×

“But Technicolor had persisted in its research and development work so that by May, 1932, it had completed the building of its first three-component camera and had one unit of its plant equipped to handle a moderate amount of three-color printing. The difference between this three-component process and the previous two-component process was truly extraordinary. Not only was the accuracy of tone and color reproduction greatly improved, but definition was markedly better.

However, we could not offer the three-component product to one customer without offering it to all, which required many more cameras, and the conversion of much of our plant. To allow time for this and to prove the process beyond any doubt, we sought first to try it out in the cartoon field. But no cartoonist would have it.

We were told cartoons were good enough in black and white, and that of all departments of production, cartoons could least afford the added expense. Finally Walt Disney tried it as an experiment on one of his Silly Symphonies. This first attempt was the delightful Flowers and Trees, following which Disney contracted for a series.

For Christmas 1932 came Santa’s Work Shop, the following Easter, Funny Bunnies; in May, 1933, came Three Little Pigs, which made screen history, and in March, 1934, Big Bad Wolf. I needn’t relate the story of Disney’s extraordinary success with Technicolor. The Silly Symphonies in Technicolor surpassed the Mickey Mouses in black and white, and then both Mickies and Sillies adopted Technicolor.

Both the Disney Company and Technicolor were rather undersized at birth and in recent years both have grown rapidly in importance.

A frequent conversation has been as to which helped the other most. Much like the conversation between two Irishmen after a considerable session at the bar: “Yer know, Clancy, when I was born I weighed only five pounds.” “Yer did, and did yer live?” “Did I live? Yer ought to see me now.” What Technicolor needed was someone to prove for regular productions, whether short subjects or features, what Disney had proved for cartoons. But the producers asked: “How much more will it cost to produce a feature in three-component Technicolor than in black and white?” This question is always with us and it seems to me the answer must be divided into two parts; the added cost of prints, negative raw stock, rushes, and lighting can be numerically calculated and requires little discussion. But then there are the less tangible elements about, which there is much discussion. I have said to producers and directors on many occasions: “You have all seen Disney’s Funny Bunnies; you remember the huge rainbow circling across the screen to the ground and you remember the Funny Bunnies drawing the color of the rainbow into their paint pails and splashing the Easter eggs. You all admit that it was marvelous entertainment. Now I will ask you how much more did it cost Mr. Disney to produce that entertainment in color than it would have in black and white?” The answer is, of course, that it could not be done at any cost in black and white, and I think that points to the general answer. A similar analogy can be drawn with respect to some part of almost any recent Technicolor feature.

If a script has been conceived, planned, and written for black and white, it should not be done at all in color. The story should be chosen and the scenario written with color in mind from the start, so that by its use effects are obtained, moods created, beauty and personalities emphasized, and the drama enhanced. Color should flow from sequence to sequence, supporting and giving impulse to the drama, becoming an integral part of it, and not something superadded.

The production cost question should be, what is the additional cost for color per unit of entertainment and not per foot of negative. The answer is that it needn’t necessarily cost any more.

In 1932 we marked our base print price down from 7 cents to 5 l/2 cents a foot.

Early in 1933 Mr. Merian C. Cooper and Mr. John Hay Whitney began to show a practical interest in Technicolor. After thorough investigation of the Technicolor situation by Mr. Whitney and his associates, and as a result of many conferences, a contract was signed between Technicolor and Pioneer Pictures, Inc., on May 18, 1933, which provided for the production of eight pictures, superfeature in character and especially featuring color. There were some conditional clauses, among others a provision for extensive preliminary tests. Certain doubts remained in the minds of Whitney and his associates as to the performance of our three-component process under certain conditions. Would the process reproduce the various shades of green in woodland and jungle? For one story they were considering a lead with very dark coloring and black hair. Would she photograph satisfactorily against light backgrounds? For another story they thought of placing a decided blonde in the leading part; how would she photograph against various backgrounds? What about make-up? What about the visibility of extremely small figures in the distance? An exhaustive sets of tests were made with results satisfactory to Mr. Whitney and Mr. Cooper.

Then began the hunt for the first story to be produced. At one time Whitney told me they had given consideration to no less than two hundred stories.

While Mr. Whitney was searching, Pioneer Pictures made a very practical and complete test of the process by producing the picture La Cucaracha. This short subject met with tremendous success.

La Cucaracha, together with Silly Symphonies, caused a tremendous interest in three-component Technicolor. The industry was now waiting to see what the first Whitney feature production would be like. Meantime Technicolor business was improving. Positive film shipments for the first six months of 1933 were double what they were for the first six months of 1932. Appropriation was made to increase the number of cameras under construction from three to seven.

The first test of the three-component process on a very large set was for Twentieth Century Fox on the closing sequence of The House of Rothschild.

Since Whoopee in 1930 Mr. Goldwyn and I had talked regularly each year about another picture in Technicolor, so that on one occasion Eddie Cantor asked me if I were coming for my annual ritual.

This time it was the closing sequence in his Cantor picture, Kid Millions, which was another important early three-component insert.

No account of Technicolor adventures in the realm of producers would be complete without affectionate mention of Mr. Andrew J. Callaghan. He was a Vice-President of the company, active in sales and studio contacts through our most troublous times. He was Hollywood’s most popular man loved by all and has been tremendously missed by everybody in Technicolor since his death in 1934.

Mr. Whitney and his Pioneer Pictures associates finally settled on Becky Sharp as their first production of the series of eight. Becky was a champion for hard luck. The original director, Lowell Sherman, was taken ill and died during the period of photographing. He was succeeded by Rouben Mamoulian. Unusual difficulty was encountered in the sound recording so that Mr. Whitney found himself in the ironically anomalous position of having produced the first three-component Technicolor feature, of having surmounted all the hazards of color, yet being in difficulty with an aspect of the work which he had naturally taken for granted.

During the 1935-36 season we were manufacturing in the neighborhood of 2 3/4 million feet of prints a month, which included a larger volume of Warner Bros, short subjects than ever before and about forty per cent of all Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer short subjects. A very interesting and important adventure in the history of Technicolor development was the organization of a British affiliate, Technicolor, Ltd., which I organized as a subsidiary of Technicolor Motion Picture Corp. and later developed in association with Sir Adrian Baillie, Mr. Alexander Korda, and The Prudential Assurance Company, Ltd.

The first Technicolor feature picture photographed in England was Wings of the Morning, a race-track story which has had very successful distribution throughout the world. This production was produced before the London laboratory was built, and was serviced from Hollywood. In 1936 the British laboratory was built at West Drayton, just outside of London where it is now regularly operating to service British made productions and prints of American made productions for distribution in the United Kingdom. Mr. Alexander Korda has been outspoken in his enthusiasm for color, as evidenced by a series of pictures which he has produced, including the current release Drums. He is now planning an all-Technicolor series of pictures, of which the first is The Four Feathers, at present being photographed in the Sudan.

Since Becky Sharp there have been produced at Hollywood and in London a large number of important feature productions in Technicolor, including:

Adventures of Robin Hood, Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland (Warner Bros.)

A Star Is Born, Janet Gaynor and Fredric March (Selznick International Pictures)

Drums, Valerie Hobson, Sabu, Raymond Masey (London Films Productions)

Ebb Tide, Ray Milland, Frances Farmer (Paramount)

Garden of Allah, Marlene Dietrich, Charles Boyer, Basil Rathbone, Joseph Schildkraut (Pioneer Pictures)

God’s Country and the Woman, George Brent, Beverly Roberts (Warner Bros.)

Gold Is Where You Find It, George Brent, Olivia de Havilland (Warner Bros.)

Goldwyn’s Follies, allstar cast (Samuel Goldwyn Pictures, Inc.)

Her Jungle Love, Dorothy Lamour, Ray Milland (Paramount)

Men with Wings, Ray Milland, Louise Campbell, Fred MacMurray (Paramount)

Nothing Sacred, Carole Lombard, Fredric March (Selznick International Pictures)

Ramona, Loretta Young, Don Ameche (Twentieth Century Fox Productions)

Sixty Glorious Years, Anna Neagle, Anton Walbrook (Herbert Wilcox)

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Walt Disney (RKO Pictures, Inc.)

Trail of the Lonesome Pine, Sylvia Sidney, Fred MacMurray, Henry Fonda (Walter Wanger Productions)

Tom Sawyer, Tommy Kelly, Anne Gillis (Selznick International Pictures)

Valley of the Giants, Claire Trevor, Wayne Morris (Warner Bros.)

Vogues of 1938, Joan Bennett, Warner Baxter (Walter Wanger Productions).

Generally speaking, these pictures have been extraordinarily well received, some of them having broken attendance records in many parts of the world. Thus Technicolor has met the second great rush into color with steadily improving quality of its product and a broadening range of service. It is the purpose of Technicolor, during the time that prints of any picture are being manufactured in its plant, to hold the laboratory open for and at the disposal of the customer as if it were his own. His representative may inspect each of his prints and any changes suggested will be undertaken if practicable.

To do this he simply moves into the inspection room where each print before shipment is compared by simultaneous projection with a standard print approved by the customer for the purpose.

William Wellman who has directed more three-component Technicolor pictures than any other individual, all of them successes, namely, A Star Is Born, Nothing Sacred, and Men With Wings, has said repeatedly of Technicolor photography that he takes it in his stride, at substantially the same number of setups per day as black and white. It is noteworthy that most of the camera work is now done by cameramen in the direct employ of the studios.

Broadly considered, this recent array of feature pictures is of such a late date that it is too early to render a verdict based upon any sort of generalization with respect to them.

Looking ahead, Technicolor has contracts for about forty feature-length productions spread among most of the outstanding producers, constituting a very substantial volume of business. Among these there are now either being photographed or in preparation the following:

Dodge City, Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland (Warner Bros.)

Gone with the Wind, Clark Gable (Selznick International Pictures)

Heart of the North, Dick Foran, Gloria Dickson (Warner Bros.)

Jesse James, Tyrone Power, Henry Fonda, Nancy Kelly (Twentieth Century Fox)

Kentucky, Loretta Young, Richard Greene, Walter Brennan (Twentieth Century Fox)

Little Princess, Shirley Temple, Richard Greene, Anita Louise (Twentieth Century Fox)

Northwest Passage, Robert Taylor, Spencer Tracy (Loew’s, Inc.)

Sweethearts, Jeannette MacDonald, Nelson Eddy, Frank Morgan, Ray Bolger (Loew’s, Inc.)

The Light That Failed, Ray Milland (Paramount)

The Mikado, all-star (G. & S. Productions, Ltd.)

The Thief of Bagdad (London Films Productions)

The Wizard of Oz, Judy Garland, Jack Haley, Bert Lahr, Ray Bolger (Loew’s, Inc.); and a second feature-length production is being prepared by Walt Disney Enterprises, Inc.

To meet this growing volume of business Technicolor many months ago appropriated some $1,500,000 to increase the number of its cameras and to double its plant capacity. This expansion program is now well on its way to completion.

I have thus passed over rapidly the matter of eighteen pictures to be produced in Technicolor during the last part of this year and the first six months of next year, although they will probably represent an investment of some fifteen million dollars.

The foreign situation is becoming increasingly difficult. Sales to Germany, Spain, Japan, and China have practically ceased, and in many other foreign countries they are below normal. The Italian Government controls the entire distribution of films in Italy, which probably means that everything possible will be done to distribute Italian-made pictures at the expense of English and American-made pictures. To cope with the various regulations of censorship, the various languages requiring either superimposed titles or dubbing with new sound-track, has for years been difficult enough, but with the more recent quota laws, import duties, exchange difficulties, and especially in the face of the impossibility of getting money out of several foreign countries, to continue in the motion picture business there means adventures in other businesses, possibly including banking and politics. The establishment of Technicolor laboratories at various points over the world is a practical necessity and despite all these difficulties definite progress is being made.

About a year ago Technicolor established a department to contact exhibitors directly. Its representatives travel over the country to call upon exchange managers, theater managers, and projectionists.

The purpose has been to study projection and screen conditions at the theater; to advise how to get the best results with Technicolor prints, to listen to complaints and establish good will, and particularly to obtain projectionist, manager, and audience reactions to productions in Technicolor. The results have been most gratifying; we have found that the public reaction to Technicolor pictures is extremely favorable and that exhibitors throughout the country are realizing more and more that Technicolor has great box-office value.

In the letter from Dr. Goldsmith, suggesting for himself and Mr. Crabtree, that I write this paper, he said, “I believe it would be of particular interest to the engineers and the industry if you cared to indicate how you happened to cling so tenaciously to these developments through the ‘dark ages’ when color motion pictures were not so well appreciated.” All I have said points to the answer; it was marvelously interesting; it was great fun; we couldn’t let anybody down, neither customers, employees, stockholders, nor directors.

But there was something else too; there was always something just ahead, a plan for tomorrow, something exciting to be finished—yes, and something more to be finished after that; and I am willing to predict that it won’t be finished for many years yet. The type of film which will be standard for natural color pictures ten years hence may not yet have emerged. I predict that within two years Technicolor will have done away with special cameras and be regularly employing single strips of negative through any standard motion picture camera and that within two months for special purposes and within six months for more general purposes it will be offering to its customers a negative for use in its present cameras with from three to four times the speed of its present negative. That’s why we cling so tenaciously; there’s always something ahead; there always will be; our pride is enlisted; it’s our job.”

(Kalmus, Herbert T. (1938): Technicolor Adventures in Cinemaland. In: Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers 31,6, 1938, pp. 564-585, on pp. 577-584.)

Tags

• 1930s
• economics
• Disney
• John Hay Whitney
• William A. Wellman

×

“The Technicolor Process

(Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation, U.S.A.; Technicolor Limited, London, England.)

Introduction.—Long after the colour film has been superseded by some wonderful electronic device the magic word TECHNICOLOR will survive. Novelists write of “sunsets in gorgeous technicolor,” and fashion journals report a tout ensemble as “gown in monochrome and hat in technicolor.” Indeed Dr. Herbert Kalmus and his associates enriched the language on that day in Boston when they invented the great name, honouring their alma mater the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in so doing. To-day a colour film is a Technicolor film, as far as the press is concerned, no matter what the process may be. This famous process owes more to engineers than to chemists, seeing that to work it successfully nothing new to photography had to be made, all its elements were ready to hand, nothing new had to be invented that was not mechanical, or that was more than refinement upon existing practice. Its sponsors were faced with innumerable problems, some of great complexity, but in nearly every case precision engineering provided the answer. Why was this? Because the film was printed not by the action of light upon a sensitive substance but by the mechanical transfer of dye from a matrix in relief—a true type of printing. Dr. Kalmus and his co-workers, D. F. Comstock, W. A. Westcott, L. T. Troland and others, began their adventure by succumbing to the seductions of optics in the form of the additive process, but they very soon realized their error and relegated their registering projection lens to the museum, where the devices of others who have trodden this primrose path also properly belong. At this stage they must have considered many alternatives. They must have reviewed the whole history of colour photography and having made only one other false start, in which they attempted, with little success, to cement together a pair of dyed reliefs, they resuscitated the inventions of L. Warneke, who discovered the wash-off relief process (1881) and E. Edwards, an Englishman, who invented “Hydrotype” or “Imbibition printing” (1875), and henceforward never diverged from the path they had chosen. How well they chose the next few years were destined to prove, yet at that time (1927-28) imbibition can hardly have seemed promising when the microscopic dimensions of the cine frame are considered, for it must have seemed certain that there would be present the defect of unsharp contours due to lateral diffusion or “bleeding” of the dye, a fault peculiar to imbibition which had invariably been experienced. Before describing in any detail the technique of this process it is helpful to analyse the complex of problems for which solutions had to be found. These may be classified thus:

(a) Means for obtaining accurately registered separation negatives, either for two-colour or three-colour analysis.

(b) Means for making positive relief matrices from the separation negatives.

(c) Discovery of suitable dyes for imbibition.

(d) Means for mechanically registering a succession of matrix films to the film destined to bear the combined dye-transfer images.

(e) Means for printing a silver sound track including, if required, a silver key picture image.

(f) Determination of chemical formulae and optimum physical and chemical conditions.

Technicolor is one, but one only, successful solution of this very complex problem. In the existing state of knowledge other equally successful solutions could have been devised. Why was this not attempted? The answer is that competing investigators were effectually scared away by rumours as to the magnitude of the task and the size of the investment necessary. Nobody dared to tackle the job again. Yet there was nothing to forbid others from scaling the same peak by another route. However, once the original adventurers had got to the top of the mountain they remained in solitary possession. And there on the summit they still are, triumphantly in possession not of unassailable patents, but of an equally unassailable “know-how.”

The early essays in the additive process had built up a background of experience in the design of beam-splitters which predisposed these men to the adoption of a special camera in preference to bi-pack; at this period only two-colour was under consideration. Once again then debt to early pioneers must be acknowledged since the system they adopted had been invented years before by an Englishman, J. W. Bennetto (1897). This inventor describes the present three-strip arrangement, namely two films face to face in one focal plane and a single film in a focal plane at right angles provided by a reflector at 45° to the axis of the objective lens. The reflector is a prism block consisting of two 45° prisms cemented together to form a cube, one of the 45° faces being coated with a partially reflecting surface of metal (aluminium, gold, silver, etc.).

Once imbibition had been chosen as the method of printing there were a number of alternatives. The technique of “Pinatype” was well known. This invention of the Frenchman, Léon Didier, in 1903, had been developed by the Germans, and had been shown to be capable of making fairly good dye-transfer prints (F.P. 337,054—1903, etc.). It was always difficult to get clean whites because the master is not a relief at all but a surface of gelatine varying in hardness, and the hardened areas took up the dyes which had an affinity for hardened gelatine and the unhardened areas were washed free of dye. Then there was the possibility of using bichromated gelatine, the exposed areas of which are hardened by the action of ultra-violet light, a relief being easily produced by exposing through the support and washing away the unhardened gelatine in warm water (as in the “carbon” process). But exposure is lengthy and requires powerful sources of ultra-violet light. Of the various alternatives, that invented by L. Warneke (1881) seemed to fulfil most of the requirements, in which advantage is taken of the tanning action of the developer pyro. Indeed the first Technicolor formulae cited in the Troland patent (E.P. 204,034) in 1922 differ negligibly from Warneke. Thereafter refinements seek retention of the thinnest steps of the relief, the preservation of detail and the control of contrast. From this period onwards surely much of the credit belongs to Eastman Kodak, who from the beginning made the matrix film for the Technicolor organization. The material closely resembled the Jos-Pe film which had been since 1916 popular in Germany for making paper prints by the dye-transfer process, utilizing pyro-tanned wash-off relief films made in accordance with the patents of G. Koppmann (D.R.P. 309,193—1916, etc.).

But the heart of the Technicolor “set-up” lay not in these photographic problems, which had been largely solved in advance, but in mastering the prodigious difficulty of bringing three reliefs successively into contact with the image-bearing film at identically the same point. And here we can appreciate the marvellous accuracy of film perforation since only by means of these perforations could this form of printing have become possible. To Bell and Howell goes the credit for precision perforation.

The student should pay particular attention to the patents of the LB. Corporation of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Quite obviously this firm has played an important part in the history of Technicolor, as witness key patents such as E.P. 487,941 dealing with the imbibition machine.

Technicolor is thus the famous descendant of a most respectable ancestry. The story of its birth and origin generally begins with the youthful partnership of three undergraduates of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dr. Herbert Kalmus, Daniel Frost Comstock and W. A. Westcott. They gave us:—

1. A beam-splitter camera. (Three-strip Negatives.)

2. A gelatine wash-off relief. (Matrices.)

3. Dye-transfer printing. (Imbibition.)

But to give credit where credit is due, these three items were the reincarnation of ideas first conceived respectively by:—

1. J. W. Bennetto, 1897. (First semi-dialyte camera.)

2. L. Warneke, 1881. (Wash-off reliefs by tanning developer.)

3. E. Edwards, 1875. (Dye transfer printing or “hydrotype.”)

These are the indubitable ancestors of Technicolor but at present they seem to occupy rather obscure niches in our motion-picture Hall of Fame.

Brief History

Founded by Kalmus, Comstock, and Westcott. Consulting Engineers, Boston, Mass., USA.

1916-1917

First Laboratory: A railway car, equipped with chemical laboratory, darkroom, fire-proof safes, power plant and offices. Services included sensitizing, perforating, processing negative, conditioned air, examination of film and making control measurements and tests.
First Production The Gulf Between with Grace Darmond and Niles Welch. It was financed by Technicolor.
Camera Single lens. Prism Divider. Pair of images of normal dimensions (viz. Silent frame).
Projection Double aperture with filters inserted. Adjustment of register with glass wedge. Special arc and projection optical system. Kalmus writes, “I decided that such special attachments on the projector required an operator who was a cross between a college professor and an acrobat.”

1918 Dr. Leonard T. Troland patented fundamental monopack claims.

1919-1921 Process attempted of cementing pairs of dyed gelatine reliefs.
Original beam-splitter used for the negative records.

1921 Pilot Plant built in Brookline Avenue, Boston.

1922 Technicolor produced Toll of the Sea (Metro).
Insufficient laboratory capacity prevented prints from being delivered until following year. Price 27 cents a foot. Producers declared 8 cents limit.

1923 New plant erected to Boston. Capacity 1,000,000 ft. monthly. Small laboratory unit founded in Hollywood. Paramount made Wanderers of the Wasteland. One hundred and seventy-five made at 15 cents per foot.

1924 The Black Pirate, being cemented pairs of relief films, trouble was experienced in projection (Cupping)

1926 Up to this date $2,500,000 had been spent. Twelve two-reelers were sanctioned for production by Technicolor

1928 The imbibition process adopted Two-colour imbibition with silver track Warner’s produced first all-talking Technicolor picture On With the Show.

1929 Hollywood plant capacity doubled

1930 Contracts for 36 feature-length. Twelve million feet of negative required and 60,000,000 feet of positive. Technicolor appropriated 3,000,000 dollars for plant, equipment and research.

1931 Serious effects felt of depression. 1,200 employees dropped to 230

1932-1933 First three-strip beam-splitter camera completed and three-colour imbibition perfected. Walt Disney made Flowers and Trees the first three-colour production. Exclusive three year contract signed with Disney. Basic price for prints 5 cents per foot. Merian Cooper and John Hay Whitney financed La Cucaracha, first three-component studio job. Closing sequences made for The House of Rothschild and Kid Millions.

1935-1936 Becky Sharp released by Pioneer Pictures. First feature three-colour production Walter Wangert Trail of the Lonesome Pine with exteriors followed.
Plant now making 2,750,000 feet of prints a month. Wings of the Morning, first feature produced in England with Ray Rennahan as Director of Photography. Processed in the Hollywood plant,

1936 Technicolor Limited formed to build British laboratory at West Drayton. By this date some 23 cameras bad been built, costing 825,000 each.

1937 Disney made his first cartoon feature, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

1939 Further laboratory extensions opened in Hollywood. 1942 . Monopack (Kodachrome modified) used for first time for the exteriors only in a major studio production, M.G.M.’s Lassie Come Home

1944 Monopack first used for a full feature in 20th Century-Fox production Thunderhead.

1946 Technicolor delivered 165,027,297 feet of positive print, covering 33 American and 5 British features in addition to large numbers of short subjects.

1949 1.000,000 feet processed per day.

Classification.—Subtractive process. Two- or three-colour dye-transfer printing by successive imbibitions from wash-off gelatine relief matrices. Registration effected by travelling pin-belt. Film base is coated on one side with a positive emulsion which is used for printing the sound track, picture key, and frame surrounds. The dyes are transferred subsequent to the completion of the silver print.

Camera.—Beam-splitter incorporating a prism block consisting of two 45° prisms cemented together to form a cube, one of the 45° faces being coated with a partially reflecting surface of gold. The prism diverts part of the beam originating from the lens to a gate at 90° to the lens axis, the balance of the beam passing through the prism to a gate in the normal position (E.P. 398,339, E.P. 492,673) (Fig. 244A).

(a) Three-strip Film Arrangement.—Bipack records the diverted beam. Single film records the direct beam. The bi-pack consists of a blue recording front film, the emulsion surface of which is coated with a red filter excluding green and blue light from the rear film, which being coated with a red sensitive emulsion records red light only. The single film bears a green sensitive emulsion. This bipack and single film known as “Three-Strip” is manufactured by Eastman Kodak.

(b) Successive Frame Negative.—Alternatively to the three-strip system, separation negatives may be recorded on a single film in the form of successive sets of blue, red, and green filter records. Since each projection positive frame requires three successively exposed negatives, time and space parallax must prohibit the photography by this method of moving subject matter. The method is therefore employed for the photography of still subject matter such as animated drawings, titles, or trick firms of any description.

(c) “Monopack.” Use is also made of a multilayer colour film made by Eastman Kodak, which is probably very similar, if not identical, to Kodachrome. From this positive colour film (see Kodachrome) either 16-mm. or 35-mm. separation negatives are extracted by optical printing technique. From these separation negatives positive printing relief matrices can be printed by a suitable skipping optical printer. ([Footnote:] In 1938 Dr. Kalmus said: “I predict that within two years Technicolor will have done away with special cameras.” Yet a number of new beam-splitter cameras are in course of construction (1949).

Projection.—Normal.

Sound Track.—Normal, silver.

Technicolor Lenses.—These were fully described by H. W. Lee, formerly of Taylor, Taylor & Hobson Ltd., in Nature, by the kind permission of the editor of which the following section is reprinted. In colour photography it is necessary to analyse the light reflected by coloured objects into at least three spectral regions which, where there are three only, may be termed red, green, and blue respectively.

This is done by means of colour filters which transmit definite portions of the spectrum and absorb the rest; the three negatives are produced either successively or simultaneously. In cinematography the negatives must, of course, be made simultaneously unless the rate of movement of the film is increased threefold, to which there are grave objections. The three negatives may be made simultaneously by means of three lenses; this results in colour parallax, and the three images will never exactly superpose. Alternatively, the beam of light issuing from a single objective must be divided. This division may be made by means of superposed filters, the components of white light being successively subtracted and acting on sensitized films superposed. The objections to this are that the films and filters must be very thin if the composite tripack and filter film is not to be too thick, and that each layer of emulsion produces a certain amount of scattering, so that the successive images are more and more diffused. Other methods of dividing the beam are by successive reflections from thin, partly reflecting and partly transmitting films, which may be either isolated films of collodion or films of silver on glass surfaces. The silver may be in the form of totally reflecting films partly covering the surfaces on which they are deposited, a method not without objection, since the areas of film must be small if there is not to be differentiation between different parts of the light beams; alternatively, the silver films may be so thin as both to reflect and transmit. The Technicolor process is, optically speaking, a combination of two processes suggested above. One semi-reflecting metallic film on the diagonal plane of a glass cube is combined with a bipack, to which the objections of the tripack do not altogether apply, as the two sensitive films can be placed in contact.

The glass cube placed between the lens and the film has considerable thickness (being approximately equal to the size of field covered) and therefore produces considerable aberration. This fact was not sufficiently realized by early experimenters in colour photography, who tried to combine prism “beam-splitters” with normal lenses on the market, which, of course, had not been computed for use with considerable thicknesses of glass. The result was poor definition and images of unequal sizes. Technicolor, however, early realized the necessity for taking the prism into account in the design of the lens system, and in 1918 D. F. Comstock took out a patent (B.P. 131,422) for several constructions, having apertures up to f/3.9, for lens systems combined with prisms. In 1927, however, their prism system was simplified and the need felt for the lenses of larger aperture, owing to the change in cinema technique from outdoor to studio photography. Technicolor approached Taylor, Taylor & Hobson Ltd., who were making lenses having an aperture of f/2, and asked them to design a special lens for their needs. This was for two-colour work. With the change to three-colour work in 1931, a further change was needed, and, moreover, the matter of colour correction became more stringent.

It is possible to equalize the focusing position and the focal lengths for two parts of the spectrum which would, in practice, be the “centres of gravity” of the spectrum bands passed by the two filters used, but when three colours are in question there is the difficulty that the third colour must necessarily be out of focus owing to the so-called “secondary spectrum.” This secondary spectrum can be reduced in certain optical systems such as telescopic objectives and photographic lenses of small aperture by the aid of special glasses; but the dispersive power of these glasses, the so-called “telescopic flints,” which have partial dispersions more nearly proportional to those of crown glasses than the flints in ordinary use, is so low that, in photographic systems of large aperture and considerable field dependent entirely upon these glasses, the construction is prohibitively complicated. However, since, in the new Technicolor process, only two images are formed in a plane at right angles thereto, it is possible to allow for the slightly different focus for the green, if the foci for the red and blue coincide. These, then, were the conditions to be fulfilled: the red and blue foci must coincide, the tolerance being that the blue focus might be 0.0005 in. longer than the red, as the blue negative is the rear one of the bipack. The green focus could be 0.003 in. shorter than the common focus for the blue and red. These conditions were for the “standard” focal length of 50 mm. The aperture required was f/1.7. As there is inevitably some loss of definition in colour processing, the definition of the lenses was to be better than that of lenses for non-colour work. Other lenses of focal length 70 mm., 100 mm., and 140 mm. were also required.

Now the secondary spectrum, which required an adjustment of 0.003 in. for the green on the 50-mm. lens, increases with focal length, so that it becomes 0.008 in. with the 140-mm. lens, while the “adjustment,” being made on the camera, is fixed. It thus became necessary to reduce the secondary spectrum with the longer focus lenses. Fortunately, the Parsons Optical Glass Co. (now Chance-Parsons) came to the rescue with a new glass; an experimental melting produced a glass having a reduced secondary spectrum and having the low V of 44.9 (as against 52.2 in the old “telescopic flint”). By judicious incorporation of this glass in one or two components in the longer-focus lenses, these were designed to give approximately the same difference between the green focus and red-blue focus as in the standard lens.

A further interesting problem arose when short-focus lenses were required, because, with normal types, there is not sufficient clearance between the lens and the focal plane to accommodate the prism.

Mr. J. A. Ball of Technicolor had tried placing a negative lens in front of an ordinary cinematograph-taking lens, the distance between the two being greater than the focal length of the positive lens; thereby he decreased the focal length and at the same time displaced the nodal plane towards the focal plane, giving greater clearance.

A negative lens so placed, however, introduces considerable barrel distortion. Ball reduced this by using two negative components, each a cemented doublet, but when the problem was put to Taylor, Taylor & Hobson Ltd. to provide a lens of aperture f/2 free from distortion, a complete solution was forthcoming with a negative consisting of only two simple elements. Fig. 245 shows the Taylor-Hobson lens. The same stringency as to colour correction, of course, applies to this lens (E.P. 355,452).

The closeness of the limits for colour correction necessitates special precautions in manufacture. In a batch of lenses made to very close tolerances of radius and thickness and made from identical glass melts, it is rare to find the chromatic corrections identical to the Technicolor specification, owing to small variations in the composition of glass throughout the pot. The assembled lenses are first tested for focus throughout the spectrum on a collimator illuminated through a constant deviation prism. If necessary, alterations are then made to bring the chromatic corrections right. Finally, a photographic check is made. An inclined object consisting of parallel lines is photographed through the actual colour filters used by Technicolor.

The Technicolor arrangement of films is a derivative of the semidialyte system of J. W. Bennetto (E.P. 28,920, 1897). The optical system is the work of Messrs. Taylor, Taylor, Hobson & Cooke Ltd., of Leicester, England.

RECENT CAMERA PATENTS

E.P. 480,173. Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation. An oscillating film gate causing the film to engage alternately a claw feed mechanism and fixed registration pins. In fact, the familiar “shuttle gate,” and similar to the famous Bell-Howell Type I gate. This movement provides the ideal conditions for registration accuracy by virtue mainly of the fixed registration pins.

E.P. 537,802. Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation. Optical defects due to imperfect contact of bipack in the camera gate have always presented an annoying snag. In this patent the two films are separated by a pin (presumably recessed) just before they enter the gate, the idea being to feed the two films along a gradually converging path in order to exclude air-pockets by progressively squeezing out the air on the approach of the two films to the gate. Means are also provided for lubricating the films with a light mineral oil. This is done by oil-saturated pads between which the films run obliquely immediately before they are separated by the pin above mentioned. The use of oil for such lubrication would seem to invite trouble arising from spread of oil over image areas on the film (Fig. 246).

E.P. 538,080. A view finder control device for cameras having an axially and laterally adjustable optical view finder system and a confined housing characterized in that the mechanism for adjustment of the optical system moves with the latter whereas as the control means for the said mechanism is mounted on the housing, and the adjusting mechanism and the control means are connected by an articulated link transmitting motion there between.

E.P. 538,744. Parallax compensating focusing view finder, and arrangement to conform to different lens foci.

E.P. 539,228. Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation. This invention combines the advantages of the Technicolor beamsplitter with those of multilayer film. A bilayer film is placed in one gate and a monolayer in the other. The bilayer film records blue light on the outer emulsion layer and red on the inner. Needless to say, a destroyable yellow filter divides the two emulsions. The monolayer film records green light. The bilayer film is processed to a reversed positive and colour developed to yellow-cyan. The monolayer film is similarly reversed and colour developed magenta. From the bilayer film the blue and red separation negatives are extracted, and from the monolayer the green separation. Clearly, imbibition matrices can then be made as usual. The method should offer important advantages, as for example:

1. The elimination of bipack, which any cameraman would count a blessing.

2. Avoidance of the common absorptances [sic!] of the subtractive dyes in a trilayer material which are the origin of faulty colour separation.

To quote the patent: “It is practically impossible to separate, without considerable falsification, colour aspects recorded in the subtractive ranges yellow (minus blue), magenta (minus green), and cyan (minus red), by printing with light absorbed by the respective subtractive records.” As indicated in Fig. 247, the absorption ranges of subtractive printing matters overlap considerably. Therefore, if, for example, the yellow record—superimposed on magenta and cyan records—is copied with blue light, the magenta record and the cyan record contribute undesired density patterns, since they likewise pick up a certain amount of the cyan record densities, whereas the red light provides a comparatively pure copy of the cyan record. Accordingly, one of the offending cyan and magenta records—for example, the magenta-coloured record of the green aspect—is taken separately, and can therefore be printed without introducing falsifying components in the other two records. It will be evident from Fig. 247 that, for example, the removal of the magenta record merely leaves a contamination of the yellow copy, which is rather slight and, moreover, of secondary importance, due to the fact that the yellow record does not materially contribute to definition and gradation of the completed picture.

Evidently prints can equally well be made on trilayer film coated two layers on one side and one layer on the other, or coated in the conventional way as in Kodachrome and Ansco, all three layers on one side. The notion is well adapted to the making of good duplicates.

Processing of Negative and Printing of Matrix

Negative Development.—Technicolor negatives are developed to a gamma of 0.65 in D-76. The negatives are«drum developed in 1,000-ft lengths.

Before development the blue record negative is treated in a bleaching bath to destroy the red filter coating on the surface of the emulsion. A solution of hydrosulphite may be used.

Matrix Printers

Material.—Eastman orange-dyed emulsion No. 1514 on 7 ½/1,000 in. film base.

