121-398: Technicolor is a family of color motion picture processes. The first version, Process 1, was introduced in 1916, and improved versions followed over several decades. Definitive Technicolor movies using three black-and-white films running through a special camera (3-strip Technicolor or Process 4) started in the early 1930s and continued through to the mid-1950s, when the 3-strip camera
242-523: A Radio Picture entitled The Runaround (1931). The new process not only improved the color but also removed specks (that looked like bugs) from the screen, which had previously blurred outlines and lowered visibility. This new improvement along with a reduction in cost (from 8.85 cents to 7 cents per foot) led to a new color revival. Warner Bros. took the lead once again by producing three features (out of an announced plan for six features): Manhattan Parade (1932), Doctor X (1932) and Mystery of
363-424: A beam splitter consisting of a partially reflecting surface inside a split-cube prism , color filters , and three separate rolls of black-and-white film (hence the "three-strip" designation). The beam splitter allowed one-third of the light coming through the camera lens to pass through the reflector and a green filter and form an image on one of the strips, which therefore recorded only the green-dominated third of
484-476: A mordant solution and then brought into contact with each of the three dye-loaded matrix films in turn, building up the complete color image. Each dye was absorbed, or imbibed, by the gelatin coating on the receiving strip rather than simply deposited onto its surface, hence the term "dye imbibition". Strictly speaking, this is a mechanical printing process most closely related to Woodburytype and very loosely comparable to offset printing or lithography , and not
605-445: A 16mm base, was available exclusively from Eastman Kodak. In both cases, Eastman Kodak was the sole manufacturer and the sole processor. In the 35mm case, Technicolor dye-transfer printing was a "tie-in" product. In the 16mm case, there were Eastman Kodak duplicating and printing stocks and associated chemistry, not the same as a "tie-in" product. In exceptional cases, Technicolor offered 16mm dye-transfer printing, but this necessitated
726-703: A 35mm base that was originally perforated at the 16mm specification for both halves, and was later re-slit into two 16mm wide prints without the need for re-perforation). This modification also facilitated the early experiments by Eastman Kodak with its negative-positive monopack film, which eventually became Eastmancolor. Essentially, the "Imbibition Agreement" lifted a portion of the "Monopack Agreement's" restrictions on Technicolor (which prevented it from making motion picture products less than 35mm wide) and somewhat related restrictions on Eastman Kodak (which prevented it from experimenting and developing monopack products greater than 16mm wide). Eastmancolor , introduced in 1950,
847-404: A Technicolor cartoon sequence "Hot Choc-late Soldiers" produced by Walt Disney. On July 28 of that year, Warner Bros. released Service with a Smile , followed by Good Morning, Eve! on September 22, both being comedy short films starring Leon Errol and filmed in three-strip Technicolor. Pioneer Pictures , a movie company formed by Technicolor investors, produced the film usually credited as
968-546: A black-and-white picture again." Although Disney's first 60 or so Technicolor cartoons used the three-strip camera, an improved "successive exposure" ("SE") process was adopted c. 1937 . This variation of the three-strip process was designed primarily for cartoon work: the camera would contain one strip of black-and-white negative film, and each animation cel would be photographed three times, on three sequential frames, behind alternating red, green, and blue filters (the so-called "Technicolor Color Wheel", then an option of
1089-580: A different color. By 1910, Pathé had over 400 women employed as stencilers in their Vincennes factory. Pathéchrome continued production through the 1930s. A more common technique emerged in the early 1910s known as film tinting , a process in which either the emulsion or the film base is dyed, giving the image a uniform monochromatic color. This process was popular during the silent era, with specific colors employed for certain narrative effects (red for scenes with fire or firelight, blue for night, etc.). A complementary process, called toning , replaces
1210-712: A dye-transfer equivalent of the stencil process, first used in Joan the Woman (1917) directed by Cecil B. DeMille , and used in special effects sequences for films such as The Phantom of the Opera (1925). Eastman Kodak introduced its own system of pre-tinted black-and-white film stocks called Sonochrome in 1929. The Sonochrome line featured films tinted in seventeen different colors including Peachblow, Inferno, Candle Flame, Sunshine, Purple Haze, Firelight, Azure, Nocturne, Verdante, Aquagreen, Caprice, Fleur de Lis, Rose Doree, and
1331-400: A film with sections cut by pantograph in the appropriate areas for up to six colors by a coloring machine with dye-soaked, velvet rollers. After a stencil had been made for the whole film, it was placed into contact with the print to be colored and run at high speed (60 feet per minute) through the coloring (staining) machine. The process was repeated for each set of stencils corresponding to
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#17327878863571452-448: A green filter and one behind a red filter. The difference was that the two-component negative was now used to produce a subtractive color print. Because the colors were physically present in the print, no special projection equipment was required and the correct registration of the two images did not depend on the skill of the projectionist. The frames exposed behind the green filter were printed on one strip of black-and-white film, and
1573-453: A lesser extent, with so-called "flat wide screen" (variously 1.66:1 or 1.85:1, but spherical and not anamorphic). This nearly fatal flaw was not corrected until 1955 and caused numerous features initially printed by Technicolor to be scrapped and reprinted by DeLuxe Labs . (These features are often billed as "Color by Technicolor-DeLuxe".) Indeed, some Eastmancolor-originated films billed as "Color by Technicolor" were never actually printed using
1694-401: A minor fraction of the projection light actually reached the screen, resulting in an image that was dimmer than a typical black-and-white image. The larger the screen, the dimmer the picture. For this and other case-by-case reasons, the use of additive processes for theatrical motion pictures had been almost completely abandoned by the early 1940s, though additive color methods are employed by all
1815-441: A new advancement to record all three primary colors. Utilizing a special dichroic beam splitter equipped with two 45-degree prisms in the form of a cube, light from the lens was deflected by the prisms and split into two paths to expose each one of three black-and-white negatives (one each to record the densities for red, green, and blue). The three negatives were then printed to gelatin matrices, which also completely bleached
