strange picture quality on archive clip

[J. P. Gilliver]

BBC Archive have just tweeted this clip
https://twitter.com/BBCArchive/status/1775040485037310033
(Sir Alec Guinness' 110th birthday, but that's not important right now)

The clip is fairly clear, but with very muted colour - the effect is
more like a PAL set with the colour control turned down quite low. I was
wondering what the cause might be: I don't _think_ it's colo(u)rised
(would BBC Archive do that anyway?), but I don't think it's PAL -
there's no obvious colour bleed effect or similar. If it's film (I see
no film artefacts but could have been very well kept), I've not seen
film fade in quite this manner: usually the colours fade differently,
not evenly. I suppose it could be faded film that has been skilfully
colour-corrected, but if that were the case, I'd have expected the
chroma to have been turned up a bit.

[John Williamson]

Post by J. P. Gilliver
BBC Archive have just tweeted this clip
https://twitter.com/BBCArchive/status/1775040485037310033
(Sir Alec Guinness' 110th birthday, but that's not important right now)
The clip is fairly clear, but with very muted colour - the effect is
more like a PAL set with the colour control turned down quite low. I was
wondering what the cause might be: I don't _think_ it's colo(u)rised
(would BBC Archive do that anyway?), but I don't think it's PAL -
there's no obvious colour bleed effect or similar. If it's film (I see
no film artefacts but could have been very well kept), I've not seen
film fade in quite this manner: usually the colours fade differently,
not evenly. I suppose it could be faded film that has been skilfully
colour-corrected, but if that were the case, I'd have expected the
chroma to have been turned up a bit.

Somebody or something has obviously worked on it, as it is playing here
in portrait format, which was not common until smartphones arrived.It
may just be X doing a default crop.

Working out what happened would be easier if there was a date attached
to the interview, but the poor resolution on the clip could be hiding a
lot of artifacts, such as head switching on a 2 inch machine.

[J. P. Gilliver]

Post by John Williamson

Post by J. P. Gilliver
BBC Archive have just tweeted this clip
https://twitter.com/BBCArchive/status/1775040485037310033
(Sir Alec Guinness' 110th birthday, but that's not important right now)
The clip is fairly clear, but with very muted colour - the effect is
more like a PAL set with the colour control turned down quite low. I was
wondering what the cause might be: I don't _think_ it's colo(u)rised
(would BBC Archive do that anyway?), but I don't think it's PAL -
there's no obvious colour bleed effect or similar. If it's film (I see
no film artefacts but could have been very well kept), I've not seen
film fade in quite this manner: usually the colours fade differently,
not evenly. I suppose it could be faded film that has been skilfully
colour-corrected, but if that were the case, I'd have expected the
chroma to have been turned up a bit.

Somebody or something has obviously worked on it, as it is playing here
in portrait format, which was not common until smartphones arrived.It
may just be X doing a default crop.

I was going to say it was square to me, but you are right, it's taller
than it is wide - but only slightly.

Post by John Williamson
Working out what happened would be easier if there was a date attached
to the interview, but the poor resolution on the clip could be hiding a
lot of artifacts, such as head switching on a 2 inch machine.

Maybe someone more familiar with Sir Alec can suggest a rough date from
his appearance - or someone can recognise the background or something.

[John Williamson]

Post by J. P. Gilliver

Post by John Williamson
Somebody or something has obviously worked on it, as it is playing
here in portrait format, which was not common until smartphones
arrived.It may just be X doing a default crop.

I was going to say it was square to me, but you are right, it's taller
than it is wide - but only slightly.

The original would have been 4 wide x 3 high, so what we see has been
cropped to fit Twitter's target audience.

Post by J. P. Gilliver
Maybe someone more familiar with Sir Alec can suggest a rough date from
his appearance - or someone can recognise the background or something.

It may have been shot on set between scenes, the background has the look
of the edge of a set. I'd guess U-Matic, possibly a portable machine,
and the later Hi Band U-matics had pretty good colour resolution.

[J. P. Gilliver]

Post by John Williamson

Post by J. P. Gilliver

Post by John Williamson
Somebody or something has obviously worked on it, as it is playing
here in portrait format, which was not common until smartphones
arrived.It may just be X doing a default crop.

