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A colorful life: Film enhancement pioneer has roots in neuroscience lab

By D. Washburn

Barry Sandrew, 60, hustles seven days a week, re-engineering the colorization system he invented and managing workers on two continents.

It was one of those “only in Southern California” workplaces: bleary-eyed surfers, New Agers, a woman who fancied herself a witch and guy who came to work every day dressed like Pee-wee Herman.

Such was the scene from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s at San Diego's American Film Technologies, one of the forerunners in the business of colorizing old black-and-white movies.

“We had the most eclectic assortment of people working there,” said Susan Olney, one of American Film Technologies' first employees. “From 16-year-olds with work permits to 60-year-olds – all of us working like crazy on rows and rows of computers.”

Presiding over it all was suit-and-tie-clad Barry Sandrew, an inventor/entrepreneur/workaholic fresh from the neuroscience laboratories of Harvard University.

Sandrew and his motley crew worked nearly around the clock during those years to make American Film Technologies the dominant player in an industry that drew media mogul Ted Turner's billions – and the ire of Hollywood's traditionalists.

Barry Sandrew Career: staff scientist, Harvard University, 1979-1986; chief technology officer, American Film Technologies, 1986-1993; co-founder Lightspan, 1993-1997; founder Sandrew and Co., 1997-2000; co-founder Legend Films 2001-present. Education: bachelor of arts in psychology and biology, University of Hartford, 1970; doctorate in neurobiology, SUNY at Stony Brook, 1977; post-doctoral fellowship, Columbia University, 1977-1979. Personal: age 60; married for 25 years to Lori Sandrew; four children: Rachael, 35, Jared, 25, Linsey, 22, Ryan, 16. Hobbies: paintball and running.

Much has changed. American Film Technologies is long gone, and the fervor that surrounded film colorization has cooled substantially.

But Sandrew – sans the suit and a bit mellowed by age – is still at it. San Diego-based Legend Films, which he co-founded in 2001, continues to revolutionize the process of making old films look newer and perhaps more accessible to today's audiences.

“In those days Barry was very intense and not as approachable as he is now,” said David Hamby, a San Diego-based animation entrepreneur and former officer at American Film Technologies.

“But he hasn't lost any of that get-up-and-go.”

Sandrew, 60, who looks 45 or even younger in the low light of the Legend Films offices, still hustles seven days a week, re-engineering the colorization system he invented and managing workers on two continents.

He splits his time between the eight-member team at the company's location off Governor Drive and the 250-employee operation in Patna, India, where all the grunt work of colorization is done.

Legend has colorized more than 120 films in the past six years, including such classics as “Miracle on 34th Street” and “My Man Godfrey,” and cult favorites “Reefer Madness” and Ed Wood's “Plan 9 from Outer Space.”

Sandrew, who holds 12 patents relating to colorization, has almost single-handedly brought the process from its rudimentary beginnings to the point where the films Legend colorizes today look like they originally were shot in color.

Beyond colorizing, Legend has a subsidiary called RiffTrax, which produces satirical DVD commentaries by Michael J. Nelson, head writer for the cult television comedy series “Mystery Science Theater 3000” (1988-1999).

“This is not a guy who just got lucky and invented colorization,” said Legend Films chief executive David Martin. “He keeps on inventing new things, which shows he is a true genius in graphic arts.”

Sandrew started his career with ambitions to change the face of neuroscience, not Humphrey Bogart.

“Hollywood and old movies was Mars – not anything near me,” Sandrew said of his early years.

A series of serendipitous events in the mid-1980s led the Harvard scientist to develop Hollywood's most advanced colorization system. After Sandrew's inventiveness met up with Turner's vast library of old Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer films, a new industry boomed.

Sandrew estimates he presided over the colorization of 300 movies while at American Film Technologies between 1986 and 1993, the vast majority coming from Turner's MGM library.

“I was working 24/7, always afraid that it was going to fall apart if I wasn't there,” Sandrew said.

