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Yes the Command Shirts were Yellow

:confused: The article lists five reasons (not one or two) for why the in reality avocado green-ish costume looked yellow/mustard/gold on our TV screens: color bias in the film stock, the lighting conditions, color timing/correcting, optical effects, and color shifts due to broadcasting techniques. ALL of those influenced how the colors appeared for the viewer to varying degrees. So why do you think just because there’s an episode that was filmed under more natural lighting conditions where the costume still appeared yellow/mustard/gold, that that would mean the article is wrong? Do you think they didn’t use film stock with color bias when filming “The Paradise Syndrome”? Or that the episode wasn’t color timed to match how the colors looked in other episodes? Or that it somehow wasn’t affected by the process of broadcasting the episode? Frankly, I have no idea what your beef with this article is. Again, how much more clearly could they have told you that there’s several factors contributing to how the avocado-green looked mustard-yellow? Not just the lighting or the film stock.
 
Regardless of the reason, it sounds like it was a production mistake arising from not realizing the lights would affect how the fabric would look. But then, I wonder, did they not test the material in front of the lights before making the uniforms? It sounds like something that should be done and could have possibly been neglected. I know there was lots of experimentation at the start of the HD broadcasting era as brighter lights had to make producers in general rethink how things were lit, for example. But I also think we need to remember that color TV was still a fairly new invention, and that likely the thought never entered their minds that the uniform could look different.
 
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ZapBrannigan said:
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:
Eva-Longoria-gown-green.jpg

Eva-Longoria-gown-yellow.jpg
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The interview with Theiss that I read he said he knew that shade of green would turn gold under the bright lights, and that was the way he wanted it.
 
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All I know is the original tunics look gold in person.

Well, that is maybe not ALL I know, lol



 
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That makes sense. Had it already been gold, who knows what it would have looked like in the film change and the lighting. Maybe white?
 
NCC-73515 said:
"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
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The fact that Kirk's dress uniform is green would also seem to lend credence to this POV.
 
Poltargyst said:
I thought the OP was saying that's not the case.
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Yes, and I was disagreeing, based on what I had read and heard in the past. But I'm far from an expert in the matter, and based on what I've read in this thread since my last post it seems I was wrong, So oh well, 1st time for everything i guess, unless you count that one other time when I thought I was wrong, but was mistaken. ;)

PS Come to think of it, I do recall seeing some of Bill Theiss' concept art for the TOS uniforms and the color of the shirt was Yellow/cold. Try this link... https://us.propstoreauction.com/view-auctions/catalog/id/146/lot/32318/index.html
 
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The one time that I spoke with Theiss he referred to the command shirts as "Avocado." He called the red "Apple," and for the life of me I can't remember him saying anything about the blue outfits - this wasn't in the context of him running down a list, or something, in fact he was mainly talking about how he picked colors for TNG (he had Carole Jackson in as a consultant) . I've heard "Colonial blue," but I don't think that was him.



upload_2024-5-25_14-12-43.png

20240524_161353-jpg.39860
 
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Gold is actually a very greenish red when you take it apart (RGB: 255, 215, 0).
Wiki also says the uniform color was satin sheen gold, a deep yellow, unlike Vegas gold, which is a moderate greenish yellow. :lol:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_(color)

Mr. Laser Beam said:
The fact that Kirk's dress uniform is green would also seem to lend credence to this POV.
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And both wraparounds
 
Meh, it was gold over the air during the reruns, on VHS, laserdisc and original DVD. If they wanted it to be green, they would have made sure it was green, these guys weren't green themselves.

There were green command tunics in Where No Man Has Gone before as well as gold tunics. But they wanted it gold for the series. The gold was adopted for the animated series. And the action figures. Then they used gold, blue and red - in a different order - in the Berman era. Note, it wasn't green, blue and red. Because it was meant to be seen as gold.

Avocado may be "soundstage accurate" but it's not series accurate.
 
Michael said:
:confused: The article lists five reasons (not one or two) for why the in reality avocado green-ish costume looked yellow/mustard/gold on our TV screens: color bias in the film stock, the lighting conditions, color timing/correcting, optical effects, and color shifts due to broadcasting techniques. ALL of those influenced how the colors appeared for the viewer to varying degrees. So why do you think just because there’s an episode that was filmed under more natural lighting conditions where the costume still appeared yellow/mustard/gold, that that would mean the article is wrong? Do you think they didn’t use film stock with color bias when filming “The Paradise Syndrome”? Or that the episode wasn’t color timed to match how the colors looked in other episodes? Or that it somehow wasn’t affected by the process of broadcasting the episode? Frankly, I have no idea what your beef with this article is. Again, how much more clearly could they have told you that there’s several factors contributing to how the avocado-green looked mustard-yellow? Not just the lighting or the film stock.
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You make some good points, and so did the official site article. There are a lot of links in the chain before Kirk reaches the viewer's eyeballs.

I just think Theiss' chosen dye, that shade of green, is not getting enough credit for messing with us. I think that color will flip from green to yellow in person, with no cameras involved, when you turn up the lights or go out in the sun. It becomes a much brighter shade of itself. If I'm too fixated on that idea, there's our problem.

Also, I think Star Trek's color palette simply looks better with Kirk's shirt biased toward the yellow. It's a brighter complement to the vivid blue and red shirts. A soft green doesn't pop, in my view. The star of the show should pop.

Thanks @Serveaux for posting the Pantone 16-0640 color sample. I would have called it yellow-gold until told that it was green, and then I see it as green.

Green and yellow are adjacent in the spectrum, and the line between them is a jump ball. I once read that languages with no word for yellow, call it light green. On this color palette page, the top-right tone of Avacado, #D9F810, looks like it's close to the line.
 
NCC-73515 said:
Gold is actually a very greenish red when you take it apart (RGB: 255, 215, 0).
Wiki also says the uniform color was satin sheen gold, a deep yellow, unlike Vegas gold, which is a moderate greenish yellow.
Click to expand...

That doesn't really help, since pure yellow is greener than gold on the RGB scale (255, 255, 0).
 
M'Sharak said:
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 ** :razz:
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Looked grey on my TV ;)
 
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