1936-445: A photographic one, as the actual printing does not involve a chemical change caused by exposure to light. During the early years of the process, the receiver film was preprinted with a 50% black-and-white image derived from the green strip, the so-called Key, or K, record. This procedure was used largely to cover up fine edges in the picture where colors would mix unrealistically (also known as fringing ). This additional black increased
2057-600: A possible shot-in-the-arm for the ailing industry. In November 1933, Technicolor's Herbert Kalmus and RKO announced plans to produce three-strip Technicolor films in 1934, beginning with Ann Harding starring in a projected film The World Outside . Live-action use of three-strip Technicolor was first seen in a musical number of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer feature The Cat and the Fiddle , released February 16, 1934. On July 1, MGM released Hollywood Party with
2178-518: A rotating filter with alternating red and green areas. The printed film was projected through similar alternating red and green filters at the same speed. A perceived range of colors resulted from the blending of the separate red and green alternating images by the viewer's persistence of vision. William Friese-Greene invented another additive color system called Biocolour, which was developed by his son Claude Friese-Greene after William's death in 1921. William sued George Albert Smith, alleging that
2299-504: A subtractive color print. Leon Forrest Douglass (1869–1940), a founder of Victor Records , developed a system he called Naturalcolor, and first showed a short test film made in the process on 15 May 1917 at his home in San Rafael, California . The only feature film known to have been made in this process, Cupid Angling (1918)—starring Ruth Roland and with cameo appearances by Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks —was filmed in
2420-750: A synchronized score and sound effects. Redskin (1929), with a synchronized score, and The Mysterious Island (1929), a part-talkie, were photographed almost entirely in this process also but included some sequences in black and white. The following talkies were made entirely – or almost entirely – in Technicolor Process 3: On with the Show! (1929) (the first all-talking color feature), Gold Diggers of Broadway (1929), The Show of Shows (1929), Sally (1929), The Vagabond King (1930), Follow Thru (1930), Golden Dawn (1930), Hold Everything (1930), The Rogue Song (1930), Song of
2541-468: A trademark with the US Patent and Trademark Office , although it asserted that term as if it were a registered trademark, and it had the force of a legal agreement between it and Eastman Kodak to back up that assertion. It was a solely-sourced product, too, as Eastman Kodak was legally prevented from marketing any color motion picture film products wider than 16mm, 35mm specifically, until the expiration of
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#17327878863572662-420: Is Cinerama was initially printed on Eastmancolor positive, but its significant success eventually resulted in it being reprinted by Technicolor, using dye-transfer. By 1953, and especially with the introduction of anamorphic wide screen CinemaScope , Eastmancolor became a marketing imperative as CinemaScope was incompatible with Technicolor's Three-Strip camera and lenses. Indeed, Technicolor Corp became one of
2783-605: Is available on DVD in Treasures 5 The West 1898–1938 by the National Film Preservation Foundation. The invention of Prizma led to a series of similarly printed color processes. This bipack color system used two strips of film running through the camera, one recording red, and one recording blue-green light. With the black-and-white negatives being printed onto duplitized film, the color images were then toned red and blue, effectively creating
2904-447: Is composed of red, green, and blue light-emitting phosphors which appear as a variety of single colors when viewed from a normal distance. Additive color, alone, does not predict the appearance of mixtures of printed color inks, dye layers in color photographs on film , or paint mixtures. Instead, subtractive color is used to model the appearance of pigments or dyes , such as those in paints and inks . The combination of two of
3025-451: Is observed, the material properties they exhibit, the cultural framework in which they are presented, as well as each individual viewer's subjective response. The film industry recognizes the impact of color on human psychology as it plays a key role in filmmaking by creating the right mood, directing attention, and evoking certain emotions from the audience. Filmmakers use different color combinations to communicate various emotions to
3146-466: Is usually what is meant by the words "color film" as commonly used. The few color photographic films still being made in the 2020s are of this type. The first color negative films and corresponding print films were modified versions of these films. They were introduced around 1940 but only came into wide use for commercial motion picture production in the early 1950s. In the US, Eastman Kodak 's Eastmancolor
3267-678: The Golden Age of Hollywood . Technicolor's three-color process became known and celebrated for its highly saturated color, and was initially most commonly used for filming musicals such as The Wizard of Oz (1939), Down Argentine Way (1940), and Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), costume pictures such as The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) and Gone with the Wind (1939), the film Blue Lagoon (1949), and animated films such as Snow White and
3388-404: The spectrum . The other two-thirds was reflected sideways by the mirror and passed through a magenta filter, which absorbed green light and allowed only the red and blue thirds of the spectrum to pass. Behind this filter were the other two strips of film, their emulsions pressed into contact face to face. The front film was a red-blind orthochromatic type that recorded only the blue light. On
3509-517: The Acme, Producers Service and Photo-Sonics animation cameras). Three separate dye transfer printing matrices would be created from the red, green, and blue records in their respective complementary colors, cyan, magenta and yellow. Successive exposure was also employed in Disney's "True Life Adventure" live-action series, wherein the original 16mm low-contrast Kodachrome Commercial live action footage
3630-523: The Bell Tolls : Color motion picture film Color motion picture film refers both to unexposed color photographic film in a format suitable for use in a motion picture camera , and to finished motion picture film, ready for use in a projector, which bears images in color. The first color cinematography was by additive color systems such as the one patented by Edward Raymond Turner in 1899 and tested in 1902. A simplified additive system