Printing.—Exposed through base with tungsten filament source used with an ultra-violet filter plus a No. 39 Wratten Filter. Alternatively blue filters of varying density may be used to control contrast. After exposure the matrix film is given a flash fog to threshold value with light identical to that used for printing the image. An ultra-violet absorbing filter is inserted between the light source and the film.

Processing

PRINTING

KEY IMAGE OR “BLANK” BLACK-AND-WHITE SILVER PRINT

In the Technicolor process the film upon which the dye transfers are made is a normal black-and-white positive film bearing a completed silver image sound track, a lightly printed picture key, [footnote: 1 Said now to be omitted, but in 1938 Dr. H. Kalmus said, “The present system is really four-component” (7).] and frame surrounds.

NOTE.—The 7th Step of the wedge exposed on the Type IIB Eastman Sensitometer must have a density of -64.

After fixation the “blank” is hardened in a chrome alum bath. The time is critical in relation to the time during which the “blank” can be kept prior to dye imbibition (normally 24 hours). Too short a “chrome wash” will cause the emulsion of the “blank” to be too soft which gives rise to bleeding of the dyes during transfer. Too long a “chrome wash” will cause incomplete transfer of the dyes from the matrix due to small particles of air being trapped between the matrix and the “blank.” In extreme cases there may be general failure to transfer the whole of the dye with consequent false colour balance in the print.

If a “blank” is to be kept for a period in excess of 24 hours the chrome alum wash must be shortened in time, owing to the fact that a “blank” tends to harden with keeping. Should a “blank” have become excessively hard owing to circumstances delaying transfer it can be run through the developing machine again with a chrome alum wash suited to the new expected time-lapse between chrome wash and transfer.

The time of development of the sound track printed on the “blank” is invariably the same, whether the track be of the variable area or variable density type. Since the sound track is developed independently of any considerations of the characteristics of the picture image the conditions for ideal processing are present.

DYE TRANSFER (IMBIBITION)

Surplus dye washed off—20 seconds at 70°-100° F. Surplus water is blown off and the semi-dry matrix is then “married” to the “blank” under de-aerated water, the blank having been previously pre-wetted for 30 seconds at 65° in de-aerated water (see E.P. 487,941).

By means of copper water-jacketed runways the mono-metal register-pin travelling band is kept at such a temperature that the film sandwich is kept heated during the transfer.

Removal of Surplus Dye (known as “Dechro,” viz., Sodium Carbonate, 10%).

Rinse.—2 minutes.

Blow off with compressed air.

Dry.

In B.P. 487,941 of the I.B. Corporation covering certain aspects of the Technicolor imbibition printing machine, the following dyes are mentioned:

“IB.” Transfer Machine (General Description)

The machinery used today by Technicolor Ltd. consists of two early type dye transfer machines sent to England by Technicolor Corp. to enable the English firm to start output on a reduced scale (20 feet per minute).

Owing to the war, no replacement was feasible and as a result of the increasing demand for colour productions this machine has continued to run practically non-stop (week-ends excluded) ever since. It is now said to be running at the increased rate of 120 feet per minute.

The machine was built by the LB. Corporation (U.S.A.) and designed by Mr. “Mack” Ames of The Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation (U.S.A.). (See LB. patent abridgement below.)

The machine is four banked, the fourth not being in use (i.e., Yellow, Cyan and Magenta; in that order). Fig. 248 illustrates schematically the general arrangement of the machine.

The “Blank”

The “blank” is the first stage in the making of a Technicolor print and consists of Kodak 1301 stock (Negative perforated) bearing a silver sound track and picture rebate and in some cases a faint silver picture image known as the “gray” in London, and the “key” in Hollywood.

These blanks are fed on to the machine on the yellow side by means of a continuous feed elevator, a sprocket with a double, normal, and stationary speed, a form of “dog clutch” being fitted between the feed reel and elevator. Each roll of blank is spliced to the preceding one by a normal cement join. The splicing “cue” for synchronizing purposes is printed on the “blank,” corresponding to the track negative as edited by the negative cutting department.

The blank then runs from the feed elevator past a mercuroid trip switch (see page 472 on Mercuroid Trip Switches) into the yellow “pre-wet bath” containing “de-aerated” water (see note on “de-aerator “). The yellow, cyan and magenta pre-wet baths are long horizontal troughs each running above its appropriate colour “table.” The object of the pre-wet is partially to soften the surface of the blank emulsion in order to decrease the chance of transfer due to “air” and to increase the receptivity of the emulsion to the transference of dye. After, say, two minutes’ immersion, the blank emerges from the yellow pre-wet, travels past two blow-offs (one either side of the film to remove surplus water), turns downwards past a mercuroid trip switch, and into the “roll tank” (entering it from the top) which is filled with de-aerated water. This water is kept flowing at a rate of 9 gallons per minute.

Marrying Matrix to “Blank”

It is in this roll tank that the blank is “married” or brought into close contact with the yellow matrix, the blank being uppermost. Both are then seated on the monel “pin belt,” by means of pressure exerted by four 6-in. diameter rubber treaded rollers; that is, two above and two below the pin belt. A jet of de-aerated water is directed at the point of first contact between blank and matrix. This is another precaution against the possibility of “transfer for air,” a defect brought about by the presence of particles of air trapped between matrix and blank, and so causing transfer of the colour in question. This defect is most liable to occur in areas of great colour contrast (i.e., air particles caught in the “shelf” in the “topography” of the matrix surface).

At about the same time as the blank is being fed on to the machine, the appropriate yellow matrix is also being run on to a continuous feed elevator, each roll of matrix being cut to length, for synchronization with the blank, by the matrix make-up department. The matrix is attached to its predecessor by means of a 6-inch length of monel strip (perforated in the same manner as a piece of negative cine film), and by four two-pronged clips.

A driving sprocket with a three-position free wheel, normal, and stationary type of dog clutch, supplies this elevator from the feed reel. Another sprocket carries the matrix into the top of the dye tank, where it runs in vertical paths past two cascades. These cascades are supplied with dye pumped up from a vat below the floor. The dye is passed through three filter bags, one large one in the vat and two smaller ones over the dye-tank cascades. Dye corrections are applied by boosting every 15 minutes under the direct control of the chemical department who are advised partly by “hand transfer tests” of a gray scale, and partly by the viewing room.

During its travel through the dye tank the matrix passes over a driving sprocket and a weighted jockey pulley attached to a cord. This cord actuates the speed control arm of a four-bush motor which drives this section of the machine. In this way the driving motor speed is governed by the tension of the film.

After leaving the top of the dye tank, the yellow matrix runs down into the “wash back” where it remains for about 90 seconds, travelling in a vertical path past either end of a hot water cascade whose temperature can be easily varied by means of a mixing valve.

The object of the “wash-back” is to wash off the dye superfluous to the amount required to bring about the desired colour ratio. The effectiveness of this washing off is directly related to the temperature of the water used, the duration of the “wash-back” time being constant (i.e., the greater the temperature the greater the wash-off). It is of interest to note that the main difference between the technique used in the London plant and that used in Hollywood, is that the Americans keep the temperature constant, but control the duration of “wash-back.” In either case the technique is directly controlled by the viewing room.

From the “wash-back” t h e matrix passes through a small elevator, the movable element being heavily weighted. This does no more than supply or take up stock in the event of slight sluggishness of the controlled driving motors when responding. From this elevator the matrix passes two blow-offs (one either side of the film), runs downwards past a mercuroid trip switch and enters the roll tank from the top, passing under a roller on to the pin belt where the blank is pressed on to it by the first 6-inch roller and held in register by the pins.

The pin belt is 240 feet long, consisting of monel perforated strip 35 mm. wide, with both large and small teeth soldered in these perforations. The small teeth are -on the “track” side of the blank.

The whole length is soldered into a loop. Four wheels of approximately 40-inches diameter enable it to travel from end to end of the machine four times. The two wheels at the dye tank end (termed the “wet end”) are set at a slight angle to each other, to give the desired cross over, and about 6 feet apart. The path from the wheel nearest the wet end passes through the roll tank by means of a water gate either end. The two wheels at the dry box end (“dry end”) run in a vertical plane side by side.

Towards the under side of the upper two paths, which travel from the wet to the dry end, and the upper side of the under two paths of the pin belt (i.e., the side not taken up by the film and teeth) hot water trunking is placed. This trunking is rectangular in section (approx. 6 in. x 1 1/2 in.). The side of the pin belt bearing the film is protected with wooden covers which are hinged for easy access.

The temperature of this heated surface (known as the “table”) is controlled. The greater the temperature the greater the contrast. There is an increased colour density in the shadows, giving in severe cases “off ratio” defects. It is therefore Technicolor policy to keep these table temperatures constant according to a standard technique by means of mixing valves.

The matrix and blank in close contact, and held in register by the pin belt, emerge from the water gate (nearest the dye end) of the roll tank, and pass under the large seating belt. This seating belt is a loop of copper strip, about 9 inches diameter, similar to a piece of negative perforated cine film, but having smaller perforation on the track side. These perforations are seated over the teeth of the pin belt by the pressure or weight of a large rubber treaded roller, there being also a small roller 3 inches away to assist the “take off” of the loop from the pin belt. The large seating belt is followed by the small seating belt. The latter is similar to the first but only forms a loop 7 inches in diameter. It has only one seating roller and is of less weight. The object of the seating belts is to ensure the correct seating of the blank and matrix perforations around the pin belt teeth. Incorrect seating of the blank and matrix would cause transfer around the perforations. Results of this are to be seen in the form of half round areas of colour with sharply defined edges against the perforations. The defect is most noticeable on the non-track side.

A close contact between blank and matrix is still further ensured by the use of two weighted rollers, the first having a 4 lb. weight attached, and the second having one of 9 lb.

After these pressure rollers a sucker is placed to remove surplus water from around the perforations and pins. This is then followed by a blow-off to remove any surplus water drops from the cell side of the blank. It is on this part of the pin belt between the blow-off and the tables that the “sync, marks” printed on the matrix and blank are checked to ensure against “out of frame” and “out of sync.” (out of rack) defects. If such a defect does occur, the number of perforations, frames, or feet, out of sync, are measured and the necessary length of leader attached to the next roll of blank or matrix (whichever is applicable) to be run on the machine.

The pin belt is friction driven by the two dry end wheels, which are chain driven by a constant speed motor. This is the only motor on the colour bank that is not controlled, and is therefore the one that sets the overall speed of the machine, and is termed the main drive motor. After completing the two circuits on the pin belt, the blank and matrix leave it at a point in line with and about 3 ½ ft. below the seating belts.

The parting is effected by both blank and matrix running over a roller called the “stripping roller” whilst the pin belt continues along its horizontal path.

The blank runs vertically downwards in a flat plane whilst the matrix runs off at an angle of 45° downwards with a twist through 180°. It is this twist that brings about the stripping or parting of the two films. A mercuroid switch is placed on the blank just after the stripping point. Both matrix and blank run over pulleys (both now being emulsion downwards) and run in horizontal paths towards the dry end, immediately below the lower tables. The blank runs horizontally in a dry box from end to end three times before emerging at the dry end to travel to the top of the machine and over a captive diabola (which by means of a cord governs the speed of the matrix dry box drive motor). The drive for the blank dry box is supplied by a friction loaded rubber covered pulley powered by a chain from the main drive motor.

The blank, after passing a mercuroid switch, travels into the pre-wet bath of the succeeding colour bank (i.e., the cyan). The matrix after leaving the stripping wheel runs under the blank dry box to a point below the large dry end pin belt driving wheels, where it travels through the floor to the “decro” tank containing sodium carbonate (not circulated). The object of this tank is to wash the matrix clear of any remaining dye (a mercuroid switch being placed at the entry into this tank).

After this the matrix passes into a wash tank and then up through the floor into the matrix dry box at the end of the transfer machine. It leaves tins to be rolled up on the take-up.

After re-winding and inspection by “matrix re-wind dept.” it is held in readiness for a further transfer.

The cyan bank is identical to the yellow (the yellow and cyan banks being built side by side in one unit (this formed an original two-colour machine)).

The blank bearing the yellow and cyan dye image passes over to the magenta bank. This bank, and a disused one alongside, forms another of the original two-colour machines, and stands parallel to the yellow and cyan banks with a gangway about 6 ft. wide between them. The magenta bank is very similar to the yellow and cyan, but has the following differences. A small tank containing alcohol, with a fixed elevator running in it, is placed between the wash back and roll tank. This is only used when a certain matrix is known to be bad for air and transfer. It is on the magenta that these defects are most pronounced. The softening effect of the alcohol on the dye laden matrix emulsion not only minimises the above defect but also increases dye spread. The weights attached to the rollers after the seating belts are increased to 6 and 12 lb. respectively.

The table temperature on this bank is maintained 10° F. above that on the other two tables. The last two modifications are introduced in order to reduce the chances of air, and transfer.

The blank on leaving the magenta dry box passes over waxing rollers running over the perforation tracks. After this the blank runs past a mercuroid switch, on to the take-up elevator.

The mercuroid switch is a glass phial one-third filled with mercury, into which electrodes protrude at one end, the phial being mounted on an arm pivoted about two-thirds of its length. On the short arm two wheels are mounted so that they ride on either side of the film (i.e., over the perforation tracks). The tension of the film running vertically causes the arm to remain horizontal. In the event of the film breaking, the weight of the glass phial, or mercuroid, on the longer arm, causes it to fall to a near vertical position, the mercury forming the circuit between the electrodes.

The closed circuit actuates a relay which stops the machine, rings a bell, and switches on a pilot light (each section having its own appropriate light). These lights are coloured either yellow, cyan or magenta, according to their colour bank.

The de-aerator is a machine situated on the ground floor (i.e., the floor below the machine) and consists of a vacuum pump exhausting air from a cylinder containing pipes with fine jets protruding from them. Distilled water at 110° F. is pumped through these pipes and forced through the jets, to form a fine spray within the vacuum. The water is then sucked from the bottom of the cylinder and pumped up to the IB. machine.

To be set against the great reproductive advantages of an imbibition machine, of which we are all aware, are the following disadvantages (not including the difficulties to be overcome in the production of matrices).

1. In the event of off-sync, or off-frame troubles, many feet of film might be run before the correction can be applied.

2. In the event of a machine stop at least two reels of production might be N.G.’d (the excessive waste in the “wash-back” causing no transfer from that part of the matrix).

3. Any machine stop of more than 3 minutes would cause permanent register trouble owing to distortion of the matrices on the hot tables (i.e., at least two sets of matrices N.G.’d).

4. There must be a severe risk of a machine stop damaging a matrix or matrices as a result of “baking” on the tables—this would cause a failure to strip.

5. Any particle of dirt would give a defect many times its size—i.e., the particle would probably be represented by a + colour density area (that is, if it adhered to the matrix before the dye tank). But if it was deposited on the matrix after the dye tank, or at any time on the blank, it would be represented by a surrounding area of transfer (if on the matrix by one colour; if on the blank by all the succeeding colours).

6. Any form of emulsion damage either on the matrix or blank would be represented by either + or — colour density—usually both.

7. If the blank emulsion is too hard — transfer would ensue, and possibly — air. If the blank emulsion be softened to overcome these two defects, bleeding or dye spread would increase. A mean technique has to be pursued which admits both defects to a lesser degree.

8. There must exist the continual problem of register, owing to the stretch and shrinkage of new and old matrices (besides the troubles experienced with negatives, masters, dupes, etc., in printing).

9. A matrix may be unreliable in its “keeping qualities,” it may distort, perish or shrink at an early age, and cause breakage, damaged perforations, and jumping on the pin belt—this would cause off-sync, and off-frame troubles.

10. The possibility of “transfer for air” (see former explanation) must always be present.

11. Quite considerable trouble could be caused by transfer “edge” owing to poor seating around the pins. This might be caused by a mild form of shrinkage (either blank or matrix).

The above defects are peculiar to a pin-belt machine. But the more usual defects are still present, i.e., scratches (this applies to matrix as well as blank) either negative or positive, on cell or emulsion, operational errors, dye and colour fluctuations, etc.

The following description of an imbibition printing machine patented by the LB. Corporation is concerned with the means at present employed by Technicolor in U.S.A. and Britain.

B.P. 487,941. Dye-Impression Printing; Electric Control Systems. LB. Corporation. Dec. 28, 1936, No. 35509. Convention date, Dec. 28, 1935. (Reference should be made to Figures 249A-D.

In the process of an apparatus for printing in multicolour from a set of photographically prepared gelatin matrices, the blanks to be printed and the matrices are fixed to supports and carried through cycles, the cycle for the matrices being automatically controlled and including the steps of applying excess dye to the matrices, removing a part of this dye, and pressing the matrices into contact with successive blanks. Preferably the matrices are overexposed and overdyed so that the removal of dye results in a gradation which corresponds to the straight part of the characteristic curve of an emulsion. The removal of dye is also adjustable to attain colour balance in the resulting pictures and may be effected by sprays. Apparatus for the process comprises a set of machines corresponding to the number of colours to be printed. In the form shown, each machine comprises a dye bath 3, Fig. 1, endless bands 11 having supports 26 for the matrices, an oscillating spray pipe 171 for applying further dye, washing sprays 72 for removing surplus dye, and rollers 110, 111 for pressing the matrices into contact with the blanks. The dye removal sprays are delivered by an oscillating tube 40 and may be deflected by a movable hood 50 to vary the quantity of dye removed. The matrices are carried by blocks 26, Fig. 10, having pins 27 which enter holes in the forward end of plates 100 carrying the blanks B. Automatic control of the hood 50 may be provided. As shown in Fig. 17, a pin 252 mounted on the endless carrier 11 in advance of the matrix, closes a switch to set in operation a motor P which draws the hood 50 upwards. At the top of its travel, a pin on the hood closes the cut-out switch 278 causing the motor to stop and the hood returns under gravity. A second pin 254 occupying a pre-set position on the front of the matrix support 26 then closes one of the switches 290 bringing a stop 265 into the path of the hood 50 as it returns. Preferably the dye bath and sprays are maintained at a raised temperature. Suitable dyes for a three-colour process are Erioglaucine for the cyan component, acid fuchsin for the magenta, and resorcine yellow for the yellow.

Technicolor General Procedure
Activities before photography:

Colour Control:

(a) Colour design of the sets.
(b) Costume colour selection.

Set colours are chosen:

(a) For hue, chroma, and value in relation to the costumes.
(b) For relative importance of the set.
(c) For cutting and relationship to other sets.
(d) For relationship of above factors to the script.

These factors, when decided upon, form the ” colour score.”

A colour control department advises on these factors.

Make-up.—Handled by the studio, but the colour cameraman often intervenes. For example, there may be compensation for sunburn during or following exterior work. Neck, throat, hands and arms require treatment. Babies frequently require no make-up. Object of make-up is largely to reduce range of flesh colour observable in various individuals. Critical care must be given to close-ups.

Photography.—Technicolor cameras are filter-balanced to average daylight. Colour-temperatures should not vary by more than 250°. For studio work the following sources are used, but in each case they are filtered to match a standard daylight. Thus the filters or stock in the camera are unaltered:

High-intensity arc.

White-flame arc.

Tungsten filament bulbs.

The General Electric C.P. tungsten incandescent bulbs are burnt at a colour-temperature of 3,380° K., and a MacBeth artificial daylight glass filter is used to transform the radiation to a colour-temperature of 6,000° K. Unfiltered inky lights are used to simulate firelight glow. Coloured lights may be used for special effects. Large sets are usually illuminated by arc lighting with occasional auxiliary inky units. Small sets are sometimes entirely lit by inky units.

For exteriors, metallic reflectors are undesirable owing to sunlight directly reflected varying in colour-temperature from average daylight. For process projection special plates are printed of the required contrast density and colour, depending on the particular background projector to be employed. Multiple projector heads project up to three matched prints. Background screens have been photographed up to 28 ft. in width. Care has to be taken to achieve foreground-background balance.

Lenses on the Technicolor camera are available of the following foci: 25, 35, 40, 50, 70, 100, 140 mm. These all fit into calibrated mounts that fit on to a master focusing mount. Generally, focusing is checked by measurement. Eye focusing has been found faulty. Stops are calibrated on an arbitrary arithmetical scale. A very original Technicolor speciality is the follow-focus aid which takes the form of a pair of Selsyn motors (Now available on the Dufaychrome camera.) One is attached to the lens mount, and the controlling motor is held in the technician’s hand, or fastened to some support if desirable, permitting the technician to be 50 ft. or more away from the camera, and yet to maintain control over the lens focus, even though the camera is “blimped.”

The motor arrangement is highly flexible. There are eight types of motor and eight combinations of motor-to-camera gears, all of which can be changed in the field. The cameras can also be operated in reverse. Speeds in excess of 24 pictures per second are not permissible. The camera can be mounted on anything from a spider to a high tripod, and on any other piece of equipment as may be desired, such as dollies, three-wheel perambulators, four-wheel velocitators, booms, rotating mounts, etc. Special mounts have been used for air photography and for underwater work. Speed cameras have been made to shoot up to 96 pictures per second. The threading time of a Technicolor camera is about 3 minutes.

Technicolor cartoons are photographed by normal cameras using the successive exposure method with either rotating or sliding filters. The negative is printed on a skipping intermittent printer. All optical and trick effects known to black-and-white can be used for Technicolor. Negatives are developed at night and black-and-white rush prints delivered the following afternoon. Colour rush prints are delivered the following evening.

Winton Hoch of the Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation wrote in 1942: “The negative reports and all laboratory contacts are handled for the cameraman through the Technicolor camera department, which also checks the daily log-sheets, and by these log-sheets keeps a very complete record of every production and of every scene photographed on that production. The records have proved invaluable, not only to the cameraman, but on many occasions to the director and others participating in the production.”

Technicolor “Monopack”

With regard to the use of Kodachrome monopack for the Technicolor record, Hoch says: “The present monopack process in latitude, visibility, and tone rendition is satisfactory, but the picture texture in grain and uniformity has not attained the smooth, fine texture of three-strip.” Progress since this was written (1942) has not been marked by any radical improvement.

Of 16-mm. Kodachrome monopack for Technicolor, William Stull (American Cinematographer, September 1941) says that the Technicolor copy “had less of the appearance of a dupe than he had considered possible” and that the “tonal range and gradation were comparable with the original Kodachrome or standard Technicolor.” We cannot agree with this verdict.

The monopack is used in cameras which are fitted with 25-mm. lenses, and has, in consequence, a characteristic perspective and depth of field which are reproduced on the 35-mm. enlargements to give what Stull describes as “an uncanny effect on the screen.”

Technicolor recommend that the Kodachrome exposure for Technicolor reproduction should be on the low side of normal.

Barrel Catling, British director, has recounted his experiences during the making of a documentary which was shot entirely in monopack. His statements do not support the absurdly exaggerated reports which have been quoted from American journals. It is quite clear that after all the fuss there has been some disappointment. The character of the result is only what was predicted by the writer seven years ago, .when Dr. Kalmus confidently predicted the demise of the beam-splitter camera. How anybody familiar with the theory of colour photography could have imagined for a moment that it was possible to get prints from negatives extracted from a 16-mm. Kodachrome film which could compare with direct separations defies imagination. Even “electronic” masking would not crack this nut. The film was English Village, the first British monopack effort. Catling says that they included a colour chart for every shot. An ultra-violet absorbing filter was used (Y-l). The film in this instance seems to have been 35-mm. Kodachrome, since a Vinten camera was employed. Small hand tests were processed at Harrow, but the main film had to be sent to Rochester for processing. Finishing on September 12, no rushes were available until December 3, when a black-and-white cutting print arrived. The colour pilots did not arrive until December 31. “They were surprisingly good, though some scenes seemed to be on the thin side, while in others there was an occasional fluctuation of colour. Greens were rendered on the hard side, and light-soaked whites had a pinky halation. Flesh tints tended to be hot.” The last material did not arrive until April 28. The following August (1944) Mr. Catling had not seen his film. It therefore does not seem to be a very practicable proposition in England as yet.

Principal U.S.A. productions on monopack so far have been:

Thunderhead—Son of Flicka.

Memphis Belle.

Fighting Lady.

Marines at Tarawa.

Report from the Aleutians.

Saludos Amigos.

Some Fitzpatrick Travelogues.

XIV Olympiad—The Glory of Sport (Part).

References

EDOUART. A. F., “Paramount Triple-Head Transparency Process Projector,” Journ. Soc. Mot. Pic. Eng. , 33 (Aug. 1939), p. 170.

“The Paramount Transparency Process Projection Equipment,” Journ. Soc. Mot. Pic. Eng., 40 (June 1943), p. 366.

HOCH, W., “Technicolor Cinematography,” Journ. Soc. Mot. Pic. Eng., 39 (Aug. 1942), p. 96.

CATLING, D., “Shooting in Monopack,” Brit. Journ. Phot. (Aug. 11, 1944), p. 282.

Resume of the Principal Technicolor Printing Patents

Excerpts from the Specifications or abridgements by permission of the Controller of H.M Stationery Office.

E.P. 132,580. Comstock, D. R, and Technicolor, 1918.

Coloured light is used in printing which will reverse or neutralize the effect of difference in the range of film densities in the negative (gamma control). For negatives having a high contrast gradient, printing light is used of such wavelength as will produce a positive having a comparatively low contrast gradient, and vice versa. Thus, for a two-colour process employing red and green taking filters, ultra-violet and blue filters may be used for printing the positives. The process is especially applicable to multicolour printing on a single film in which the contrast gradients cannot be equalized by development. Wall says [ 4 ] : “This principle was first suggested by Lemann [5] and had been in constant use for many years.”

E.P. 188,329. Comstock, D. R, and Technicolor, 1921.

Describes the exposure of two films through the celluloid and the superposition of the two films by cementing them back to back before development. Technicolor used double-width film at this period, and after printing it was folded with the images outwards. It is stated that the developer is to be pyro, subsequently bleaching with potassium ferrocyanide, fixing with hypo, etching away the soft gelatine, and staining the relief images so obtained.

E.P. 204,404. Comstock, D. R, and Technicolor, 1923.

The imbibition film is mounted for development after exposure on a thin metal band, or backing. Steel plated with copper is suggested. The film is cemented with a layer of binding material such as amyl acetate and lacquer, and fed through pressure rollers and heated to 120° F. for 30 minutes. The metal strip ensures perfect registration when printing by imbibition upon a blank film.

E.P. 241,052. Andrews, J. M., and Technicolor.

Processing machinery for dissolving away the unhardened gelatine with hot water which is flowed on to the film at opposite edges from several nozzles. The hot water has a temperature of 120° F. E.P. 263,331. U.S.P. 1,677,665. Weaver, E. A., and Technicolor, 1926. The gradations in the high-lights of imbibition relief images are made more gradual than those in the half-tone parts by exposure of the film to uniformly distributed light, either previously or simultaneously with the contact printing of the image proper. The film may be rendered absorptive to light of a particular colour, and the uniformly exposing light may be of that colour. The exposure to uniform light may be approximately the threshold exposure, and both exposures are made from the same side of the film, either from the emulsion side or the celluloid side. Either one or all of the images of a multicolour positive may have been thus exposed to uniformly distributed light.

E.P. 263,650. Weaver, E. A., and Technicolor, 1926.

The densities in the shadows of imbibition reliefs are made at least as great as in the half-tone portions. The film is dyed with a dye absorptive to light of short wavelength, and printing is done with a light of short wavelength mixed with a light of long wavelength. A sharp-cutting dye such as naphthol yellow is used, and it is used in as concentrated a form as possible. Quinoline yellow is mentioned as a restrainer permitting the use of maximum concentration of naphthol yellow.

E.P. 264,369. Ball, J. A., and Technicolor, 1926.

Printing apparatus for imbibition matrices. The machine enables one negative bearing two-colour records in alternating sequence to print two separate positive films; two printing lights are employed, one for each gate. The type of negative used in this printer is that obtained with a beam-splitter camera of the type described in E.P. 194,971 (see Chapter V). The arrangement of the images is the same as in E.P. 349,318.

E.P. 270,279. Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation, 1926.

Dyes for imbibition printing are highly purified in such a way as to remove any solid matter or impurities, so that the dye will be absorbed upon the printing matrix in accordance with the density of the printing image, without the formation of self-agglomerating components, and will also be freely imbibed into the receptive gelatine surface without diffusion and without the formation of layers or matter which tends to adhere to the surface or becomes detached from the printing matrix. The dye solutions may be “egg-treated”—namely, by the addition of the white of egg or like amphoteric colloid followed by coagulation, as by boiling, and removal of the coagulated colloid together with extraneous solids or solid-forming constituents. To the dye solution may also be added a viscosity agent to prevent lateral diffusion, and this may comprise a second dye having relatively low penetration or dispersion, and high definition with respect to the film to be printed. Two acidified dye compositions for red and green respectively are specified.”

(Cornwell-Clyne, Adrian (1951): Colour Cinematography. London: Chapman & Hall, pp. 451-479.)

Tags

• dye transfer printing
• patent
• lens
• matrices
• registration
• focal length
• innovation
• mechanics
• aperture
• focus plane

×

“While the sales and production departments were experiencing severe problems, Ball and his staff persisted in their research and development work. In 1930 the Hernandez-Mejia patents finally became available, and Technicolor initiated immediate steps toward perfecting a three-color dye-transfer, imbibition print system.⁶⁷ Working in conjunction with George Alfred Mitchell (who had earlier perfected the famous Mitchell camera), Ball designed and built a special 3-strip camera for the new process.⁶⁸ The camera utilized a single lens. Immediately behind this lens was a beam-splitter made by joining two prisms of optical glass, the joined faces being “silver-sputtered” to produce a partially reflecting mirror. This beam-splitter reflected part of the light to an aperture at the left of the lens and allowed the remainder of the light to pass through to a normally located aperture.

Three specially hypersensitized films passed through these two apertures. In the rear aperture, a single Super-X Panchromatic film was exposed behind a green filter. In the left aperture a standard “bipack” was exposed behind a magenta filter. This filter transmitted both red and blue light, but excluded green. Behind the magenta filter were two strips of film, one behind the other. The front film in the bipack, being an orthochromatic emulsion, recorded only the blue components of the light reaching it. (The film carried a red-orange dye which absorbed the blue rays, leaving only the red to affect the rear film.) The panchromatic film in the rear of the bipack thus recorded only the remaining red light.

The three negatives record the primary color aspects (red, green and blue) of the scene, but they resemble ordinary black and white negatives. For example, if a red barn were photographed in a green field with a blue sky overhead, the red record negative would have only the image of the barn, the green record negative would have only the image of the field, and the blue record negative would correspondingly have only the image of the sky. Each of these color separation negatives would then produce a special positive relief image matrix.

These positives differ from ordinary positives in that the picture gradations are represented by varying thicknesses of hardened gelatin. The dye image from each of the three matrices would then be transferred, one after the other, upon a strip of clear “blank” film coated with a layer of special dye-absorbent emulsion. This strip, with the superimposed images in precise register, becomes the final completed print used in projection.

Extreme control over the entire process was maintained by the Technicolor Company to insure optimum results. All features were shot on fewer than forty cameras owned and maintained by the company, and all release printing was confined to one of two plants–located in Hollywood and London. The films used in Process Number Four were made exclusively by the Eastman Kodak Company, and they possessed exceptionally low shrinkage rates. The subsequent registration of the three images was exact to within one-thousandth of an inch, with color fringing all but eliminated on even the largest screens.

By May of 1932, the first three-component camera had been completed, and, under the direction of Troland, one unit of the Technicolor plant had been equipped to handle Process Number Four. The difference between the new process and Technicolor Process Number Three was truly extraordinary.

There are now rich, deep blues and it is no longer necessary to avoid or to regret the existence of blue skies, blue water, and blue costumes. The old process presented blurred outlines which were even harder on the eyes than its imperfect colors.
. . . Color producers today may again mishandle their medium. But at least they will have good colors, well focused, to abuse.⁶⁹

Unfortunately, most producers were unwilling to try the improved system. After failing to interest the feature filmmakers, Kalmus turned his attention to those in the cartoon field. These initial contacts also proved unsuccessful. Most cartoonists argued that their product was “good enough in black and white, and that of all departments of production, cartoons could least afford the added expense.”⁷⁰ Of all those contacted, only Walt Disney showed any interest. Willing to experiment with Process Number Four, Disney filmed Flowers and Trees in three-color Technicolor. Although the Silly Symphony cartoon utilized the new process, a regular animation camera was used. A set of “tri-color primary filters” was placed before the lens, and each animation cell was photographed three times–each frame being exposed behind a different filter.⁷¹ The camera film was then run through an optical printer three times, with the printer geared to print every third frame. The starting point was staggered one frame for each pass, thus the resulting release print would contain the complete color record.

Released in 1932, Flowers and Trees was extremely successful. Disney followed with two more Technicolor cartoons–Santa’s Work Shop and Funny Bunnies. Then, in May, 1933, the immortal Three Little Pigs reached the nation’s screens, and its overwhelming box-office draw brought immediate prestige to the new three-color process:

. . . Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf? might also be considered the theme song in the drama of Technicolor’s recovery, for it was Walt Disney’s successful gamble with Silly Symphonies in color that drove the wolf from Technicolor’s door.⁷²

Within a short period of time the Silly Symphonies series in Technicolor began to make more money than Mickey Mouse films in regular black-and white. As a result, Disney contracted to produce both utilizing the new process in the spring of 1934,⁷³ and in 1935, The Band Concert became the first Mickey cartoon in full Technicolor.⁷⁴ Without doubt, Disney’s initial willingness to try Process Number Four was an important step in the continued existence of the Technicolor Corporation.

Kalmus realized this and rewarded Disney by granting him exclusive cartoon rights to both Technicolor processes. This agreement later became a source of embarrassment.

Once the success of color cartoons had been proved, the other producers again came around to Dr. Kalmus to get film–for their cartoons–Dr. Kalmus said he was sorry but he did not have any film for them. This made the producers angry and left Dr. Kalmus in a difficult position. For if he would not let Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, for instance, use Technicolor in cartoons, Mr. Mayer would naturally have no goodwill for Technicolor in anything else. And, after all, Dr. Kalmus was thinking of features, not cartoons, as the ultimate Technicolor good.⁷⁵

Kalmus later succeeded in gaining Disney’s consent to allow other cartoonists the use of Technicolor, however they were initially limited to the older two-color system. It was almost two full years before competing studios were finally permitted to produce their animated shorts in Process Number Four. Finally, on September 1, 1935, the exclusive arrangement with Disney expired, and Variety reported:

Tri-color cartoons will dominate the field . . . With leading cartoon producers making their pictures via Technicolor’s three-component process, Majors to distribute trio-tint series will include Metro, Paramount, United Artists, Columbia, Radio and Warners.⁷⁶

The use of Technicolor in feature-length film production was still to come. Picture producers admitted they had been wrong concerning the value of color in cartoons, but none were willing to incur the risk or expense of producing a full-color dramatic film. In an attempt to spur interest, Technicolor lowered their base print price from 7 cents to 5.5 cents per foot.⁷⁷ Still there were no takers, and the special 3-strip camera remained idle.

