The
color of money
Local colorization whiz Barry Sandrew turns forgotten films into filthy
lucre.
By Jeff Berkwits
Though he has analyzed thousands of movies over the years,
there’s one motion picture that Barry Sandrew, the man who developed
the technology to digitally colorize classic films, can’t bear to
watch. Not because it’s too wretched – he has certainly endured
hours of tasteless dreck – but rather due to the tale’s devastating
emotional impact.
“I’ve never seen ‘Schindler’s List,’”
he admits, adding that, during the picture’s development, members
of Steven Spielberg’s production crew conferred with him on how
to best insert flashes of color in some of the stark black-and-white scenes.
“I simply can’t watch any movie that has to do with the Holocaust.
The whole Holocaust situation affects me as a Jew, even though I’m
not religious. It just affects me a great deal.”
Fortunately, most of the images he deals with on a day-to-day
basis aren’t so distressing. As president and chief operating officer
of San Diego-based Legend Films, the world’s preeminent facility
for restoring and colorizing vintage black-and-white movies, Sandrew heads
a creative team dedicated to revitalizing forgotten cinematic shorts and
full-length motion pictures. The company recently issued colorful DVD
renditions of both the inadvertently humorous “Reefer Madness”
and a “lost” documentary on the race horse Seabiscuit, with
impending plans to release colorized versions of the Abbott and Costello
film “Africa Screams,” “Night of the Living Dead”
and, on a single disc, four Three Stooges comedies. Sandrew will be leading
the marketing push for these products at this year’s Comic-Con International,
spreading the word about the firm’s new titles, giving away discs
and working to arrange screenings at nearby venues.
Ironically, his status as the movie industry’s premier
colorization expert came about as a fluke. After receiving his doctorate
in neuroscience, Sandrew was toiling as a research associate at Harvard
University’s Massachusetts General Hospital when in 1986 a group
of entrepreneurs asked him to help determine the best way to add color
to black-and-white films.
“I wasn’t even aware of the fact that there was
such a thing as colorization,” laughs the 57-year-old businessman,
who moved to San Diego soon after that fateful meeting. “I was using
color in my work to enhance the diagnostic value of CAT scans and x-rays,
and my colleagues and I at Harvard were trying to figure out ways of doing
three-dimensional reconstructions of angiograms and that sort of thing.
So when they asked me to do something as insignificant as colorizing a
black-and-white movie, it was a no-brainer. It’s no different than
adding color to an x-ray, only there are about 144,000 [frames] that you
have to do for a movie, and you have to do it economically.”
That encounter led to the formation of a company that ultimately
grabbed the lion’s share of the colorization market. A long-term
contract with Ted Turner resulted in Sandrew adding hues to more than
250 pictures, with other deals leading to the colorization of numerous
early television adventures and about 80 vintage Disney and Warner Bros.
cartoons. Upon launching Legend Films in 2001, Sandrew continued to build
upon that colorful past, mastering all of his new productions in the
HDTV format and featuring on each DVD such extras as technical commentaries
and humorous insights from former “Mystery Science Theater 3000”
host (and schlock-film maven) Mike Nelson. The company’s expertise
has also been tapped by contemporary moviemakers, including Martin Scorsese,
who is employing Legend Films to craft digital effects for “The
Aviator,” a biography of Howard Hughes currently scheduled for release
in December.
In spite of this success, most cinema purists decry such restorations,
contending that colorizing early motion pictures “destroys”
them by altering the director’s creative vision. It’s a claim
that, not surprisingly, Sandrew vigorously denies.
“It’s the ultimate arrogance for someone to tell
me what to watch, what not to watch and how I should watch it,”
he argues, acknowledging that he rarely views films – old or new
– purely for enjoyment. “When it comes right down to it, all
the movies that I’m colorizing were made for one purpose, and one
purpose only: to make money. While there was some creative interest involved,
the studios had no interest other than to make money. This was not art
to them.
Nevertheless, they’re great movies, and we’re living in a
time when people don’t accept black-and-white films, especially
the younger generation, so this is a way of getting those movies to a
whole new audience.”
Reaching fresh audiences is important for Sandrew, not only
because it keeps the legacy of potentially overlooked productions alive,
but also from a personal perspective.
“There’s certainly a creative element within the
Jewish culture, and I think that comes out in the entertainment industry,”
he says, noting that he often finds himself working closely with other
Jewish individuals in Hollywood. “Influencing people through storytelling
and entertainment is also part of the Jewish culture. Jews are very in
tune with affecting others, and I think that’s really what motivates
people creatively in the entertainment industry.”
He may not be able to watch every production, but Sandrew
undoubtedly appreciates and builds upon the work of those filmmakers –
Jew and non-Jew alike – that came before him, embellishing the past
to build a brighter, more colorful future. What could be more Jewish than
that?
Comic-Con International 2004
When: Thursday, July 22-Sunday, July 25
Where: San Diego Convention Center, 111 Harbor Drive,
Downtown
Tickets $60 for adults, $30 for ages 7-16 & 60+. For more information,
call (619) 491-2475 or visit www.comic-con.org.
For feedback, contact editor@sdjewishjournal.com.