3751-464: The Blu-Ray editions of Sailor Moon having a pink tint due to film fading and no color correction being applied. While modern digital film scanning and color correcting techniques have mitigated this issue to a degree, it highlights the importance of digitizing and backing up of analog media. Additive color Additive color or additive mixing is a property of a color model that predicts
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3872-759: The Flame (1930), Song of the West (1930), The Life of the Party (1930), Sweet Kitty Bellairs (1930), Bride of the Regiment (1930), Mamba (1930), Whoopee! (1930), King of Jazz (1930), Under a Texas Moon (1930), Bright Lights (1930), Viennese Nights (1930), Woman Hungry (1931), Kiss Me Again (1931) and Fifty Million Frenchmen (1931). In addition, many feature films were released with Technicolor sequences. Numerous short subjects were also photographed in Technicolor Process 3, including
3993-465: The Kinemacolor process infringed on the patents for his Bioschemes, Ltd.; as a result, Smith's patent was revoked in 1914. Both Kinemacolor and Biocolour had problems with "fringing" or "haloing" of the image, due to the separate red and green images not fully matching up. By their nature, these additive systems were very wasteful of light. Absorption by the color filters involved meant that only
4114-641: The Lake Lagunitas area of Marin County, California . After experimenting with additive systems (including a camera with two apertures , one with a red filter, one with a green filter) from 1915 to 1921, Dr. Herbert Kalmus , Dr. Daniel Comstock, and mechanic W. Burton Wescott developed a subtractive color system for Technicolor . The system used a beam splitter in a specially modified camera to send red and green light to adjacent frames of one strip of black-and-white film. From this negative, skip-printing
4235-1127: The Seven Dwarfs (1937), Gulliver's Travels (1939), Pinocchio (1940), and Fantasia (1940). As the technology matured, it was also used for less spectacular dramas and comedies. Occasionally, even a film noir – such as Leave Her to Heaven (1945) or Niagara (1953) – was filmed in Technicolor. The "Tech" in the company's name was inspired by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , where Herbert Kalmus and Daniel Frost Comstock received their undergraduate degrees in 1904 and were later instructors. The term "Technicolor" has been used historically for at least five concepts: Both Kalmus and Comstock went to Switzerland to earn PhD degrees; Kalmus at University of Zurich , and Comstock at Basel in 1906. In 1912, Kalmus, Comstock, and mechanic W. Burton Wescott formed Kalmus, Comstock, and Wescott, an industrial research and development firm. Most of
4356-463: The Wasteland , was released in 1924. Process 2 was also used for color sequences in such major motion pictures as The Ten Commandments (1923), The Phantom of the Opera (1925), and Ben-Hur (1925). Douglas Fairbanks ' The Black Pirate (1926) was the third all-color Process 2 feature. Although successful commercially, Process 2 was plagued with technical problems. Because the images on
4477-485: The Wax Museum (1933). Radio Pictures followed by announcing plans to make four more features in the new process. Only one of these, Fanny Foley Herself (1931), was actually produced. Although Paramount Pictures announced plans to make eight features and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer promised two color features, these never materialized. This may have been the result of the lukewarm reception to these new color pictures by
4598-456: The addition of light, while subtractive color theory states that colors are created by the absorption of light. Hermann von Helmholtz's theories support this, as they inform that the colors we perceive are determined by the combination of object colors, the colors interactions with light, and their color temperature and spectral properties. The first color systems that appeared in motion pictures were additive color systems. Additive color
4719-544: The additive Kinemacolor and Chronochrome processes, Technicolor prints did not require any special projection equipment. Unlike the additive Dufaycolor process, the projected image was not dimmed by a light-absorbing and obtrusive mosaic color filter layer. Very importantly, compared to competing subtractive systems, Technicolor offered the best balance between high image quality and speed of printing. The Technicolor Process 4 camera, manufactured to Technicolor's detailed specifications by Mitchell Camera Corporation, contained
4840-501: The additive primaries and was processed to produce a dye image in the complementary subtractive primary. Kodachrome was the first commercially successful application of monopack multilayer film, introduced in 1935. For professional motion picture photography, Kodachrome Commercial, on a 35mm BH-perforated base, was available exclusively from Technicolor, as its so-called "Technicolor Monopack" product. Similarly, for sub-professional motion picture photography, Kodachrome Commercial, on
4961-428: The amounts of red, green and blue light present at each point of the image formed by the camera lens. A subtractive primary color (cyan, magenta, yellow) is what remains when one of the additive primary colors (red, green, blue) has been removed from the spectrum. Eastman Kodak's monopack color films incorporated three separate layers of differently color sensitive emulsion into one strip of film. Each layer recorded one of
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5082-453: The appearance of colors made by coincident component lights , i.e. the perceived color can be predicted by summing the numeric representations of the component colors. Modern formulations of Grassmann's laws describe the additivity in the color perception of light mixtures in terms of algebraic equations. Additive color predicts perception and not any sort of change in the photons of light themselves. These predictions are only applicable in
5203-460: The areas corresponding to the clearest, least-exposed areas of the negative. To make each final color print, the matrix films were soaked in dye baths of colors nominally complementary to those of the camera filters: the strip made from red-filtered frames was dyed cyan-green and the strip made from green-filtered frames was dyed orange-red. The thicker the gelatin in each area of a frame, the more dye it absorbed. Subtle scene-to-scene colour control
5324-420: The audience. The moods and psychological states of characters are often conveyed by colored lights, while object colors, in conjunction with the colors attributed to characters costumes, hair, and skin tones, establish relationships or conflicts. The way that light affects our perception of color can be defined by the principles of additive and subtractive color. Additive color theory states that colors come from
