TOS in glorious . . . black and white

[plynch]

Anybody check me on the greenness of the command shirts coming through on the viewmasters? Please don't make me go looking.

By the way: last night watched "dagger" cuz of a thread here, and the bluish hue of the film stock or something made the command tunics look more greenish than usual in S1 or 2. Though, not on the bridge with its very red lighting. Moody, that. Think they were still using light "bars" on Shatners eyes at that point of s1. Oh that it all could have lasted . . . "We'll always have Paris" (or the first 13 eps in our case).

 

[Therin of Andor]

Anybody check me on the greenness of the command shirts coming through on the viewmasters? Please don't make me go looking.

Judge for yourself:

http://mystartrekscrapbook.blogspot.com/2009/03/omega-glory-viewmaster-reel.html (Actual VM scans)

and

http://graeme.50webs.com/trekmisc/viewmastertrek/index.htm (Episode frame grabs)

 

[Captain Robert April]

Those ViewMaster scans are rather badly faded. I really need to figure out how to scan mine, they really are pristine, especially since I got them loose.

Yes, the command tunics really were that green.

 

[plynch]

Especially the outdoor shots where you get "true" lighting if there is such a thing.

Here's from TrekCore. http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/2x23hd/theomegagloryhd0286.jpg

Fairly greenish for what usually went out on air. And the vm reels are even moreso. Or were. I hope mine haven't faded. They're deep in a box in the dark. I'm afraid to look.

another: http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/2x23hd/theomegagloryhd0238.jpg

 

[CorporalCaptain]

I'm not seeing the green in these pictures, by which I mean that it all looks squarely in the yellow part of the color wheel to me. I don't see anything anomalous at all.

In fact, I've brought up before how it would be nice to see some photos capturing the alleged greenness of the command tunics that also include a ColorChecker card, so we can get some [even somewhat] objectively meaningful data.

That remark of mine was met with nothing but crickets chirping.

 

[Maurice]

We've seen actual uniforms, and Theiss himself said it was a shade of green that photographed differently than it looked in person.

In fact, I have some old pix of James Cawley wearing an actual Shatner 1st season wrap-around tunic--the one we all know is green--and in one photo, lo and behold, it looks goldish...and it's not even the troublesome velour.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

I don't doubt that the shade is "really" green and that it has the property of photographing differently. It's just that I haven't had the fortune and pleasure of seeing one of the uniforms in person.

Technical question: does the color plot near the edge of the CIE xy chromaticity diagram?

 

[plynch]

The Omega pics don't look green, but more greenish to my eyes than the straight-up gold they look usually. But again, I'm remembering the vm's as being even more green.

And I saw a S3 polyester tunic in Detroit and it was greenish yellow. Chartreuse. Other threads on this. I was just curious if my vm memories were accurate. But maybe they've all faded like the scanned ones and we'll never know.

 

[tafkats]

I've never seen TOS in black and white, but I watched the first few seasons of TNG that way -- we got a color TV in the late '80s. What I remember most is not anything about the footage -- heck, TNG was mostly beige anyway, except for the uniforms -- but how bright the opening sequence looked.

 

[Green Shirt]

The Omega pics don't look green, but more greenish to my eyes than the straight-up gold they look usually. But again, I'm remembering the vm's as being even more green.

And I saw a S3 polyester tunic in Detroit and it was greenish yellow. Chartreuse. Other threads on this. I was just curious if my vm memories were accurate. But maybe they've all faded like the scanned ones and we'll never know.

The color problem even exists in the other Trek series (including Trek 2009). But they were deliberately created in a goldish mustard color that sometimes looked green in various lighting conditions.

 

[Captain Robert April]

Has anyone got that quote from a very frustrated Bill Theiss about how the shirts were, in fact, sort of an avocado green, and that between the oddities of the velour and the color mixers intent on making Spock look less yellowish, they only looked gold on screen?

 

[Redfern]

I was kinda' lucky.

I didn't start watching Trek on a regular basis until the Fall of 1972 when it was in reruns and by that time we had a color TV. Oddly enough, it wasn't until 1975 when I finally got a TV in my bedroom that I saw episodes in monochrome. (At that time it aired only on Saturdays and normally opposite a ball game so my father claimed the color set in the den.)

That B/W set followed me to my grandmother's after my father died and I watched that until it "died" in late summer '77 after which I got my first color set, a 13 inch tabletop GE. (The "original" color set was too bulky for my bedroom at my grandmother's. It sat in the "sitting" room prone to temperature extremes until the tubes became too unstable and could only manifest a recreation of the "galatic barrier" on the screen. Oddly, my grandmother didn't want the color set in her room which could have housed it without being "swamped". She just didn't care for color.)

Sincerely,

Bill

 

[Maurice]

Has anyone got that quote from a very frustrated Bill Theiss about how the shirts were, in fact, sort of an avocado green, and that between the oddities of the velour and the color mixers intent on making Spock look less yellowish, they only looked gold on screen?

“It was one of those film stock things;” Theiss states, “it photographed one way - burnt orange or a gold. But in reality was another; the command shirts were definitely green.”

A STITCH IN TIME
by James Magda, 1988

That's the only quote I know of off-hand that has Theiss discussing the color problem.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

^ Thank you!