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This is BS. I enjoy these videos and encourage people to keep making them. It’s a great way to get a better idea of what things really looked like which is har

This is BS. I enjoy these videos and encourage people to keep making them. It’s a great way to get a better idea of what things really looked like which is hard to do with choppy grainy footage. Historians should be doing everything they can to help us be more connected with the past, so being all curmudgeonly on this doesn’t make sense.

detritus 6y ago
Likewise, I've personally been in awe at some of the upscaled Nuclear testing footage that's cropped up on YouTube recently. It's literally awe-inspiring. So what if it's not 100% accurate?
- mcguire 6y ago
  You could likely use modern digital techniques to make up some new testing footage that is even more awe-inspiring. So what if it's 100% inaccurate?
  - detritus 6y ago
    I guess because it's known that the other is 95% truth vs. 95% fiction?
mnl 6y ago
I don't care for them. If people enjoy that good for them I guess, but nothing changes the fact that they're fantasy. The colors are simply made up, that information isn't in the film, you can't tell from luminance which colors were there. I cringe at colorized films for the same reasons. If you can't take B&W you should consider that make-ups, costumes and all settings were chosen according to how they would look in B&W. In the same way that Technicolor forced you to have one of their color advisors supervising everything. At some point some audiences decided that B&W was boring and the aesthetical appreciation of that whole graphical universe was lost, as a result the expectations are that everything has to look in a very definite way or else it's unwatchable. I find such way of thinking the most narrow-minded by far.
- ant6n 6y ago
  > If people enjoy that good for them I guess, but nothing changes the fact that they're fantasy. (...) If you can't take B&W you should consider that make-ups, costumes and all settings were chosen according to how they would look in B&W. So the colorized versions are a Fantasy, but the original b/w versions were already a Fantasy.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - toast0 6y ago
    If we're looking at colorized feature films, everything is a fantasy of course. The cinematography used various colors to get the desired look on black and white film, in some cases to evoke various percieved colors with totally different colors. When colorizing, sometimes they have color photos from the filming. You can try to match those, but that may not match the intent of the film. But you might not know the intent either, so you have to guess at that too. It might be easier to convince people to watch colorized films, but it's important to realize it's not really the same film.
- jedberg 6y ago
  There's a big difference between a colorized movie and historical film that's been colorized. The movie represents a directors vision, and how it looked in B&W was part of that vision. I agree, they should not colorize old movies. But historical films are in B&W because that's all they had, not because they wanted to depict it that way. I'm sure if the creators of those films had the option of 4K HDR, they would have used it.
  - shard 6y ago
    The historical films also represent the directors' vision, as they had to choose the lens/film/exposure/processing to interpret the image and get their message across. 4K HDR would just gives them more knobs to tweak. A documentary has less control over what happens in front of the camera, but the whole workflow behind the camera is still completely under the directors' control.
2bitencryption 6y ago
This was my first thought as well. However, I can think of at least one possible disadvantage -- If these "enhanced" videos proliferate, then as a side effect there will be less desire for the original "source of truth" videos in grainy B&W and low framerates. I.e., this scenario: the original, primary-source video, based 100% on reality, gets 100 views on Youtube while the same video artificially manipulated to look better gets 100k. Eventually the enhanced one has replaced the original, and possibly even the original gets lost, and in the future historians will only have our grossly-artificial reinterpretations of the video instead of the source of truth. (but then again, YT is not exactly a historical archive, I'd imagine the originals should be archived properly to prevent this)
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  Yes, and so what? If the "improved" version didn't exist, how many Youtube views would the original get? 110? 200? 1100? It sure wouldn't be 100,100. On what basis would you assert that 10 or 100 or 1000 people viewing the original was better than 100,000 viewing the enanced version? And eventually the original gets lost? What it if eventually gets lost anyway, and we don't even have the enhanced version?
cooljacob204 6y ago
Historians fill in gaps from partial information about what happened in the past all the time. I see this as no different then recreating a scene based on an old video.
Barrin92 6y ago
>Historians should be doing everything they can to help us be more connected with the past No, Historians have the job of creating an accurate account of the past, their job isn't to connect you to anything, they're not Facebook for the past or the history channel.
- Spivak 6y ago
  Yes but that super accurate account is worthless if the accounts never actually get told to someone who isn't a historian. It's somebody's job to take those accounts and present them to non-historians/muggles and they care very much that you feel connected to the past.
  - Barrin92 6y ago
    No, that's a cultural issue about the confusion between education and entertainment. If people aren't interested enough in actual history the solution is not to turn science into entertainment, it's to foster a genuine interest in actual science in the population. Trying to turn everything into entertainment is a race to the bottom, because people will more and more demand that their scientific education is 'engaging'. That's actually how the history channel went from well, actual history to ancient aliens
    - joshstrange 6y ago
      This kind of purist attitude is so self-defeating in my opinion. The choices are "make history interesting/easily digestible/accessible" or "not have people care", unfortunately "make people care more about history" doesn't just happen. I'm sorry but I'm not motivated at all to pick through old/inaccessible texts trying to pull out some historical significance but I'll gladly watch a documentary/YT series/TV docuseries that does a good job of explaining events, painting a full picture, and puts events in context. The type of approach you suggest feels like the arguments about how people should just learn the CLI or low-level computer operations. The "We shouldn't bother with GUI's", "it's not important that we expose functionality with pretty UI", or "if people cared they would learn the CLI and be happy about it". Making history/art/computers/etc more accessible is not a bad thing.
Spivak 6y ago
That video of NYC is breathtaking. I don't care in the slightest that the colors might technically be wrong. The emotional impact of feeling like I could actually be standing on that street is genuinely amazing. Maybe other people are different but I can't cross the imagination gap with b/w footage but this did it instantly. 10/10 best possible ad for these services.
- mcguire 6y ago
  The emotional impact you are feeling, then, is a result of the image manipulation?
redisman 6y ago
Yeah this article presents a really tiring argument. Learning should be boring! How dare you make it more exciting. These YouTubers don't claim to be some archivists for a national museum..
snowwrestler 6y ago
> It’s a great way to get a better idea of what things really looked like It's not, though. It's a great way to get an idea of what a few people today think things looked like. Enjoying the videos is fine, but it's not great to think they are more accurate just because they look better.
mcguire 6y ago
"...a better idea of what things really looked like..." But that's the problem. Is it what things really looked like? I am a curmudgeon, so presumably I don't count, but I think you should feel free to enjoy the modified photos and videos. But don't forget that that is not what it really looked like.