5445-434: The best, if not the best, processor of Eastmancolor negative, especially for so-called "wide gauge" negatives (5-perf 65mm, 8- and 6-perf 35mm), yet it far preferred its own 35mm dye-transfer printing process for Eastmancolor-originated films with a print run that exceeded 500 prints, not withstanding the significant "loss of register" that occurred in such prints that were expanded by CinemaScope's 2X horizontal factor, and, to
5566-619: The breakup of Technicolor's near monopoly on the medium. In 1947, the United States Justice Department filed an antitrust suit against Technicolor for monopolization of color cinematography through their 1934 "Monopack Agreement" with Kodak (even though rival processes such as Cinecolor and Trucolor were in general use). In 1950, a federal court ordered Technicolor to allot a number of its three-strip cameras for use by independent studios and filmmakers. Although this certainly affected Technicolor, its real undoing
5687-399: The color video and computer display systems in common use today. The first practical subtractive color process was introduced by Kodak as "Kodachrome", a name recycled twenty years later for a very different and far better-known product. Filter-photographed red and blue-green records were printed onto the front and back of one strip of black-and-white duplitized film . After development,
5808-411: The color components as completely separate images (e.g., three-strip Technicolor ) or adjacent microscopic image fragments (e.g., Dufaycolor ) in a one-layer black-and-white emulsion. Each photographed color component, initially just a colorless record of the luminous intensities in the part of the spectrum that it captured, is processed to produce a transparent dye image in the color complementary to
5929-450: The color of the light at each image point is also captured. This is done by analyzing the visible spectrum of color into several regions (normally three, commonly referred to by their dominant colors: red, green and blue) and recording each region separately. Current color films do this with three layers of differently color-sensitive photographic emulsion coated on one strip of film base . Early processes used color filters to photograph
6050-633: The color of the light that it recorded. The superimposed dye images combine to synthesize the original colors by the subtractive color method. In some early color processes (e.g., Kinemacolor ), the component images remained in black-and-white form and were projected through color filters to synthesize the original colors by the additive color method. The earliest motion picture stocks were orthochromatic , and recorded blue and green light, but not red. Recording all three spectral regions required making film stock panchromatic to some degree. As orthochromatic film stock hindered color photography in its beginnings,
6171-426: The common three additive primary colors in equal proportions produces an additive secondary color — cyan , magenta or yellow . Additive color is also used to predict colors from overlapping projected colored lights often used in theatrical lighting for plays, concerts, circus shows, and night clubs. The full gamut of color available in any additive color system is defined by all the possible combinations of all
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#17327878863576292-457: The company, and Technicolor Inc. was chartered in Delaware. Technicolor originally existed in a two-color (red and green) system . In Process 1 (1916), a prism beam-splitter behind the camera lens exposed two consecutive frames of a single strip of black-and-white negative film simultaneously, one behind a red filter, the other behind a green filter. Because two frames were being exposed at
6413-535: The contrast of the final print and concealed any fringing. However, overall colorfulness was compromised as a result. In 1944, Technicolor had improved the process to make up for these shortcomings and the K record was eliminated. Kalmus convinced Walt Disney to shoot one of his Silly Symphony cartoons, Flowers and Trees (1932), in Process 4, the new "three-strip" process. Seeing the potential in full-color Technicolor, Disney negotiated an exclusive contract for
6534-412: The cupped ones could be shipped to their Boston laboratory for flattening, after which they could be put back into service, at least for a while. The presence of image layers on both surfaces made the prints especially vulnerable to scratching, and because the scratches were vividly colored they were very noticeable. Splicing a Process 2 print without special attention to its unusual laminated construction
6655-665: The dye-transfer process, due in part to the throughput limitations of Technicolor's dye-transfer printing process, and competitor DeLuxe's superior throughput. Incredibly, DeLuxe once had a license to install a Technicolor-type dye-transfer printing line, but as the "loss of register" problems became apparent in Fox's CinemaScope features that were printed by Technicolor, after Fox had become an all-CinemaScope producer, Fox-owned DeLuxe Labs abandoned its plans for dye-transfer printing and became, and remained, an all-Eastmancolor shop, as Technicolor itself later became. One major downside of Eastmancolor
6776-559: The early patents were taken out by Comstock and Wescott, while Kalmus served primarily as the company's president and chief executive officer. When the firm was hired to analyze an inventor's flicker-free motion picture system, they became intrigued with the art and science of filmmaking, particularly color motion picture processes, leading to the founding of Technicolor in Boston in 1914 and incorporation in Maine in 1915. In 1921, Wescott left
6897-408: The exceptionally wasteful process of printing on a 35mm base, only thereafter to be re-perforated and re-slit to 16mm, thereby discarding slightly more than one-half of the end product. A late modification to the "Monopack Agreement", the "Imbibition Agreement", finally allowed Technicolor to economically manufacture 16mm dye-transfer prints as so-called "double-rank" 35/32mm prints (two 16mm prints on
7018-495: The feature film industry would soon be turning out color films exclusively. By 1931, however, the Great Depression had taken its toll on the film 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
7139-464: The film had an extremely slow speed of ASA 5. That, and the bulk of the cameras and a lack of experience with three-color cinematography made for skepticism in the studio boardrooms. An October 1934 article in Fortune magazine stressed that Technicolor, as a corporation, was rather remarkable in that it kept its investors quite happy despite the fact that it had only been in profit twice in all of
7260-411: The first color sound cartoons by producers such as Ub Iwerks and Walter Lantz . Song of the Flame became the first color movie to use a widescreen process (using a system known as Vitascope , which used 65mm film). In 1931, an improvement of Technicolor Process 3 was developed that removed grain from the Technicolor film, resulting in more vivid and vibrant colors. This process was first used on