In the spring of 1933, Merian C. Cooper, John (Jock) Whitney and Cornelius (Sonny) Vanderbilt Whitney formed Pioneer Pictures, with distribution to be handled by RKO Pictures.⁷⁸ Cooper was a well-known Hollywood director, producer and motion picture executive whose King Kong had become an enormous popular hit. John Whitney was an unknown to the motion picture industry. His personal fortune (rumored at $100 million)⁷⁹ was known, I1 however, and insured that the newly formed producing company would be adequately capitalized. Both men were excited about the possibilities of full-color feature films, and on May 18, 1933, Pioneer Pictures signed a contract with Technicolor “for the production of eight pictures, superfeature in character and especially featuring color.”⁸⁰ Before production could begin, however, Cooper and Whitney demanded a series of extensive preliminary tests of the process under a variety of shooting conditions.

Several of the tests were performed by noted stage designer Robert Edmond Jones.

In one of his early tests he first photographed, with black and white, a woman dressed in orange, against a green background. Following this he recorded the same scene with the color camera. Inspection revealed a beautiful blending of colors as the actress moved back and forth in front of the backdrop.
Then the designer took an important step which now promises a final combination of art and science . . . he decided to try changing the lights as her mood varied. Twenty boys, each manning a “gelatin,” or colored spot light, stood off stage when the camera began to grind again. Jones called for first one combination of lights, then another. . . .
The test proved to Jones’ satisfaction that lights could be used effectively and that the face would “take” these changes.⁸¹

Another test was made with John Barrymore, an old friend of Jones’, who had volunteered to act a scene from Hamlet. This time a carefully planned interplay of colored lights proved that color film could be used to psychological advantage.⁸² Fully satisfied with the test results, John Whitney and his cousin Cornelius purchased an estimated 15 percent of the outstanding shares of Technicolor stock.⁸³ As Fortune magazine noted at the time, this interest in Technicolor

has an important bearing on the probable permanence of Pioneer Pictures. It is altogether likely that Pioneer Pictures will lose money on its early productions, particularly since Mr. Whitney is determined to turn out pictures slowly, carefully, and expensively. But should Pioneer Pictures be sufficiently successful to inspire a color vogue among the standard producers, Technicolor stock would undoubtedly zoom. If we estimate that the Whitneys have 100,000 shares of Technicolor, and if we assume a rise from $13 to $20 a share (and a real color splurge would result in considerably more elevation), it is obvious that a loss in Pioneer would be more than made up for by a gain in Technicolor. This is an important item, because although Mr. Whitney does many things for fun he also does them for money.⁸⁴

Pioneer Pictures’ first release (and the first commercial use of the three-strip Technicolor camera) was an expensive 2-reel short entitled La Cucaracha. The 1934 short used 82,300 feet of film, and although it cost approximately $65,000 to make (more than four times the average for a 2-reeler), La Cucaracha was an immediate success. Total box-office receipts approached $400,000, and its financial success was nearly equaled by its critical impact. One reviewer noted that “the excellence of its color . . . stands today as a landmark which ushers in the era of color.”⁸⁵ Fortune magazine commented that “the colors are clear and true; when a gentleman in a close up turns red with anger you can see the color mounting in his cheeks; and there is no question that color has made . . . La Cucaracha an outstanding short.”⁸⁶ Once again there was newfound interest in Technicolor among Hollywood producers. With the estimated $1,500,000 income from the sale of stock to the Whitneys, Kalmus ordered four additional three-strip cameras to be built (there were only three in existence in 1934), and initiated plans on further expansion of the Hollywood plant.⁸⁷ During the remainder of 1934, four Technicolor inserts were added to feature films already in production.

The first of these was the closing scene of United Artists’ The House of Rothschild. A second Technicolor sequence was included in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s Kid Million. André Sennwald of the New York Times praised the film by reporting :

The Technicolor sequence in the ice-cream factory is a fantasy which will please the most fastidious. . . . The lavish . . . scene . . . is the most successful example of fantasy in color that Broadway has seen outside of the Disney cartoons.⁸⁸

The Little Colonel, Twentieth Century-Fox, and Metro’s The Cat and the Fiddle also added color scenes prior to their distribution. Meanwhile, John Whitney and his Pioneer Pictures associates finally settled on a screen version of Thackeray’s Vanity Fair as their first feature production. Renamed Becky Sharp, the play was selected after Whitney had “given consideration to no less than two hundred stories,”⁸⁹ barely edging out The Three Musketeers as the subject matter for this historic film.⁹⁰ As with La Cucaracha, Jones was put in charge of sets and costuming. Rouben Mamoulian replaced Lowell Sherman as director after the later became ill and died during principal photography. One day prior to its world premiere, Mamoulian told a Variety reporter:

When you look at an object, you see form and color. On the screen you’ve been seeing it only as form. Pictures are primarily visual. Now with color pictures, the vision gets the other half . . . color balances the ear, offsets the sometimes distracting pull of sound. With color, pictures are once more primarily visual–and now at last the perfect talking picture approaches.⁹¹

Pioneer Pictures and Technicolor shared Mamoulian’s enthusiasm, and trade publications carried advertisements with headlines reading: “Tomorrow the World Will Behold the New Miracle of Motion Pictures’.”⁹² Becky Sharp opened at the Radio City Music Hall on June 13, 1935, and the all-important reviews were generally favorable. André Sennwald of the New York Times wrote:

Science and art, the handmaidens of the cinema, have joined hands to endow the screen with a miraculous new element in Becky Sharp,” the first full length photoplay produced in the three-component color process of Technicolor. . . . Although its faults are too numerous to earn it distinction as a screen drama, it produces in the spectator all the excitement of standing upon a peak in Darien and glimpsing a strange, beautiful and unexpected new world. As an experiment, it is a momentous event, and it may be that in a few years it will be regarded as the equal in historical importance of the first crude and wretched talking pictures. Although it is dramatically tedious, it is a gallant and distinguished outpost in an almost unchartered domain, and it probably is the most significant event of the 1935 cinema.⁹³

While Sennwald felt Process Number Four was a vast improvement “over the gaudy two-color process,” he did detect poor definition in the long shots as being a minor flaw.⁹⁴ Furthermore, he noted the tendency of brightly colored scenes to “provoke an after-image when the scene shifts abruptly to a quieter color combination.”⁹⁵ In summation, Sennwald felt that most of these problems would be overcome through time and viewing experience.

The major problem from the spectator’s point of view is the necessity for accustoming the eye to this new screen element in much the same way that we were obliged to accustom the car to the first talkers. . . But one thing is certain about Becky Sharp. Its best is so good that it becomes a prophecy of the future of color on the screen. It forced this column to the conclusion that color will become an Integral motion picture element in the next few years.⁹⁶

Variety held a similar opinion. Under the headline of “Color Has Producers on the Fence: Paint Brush Boys Future Big Shots?”⁹⁷ the trade publication assessed the Hollywood preview of Becky Sharp as being a success.

General consensus of those who have analyzed the picture seem to be that its experimental flaws do not materially detract. Also that film may mark the heyday of the artist as a production ace, just as sound spelled the rise of the electrician.⁹⁸

Although Becky Sharp was not an unqualified hit, box-office receipts were encouraging enough for producers to photograph subsequent features with the three-color process. Pioneer Pictures released Dancing Pirate in 1936 with Steffi Duna (of La Cucaracha) and Frank Morgan.

Twentieth Century-Fox followed with Ramona, and Frank S. Nugent of the New York Times called the film “Chromatically . . . superior to anything we have seen in the color line . . . it has achieved warmth and vigor without subjecting its beholders to a constant optic bombardment.”⁹⁹ United Artists’ first full-length feature in full color was Garden of Allah, and Warner Bros, followed suit with God’s Country and the Woman. All of these films received mixed, yet generally favorable, reviews for their color work. None, however, approached the visual grandeur of The Trail of the Lonesome Pine, the first feature film utilizing Process Number Four to be photographed entirely on location.¹⁰⁰ Produced by Walter Wanger and released by Paramount, The Trail of the Lonesome Pine contained a unique blend of elements which insured its phenomenal box-office success. As Fortune magazine reported:

Pine‘s success is by no means entirely due to its color. For the three main ingredients of any hit show are cast, story, and setting and Pine is well enough equipped on all three counts to make it attractive to large masses of customers. The cast (Sylvia Sydney, Fred MacMurray, Henry Fonda) is far from mediocre as a box-office draw. The story (heavy hillbilly drama) is a dependable tear jerker. And the setting (the Blue Ridge Mountains, hillbilly cabins, slouch hats and shotguns) is as commonplace and as satisfying as the U.S. front porch. But with color added to these orthodox boxoffice virtues, Pine has stepped from a second-rank to a near first-rank picture. And thus, judged by Pine‘s experience, color may mean the difference between a small gross profit and a large one.¹⁰¹

Frank S. Nugent, writing for the New York Times, also took note of the significance of the film, calling it

a richly beautiful color production . . . commanding attention no less for its intrinsic entertainment value than as another significant milestone in the development of the cinema.¹⁰²

Comparing The Trail of the Lonesome Pine with its predecessor, Nugent declared:

Color has traveled far since first it exploded on the screen last June in Becky Sharp. Demonstrating increased mastery of the new element, Walter Wanger’s producing unit proves in The Trail of the Lonesome Pine, which opened yesterday at the Paramount, that Technicolor is not restricted to a studio’s stages, but can record quite handsomely, the rich, natural coloring of the outside world and whatever dramatic action may be encountered in it.
The significance of this achievement is not to be minimized. It means that color need not shackle the cinema, but may give it fuller expression. It means that we can doubt no longer the inevitability of the color film or scoff at those who believe that black-and-white photography is tottering on the brink of that limbo of forgotten things which already has swallowed the silent picture.
Chromatically, The Trail of the Lonesome Pine is far less impressive than its pioneer in the field.
Becky Sharp employed color as a stylistic accentuation of dramatic effect. It sought to imprison the rainbow in a series of carefully planned canvases that were radiantly startling, visually magnificent, attuned carefully to the mood of the picture and to the changing tempo of its action.
The new picture attempts none of this. Paradoxically, it improves the case for color by lessening its importance. To accept the spectrum as a complementary attribute of the picture not its raison d’être. In place of the vivid reds and scarlets, the brilliant purples and dazzling greens and yellows of Becky, it employs sober browns and blacks and deep greens. It may not be natural color, but, at least, it is used more naturally. The eye, accustomed to the shadings of black and white, has less difficulty meeting the demands of the new element; the color is not a distraction, but an attraction–as valuable and little more obtrusive than the musical score.
. . . it would appear that blue still baffles the camera, that light browns have a tendency to run to green, that red is either extremely red or hopelessly orange. These are remediable defects, we feel, and ones that Hollywood’s skill will over-come.¹⁰³

Outstanding box-office takes were registered throughout the country. In Hartford, The Trail of the Lonesome Pine ran 123 percent above the weekly average,¹⁰⁴ and Fortune listed a number of additional statistics which were not ignored by the industry for long.

. . . in New Haven, 60 percent above, in Chicago, 47 percent above . . . and at Manhattan’s Paramount Theatre Pine set an all-time high for a single day’s attendance. . . . Its national boxoffice take is said to be 52 percent above average.¹⁰⁵

Clearly Technicolor’s future had at last become firmly established. After the success of The Trail of the Lonesome Pine, Hollywood scrambled to Kalmus with a “second great rush into color.”¹⁰⁶ Business Week reported that “every feature color picture shot in 1936” used Technicolor Process Number Four,¹⁰⁷ and while that statement is not totally true, it does indicate further the enormous gains made by Kalmus and his company as a result of The Trail of the Lonesome Pine. During the next ten years Technicolor’s growth was both dramatic and orderly.

Technicolor processed 5,526,128 feet of film in 1932, nearly 162,000,000 in 1944 and over one billion feet in 1946. An estimated nine billion dollars had been invested by 1947 in Technicolor films in Hollywood and Great Britain.¹⁰⁸

It had taken twenty years for his dream to come true, and Kalmus had suffered one disappointment after another. Many would have become discouraged and quit.

Kalmus, however, maintained a remarkable level of enthusiasm and. determination throughout. His eventual success–where so many others had failed—is attributable in no small part to this unique blend of persistence and optimism. Perhaps this outlook -was best expressed when he wrote:

. . . it is marvelously interesting; it was great fun; we couldn’t let anybody down, neither customers, employees, stockholders, nor directors.
But there was something else too; there was always something just ahead, a plan for tomorrow, something exciting to be finished. . . . That’s why we cling so tenaciously; there’s always something ahead; there always will be; our pride is enlisted; it’s our job.¹⁰⁹

References

⁶⁷ Robert Allen Mitchell, “Color in Motion Pictures and TV–Part II: Natural Color on Film,” American Cinematographer 40 (October 1959): 169.

⁶⁸ Ibid.

⁶⁹ “What? Color in the Movies Again?” p. 97.

⁷⁰ Kalmus, p. 578.

⁷¹ Ray Spottiswoode, Film and Its Technique (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970), p. 225.

⁷² “What? Color in the Movies Again?” p. 97.

⁷³ Ibid.

⁷⁴ Behlmer, pp. 343-344.

⁷⁵ “What? Color in the Movies Again?” p. 97.

⁷⁶ Variety, May 29, 1935, p. 5; and Limbacher, Four Aspects of the Film, p. 32.

⁷⁷ Kalmus, p. 579.

⁷⁸ “What? Color in the Movies Again?” p. 164.

⁷⁹ Ibid., p. 161.

⁸⁰ Kalmus, p. 579.

⁸¹ Andrew R. Boone, “Pictures in Full Color Open New Era in Movies,” Popular Science, May 1935, p. 14.

⁸² Ibid.

⁸³ “What? Color in the Movies Again?” p. 164.

⁸⁴ Ibid.

⁸⁵ Boone, p. 15.

⁸⁶ “What? Color in the Movies Again?” p. 164.

⁸⁷ Taylor, “Mr. Technicolor,” p. 132; and Kalmus, p. 580.

⁸⁸ New York Times, November 12,, 1934, p. 17.

⁸⁹ Kalmus, p. 580.

⁹⁰ Behlmer, p. 345.

⁹¹ Variety. June 12, 1935, p. 2.

⁹² Ibid.

⁹³ New York Times, June 14, 1935, p. 27.

⁹⁴ Ibid.

⁹⁵ Ibid.

⁹⁶ Ibid.

⁹⁷ Variety, June 19, 1935, p. 1.

⁹⁸ Ibid.

⁹⁹ New York Times, October 7, 1936, p. 32.

¹⁰⁰ Dr. Roger Manvell, The International Encyclopedia of Film (New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1972), p. 31.

^l01 “Unfinished Business,” Fortune 13 (June 1936): 46.

¹⁰² Frank S. Nugent, New York Times, February 29, 1936, p. 23.

¹⁰³ Ibid.

¹⁰⁴ “Unfinished Business,” p. 46.

¹⁰⁵ Ibid.

¹⁰⁶ Kalmus, p. 582.

¹⁰⁷ “Color Film Increases,” Business Week, May 22, 1937, p. 49.

¹⁰⁸ Variety, February 17, 1947, p. 16.

¹⁰⁹ Kalmus, p. 584.”

(Nowotny, Robert A. (1983): The Way of all Flesh Tones. A History of Color Motion Picture Processes, 1895-1929. New York: Garland Pub., pp. 243-260.)

×

“The fourth major change in the Technicolor process incorporated fundamental changes in both the camera and the print process. In order to produce a three-color subtractive color process a new three-strip beam-splitter camera was developed (Fig. 38), and the third matrix was added to the matrix printing and transfer system.

The new camera employed a special optical system which exposed the green-sensitive negative film at one picture aperture and a bipack at a second picture aperture. The bipack consisted of a red-sensitive negative film which was placed emulsion to emulsion with a blue-sensitive negative film. The front element of the bipack was the blue-sensitive film. To prevent any blue and green fight from reaching the rear red-sensitive film, the blue-sensitive emulsion, which was exposed through the base, contained a red-dyed gelatin overcoating which performed the dual function of antihalation layer for the blue negative and a filter which prevented all but the red light from reaching the red negative.

After exposure the three negatives were developed to a gamma of 0-65 in a conventional black and white developer, fixed, washed and dried.³² From each of the separation negatives, which had been combined with three duplicate negatives containing any added special effects, a matrix was exposed through the base on an optical step registration printer. As in the two-color process these matrices were developed in a tanning developer which tanned the gelatin in the image bearing areas leaving the remainder of the film unaffected. After washing the film was immersed in a ferricyanide bleach which converted the silver in the image to silver halide. This was followed by a hot water etch which removed the main image-bearing gelatin leaving a relief image. The thickness of the relief varied with the density of the image which produced it. The silver that had been converted by the bleach was then removed by immersion in a fixing bath. The three matrices then had a hardened gelatin relief image which corresponded to the red, green and blue components of the picture, and were ready for imbibition printing.

Before the actual transfer was made to the blank transfer film, the sound track was printed from a black and white optical sound negative. From this a silver sound track was developed using a normal black and white developer. The track was fixed, washed and dried and the blank was then ready for picture transfer.

The three matrices were passed through temperature controlled dye baths where the hardened images absorbed dye in proportion to the degree of relief in various areas of the images. The dye transfer operation brought each dyed matrix while still wet into contact with a blank film on which the gelatin mordant receptive layer was already swollen. Dye transfer took place in approximately 45 seconds at a raised temperature of 110°F. The yellow dyed matrix was first to be brought into intimate contact with the blank in the transfer machine.

During the transfer operation the two films were held in accurate registration on a continuous stainless steel pin-belt. After the major portion of the dye had been transferred from the matrix to the blank the films were separated and the matrix passed into decrocienating solution which removed any remaining dye, then it was washed and dried and was ready for re-use. The blank was washed and dried and was then ready to receive the cyan image which is transferred on top of the yellow image in accurate register. Once more the blank was washed and dried and the magenta image was transferred on top of the yellow and cyan images.

The film now received a final wash and was dried ready for projection.

The fifth major change in the Technicolor process has been the replacement of the beamsplitter cameras and the three-strip negative film. With the introduction of Eastman Color Negative Film Type 5218 producers had available to them a film capable of producing a high quality negative color image without the use of special cameras. Further, since the processing steps used with this film were far less complicated than those required with previous color systems, processing was available at all of the major commercial laboratories. Eastman Color Negative has become the almost universal film used in original photography. During production daily prints are made on Eastman Color Print film; when the picture has been finished and edited, matrices are made directly from the Eastman Color originals. After the matrices have been prepared the final prints are made by imbibition in the manner described previously.³³

Developer—Negative

Modified D-76 was used to develop beam-splitter negatives for both the two color and three-color processes,

 

Note: These dyes given as an example of what could be used (USP 1,900,140). There is no data published as to the actual dyes used by Technicolor Corp.

References

³² CLYNE, A. C., p. 463.

³³ Elements of Color in Professional Motion Picture, New York: Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, 1957, pp. 32-83.

³⁴ USP 1535700.

³⁵ FRIEDMAN, J. S., History of Color Photography, Boston: American Photographic Publishing Co., 1944, p. 474.

³⁶ Ibid., p. 480.

³⁷ USP 1.900.140.”

(Ryan, Roderick T. (1977): A History of Motion Picture Color Technology. London: Focal Press, pp. 79-81.)

Tags

• dye transfer printing
• dyes
• film development
• matrices
• registration

×

“Three Strip Technicolor

TECHNICOLOR PROCESS NUMBER FOUR: THREE STRIP DYE TRANSFER

While Kalmus expanded the Hollywood plant, his technicians began the development of the three-strip camera that would be used in live action principal photography to generate the entire color spectrum for Technicolor Process Number Four. By 1932, Technicolor had completed construction of the first three-component camera at the cost of $30,000 per unit. The Hollywood Plant was equipped to handle a moderate amount of three-strip matrix manufacture and dye transfer printing.

Unfortunately, interest in the Technicolor company was by then minimal. Few producers used the two-strip process, and the pitfalls of three-strip photography were unknown. Kalmus tried an alternate method of three-strip color photography to launch the process.

SUCCESSIVE EXPOSURE ANIMATION

Walt Disney had already made a technological breakthrough with Steamboat Willie in 1928, the first cartoon that contained a synchronized optical soundtrack. Color was the next logical step. Disney had almost completed a short titled Flowers and Trees in black and white when Kalmus approached him about shooting a three-color cartoon. Disney decided to take the plunge, and against the objections of his business partner and brother, Roy, scrapped the film and started again in color by painting the animation cells.

To photograph the three colors, Disney and the Technicolor research department developed the successive exposure method, suitable exclusively for animation. On each roll of black and white negative, the animation cells were photographed on three successive frames filtered to emit the red, green and blue spectrum of color in silver densities.

A step printer was used to derive the three matrices, with each matrix exposing every third frame of the black and white negative.

The red, green and blue matrices were dyed with their complementary colors—cyan, magenta and yellow—and transferred onto the same blank stock used in the two strip process (fig. 7).

The first three-strip Technicolor cartoon was an enormous success and won Disney his first Academy Award (Best Cartoon of 1931-32). Disney signed a contract to shoot all animated films coming out of his studio in the Technicolor process and honored it until the shutdown of the Hollywood plant in 1975. Kalmus gave Disney a three-year exclusive on three strip-animated shorts while allowing the competing studios to use the two color method. However, when MGM requested the three strip process for their shorts, Disney agreed to limit the exclusive to one year rather than incur the wrath of Louis B. Mayer. It is possible Disney’s distributor, RKO, might have influenced this decision. Disney did not control the distribution of his pictures until 1956, when he formed Buena Vista.

The technique of successive exposure for animation became the standard for all Technicolor cartoons and was adopted by the other studios, including Paramount, Universal, Warner Bros, and MGM, in the thirties and forties.

THREE STRIP SUCCESSIVE EXPOSURE TECHNICOLOR FEATURES

35mm dye transfer features derived from b&w successive exposure negative (Post-1950 features printed on safety base film. All pre-1950 nitrate features were reissued on Safety Base except for Victory through Air Power.)

Flowers and Trees (first three-strip short) (Disney/RKO, 1932)

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (Disney/RKO, 1938)

Gulliver’s Travels (Par, 1939)

Fantasia (Disney/RKO, 1940)

Pinocchio (Disney/RKO, 1940)

Dumbo (Disney/RKO, 1941)

Mr. Bug Goes to Town (Par, 1941)

Bambi (Disney/RKO, 1942)

Saludos Amigos (Disney/RKO, 1943)

Victory through Air Power (UA, 1943)

Make Mine Music (Disney/RKO, 1946)

Melody Time (Disney/RKO, 1948)

Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (Disney/RKO, 1949).

LIVE ACTION PHOTOGRAPHY
Cinderella (Disney/RKO, 1949)

Alice in Wonderland (Disney/RKO, 1951)

Johnny, the Giant Killer (Lippert, 1953)

Peter Pan (Disney/RKO, 1953)

Animal Farm (Ind, 1954)

Hansel and Gretel (Ind, 1954)

1001 Arabian Nights (Col, 1960)

One Hundred and One Dalmatians (BV, 1961)

Gay Puree (WB, 1962)

Sword and the Stone (BV, 1963)

Jungle Book (BV, 1967)

The Aristocats (BV, 1970)

Robin Hood (BV, 1973)

While Disney continued to perfect the successive exposure method, Kalmus made a deal with finacier Jock Whitney to produce the first live action Technicolor film. Whitney founded Pioneer Pictures as his corporate entity, with RKO handling the distribution. To protect their investment, Whitney and his cousin, Sonny, purchased a large block of Technicolor stock.

Before they committed to a full-length feature, a two reel short subject, La Cucaracha, was made as a test and released in 1934 by RKO (16mm dye transfer reprints were made of this film in 1972 for archival reference prior to the plant shutdown). A large sum, $65,000 (most shorts were only $15,000), was spent on the production, which was a big success. Critics and audiences were impressed with the full range of colors. The second three-strip film also won an Academy Award, this time for Best Comedy Short Subject of 1934. Three strip Technicolor was off to a good start.

The black and white negatives used in the three strip cameras were very slow, requiring a great deal of light to get an exposure and making shooting conditions even more uncomfortable than the two strip productions of the twenties. However, the results were so impressive it was worth the effort.

Following the short, Becky Sharp, starring Miriam Hopkins and directed by Rouben Mamoulian, went into production. With her college art background, Natalie Kalmus, Herbert’s wife, became an influential figure at the company in her role as the color consultant for most of the three strip productions.

Since the color blue was not present in the earlier two strip process, it was emphasized in Becky Sharp. Red was the most vibrant color and tended to be used dramatically. Indeed, a whole article could be written about the creative use of the color red in Technicolor films from 1934 through 1974. This unique rendering of the red hue could not be replicated in any other color process (although Kodachrome came close).

The combination of saturated, vibrant primary colors with rich contrast and pure blacks gave the three strip dye transfer prints excellent “apparent” sharpness, little “apparent” grain and a three dimensional appearance. The projected image was “solid,” as if the audience was looking out a window, except that the world looked more colorful and far more beautiful than reality. It was this unique look that inspired advertisers to label the process as “Glorious Technicolor” (fig. 8).

Other features that used three strip Technicolor sequences included the last reel of Kid Millions (the ice cream factory fantasy) in 1934 and a sequence in House of Rothschild, produced by Fox the same year.

THE THREE STRIP CAMERA, 1932-1955

The three strip camera, used until the advent of color negative in the 1950s, was a huge and cumbersome machine usually bolted to a crane or dolly on wheels. The noisy machine was encased in a “Blimp” (outer covering) to quiet it. J. Arthur Ball, a student of Kalmus’s at MIT, along with George Mitchell and a German mechanic, Henry Prouch, were involved with the actual design and construction.

Three black and white negatives were threaded into the camera with two of them bipacked emulsion to emulsion (fig. 9). The three negatives were exposed through a prism that split the light coming through the lens. The prism had a gold-flecked surface, which split the light into two beams. The straight-through beam (light coming through the lens not being reflected) was exposed through a green transmitting filter onto one roll of black and white negative through the emulsion. Therefore, the green black-and-white record (which received direct light) was the sharpest.

The gold-flecked prism reflected the same beam of light at a right angle to the two bipacked negatives (which were emulsion to emulsion), through a magenta filter transmitting blue and red light.

The front negative was blue sensitive and contained a red-orange dye that absorbed the blue light, letting the red light pass through to the rear film of the bipack, which was red and blue sensitive. The sensitizing dyes in the black and white negatives were washed away during development, leaving only the black and white image.

The gold-flecked prism was used on all three-strip productions of the thirties. In the forties, Technicolor developed a silver reflected prism. The coating of the prism was eventually changed, toward the end of the three strip era, to dielectric materials that controlled which colors were reflected through the prism more effectively and allowed more light to reach the negatives. In the early fifties, a new prism was developed that split the light three ways, eliminating the bipack negatives, but was never used, since color negatives replaced this method for principal photography. The exception was animated films, which continued to use the successive exposure technique.

THREE STRIP MATRICES

A change in threading up negatives for matrix manufacture was necessary because the cyan record was exposed through the base.

Therefore, the yellow and magenta records were threaded base to light (as in the two strip method), and the cyan record emulsion to light.

Since the registration of the three negatives that were exposed through a prism was not always precise, the matrix printer had a register glass that could be tilted in two axes to shift the image as much as plus or minus 0.0004 degrees from normal until they matched.

After the switch to color negative in the fifties, this kind of matrix adjustment was not necessary, since matrices derived from single strip preprint did not have registration problems. (When Technicolor three strip films are converted to Eastmancolor today, however, few facilities have the capability of making these precise adjustments, and some registration problems occur.)

THE GRAY PRINTER

As previously mentioned, the green record in two strip productions was occasionally printed onto the blank first in a halftone image, which helped to fine-tune the shadow detail and contrast of the final dye transfer print. Although this also applied to three strip productions, there was another reason to expose and develop a gray black-and-white image under the dyes. The bipack records (which received reflected light) were not as sharp as the green record, which received direct light. By exposing the green record in a halftone black and white key image on the blank, apparent sharpness was increased.

The Type 19 Gray Printers were Bell and Howell Model D machines that used an intermittent contact movement with a rotating drum shutter. The contact-printed gray image of the green record was manufactured in very close registration tolerance so there would be no fringing. The gray component can be thought of as a black and white print of the green record that is half the density (or darkness) of a normal black and white print. If the green record was exposed as a standard black and white positive, the final dye transfer release print would have been too dark, thus the halftone gray exposure.

After the advent of the color negative, the gray exposure was eliminated, with the exception of an occasional feature that used it for effect. Moby Dick (1956) used a halftone gray exposure to desaturate the colors.

COLOR TIMING

Scene to scene and shot to shot color correction in the three strip process (referred to as color timing) was difficult. Generally speaking, the cameraman had to take a crash course with the lab to learn the ins and outs of color photography as dictated by Kalmus and staff. Since Technicolor supplied the equipment and handled all aspects of the process from negative developing through release printing, the terms were tough. Studios were required to hire a color consultant, who influenced if not dictated what colors would be used and how they would be rendered in the final dye transfer release print. This may sound unreasonable, but Kalmus was a shrewd businessman and wanted to protect his interests. The film industry was always bogged down in litigation over patent infringements, and he wanted to protect those aspects of his process that were covered. He also had a reputation to maintain as “The Greatest Name in Color.” Since Technicolor technicians were always present on the set, exposure tended to be very consistent from shot to shot within the same scene, alleviating later problems of making shots match. For dailies, matrices and dye transfer “rush” prints of selected shots from a scene would be made so the director could get an idea of what the final print would look like. These test prints were very important as a reference, and the color timing information was eventually recorded on a three faced white card called a “lilly,” which gave information on the gamma of each black and white negative strip and the correct lights they were to be printed under.

For editing purposes, a black and white positive copy of the green record was made (referred to as a workprint) that had the negative edge numbers printed onto the side of the sprockets. Once a final cut workprint was assembled, these edge numbers were matched to the green record in a synchronizer, which had the red and blue records threaded up. All three negatives were then matched shot by shot into the final cut three strip master and readied for matrix manufacture. It should be noted that after the lillies were used as a reference, each black and white negative had to be timed and printed as a separate entity for exposure in the matrix printer.

If this sounds complicated, it was. In the midthirties it took a lot of trial and error before a usable matrix could be made. Eventually, the staff (which was divided into departments on each floor of the plant) became experts at color correcting the three strips of negative.

No one could deny that the dye transfer release prints were truly beautiful and that the words “Color by Technicolor” often increased box office revenue by 30 percent. Technicolor justifiably shared top billing with the stars on screen and in advertisements.

OPTICALS

Fades, dissolves, superimpositions and titles all had to be made on each separate record and spliced into the final cut negative. They were made on an optical printer which rephotographed the desired effect onto a fine grain black and white duplicate negative stock. This was the same method used on black and white films except that it had to be done on each shot three times for Technicolor pictures. (Silent films had to be hand cranked back and forth to expose the optical effect directly onto the camera negative since no acceptable duplicating stock existed in the twenties.) There was one important difference. In black and white films the opticals were so grainy that the editors cut back to the camera negative after the effect, creating a visual “pop” on screen. For example, if a character walked out of a room and the scene dissolved to another location, the image would appear very sharp until the start of the effect and then suddenly get grainy and contrasty, all within the same shot.

Theoretically, this would apply to dye transfer features as well, but the opticals were not as noticeably grainy. Three strip productions used a vast amount of light during principal photography, which generated a good exposure and very dense, fine grain negatives.

Because the records were so finely grained, the duplicate negatives used for the opticals were not as obviously grainy as in standard black and white features. As a result, for Technicolor opticals the entire shot, rather than just a portion of it would be duped off and incorporated into the final negative. The vivid dyes and contrast in the release prints also drew attention away from the optical effects.

RECLAIM BLANK

With all of the expense involved in making three strip Technicolor prints, the lab did have two methods of saving money.

Both involved the blank film as their source.

During soundtrack and gray halftone exposure, a great deal of silver was washed off the blank stock and reclaimed. In the 1950s, no gray image was used on dye transfer prints derived from Eastmancolor negatives, and even more silver was collected and resold.

Technicians used to joke that Technicolor had a silver mine in its lab.

The blank film was also reusable if it did not come out. If the color components had not been applied at the proper ratio, the dyes were washed off and retransferred.

“Dummy” blanks (blanks with no soundtrack that were used for Technicolor dailies) were also used over and over in this capacity although not for release printing, since the optical track was never exposed.

COLOR CONSULTANT

As mentioned earlier, part of the deal imposed on studios for every Technicolor production in this era was the presence of a color consultant. The director in this function was Kalmus’s former wife, Natalie, whose name appears in the credits on most Technicolor films in the thirties and forties.

With her art background,. Natalie Kalmus was the obvious choice, although her department had more than one run-in with the studio cinematographers. The history of this end of the company is interesting. In 1921, Natalie and Herbert divorced but kept it a secret from their staff and continued to live together for many years, an unusual relationship for the time.

Part of the divorce settlement was to make her head of this department. She became a powerful figure in the company during the three-strip years. Her staff included Henri Jaffa and William Fritzsche. Natalie had specific likes and dislikes when it came to color, which often put her and the other color consultants in conflict with the directors and cinematographers. Filmmakers like Alfred Hitchcock and David O. Selznick liked to experiment with unusual color effects and had to fight it out with the color consultants to get what they wanted.

Natalie preferred picture postcard beauty, which was the style of black and white productions as well, rather than realism or a stylistic use of color. One can imagine what she thought of Selznick’s exaggerated skies tinted weird colors, one of his trademarks. After the introduction of color negative in the early fifties, the color consultants became less influential, since Technicolor began making dye transfer release prints of features developed at other labs. For example, the Giant color negative was processed at WarnerColor, while release prints were made at Technicolor. In these cases, color consultants had no input during production.”

(Haines, Richard W. (1993): Technicolor Movies. The History of Dye Transfer Printing. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, pp. 17-27)

Tags

• dye transfer printing
• registration

×

“Technicolor Cinematography

WINTON HOCH

This essay does not in any way pretend to be a comprehensive coverage of the equipment, methods, and problems of the Technicolor cameraman at the present time, but is intended rather to present some of the items that might be of general interest. Inasmuch as the general technics of motion picture photography are well known and have been frequently discussed in the literature, there will here be presented some of those aspects that are peculiar to, or receive emphasis from, the fact that the camera is photographing in color.

These aspects arise in very large part before photography, and of all the preparation activities that take place before the actual start of photography, two that are very important to the Technicolor cameraman are color design of the sets and costume color selection. The importance of proper color design and costume color selection cannot be overemphasized. The set colors should be chosen with care for hue, chroma, and value, and with a knowledge of the costumes to be used, the relative importance of the set, its cutting and physical relationship to the other sets, and the orientation of these factors with the script. While it is true that the cameraman can control the set effect to a large extent by his lighting, this color control work must be carefully handled or the screen result will not be optimum. Obviously the more adverse conditions the cameraman meets, the more the production is likely to suffer in screen result in production time lost in correcting those adverse conditions, or in both. These two factors of set and costume color probably go farther than any other group of factors in representing the difference between a black-and-white production and a color production. The net result might be termed the “color score” of the picture. It might be compared to a musical score sometimes flashing and brilliant and at other times subdued.

It follows that if the problem is ignored, discords usually occur.

Obviously, without sets and costumes in color, the only colors left are flesh tones. A very interesting color emphasis effect was demonstrated in the RKO picture, Irene, where an entire set was designed in neutral tones and the star wore the only color.

