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ilovemychickens OP t1_j1xkost wrote

Reply to comment by edrenfro in In Return to Oz (1985) the nightmare fueled sequel to the Wizard of Oz, why do so many of the characters look completely different from the first film? by ilovemychickens

That is extremely interesting, I didn't even think about the characters from the books and movies having different rights, but that makes sense

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Ground2ChairMissile t1_j1xrad0 wrote

The witch - any witch in pop culture, in fact - wasn't even green until MGM wanted to show off their color film.

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psymunn t1_j1xwqoa wrote

It's a great movie to showcase color too. While the book doesn't explicitly have Kansas be black and white, they make a lot of mention of how grey everything is, and all the lands Dorothy visits are very focused on color; the Emerald city especially. They didn't call it out as explicitly in the movie but it's definitely a great inspiration

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luuummoooxdadwarf t1_j1yy3jv wrote

Fun fact, and as a Kansan I can confirm, back then the film was all filmed in color, in Oz and in Kansas, but the state just sucked the color out of everyone that entered.

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TheJonnieP t1_j21627x wrote

As someone who grew up in Kansas I can concur...

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bigdipper80 t1_j217nhc wrote

Wichita is pretty great. I've always enjoyed my time there.

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TheJonnieP t1_j21hski wrote

My kids like to go to Wichita to the zoo and science center.

I grew up in the SE corner in a small town called Mulberry. It was a nice place to grow up back in the 70's and 80's.

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Corno4825 t1_j1zngko wrote

That means that Kansas in the black hole of the US, which means that the Rocky and Appalachian Mountain ranges are the butt bones of America.

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Awdayshus t1_j1yzs2w wrote

In the original movie, when Dorothy first opens the door and sees everything in color, the whole shot is done on color film. They painted everything inside the house to match how it looked on black and white film so the camera can slowly move through the doorway and reveal the colors.

Even Dorothy transitions to color in this scene. Her double crosses in front of the camera in a black and white gingham dress, and then Judy Garland steps out of the house in her iconic blue dress.

Edit: could be Judy in sepia and her double stepping out in color. The point is that they filmed it that way. It's not a trick they did in post-production.

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VT_Squire t1_j21salz wrote

I don't know if it's written in stone anywhere, but a quick review of the scene looks like it's the inverse of what you're saying.

To me, it looks as follows:

Shot 1: Judy was in Sepia. Part of her face was showing in that shot (albeit with a creative use of bad lighting), her double in color stepped out, but as a view from behind, obscuring her face.

Shot 2: A head-shot of Judy as Dorothy from the reverse angle was spliced in to show that it was her. But... oh look, her hands moved. Clearly, this was a distinct shot. I would expect a multiple-camera setup for a shot like this to preserve continuity, which begs the question of why a whole separate take with continuity errors was leaned on in order to accomplish the effect if that was actually Judy who stepped out in color.

Shot 3: A continuation of shot 1 (the hand placement and camera position are exactly where you'd project them to be with approx 1/2 second of missing film in between) but the face of the "color" version of Dorothy is again obscured. There is a creative use of foreground and a long-drawn out take (misdirection) until Judy's double is sufficiently far from the lens so as to be obscured via good old-fashioned limitations of focal length.

Shot 4: As before, definitely not from a continuous take, begging the same question as before.

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Awdayshus t1_j21tch1 wrote

I am talking about the single shot from 0:50-1:01 in this clip: https://youtu.be/YWFHeDcVNiw

Everything before that is shot in black and white/sepia. At 0:50, it's in color, but the inside of the house is painted sepia. Her extra opens the door dressed in sepia and leaves the frame. Then Garland walks through the door in color. The camera doesn't cut until the reverse angle at 1:01.

Edit: Now I realize you're just saying Judy opens the door and her double steps out. That could be. My point is that the very first shot with color out the door was shot practically. It's not two shots spliced together or color added or subtracted in post-production. They made the transition from sepia to color with some tricks while they were filming.

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VT_Squire t1_j23bzwi wrote

Holy crud... Her body double is still alive at 103 yrs old.

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BitchStewie_ t1_j207lns wrote

Can confirm, I've driven through Kansas and it gets black and white as soon as you hit the border. It was a weird transition driving west, you get color in Missouri, black and white in Kansas, then back to color once you hit OK or CO.

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DavefromKS t1_j20qemn wrote

Also can confirm. As a Kansan i am rendered in black and white.

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Witetrashman t1_j1zxga1 wrote

The book actually does describe Kansas as a grey place. Here’s an interesting article exploring the use of color in the book: “Within the first chapter of the novel, the reader is exposed to the very dull and gray depiction of Kansas. On one page alone, the author describes the gray prairies of Kansas and the gray house where Dorothy resides. He continues on to state that even the sky and grass, which are universally known to be colorful symbols of life, are gray in Kansas.”

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psymunn t1_j203qp3 wrote

Yep. Also when she returns at the end of the book, things are imbued with color

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Keeble64 t1_j1xu614 wrote

Yeah, not sure how a one-eyed, 3 pigtailed witch that looks like James Cagney would have worked in the 39 movie.

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Random_Sime t1_j1ypb1t wrote

That colour... as big of a deal at the time, (if not bigger than) the computer animation of "living" creatures in Jurassic Park was back in the 90s.