7381-434: The first films with color in them used aniline dyes to create artificial color. Manual-colored films appeared in 1895 with Thomas Edison 's manual-painted Annabelle's Dance for his Kinetoscope viewers. Many early filmmakers from the first ten years of film also used this method to some degree. George Méliès offered manual-painted prints of his own films at an additional cost over the black-and-white versions, including
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#17327878863577502-405: The first live-action short film shot in the three-strip process, La Cucaracha released August 31, 1934. La Cucaracha is a two-reel musical comedy that cost $ 65,000, approximately four times what an equivalent black-and-white two-reeler would cost. Released by RKO , the short was a success in introducing the new Technicolor as a viable medium for live-action films. The three-strip process also
7623-422: The frames exposed behind the red filter were printed on another strip. After development, each print was toned to a color nearly complementary to that of the filter: orange-red for the green-filtered images, cyan-green for the red-filtered ones. Unlike tinting, which adds a uniform veil of color to the entire image, toning chemically replaces the black-and-white silver image with transparent coloring matter, so that
7744-441: The gate, it cooled and the bulge subsided, but not quite completely. It was found that the cemented prints were not only very prone to cupping, but that the direction of cupping would suddenly and randomly change from back to front or vice versa, so that even the most attentive projectionist could not prevent the image from temporarily popping out of focus whenever the cupping direction changed. Technicolor had to supply new prints so
7865-541: The green lost-world sequences. Alfred Hitchcock used a form of manual-coloring for the orange-red gun-blast at the audience in Spellbound (1945). Kodak's Sonochrome and similar pre-tinted stocks were still in production until the 1970s and were used commonly for custom theatrical trailers and snipes . In the last half of the 20th century, Norman McLaren , who was one of the pioneers in animated movies, made several animated films in which he directly manually painted
7986-523: The highlights remain clear (or nearly so), dark areas are strongly colored, and intermediate tones are colored proportionally. The two prints, made on film stock half the thickness of regular film, were then cemented together back to back to create a projection print. The Toll of the Sea , which debuted on November 26, 1922, used Process 2 and was the first general-release film in Technicolor. The second all-color feature in Process 2 Technicolor, Wanderer of
8107-410: The human eye may be reproduced with additive combinations of three primary colors—red, green, and blue—which, when mixed equally, produce white light. Between 1900 and 1935, dozens of natural color systems were introduced, although only a few were successful. Color psychology is an essential aspect of the film industry. Hermann Von Helmholtz began investigating the physiological responses to color in
8228-561: The image origination and color-toning methods constituting Kodak's own process were little-used. The first truly successful subtractive color process was William van Doren Kelley's Prizma , an early color process that was first introduced at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City on 8 February 1917. Prizma began in 1916 as an additive system similar to Kinemacolor. However, after 1917, Kelley reinvented
8349-521: The image, washing out the silver and leaving only the gelatin record of the image. A receiver print, consisting of a 50% density print of the black-and-white negative for the green record strip, and including the soundtrack, was struck and treated with dye mordants to aid in the imbibition process (this "black" layer was discontinued in the early 1940s). The matrices for each strip were coated with their complementary dye (yellow, cyan, or magenta), and then each successively brought into high-pressure contact with
8470-581: The images, and in some cases, also the soundtrack, on each frame of the film. This approach was previously employed in the early years of movies, late 19th and early 20th century. One of the precursors in color manual painting frame by frame were the Aragonese Segundo de Chomón and his French wife Julienne Mathieu , who were Melies' close competitors. Tinting was gradually replaced by natural color techniques. A three-color theory of combination, which informs that all colors are created by combining
8591-447: The introduction of color did not increase the number of moviegoers to the point where it was economical. This and the Great Depression severely strained the finances of the movie studios and spelled the end of Technicolor's first financial successes. Technicolor envisioned a full-color process as early as 1924, and was actively developing such a process by 1929. Hollywood made so much use of Technicolor in 1929 and 1930 that many believed
8712-543: The lack of a camera that could record more than two strips of film at once, most early motion-picture color systems consisted of two colors, often red and green or red and blue. The pioneering three-color additive system was patented in England by Edward Raymond Turner in 1899. It used a rotating set of red, green and blue filters to photograph the three color components one after the other on three successive frames of panchromatic black-and-white film. The finished film
8833-468: The last year for Three-Strip as camera negative stock). The first commercial feature film to use Eastmancolor was the documentary Royal Journey , released in December 1951. Hollywood studios waited until an improved version of Eastmancolor negative came out in 1952 before using it; This is Cinerama was an early film which employed three separate and interlocked strips of Eastmancolor negative. This
8954-418: The limited red–green spectrum of previous films. The new camera simultaneously exposed three strips of black-and-white film, each of which recorded a different color of the spectrum. The new process would last until the last Technicolor feature film was produced in 1955. Technicolor's advantage over most early natural-color processes was that it was a subtractive synthesis rather than an additive one: unlike
9075-569: The limited scope of color matching experiments where viewers match small patches of uniform color isolated against a gray or black background. Additive color models are applied in the design and testing of electronic displays that are used to render realistic images containing diverse sets of color using phosphors that emit light of a limited set of primary colors . Examination with a sufficiently powerful magnifying lens will reveal that each pixel in CRT , LCD , and most other types of color video displays