To handle this very important set and costume color contact, the Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation has available the services of a color control department to advise on the color design of the sets, the evaluation of costume colors, and allied problems. This department has a background of experience from all productions, and its experience and highly developed judgment are available, through the normal functioning of the department, to each new production as it comes along. This department is the spearhead of the Technicolor photographic activity.

The make-up problem is handled, as in black-and-white pictures, by the studio make-up departments, although the color cameraman does have the responsibility of requesting the ” touching-up” of the make-up as it may be necessary, and he very often has special problems that require close collaboration with the make-up man. For instance, on exteriors with the actors working in sunshine, they usually begin to sunburn, and make-up changes must be made in many cases to handle these gradually tanning complexions. Frequently this means a new make-up problem in order to keep the camera appearance of the flesh tones the same. It can readily be seen that this can become a difficult job. The reverse is also true. As the troupe begins stage work after returning from the exteriors, their tanned skins will slowly fade and the problem of compensating by make-up continues. Occasionally we have had difficulty due to physical exertion on the part of the principals, causing faces to flush beneath the make-up, which effects the camera appearance.

The color camera is very discerning of flesh quality, and we find it necessary to include in the make-up area the neck and throat, and the hands and arms if they show. On rare occasions no make-up at all is used, and it is frequently omitted when photographing babies, as their clear smooth skin generally needs no correction.

It should be kept in mind that, generally speaking, the primary function of make-up is to correct extremes in colors, cover blemishes, and generally reduce the tone range observed in any average group of persons. If one will note the varying complexions of people, he will readily appreciate that if three or four persons were lined up side by side to be photographed, it would be highly desirable and probably very necessary to correct the flesh tones and greatly reduce the tone spread. This must not be interpreted as meaning that all flesh tones should appear alike. Variations of tone are very desirable. It is the extremes that are undesirable. Obviously a white man with a heavy tan who photographs like an Indian is not a very convincing white man. The most critical care is given to the close-ups, especially of the principals. The care and attention given to the problem are, of course, directly proportional to the screen importance of the skin tones.

A great deal of time and money has been spent in solving the makeup problem, and literally thousands of feet of film have been exposed and printed on various make-up tests to discover the best make-up materials and technics for the color camera. A proper make-up requires highly skilled artistry in its application.

Other important items to the cameraman are his lights. Here color photography again introduces an important factor of which the cameraman must be cognizant, and which must be watched very closely on certain types of work. That factor is color-temperature.

Our present three-strip Technicolor cameras are balanced to an average daylight color-temperature. For true color rendition, especially in the pastel shades and neutrals grays, this temperature should not vary on the set by more than about ±250°.

There has been in the past some misconception regarding the status of incandescent lamps (designated in the studios as “inkies”) with respect to Technicolor photography. Some people have understood that the Technicolor cameras are changed over by filters and prisms to accept an unfiltered incandescent-lamp color-temperature. Others have indicated that they thought that the camera automatically corrected any unfiltered inky light that might be added to an arc-lighted set. These conceptions are wrong.

The filters, prisms, and film of our present three-strip Technicolor camera are all balanced to daylight and this balance is used both for exteriors and interiors. This simplifies the production problem a great deal. First of all, there is manufactured and used only one set of film emulsions. This means that manufacturing, ordering, shipping, storing, exposing, and developing are all standardized for one system, with all the obvious attendant advantages, not the least of which is a lower negative cost.

This single standard also simplifies set-lighting problems, both interior and exterior. All regular Technicolor lighting units have been balanced to this daylight color-temperature by actual and repeated tests with the Technicolor camera. Therefore, they may all be used interchangeably as far as color-temperature is concerned. The only other factors governing their use are the very direct functional ones such as size of unit, light output of unit, operational characteristics of the unit, the type of light that it gives (that is, whether a “hard” light or “soft” light), and the unit efficiencies with respect to light output vs. current input, and with respect to light output vs. the throw required of the unit for the particular job in hand.

The more common units used for general production are (HI = high intensity):

The 150-ampere HI arc
The 120-ampere HI arc
The white-flame Twin Broad arc
Inky Sr. spotlight
Inky Jr. spotlight
Inky Baby spotlight

Among others less frequently used but frequently no less important should be mentioned many special converted lamps, a 65-ampere HI arc spot, and a 10-kw corrected inky lamp.

The light-sources used for photography might be classed in four general groups as follows:

Daylight
High-intensity arc light
White-flame arc light
Incandescent light

The daylight, of course, is our standard for color-temperature.

The HI arc lights are all corrected for normal work with a Y-l gelatin filter placed in front of the arc light. This filter was especially made for Technicolor, using a special non-fading yellow dye supplied by us.

The exact filter strength is determined by camera test. The whiteflame arcs were balanced to a daylight color-temperature by the National Carbon Company, and therefore require no filter of any kind.

The incandescent lighting units must fulfill two requirements to meet the daylight color-temperature standard. They must first be equipped with incandescent bulbs burning at a color-temperature of 3380°K, and second, they must be fitted with a tested Macbeth glass filter. All General Electric bulbs marked C.P. will burn with a color-temperature of 3380°K when operated at their rated voltage.

It should be emphasized that the rated voltage must be supplied, and in the case of the arcs, the proper amperages and proper gap lengths and positions must also be maintained.

Daylight as a source probably presents fewer troubles, although very early in the morning and very late in the afternoon trouble is frequently encountered. An interesting difficulty occurred early one afternoon when the smoke from a forest fire filtered the sunshine to such a brownish orange hue that it was necessary to abandon the location for that day.

The conditions just outlined do not have to be met at all times, but they should be adhered to if a pure white light is necessary and desirable for the work in hand. Certainly there is no limit to the effects obtainable with colored lights. For instance, frequently straight unfiltered flickering inky lights are used to produce a warm glow on the costumes and faces to simulate firelight. Artistic sense and experience must dictate the extent to which colored lights are used. The colored-light possibilities have been frequently used, perhaps most recently and extensively in the colored shadow and live action sequences in Fantasia. Its first featured use in three-color pictures was in the first three-color production, La Cucaracha.

The rigging and lighting of a color set is similar in many respects to that of a black-and-white set, with the exception that lighting units balanced for Technicolor are the units used, unless effects are in order.

Most Technicolor sets rely upon arc-light units for the bulk of the lighting. The large sets especially use the larger arc units. Some of the very small sets are from time to time lighted entirely by corrected inky light. Inky units are valuable also on big sets as auxiliary lighting units. They must be watched for age and cleanliness, as an aged bulb and a dirty reflector, filter, and lens can substantially reduce the lamp output. Needless to say, cleanliness is also an asset with arclight lenses, and proper maintenance and servicing of all lighting units are important.

Exterior sets and set-ups are also handled in a very similar manner to black-and-white set-ups. Scrims, nets, reflectors, and booster light all play their part. It should be noted that the so-called gold reflector is not acceptable in color work (unless for effect) for obvious reasons.

The color-temperature factor is once more introduced when reflectors are extensively worked. The term daylight has been advisedly used. By definition, daylight is the light from the entire sky, including direct sunlight if the sky is clear. Sunshine has a color-temperature of about 5500°K, while blue sky has a color-temperature varying from 10,000° to 20,000°K. When reflectors are used as lighting aids they select only the sun, which is reflected into the scene, and introduce a filler light that is warmer in tone than daylight. In addition, it must be remembered that the so-called silvered surface, which is usually aluminum or tin, reflects slightly less blue than it does red and green. This factor also adds slightly to the effect of a lower color-temperature. For these reasons reflectors are not considered as desirable as booster light for some purposes. This is especially true of close-ups where flesh quality is of critical importance.

Process photography in Technicolor is now largely a matter of routine. The scenes selected for process work are, of course, subject to the usual limitations for that type of work, but astonishing results have been obtained. Progress in this field can be largely attributed to two factors: improvement in plate quality, and improvements in background projector equipment. As Technicolor production film is processed day by day, the technical crews improve in skill and the research groups add their contributions, to the end that the process plates now furnished to the studios are specially printed for the optimum contrast, color-quality, and density required for this type of work. The equipment combinations of each studio have been photographically tested for color-balance, and this color-balance is also taken into account when the plates are printed.

It has been found that background projectors vary appreciably in the color-quality of the projected light. Generally speaking, the projectors using reflectors have a little more blue in the light than the condenser projectors, although this color-quality varies appreciably, depending upon the condition of the reflector and the nature of its surface, or upon the glass used in the particular condenser set-up in use. Some condenser lenses have a very pronounced yellowish cast that is not very desirable for color work.

There has been appreciable pressure in the last few years aimed at increasing the background projector outputs. The present high outputs have resulted from improvements in carbons, objective lenses, projector optics behind the objective lens, and lamp house, and in the successful combination of several projectors for throwing superimposed, matched, and synchronized images onto the process screen.

Astonishing progress has been made toward increased output, and fortunately these developments reached the point where they were incorporated into production equipment before the present war appreciably curtailed progress in this line.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and many studios and equipment companies have all contributed to this projector improvement problem. As a result, we very frequently photograph screens in color more than 20 feet wide, and have photographed, in color, process screens approximately 28 feet wide. This size was used in the Paramount-de Mille production Reap the Wild Wind. A shot has recently been made by the same studio using a split screen including a total camera spread of 50 feet. This was accomplished with the aid of two triple relay projectors incorporating the recent improvements previously mentioned. In this emphasis on large screens it should not be forgotten that miniature screens also have their uses, and can be successfully handled on the same general basis as the large screens.

The problems faced by the color cameraman in handling process photography are generally about the same as those found in all process work. However, he must be very color-conscious and on his guard against an off-color projector light and improperly burning foreground lights. He must also be very careful of his foreground-to-background balance, as a background that is carried too high will often present a burned-out appearance that greatly alters the color values of the plate, and destroy the illusion of realism that he is striving to create.

Modern Technicolor camera equipment closely parallels the black-and-white studio equipment in its principal operational features and functions. There are available, for the camera, lenses of 25, 35, 40, 50, 70, 100, and 140-mm focal-lengths. They are all in carefully calibrated mounts that fit onto a master focusing mount on the camera.

In almost all cases focusing is accomplished by actual measurement to the focal plane desired, and then the lens is set on this indicated calibration. Repeated tests have shown that this method is more accurate than eye focusing. Eye focusing is seldom resorted to unless the focal distance is so short that it exceeds the lens calibrations.

The stop calibrations on the lenses are all photometrically determined and calibrated on an arbitrary arithmetic scale. These lenses have all been specially corrected for Technicolor work. A very interesting and very valuable follow-focus aid, which has been standard equipment since the manufacture of the cameras, is available to the assistant or technician in the form of a pair of selsyn motors. One is attached to the lens mount, and the controlling motor is held in the technician’s hand, or fastened to some support if desirable, permitting the technician to be 50 feet or more away from the camera, and yet maintain accurate control over the lens focus. This is of especial value when the camera is put into the sound “blimp,” making actual rigid mechanical connection with the lens-mount unnecessary.

This is very helpful on sound shooting inasmuch as the camera unit inside the blimp is actually floating in rubber and has no direct mechanical contact with the blimp except through this sponge rubber.

The non-rigid relationship between camera and blimp suggests another problem that has been solved in a very successful manner.

That is the problem of attaching a finder for the use of the camera operator. Obviously, if it were attached to the outside of the blimp, the camera, inasmuch as it is floating, could be framed differently from the way indicated by the finder. This was solved by designing a very compact finder, and attaching the main optical elements to the camera. Auxiliary optical elements are available for use depending upon whether the camera is used with or without the blimp. This compact design has the additional advantage that this same finder is used with the camera for almost 100 per cent of the work; thus only one finder and one set of mattes are necessary for each camera, and the camera operator has only one set of finder conditions for which to make allowances. Auxiliary finder allowances are always necessary to compensate for the parallax errors both in front of and behind the focal plane for which the camera is adjusted.

The camera motor arrangement is highly flexible and worthy of special note. There are eight types of motors and eight combinations of motor-to-camera gears, all of which can be changed in the field.

The only requirement of the cameraman is to specify the kind of shooting expected and the electrical current or the kind of distributor system to be used. The regular cameras can also be successfully operated running backward at full speed. Speeds higher than 24 pictures per second, either forward or backward, are not permitted with the standard cameras.

The camera unit has available all the standard camera mounts to which the industry is accustomed. The wild camera can be mounted on anything from a camera spider to a high tripod, and on any other piece of equipment as may be desired, such as dollies, three-wheel perambulators, four-wheel velocilators, booms, rotating mounts, etc.

The camera, incidentally, has been successfully operated in all possible positions.

For sound shooting the standard camera is used in connection with either a “barney” or a blimp. The barney is necessarily not so efficient from a sound standpoint as the blimp, but it is very useful in a great many places. The regular blimp is a highly efficient piece of equipment, and of course requires heavier mounts than the wild camera, but it can be accommodated on all types of mounts. Those most popularly used are the blimp “high-hat,” four-wheeled “velocilator,” and a variety of booms.

The many items of special equipment available to the Technicolor photographer are far too numerous to be described in detail.

Among them should be mentioned, however, the variety of equipment and mounts used for air photography; the camera blimp and mounts used for underwater photography; and the speed-cameras capable of consistent operation at so-called six times normal speed, or 96 pictures per second.

The question has been asked if an extra standby camera was kept on the set at all times to replace the camera in use when the film ran out, because it took so long to thread the Technicolor cameras. This is not true. The actual threading time of a Technicolor camera is only about three minutes, for a skilled technician, and many units work with only one camera. On major production units, however, an extra camera is usually kept on hand, threaded, to prevent any possible loss of production time due to many reasons. Sometimes a reduction of the three-minute threading time is desirable, and when sound shooting is involved and a certain emotional tempo or mood has been established with the principals, unnecessary mechanical interruptions are highly undesirable. Frequently the director requires two cameras on a shot, and the fact that the supply of extra cameras is often many miles from the stage has an important bearing upon the desirability of this extra camera. The additional cost of the extra camera is a very minor item and the camera usually saves much more than its cost by the saving of production time.

This equipment has been in service for many years, and has successfully met the test of almost all climates, altitudes, and conditions.

The cameras have been in all parts of the world—into the crater of Mt. Vesuvius, under the sea near Nassau, almost 20,000 feet above the Andes in South America, in tropical climates, and in subzero temperatures.

Cartoons and all types of animation photography also should be mentioned. The bulk of the cartoon and animation work is now handled by adapted black-and-white cameras using the successive exposure method. These cameras are set up with a balanced set of three-color filters in the optical system at some point, the niters either rotating or sliding, and the color-exposures are made by exposing one frame of film through each filter successively. At the head end of each roll of film a special chart is photographed, permitting the laboratory to identify the various frames. This negative, after development, is printed on a step printer that prints each third frame only. Thus the records are separated and the prints handled in a manner similar to other standard prints. This method is limited to work where no movement takes place during the exposure, and great care must be exercised in the lighting, exposure, registration, development, and color-balance of the film. The cameras must be serviced to rigid mechanical specifications, and the lenses should be color corrected.

A great deal of careful work must be done to set up such a system, and reasonable care observed in the shooting. Once the system is set up, however, these items are handled largely on a routine basis and with reasonable facility. This type of photography can not be intercut with the standard three-strip negative unless dupe negatives are made.

Other very valuable technics and facilities that are available and are very successfully executed in current production today are glass shots; double and multiple exposures; double and multiple printing; wipes, fades, and lap dissolves made in the laboratory; and many combinations of these. The possibilities are numerous.

While speaking of effects photography, fluorescent materials, paints, inks, etc., should be mentioned. This is a field that has not received much attention due to lighting equipment limitations; however, it can be accomplished in Technicolor. A very simple test was recently made to indicate some of its possibilities. Fabrics colored with fluorescent materials were photographed using as an ultraviolet source a Type 170 M. R. HI arc, covered by a 12-inch ultraviolet Corning filter. The arc unit was positioned 12 feet away from the illuminated subject and the spread obtainable with the filter was about 6’/2 feet at this distance. The brightness of the fluorescent fabrics was sufficient to give an acceptable Technicolor negative with the camera operating at the normal speed of 24 pictures per second.

Routine studio Technicolor photography has long since passed the experimental stage. It is now handled with the same efficiency and dispatch as many black-and-white units. The negative is developed a t night and the negative reports, negative clippings, and estimated printer points are delivered to the Technicolor cameraman on the set the following morning. Black-and-white rush prints, if ordered, are generally delivered the following afternoon, and the color rush prints are delivered the following evening.

The negative reports and all laboratory contacts are handled for the cameraman through the Technicolor camera department, which also checks the daily log sheets, and by these log sheets keeps a very complete record of every production and of every scene photographed on that production. The records have proved invaluable, not only to the cameraman, but on many occasions to the director and others participating in the production. This most excellent coordinating agency is extremely valuable.

Further production flexibility would be available if a single film capable of being exposed in any ordinary black-and-white camera could be used for a full color record. Technicolor’s Research Laboratory has spent many years in the development of a monopack type of film that would fulfill this requirement. Progress on the project was reported by Dr. Herbert T. Kalmus, President of Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation, to its stockholders in his Annual Report for 1940, as follows: “Your company’s research engineers have also been engaged in cooperation with Eastman Kodak Company on a process of photography employing a single negative or monopack instead of the three strips, and on which three emulsions are superimposed on a single support.

Your company’s officers and technicians are frequently asked when Technicolor monopack prints will be available. Their current interest in the monopack process is not primarily for release prints because the triple-layer raw film appears inherently to be so expensive that it could hardly compete in cost with Technicolor imbibition prints in the long run.

“But your company’s officers and engineers do believe that monopack will be developed to be satisfactory for use as originals from which Technicolor imbibition prints can be made. Such an original could be exposed through any standard black-and-white motion picture camera and should thus have mechanical and cost advantages over three-strip negative.

“Work on this monopack process for originals has been in progress for several years, and has lately reached a point of decided encouragement for certain purposes. At present the monopack research program includes a number of experiments of semi-commercial character which are promising for photography where camera size, mobility, operating speed, or other special considerations are of extreme importance. The expectation is that it will first be tried in a limited way for the special purposes indicated, to be matched and cut in with the larger part of a picture photographed by the three-strip method. It should be borne in mind that Technicolor three-strip photography is constantly improving in quality so that imbibition prints from monopack have not yet overtaken the present quality of imbibition prints from three-strip.”

The expectation outlined in Dr. Kalmus’ report has been largely realized, and since that time monopack has been used in several pictures, including Dive Bomber and Captains of the Clouds, where shots from airplane wing-tips and other difficult locations were required; in the industrial field; in military training films; and in special-effects photography where mobility and high speed are important. These uses of monopack are considered as commercial experiments serving the dual purpose of fulfilling a special need of increased flexibility in the field of color photography and of pointing up production requirements which are not easily determined even on the large-scale test basis that characterizes Technicolor’s research program.

Technicolor does not consider that the quality of prints from the monopack method of photography has reached the level of quality of prints from its three-strip process. This is due not to any lack of progress in monopack research but to the rapid improvement of three-strip Technicolor which, like all phases of Technicolor’s process, receives emphasis from its research group.

The present monopack process, in latitude, visibility, and tone rendition is satisfactory, but the picture texture, in grain and uniformity, has not attained the smooth, fine texture of three-strip. The problems involved in correcting these deficiencies are receiving attention and progress is being made.

Technicolor is now and has been for some time definitely on a routine production basis, with almost all the technics used in black-and-white available in color also. The experimental phases have definitely long since left the production field, and have taken their place in the Technicolor research department, which is currently very active and from which the results flow quietly but efficiently to the production field without disturbing changes.”

(Hoch, Winton (1944): Technicolor cinematography. In: The Technique of Motion Picture Production. A Symposium of Papers Presented at the 51st Semi-annual Convention of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers, Hollywood, Cal. New York: Interscience Publ. 1944, pp. 24-36.)

Tags

• costume design
• set design
• make-up
• special effects
• cinematography
• blimp

×

“LIGHTING FOR TECHNICOLOR COMPARED WITH BLACK AN WHITE PHOTOGRAPHY

By JOE VALENTINE

In 25 years of camera work the highest key I ever used in black and white photography turned out to be the lowest key of lighting in the history of Technicolor.

That was my introduction to color on Joan, for Sierra-RKO, directed by Victor Fleming, starring Ingrid Bergman. Far from the fancy phrases of an expert, this piece merely attempts to tell my rambling impressions on making the transition from black and white to color photography.

The first thing I discovered, in spite of the picture being in low key, was that 10 light units must be used in color for two in black and white. This produced a headache.

Color gradations change perceptibly with the slightest change in intensity of light. Overlight a face and it will film red.

Underlight it and it becomes green. I found that mood and effect shots could be made ten times as effective in color, but the intensity of light must be watched ten times as close as in black and white.

There is a scene in which a constable, in the dead of night, accosts Ingrid Bergman on the road. He holds up his lantern to see her on horseback. In black and white the key on his face could be as low or as high as we wanted it for mood. Had we keyed too low in color his face would become green and unreal.

Except for my hawk-eye on intensity, one key light is still as good in color as in black and white for modeling faces. No need to use four or five units. Not only does it serve the purpose artistically, it gives lower balance, cuts down the heat and is more comfortable on actors. It keeps them from squinting and is less harmful to the eyes.

The happiest thing about color is separation.

My daffiest moments in black and white were spent trying to separate a wall from a staircase. In color you just sit back and relax. Separation is done for you by the actual color difference of a staircase and a wall. You get what you see, you don’t have to create it. The fact that color means automatic separation is the big difference for a cameraman changing from black and white to color.

Actually you can throw a flat light in Technicolor and still get your effect and separation.

A happy discovery was that I could light to F.2, the same opening I use in black and white, and get an exceptional third dimensional quality.

A groundless fear was my apprehension about the dimmers and control of key lights.

With one exception I found the use of dimmers to be exactly the same as in black and white. When dimming low on incandescents the intensity gives more red.

Actually we used less color gelatines on lights in Joan than any color picture has used to date. Which brings up again the question of this picture having been shot in the lowest key of color history.

When I looked at the sets before the actual shooting started I thought I was back in black and white. Throughout the picture we kept the color muted. Most of the sets are drab, with an occasional touch of blue. Red was used at a minimum because it is too blatant.

At the same time we were able to make color carry the mood of the picture. The action builds from an opening low key in the enemy scorched Domremy through Joan’s fight for recognition and her victorious battles to the climax of the coronation scene which, of course, is in brilliant color.

The opening shot was in such low key that the color will be barely discernible.

Then with each new success of Joan’s, the color builds until the coronation becomes the highest key in the picture with the beautiful vestments of the priests and colorful costumes of the knights and court ladies, the many religious banners and the magnificent interior of the Cathedral.

The color drops again beginning with Joan’s capture and ending with the trial sequence and the prison at Rouen. The same low key is used as in the beginning of the picture.

Color will rise at the end only with Joan’s burning at the stake. The flames and the executioner’s robe will be the high key elements standing out in the market square.

Getting mood is the greatest thrill in Technicolor. As in black-and-white, it is a matter of lighting, but the difference is that color gives you so many more gradations and delicate changes.

For example, the picture opens at dawn.

In black-and-white dawn could merely be suggested. The atmosphere at that precise moment could not be reproduced. We could never achieve the cool pink dawn sky and the first breaking of orange light through the blackness that covered the village of Domremy. A few pink gelatins on the sky background and in Technicolor one can reproduce just those colors. A true dawn with every nuance of color, exactly as it is at four-thirty in the morning.

In black-and-white the best you can do with atmosphere is an approximation in the changing season and the changing hours of the day. You can only reproduce the broad changes, either day or night. But in Technicolor you can get true reproduction of any hour of the day and any given part of any season. You can get changes in the color of the soil, changes in leaves, in the sky. I found even in the battle scenes that we could reproduce the various colors of smoke that are part of any battle. In fact, some of the changes became so violent that the smoke colors clashed and we had to reduce them to yellow, black and grey—no white.

That is the story, except to say that I’ve been able to hold one boast good from black-and-white to Technicolor. I still come within 25 foot-candles on the meter with my naked eye, and come within 1% to 2 points printer range on the entire picture.

After all, balance is balance, whether you photograph in black-and-white or in color.”

(Valentine, Joe (1948): Lighting for Technicolor as Compared with Black and White Photography. In: International Photographer 20,1, Jan. 1948, pp. 7-10.)

Tags

• 1940s
• lighting
• color scheme
• restrained
• exposure
• atmosphere
• Victor Fleming

×

“TECHNICOLOR AND HOLLYWOOD: EXERCISING COLOR RESTRAINT

Richard Neupert

Technicolor Inc. was the dominant color system for the classical Hollywood cinema from 1935 until the early 1950s. As with any material advance, the photographic reproduction of color had to tackle the industry’s resistance to innovation by overcoming a complex series of economic, technological, and aesthetic barriers (see Bordwell, Staiger, and Thompson, and Kindem). […]

Mere technological determinism and economic profit incentives did not guarantee Technicolor’s success; rather Technicolor had to reassure the industry that its process could satisfy demands for high aesthetic quality. During 1932 Technicolor unveiled its three-strip process that added blue to the earlier and less successful red and green two-strip process, which had flourished briefly from 1929 to 1931. However, Technicolor realized that if it did interest the majors in three-color, the old problem of color quality could resurface. During the late 1920s, films had exhibited little concern with conventions of color harmony or dramatic logic. Their color too often called attention to itself, and such foregrounding certainly undercuts any technology’s appropriateness for the Hollywood cinema. As A. B. Klein wrote concerning two-color films: “Nearly everything… has been a travesty of nature, a poor distorted tinting, and an offence to the eye” (308). Klein’s attack was typical of the aesthetic resistance Technicolor had to overcome in the early 1930s.

Technicolor decided to safeguard the new three-color process by controlling its innovation and diffusion quite carefully at every stage of production. Part of that plan dictated that Natalie Kalmus, ex-wife of Technicolor President Herbert Kalmus, would direct the Color Advisory Service. Not only had Natalie Kalmus earned a role in the company as part of her divorce settlement, but she had an art school background and was also very familiar with the Technicolor process.

The work of Natalie Kalmus and her color consultants ensured Technicolor’s future dominance by actively convincing critics and potential customers that in addition to being accurate and relatively cost efficient, Technicolor would also be aesthetically pleasing, consistent, and essential.

In effect, the aura of color mastery that became associated with the label “Color by Technicolor” was a careful creation of Technicolor Inc., and its predictable stylistic traits were in part due to the rigorous labor of Natalie Kalmus’s Color Advisory Service, which implemented aesthetic and procedural principles that standardized the look of Technicolor films. This article examines how her policies helped convince the industry that color was natural and dramatic and thus essential to the classical fiction film.

Basic to this study is the belief that our understanding of the history and function of Technicolor depends upon careful analysis of the industrial and local constraints and generating mechanisms that help determine normal production practice.

THE COLOR ADVISORY SERVICE

As chief of the Advisory Service in the 1930s, Natalie Kalmus’ job was not only to ensure that producers and designers selected harmonious or “appropriate” colors for their costumes and sets, but also to reassure the industry that the new color use would be more efficient and acceptable. In 1935, she promised the Society of Motion Picture Engineers that past mistakes would not recur: “We must constantly practice color restraint. In the early two-color pictures, producers sometimes thought that because a process could reproduce color, they should flaunt vivid color continually before the eyes of the audience. This often led to unnatural and disastrous results” (“Color Consciousness” 147).

Renewed critical warnings from film reviewers and historians were formidable, however, and Kalmus had to try to satisfy one and all that Technicolor would project and maintain a reliable standard of quality. André Sennwald of the New York Times is representative of critics in the 1930s who remembered the disappointing earlier attempts at color.

Sennwald warned against future mistakes, writing in 1935 that his biggest fear was that “color will fall into the hands of the unlettered and cause such a rape of the laws of color harmony and contrast, such a blare of outrageous pigmentations, that only the color-blind will consider it safe to venture inside a motion picture theater” (X3). Through a campaign of public relations and her policies of color consulting, Natalie Kalmus set out to convince everyone that color decisions would be in the hands of experts, and that her new procedures had taken the aesthetic risks out of shooting in Technicolor.

As a result, Technicolor carried out a media blitz to pre-sell their first threestrip feature, Becky Sharp (1935). They declared it the new standard in color cinematography. Before Becky Sharp opened, The New York Times featured interviews with most creative members of the crew, including Natalie Kalmus, Robert Edmond Jones (the art director), Miriam Hopkins, and director Rouben Mamoulian. On the eve of the premiere reviewer Frank S. Nugent even complained in his column that he had already interviewed “the color designer, the property man, the carpenter, the script-girl and the third assistant yesman” of Becky Sharp, and that he only agreed to meet with Mamoulian if the director promised not to discuss color.

Mamoulian, however, did not keep his promise.

In spite of the careful production and all the public relations work, Becky Sharp and subsequent color films did not satisfy all the critics’ fears. André Sennwald wrote that Becky Sharp‘s color “bludgeoned” the audience. Robert Edmund Jones later complained that the early three-strip productions “were so stupidly put together that the color sequences exploded against one another like bombs” (1938, 208). Similarly, Eric Rideout warned that color had to shift along with the action and parallel the crises established by dialogue and music before it would be truly dramatic and necessary. Rideout found that the color was instead disruptive in the first threecolor films: in Becky Sharp he complained that “some horrible sunrise and sunset pictures betrayed the vicious possibilities of the process”; and in The Garden of Allah, which was “generally free of distractions,” that several cuts “directed attention to the process and destroyed the atmosphere that had been so carefully built up” (106).

The critics were thus warning about color’s interference with the films’ continuity, as well as its disruption of the story action within specific shots and scenes. In effect, it did not serve the norms of the classical Hollywood cinema.

In addition to quieting these fears about color’s interference with the classical cinema’s mode of storytelling, Technicolor had to assure the producers that the process was free of aesthetic risks and worth the extra production money.

As Douglas Gomery writes, along with standardized modes of production, the studios also wanted standardized returns on their investments: “Each year the New York office decided how much money would be allocated for production and hoped to regularize returns” (193). Technicolor tried to convince the studios to set aside a larger portion of their annual budget for color productions by arguing that such productions would generate ever-higher box office returns. Hurdles for Technicolor thus included the critics who were warning against color’s potential flaws, producers who were wary following earlier color disasters, and the New York offices which had adopted more conservative business strategies in the wake of the Depression. Kalmus had to convince them all that Technicolor was as predictable, profitable, and risk-free as sync-sound had proven.

Kalmus trained consultants and devised a system of advising that resulted in a consistent color philosophy and “look” for Technicolor films. Thus, while former consultant Leonard Doss joined Technicolor with an interior design degree, he had to apprentice with Kalmus and other consultants for two years before being assigned his own film.

Doss told me that all consultants followed a five-stage procedure: First, they read the script, then researched and planned out the appropriate color schemes (meeting occasionally with Kalmus). Second, they met with the producers to set up a budget and schedule. (A larger production budget would warrant several consultants being assigned to a film.) Third, they met with the costume department, since the interior set was generally designed around the colors worn by the protagonists. Fourth and fifth, they met with the studio’s Art and then Props Departments to guarantee that the props and sets would reinforce the color schemes planned for each shot and scene.

After all this pre-production work, the consultant remained on the job for both production and post-production stages.

Technicolor’s policy of apprenticing consultants and then assigning them to cover the same studio whenever possible (Doss worked mostly with Twentieth Century Fox), ensured continuity from film to film as well as from studio to studio.

Moreover, only a limited number of consultants (8-10) worked for Technicolor at any point during the 1930s and 40s (Doss). Kalmus’ efficient system of color consulting thus became one institutional device that strongly shaped the traits of Technicolor’s films while affecting Hollywood’s acceptance and subsequent use of color. (It also appears that her own input into the process was quite extensive during the 1930s and early 1940s, but then decreased steadily so that she often had little or no contact with the consultants on routine projects by the middle 1940s.) A historical poetics of the cinema is interested not just in the technical practices, but also in the discursive strategies and the artist’s labor or craft behind any technological innovation. Kalmus established a set of rules for color planning, a three-tiered philosophy for Technicolor style: color should be natural; color should build upon conventional artistic standards of harmony, contrast, and cultural connotations; and color should add to the story without distracting the audience.

The first of these color principles is obvious in Kalmus’ claim that the “colorist” must always use Nature as a guide: “Even when Nature indulges in a riot of beautiful colors, there are subtle harmonies which justify those colors” (141). Kalmus assumes that the threecolor technology itself was unproblematic and fully capable of capturing and reproducing “natural” color.

Moreover, she uses human perception and cognition to assert that Technicolor is more naturally pleasing than black and white cinematography, which provides an “unnatural shock” to our perception: “The complete absence of color is unnatural. The mind strives to supply the missing chromatic sensations” (142).

Similarly, she writes, “The monotony of black, gray, and white is an acknowledged fact” (“Colour” 118). However, the opposite extreme of nuive and “superabundant” color composition also shocks the human eye: “A super-abundance of colour is unnatural, and has a most unpleasant effect not only upon the eye itself, but upon the mind as well” (“Colour” 118). It is certainly not surprising then that Kalmus’s appeal to “correct and natural color” underlines both the need for color in general (anticipating the Bazinian “myth of total cinema”), and the need for Technicolor in particular (the most accurate process available). But it also calls for the talented application of these natural laws, which can best be accomplished by a producer’s reliance on her color consultants.

Second, Kalmus justified her company’s policies as continuing the “basic principles of art,” and thus the advice of the consultant drew its authority from pertinent references to art history. She warned that providing an accurate or natural record of reality should be coupled with artistic application, which meant not only conventions of harmony and contrast, but also an awareness of color’s cultural connotations: “A motion picture will be merely an accurate record of certain events unless we guide this realism into the realms of art. . . . The principles of color, tone, and composition make painting a fine art. The same principles will make a colored motion picture a work of art” (“Color Consciousness” 140).

Color appreciation became one of her primary battle cries, and throughout her career she referred to Rembrandt’s lighting effects, Velasquez’s color composition, and “the atmosphere” of Goya as models for her films. Similarly, she defined colors by citing several of their traditional symbolic associations. For example, “blue is suggestive of coolness and truth (‘true blue’), purple is royalty and vanity, while gold and some yellows “symbolize wisdom, light, fruition, harvest. . . . but yellow also symbolizes deceit, jealousy, inconstancy in its darker shades” (“Color Consciousness” 143).

Kalmus thereby sold to her clients the image of a well-rounded theorization of color. Furthermore, by avoiding mention of the theater as an appropriate model for color planning, she discouraged clients from believing that simply hiring an art director with stage experience could adequately satisfy the specific color demands of a motion picture. (Ironically, Mamoulian’s theatrical background may have helped convince Pioneer to hire him to direct Becky Sharp.) Kalmus’ third principle carried important implications for the fiction film. She believed that color could and should be tied to the story, thus making color narrativized as one more tool for delivering essential story information and evoking emotional responses. We can once again look to her own descriptions of the process followed by her advisory service: “In the preparation of a picture we read the script and prepare a color chart for the entire production, each scene, sequence, set and character being considered. This chart may be compared to a musical score, and amplifies the picture in a similar way” (145). Thus she argued that just as sound had become indispensable to film narration by the mid-1930s, color would make its own contribution to the telling of a story. The Technicolor consultants would then become to images what composers are to music.

