Yes the Command Shirts were Yellow

[ZapBrannigan]

There is a belief out there that the Kirk-Sulu uniform had a false yellow appearance (prior to the 2006 remaster) because of "a film stock thing." The idea was that the shirts were really green, and the yellow look came in only because 35mm Kodak film was somehow inaccurate for that color.

StarTrek dot com has an article somewhere making that claim. There's even an old interview with costume designer William Ware Theiss making that claim. He would buy white material and send it out to a dye shop with very exacting instructions for the shade of green he wanted. How could he be wrong?

It turns out, that shade of green is also a shade of yellow when the lights are bright enough. And Theiss' workspace would not be lit as brightly as the filming sets. So the shirts were really green backstage for him, and they were really yellow under the klieg lights, or sunlight on location.

These digital photos were taken minutes apart, with no "film stock thing" involved. From this I deduce that Eva Longoria is a huge TOS fan, and she slyly set out to prove the point without saying a word:

 

[Oddish]

I've seen shots of Kirk in his uniform along with another gold shirt, and Kirk's uniform was much greener.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

I've seen shots of Kirk in his uniform along with another gold shirt, and Kirk's uniform was much greener.

I'd like to see that. If you saw Kirk in his green wrap-around, or his full dress uniform, then it doesn't count, because those were green as hell.

His everyday, Sulu-Chekov uniform was yellow until the 2006 CBS remaster "fixed" it, based on a false belief about film stock.

 

[Metryq]

I've seen "iridescent" effects on some cloth so that it seems to change color under different lighting, or even under the same lighting, depending on incidence (angle that the light is hitting it). Is it possible that the costume workshop had fluorescent lighting, known to have a green cast?

Also, while working in a studio many years ago I'd seen graphs that came with some lamps to show the spectral output. Many would have spikes here and there across the spectrum, yet the overall effect to the naked eye was "white light." The eye, or perhaps I should say the brain, is remarkably adaptable to such color shifts, morning vs afternoon light, and different light sources. One can be trained to notice the color differences, some have that perception naturally.

I have a Siamese cat, a "chocolate point" meaning that her dark areas are a dark brown. She does something I call "putting on the fluffy." One minute her fur can feel very coarse, like wool. Literally within less than a minute she can feel ultra-soft and silky. I think it has something to do with muscle action along the roots of the follicles. Anyway, aside from the texture her fur will also change color—under the same lighting. It's subtle but noticeable. Coarse mode she is tans and browns. Fluffy mode she is white and black.

One last note: I mess around with fluorescent inks, collect UV-reactive mineral specimens, etc. Some of those inks are literally invisible under any kind of normal indoor lighting. You can examine the spot where it has been applied (on cardboard, skin, whatever) with a magnifier and see nothing. Step outside, or under some studio lighting known to have a bit of UV output (usually filtered against), and the design made with the UV ink will be visible as a pale pink. All those old laundry detergent ads that promised to make your whites whiter and colors more vibrant? Shine a UV light into some laundry soap sometime and see why. Out in sunlight your shirts are literally "whiter" because they are fluorescing that UV down into the visible spectrum. The shirt is not quite "glowing" against the more obvious reflection of sunlight, but that fluorescence is adding its bit.

 

[TIN_MAN]

I've heard both explanations for the color variation (film stock/lighting) as far back as I can remember, but the first or oldest explanation was that it was due to the lighting on the set.
But regardless of the cause, the remastered versions were not wrong in "fixing" the issue, the yellow/gold is the false color and the green is the true color -at least originally.

PS always nice to see Eva!

 

[feek61]

The original uniforms I have seen in person are most definitely gold. Yes, they could have faded over the years but they appear to be surprisingly similar to what is seen on screen.

 

[Kor]

I wonder if, in person, there is noticeable difference in color between the velour fabric from S1 and 2, and the polyester or whatever it was, from S3?

Kor

 

[scotpens]

. . . It turns out, that shade of green is also a shade of yellow when the lights are bright enough. And Theiss' workspace would not be lit as brightly as the filming sets. So the shirts were really green backstage for him, and they were really yellow under the klieg lights, or sunlight on location.

That's what I've always heard. I never even knew of the "film stock" explanation until just now.

. . . I have a Siamese cat, a "chocolate point" meaning that her dark areas are a dark brown. She does something I call "putting on the fluffy." One minute her fur can feel very coarse, like wool. Literally within less than a minute she can feel ultra-soft and silky. I think it has something to do with muscle action along the roots of the follicles. Anyway, aside from the texture her fur will also change color—under the same lighting. It's subtle but noticeable. Coarse mode she is tans and browns. Fluffy mode she is white and black.

Does the changing color effect show up in photos? Maybe you could post a few pix of your cat in the Feline Follies thread.

 

[urbandefault]

Not that it matters much either way, but in 1975 George Takei told a buddy and me that the shirts were green.

 

[Ray Hardgrit]

I wonder if, in person, there is noticeable difference in color between the velour fabric from S1 and 2, and the polyester or whatever it was, from S3?