I was going to say it was square to me, but you are right, it's taller
than it is wide - but only slightly.

The original would have been 4 wide x 3 high, so what we see has been
cropped to fit Twitter's target audience.

Agreed.

Post by John Williamson

Post by J. P. Gilliver
Maybe someone more familiar with Sir Alec can suggest a rough date from
his appearance - or someone can recognise the background or something.

It may have been shot on set between scenes, the background has the
look of the edge of a set. I'd guess U-Matic, possibly a portable
machine, and the later Hi Band U-matics had pretty good colour
resolution.

So why the reduced-colour effect?

[John Williamson]

Post by J. P. Gilliver
So why the reduced-colour effect?

Artistic choice by the uploader?

[NY]

Post by J. P. Gilliver
BBC Archive have just tweeted this clip
https://twitter.com/BBCArchive/status/1775040485037310033
(Sir Alec Guinness' 110th birthday, but that's not important right now)
The clip is fairly clear, but with very muted colour - the effect is
more like a PAL set with the colour control turned down quite low. I was
wondering what the cause might be: I don't _think_ it's colo(u)rised
(would BBC Archive do that anyway?), but I don't think it's PAL -
there's no obvious colour bleed effect or similar. If it's film (I see
no film artefacts but could have been very well kept), I've not seen
film fade in quite this manner: usually the colours fade differently,
not evenly. I suppose it could be faded film that has been skilfully
colour-corrected, but if that were the case, I'd have expected the
chroma to have been turned up a bit.

It's definitely film. The overall look resembles film rather than video,
and I noticed a hair on one frame - I *thought* I spotted it so I
downloaded the video and went through that bit till I found the frame

Loading Image...

the hair is over his left shoulder, against the white border of the
background.

There are really *horrible* amoeba-like compression artefacts on the
background which may be due to film grain not compressing well.

I've wound up the saturation on the still

Loading Image...

which gives a more natural skin tone.

It looks as if it's a two-light shoot - you can see two catchlights in
his eyes, as if there is a main light that is casting a shadow of his
nose on his right (screen left), with a fill-in light to lessen the
effect of this. That suggests an on-location interview rather than an
interview in a TV studio where the lights are much higher up and less
likely to produce catchlights in the eyes.

I'd say he looks about 50-60 - there is still a hint of his youthful
appearance in Kind Hearts and Coronets (though all the characters he
played in that looked very different to each other!) and he hasn't yet
got the lined face he had when he played George Smiley.

[J. P. Gilliver]

Post by NY

Post by J. P. Gilliver
BBC Archive have just tweeted this clip
https://twitter.com/BBCArchive/status/1775040485037310033
(Sir Alec Guinness' 110th birthday, but that's not important right now)
The clip is fairly clear, but with very muted colour - the effect is

[]

Post by NY
It's definitely film. The overall look resembles film rather than
video, and I noticed a hair on one frame - I *thought* I spotted it so
I downloaded the video and went through that bit till I found the frame
https://i.postimg.cc/0y61djNz/temp.png
the hair is over his left shoulder, against the white border of the
background.

Well spotted!

Post by NY
There are really *horrible* amoeba-like compression artefacts on the
background which may be due to film grain not compressing well.
I've wound up the saturation on the still
https://i.postimg.cc/63V8WYJx/temp1.png
which gives a more natural skin tone.
It looks as if it's a two-light shoot - you can see two catchlights in
his eyes, as if there is a main light that is casting a shadow of his
nose on his right (screen left), with a fill-in light to lessen the
effect of this. That suggests an on-location interview rather than an
interview in a TV studio where the lights are much higher up and less
likely to produce catchlights in the eyes.

[]
Any thoughts on why the reduced colour? As I've said, usually if it's
due to film fading, that tends to put a colour _cast_ as the layers fade
in different ways (such as the famous green of the title sequence [and
some episodes] of the first series of All Creatures Great And Small), so
I'm puzzled about this case, where the effect is more just as if the
chroma has been backed off (but evenly).