"Hellzapoppin" Like You've Never Seen It: Re-colorized!

Yesterday Black Pepper Swing , a dance school out of Helsinki, Finland, posted to YouTube a re-colorized version of the classic lindy hop dance scene from “Hellzapoppin’” featuring Whitey’s Lindy Hoppers. It takes an already amazing dance video to another level. I love seeing the colors of the different costumes the performers are wearing, with certain details like the shine of Willa Mae Ricker’s dress really jumping out at me.

Here’s the original in black and white, by comparison.

Black Pepper Swing credits the DeOldify program for making the re-colorization possible. DeOldify is an open-source, Deep Learning based project to colorize and restore old images and film footage. DeOldify uses AI neural networks trained with thousands of reference pictures.

And if you haven’t seen it, check out our post “Seven Things You Should Know about ‘Hellzapoppin’”.