I have been reading about Technicolor. I was actually quite surprised to see that so many movies in the 20s/30s were filmed in color, but for various reasons lost or destroyed, and that the Great Depression obviously delayed its widespread use. Also, it should be noted Technicolor was not the only color process, I was just reading about it specifically. Im not going to pretend I completely grasped how exactly it has been applied to film over the years (several different processes have been developed, each fixing bugs and making it easier), I would understand it much better if someone opened a camera and actually showed it to me, but for the most part it makes sense. This is the 4th process, three-strip, which seemed to really be the catalyst: As early as 1924, Technicolor envisioned a full-color process, and by 1929, the company was actively developing such a process. Hollywood made so much use of Technicolor in 1929 and 1930, that many believed the feature film industry would soon be turning out color films exclusively. By 1931, the Great Depression took its toll on the movie industry, which began to cut back on expenses. The production of color films had decreased dramatically by 1932, when Burton Wescott and Joseph A. Ball completed work on a new three-color movie camera. Technicolor could now promise studios a full range of colors, as opposed to the limited red-green spectrum of previous films. The new camera simultaneously exposed three strips of black-and-white film. The light passing through the camera lens was divided into two beams by a prism block beam splitter. One beam passed through a green filter, which blocked red and blue light, and formed an image on a strip of panchromatic film. The other beam passed through a magenta filter, which blocked green light, and formed an image on a bipack consisting of two strips of film running through the camera with their emulsion sides pressed together. The front film was sensitive only to blue light and recorded only the blue end of the spectrum. Its emulsion had a superficial coating of orange-red dye that prevented blue light from reaching the panchromatic film behind it, which therefore recorded only the red end. The three negatives that resulted were used to produce three printing matrices, which in turn were used to print superimposed cyan, magenta and yellow dye images on a single strip of film, creating a full-color projection print. From what I understand, the films that were dyed hold up MUCH BETTER than the other processes which can be worn down or destroyed by UV light, heat, etc over the years. For example: An article on the restoration of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope claimed that a rare dye-transfer print of the movie, made for director George Lucas at the British Technicolor lab during its initial run, had been used as a color reference for the restoration. The article claimed that conventional color prints of the movie had all degraded over the years to the extent that no two had the same color balance. However, because of the variation in color balance per print, dye-transfer prints are used in the professional restoration world as only a rough guideline. I do know that when sound was first applied to film, some people said it would never catch on - I wonder what was said about color. Seems silly to anyone my age and even my parents age - but its important to not always live inside our own bubbles. Nowadays we hit a button on a little device we carry in our pocket and take for granted that it captures all color and sound without even any delay problems. Pictured: A cell from the first movie shot in Technicolor - The Gulf Between - in _1917_ (!!!!!). The film is lost unfortunately. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technicolor
Posted on: Fri, 28 Mar 2014 21:04:43 +0000