9196-629: The materials. Original Technicolor prints that survived into the 1950s were often used to make black-and-white prints for television and simply discarded thereafter. This explains why so many early color films exist today solely in black and white. Warner Bros., which had vaulted from a minor exhibitor to a major studio with its introduction of the talkies , incorporated Technicolor's printing to enhance its films. Other producers followed Warner Bros.' example by making features in color, with either Technicolor, or one of its competitors, such as Brewster Color and Multicolor (later Cinecolor ). Consequently,
9317-429: The mid-19th century. His and other research changed the way filmmakers approach color in their productions, which prompted standards in technology and aesthetics for the use of color in the film industry. The film-making process involves color choices, which can have a significant impact on how the audience perceives a story. The perception of color is influenced by various elements, such as the context in which each color
9438-420: The neutral-density Argent, which kept the screen from becoming excessively bright when switching to a black-and-white scene. Tinting and toning continued to be used well into the sound era. In the 1930s and 1940s, some western films were processed in a sepia-toning solution to evoke the feeling of old photographs of the day. Tinting was used as late as 1951 for Sam Newfield 's sci-fi film Lost Continent for
9559-462: The only movie made in Process 1, The Gulf Between , which had a limited tour of Eastern cities, beginning with Boston and New York on September 13, 1917, primarily to interest motion picture producers and exhibitors in color. The near-constant need for a technician to adjust the projection alignment doomed this additive color process. Only a few frames of The Gulf Between , showing star Grace Darmond , are known to exist today. Convinced that there
9680-442: The original custom-format nitrate film copied to black-and-white 35 mm film, which was then scanned into a digital video format by telecine . Finally, digital image processing was used to align and combine each group of three frames into one color image. As a result, these films from 1902 became viewable in full color. Practical color in the motion picture business began with Kinemacolor , first demonstrated in 1906. This
9801-493: The possible luminosities of each primary color in that system. In chromaticity space, a gamut is a plane convex polygon with corners at the primaries. For three primaries, it is a triangle . Systems of additive color are motivated by the Young–Helmholtz theory of trichromatic color vision , which was articulated around 1850 by Hermann von Helmholtz , based on earlier work by Thomas Young . For his experimental work on
9922-526: The process as a subtractive one with several years of short films and travelogues, such as Everywhere With Prizma (1919) and A Prizma Color Visit to Catalina (1919) before releasing features such as the documentary Bali the Unknown (1921), The Glorious Adventure (1922), and Venus of the South Seas (1924). A Prizma promotional short filmed for Del Monte Foods titled Sunshine Gatherers (1921)
10043-432: The projection print made of double-cemented prints in favor of a print created by dye imbibition . The Technicolor camera for Process 3 was identical to that for Process 2, simultaneously photographing two consecutive frames of a black-and-white film behind red and green filters. In the lab, skip-frame printing was used to sort the alternating color-record frames on the camera negative into two series of contiguous frames,
10164-510: The public. Two independently produced features were also made with this improved Technicolor process: Legong: Dance of the Virgins (1934) and Kliou the Tiger (1935). Very few of the original camera negatives of movies made in Technicolor Process 2 or 3 survive. In the late 1940s, most were discarded from storage at Technicolor in a space-clearing move, after the studios declined to reclaim
10285-423: The receiver, which imbibed and held the dyes, which collectively rendered a wider spectrum of color than previous technologies. The first animation film with the three-color (also called three-strip) system was Walt Disney 's Flowers and Trees ( 1932 ), the first short live-action film was La Cucaracha ( 1934 ), and the first feature was Becky Sharp ( 1935 ). Gasparcolor , a single-strip 3-color system,
10406-441: The red-filtered frames being printed onto one strip of specially prepared "matrix" film and the green-filtered frames onto another. After processing, the gelatin of the matrix film's emulsion was left proportionally hardened, being hardest and least soluble where it had been most strongly exposed to light. The unhardened fraction was then washed away. The result was two strips of relief images consisting of hardened gelatin, thickest in
10527-407: The resulting silver images were bleached away and replaced with color dyes, red on one side and cyan on the other. The pairs of superimposed dye images reproduced a useful but limited range of color. Kodak's first narrative film with the process was a short subject entitled Concerning $ 1000 (1916). Though their duplitized film provided the basis for several commercialized two-color printing processes,
10648-571: The same time, the film had to be photographed and projected at twice the normal speed. Exhibition required a special projector with two apertures (one with a red filter and the other with a green filter), two lenses, and an adjustable prism that aligned the two images on the screen. The results were first demonstrated to members of the American Institute of Mining Engineers in New York on February 21, 1917. Technicolor itself produced
10769-603: The silver particles in the film with metallic salts or mordanted dyes . This creates a color effect in which the dark parts of the image are replaced with a color (e.g., blue and white rather than black and white). Tinting and toning were sometimes applied together. In the United States, St. Louis engraver Max Handschiegl and cinematographer Alvin Wyckoff created the Handschiegl Color Process ,
10890-479: The so-called "Monopack Agreement" in 1950. This, notwithstanding the facts that Technicolor never had the capability to manufacture sensitized motion picture films of any kind, nor single-strip color films based upon its so-called "Troland Patent" (which Technicolor maintained covered all monopack-type films in general, and which Eastman Kodak elected not to contest as Technicolor was then one of its largest customers, if not its largest customer). After 1950, Eastman Kodak
11011-401: The subject, James Clerk Maxwell is sometimes credited as being the father of additive color. He had the photographer Thomas Sutton photograph a tartan ribbon on black-and-white film three times, first with a red, then green, then blue color filter over the lens. The three black-and-white images were developed and then projected onto a screen with three different projectors, each equipped with