I don't know how it looks in person, but Star Trek Prop Authority has photos of the season 3 fabric (right) draped across a season 1 tunic (left):

 

[Skipper]

The original uniform

 

[F. King Daniel]

Right, which of you is gonna formally apologize to "Trials and Tribble-ations"?

 

[NCC-73515]

The original uniforms I have seen in person are most definitely gold. Yes, they could have faded over the years but they appear to be surprisingly similar to what is seen on screen.

The one I remember seeing was green

 

[fireproof78]

Right, which of you is gonna formally apologize to "Trials and Tribble-ations"?

And where do we send the card and flowers?

 

[Relayer1]

The original uniforms I have seen in person are most definitely gold.

The one I remember seeing was green

There are four lights !

 

[Poltargyst]

the yellow/gold is the false color and the green is the true color -at least originally.

I thought the OP was saying that's not the case.

 

[M'Sharak]

All I know is that, when the series originally aired, those shirts were yellow / gold on our television set.

If the material used to make them was green under the lights in the costume-designer's room, that's one thing; however, it's not what was shown on-screen. Green might have been the real-world color, but it's not the canon color.

** stands by for a barrage of avocados from @STEPhon IT **

 

[NCC-73515]

"So, what color was Kirk’s command tunic? Was it gold, mustard, green or something else completely different? Well, the answer to that question can be found directly from the source. That is, based on fabric samples from costume designer William Theiss as well as interviews with him, we know it was actually a very subtle avocado green and not gold or mustard as it sometimes appeared in the episodes. Simply, Theiss wanted the three Starfleet service branches to be represented by the three primary colors. He selected red for engineering, blue for sciences and… wait for it… green for command. He was actually fairly consistent in his approach and even designed the work jumpsuits using this same scheme."

https://www.startrek.com/news/shirts-and-skins-in-tos

 

[Michael]

"So, what color was Kirk’s command tunic? Was it gold, mustard, green or something else completely different? Well, the answer to that question can be found directly from the source. That is, based on fabric samples from costume designer William Theiss as well as interviews with him, we know it was actually a very subtle avocado green and not gold or mustard as it sometimes appeared in the episodes. Simply, Theiss wanted the three Starfleet service branches to be represented by the three primary colors. He selected red for engineering, blue for sciences and… wait for it… green for command. He was actually fairly consistent in his approach and even designed the work jumpsuits using this same scheme."

https://www.startrek.com/news/shirts-and-skins-in-tos

That’s a great article and I don’t know how much more conclusive and exhaustive it could be on the matter. It even explains the very phenomenon we’re seeing with Eva Longoria’s dress in these photos here:

Color Temperature

Another reason that the colors of the command shirts and Vulcan skin appear to be shifted on the film has to do with the type of lighting used on the set (basically indoor, or “tungsten,” lighting) and how different that is from “natural light.” As a real-life example of how these types of differences in lighting affect color, anyone who buys paint at a hardware store knows that the color of the paint in the store can look completely different than the color of it on your wall at home. This has to do with the lighting differences between the store and your home and gets at something called color temperature. Color temperature, basically, refers to color bias and, with regards to lighting, some lights are biased blue and are referred to as cold, while others are biased red and are referred to as warm. Camera flashes, some fluorescent lights (like in our hypothetical hardware store) and the sun are blue biased while old-school tungsten lights (like in some of our homes) are red biased.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

That’s a great article and I don’t know how much more conclusive and exhaustive it could be on the matter.

The article gets it wrong. It says

"With regards to the command tunic material, it looks unmistakably green under daylight or flash conditions but, under tungsten studio soundstage lighting, the warmer colored lights combined with the film print stock caused the particular green to look yellow/gold when viewed."

And that was not true. Look at the non-remastered, pre-2006 DVDs, or recall the pre-2006 reruns. Outdoor, natural light episodes like "The Paradise Syndrome" have the shirt as yellow in bright sunlight, same as it is yellow on the brightly lit Bridge set.

Furthermore, the shirt is yellow under a bright camera flash, and green in dimmer light, as you can see in this Prop Authority article (you have to scroll down a bit for the photos):
http://www.startrekpropauthority.com/2009/03/star-trek-exhibition-in-detroit.html

Kirk's shirt was green in lower light, seldom seen on the show. We saw green in one frame from the View-Master reels (Shatner in the Captain's chair), and there's an on-set production still from "Plato's Stepchildren" with dimmer light and the shirt is clearly green. Velour shirt, synthetic Season 3 shirt, made no difference. It was the dye that had the color properties.

The StarTrek dot com article? The authors incorrectly state the opposite. They applied their assumptions (the unsupported claim that Kodak film was color-inaccurate) without knowing the show itself. Seems like they personally only know the remastered version, if that. They just figured the shirt would be green in sunlight. Nope.

The Eva Longoria photos show exactly what we see in Kirk's shirt: bright light makes it yellow, dimmer light makes it green. And since the vast majority of TOS was filmed with bright lighting, I agree with @M'Sharak. The canon, in-universe color is a yellow-gold. It can appear canon-green when the lights go down, if ever.