But precisely how did Kalmus and her consultants, through the imposition of these color principles, manage to satisfy the classical Hollywood film’s central concern for characterization and thematic unity? By examining a few color schemes and motifs in early three-strip films, we can better understand how color’s prescription and function at Technicolor managed to fit into the classical mode of production. A single red motif in the opening scene of The Adventures of Robin Hood (Curtiz 1938) demonstrates the workings of Kalmus’ constraints of nature, art, and narrative efficiency. This scene introduces the evil Sir John, who is taking advantage of the fact that the real king, his brother Richard, has been taken hostage while returning from the Crusades. John and his accomplice toast their plot to betray Richard, but John spills some of his red wine onto the white floor. While this is hardly a subtle foreshadowing of John’s bloody reign, this device fits perfectly with Kalmus’ ideas: the story needs an easily grasped omen, so here a red stain belonging to a “natural” object in the diegesis is used. Not only does the red wine connote John’s treachery and announce the blood that will soon flow, its being spilled also helps characterize him as a clumsy oaf who lacks the grace and finesse of a true leader like King Richard.

Significantly, Kalmus wrote in 1935 that “red recalls to mind a feeling of danger, a warning. It also suggests blood…. It led the Roman soldiers into battle” (143). The cultural connotations connected with the blood-red wine, and a color scheme that foregrounds the redness (Sir John is dressed in whites and blues, and the floor is off-white) helps tie this device dramatically to the narrative event.

Moreover, this scene leads into a montage of John’s men terrorizing the people, and those scenes all contain red objects, such as newly butchered sides of beef and roaring fireplaces. The red motif, begun with the spilled wine, thereby underlines and motivates the ensuing violence, and it returns later when Robin rescues a family whose wine is being raided and whose daughter is being assaulted. In this instance, the color of the wine is so exaggerated as to look artificial and to foreground the redness. A citizen about to be hung also sports a bright red scarf around his neck. Red becomes a major signifier of John’s bloody treachery, just as green represents the natural counterpart of Robin Hood, his band, and the people in general.

Kalmus’ appeal to color’s narrative functions is thus based on cultural and intertextual codes, and a naive theory of psychology and cognition; as she writes, “the usual reaction of a colour upon a normal person has been definitely determined” (“Colour” 120). The message to critics and producers alike is that color is already theorized in terms of nature, art, and psychology; the job of the Technicolor consultant is simply to ensure that those pre-existing rules fully exploited by the film’s color schemes. Her ultimate goal, however, was to convince the industry that her advisory department was not so much dictating a color style as enforcing established aesthetic norms. In this way, Kalmus was helping Technicolor prove that its process adhered to the institutionalized aim of “adherence to standards of quality” (Bordwell, Staiger, and Thompson 244), standards which were not only technological but aesthetic.

Colors thereby become signs waiting to complement the characters, action, and dialogue of the fiction film. Such color associations are not rare, of course, as anyone who has read an art primer surely recognizes. Kalmus simply belongs to a long line of color practitioners who accept as fairly natural that color’s meanings are fixed and definable. As such, she had great faith in anticipating the meanings “determined” by certain colors, while also believing that colors could take on more concrete meanings and create subtle effects when properly developed and combined in a fiction film.

Yet as noted above, in the earliest three-color films the critics and audience alike found that the strict harmony and narrative functionality assigned color often looked stagy and artificial. For instance, during the famous Waterloo Ball scene in Becky Sharp the guests are divided into high society people and soldiers. The socialites all wear pale gray, blue, blue-green, and are barely brighter than similar colored backgrounds (walls, curtains, potted plants), while the soldiers sport red uniforms. The suspense that builds as Napoleon’s cannon fire ncars is paralleled so deliberately by the gathering of more and more red uniforms in the frame that the scene becomes comical. Either a character is the color of the potted plants, or else he is a soldier running around to add some contrasting red to the mise-en-scene. While such overly simplistic color schemes were meant to support the dramatic action, they actually detracted from it by calling attention to the clumsily fashioned color design (cool harmonious colors for the vulnerable people contrasted with the blood red uniforms paralleling the rockets’ red glare).

Even in God’s Country and the Woman (Keighley, 1936), a tale about feuding lumber camps set mostly in the woods, the color cues are highly artificial though functional. In a picture partly designed to prove that Technicolor could shoot outdoors, there are few color devices open to the consultant’s control, so the costuming takes on exaggerated significance. Miss Jo Barton, the fiery young leader of one logging company, wears blue jeans and earthy colors while she is in charge, but once she loses her heart to rival leader Steve Russett, she switches to soft blue sweaters in the privacy of her own home. Steve finally tells her she is simply “A woman trying to be a man,” and needs some decent clothes and powder on her face. By the time they finally embrace, therefore, she has traded her red flannel shirts and jeans in for a white lace top and light blue skirt, while he still wears the earthy colors (he had traded his tuxedo for a work clothes in an early scene). This time the red shows his passion, while her casting off of her more rugged colors and clothes parallels her more passive and domestic behavior (instead of telling the men which trees to cut, she is seen setting a table and arranging flowers). Color serves additional functions, of course. Jo’s primary colored wardrobe in the exteriors helps isolate her from the forest’s greens and browns, while the white and soft blue also distinguish her at home from the purple flowers and yellow lit background. Technicolor thus satisfies several functions at once here, and while the specific colors worn by Jo change, the overall rules of color composition do not—color balance and harmony isolate the protagonist and guide our attention, while also reinforcing the “natural” connotations.

At times Kalmus became as confident about the powers of color coding as Eisenstein was about montage. In her definition of the associations for red, for example, her discussion moves from blood to love, claiming that various shifts in red’s value, or its placement beside other colors, could reinforce or replace dialogue and action by supplying character motives and other abstract qualities:

Whether blood is spilled upon the battlefield in an approved cause or whether it drips from the assassin’s dagger, blood still runs red. The introduction of another color with red can suggest the motive for a crime whether it be jealousy, fanaticism, revenge, patriotism, or religious sacrifice. Love gently warms the blood. The delicacy or strength of the shade of red will suggest the type of love. By introducing the colors of licentiousness, deceit, selfish ambition, or passion, it will be possible to classify the type of love portrayed with considerable accuracy (“Color Consciousness” 143).

It is easy to imagine how “natural” such color selection could become for the color consultants, trained as they were to see colors as things to be looked up in a sort of color dictionary. Since the consultant was involved in so many different stages and departments of the production, such “zero degree” color signification became one of the dominant traits of the Technicolor look. Colors often recur in similar situations, and Technicolor’s strategies reinforce such cultural connotations without pushing them further. Eventually, Technicolor’s practices began to establish the norms for color use in the cinema, particularly after color proved profitable and Technicolor’s own discourse promised that just as their engineers had overcome technological hurdles, their consultants could level any aesthetic ones.

CONCLUSIONS

An historical poetics of film should ask certain pertinent questions, such as how a film is put together and how it produces meaning. In answering such questions, it allows us to analyze historical norms and the possible functions of formal options. Before simply ascribing an interpretation to a color “sign” in a specific Technicolor film, therefore, we should look for the appropriate historical contexts. For example, the particular logic and institutional procedures behind Natalie Kalmus’s rules for narrativizing, naturalizing, and codifying color use, helped Technicolor grasp and maintain a profitable foothold within the industry, where other color companies (and even the earlier two-strip Technicolor) had failed.

While the engineers and camera operators at Technicolor struggled to turn out a consistently high standard of color quality, Kalmus and her consultants devised rules and norms that promised to satisfy high aesthetic standards as well. In the end, Kalmus proposed a system for color that tried to parallel the system for music in the classical fiction film: there were basic rules of harmony and motivation behind the “score” of each scene, yet the actual selection and combination always allowed for an infinite number of “variations on a theme.” “Color by Technicolor,” therefore, satisfied commercial fiction film demands by promising procedural efficiency, product differentiation, and high standards of quality, on both the technological and aesthetic fronts.

WORKS CITED Bordwell, David. Hamilton in the Cinema. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1985.

——. Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1988.

Bordwell, David, Janet Staiger and Kristin Thompson. The Classical Hollywood Cinema. New York: Columbia UP, 1986.

Culler, Jonathan. Structural Poetics. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1976.

Doss, Leonard. Telephone Interviews. 21 February and 3 November 1989.

Gomery, Douglas. The Hollywood Studio System. New York: St. Martin’s, 1986.

Jones, Robert Edmund. “The Crisis with Color.” New York Times 19 May 1935: X3.

——. “Problems with Color.” New York Times 27 Feb. 1938: X4.

Kalmus, Natalie. “Color Consciousness.” Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers. 25.2 (August 1935): 139-147.

——. “Colour.” Behind the Screen: How Films are Made. Ed. Stephen Watts. London: Arthur Barker, 1938. 116-127.

Kindem, Gorham. “Hollywood’s Conversion to Color: The Technological, Economic, and Aesthetic Factors.” The American Movie Industry. Ed. Gorham Kindem.

Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1982. 146-158.

Klein, Adrian Bernard. Colour Cinematography. London: Chapman Hall, 1936.

Rideout, Eric. The American Film. London: The Mitre Press, 1937.

Sennwald, André. “The Future of Color.” New York Times. 23 June 1935: X3.”

(Neupert, Richard (1990): “Technicolor and Hollywood: Exercising Color Restraint.” Post Script 10 (1): 21–29.)

Tags

• restrained
• Natalie Kalmus
• normative aesthetics
• color consulting

×

“[…] Cardiff would go on to become a cinematographer noted for masterful three-strip Technicolor films such as A Matter of Life and Death (1946), Black Narcissus (1947) and The Red Shoes (1948), and he also became a director of note. Although his name is synonymous with the golden age of British cinema, he says that his influences were largely American. “We were making very economical little films at the time and Hollywood was sending over these big classics with wonderful sets and lighting,” says Cardiff. “I got to realize the photography of certain people, among them [ASC members] George Barnes, Harry Stradling and Gregg Toland. Eventually I worked for Stradling as an operator on a number of pictures in England. He was a delighted man.

“At the same time, I formed a terrific love of painting, particularly the impressionists. They were daring, they had audacity, they had ideas. This was great training, and I said to myself. Audacity is the ticket. I started to paint and still do. I had this sort of general education about light and also saw the way light worked in films.

“There are several aspects of lighting. There’s a broad sweep that’s sort of impressionistic and reasonably realistic, but some of our British cameramen, and the French cameramen, too, were sort of ‘itty-bitty.’ George Perinal was considered one of the best cinematographers at the time, but he used dozens of lights — a little bit here, a little bit there — and it didn’t look natural. A big director who had been a cameraman came over from America to do a screen test, and when this director came on the set, he said: ‘Are you ready. Peri?’ Peri said, ‘Yes.’ Then the director said to the gaffer, ‘Kill that one, kill that one …’ and he killed about 10 lights. Watching that was a lesson to me: simplicity.”

Although Cardiff cut his teeth in black-and-white cinematography as an assistant, his path toward becoming a director of photography began when he went to work for the English branch of Technicolor. “I was working as a kind of operator and junior cameraman, and I would occasionally do odd inserts for features. A German, Count von Keller, came to Technicolor with his wife; they’d been traveling around with a 16mm camera shooting amateur movies, and their friends advised them to get a proper color camera and a cameraman to go with them. They were told they couldn’t borrow a three-strip camera, as there were only four in Britain. The Kellers said, ‘Alright, we’ll pay for it.’ I was assigned to go touring with them. We had a van and a whole Technicolor crew, and we shot travelogues.

“The Technicolor authorities at Westbury didn’t want their camera treated carelessly — the beam-splitting prism was a very delicate thing. The camera had to be checked in the bedroom of the assistant cameraman, who also had to clean it every couple of days. Technicolor ordered us not to ever put the camera in a dangerous position, but I disobeyed all the rules. I took it on top of Mount Vesuvius during an eruption! Technicolor was furious, and I was about to be fired, but then they sent a telegram saying they’d been impressed with the dailies and my job was secure, at least for the moment. Those little travelogues were exciting work and gave me an opportunity to light what I liked. I gained great confidence in my abilities, but I wanted to photograph a big production.

“I had worked with a very good cameraman, Claude Friese-Greene, as a focus puller and operator. His father, William Friese-Greene, arguably developed one of the first cameras to record motion in England. Director Norman Walker wanted Claude to photograph The Great Mr. Handel in Technicolor, but Claude was a black-and-white man. He said, ‘I’m sorry, but I haven’t got any color photography background and don’t want to take a chance on that.’ Then he had the idea of working on it with me. He said, ‘Let Jack photograph the first two weeks of the picture and I’ll watch.’ And that’s how I got my first break as a lighting cameraman on a set.

“After that, it was back to shooting inserts and doing second unit work, which is very dreary because the first unit does all the exciting things. I was working second unit on one or two exteriors and Michael Powell came to supervise, and I think he sort of liked my work because I worked very fast and was confident. One shot I had to do was of a wall with animal’s heads mounted on it. This shot depicted a love affair gone bad; the character had gone around the world shooting animals to forget his lost love. The animal heads had horns, and [they were] very difficult to shoot because every light i put on [them] made duplicate shadows — horns all over the bloody wall — but 1 had all day to do it. Eventually I heard someone say, ‘Very interesting,’ and I turned around and there was Powell. He said, ‘Would you like to photograph my next film?’ It was A Matter of Life and Death”

Technicolor’s three-strip system utilized three separate rolls of black-and-white film to create color separation masters in the camera; the color was achieved in printing. Yellow, cyan and magenta dye-soaked matrices struck from the original separation negatives were brought into contact with a blank roll of film in a process that was similar to color lithography. Cardiff has great respect for the vibrant color Technicolor could achieve, but he acknowledges that the three-strip system made for a difficult working environment. “The Technicolor camera needed an enormous amount of light — I think it was 650 footcandles at a lens aperture of 2.5. Generally we were forced to use arc lamps to get enough light, and that could be a problem with the actors. In a two-shot, for example, one person wouldn’t take any notice at all, but the other would say, ‘I’m sorry, but the lights are so strong! Take it down a bit.’ I did all I could to make it easier for the actors; I had barn doors on all the lamps so I could put a little lid over them or take out glare.

”Black Narcissus was shot at a time when everyone used arc lamps and hardly any Inkies. The noise from the arcs was such that the sound people routinely said, ‘We’ll have to dub this later.’ We also had a lot of haze from the carbon dust — every half an hour we’d open the stage doors to let the dust haze get out. “To achieve a higher diaphragm setting to get more depth of field, we had to increase the light. Most cameramen don’t like to change their levels, but it’s sometimes necessary, and I got used to doing it. Once or twice Powell wanted someone very close in the foreground sharp and someone in the background sharp, and the poor actors were almost burned alive! It was a tough, tough way of working. “We also had a big blimp that was bloody difficult. There was a certain lack of freedom in moving the camera around. You couldn’t do with it, not like you can with the average small camera. There was no reflex viewing, and the rangefinder system on the side of the blimp was just adequate. “We didn’t stop to reload film. We had two cameras all the time, and when we needed to reload we’d slide out one camera from the blimp and replace it with the other. That saved a lot of time. If we hadn’t done that, we would’ve had to stop at least every 15 minutes to reload the camera.

“Technicolor also laid down a lot of strange laws. They were interested in showcasing their process, not necessarily in the requirements of filmmakers. If an actor was supposed to wear a white shirt, we had to deal with different grades of slightly grayish whites because Technicolor dictated we couldn’t use pure white. But after a while, when we were shooting outside, we’d notice that passersby wearing white looked all right [on film]. So eventually we were able to have whites on studio sets.”

Like other cinematographers working in the three-strip process, Cardiff also had to contend with what he terms “a so-called color expert.” Natalie Kalmus, ex-wife of Technicolor co-founder Herbert Kalmus, received credit as Technicolor consultant on Black Narcissus, but Cardiff says she was never on the set. “Natalie would be floating about, but a lot of directors said they didn’t want her on the set. [On Black Narcissus] there was a woman called Joan Bridges who was very meek and just made occasional suggestions.”

Even though some filmmakers resented the presence of the color consultants, Technicolor’s rules were important because the three-strip system sometimes saw colors differently than the eye. “Before we started Black Narcissus, I knew we had to be very careful because nuns don’t use makeup,” says Cardiff. “If the audience could tell they were made up, we were dead. We tried to ban lipstick, but we discovered during testing that Technicolor exaggerated the reds a bit so that the nuns’ natural lips looked like lipstick. We ended up having to add a bit of flesh color to the lips to take down the reds.” One major frustration in working with three-strip Technicolor was that the cinematographer and director saw most of their dailies in black-and-white. It was standard practice for the Technicolor laboratory to supply monochrome work prints for most of the footage. “At the end of each scene in the rushes, there was a pilot shot that would give us an indication of the general colors,” recalls Cardiff.

“Sometimes the director would ask to see an entire scene printed in color, but that happened only very occasionally. The monochrome rushes were printed from the cyan record, and that could sometimes give you a shock. When I first started, I photographed a commercial film called Steel, and I filmed in a factory that had big, flaming-hot, bright-orange ingots. When we saw the rushes, there was nothing to be seen — the ingots just disappeared! We were terrified, but then we realized the cyan record didn’t pick up yellow at all.”

A hallmark of Cardiff’s style was his audacious use of colored lights to add dramatic impact to a scene. “When I had a lamp effect, I used a warm filter on what were supposed to be the source lights and then sometimes used a very pale blue filtered light to fill. You could build up a lot of [visual] interest just by the color relationship itself. “I had a system for lighting candle effects. Overhead I had a fill spot, soft, gelled with an amber filter to create light that looked as if it were coming from the flame. Then I’d get a painter to paint the candle a dark ochre so it looked like the shadow a candle would cast. I emphasized it by painting it dark and then gradually easing off so that when it got to an inch from the top, it was clear. That looked like the thing was on even before we lit it, and I had the light on a dimmer going up and down during the scene. It was very complicated. I even had an electrician with a long stick punch the rope holding the overhead spot so it wangled a bit to make it look like the flames. Oddly enough, even with the high light levels required by Technicolor, we had no problem picking up the actual candle flame.

“There’s one shot in Black Narcissus that makes me go ‘Ugh!’ every time I see it: the long shot when the nuns are carrying candles. It’s a very long shot and it s all arc-lit, and I couldn’t get any effect of the candles. If we did that today we’d have an actual candle and an Inky that was very low, but in those days we were bothered so much with the Natalie Kalmus [edict] that there couldn’t be any positive black. You had to light everything, and if the shadows were left without any light at all there were occasionally times when they looked a bit green or red. 1 used to take a chance with that a bit and let the shadows go, because otherwise it’s just like a theatrical pantomime and not realistic.

“By the time we made The Red Shoes, my third picture with Powell, the Brute lamp had come out, and I loved it. I learned of it when I was in Hollywood for some reason, and Pete Mole at Mole-Richardson said he’d made a new lamp and offered to show it to me. It was big, but I like to use one lamp and then fillers, and he said this one lamp would do it. They had just one unit and were making a second one. I thought it was marvelous, and he sent over the first two Brutes.”

One of the most visually exciting moments in Black Narcissus occurs when Sister Ruth (Kathleen Byron} puts on a red dress she has ordered by mail and, with awkward determination, applies lipstick before she attempts to seduce Mr. Dean (David Farrar), the English adviser to the local Indian prince. “The scene is purposely larger than life,” says Cardiff. “We thought we needed that exaggeration. Funnily enough, the shot where Ruth puts that lipstick on became extraordinarily successful. A lot of people who have nothing to do with the cinema say, ‘Oh, I know that film, it has that terrifying shot with the nun putting the lipstick on.’”

Black Narcissus is set in India, but except for a few exteriors that were shot in Ireland, nearly all of the film was filmed on soundstages and on the backlots at the Denham and Pinewood studios in England. Art director Alfred Junge’s sets and scenery achieve credibility even though they were conceived in a theatrical, painterly vein. Part of the illusion was achieved through the matte paintings of Percy “Papa” Day. in dreadful condition,” notes Cardiff. “There were trucks and bits of rubbish all over the place, but we had one thing in our favor: Papa Day. Like the early days of glass shots, we just made a matte with a piece of black cardboard that blotted out the background. Day would paint the missing parts of the scenery, and we’d make a reverse matte with the cardboard and shoot it. Many viewers thought we’d gone out on location — in fact, Powell got a letter from someone who said he’d lived in that particular place, and he thought it was all real. Day was great; everyone called him ‘Papa’ because he looked about 150 years of age, but he was quite sprightly and he was probably 60.”

Because Black Narcissus was “studio-bound,” several “exteriors” were shot in the great indoors of a soundstage. “It was asking for trouble to do exteriors on a stage, but I think I made it work,” says Cardiff. “To make it look natural, I had a lot of lights above with bluish filters — like a sky reflection — that illumined the tops of [the actors’] heads, and what was absolutely necessary to give an effect of sunlight [were units with] amber filters [lighting] the actors.

“In A Matter of Life and Death, there’s a scene where David Niven is supposed to be in a garden and the magician casts a spell that freezes Niven in time. Well, as it was magic, it obviously had to be something very different from ordinary light. I suggested to Powell that I use a lemon filter for sunlight instead of amber so the light wouldn’t look that natural, and he loved the idea. Not many people noticed it, really, but it was there.”

Even though Cardiff was closely associated with Technicolor’s three-Strip system and won an Oscar for his cinematography on Black Narcissus, he was not particularly sorry when the three-strip cameras were retired in the early 1950s. “We were very happy when Eastmancolor came in because we could use lOKs instead of big arc lights and have it quiet. I was working on a three-strip film with Hitchcock, Under Capricorn [1949], and Ingrid Bergman was in it. Every scene we did was with arc lights, and because of the noise on set most of the sound recordings were just guide tracks and to be dubbed afterwards. Ingrid put her foot down on one sequence. She said, ‘I don’t want to act this scene knowing it has to be dubbed. I’d like this sequence shot with incandescent light.’ Now, it wasn’t impossible; you could use incandescent light on a very small set, but very few people did it because it required so many Inkies. So I said, ‘Sure.’ I used 5Ks on the spot rail and one or two smaller lamps downstairs. It was difficult, but I did it. Ironically, the scene had to be retaken because for the first time, even with the huge blimp, we heard the noise of the Technicolor camera!”

(Birchard, Robert S. (2006): A Master’s Palette. Jack Cardiff, BSC Reminisces About his Achievements with Technicolor’s Three-strip Process. In: American Cinematographer, March 2006, pp. 58-65.)

Tags

• Great Britain
• lighting
• mood lighting
• Jack Cardiff
• make-up
• color consulting
• cinematography
• carbon arc
• Georges Périnal
• blimp

×

“Technicolor (1917-55)

Two-colour additive process/two-colour subtractive process/three-colour subtractive process

Founded in the USA as the Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation in 1915 by Herbert Kalmus, Daniel Comstock and W. Burton Westcott, in the 1930s Technicolor swept aside all the competition to become the most commercially successful colour film company and process. Most often the name is associated with three-strip Technicolor – used for such key 1930s colour films as Becky Sharp (1935), Gone with the Wind (1939) and The Wizard of Oz (1939) – which is officially known as Technicolor Process No. 4. The name gives testament to the fact that the rapid success of Technicolor was in fact the result of years of painstaking trial and error in the area of research, coupled with an aggressive campaign of commercial exploitation.

The first Technicolor process, unveiled in 1917, was an additive system which used a beam splitter in the camera to record two frames simultaneously through red and green filters. The two images were registered successively on the negative and processed into a positive. In projection the successive images were projected through the corresponding filters and through a prism which could be adjusted to bring the successive frames into precise register.

Technicolor’s two-colour subtractive process was actually two processes, the second one being a refinement of the first, which was developed in 1922. Technicolor’s first subtractive process – known as Technicolor Process No. 2 – used a beam splitter to create two separate colour record negatives, as the additive system had done, but with significant variations. The camera exposed the red and green images simultaneously through filters, but a new prism was included that exposed the green record upside down.

From the two negatives two dyed positive relief images were made using special stock known as the matrix (see Dye transfer/Dye imbibition). The two relief images were cemented back to back and then dyed red-orange on the green side and green on the red side, making a subtractive print that was the normal thickness and could be used on any conventional projector. The system was successful but had problems, notably that in time one of the two cemented images would frequently break away from the other, causing the print to go out of focus.

In 1928 the processing was improved by virtue of a dye-transfer process, which became known as Technicolor Process No. 3. The two relief images were produced as they had been in Process No. 2 and two matrices were created but instead of being cemented together they remained separate. Still in relief, and dyed with the correct colours, the matrices were then pressed using pressured rollers against a blank film coated with gelatine to which the dyed images were transferred by embossing the relief images onto the blank film with the dye, the dyes being locked by the use of a mordant. By this method multiple layers could be registered on a single film strip.

Even as Process No. 3 was being rolled out commercially, Kalmus continued his research to figure out a way to use three colours, thus making possible the rendering of the full colour spectrum. The dye-transfer process had effectively solved one of the problems of three-colour cinematography, which was that even by using double-sided film there was still the challenge of how to register the third colour on the print. Imbibition allowed two or more colour images to be transferred via the matrices onto the print, provided that the images were in precise register. Kalmus therefore focused on producing a working three-colour camera. Initial experiments with a successive-frame system were abandoned in favour of a camera which used a beam splitter to split the light from the source through filters, the green record passing straight through a green filter onto a film strip, while the red and blue records were captured on a bipack film through a magenta filter. The camera therefore produced three negatives, one red, one blue, one green. As with the two-colour process, gelatine relief matrices were made which were then dyed complementary subtractive colours and pressed one after the other against a blank film which absorbed the dye.

The success of Technicolor has as much to do with the way in which Kalmus ran the business as the quality of the process itself. As stated, Technicolor Process No. 2 suffered from a number of problems – not only the cement joining the two thin emulsions coming apart, but also cupping, where the heat from repeated projections would cause one emulsion to shrink slightly and throw the images out of register. While not sharing the same problems in projection, three-strip Technicolor was expensive and involved the use of a large, cumbersome camera, making location shooting difficult. Similar issues had led to the demise of other processes, but despite the fact that for years the company lost money, Kalmus managed to keep finding investors to back his work and film directors willing to experiment. From the first feature using the original two-colour additive system – The Gulf Between (1917) – Technicolor in all its incarnations appeared in some of the biggest Hollywood films of the day, albeit often only in short sequences. Thus, after being used for the first time to make The Toll of the Sea (1922), the cemented positive process was used for significant scenes in films including The Ten Commandments (1923), The Phantom of the Opera (1925) and Ben Hur (1926). Also in 1926 the commercial exploitation of Technicolor received a boost when Douglas Fairbanks decided to make The Black Pirate entirely in Technicolor, but the success of the film only proved how unworkable the cemented positive system was as Technicolor struggled to cope with the large number of prints required and the increased number of problems which consequentially arose. Technicolor was making losses and enjoying only very moderate success, yet Kalmus continued to develop his ideas even after the conversion to sound was followed by the Great Depression, which saw a shift in aesthetics in Hollywood towards black and white and away from colour.

Three-strip Technicolor led to the company becoming the industry leader. In 1932 Kalmus approached Walt Disney, who used three-strip Technicolor for a number of his Silly Symphony shorts. Shortly afterwards, in 1934, the first live-action Technicolor short was released, La Cucaracha, followed by the first feature film, Becky Sharp (1935). It was the global success of this film which propelled three-strip Technicolor forward, and it was the impact of Becky Sharp in the UK, as well as the quality of the image, which first attracted Alexander Korda to the process and encouraged him to abandon his plans to use Hillman colour, thus bringing the Technicolor brand to the UK. The first British film made using the process was Wings of the Morning (1937), and Technicolor would ultimately be used for some of the most respected British films of the 1940s, including Black Narcissus (1947) and The Red Shoes (1948).

Further reading

Basten, Fred E., Glorious Technicolor: The Movies Magic Rainbow (New Jersey: A. S. Barnes and Co., 1980).

Coe, Brian, The History of Movie Photography (London: Ash & Grant, 1981), pp. 132-5.

Cornwell-Clyne, Adrian, Colour Cinematography (London: Chapman & Hall, 3rd edn, 1951), pp. 451-507.

Haines, Richard W., Technicolor Movies; The History of Dye Transfer Printing (London: McFarland and Co., 1993).

Higgins, Scott, Harnessing the Technicolor Rainbow; Colour Design in the 1930s (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007).

Huntley, John, British Technicolor Films (London: Skelton Robinson, 1949).”

(Brown, Simon (2012): Technical Appendix. In: Sarah Street: Colour Films in Britain. The Negotiation of Innovation 1900-55. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 259-287, on pp. 284-286.)

Tags

• innovation

×

“Will Your Favorite Star Survive Color?

You can’t fool the color camera! It’s going to set a new standard of beauty.

By Mildred Mastin

BLEACHED heads must go. No more platinums. No more artificial blondes. No more heavy make-up.

How many stars can survive these edicts?

Yet, according to Robert Edmond Jones, these rules must govern the choosing of stars in the future.

“Because,” Jones says, “color has come to the screen to stay. And you can’t fool the color camera! It catches the slightest artificiality, magnifying it, making it ridiculous. Bleached hair which may be beautiful on the shadow screen, in Technicolor looks like a straw wig.”

Robert Edmond Jones, famous stage designer, designed the sets and worked out the color composition for La Cucaracha, the first motion picture to be made entirely by the new Technicolor process. He is in Hollywood now working on Becky Sharp, an all-color full length feature which RKO-Radio is producing.

The title rôle in Becky Sharp was, of course, a coveted one. It would be the first full-length feature picture filmed by the new process which photographs all the colors of the spectrum. It would attract tremendous attention and comment.

However, when Robert Edmond Jones looked over a list of all the eager applicants for the role, his answer to each name was “no.” Becky Sharp must be blonde. But she had to be a natural blonde. The plum finally went to Miriam Hopkins, whose golden hair has never been touched by a bleach. It photographs beautifully, soft and silky, shining yellow.

“We all live in a world of color,” says Jones. “It is ridiculous to think that people do not want color in their movies. People are now prejudiced against color pictures because they have seen bad ones, made by the old, imperfect process. When they are shown movies in which the color has been brought to the screen truly and naturally, they won’t be satisfied with black and white pictures any more.”

And whether you agree with Jones or not, you are compelled to remember back, seven years ago, when sound came to the screen, and movie-goers resented the imperfect recordings, the cracked voices. They said it was just a fad, that silent pictures would remain, that the talkies would never be accepted.

However, sound advanced swiftly, and the public’s early prejudices against it were soon swept away by the rapid improvements in talkies.

Technicolor, on the other hand, has been building up a wall of disfavor for twenty years. The first Technicolor picture was made in 1914, and it was not till recently that any major improvement in the process was made.

Except for Disney’s colored symphonies, La Cucaracha is the only picture released so far that has been entirely made by the new process. Pictures made by the old process you did not like. They looked highly artificial, and the colors were not true. There were several reasons for this. In the first place, the old color camera could not photograph blue. Of the primary colors it “saw” only yellow and red. Since blue is one of the three primary colors, it was impossible to get a true color picture of any shot with the old Technicolor cameras. Even white did not reproduce truly, but photographed with an orangish-yellowish tinge.

Rich purples, lavenders, all shades of blue, and many lovely in between colors could not be recorded.

Now, however, the camera, by the new process, is able to “see” all three primary colors, and their combinations, of course, make up every color visible to the human eye.

You can understand the impossibility of getting true color pictures by the old process if you try to imagine yourself painting a water color picture, using only red, yellow and green.

Under the old process, too, outlines were blurred, making the pictures not only displeasing but hard on the eyes.

THE failure of former Technicolor pictures, however, should not be blamed entirely on the camera’s lack. Those who made the pictures were partly to blame. They were used to working in black and white. They did not realize that a production done in color had to be handled differently; that careful planning of color combinations and design were of paramount importance.

When Robert Endmond Jones worked out the color for La Cucaracha, he made thousands of crayon sketches, designing the movie, scene by scene, from the script. Every scene, each tiny sequence, was then created from his crayon sketches, copying the color exactly. Thus each shot was a perfect picture so far as color and design were concerned, making a beautiful and artistic whole.

He is doing Becky Sharp with the same care and exactness.

Those working in color realize now that such careful design is necessary. They have learned, too, that in many other respects their picture-making must be treated differently. For example, the heavy make-up so effective in black and white photography is ugly and artificial in Technicolor. A light, natural make-up must be used. This, of course, makes it more difficult to cast a rôle. Skin defects cannot be hidden beneath a coat of grease-paint and powder. Freckles can’t be powdered over.

Eyes that are too small can’t be made to look large by tricky use of mascara and eye shadow. Colorless hair won’t do, while artificial coloring or bleaching photographs badly.

IT’S putting an added demand on stars! Those that passed their voice tests several years ago, and have been breathing easy, ask nervously now, “How will I photograph in color?”

“It will change the standard of screen beauty,” says Robert Edmond Jones. “It will bring naturalness into favor and toss artificiality into the discard. Beauty like Irene Dunne’s, for example, will then become fully appreciated – rich reddish-brown hair, skin of lovely texture and color.”

And, those stars who survive the test are going to find themselves confronted with a more difficult job in movie-making.

The tedious business of wardrobe planning, for example, will be even more difficult than it is now.

Furthermore, according to stars who have appeared in color pictures, the intense lighting necessary for its photography makes working conditions trying and unpleasant.

Jeanette MacDonald, who appeared in the Technicolor sequence of The Cat and the Fiddle, says, “It was terrible, trying to work under the lights. The heat was terrific; make-up was ruined after five minutes, and the intense light was so hard on our eyes, it was almost unbearable.”

Miss MacDonald, incidentally, with her gold-red hair and gray-blue eyes, is one star who should certainly rate high before the color camera.

But if the players find themselves confronted with difficulties, what of the studios?

The studios have millions of dollars worth of
equipment for making black and white pictures.
It cannot be used for color movies. Are they going to be faced with junking all of this? Of course, when the tornado of sound hit Hollywood, almost overnight equipment that cost fortunes was thrown on the junk heap. And there is no doubt that, if the public demands color pictures, Hollywood must, and will, provide them.

But, aside from the high price of equipment, the actual cost of producing a color picture is enormous!

For example, it cost sixty-four thousand dollars for RKO-Radio to produce La Cucaracha.

The average black and white picture of the same length costs around fifteen thousand.

ONE reason for the steep cost of color pictures is that the Technicolor camera uses three times as much film as the black and white camera. It carries one strip of negative film to record each of the three primary colors. Thus when the cameras grind, three photographs of the scene are actually being taken at once. It follows then that at each step in the handling of the film the work and cost is tripled.

The process itself is not as difficult or complicated as one might expect. Let us imagine that the color camera is photographing a holly wreath, hung on a blue door. Your eye sees the red berries, the green leaves, the blue door. A beam of light carries these three colors into the camera.

As the light enters the camera, it strikes a prism which splits it into three parts. In the camera are three filters made of gelatin – a green gelatin filter, a red one, a blue one. Each of the three parts of the light beam strikes one of these filters.