The desire to take risks on the bleeding edge of technology may be in Sandrew's DNA.

Sandrew was told growing up that his paternal grandfather, Samuel Sandrew, was among the first dry cleaners in New England. His father, Paul Sandrew, also ran his own dry-cleaning business.

Young Barry showed little of the entrepreneurial spark that would characterize his later years. Splitting his childhood between Pittsfield and New London, Conn., Sandrew was an average student and not one to go out for the sports teams.

“My main interest as a teenager was getting through high school,” Sandrew said. “And I had trouble getting into college. I ended up at the University of Hartford by the skin of my teeth.”

Then, during his freshman year of college, Sandrew lost his mother, Rose Sandrew, to cancer. And the grieving 20-year-old found a focus and drive that he didn't know he had.

“I lost myself in my studies,” he said. “I guess it was a defense mechanism.”

Among his freshman-year courses was a statistics class taught by a professor who had a lab at Hartford Hospital and worked with William Scoville, one of the world's foremost neurosurgeons.

Sandrew began working at the lab and quickly became immersed in groundbreaking brain studies. He had found his niche: He would be a pioneer in the burgeoning field of neuroscience.

After graduating from Hartford, he was accepted to a doctoral program at State University of New York at Stony Brook. He earned his doctorate in 1977 and won a two-year fellowship at Columbia University from the National Institutes of Health.

From there, he landed a coveted job as a staff scientist at Harvard, where he began experiments with 3-D digital brain imaging. He had a hand in developing a process for colorizing CAT scans.

“I was planning on working my way up to full professor and spending the rest of my career writing papers,” Sandrew said.

That changed in November 1986 when Sandrew met up with a couple of venture capitalists from Philadelphia at the Radiological Society of North America convention in Chicago.

The two entrepreneurs had heard about his work with digital medical imaging and wondered whether he could apply it to colorizing old movies. A month later, Sandrew was in San Diego running American Film Technologies and making double his Harvard salary.

“It was a very big step, and looking back I'm not sure why I did it – I had a career in neuroscience,” Sandrew said. “I think I was motivated financially, and it was an idea that I knew would work.”

The company hit the mother lode in 1988, when Turner came to San Diego for Super Bowl week. He was persuaded to stop by the firm's offices in Sorrento Valley to look at a demo.

“He strutted in, looked at the demo, but didn't say much,” Sandrew said. “But after he left he told his people, 'Give these guys anything they want.' ”

After that, American Film Technologies was colorizing seven movies a month, operating a 350-worker maquiladora and had a market value of $200 million. Within two years, Sandrew had gone from being a lab rat in Massachusetts to a Hollywood player. The amount of public interest was quite a contrast.

“In academia you spend your life writing papers that maybe 20 people read,” Sandrew said.

Along with the success came intense pressure and eventually problems. Sandrew was working almost around the clock, and rifts were developing between the employees in San Diego and the owners on the East Coast.

By the early 1990s, the contract with Turner had run out, and the colorization craze was fading – and with it the company's only revenue stream.

Suddenly, an operation that Sandrew had put his heart and soul into was basically kaput, and he was left with a bunch of worthless stock and no job.

“I remember Barry being quite devastated,” Hamby said. “But to his credit, he bounced back very quickly.”

Within months, Sandrew had co-founded Lightspan, an educational software company, and he later launched a successful Internet consulting company.

By 2000, he had been drawn back into the colorization business. He knew this time that it would work long term. The Internet had, in a few short years, created far more outlets for distribution.

This time the company, Legend Films, would build its own library of movies, rather than colorize on a fee-for-service basis. The new business plan is working so far.

The company is private and won't release revenue figures, but Martin said revenue has doubled in each of the past three years. Sandrew – who said building companies is more fun than keeping them running – can't say if Legend will be the final act in his career.

But don't expect him to retire.

“My dad quit working at 65,” Sandrew said. “He would tell me, 'I feel like I'm sitting on a bench watching the world go by.' That is sad; I'll never do that.”

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