11132-480: The surface of its emulsion was a red-orange coating that prevented blue light from continuing on to the red-sensitive panchromatic emulsion of the film behind it, which therefore recorded only the red-dominated third of the spectrum. Each of the three resulting negatives was printed onto a special matrix film. After processing, each matrix was a nearly invisible representation of the series of film frames as gelatin reliefs, thickest (and most absorbent) where each image
11253-694: The three main hues of red, blue, and green, was first established by Thomas Young and Hermann von Helmholtz , in the early 19th century. These principles on which color photography is based were first proposed by Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell in 1855 and presented at the Royal Society in London in 1861. By that time, it was known that light comprises a spectrum of different wavelengths that are perceived as different colors as they are absorbed and reflected by natural objects. Maxwell discovered that all natural colors in this spectrum as perceived by
11374-494: The three-strip process. One Silly Symphony , Three Little Pigs (1933), engendered such a positive audience response that it overshadowed the feature films with which it was shown. Hollywood was buzzing about color film again. According to Fortune magazine, " Merian C. Cooper , producer for RKO Radio Pictures and director of King Kong (1933), saw one of the Silly Symphonies and said he never wanted to make
11495-475: The two sides of the print were not in the same plane, both could not be perfectly in focus at the same time. The significance of this depended on the depth of focus of the projection optics. Much more serious was a problem with cupping. Films in general tended to become somewhat cupped after repeated use: every time a film was projected, each frame in turn was heated by the intense light in the projection gate, causing it to bulge slightly; after it had passed through
11616-607: The use of the process in animated films that extended to September 1935. Other animation producers, such as the Fleischer Studios and the Ub Iwerks studio, were shut out – they had to settle for either the two-color Technicolor systems or use a competing process such as Cinecolor . Flowers and Trees was a success with audiences and critics alike, and won the first Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film . All subsequent Silly Symphonies from 1933 on were shot with
11737-580: The visual-effects pioneering A Trip to the Moon (1902). The film had various parts of the film painted frame-by-frame by twenty-one women in Montreuil in a production-line method. The first commercially successful stencil color process was introduced in 1905 by Segundo de Chomón working for Pathé Frères . Pathé Color , renamed Pathéchrome in 1929, became one of the most accurate and reliable stencil coloring systems. It incorporated an original print of
11858-405: The years of its existence, during the early boom at the turn of the decade. A well-managed company, half of whose stock was controlled by a clique loyal to Kalmus, Technicolor never had to cede any control to its bankers or unfriendly stockholders. In the mid-'30s, all the major studios except MGM were in the financial doldrums, and a color process that truly reproduced the visual spectrum was seen as
11979-415: Was Kodak's first economical, single-strip 35 mm negative-positive process incorporated into one strip of film. This eventually rendered Three-Strip color photography obsolete, even though, for the first few years of Eastmancolor, Technicolor continued to offer Three-Strip origination combined with dye-transfer printing (150 titles produced in 1953, 100 titles produced in 1954 and 50 titles produced in 1955,
12100-584: Was a two-color system created in England by George Albert Smith , and commercialized by film pioneer Charles Urban 's Natural Color Kinematograph Company from 1909 on. It was used for a many films, most notably the documentary With Our King and Queen Through India , depicting the Delhi Durbar (also known as The Durbar at Delhi , 1912), which was filmed in December 1911. The Kinemacolor process consisted of alternating frames of specially sensitized black-and-white film exposed at 32 frames per second through
12221-411: Was apt to result in a weak splice that would fail as it passed through the projector. Even before these problems became apparent, Technicolor regarded this cemented print approach as a stopgap and was already at work developing an improved process. Based on the same dye-transfer technique first applied to motion pictures in 1916 by Max Handschiegl, Technicolor Process 3 (1928) was developed to eliminate
12342-412: Was darkest and thinnest where it was lightest. Each matrix was soaked in a dye complementary to the color of light recorded by the negative printed on it: cyan for red, magenta for green, and yellow for blue (see also: CMYK color model for a technical discussion of color printing). A single clear strip of black-and-white film with the soundtrack and frame lines printed in advance was first treated with
12463-470: Was developed in 1933 by the Hungarian chemist Dr. Bela Gaspar. The real push for color films and the nearly immediate changeover from black-and-white production to nearly all color film were pushed forward by the prevalence of television in the early 1950s. In 1947, only 12 percent of American films were made in color. By 1954, that number rose to over 50 percent. The rise in color films was also aided by
12584-641: Was first duplicated onto a 35mm fine-grain SE negative element in one pass of the 16mm element, thereby reducing wear of the 16mm original, and also eliminating registration errors between colors. The live-action SE negative thereafter entered other Technicolor processes and were incorporated with SE animation and three-strip studio live-action, as required, thereby producing the combined result. The studios were willing to adopt three-color Technicolor for live-action feature production, if it could be proved viable. Shooting three-strip Technicolor required very bright lighting, as
12705-408: Was free to make and market color films of any kind, particularly including monopack color motion picture films in 65/70mm, 35mm, 16mm and 8mm. The "Monopack Agreement" had no effect on color still films. Monopack color films are based on the subtractive color system, which filters colors from white light by using superimposed cyan, magenta and yellow dye images. Those images are created from records of
12826-409: Was introduced, commercialized subtractive processes used only two color components and could reproduce only a limited range of color. In 1935, Kodachrome was introduced, followed by Agfacolor in 1936. They were intended primarily for amateur home movies and " slides ". These were the first films of the "integral tripack" type, coated with three layers of different color-sensitive emulsion , which