The green filter permits only the green in the light to pass through and hit the negative film.

The red filter lets only the red in the light through.

The blue filter carries through the blue in the light to the negative.

Now the actual color is not recorded on these negatives.

Looking at them, you see only shadow, as on an ordinary negative. The thing that is recorded here is the intensity of the light that has struck each negative.

These negatives must be printed now on a positive which will preserve these values of intensity and which can take dyes and print them.

The positive used is a gelatin-coated film. After the negative is printed on the positive, the positive is put through a chemical process which hardens the gelatin of the positive in proportion to the light that strikes it. For example, the red berries were dark on the one negative behind the red filter, and those spots let little light through, so the gelatin there remains soft. On the same negative, the green leaves and blue door are not dark, and light hardens the gelatin in those spots. Each positive is now taken out and washed. Naturally the soft gelatin washes away, leaving little “valleys” where the red berries should be, and reliefs of hard gelatin for the door and leaves. These gelatin positives are known as matrices.

NOW these matrices must be dyed. Each is dyed with its opposite or complementary color. The red matrix is dipped in a green dye; the green matrix is dipped with red dye; the blue matrix is dipped in yellow dye. You now have three strips of film, one yellow, one green, one red. The dye, of course, is absorbed according to the thickness of the gelatin coating. Where there is no gelatin, no dye will “take.” Consequently, the berries on the originally red matrix, having no gelatin covering, take none of the green dye. By the same token, on the originally green matrix these berries retained the gelatin, and so absorb the red dye.

The three matrices are now printed on the final positive film. First the red matrix (now dyed green, remember) is placed against the film. Since, on this matrix, the red berries retained no gelatin and consequently picked up no green dye, the spot where the berries should be simply remains blank on the film. Next, however, the green matrix (now dyed red) is placed against the film. Here the berries retained the gelatin, absorbed the red dye and now print it on the film. However, on the third matrix (the one originally blue, now dyed yellow) the berries also retained the gelatin and took the yellow dye. When this is pressed against the film, then, yellow dye is placed over red dye of the berries. The same is true of each impression: each is dyed twice.

But the light in the projection machine, striking the film as the picture is being shown, clears this up. The light contains red, green and blue elements – the three primary colors. As it shines through the film, the red element holds up the green, the green stops the red, the blue detains the yellow. Thus the holly berries, stained with red and stained with yellow, come onto the screen as red only, because the blue element in the light detains the yellow, and only the red is allowed to go through. On the screen, you see the colors now as accurately and truly as if you were looking at the original objects.

IF black and white movies are realistic to you, it is only because your imagination supplies the color. Technicolor, however, leaves nothing to the imagination. There is even a process which makes it possible to record such realistic touches as a blush, or a players turning white with fright or crimson with anger. In La Cucaracha you may remember when Paul Porcas became angry at Steffi Duna in the restaurant, his face turned purplish red.

This is done with a machine which contains a variety of colored lights set on a pivot. The pivot is turned, shedding the desired light in front of the projector, and directing it to the spot in the scene where the effect is wanted. The man who invented the machine says it will increase the possibility of interesting effects immeasurably, permitting even such realistic touches as pale greenish tinges for seasick actors and pasty white effects for “hangovers,” if desired.

Hollywood today is pretty much divided on the subject of color. Sam Goldwyn and Eddie Cantor recently leagued with the pro-colorists when they made the final sequence of Kid Millions in Technicolor. RKO-Radio signifies its belief in the future of color by tossing tall sums of money into Becky Sharp.

But the fate of its future lies in the hands of the public.

If the public demands it, the expense to the industry, the discomfort to players will be considered of small consequence.

If the public wants it, Robert Edmond Jones’ prophecy will be fulfilled – color will come to the screen, to stay.”

(Mastin, Mildred (1935): Will Your Favorite Star Survive Color?. In: Photoplay, Vol. 47, No. 2, pp. 26-27 and pp. 104-105.)

×

“I PREDICT that a certain delectable shade of blue is going to sweep the country. And like so many new fashions we have the screen to thank for it. This shade happens to typify the second great change that has taken place in motion pictures the past eight years. Indeed, “Becky Sharp blue” is symbolic of the revolution that has overtaken us practically overnight.

Just as in 1927 the Jazz Singer set scores of writers to banging excitedly their typewriters, so the press is now enthusiastically proclaiming the triumph of the new-color process as it appears in the film Becky Sharp. The technicians behind this invention have mastered every color from scarlet to green. So if I pick out and emphasize a certain shade as worn by Miriam Hopkins in the role of Becky, it is because I know women. When they see her blonde loveliness in perfect harmony with her clothes they are going to be enchanted. The effect will be so realistic. And that, I believe, is the supreme compliment to Dr. Kalmus, who has labored many years to bring Technicolor to its present perfection.

IT is an interesting fact, deserving of comment, I think, that when Pioneer Pictures began photographing Becky Sharp, Photoplay was the first publication to give the story to the public. That was seven months ago. Not only did this magazine describe the entire technical process, but it also forecast the effect upon the entire motion picture industry, upon the actors themselves and upon picture audiences. Perhaps we were not as omniscient as that statement might make us appear, for the potentialities of the new color art had already been made visible in that miniature but flawless gem, La Cucaracha, released, like Becky Sharp, by RKO-Radio. Photoplay had carried its comment on the great promise indicated by La Cucaracha, and with the filming of Becky it was obvious that a new era in pictures had arrived.

A HAPPY combination of men and circumstances is responsible for this film at this time. La Cucaracha had been a trial balloon that proved at the box-office the public’s reaction toward color – when that color was in every respect true to what the eye expected. Into the scene came “Jock” Whitney, a young man with his hundred millions of dollars, eager to advance a great art; Robert Edmond Jones, a master of stage settings, who had contributed his fine technique to John Barrymore’s “Hamlet,” “Mourning Becomes Electra” and a score of other plays; Rouben Mamoulian, master director of Hollywood; Ned E. Depinet, Vice-president of RKO-Radio; and M. H. Aylesworth, President of National Broadcasting Corporation, an affiliate of RKO-Radio. Each man did his part – financial, technical, artistic, with none of the interference of one head with another that too often in picture production has led to a stalemate or a flop.

When you see Becky Sharp you’ll be sure to note, amid all the brilliance and softness of reds, blues, greens and a score of others, one color I won’t have to tell you to look for. You’ll find “Becky Sharp blue” for yourself. That is, of course, if you are a woman.”

(Dougherty, Kathryn (1935): Photoplay Close-Ups and Long-Shots. In: Photoplay, Vol. 48, No. 3, pp. 21-22.)

×

“Will Becky Sharp Revolutionize Hollywood?

A no more significant movie has been turned out since the first talkie than this the first feature-length, all-color production.

IF ever Hollywood was rooting for a picture, the whole town was rooting for the triumph of Becky Sharp. To begin with, no more significant production has come out of Hollywood since Al Jolson sang a mammy song in The Jazz Singer, first of the successful talking pictures that revolutionized the entire industry. The history of motion pictures has been marked frequently by such revolutionary milestones since D. W. Griffith produced The Birth of a Nation, which proved the limitless scope of spectacle upon the screen.

Now, after more than a year of preparation and the expenditure of more than a million dollars, comes Becky Sharp, first feature-length film to introduce the new full color Technicolor process. Upon the slim shoulders of this heroine of Thackeray’s “Vanity Fair,” rests the responsibility of hurrying or retarding the next great step in Hollywood progress – color. No wonder all of Hollywood kept anxious eyes on Becky Sharp for the future of Hollywood was in this pioneering color film.

Then, too, Hollywood, good old blasé Hollywood, was intrigued by the organization of the aptly named Pioneer Pictures just as Americans have always been intrigued by the drama of typically American success stories There was drama aplenty in the story behind the making of Becky Sharp, drama that encompassed accidents, illnesses, even death. Hollywood knows the whole amazing story and you should, too.

Its beginning might be said to date back ten years. It was in the fall of 1925 that Meriam C. Cooper with his partner, Ernest Schoedsack, emerged from the Malay jungles with a completed motion picture they called Chang. That their picture became one of the most successful wild animal films ever made was not the source of as much pride on Cooper’s part as might be imagined. He mourned the product of a year’s hard work and privation because it was not good enough. The real beauty of the jungle had escaped the camera Nothing in black and white could capture or re-create the tropical riot of colors.

An obsession for color photography literally consumed Cooper. He talked color night and day. “We do not live in a black and white world. Why should we have only black and white motion pictures? ” he asked.

No one seriously listened to Cooper. Then he met Dr. Herbert Thomas Kalmus, founder of Technicolor, who had been experimenting with color photography since 1915. One of the first color films, Toll of the Sea, was produced in a two-color process in 1921, but Dr. Kalmus and his associates were still striving for its improvement. The meeting of Cooper and Kalmus marked the crossing of the paths of our first two characters in the drama behind the making of Becky Sharp.

During the next two years, Cooper continued to talk color. He could not forget the beauty he had seen in the Malay wilderness and his enthusiasm never waned. He nearly succeeded in interesting Jesse Lasky. Then came sound and the project was postponed. New problems had to be met and the color-mad Cooper was momentarily forgotten. But he did not forget. He was a bit sarcastic about sound. “Galloping gray ghosts that talk,” was his summation of the new trend.

It is impossible to determine Cooper’s influence on the initial vogue for color which followed the novelty of talking films. He has been called the father of color among the producers, and it may be true. The 1928 vogue was destined, however, to be short lived, for the color was decidedly poor. Actually only two colors were used, red and green, double- printed on each side of the projection negative. It was far from satisfactory, as it blurred outlines and was incapable of reproducing certain spectrums without color compromise. I well remember when trees and bushes were painted by airbrush because their natural colors would not reproduce naturally. After On with the Show, Gold Diggers of Broadway, The Mystery of the Wax Museum and a handful of other features, color was judged a fiasco. It died a premature death because of its imperfections and because, as Cooper termed it, “misuse and abuse.”

KALMUS continued his experiments and Cooper remained true to his enthusiasms. Yet it was not until 1932 that Kalmus was able to announce the perfection of a three-color process. The announcement was greeted by an astounding lack of interest. Color was a box-office failure and in the mind of Hollywood that is the very worst kind of failure. Only Cooper fully believed from the start.

Walt Disney with his Silly Symphonies proved one of the earliest customers for the full color development. After the amazing success of The Three Little Pigs, other producers of short subjects became interested. But the beginning was slow. Even at this writing, there are only thirteen new Technicolor cameras in existence. That number until the release of Becky Sharp was ample equipment.

COOPER’S devotion to color was to be justified at last by the entry upon the scene of John Hay Whitney, better known as “Jock.” Cooper and Whitney are friends of long standing and Whitney agreed to finance a new producing organization. Thus was Pioneer Pictures born. Cooper, having a contract with RKO-Radio. was unable to take an active hand until the completion of his contract. A deal was nonetheless consummated and the new organization was dedicated entirely to the production of color pictures. An agreement was reached with RKO for the release of the product and Kenneth MacGowan was borrowed as active producer. The fifth member of our behind-the-scenes drama is Robert Edmond Jones, long recognized as a master designer of stage sets and a color authority. With Jones’ arrival in Hollywood, an experimental color short was made. Pioneer’s first production was the Academy prize winner of 1934, La Cucaracha, which played to more business than any black and white short ever made.

The stage was set for the start of Becky Sharp. The picturesque costumes of the Napoleonic era seemed particularly suitable for color. Miriam Hopkins was engaged as the star and Lowell Sherman as the director.

From the first day of shooting, it was apparent that Lowell Sherman was a seriously ill man. He was actually dying on the set, but could not be persuaded to halt work. Nor would he accept the verdict of doctors that his throat ailment was incurable. He sought quacks who promised a cure. It was not learned until after his death that Sherman had been afraid to go to bed for weeks and had employed a man to watch over him as he dozed in an arm chair. The man’s duty was to awaken him if Sherman began to choke.

Hardly had production been resumed under the direction of Rouben Mamoulian that Miriam Hopkins, the star, contracted bronchial pneumonia and the picture was again halted. Later Mamoulian and Frances Dee, playing the second feminine lead, were both influenza victims. Then came a series of strange accidents.

Miriam Hopkins’ dress caught fire from a candle on the set; a property man was injured when a large box fell; the side of a set fell on an electrician; one of the soldier extras placed a steel helmet on a generator box, short circuiting the lights and narrowly escaping electrocution. To cap the climax, a whole reel of completely cut negative burned in a projection room.

To comprehend the loss caused by this final accident, it is necessary to know something of the technical details of the new Technicolor three-color process. As black is also used, it is really four colors, lithographed (to use a general term) upon film.

Three separate magazines of film run through
the Technicolor camera photographing simultaneously the three primary aspects of the
scene – red, green and blue. Matrices are prepared from these color-separation negatives, a matrix being similar, for laymen explanation to an engraved plate in printing.

SUPTRACITVE primary dyes are used in the imbibition transfer upon the properly prepared film that holds the master black. The dyes are cyan or minus red, magenta or minus green, and yellow or minus blue. All three transfers are necessary to complete the color print ready for projection.

In this new process, there is no tampering with colors. What the camera sees, it records and, except for the precision of film printing, the process is fool proof. The errors of the human equation enter mostly into the creation of color values.

With no reflection upon the work of the late Lowell Sherman, Rouben Mamoulian, upon taking over the direction, retook all of the early sequences. The entire mood of the story was changed and night after night, Mamoulian worked with Francis Edward Faragoh, author of the screen play on the job of rewriting the script.

“Color is another emotion,” Mamoulian says. “It is a psychology to which every normal person reacts. Colors through associations or customs have come to mean certain things. Look at our traffic lights. Red means danger; green safety.

RED is the color of blood, of fire, of anger. In its different shades, it means different things but always excitement. Green contra-wise, signifies tranquility. It is the color of nature, the grass and trees.

“The use of color can stimulate or disturb. It must be in keeping with the mood of the story. The error of early color pictures was an unintelligent overabundance of hues, clashing, discordant and eye-straining.

“In Becky Sharp, we have tried to use color as we use music or any other contributing element to drama. We help to build climaxes with it. After all, Shakespeare knew what he was talking about when he said, ‘The play’s the thing.’

“The opening sequences of Becky Sharp were first taken against a red-walled room. In retaking it I had the walls changed to gray. One of the several reasons for this change is to make a not too abrupt contrast for a public accustomed to black and white only.

“The scene laid at the Duchess of Richmond’s ball on the eve of the battle of Waterloo offered the greatest danger of overuse of color. It is essentially a colorful affair, yet it must achieve a climax. We imagined a storm. The wind blows open a window and many of the wax tapers go out. Then the riot with men and women rushing from the ballroom. We progress from a series of sober colors, grays, blues, greens, yellows to the excitement of oranges and reds.”

FAR from a perfect picture, Becky Sharp is more surprisingly near perfection than any pioneering effort in memory. Consider all of its adversities from accidents, illness and death. Then consider all of the minor inconveniences – take after take being ruined by the sputtering noise of arc lights (the silent incandescent lamps cannot be used because such light is yellow rather than pure white) – the need of creating make-up in natural color tones – the tonal value of scenes – the constant danger of lack of color separation – color emphasis – color restraint – color blotches – all new terms, new problems, new worries. Just as though the making of motion pictures were not complicated enough as it is!

But if the hard luck encountered by previous Hollywood successes since the days of “The Covered Wagon” is any criterion, Becky Sharp should make many millions. Strangely enough similar trials and tribulations have been visited upon every great film success in history.

There is small doubt in anyone’s mind in Hollywood that color is the next trend in motion pictures. No comparison exists between the first color subjects and the new full color Technicolor. If you have already seen Becky Sharp you realize this. “Unless you have seen the new Technicolor,” states Mamoulian, “to say you don’t like color on the screen is like saying you do not like horseback riding when all you have ridden is a three-legged horse.””

(Grant, Jack (1935): Will Becky Sharp Revolutionize Hollywood? In: Photoplay, Vol. 48, No. 3, pp. 24-25 and pp. 100-101.)

×

“BECKY SHARP – Pioneer-RKO Release

VIVID, colorful, beautiful – literally and figuratively – is this first all new Technicolor feature-length picture. Symphonies in startling shades, gorgeous screen paintings, in scene after scene, supply the magnificent main attraction, of course. But even they are rivaled by the sparkling performance of Miriam Hopkins as the conniving flirt and lady of fortune who crashed the court circle of England in the Napoleonic era and lived by her woman’s wiles alone.

An excellent comedy drama has been drawn from Thackeray’s character in “Vanity Fair.”

You must see it for the brilliant new colorings, for the full and artistic story presentation and the fine acting of Nigel Bruce, Cedric Hardwicke, Alan Mowbray, and every other member of an ace cast responding to Rouben Mamoulian’s period-perfect direction.

The endless stimulation of color may tire your eyes at first. You may be drawn to a gold button or a blue ribbon instead of a vital expression. But the actors will seem warmer and fresher and more alive.

And the lavish color-contrasted backgrounds (a bow to artist Robert Edmond Jones) are something you’ll long remember.

Becky Sharp is a new experience you should have; a delightful thrill you should enjoy, and a grand picture you must see.”

(Anonymous (1935): The Shadow Stage. A Review of the New Pictures. Becky Sharp. In: Photoplay, Vol. 48, No. 4, p. 66.)

×

“WITHIN two years, I am convinced, every important motion picture will be made in color.

I know the danger of prophecy in the shifting world of Hollywood, but I made this flat statement, so convinced am I of the imminence of color, after seeing The Trail of the Lonesome Pine.

It will mean a production revolution; it will mean chaos probably worse than that of 1927 when sound came in. Undoubtedly it will see the dimming of the stars now at their zenith and the swift ascent of unknowns with these new rainbows round their shoulders.

One afternoon recently, when I had come to the end of an imperfect day, the Walter Wanger office called me and said if I wanted to I could see the rough cut of Pine at the Technicolor laboratory.

I didn’t want to particularly. I still recalled my deep disappointment at Becky Sharp. Besides, it was nearly six o’clock.

WE sat in a dreary little projection room, a couple of exhibitors and I. They warned us that we were to see an unfinished print of the picture, and unfinished it certainly was. Every few feet the blues would jump about or a big column of red would suddenly march across the screen, or the plain black and white print would strike through. The projection machine was one of those one-lung affairs that would only take a reel at a time, so that every fifteen minutes the continuity of the action was broken while the projection man stopped and put on a new reel. It would be practically impossible to see a picture under worse circumstances, but I stayed on while the city went dark outside and my appetite grew.

I stayed, because it was one of those electric moments for a motion picture enthusiast, as electric as that first glimpse of Katharine Hepburn in A Bill of Divorcement , or the original sound of Lawrence Tibbett’s voice in The Rogue Song, or the initial screen tapping of Fred Astaire’s dancing feet, as electric as those moments and much more important.

For here was color used without self-consciousness; here was color as a pure plus value in entertainment. There was none of the “composition” of Becky Sharp. No one was going about being mannered. Here was just a movie, a swell movie, made out-of-doors with the blue of the sky and the dark pines and the weather-stained old mountain cabins as a subtle background for its love story. Here was the dark loveliness of Sylvia Sidney’s hair, so arresting above those strange blue eyes of hers. Here was the greatest realism that had yet come to pictures.

THERE are two methods for the use of color in pictures, the realistic and the imaginative. Becky Sharp took the latter method and today at Pioneer the same group of people are again taking this imaginative approach in their production of Dancing Pioneer. It is being made entirely inside the studio with the skies tinted so as not to conflict with the colors of the ladies’ dresses.

THIS time I hear they have a fine story and the basic failure of Becky Sharp was not, of course, its color, though that jibbered about enough, but the weakness of its story plot.

But The Trail of the Lonesome Pine was taken almost entirely out-of-doors. With its color so accurate and beautiful that after a bit you forget all about it, just as today, now that you have become accustomed to sound, you seldom hear the music score of a dramatic picture. In this picture, color is used quite simply and honestly to heighten your pleasure in a picture that in every other way is superb entertainment too.

AS with all revolutionary things, there is a personality in back of all this. He is Walter Wanger, distinctly one of the most intelligent men in the motion picture business and, as far as I am concerned, the only relaxed motion picture executive I have ever seen.

Wanger is another thing besides daring, he is practical.

He it is who had the courage to produce Gabriel Over the White House, The President Vanishes, and Private Worlds, risky pictures all from the point of view of the box-office, but he is also the same man who had the common sense to produce such simple money items as Every Night At Eight, Smart Girl, and Shanghai. Where the average picture executive surrounds himself with all the trappings of a king in a musical comedy, Wanger operates from a small, neat building in a little studio on a Hollywood side street. You walk up a flight of plain, uncarpeted wooden stairs to get to his office which is furnished with the serene charm you might expect in intelligent business executives’ offices, but which is startling in Hollywood. People pop in and out of his office in a quiet and happy way. He keeps few people under contract to him, but those he has are devoted to him.

THE day I went to see him, Madeleine Carroll and Henry Fonda dropped in casually from side doors into Mr. Wanger’s office. Henry wanted to discuss some dialogue and Madeleine wanted to know about her stills. A script writer came in to talk scenes and a set designer had some sketches to show. It was all very unaffected and friendly and they were all obviously working together towards the same end, producing a good picture, and Mr. Wanger lounged back in his chair making it plain that, while he was perfectly willing to talk about himself, he much preferred to discuss politics or world peace programs, on both of which subjects he has passionate convictions. There was no hustle and drive, no tension of nerves about the place and yet this same producer has put out thirteen productions in the past year, which is a whale of a record.

IT is just the advent of a man like this into the realm of color pictures that persuades me of their imminence and their true value. Wanger says that the addition of color to a picture makes it cost about one hundred and fifty thousand dollars more, but he can not feel that on the important budgets pictures have today, an extra one hundred and fifty thousand is anything to worry about, not as balanced against the greater entertainment value that color creates. He believes in color so completely that he has two and possibly three more color pictures planned on his schedule this year.

To which I can only add that if The Trail of the Lonesome Pine doesn’t make a million dollars, I’ll eat this prophecy.”

(Waterbury, Ruth (1936): Close Ups and Long Shots. In: Photoplay, Vol. 49, No. 4, pp. 11-12.)

×

“This month’s color picture – Hollywood is beginning to make them at the rate of at least one a month now – is A Star Is Born. David Selznick, of Garden of Allah fame, is producing it. Janet Gaynor and Fredric March head the cast.

We know a color expert who says that, in the all-color future, the biggest tars will be redheads (“They have more natural color than blondes or brunettes.”) Gaynor is the first titian to risk a test of the theory. In her case, it looks like no risk.

She plays a movie-struck girl from the Middle West named Esther Victoria Blodgett. She comes to Hollywood, gets a job in the home of a star named Norman Maine (March). With blasé grandeur, he arranges a screen test for the little girl; her name is changed to Vicki Lester (pronounced Vicki-Vicki); and to everybody’s amazement, she becomes and actress. She rises, while he slips. Until finally – you anticipate us – her love does things for him.

It sounds like “Cinderella,” Hollywood style? Wait till you hear some of the other names in the cast. Adolphe Menjou plays a producer who can’t be told anything. Lionel Stander, of the one blue eye and one brown eye, plays a brash press agent. Owen Moore, a bored director. Andy Devine, his overanxious “yes” man. May Robson, Janet’s grandmother and chaperon. Edgar Kennedy, a slow-burning clerk in a small Hollywood hotel.

Turn that assortment of comedians loose on one set, along with the Gaynor and March, and no picture could be Pollyannaish. It would have to be a satire.

On this particular set, nothing is quite sane. That’s the Director William Wellman influence, as much as anything. When he makes a picture, he kids himself and everyone around him. And he has a double right on this picture. He helped to concoct the story.

The scene we watch is the one in which Vicki has her screen test.

In real life, Janet has a luxurious portable dressing room in the form of a trailer. This is drafted as background for this action. It is supposed to be March’s dressing room in the scene.

In the foreground are “prop” frees and bushes, Kleig lights, a movie camera, folding chairs for director and script girl (played, by the way, by Wellman’s own script girl). The huge color camera is getting a behind-the-scenes shot of a movie test.

Janet stands in front of the “dud” camera, in a frilly yellow gown, a picture hat, and a make-believe agony of self-consciousness. Owen Moore strolls on the make-believe set, very bored. He asks the set workers what all the delay is about; don’t they know this is Saturday and there’s a football game?

Pandemonium breaks loose, as they rush to get this over with. You never saw so much action in a color picture before. Wellman is pampering his color camera. He’s making it do what the regular camera can do.”

(Reid, James (1937): We Cover The Studios. In: Photoplay, Vol. 51, No. 2, pp. 58-59.)

×

“An experiment has been successful – a new day dawns – here’s the good news by our Hollywood herald.

TO be in color, or not to be in color? That is the question, this early Autumn of 1937. And the answer is increasingly “Yes.” Hollywood’s next revolution is on the way.

It’s getting so that you can’t talk to any star without hearing a sales talk for color. It’s even getting so that a producer can’t plan a picture that he likes, without fearing that you might like it better in color. That’s why, this month, for the first time in Hollywood history, three big pictures are being filmed simultaneously by color cameras. A new day is definitely dawning in Hollywood. And the dawn is in Technicolor.

Paramount, latest studio to be converted, is the bravest of them all. Sea pictures are notoriously difficult to make. But Paramount goes to sea with color cameras. And we go along, to check up on the experiment.

The principal participants in the experiment are Oscar Homolka, Frances Farmer, Ray Milland, Lloyd Nolan and Barry Fitzgerald. You may never have heard of Homolka. But you will. He may be new to Hollywood (this is his first picture here) but he is one of Europe’s great actors. He looks like competition for Paul Muni.

The occasion for the experiment is Ebb Tide, a film adapted from the Robert Louis Stevenson story. It is no idyllic South Seas romance. It is melodramatic adventure. In the Stevenson version of the story, there is no girl. But Homolka knew that Hollywood would get sex into it somewhere, and he was a bit worried about results. He insisted on seeing the final shooting script before signing his contract. He wanted to know what the girl would be doing. It must be that the addition of a feminine character doesn’t damage the story, for here is Homolka staking a Hollywood future on a color debut in Ebb Tide.

The outdoor scenes are being filmed at Santa Catalina Island, notorious for its fogs, which have grayed many a directorial head.

Director James Hogan has grayish hair to begin with, which gives him a head start on the fog. Besides this, he has Irish luck. For three weeks before the company arrives, a camera crew tries to photograph sea vistas and is foiled by fog. Hogan appears, and the fog vanishes until he finishes.

By a lonely, tornuous dirt road, which winds around mountains, sometimes on precipices hundreds of feet above the Pacific, we reach Little Harbor on the sea side of the island. Here are two locations.

Little Harbor is a double cove. One area of the cove is Tehua in the South Seas – a gray sand beach with long white rollers pounding down on it. The other arm is the small harbor of a small uncharted island in mid-Pacific – calm, clear green water choked with brown seaweed. Outside, sailless, silhouetted against bright blue sky, rides an old three-masted schooner – the principal setting of the picture.

With no difficulty whatsoever, we get South Sea fever. And with no difficulty whatsoever, Hogan seems to be getting what he wants. He has the Technicolor camera moves all over the place, despite its six hundred pounds.

We see the scene that gives Hogan his worst moment. Frances Farmer is supposed to swim ashore from the ship – a distance of a good quarter-mile. Hogan has a stunt swimmer on hand to double for her. Frances balks at the idea. It seems that she likes to swim. Not only that. She insists that she is a stunt swimmer herself; she grew up near Puget Sound. She says she can swim in her 1890 dress – with a bathing suit under it. She talks Hogan into letting her try it. He and the worried Ray Milland talk her into having a dory load of Kanaka divers following her, out of camera range – just in case.

Nothing happens, except that Frances proves that a bathing girl can still become a movie star. And vice versa.”

(Reid, James (1937): We Cover the Studios. In: Photoplay, Vol. 51, No. 10, pp. 52-53 and p. 70.)

×

“Zweiter Hauptteil

Die Farbfilmverfahren

Im ersten Hauptteil dieses Buches haben wir uns mit der Physik des Lichtes und der Psychologie des Farbsehens beschäftigt. Nunmehr gehen wir einen Schritt weiter und wenden uns den Verfahren zu, auf denen die Photographie in natürlichen Farben und somit auch der Farbfilm beruht. Im Laufe der vergangenen Jahrzehnte ist eine schier unübersehbare Fülle von Vorschlägen ausgearbeitet und wieder verworfen worden, die auch nur dem Namen nach lückenlos aufzuzeichnen ein mühseliges und dabei unnützes Unternehmen wäre. Wir ziehen vor, nach Klarstellung der farbenphotographischen Grundlagen zunächst in die Unzahl der Vorschläge eine systematische Ordnung zu bringen, bevor wir uns der Besprechung der hauptsächlichen Verfahren zuwenden.

I. Grundlagen der Farbenphotographie

Wenn wir uns vor die Aufgabe gestellt denken, wir müssten erstmalig die Farbenphotographie erfinden, so würden uns der Erste Hauptteil dieses Buches den Fingerzeig für die beiden möglichen Methoden geben: dort ist einmal ausgeführt, daß man durch Übereinanderprojizieren roten, grünen und blauen Lichtes auf einem Schirm jede beliebige Lichtfarbe erhält, wenn man die Stärke der Farblichter entsprechend im Verhältnis zueinander regelt (Abb. 39). Wir erweitern dies nun dahingehend (Abb. 40), daß wir die Regelung der Stärke der Farblichter durch geeignete photographische Silberbilder vornehmen, über deren Herstellung wir später hören werden. Wir erfinden aber auch gleich noch die andere mögliche Methode, zu Farbbildern zu gelangen (Abb. 41): Wenn es uns gelingt, ein geeignetes purpurfarbenes, gelbes und blaugrünes Farbstoffbild herzustellen, brauchen wir diese nur hintereinander zu schalten und auf die Leinwand zu projizieren.

Die erste – additive – und die zweite – subtraktive – Methode ist in den Abbildungen an einem einfachen Beispiel, einem gelben Kreuz auf bläulichem Grund, erläutert.

Ohne daß uns damit die praktische Arbeitsweise der Farbenphotographie bereits bekannt wäre, haben wir doch induktiv abgeleitet, daß die Voraussetzung jedes naturfarbig projizierten Bildes das Vorhandensein von drei Teilbildern ist, die bei additiver Wiedergabe schwarzweiße Silberbilder, bei subtraktiver Wiedergabe aber Farbstoffbilder sein müssen.

Jedes Farbverfahren zerfällt in die drei Hauptteile:

1. den Aufnahmevorgang, der primär zur Herstellung der drei Farbauszüge führt,
2. die Maßnahmen zur Verarbeitung der Farbauszüge und
3. die Wiedergabemaßnahmen, durch die das farbige Projektionsbild erhalten wird.

Man muß sich ganz klar machen, daß Aufnahme und Wiedergabe durchaus selbständige und voneinander unabhängige Prozesse sind, und daß es sehr wohl möglich ist und sogar vorteilhaft sein kann, den Aufnahmeprozeß des Verfahrens A mit dem Wiedergabeprozeß der Verfahren B, C oder D zu kombinieren. Hiernach richtet sich dann die Gestaltung des Verarbeitungsprozesses.

2. Systematik der Farbenphotographie

a) Aufnahmeverfahren

Machen wir eine normale photographische Schwarzweißaufnahme, so entwirft das Objektiv unserer Kamera zu jedem Zeitpunkt nur ein einziges Bild auf dem Film. Bei Farbaufnahmen müssen wir indessen gleichzeitig drei Aufnahmen erhalten. Diese Aufnahmen müssen in allen Teilen untereinander identisch sein, bis auf die verschiedene photographische Umsetzung der Farbwerte der Objekte. Diese Farbauszüge lassen sich entweder nach der Methode der Farbspaltung (Abb. 42), der Farbsiebung (Abb. 43) oder nach verschiedenartigen Kombinationen aus Farbspaltung und -siebung erhalten (Abb. 44). Von Farbspaltung sprechen wir, wenn durch besondere optische Zusatzeinrichtungen hinter dem Aufnahmeobjektiv die Farbauszüge nebeneinander auf drei oder auf zwei Filmen oder auf einem einzigen Film entworfen werden. Bei Farbsiebung sind die drei Aufnahmeschichten hintereinander angeordnet, und zwar entweder auf drei oder zwei oder einem einzigen Film.

Unter diesen Gesichtspunkten läßt sich eine aufschlußreiche Systematik aller Möglichkeiten der Farbaufnahme entwickeln (Abb. 45). Man erkennt so den Zusammenhang der historisch oder gegenwärtig wichtigen Farbverfahren untereinander und bemerkt auch, daß nicht alle theoretisch möglichen Kombinationen bisher praktisch ausgeführt wurden.

Die Unterteilung in die Spalten 3 Filme, 2 Filme und 1 Film, die in der Kamera laufen, ergibt unmittelbar wichtige Rückschlüsse auf die Handhabung des Aufnahmeverfahrens. Nur die in der Spalte “1 Film” aufgeführten Verfahren können die vom Schwarzweißfilm her vorhandenen Aufnahmeapparate verwenden, während alle andern Verfahren Spezialkameratypen benötigen.

Die in der rechten oberen Ecke der Tabelle Abb. 45 aufgeführten Verfahren haben zwar das gemeinsame systematische Merkmal dreimaliger Farbspaltung bei Verwendung eines einzigen Films in der Kamera, indessen sind sie so heterogener Natur, daß es zweckmäßig ist, die hier bestehenden technischen Abarten im folgenden noch einmal besonders zu betrachten.

Es bestehen grundsätzlich drei Möglichkeiten der dreimaligen Farbspaltung bei Verwendung eines einzigen Films, und zwar die Zerlegung

1. in ganze Bilder (Abb. 46),
2. in Streifenraster (Abb. 47),
3. in Kreuz- oder Punktraster (Abb. 48)

Methode 1 ist verhältnismäßig trivial, sie verlangt die Verwendung eines Strahlenteilungsobjektivs bei der Aufnahme; meistens werden drei Bildchen etwa von Schmalfilmgröße auf dem Normalfilmbildfeld neben- und untereinander angeordnet. Methode 2 und 3 schachteln die Farbauszüge mikroskopisch fein streifen- bzw. punktweise ineinander; mit welchen Mitteln dies geschieht, werden wir noch erfahren.

b) Wiedergabeverfahren

Auch die Wiedergabeverfahren lassen sich durch eine systematische Betrachtungsweise übersichtlicher machen. Während bei der Aufnahme ein bis drei Filme gleichzeitig laufen, dient zur Wiedergabe immer nur ein einziger Film; anders wäre eine Vorführung praktisch schwierig durchzuführen. Der Wiedergabefilm trägt die drei Farbauszüge, und zwar entweder hintereinander oder nebeneinander (Tabelle Abb. 49).