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dittybopper_05H t1_j1zehd6 wrote

Most of the dinosaur scenes in Jurassic Park were done with practical effects. The CGI used in Jurassic Park only totals about 4 minutes.

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Random_Sime t1_j228ewt wrote

Yeah the practical effects really helped sell the digital effects, but the shots that really created awe in the audience were the wide shots like the brachiosaur reaching for the treetops at the start, the t-rex chasing the jeep, and the finale with the raptors and the t-rex. Those would have looked real janky with practical, but digital fx made us believe it could be real.

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Davrosdaleks t1_j21buuo wrote

Plus the book version of the witch only had one eye.

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thetoog91 t1_j21cqmu wrote

Didn't MGM trademark that particular shade of green too, IIRC?

I think to the point that when Disney made Oz the Great and Powerful and the Wicked Witch appeared, they had to use a shade very similar but not so much that they infringed copyright

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Rolemodel247 t1_j1xoctr wrote

I think the book doesn’t have any “rights” as their copyright expired

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Salarian_American t1_j1xumwg wrote

Some of the books were public domain at this point, and Disney owned the movie rights to the ones that weren't. The last of the books didn't lose its copyright until 1996.

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DrRexMorman t1_j1xwjv4 wrote

> Disney owned the movie rights to the ones that weren

It didn't.

It paid MGM to use movie-specific stuff.

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Scottland83 t1_j1ymozs wrote

Disney had the rights to The Marvelous Land of Oz and Ozma of Oz, on which the movie was based. They had to make a movie before those books became public domain.

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Salarian_American t1_j1zf00h wrote

Right I was unclear. Disney had optioned the remaining Oz books, the ones that weren't already public domain and the ones that MGM didn't hold the movie rights to.

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LatinaMermaid t1_j1xtg44 wrote

You need to look up the feud with Walt Disney and MGM! Constantly taunted Disney with the Wizard of Oz rights. The old studio guys were so petty!

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Keeble64 t1_j1xv72c wrote

1930's Hollywood Movie Producer Voice "Hey there, ol' Walt! That's a mighty fine drawing of a some dwarves ya got there! Too bad you can't make a movie with real ones! Aww I'm just cueballin' ya! Don't be a sourpuss now! You go work on your castle amusement park. Just don't make the castle green or we'll take the mouse!" aggressive elbow nudges

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BlueHero45 t1_j1yezlt wrote

Disney clutches his fist "One day I will own everything"

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GriffinFlash t1_j1ykc6s wrote

Everything but heathy lungs. *puffs 40 cigarettes at once

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Qorhat t1_j1yi5dg wrote

“Now you listen here Mervyn, you can use all the asbestos as you like in your little picture but Snow White will be just aces I tell ya, people are just going to flip their wig”

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Scottland83 t1_j1ymtpx wrote

They made that dumb James Franco movie just to get around the copywriter claims. There’s this weird workaround through the book of Wicked and making the witch green, it’s complicated.

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MulciberTenebras t1_j2114fq wrote

And yet 60 years later they'd join forces for a theme park at Disney World (the MGM, now Hollywood Studios)

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RainMonkey9000 t1_j1yopjw wrote

Disney has one of these happen just yesterday. Winnie the Pooh books just entered public domain but not Disneys version. Basically Pooh’s red shirt was a Disney addition so if you don’t have that then go for your life.

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Roook36 t1_j1yz0n3 wrote

Yeah there're been a few adaptions of the novels. Both live action and animated, and they usually base their look off of descriptions in the book.

The costumes for the characters for the 1939 musical were made to allow the cast to sing and dance so were heavily influenced by just practicality.

The same characters in Return to Oz were based off the book descriptions and made to look more like the actual things they are. An actual lion, an actual scarecrow, etc rather than a human actor in a costume.

I always found the scarecrow in Return to Oz terrifying but appreciated a less "stage musical" look to them.

If you want true nightmare fuel though, look up the characters in The Wonderful Land of Oz (1969). It has the Return to Oz story in it and it's a much lower budget version.

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hawkwings t1_j1z3rzk wrote

That was an issue with the Addams family movies. The movie producers paid the comic strip artist who created the characters, but they didn't pay the people who produced the TV show. There was a bunch of stuff in the TV show that was not in the comic strip, so the TV show people sued the movie producers and got some money. Gomez had no name in the comic strip; that name was invented by the TV people.

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Extensxv t1_j1z72n6 wrote

They made that dumb James Franco movie just to get around the copywriter claims.

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ofBlufftonTown t1_j1zbmfp wrote

Dorothy is young in the books, and was cast much older in the original movie.

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RawbM07 t1_j1zhdkw wrote

This reminds me a bit of Sherlock Holmes. I might be a little sketchy on the details, but some of Sherlock is under public domain, and some of him from later stories is still under the original copyright protection and belongs to Arthur Conan Doyle’s estate.

Apparently the early Sherlock in which he’s more wooden and emotionless is public domain, but a kinder and gentler Sherlock was in the stories that are still copyrighted, which is why you don’t see that version of Sherlock in the current iterations.

They sued the new Netflix version with his little sister Enola because of this and it was dismissed but I believe they settled.

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