12947-609: Was later refined through the incorporation of dye imbibition , which allowed for the transferring of dyes from both color matrices into a single print, avoiding several problems that had become evident with the cemented prints and allowing multiple prints to be created from a single pair of matrices. Technicolor's early system were in use for several years, but it was a very expensive process: shooting cost three times that of black-and-white photography and printing costs were no cheaper. By 1932, color photography in general had nearly been abandoned by major studios, until Technicolor developed
13068-399: Was managed by partial wash-back of the dyes from each matrix. Each matrix in turn was pressed into contact with a plain gelatin-coated strip of film known as the "blank" and the gelatin "imbibed" the dye from the matrix. A mordant made from deacetylated chitin was applied to the blank before printing, to prevent the dyes from migrating or "bleeding" after they were absorbed. Dye imbibition
13189-433: Was no future in additive color processes, Comstock, Wescott, and Kalmus focused their attention on subtractive color processes. This culminated in what would eventually be known as Process 2 (1922) (often referred to today by the misnomer "two-strip Technicolor"). As before, the special Technicolor camera used a beam-splitter that simultaneously exposed two consecutive frames of a single strip of black-and-white film, one behind
13310-423: Was not suitable for printing optical soundtracks, which required very high resolution, so when making prints for sound-on-film systems the "blank" film was a conventional black-and-white film stock on which the soundtrack, as well as frame lines, had been printed in the ordinary way prior to the dye transfer operation. The first feature made entirely in the Technicolor Process 3 was The Viking (1928), which had
13431-474: Was only used indoors. In 1936, The Trail of the Lonesome Pine became the first color production to have outdoor sequences, with impressive results. The spectacular success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), which was released in December 1937 and became the top-grossing film of 1938, attracted the attention of the studios. Film critic Manny Farber on the 1943 Technicolor film For Whom
13552-428: Was practical because no special color stock was necessary. Black-and-white film could be processed and used in both filming and projection. The various additive systems entailed the use of color filters on both the movie camera and projector. Additive color adds lights of the primary colors in various proportions to the projected image. Because of the limited amount of space to record images on film, and later because
13673-557: Was projected through similar filters to reconstitute the color. In 1902, Turner shot test footage to demonstrate his system, but projecting it proved problematic because of the accurate registration (alignment) of the three separate color elements required for acceptable results. Turner died a year later without having satisfactorily projected the footage. In 2012, curators at the National Media Museum in Bradford, UK, had
13794-539: Was replaced by a standard camera loaded with single-strip "monopack" color negative film. Technicolor Laboratories were still able to produce Technicolor prints by creating three black-and-white matrices from the Eastmancolor negative (Process 5). Process 4 was the second major color process, after Britain's Kinemacolor (used between 1909 and 1915), and the most widely used color process in Hollywood during
13915-511: Was successfully commercialized in 1909 as Kinemacolor . These early systems used black-and-white film to photograph and project two or more component images through different color filters . During the 1930s, the first practical subtractive color processes were introduced. These also used black-and-white film to photograph multiple color-filtered source images, but the final product was a multicolored print that did not require special projection equipment. Before 1932, when three-strip Technicolor
14036-406: Was that the dyes used were unstable which caused the color to fade into magenta over time, with visible fading starting to occur within as little of a few years of manufacturing. This cannot be prevented but can be slowed down by storing the film stock in a cold environment where the chemical reactions responsible for it slow down. This has recently gained significant attention online as a result of
14157-514: Was the dominant form of cinematography until the 2010s, when it was largely replaced by digital cinematography . The first motion pictures were photographed using a simple homogeneous photographic emulsion that yielded a black-and-white image—that is, an image in shades of gray, ranging from black to white, corresponding to the luminous intensity of each point on the photographed subject. Light, shade, form and movement were captured, but not color. With color motion picture film, information about
14278-551: Was the invention of Eastmancolor that same year. In the field of motion pictures, the many-layered type of color film normally called an integral tripack in broader contexts has long been known by the less tongue-twisting term monopack . For many years, Monopack (capitalized) was a proprietary product of Technicolor Corp, whereas monopack (not capitalized) generically referred to any of several single-strip color film products, including various Eastman Kodak products. It appeared that Technicolor made no attempt to register Monopack as
14399-497: Was the usual choice, but it was often re-branded with another trade name, such as "WarnerColor", by the studio or the film processor. Later color films were standardized into two distinct processes: Eastman Color Negative 2 chemistry (camera negative stocks, duplicating interpositive and internegative stocks) and Eastman Color Positive 2 chemistry (positive prints for direct projection), usually abbreviated as ECN-2 and ECP-2. Fuji's products are compatible with ECN-2 and ECP-2. Film
14520-431: Was used in some short sequences filmed for several movies made during 1934, including the final sequences of The House of Rothschild ( Twentieth Century Pictures / United Artists ) with George Arliss and Kid Millions ( Samuel Goldwyn Studios ) with Eddie Cantor . Pioneer/RKO's Becky Sharp (1935) became the first feature film photographed entirely in three-strip Technicolor. Initially, three-strip Technicolor
14641-491: Was used to print each color's frames contiguously onto film stock with half the normal base thickness. The two prints were chemically toned to roughly complementary hues of red and green, then cemented together, back to back, into a single strip of film. The first film to use this process was The Toll of the Sea ( 1922 ) starring Anna May Wong . Perhaps the most ambitious film to use it was The Black Pirate ( 1926 ), starring and produced by Douglas Fairbanks . The process
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