Man vermag leicht einzusehen, daß die Nebeneinanderordnung der Farbauszüge die Umkehrung der Farbspaltung bei der Aufnahme ist, und daß man das farbige Projektionsbild in diesem Falle durch die additive Farblichtmischung erhält. Sind die Farbauszüge hintereinander auf dem Wiedergabefilm angeordnet, derart also, daß das Projektionslicht nacheinander die drei Farbauszüge durchsetzt, so bedeutet das subtraktive Farbbilderzeugung. Als äußerliches Unterscheidungsmerkmal kann dabei noch bewertet werden, ob die drei Farbauszüge alle auf der gleichen Seite des Films untergebracht sind, oder ob z. B. die eine Seite zwei, die andere einen Farbauszug trägt.

Die Tabelle Abb. 49 gibt ferner an, woraus das Bild besteht: aus Silber oder aus photographisch erzeugten Farbstoffen oder aus photochemisch gedruckten Farbstoffen. Der erstgenannte Fall beschränkt sich auf die additive Wiedergabe, die beiden anderen bedeuten subtraktive Wiedergabe.

c) Kopplung von Aufnahme- und Wiedergabeverfahren; die Verarbeitung der Farbauszüge

Das Ziel des Aufnahmeprozesses ist, die drei Farbauszüge herzustellen; das Ziel des Wiedergabeprozesses ist, die drei Farbauszüge wieder zu einem naturgetreuen projizierten Farbbild zu verschmelzen. Die Aufnahme-Farbauszüge erfahren nun verschiedene umfangreiche und umständliche photographische und photochemische Umwandlungen bis sie als Wiedergabe-Farbauszüge für die Projektion geeignet sind; d. h., daß sich zwischen Aufnahme und Wiedergabe ein von der Kopieranstalt zu leistender Verarbeitungsprozeß einschiebt, von dessen technischer Gestaltung und sorgfältigen Durchführung der Erfolg eines Farbverfahrens im hohen Maße abhängt.

Üblicherweise ist in unserer Vorstellung der Aufnahme- und Wiedergabeprozeß bei jedem Farbfilmverfahren eine zusammengehörende Einheit. Indessen ist dies nicht berechtigt; wir können jedes Aufnahmeverfahren aus Tabelle Abb. 45 mit jedem Wiedergabeverfahren aus Tabelle Abb. 49 kombinieren, indem wir den Verarbeitungsprozeß entsprechend leiten. Selbstverständlich ist nicht jede Kombination empfehlenswert und technisch vertretbar, dennoch zeigt diese Betrachtungsweise besonders deutlich die engen Zusammenhänge der Farbfilmverfahren untereinander. Wir werden an diesen Gedankengang eine vergleichende Betrachtung der wichtigsten Farbfilmverfahren anschließen, sobald wir sie im nächsten Abschnitt in ihren Grundzügen kennengelernt haben.

3. Kurze Beschreibung einiger typischer Farbfilm verfahren

a) Francita

Die Aufnahme ist in Abb. 50 schematisch dargestellt. Die Wiedergabe ist einfach die Umkehrung des Aufnahmestrahlenganges (Abb. 40). Es handelt sich also um ein Aufnahmeverfahren mit dreifacher Farbspaltung und um additive Wiedergabe. Negativfilm für die Aufnahme und Positivfilm für die Wiedergabe sind ganz gewöhnliche Schwarzweißfilmsorten. Ebenso unterscheidet sich der Verarbeitungsprozeß nicht von dem bei Schwarzweißaufnahmen. Das Francita-Verfahren, ebenso wie das im Prinzip gleiche Verfahren von Roux, Spektralcolor u. v. a., scheint das Kolumbusei unter den Farbverfahren zu sein: Rohfilme, Aufnahmekamera, Verarbeitung und Wiedergabeprojektor sind die gleichen wie bei Schwarzweißfilm, die einzige Veränderung ist je ein Spezialobjektiv für Aufnahme und Wiedergabegeräte. Die Gründe, die trotz ihrer Einfachheit und trotz vieljähriger Bemühungen diese Verfahren bisher scheitern ließen, sind:

1. geringe Helligkeit bei der Wiedergabe,
2. geringe Schärfe und Auflösung, d. h. mangelnder Detailreichtum der Bilder infolge des allzu kleinen Formats der Einzelbilder,
3. Deckungsfehler, d. h. farbige Konturen, besonders an den Bildrändern, teils wegen optischer Fehler der Teilbildlinsen, teils wegen der ungleichmäßigen Schrumpfung der Filme, durch die die relative Lage der Teilbildchen zueinander in wechselndem Maße geändert wird.

Eine überschlägig durchgeführte kurze Rechnung soll uns zeigen, warum wir von diesem Verfahren keine Bilder erwarten dürfen, die zuverlässig von Deckungsfehlern frei sind. Wir nehmen an, daß wir ein auf eine 8 Meter breite Leinwand aus 40 Meter Abstand projiziertes Bild aus 20 Meter Entfernung betrachten. Das Auflösungsvermögen des Auges wollen wir nur mit zwei Bogenminuten ansetzen (tatsächlich ist es noch größer); das bedeutet hier, daß zwei Bildkonturen, die etwa 1,2 cm auseinander liegen, noch getrennt wahrgenommen werden. Unter den vorausgesetzten Projektionsverhältnissen genügt bereits eine relative gegenseitige Versetzung der Teilbildchen um 0,015 mm um einen in der Projektion erkennbaren Deckungsfehler erkennen zu lassen. Die Filmschrumpfung allein bewirkt jedoch bereits relative Versetzungen von 0,04 mm, wenn Schrumpfungen bis zu 0,4% angenommen werden. Dazu kommen noch Bildfeldwölbungen in den Bildfenstern von Aufnahmeapparat und Wiedergabeprojektor, optische Linsenfehler sowie Dejustierungen der Teilbildlinsen bei Aufnahme und Wiedergabe, wodurch die Fehler in der Konturendeckung vervielfacht werden.

Bemerkenswert ist auch die überaus geringe Bildwandhelligkeit der Farbverfahren vom Francita-Typ. Sie ist einmal auf die früher bereits angeführten physikalischen Gründe zurückzuführen, die aber hier durch das winzige Format der Farbauszugbilder noch verschärft werden. An Stelle einer exakten optischen Ableitung der auftretenden Lichtverluste sei nur darauf hingewiesen, daß niemand von der Projektion eines Schmalfilms auf die riesige Wand eines großen Filmtheaters ein gleich helles und auch sonst mit einer Normalfilmprojektion gleichwertiges Bild erwarten wird. Die Filmbildgröße der Farbverfahren vom Francita-Typ entspricht aber der des Schmalfilms, so daß die entsprechenden Qualitätseinbußen unvermeidlich sind.

Es schien uns notwendig, auf diesen Typ von Farbfilmverfahren etwas genauer einzugehen. Das bestechende Moment der Einfachheit verführt immer wieder Erfinder dazu, auf diese Karte zu setzen; die prompt eintretenden oben erläuterten Fehler werden dann als leicht überwindbare Anfangsschwierigkeiten angesehen, während doch eine sorgfältige Durchrechnung der zulässigen Toleranzen für Linsenfehler, Justagefehler und Filmschrumpfung sowie eine Berechnung der erzielbaren Bildwandhelligkeit über die Grenzen des Verfahrens sofort Aufschluß geben würde.

b) Siemens-Berthon-Linsenrasterverfahren

Auch dieses Verfahren verwendet dreifache Farbspaltung für die Aufnahme und additive Wiedergabe. In Abb. 51 ist es schematisch dargestellt. Von den Verfahren vom Typ Francita unterscheidet es sich dadurch, daß die drei Farbauszüge nicht als vollständige kleine Bildchen getrennt nebeneinander angeordnet sind; hier wird jeder Farbauszug vielmehr in mikroskopisch feine Streifen aufgeteilt und mit den andern ebenso aufgeteilten Farbauszügen ineinandergeschachtelt. Es folgen also ständig fortlaufend je ein Streifchen Farbauszug Rot, Grün, Blau, Rot, Grün, Blau, Rot usw. Jedes Streifchen ist nur etwa 0,010 mm breit. Die technischen Mittel, mit denen diese erstaunliche Leistung erzielt wird, sind optischer Art. Die Zerlegung des Bildes in die 0,010 mm breiten Farbauszugstreifen bewirkt das auf dem Film selbst angebrachte Linsenraster im Verein mit einem im Objektiv angeordneten Dreizonenfarbfilter. Die Wiedergabe ist die genaue Umkehrung des Aufnahmestrahlenganges. Das heißt, daß auch der Positivfilm ein Linsenraster tragen muß, und daß in das Projektionsobjektiv ebenfalls ein Dreizonenfarbfilter einzusetzen ist. Der Vorteil dieser streifenweisen Anordnung der Farbauszüge ist, daß Deckungsfehler nicht mehr auftreten können; dafür entstehen allerdings Farbsäume, wenn die Bildkonturen zufällig parallel den dem Film aufgeprägten Zylinderlinsen verlaufen. Durch besondere optische Maßnahmen ist dieser Fehler vermeidbar.

Auf die Einzelheiten des Siemens-Verfahrens, das praktisch nicht mehr ausgeübt wird, wollen wir nicht näher eingehen; es genügt uns in diesem Zusammenhang, die Grundzüge herauszustellen. Die mit dem Siemens-Verfahren erzielte Farbgüte war bemerkenswert hoch. Dennoch gelangte es nicht zur praktischen Einführung, und zwar mit Rücksicht auf die allzu geringe Bildhelligkeit in der Projektion, die nur etwa den zehnten Teil einer unter gleichen Verhältnissen durchgeführten Schwarzweißprojektion erreichte. Trotzdem bleibt die wissenschaftliche und technische Leistung der Siemens-Laboratorien, in denen dieses Farbfilmverfahren aufs sorgfältigste und umfassend durchgearbeitet wurden, bewundernswert. Insofern ist das Siemens-Rasterverfahren ein Schulbeispiel in der Geschichte der Farbfilmtechnik: Man griff auf eine jahrzehntealte Grundidee zurück (die Grundzüge des Verfahrens waren bereits vor dem Weltkriege von Berthon und Keller-Dorian in Frankreich angegeben worden) und erwartete von einer wissenschaftlichen und technischen Ausschöpfung aller Möglichkeiten die Überwindung der im Anfangsstadium aufgetretenen Mängel. Dies gelang auch in einem bemerkenswerten Maß, wobei für das gesamte Farbfilmgebiet wesentliche Erkenntnisse gewonnen wurden. Nur die zu geringe Bildwandhelligkeit ließ sich mit den derzeitigen technischen Mitteln nicht verbessern, und daran mußte schließlich die Einführung des Verfahrens überhaupt scheitern.

c) Dufaycolor

Die Arbeitsweise dieses Verfahrens geht aus Abb. 48 hervor. Bevor bei der Aufnahme die Lichtstrahlen hinter dem Objektiv die photographische Schicht erreichen, wo sie das Bild des aufzunehmenden Objektes entwerfen, durchsetzen sie ein Farbraster, das unmittelbar im Kontakt mit der lichtempfindlichen Schicht steht. Die Belichtung und spätere Schwärzung der Schicht erfolgt also für jeden Punkt nach Maßgabe der dort wirksam gewesenen Lichtfarbe und der Farbe des Filterfeldchens. Würde z. B. gleichmäßig rotes Licht auftreffen, so wird dieses von den roten Filterstreifen durchgelassen, von den grünen und blauen Filterstückchen dagegen verschluckt werden. Nach der Entwicklung, in diesem Fall einer Umkehrentwicklung, die statt zum Negativ zum Positiv führt, erhält man unter den roten Streifen keine Silberschwärzung, unter den blauen und grünen Filtern dagegen hohe Schwärzungen. Der Film sieht also in der Durchsicht betrachtet gleichmäßig rot aus, da nur die roten Filterstreifen sichtbar sind, während die grünen und blauen Filterstreifen durch die Silberausscheidung verhüllt werden. Zu einem gleichartigen Aussehen des Bildes führt im Endresultat auch der Dufaycolor-Negativ-Positiv-Prozeß.

Obwohl es sich bei Dufaycolor um ein echtes Farbspaltungs-Aufnahmeverfahren und ein echtes additives Wiedergabeverfahren handelt, erhält man unmittelbar farbige Negative und Positive, was sonst nur bei subtraktiven Verfahren der Fall ist. Der Grund besteht darin, daß bei Dufaycolor die Farbfilter, die immer das Kennzeichen additiver Wiedergabe sind, unmittelbar und unlösbar auf dem Film selbst angebracht sind. Dieser scheinbare Vorteil ist aber auch gleichzeitig die Schwäche des Verfahrens: Die Feinheit des Farbrasters bestimmt die Auflösung und Schärfe des Bildes sowie die Farbgüte. Obwohl die Fabrikation eines derartigen Rasterfilms schwierig genug sein mag, genügt die Feinheit der Striche bei weitem noch nicht.

Das Dufaycolor-Verfahren, zu dem der Film seit Jahren von der englischen Filmfabrik Ilford hergestellt wird, ist bis jetzt noch nicht in bedeutende Anwendung gekommen; es ist auch für die Zukunft keine Aussicht dazu.

Bei der Wiedergabe besteht, wie bei allen additiven Verfahren, die Schwierigkeit, ausreichende Bildhelligkeit zu erhalten. Davon abgesehen kann der Film wie jeder subtraktive Farbfilm ohne Projektoränderung laufen, da er – wie gesagt – sein Farbfilter gleich mit sich führt.

d) Technicolor

Dem Technicolor-Verfahren kommt von den bisher genannten Farbfilmverfahren allein praktische Bedeutung zu. Die Aufnahme geschieht mit einer Strahlenteilungskamera, in der drei Normalfilme gleichzeitig laufen, und zwar der Grünauszug für sich, der Rot- und Blauauszug im Kontakt als sogenannte Bipackfilme. Es handelt sich also um ein Aufnahmeverfahren mit teilweiser Farbspaltung und -siebung. Die Anordnung entspricht Abb. 44.

Nach der Entwicklung werden von den Negativen sogenannte Matrizenfilme hergestellt, das sind Filme, die das Bild in Form eines Gelatinequellreliefs tragen. Die Matrizenfilme können bestimmte Farbstoffe aufnehmen, wobei die Menge des an jeder Stelle aufgenommenen Farbstoffes von dem Quellungszustand der Gelatine abhängt. Der so eingefärbte Matrizenfilm wird auf einen blanken Gelatinefilm umgedruckt: Werden der eingefärbte Matrizenfilm und der Gelatineblankfilm unter bestimmten Voraussetzungen in Kontakt miteinander gebracht, so zieht nach kurzer Zeit der Farbstoff vollständig in den Gelatinefilm ein, es entsteht in ihm also ein Farbstoffbild, das dem Bild auf dem Matrizenfilm aufs genaueste gleicht. Die dem Rot-, Grün- und Blauauszug entsprechenden Matrizenfilme werden nun beim Technicolor-Verfahren nacheinander jeweils mit den zugehörigen Farbstoffen eingefärbt und auf den Gelatineblankfilm umgedruckt, so daß dieser zuletzt in einer Schicht übereinander die drei Farbstoffbilder enthält. Damit ist im Prinzip die Technicolor-Kopie vorführfertig. Praktisch ist die Herstellung komplizierter; so verwendet man z. B. als Film, auf den die Farbstoffbilder umgedruckt werden, keinen Gelatineblankfilm, sondern eine Art von Positivfilm, in dem man zunächst eine sehr kontrastreiche Schwarzweißkopie aus allen drei Teilnegativen erzeugt. Durch dieses Schwarzbild, auch Schlüsselbild genannt, erhöht man die scheinbare Schärfe der nachträglich eingedruckten Farbstoffbilder; außerdem verringert man durch den Schwarzgehalt unliebsame Farbstichigkeiten. Besondere Vorkehrungen sind zu treffen, damit die drei bzw. vier Teilbilder registerhaltig werden, d. h. daß sie keine Farbsäume infolge von Deckungsfehlern aufweisen. Für die Kopienherstellung im großen wurden von Technicolor umfangreiche technische Anlagen in Amerika und England geschaffen. Während einer Reihe von Jahren war Technicolor überhaupt das einzige Verfahren, nach dem große Spielfilme hergestellt werden konnten. Neuerdings ist aber in dem deutschen Agfacolor-Verfahren ein ernsthafter Wettbewerber um den ersten Platz in der Farbfilmtechnik entstanden.

Die Wiedergabe bereitet bei Technicolor-Filmen keine Schwierigkeiten. Da der Film selbst ein Farbstoffbild trägt, also farbig ist, braucht an der Vorführmaschine keine Änderung vorgenommen zu werden: Auch die Helligkeit des Projektionsbildes entspricht etwa der des Schwarzweißbildes.

e) Pantachrom-Verfahren

Dieses interessante, vor Jahren von der Agfa entwickelte und beim erfolgreichen Durchsetzen des Agfacolor-Verfahrens wieder verlassene Farbfilmverfahren arbeitet folgendermaßen: Die Aufnahme erfolgt unter zweimaliger Farbspaltung und einmaliger Farbsiebung auf Bipackfilm, von dem der Frontfilm ein Linsenrasterfilm ist. Dieser nimmt den Grün- und Blauauszug auf, der ungerasterte Rückfilm dagegen den Rotauszug. Dementsprechend ist im Aufnahmeobjektiv ein Zonenfarbfilter mit den Farben Purpur (Blau- + Rotdurchlässigkeit) und Gelb (Grün- + Rotdurchlässigkeit) angeordnet. Kopiert wird auf einen Film, der auf der einen Seite zwei übereinandergegossene farbstoffhaltige Bromsilberschichten besitzt, und zwar eine Schicht mit Gelb-, die andere mit Purpurfarbstoff. Der Rotauszug wird auf die einfach begossene Seite kopiert und nach dem Entwickeln in bekannter Weise in ein Eisenblaubild umgewandelt. Der Linsenrasterfilm wird in einer Kontaktkopiermaschine in die Doppelschicht kopiert, und zwar der Blauauszug in die Gelbschicht, der Grünauszug in die Purpurschicht. Im Laufe des Entwicklungsprozesses werden diese Farbstoffe nach Maßgabe des entwickelten Silbers ausgebleicht.

Das Verfahren liefert also Kopien für subtraktive Wiedergabe, und zwar von hoher Farbsättigung. Der Nachteil besteht in der Gefahr von Deckungsfehlern beim Kopieren sowie in den Beschränkungen in der Aufnahmeoptik infolge der Verwendung eines Linsenrasterfilms. Obwohl das Verfahren wieder fallen gelassen wurde, ist es für unsere vergleichende Betrachtungsweise von großem Interesse, weil es ein schönes Beispiel dafür ist, wie Aufnahme- und Wiedergabemethoden beliebig koppelbar sind. Hier ist durch eine geschickte Anordnung erreicht worden, daß das Linsenrasterverfahren, das zunächst für die additive Wiedergabe prädestiniert erscheint, dennoch eine subtraktive Farbkopie liefert. Dadurch umging man die Schwierigkeit der zu geringen Bildwandhelligkeit und der Optikänderung des Projektors; angesichts dieser Vorzüge konnte man die Gefahr der Deckungsfehler beim Herstellen der Kopien in Kauf nehmen.

f) Agfacolor-Verfahren

Von diesem Verfahren wollen wir an dieser Stelle nur die Grundzüge insoweit bringen, als sie notwendig sind, um Agfacolor in die vergleichende Betrachtung der Farbfilmverfahren einreihen zu können. Im dritten Teil dieses Buches werden wir dann ausführlich auf die Eigenschaften des Verfahrens eingehen. Wir behandeln hier Agfacolor nur als Negativ-Positiv-Verfahren, während wir den Umkehrprozeß, dessen Anwendung auf den Amateurfilm beschränkt ist, übergehen.¹

Einen Überblick über den gesamten Agfacolor-Prozeß gibt Abb. 53. Die Aufnahme erfolgt auf einem Film, der übereinander die drei Farbauszugsschichten trägt; Agfacolor ist also in der Aufnahme ein reines Farbsiebverfahren. Bei der Entwicklung entstehen primär Silberbilder, aber zugleich auch Farbstoffbilder; die Silberbilder werden entfernt, nur die Farbstoffbilder werden weiter verwendet. In der oberen Schicht ist das Bild aus gelben Farbstoffen aufgebaut, in der mittleren aus purpurfarbenen, in der unteren aus blaugrünen. Zum Kopieren wird ein ebensolcher Dreischichtenfilm verwendet, dementsprechend übertragen sich die Negativfarbauszüge in die ihnen nach Farbempfindlichkeit zugeordneten Schichten des Positivfilms, der nach der Entwicklung ebenfalls unmittelbar ein farbiges Bild liefert. Wir legen an dieser Stelle weniger Wert darauf, daß der Leser diese Vorgänge schon im einzelnen versteht (das werden wir im Dritten Hauptteil nachholen), als darauf, daß er das charakteristische Merkmal des Agfacolor-Verfahrens erfaßt: der Agfacolor-Negativfilm liefert bei der Entwicklung unmittelbar ein farbiges Bild, von dem ohne weiteres auf Agfacolor-Positivfilm eine farbige Kopie hergestellt wird, die für subtraktive Farbwiedergabe geeignet ist. Insoweit hat das Agfacolor-Verfahren eine scheinbare Ähnlichkeit mit dem Dufaycolor-Verfahren, das ebenfalls unmittelbar farbige Negative und ohne weiteres projektionsfähige Positive liefert. Während aber Dufaycolor sich für die Aufnahme der Farbspaltung bedient, verwendet Agfacolor die Farbsiebung, und während bei Dufaycolor die Wiedergabe additiv erfolgt, geschieht dies bei Agfacolor subtraktiv.

4. Vergleichende Gegenüberstellung der hauptsächlichen Farbfilmverfahren

Bevor wir diesen Teil des Buches abschließen und uns der speziellen Betrachtung des Agfacolor-Verfahrens zuwenden, wollen wir durch eine kurze vergleichende Betrachtung der hauptsächlichen Farbfilmverfahren eine Nutzanwendung zu ziehen versuchen. Die große praktische Bedeutung einer solchen vergleichenden Gegenüberstellung der hauptsächlichen Farbfilmverfahren besteht darin, daß nur sie die Grundlage für eine objektive Wertung und Abwägung der Aussichten zur Verwirklichung jedes Farbfilm Verfahrens gibt. Insofern ist dieses Kapitel nicht nur für den Techniker, sondern auch für den Geldgeber von neu auszuarbeitenden Farbfilmverfahren bestimmt.

Im Vergleich zum Schwarzweißfilm verlangt jedes Farbfilmverfahren unweigerlich einen höheren technischen Aufwand. Setzen wir einmal in erster Annäherung den technischen Aufwand bei jedem Farbfilmverfahren in seiner Gesamtheit als gleich groß voraus, wobei wir unter “technischem Aufwand” alle technischen Maßnahmen von der Rohfilmherstellung bis zum Projizieren des farbigen Bildes auf die Theaterleinwand verstehen. Wir unterteilen den gesamten technischen Aufwand weiterhin auf die Untergruppen:

a) Rohfilmherstellung für die Aufnahme
b) Aufnahmeeinrichtungen
c) Bearbeitung in der Kopieranstalt
d) Rohfilmherstellung für die Wiedergabe
e) Wiedergabeeinrichtungen im Theater

und veranschaulichen in Abb. 54, linke Hälfte, für die hauptsächlichen Farbfilmverfahren, wie es mit dem technischen Aufwand in diesen Untergruppen im Vergleich zum Schwarzweißfilm steht. Je höher sich die Fläche über die Grundlinie erhebt, desto größer ist der technische Aufwand einzuschätzen. Es ist klar, daß es sich dabei um eine subjektive Schätzung handelt, die nur eine Vorstellung von der Verteilung der technischen Schwierigkeiten liefern soll. Wir erkennen, daß es alle Variationsmöglichkeiten gibt: Der technische Aufwand kann auf zwei, drei, vier oder alle fünf Untergruppen verteilt sein. Für die Praxis am unangenehmsten ist es, wenn die Wiedergabeeinrichtungen besondere Aufwendungen erfordern, da es sich hier um eine sehr große Zahl von Apparaten, die zu ändern sind, handelt. Die Verfahren, die in Spalte e höheren Aufwand als Schwarzweißfilm verursachen, gehen also von vornherein mit einem Nachteil ins Rennen. Unbeliebt sind auch Änderungen an den Aufnahmeeinrichtungen (Spalte b), weil jede vom Schwarzweißfilm abweichende Konstruktion und Bedienung der Aufnahmekamera eine Erschwerung und Verteuerung des Atelierbetriebs mit sich bringt. Verfahren ohne besondere Ansprüche in dieser Spalte werden sich daher leichter praktisch einführen lassen als die andern. Besondere Maßnahmen in der Kopieranstalt (Spalte c) können dagegen leichter in Kauf genommen werden.

Die Kopieranstalt ist ohnehin als technischer Betrieb anzusehen, dem ein erhöhter Aufwand für den Farbfilm schon zugemutet werden kann. Allerdings bedeutet großer Aufwand an dieser Stelle in der Regel auch größeren Zeitbedarf für die Farbfilmherstellung. Dies kann insbesondere den Produktionsablauf eines Farbfilms empfindlich stören, wenn etwa die Musterkopien nicht innerhalb 24 Stunden geliefert werden können. Schließlich bleibt noch übrig, daß die Schwierigkeiten hauptsächlich auf die Rohfilmherstellung verlagert werden (Spalte a und d). Es leuchtet nach dem vorher Gesagten ein, daß dies eine vorzügliche Lösung sein muß; die Untergruppen b und e bleiben gänzlich unbetroffen, die Untergruppe c wird nur mäßig berührt. Vom Standpunkt des anwendenden Filmtechnikers, dessen Aufgabengebiet von der Aufnahme im Atelier bis zur Wiedergabe im Theater reicht, ist es geradezu die Lösung, denn sie verlagert den Hauptteil der Farbfilmschwierigkeiten sozusagen außer Haus. Dies ist auch ökonomisch eine ausgezeichnete Lösung: Jeder Ateliertag kostet Zehntausende von Mark; die paar hundert täglich gedrehten Meter Film stellen also eine äußerst wertvolle Investition dar. Je schwieriger ein Verarbeitungsprozeß ist, desto mehr Fehlerquellen hat er. Muß man also mit dem die Aufnahmen bereits tragenden Film umständlich manipulieren, um zum farbigen Bild zu kommen, so setzt man damit die wertvollen Aufnahmen allen diesen Verarbeitungsfehlerquellen aus. Sind dagegen die technischen Schwierigkeiten der Farbfilmherstellung im wesentlichen bereits bei der Fabrikation des Rohfilms, also noch bevor der Film bebildert wurde, überwunden worden, so verringern sich damit die Fehlerquellen, denen der Film nach der Belichtung ausgesetzt werden muß. Dabei ist vorausgesetzt, daß die bei der Rohfilmherstellung auftretenden Fabrikationsfehler durch eine sorgfältige Kontrolle entdeckt werden können, so daß also ein völlig einwandfreies Filmmaterial zur Aufnahme verwendet wird. Man kann demnach erwarten, daß Farbfilmverfahren, die auf vielen oder sogar allen Teilgebieten der Filmherstellung zusätzliche Schwierigkeiten machen, es schwerer haben werden, sich praktisch durchzusetzen, als solche, die nur wenige Teilgebiete beanspruchen.

Diese vergleichende Betrachtung würde unvollständig sein, wenn nicht außer den Schwierigkeiten auch die Ergebnisse der verschiedenen typischen Verfahren untereinander verglichen würden. Für die Bewertung der Ergebnisse haben wir in Abb. 54, rechte Hälfte, drei photographisch besonders wichtige Größen zugrunde gelegt, nämlich die Schärfenzeichnung des projizierten Bildes (Spalte a), das mögliche Auftreten von Deckungsfehlern und Farbsäumen (Spalte b) und die Helligkeit des Projektionsbildes (Spalte c). Die Bewertung dieser drei Größen ist auch hier im Verhältnis zum Schwarzweißfilm angegeben. Das heißt also z. B., daß bei Technicolor die Schärfenzeichnung etwas schlechter ist als beim Schwarzweißfilm, daß ferner die Gefahr der Deckungsfehler vorhanden ist, während die Projektionshelligkeit der vom Schwarzweißfilm gleicht. Dagegen ist z. B. das Francitaverfahren in allen drei Punkten dem Schwarzweißfilm stark unterlegen, wie aus den großen roten Flächen hervorgeht. Das Agfacolorverfahren indessen erreicht in allen drei Bewertungspunkten den Schwarzweißfilm; es zeichnet sich dadurch vor allen anderen Verfahren aus.

Abb. 54 stellt eine Art von technischer Bilanz der typischen Farbfilmverfahren dar, wobei die linke Hälfte die Sollseite, nämlich den technischen Aufwand, und die rechte Hälfte die Habenseite, nämlich das technische Ergebnis, bedeutet, und zwar beide im Vergleich zum normalen Schwarzweißverfahren dargestellt. Die Habenseite der Bilanz weist allerdings “rote Zahlen” auf, das heißt, sie ist negativ, sobald die Beurteilungsgrößen von den entsprechenden Schwarzweißwerten überhaupt abweichen. Das ist darin begründet, daß selbstverständlich kein Farbfilm etwa ein helleres Bild oder weniger Deckungsfehler liefern kann als der als Vergleichsbasis dienende Schwarzweißfilm. Aus dieser Bilanz kann man allerlei herauslesen, z. B. daß ein großer Aufwand ein besseres Ergebnis liefert als ein kleiner Aufwand, wie z. B. der Vergleich Agfacolor – Francita zeigt. Dies ist zwar eine Trivialität, dennoch hat sie sich auf dem Farbfilmgebiet hoch nicht allgemein durchgesetzt. Ferner, daß ein großer Aufwand allein noch keinen Erfolg verbürgt, er muß auch an den richtigen Teilgebieten eingesetzt sein (vergleiche Agfacolor – Dufaycolor); ferner, daß die additiven Wiedergabeverfahren (Siemens, Dufay, Francita) sämtlich eine schlechtere Bilanz aufweisen als die subtraktiven Verfahren (Agfacolor, Technicolor, Pantachrom); ferner, daß das Agfacolor-Verfahren unter allen Wettbewerbern weitaus an der Spitze liegt. Es ist selbstverständlich, daß für diese Gegenüberstellung die Bewertung verschiedenartiger Vor- und Nachteile nur qualitativ erfolgen kann. Trotzdem genügt die Genauigkeit der Angaben, um die wesentlichen Unterschiede deutlich aufzuzeigen.

Der Leser vermißt vielleicht in Abb. 54 eine Spalte “Güte der Farbwiedergabe”, denn schließlich scheint es das erste Kriterium eines Farbfilmverfahrens zu sein, “wie die Farben kommen”. Tatsächlich jedoch ist dies das unwichtigste Merkmal für eine strenge und objektive Abwägung der Aussichten der verschiedenen Farbverfahren. Mit etwas paradoxer Übertreibung läßt sich behaupten, daß die Farbgüte bei allen Verfahren gleich groß werden kann, wenn nur die für jedes Verfahren spezifischen Arbeitsbedingungen genügend streng gehandhabt werden. Bei einzelnen Verfahren würde dabei allerdings ein in der Praxis undurchführbar hoher technischer Aufwand getrieben werden müssen. Gerade unter der – theoretischen – Voraussetzung gleichwertiger Farbergebnisse bei allen Verfahren erweist sich unsere technische Bilanz als stichhaltig.

Tatsächlich hat auch die Praxis gezeigt, daß keine noch so bestechende Farbgüte ein Verfahren durchzusetzen vermag, dessen photographische Habenseite, gemäß Abb. 54, rechte Hälfte, nicht in Ordnung ist, während selbst eine im Anfang wirklich bescheidene Farbtreue dennoch die sofortige praktische Einführung eines Verfahrens nicht verhindert, dessen Habenseite in der technischen Bilanz günstig ist. Gute Schärfenzeichnung, Freiheit von Deckungsfehlern und große Helligkeit des projizierten Bildes sind vom Ergebnis her gesehen die wirklich ausschlaggebenden Faktoren auch beim Farbfilm.”

(Schmidt, Richard / Kochs, Adolf (1943): Farbfilmtechnik. Eine Einführung für Filmschaffende. Berlin: Hesse, pp. 54-72. (Schriftenreihe der Reichsfilmkammer, 10.) (in German)

×

“PRESENT COLOR TREND IS TOWARD SUBDUED HUES

Gilbert Betancourt

History tells us that man first used color some one hundred and sixty centuries B. C. During these many centuries he has gone from the savage’s bright hues and contrasting color combinations to the present trend toward true color harmony in a refined form and subdued or pastel hues.

Man has also made a vast science of the study of color, with thousands of books on the subject; but once the few fundamentals and the colorman’s vocabulary have been learned, the student can begin acquiring his own experience and also interpreting lessons from nature, the oldest and best colorist of all.

The units of measure of color are as follows: Chroma is the measure of purity, and it indicates either the absence of gray or the amount of it mixed into the color. Value measures the lightness or darkness of the color, a light value often being called a “tint” and a dark one a “shade.”

HUE THE THIRD UNIT

The I. E. Du Pont De Nemours Company calibrates its “Duco” lacquers in some twenty different values. Finally, hue is the third unit of measure and indicates the position the color occupies in the spectrum, also referring to that which makes one color differ from another.

Munsell has taken ten distinct hues from the spectrum and produced some four hundred different color units by varying their value and their chroma; sufficient material for any conceivable problem involving color.

If we take the solar spectrum and wrap it around a circle so that the hue bands lie radially, we obtain a most convenient arrangement or chart called the hue cycle or circuit.

If the three primary colors – red, yellow and blue – are placed equidistantly about this circle, and their three half-and-half combinations – orange, green and purple – or secondary colors, half-way between the component primaries, filling the six spaces then left with intermediate hues, we obtain eighteen different bands as a basis for all color combinations. The longest wave infra-red, beyond the red; and the shortest wave ultra-violet, beyond the violet, do not appear in this hue circle, both being invisible. The latter is very important, however, to the outdoor photographer on account of its great actinism, making the use of filters necessary. The infra-red is also coming to the front in ultra long distance aerial photography and in motion picture night effects.

COLOR HARMONY

Color harmony means the art of arranging colors for pleasing effects. It is simple enough to define, yet in practice calls for genius similar to that of the musical composer, for there are no hard and fast rules. One must consider the mood or feeling to be expressed or interpreted, as well as the environment in which the color scheme is to appear.

There are at least five basic kinds of color harmony:

(A) Monochromatic harmony, which simply arranges different values and chroma of the same color.

(B) Complementary harmony, which places colors diametrically opposite in the hue-cycle together, also in their various values and chroma.

(C) Triadic harmony, which arranges the three colors at the corners of any equilateral triangle within the hue cycle.

(D) Analogous harmony, which groups colors that are closely related to one another; for example, red, purple-red and orange-red.

(E) Split-complementary harmony, which uses not the exact complementary of any color but its adjoining relatives. The paint masters, in portraying life on canvas, fixed and arranged their colors without fear or thought of anyone shifting them around afterward. But when we paint our pictures with a motion picture camera this is not the case; actors, setting and the camera itself can and do move, and each move can change the compositional color relationships.

COLOR MOVIE PROBLEMS

Thus the cameramaster has the new problem of having to avoid clashing color combinations at any time during a scene – a problem which requires thorough study and careful color designing before the scene can be recorded.