detritus 6y ago

Likewise, I've personally been in awe at some of the upscaled Nuclear testing footage that's cropped up on YouTube recently. It's literally awe-inspiring. So what if it's not 100% accurate?

mcguire 6y ago
You could likely use modern digital techniques to make up some new testing footage that is even more awe-inspiring. So what if it's 100% inaccurate?
- detritus 6y ago
  I guess because it's known that the other is 95% truth vs. 95% fiction?

mnl 6y ago

I don't care for them. If people enjoy that good for them I guess, but nothing changes the fact that they're fantasy. The colors are simply made up, that information isn't in the film, you can't tell from luminance which colors were there. I cringe at colorized films for the same reasons. If you can't take B&W you should consider that make-ups, costumes and all settings were chosen according to how they would look in B&W. In the same way that Technicolor forced you to have one of their color advisors supervising everything. At some point some audiences decided that B&W was boring and the aesthetical appreciation of that whole graphical universe was lost, as a result the expectations are that everything has to look in a very definite way or else it's unwatchable. I find such way of thinking the most narrow-minded by far.

ant6n 6y ago
> If people enjoy that good for them I guess, but nothing changes the fact that they're fantasy. (...) If you can't take B&W you should consider that make-ups, costumes and all settings were chosen according to how they would look in B&W. So the colorized versions are a Fantasy, but the original b/w versions were already a Fantasy.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- toast0 6y ago
  If we're looking at colorized feature films, everything is a fantasy of course. The cinematography used various colors to get the desired look on black and white film, in some cases to evoke various percieved colors with totally different colors. When colorizing, sometimes they have color photos from the filming. You can try to match those, but that may not match the intent of the film. But you might not know the intent either, so you have to guess at that too. It might be easier to convince people to watch colorized films, but it's important to realize it's not really the same film.
jedberg 6y ago
There's a big difference between a colorized movie and historical film that's been colorized. The movie represents a directors vision, and how it looked in B&W was part of that vision. I agree, they should not colorize old movies. But historical films are in B&W because that's all they had, not because they wanted to depict it that way. I'm sure if the creators of those films had the option of 4K HDR, they would have used it.
- shard 6y ago
  The historical films also represent the directors' vision, as they had to choose the lens/film/exposure/processing to interpret the image and get their message across. 4K HDR would just gives them more knobs to tweak. A documentary has less control over what happens in front of the camera, but the whole workflow behind the camera is still completely under the directors' control.

