Could you imagine watching the animated classics in black and white?  What would Disney’s 1940s masterpiece “Fantasia” look like if it was not for Technicolor? The classical music of the Philadelphia Orchestra would be playing to animations that would look nothing more than black and white sticks and orbs, with a boring Sorcerer’s Apprentice which would hold none of the charm it does today. Of course, not only animated movies were shot using the Technicolor technology, but also musicals, such as the Wizard of Oz.  Who does not remember this beloved musical with colors that were so bright that they could not possibly occur in nature? 

Colorizing black and white films simply means to painstakingly add color to each image of the movie. The process is one of painstaking precision. After all, it is important to ensure that colors do not simply flow into one another but that there are well defined boundaries between them. Similarly, that which normally shows up as grey tints in a black and white movie will have to be identified with the proper colors and then shaded accordingly. You may now wonder why such a simple – albeit labor intensive – process would draw so much debate and disagreement between film critics, film buffs, and those involved in the industry.