2bitencryption 6y ago

This was my first thought as well. However, I can think of at least one possible disadvantage -- If these "enhanced" videos proliferate, then as a side effect there will be less desire for the original "source of truth" videos in grainy B&W and low framerates. I.e., this scenario: the original, primary-source video, based 100% on reality, gets 100 views on Youtube while the same video artificially manipulated to look better gets 100k. Eventually the enhanced one has replaced the original, and possibly even the original gets lost, and in the future historians will only have our grossly-artificial reinterpretations of the video instead of the source of truth. (but then again, YT is not exactly a historical archive, I'd imagine the originals should be archived properly to prevent this)

AnimalMuppet 6y ago
Yes, and so what? If the "improved" version didn't exist, how many Youtube views would the original get? 110? 200? 1100? It sure wouldn't be 100,100. On what basis would you assert that 10 or 100 or 1000 people viewing the original was better than 100,000 viewing the enanced version? And eventually the original gets lost? What it if eventually gets lost anyway, and we don't even have the enhanced version?

cooljacob204 6y ago

Historians fill in gaps from partial information about what happened in the past all the time. I see this as no different then recreating a scene based on an old video.

Barrin92 6y ago

>Historians should be doing everything they can to help us be more connected with the past No, Historians have the job of creating an accurate account of the past, their job isn't to connect you to anything, they're not Facebook for the past or the history channel.

Spivak 6y ago
Yes but that super accurate account is worthless if the accounts never actually get told to someone who isn't a historian. It's somebody's job to take those accounts and present them to non-historians/muggles and they care very much that you feel connected to the past.
- Barrin92 6y ago
  No, that's a cultural issue about the confusion between education and entertainment. If people aren't interested enough in actual history the solution is not to turn science into entertainment, it's to foster a genuine interest in actual science in the population. Trying to turn everything into entertainment is a race to the bottom, because people will more and more demand that their scientific education is 'engaging'. That's actually how the history channel went from well, actual history to ancient aliens
  - joshstrange 6y ago
    This kind of purist attitude is so self-defeating in my opinion. The choices are "make history interesting/easily digestible/accessible" or "not have people care", unfortunately "make people care more about history" doesn't just happen. I'm sorry but I'm not motivated at all to pick through old/inaccessible texts trying to pull out some historical significance but I'll gladly watch a documentary/YT series/TV docuseries that does a good job of explaining events, painting a full picture, and puts events in context. The type of approach you suggest feels like the arguments about how people should just learn the CLI or low-level computer operations. The "We shouldn't bother with GUI's", "it's not important that we expose functionality with pretty UI", or "if people cared they would learn the CLI and be happy about it". Making history/art/computers/etc more accessible is not a bad thing.

Spivak 6y ago

That video of NYC is breathtaking. I don't care in the slightest that the colors might technically be wrong. The emotional impact of feeling like I could actually be standing on that street is genuinely amazing. Maybe other people are different but I can't cross the imagination gap with b/w footage but this did it instantly. 10/10 best possible ad for these services.

mcguire 6y ago
The emotional impact you are feeling, then, is a result of the image manipulation?

redisman 6y ago

Yeah this article presents a really tiring argument. Learning should be boring! How dare you make it more exciting. These YouTubers don't claim to be some archivists for a national museum..

snowwrestler 6y ago

> It’s a great way to get a better idea of what things really looked like It's not, though. It's a great way to get an idea of what a few people today think things looked like. Enjoying the videos is fine, but it's not great to think they are more accurate just because they look better.

mcguire 6y ago

"...a better idea of what things really looked like..." But that's the problem. Is it what things really looked like? I am a curmudgeon, so presumably I don't count, but I think you should feel free to enjoy the modified photos and videos. But don't forget that that is not what it really looked like.