Since the color sensation received from any object depends upon the nature of the light illuminating the scene, set lighting becomes doubly important, particularly when the same set or players are to be photographed under natural and then again under artificial lighting which, in the case of standard incandescent lighting, is generally rich in yellow.

On the other hand the color-movie artist has at his disposal greater resources than the painting master. He can vary the color components of his lights and, to a certain degree, vary his exposures in order to change the effects of a set or a scene to harmonize with the atmosphere of the story. It has been demonstrated that by changing the color components of lighting one can change the color mood of a scene completely.

COLOR REACTIONS

The most important individual characteristic of the various colors is their association with heat or cold. Long wave length colors such as reds, oranges and yellows are stimulating colors and through association give us the effect of warmth. At the other end of the spectrum we have the short wave length colors which seem to recede from us, actually rest the eye, and give the effect of coolness. These are greens, blues and purples.

Certain hues of dull or bilish greens, and certain blends of green and brown, as well as some browns, often produce reactions of sea and air sickness. Their use should therefore be avoided in ships or aircraft.

There is one more important association: that pertaining to either femininity or masculinity. The delicate hues of pink, violet, orchid and related colors are considered decidedly as feminine, while chromatically rich primaries such as red, blue and yellow are more masculine.

Finally one may speak of certain very neutral hues of browns and other mixtures as being indifferent and even “muddy” colors. Their use is not safe and often indicates bad taste.

TRENDS IN COLOR HARMONY

While contrasting or complementary color combinations will continue being used for advertising, traffic signs and posters, the trend of good taste is toward the more subdued types of harmony such as the analogous, the split-complementary or even the monochromatic.

Pastel shades are, of course, less tiring and therefore preferable for the home and public rooms. For apparel one can resort to brighter colors and color-schemes since one changes frequently.

Here one may lay emphasis on the very important element of time. Generally speaking the color contrast in any arrangement of hues should vary as an inverse function of time. In other words, if a particular color scheme is to be viewed for a long period of time it should be more subdued than if intended for only a short period.

COLOR HINTS FROM NATURE

The lessons derived from nature are numerous, and they support all good theory on color. The most apparent are:

(A) Simplicity. The predominating color scheme in nature is of course greens and blues. Both are cool and restful hues. They would not constitute good color harmony, however, if they adjoined too sharply: but very definite transition mixtures of blue-greens and green-blues as the landscape recedes toward the horizon give us perfect analogous harmony. Often when one is close to a green hill or mountain these transition bands are not visible, but the sky or blue mountains in the background are so far removed that the picture becomes a double landscape, destroying the clash.

(B) Moderate use of warm colors. Nature brings into the landscape bright reds, oranges, yellows, purple-reds, etc., only in very small areas, such as flowers, fruits, birds and other incidentals, scattering them all over the picture, thus brightening the scene without a general clashing effect. When man wants to reproduce this ensemble he should maintain similar proportioning.

(C) Water. This element has the well known property of reflecting and blending the colors above, thus providing somewhat of a carpet and a mirror to complete the perfect landscape.

(D) Twilight. When a display of warm colors appears in nature over a very large area, such as a field of desert flowers in the spring, fall foliage, etc., it is of comparatively short duration and has the effect of cheering us up. Thus also a warm sunrise wakes us up and gives us new energy and hope for the problems ahead, while a red and gold sunset spread out over most of the heavens above closes with a warm farewell and acts as a mild tonic at the end of a tiring day.” (Betancourt, Gilbert (1937): Present Color Trend is Toward Subdued Hues. In: American Cinematographer, Aug. 1937, p. 317 and p. 352.)

Tags

• restrained
• harmony
• taste

×

“LOW KEY LIGHTING MAY BE AS EASY IN COLOR AS IT IS IN MONOCHROME

W. Howard Greene

Low-key lighting has always been a favorite means of increasing the pictorial and dramatic effectiveness of motion picture scenes. And now that so many important productions are being photographed in natural color, cinematographers are learning that low-key lightings can be even more effective in color than they are in black-and-white.

What is more to the point, we are all of us learning that low-key lighting in color is every bit as easy and as practical as in monochrome. I think the somewhat common misconception that such is not the case can be traced to the limitations under which the Technicolor process operated when the three-color process was first introduced.

At that time limitations in both printing and laboratory processing definitely restricted the range of visual brightnesses which a cinematographer could attempt to record on his negatives.

Moreover, the lighting equipment then available was by no means satisfactorily efficient. Much of the spotlighting equipment then used dated back to the pre-talkie days of orthochromatic film and “hard” light, and a further serious shortcoming lay in the lack of adequate medium and low powered spotlighting units.

EFFECTS RANGE LIMITED

The only possible course was to lay a good foundation of general lighting – for which Mole-Richardson had already developed Side Arcs and Scoops – and to build up key and modeling lighting as best one could with the obsolescent sun arcs and rotaries which were all we had to use for such service.

Under such circumstances it was often necessary to use more light and more lamps than were truly desirable. This inevitably limited the range of effects which could safely be attempted.

I do not think it has been adequately brought out that Technicolor cinematography at that time stood at about the same relative stage of development as did sound back in 1928, when only a scant handful of talking pictures had been made.

Progress in sound came only as experience brought forth improved equipment and techniques. During the last year progress in color cinematography has been advanced in the same way.

From the cinematographer’s viewpoint one of the most notable advances has been in the development of a line of truly modern lighting units. As soon as the first pressing need for modern general lighting units had been met with the side arcs and scoops, Mole-Richardson engineers, in cooperation with the Technicolor staff, turned to the development of a full range of modern arc spotlighting units.

The spotlights now used on Technicolor sets are markedly in advance of the types most frequently used on black-and-white productions.

Ranging from a handy little 65-ampere spotlight up through the 90-ampere H. I. arc and the 150-ampere Ultra H. I. arc, all our modern units are based on the same Fresnel-lensed optical system used in the familiar incandescent Solarspots.

ONE DISPLACES TWO

Their beams are smooth, precisely controllable, and flexible. They burn steadily and quietly. It is a fact that where at the time we made Becky Sharp and Trail of the Lonesome Pine we would use two lamps, today we need use but one. This in itself broadens the range of lighting effects a cinematographer can use.

An equal improvement has been made in the laboratory treatment of Technicolor film, and especially in the printing methods. These advances have been made in an infinite number of details – too many to be discussed here – and cumulative effect is that the laboratory is able to use lighter, more normal negatives, and to give better, more uniform prints.

It was my good fortune to photograph A Star Is Born just as these improved methods were being put into practice, and to reap the benefits of having my release prints made by the improved methods.

As a result I was able to go farther in the direction of low-key lightings than had previously been advisable in color filming. The mood and action of the story also favored low-key treatment, and I had the good fortune to be working with a director and a producer who appreciated the dramatic value of such camerawork.

The result was that for many of my effect lightings I found myself approaching parity with the lighting levels and balances the average monochrome cinematographer would use for the same scenes. Since then, not only I but many other cameramen who have made Technicolor productions have been able to advance still nearer monochrome standards.

In producing any type of effect lighting in modern Technicolor, the photographer can light his action much more flatly than he would find necessary in black-and-white. In color, of course, one has actual color contrasts to give separation, where in monochrome such separation to a great extent must be achieved by lighting contrasts. With the advantage of natural color contrasts, lighting contrasts are not nearly so necessary.

SAME AS BLACK AND WHITE

It must be understood that this flatter lighting is achieved exactly as one would do it in monochrome. The days when the flatter lighting of a color scene required a forest of side arcs on the floor and row after row of scoops overhead, giving an almost characterless, shadowless lighting, are definitely and permanently gone.

Instead, the flatter – or to be exact, the softer lighting, is achieved by economizing on the number of sources used and by restraining the amount of back and rim lighting used.

Furthermore, we can now use smaller units. Where a few years ago we would have to use, say, a 90-ampere H. I. arc we can now use a 65-ampere unit. Where in Becky Sharp we would find a big 36-inch sun arc necessary we can use a 150-ampere Ultra H. I. arc, or even the 90-ampere unit. On many occasions we have made close shots in which we found only a side arc necessary as a key light.

Similarly, the amount of general lighting needed for color scenes has reached virtual parity with the best practice in black-and-white. The forest of overhead Scoops which once characterized Technicolor sets has disappeared. The only time I used these units on A Star Is Born was on a few large sets and for occasional filler service in cramped quarters.

In low-key monochrome scenes it is often very effective to have relatively strongly lit actors moving in front of a dark background. This effect is even more striking in color, for the natural coloring of the players’ complexions and costumes furnishes a striking natural contrast with the dark background. A sure way to make any color stand out vividly is to play it against a dark background.

ADVANTAGES IN COLOR

In making such scenes in monochrome we would ordinarily use at least some back lighting to give a sharply defined separation between figure and background. In Technicolor the natural color contrast does this for us.

Cinematographers long have realized that one way to correct undesirable tonal contrasts in a set is to keep the light away from the disturbing area. The effect is even more marked in color. The extent to which set coloration can be controlled by lighting is a constant surprise to newcomers in color camerawork.

A normal illumination level will give a normal color rendition; as the illumination is lessened, the color grows darker and less obtrusive, until, if all light is excluded, even a brilliantly colored area can appear virtually black. In this connection the Fresnel-lensed M-R spotlighting units are most helpful, for their construction completely does away with spilled light.

Balancing shadows in Technicolor is no more of a problem than in black-and-white. Generally speaking, one will get better results with a slightly smaller range between highlight and shadow illumination levels than would be the case in monochrome, but with this slight modification, the balancing of illumination is closely the same.

In fact, as one eminent monochrome cameraman recently remarked, between the more efficient lighting equipment used for Technicolor and the more natural lightings possible, modern color cinematography is actually simpler than black-and-white.

In closing, I would like to take this opportunity of expressing to my fellow-members of the A.S.C. my appreciation for the Academy color award which their votes brought me, and to the operative crew – Arthur Arling, operative; Nelson Cordis, technician, and Thad Brooks, assistant – who worked so splendidly with me in making the picture which won the award.”

(Greene, W. Howard (1938): Low Key Lighting May be as Easy in Color as it is in Monochrome. In: American Cinematographer, April 1938, p. 151.)

Tags

• lighting
• low-key

×

“Am 17. Januar 1939 hielt der Protokollant einer Sitzung des Ufa-Vorstandes fest, daß “die amerikanischen Filme nicht mehr in Ur- und Erstaufführung gespielt werden sollen”. Also fanden keine Technicolor-Träume mehr in Deutschland statt, zumindest nicht mehr im Kino, wo das kollektive Bewußtsein am leichtesten zu beeinflussen war. Eine technische Zivilisation der westlichen Welt, oft auf dem Niveau von Kinder- und Jugendphantasien, Abenteuern und Historiendramen, nun mit einem Mal: wie vom Winde verweht.”

(Meder, Thomas (1999): Die Volksgemeinschaft in Farbe. In: Weltwunder der Kinematographie, 5, 1999, pp. 107-116, on p. 108.) (in German)

×

“The first three-colour subtractive system

Introducing a third primary colour, blue, into its subtractive colour technology, and being thus theoretically capable of incorporating the visible spectrum much more widely and accurately into its aesthetic and technical ambit, the new system worked as follows:

The Technicolor three-strip camera exposed three separate black-and-white negatives simultaneously through a single lens. Immediately behind this lens was a beam-splitter made by two prisms of optical glass which were gold coated (later silver flecked) to produce a slight mirrored effect. The purpose of the beam-splitter was to reflect part of the light to an aperture to the left. The remaining light passed directly through to a normally positioned aperture.
The ray of light that passed directly through the prism reached a green filter that allowed only green light (or a green image) to reach the negative behind it. The reflected beam of light was directed to a standard bi-pack containing two negatives. The front film carried a red-orange dye which absorbed the blue light and filtered out the red rays. These rays passed through to register on the rear film of the pair.⁴ […]

The next step was to produce negatives from the exposed film and then to produce matrices from the negatives. As in the two-colour matrix process, the matrices were dyed and then used to produce positive prints:

While the matrices were being made, a special dye-receptive blank film was prepared. If the customer wanted prints with optical sound tracks, the silver sound record was incorporated in the blank film at this stage. If the customer’s prints were to carry magnetic sound tracks, the silver sound record was omitted and the magnetic tracks were applied after the dye transfer. Each matrix was dyed on a dye transfer machine with its complementary, or opposite, colour. The red matrix was brought into contact with a blue-green dye called cyan (blue-green being complementary to red). The green matrix was dyed with a magenta dye (complementary to green) and the blue matrix was dyed with a yellow dye (complementary to blue)…
When each of the three matrices had been processed through the dye transfer machine, the once blank film contained all the colors necessary for excellent reproduction of the color scene and was ready for delivery to exhibitors for projection. Where yellow dye was present, blue light was subtracted from the projector’s white light source. Similarly, red was subtracted where cyan was present and green where magenta occurred. Absence of all dyes resulted in white light on the screen. The presence of all dyes in sufficient quantities created an absence of light, or a black image.⁵

Technicolor had completed the production of its first three-colour camera in May 1932. However, a number of factors militated against its widespread use, and contributed towards determining the channels for its use over the next few years. The new process was expensive. The cameras alone cost some $30,000 to build. Prints were expensive. And for producers there were extra costs involved in lighting, costuming, and scenery. The new process emerged at the end of the period of popularity of the two-colour process, whose lack of sustained success and impact on attendance and box-office figures during a period of depression tended to make major producers both sceptical and cautious. This scepticism and caution tended to be shared by those writing about colour technology at this time. Adrian Bernard Klein, for instance, writing in 1936, argues that the industry is unlikely to see a rapid move toward the adoption of Technicolor’s system:

Not the least cogent reason for thinking this is the cost of negative and positive film stock for colour as compared to black-and-white. Unless remarkable economies can be effected on some other important items of the cost of making a film, it is very difficult to see how the extra cost of negative and positive is going to be borne by producers; especially as it is universally admitted that it is going to be impossible to make more out of a film just because it happens to be in colour, for the very simple reason that the public won’t pay more to see it.⁶

In consequence, Technicolor had difficulties in finding a producer willing to use its new process. Rather than becoming involved directly in production itself, it instead offered the process to two small independent producers, Walt Disney and Pioneer Films (Merian C. Cooper and John Whitney), both of whom, as Gorham Kindem has noted, were either previously or subsequently involved in other technological innovations.⁷

It was Disney who first used the process in his ‘Silly Symphonies’ cartoon series. The first, Flowers and Trees, and the subsequent The Three Little Pigs were enormously successful. Both won Oscars, and The Three Little Pigs grossed something approaching a quarter of a million dollars. Disney was offered a three-year contract for the exclusive use of three-colour Technicolor in the cartoon field, but, partly due to pressure from other major producers, this was subsequently reduced to one year. By 1934, Fox, MGM and Goldwyn were using three-colour sequences in films like The Cat and the Fiddle, Kid Millions and The House of Rothschild.

Pioneer produced the first three-colour live action film, La Cucaracha, in 1934. Encouraged by the success of La Cucaracha, Pioneer went on the following year to make the first three-colour feature, Becky Sharp, which proved, however, to be a commercial failure. Cooper and Whitney then went on to join with David O. Selznick to establish Selznick International, which took over the contract with Technicolor. Selznick went on to produce three very successful colour features in successive years in the late 1930s, A Star is Born (1937), The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1938) and Gone With The Wind (1939), the latter helped by the introduction of refinements by Technicolor yielding superior colour rendition, less grain, sharper definition and greater depth of focus and requiring much lower lighting levels.

Technicolor in the 1940s and 1950s

The success of these films, and the availability of the new, improved three-colour system led to a greater use of the three-colour system during the 1940s but a number of factors still continued to limit the production of colour features. Kindem lists some of them as follows:

1) Technicolor’s virtual monopoly over three-color services for feature films, 2) the high cost of color, and 3) limited markets for color. ⁸

Although, as Kindem suggests, there is evidence that Technicolor did not intentionally limit its colour facilities in order to maximise its profits, it was nevertheless the case that Technicolor’s virtual monopoly over three-colour processes, combined with its policy of control over the use of the process, substantially limited the supply and availability of colour during the 1940s. From a rough average of just under 20 films per year in the early 1940s to a figure of 46 in 1949, the number of Technicolor films certainly increased, but would seem to have remained below the level of demand, as is evidenced by the anti-trust suits initiated against both Technicolor and Eastman Kodak in the mid-1940s. Such suits were stimulated by Technicolor’s policy of total secrecy and security as regards its technical and scientific research and by its insistence on having an adviser or advisory team present during production. Its security measures became increasingly rigid:

With competitors on the scene, the by-words were ‘top security’. Very few people were privy to the know-how and workings within the various departments, or to the methods and procedures that were discovered (and constantly being improved) solely by trial and error. Almost no one was allowed to roam at will, even insiders. It was impossible to gain admittance to the processing lab, for example, without a pass or the personal accompaniment of top-level management. Those employees who worked on an operational level were compartmentalized and stayed exclusively within the boundaries of their specialities. Rarely was anyone transferred to another department or division and only a small number had an overall view of the workings of the company.⁹

As Lewis Jacobs, writing in 1939, points out, the situation with Technicolor and its facilities was similar to the situation pertaining ‘in the early days when attempts were made to keep the movie projector in the hands of the few.’¹⁰ Technicolor equipment could not be bought, it could only be rented from Technicolor itself. Jacobs goes on to quote an article written for The American Cinematographer complaining about secrecy surrounding Technicolor’s processes:

If the color enthusiasts would turn over their processes intact to practical studio men, they might iron out the kinks from a practical angle and develop color’s commercial application… Reports mainly have it that current color processes have all too definite limitations in reproduction capability under actual production conditions, that too little now is known about the play of light on colors, that cameras need design improvement and a wider range of performance, that processing is done behind barred doors, that costs are needlessly high, that the whole subject is smothered in uncalled-for pseudo-theory and technicalities and that young blades from science academies are not necessarily picture producers.¹¹

Such a quote is evidence not only of the frustration over the secrecy and control that Technicolor pursued, but also, in its call for work on colour from elsewhere to be handed over to studio technicians, of a wish on the part of producers to have access to and control over an increasingly popular and potentially profitable aspect of film technology. Control was exercised not only at the level of the laboratory, but also at the level of production, through Technicolor’s colour consultancy service:

Starting in the mid-1920s, Technicolor had made available a color consulting service to work with the studios and designers prior to and during film production. Now that service was not only available but required – and expanded to include the upgrading of virtually every facet involved in color photography. A contract with Technicolor was a package that included not only the rental of the three-color camera but a Technicolor cameraman who worked as an advisor to the studio’s cinematographer; advice given to art directors, set directors and designers, wardrobe and property departments; use of make-up and assistance to the studio make-up departments; the requirements of special lighting equipment; and laboratory processing up to and including the final release print.¹²

This service, in addition to helping maintain Technicolor’s monopoly, its control not only of colour technology as such, but also of colour aesthetics, contributed also to the costs of using colour. It was estimated that in 1935, colour added some 30 per cent to the production costs of a feature; in 1949, some 10 per cent.¹³ In addition, during the 1940s, the differential costs between distributing colour and black-and-white feature films increased:

The cost of Technicolor release prints increased from about 5 c/ft in 1940 to about 7 c/ft in 1949, while the cost of black-and-white prints remained about the same, almost 3 c/ft. In short, in terms of both production and distribution, it was obviously much less expensive to use black-and-white for a feature film than color, and hence, the cost differential between color and black-and-white limited color feature film diffusion during the 1940s.¹⁴

Finally, as Kindem has elaborated, there was still some uncertainty as to the market value of colour (as opposed to black and white) through the 1940s and into the 1950s. Colour was still overwhelmingly associated, aesthetically, with spectacle and fantasy. In consequence, colour continued to be regularly used in genres like the musical, the western and the adventure film, as well as in Disney’s feature cartoons. Colour was used, through the 1940s and into the 1950s, in films like Pinocchio, The Return of Frank James, The Thief of Baghdad, Billy the Kid, Dumbo, Western Union, Arabian Nights, Jungle Book, Broadway Rhythm, Buffalo Bill, Kismet, Meet Me In St Louis, Anchors Away, State Fair, The Bandit of Sherwood Forest, Ziegfeld Follies, Sinbad the Sailor, The Pirate, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and The Three Musketeers. Outside these genres, however, the aesthetic and market values of colour were less certain, less predictable and less profitable. Kindem finds that:

The markets for color were not significantly greater for color features than for black-and- white features in the 1940s and 1950s. Of the top grossing films for each year from 1940 to 1949, 5 1/2 were in black-and-white and 4 1/2 were in Technicolor. In 1948 Variety estimated that color added about 25% to a feature film’s earning power.¹⁵

However, Kindem argues, additional production costs for colour might come to around $10,000 on an average film costing about $1 million, and to this had to be added as much again for the increased cost of distribution prints. Kindem finds that 50 per cent of all features had receipts of $ 1 million or more; thus on an average film in colour the additional 20 per cent costs would be barely covered by the additional 25 per cent revenue. He therefore concludes that doubts about the commercial value of colour placed limits on colour feature film diffusion.

The period between the mid to late 1940s and the early to mid 1950s was one which saw a number of important developments, shifts and changes in the field of commercial colour feature film production. In 1947, the United States Department of Justice filed an anti-trust suit against Technicolor, charging restraint of trade; in 1949 Eastman Kodak introduced a single strip colour negative and printing film stock which opened the field to a number of new commercial colour processes; television began to exert enormous (and complex) pressures upon the film industry, shifting, among other things, the value of colour in film; and, partly as a response to this pressure, the industry introduced a number of technical and aesthetic innovations (notably widescreen) which required certain modifications to existing colour processes. Technicolor survived all these changes. Indeed, it retained a hegemonic position. But that position was based on different factors from the one it occupied in the 1930s and 1940s. Before going on to discuss these changes and developments in a little more detail, it is therefore probably worth saying something about the foundations of its early success at this point.

The contexts of Technicolor’s success

Technicolor’s early success, its domination of the colour field in commercial film production during the 1930s and 1940s, was clearly due to the superiority of its colour technology and its colour processes, especially after the introduction of three-colour Technicolor in the early 1930s. That superiority gave it a clear lead in the market, enabling it to build up the position of near monopoly which eventually led to the anti-trust suit. But Technicolor’s monopolistic position resulted not just from the colour processes themselves, but also from the practices in which Technicolor as a company engaged and from the consequent position it established vis-à-vis production, and, hence, Hollywood’s major studios.

Technicolor, historically, was an off-shoot of Kalmus, Comstock and Westcott, an engineering firm engaging in technical research and offering technical consultation and advice. Its personnel were highly trained science graduates, the firm and the personnel having strong links with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. There was hence a sound scientific, technical and engineering base for the subsequent development of its colour processes and equipment. Compared to Eastman Kodak, Technicolor was a small company. Its success lay in taking financial risks and in investing heavily in research and development. Gorham Kindem compares this aspect of the two companies:

Technicolor’s major inventions involved substantial economic risk. Technicolor continued to invest heavily in research and development despite the fact that between 1923 and 1935 Technicolor, Inc., accumulated a net loss of $2 million. In 1931, Technicolor invested over $180,000 in research and development. Despite the fact that Technicolor possessed a virtual monopoly on three-color for feature films throughout the 1930s, it didn’t actually profit after taxes until 1939.

Eastman Kodak, on the other hand, invested over $ 15 million in color photographic research between 1921 and 1948, but it also had net sales of $435 million compared to Technicolor’s $20 million in 1948. In 1.948, Eastman Kodak also secured its major patents upon colored couplers [substances in the film emulsion or developing solution which form colour dyes during photochemical processing of the exposed film] for Eastman Color, while it invested $3 million in color research. Obviously, Eastman Kodak never undertook financial risks proportionately equal to Technicolor’s in its quest to secure a virtual monopoly over film color through patent protection of its major inventions.¹⁶

Having established itself, Technicolor protected its position in two ways. First, it developed a policy of strict secrecy, leading to the kind of complex intra- and inter-departmental security described already. Secondly, it refused to challenge the studios in the sphere of production. It did produce films, early on, but much preferred to contract its facilities, expertise, equipment and advice to those already engaged and established in production. Technical innovation thus took place outside the studios proper (a feature colour had in common with sound), and it was precisely this division between production and technical innovation and servicing which enabled Technicolor, having demonstrated its technical superiority, to maintain and protect its position. And because there was no competition between the studios, and producers on the one hand and Technicolor on the other, Technicolor’s position was even further secured. The studios and producers needed Technicolor, just as Technicolor needed them. In this respect, the development of colour was different from the development of sound, as Lewis Jacobs has pointed out:

The conditions affecting the progress of color are different. Most of the companies have a financial stake in Technicolor, so that there is little fear of competition to hurry Technicolor’s development. Moreover, since these companies do not wish to relinquish the patent rights to the Technicolor process as Warner and Fox had to give up their rights to the electrical companies, and since they would dislike being faced by a competing color process, all scientific research in color is done in complete secrecy. There is little co-operation among laboratory workers; what knowledge there is about color is held by a few. As in the early days when attempts were made to keep the movie projector in the hands of the few, today Technicolor equipment cannot be bought; it can only be rented with operator and crew. Negatives are processed behind the guarded doors of the Technicolor laboratory by Technicolor technicians.¹⁷

However, as was pointed out earlier, this secrecy eventually became a source of irritation and conflict, especially when Technicolor began to prove its financial worth, and especially among the smaller production companies who could either ill afford Technicolor’s process or who, if they could, were forced to wait in line behind the majors when, towards the end of the 1940s, colour was more and more in demand. Technicolor began to get a reputation for being uncooperative and generally difficult, and it was precisely at this time that the anti-trust suit was brought against it (part of a wave of anti-trust actions and legislation that profoundly affected the industry overall, leading eventually to a split between production and distribution, the destruction of vertical integration, and finally to the more atomised and fragmented system we have today). The courts found against Technicolor, and ordered the company to set aside a certain number of cameras on a first-come first-served to non-major producers and studios. The decision appears to have had little impact upon Technicolor’s future development. However it was, at the very least, symptomatic of shifts taking place within the industry which were, in turn, to shift Technicolor’s position within it, and its own relationship to the general field of mass entertainment.

The advent of Eastman Color

The introduction of Eastman Color by Eastman Kodak changed markedly Technicolor’s place within the colour field, leading first to modifications in Technicolor’s practices, technologies and services and eventually, in the 1960s, to a policy of diversification, in which the company expanded its operations to include not only films but television (and not only colour, but also black and white). Eastman Color was a development of the German Agfa-color single-strip process. Its hallmark was that the three strips of colour sensitive film needed for the production of a colour image were bonded together in a single tri-pack roll. Henceforth, a colour film could be shot on an ordinary one-lens camera, while in principle any laboratory with conventional processing facilities could produce colour prints. Technicolor’s monopoly, based on its special camera and on its processing services, was henceforth a thing of the past.

Notes

⁴ E. Basten, Glorious Technicolor, (London: A. S. Barnes, 1980), pp. 199-201.

⁵ Basten, Glorious Technicolor, pp. 202-203.

⁶ Adrian Bernard Klein, Colour Cinematography (London: Chapman & Hall, 1936) pp. 302-3.

⁷ Gorham A. Kindem, ‘Hollywood’s Conversion to Color: The Technological, Economic and Aesthetic Factors’, Journal of the University Film Association, vol. XXXI, no. 2 (Spring 1979) p. 33.

⁸ Kindem, ‘Hollywood’s Conversion to Color’, p. 33.

⁹ Basten, Glorious Technicolor, pp. 91-3.

¹⁰ Lewis Jacobs, The Rise of the American Film (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1939) p. 447.

¹¹ Quoted in Jacobs, The Rise of the American Film, pp. 447-8.

¹² Basten, Glorious Technicolor, p. 66.

¹³ Kindem,’Hollywood’s Conversion to Color’, p. 34.

¹⁴ Kindem, ‘Hollywood’s Conversion to Color’, p. 34.

¹⁵ Kindem, ‘Hollywood’s Conversion to Color’, p. 34.

¹⁶ Kindem,’Hollywood’s Conversion to Color’, pp. 31-2.

¹⁷ Jacobs, The Rise of the American Film, p 447.”

(Neale, Steve (1985): The Beginnings of Technicolor. In: Angela Dalle Vacche and Brian Price (eds.): Color. The Film Reader. New York: Routledge, 2006, pp. 13-23, on pp. 15-21.)

×

“Clearly, the introduction of Eastman Color had substantial effects on Technicolor, establishing Eastman Kodak’s importance within the field of colour technology. Technicolor, however, maintained a modified but still substantially hegemonic position. It continued to supply release prints and modified its processing techniques to accommodate the demands of wide-screen systems. In consequence, The Robe, the first CinemaScope film, was shot and processed by Technicolor, as was White Christmas, the first film in Vista Vision. Technicolor manufactured the prints for This is Cinerama and itself introduced such wide-screen formats as Technirama and Technirama-70. With the opening of a television film processing plant in 1965, Technicolor’s relationship with the television industry was cemented.”

(Neale, Steve (1985): The Beginnings of Technicolor. In: Angela Dalle Vacche and Brian Price (eds.): Color. The Film Reader. New York: Routledge, 2006, pp. 13-23, on p. 22.)

×

“Henry V (GBR 1944, Laurence Olivier)

While Technicolor tempted producers to overdo their colour, the French felt that they could overdo ‘with taste’. They pointed to Olivier’s Henry V where gaudiness was turned into a virtue, where colour separation was used thematically and where the brightness and saturation of Technicolor made the scenes seem lit from within as if they were indeed pages of illuminated manuscripts.¹⁸ They could also note that the night scenes before the battle came off spectacularly well; while these shots were not precisely natural, they gave the feeling of Rembrandt or Pieter de Hooch colouring, thus contrasting with the illuminated miniature sections of the film in colour as well as in architecture and theme. Together these aspects gave Olivier the opportunity to take a public and cultural (illuminated) play and shift it suddenly into a brooding and nearly existential meditation (Rembrandt darkness). The key scene marking the transition between these aesthetic postures – and one of the most beautiful of the film – shows the weakened British troops trudging in the sunset away from the camera and toward a battle they can no longer avoid. This shot was taken against the objections of Natalie Kalmus, the Technicolor consultant on the film and wife (actually former wife) of the inventor of the process.¹⁹

¹⁸ Roland Dailly, ‘La palette de la camera’, L’Ecran Française, No. 172, 12 October 1.
¹⁹ C. Clayton Hutton, The Making of Henry V (London: Ernest Day, 1945).”

(Andrew, Dudley (1980): The Post-War Struggle for Colour. In: Angela Dalle Vacche and Brian Price (eds.): Color. The Film Reader. New York: Routledge, 2006, pp. 40-50, on p. 45.)

Tags

• literary adaptation
• Laurence Olivier
• gaudy

×

“The most complicated and expensive of subtractive processes, Technicolor virtually blackmailed its way into dominance in the thirties. Able to guarantee brilliance, latitude and consistency, the company forced all commercial colour films to come to it. None could afford reviews commenting on the poverty of its colour. Technicolor’s well-known method involved the company’s participation and supervision at every stage of the filmmaking process. Technicolor’s own operators and colour specialists would help film the production with the patented beam-splitting camera, an enormous machine which prismatically redirected the blue and red light 90° to a second roll of film running opposite the roll recording the green. The second roll was actually a double layer roll; the first layer recorded blue and filtered all but red light, while the second layer accepted red light only. Technicolor alone could process these three master rolls, for they were not only protected by patent but also by the expensive and complicated process itself. The rolls became colour matrices which were then submitted to the famous imbibition method of dyeing pure, complementary colours on a virgin colour stock, guided by information permanently etched on the three black and white records. Perfect control as well as perfect consistency in the laboratory were thus possible, for the colour records were all in black and white and technicians could adjust the various colours for brightness, hue and saturation until all requirements were satisfied.

[…] Technicolor though needing a great deal of light to pour through its beam-splitting prism, was considered ideal for studio use. The ability to manipulate colour balances in processing made studio shooting safe. Even more important, though, was the general look imposed by the matchless saturation of Technicolor, a saturation so pure that the density of its colours tended to form flat blocks of colour and produce a kind of black masking around each object. The separation of objects via colour gave at once either a cardboard or a remarkably 3-D look which could best be exploited in studio lighting conditions.”

(Andrew, Dudley (2006): The Post-War Struggle for Colour. In: Angela Dalle Vacche and Brian Price (eds.): Color. The Film Reader. New York: Routledge, 2006, pp. 40-50, on p. 44.)

Tags

• saturated
• innovation

×

“4. LES PROCÉDÉS SOUSTRACTIFS

Autour des années trente, on assiste à la naissance presque simultanée des principaux procédés modernes qui relèvent tous du système soustractif. Dans ce système, la couleur est matérialisée sur la copie destinée à la projection. Le quasi-monopole exercé par les procédés soustractifs tient à un fait très banal : il ne demande aucune transformation du matériel de prise de vues et de projection. Mais cette simplification d’utilisation résulte d’une complexité accrue au niveau de la fabrication et du traitement des émulsions. C’est là que se situe le problème du point de vue de la conservation : les trois couches qui composent la structure de la plupart des films soustractifs sont composées de matières colorantes beaucoup plus instables que l’argent réduit de l’émulsion en noir et blanc.

[…]

b. Le Technicolor trichrome : issu de nombreuses recherches effectuées dès 1915, le procédé Technicolor (n° 4, 1932) fut le premier grand procédé moderne de cinématographie des couleurs. L’analyse se faisait avec une caméra spéciale utilisant trois films noir et blanc entraînés synchroniquement, dont deux en “sandwich”. Ces films étaient exposés simultanément grâce à un cubediviseur optique derrière des filtres bleu, vert et rouge et donnaient donc trois négatifs de sélection d’où l’on tirait trois positifs. Un traitement particulier des positifs permettait d’obtenir des reliefs de gélatine proportionnels à la densité des images. La gélatine de ces matrices était ensuite imprégnée de teintures appropriées (jaune, magenta et cyan), puis mise en contact avec un film argentique, la future copie du film. Chaque matrice déchargeait tour à tour son colorant (dye transfer) sur la surface mordancée de cette copie préalablement munie d’une piste sonore et éventuellement d’une légère image argentique noir et blanc. Ce procédé, proche de l’imprimerie polychrome, fut abandonné en 1975. Il permettait une continuité de résultat et une stabilité des couleurs très supérieures à celles de tous les autres modes de tirage.”

(Pinel, Vincent (1992): La forêt des techniques. In: Michel Ciment (ed.): Ciné mémoire. Colloque international d’information (7-9 octobre 1991). Paris: Femis, pp. 17–24, on pp. 21–22.) (in French)

Tags

• 1930s
• Technicolor
• 1940s
• 1910s
• negative
• 1950s
• black and white
• positive
• emulsion
• dye transfer printing

×

“COLOR CONSCIOUSNESS*

NATALIE M. KALMUS**

Summary. – Color constitutes another step in the steady advancement of the motion picture toward realism, the same principles of color, tone, and composition applying to the motion picture as to the art of painting. In order fully to appreciate the color picture, a “color consciousness” must be adopted, the lack of which is tantamount in a degree to color blindness.

Monotony is the enemy of interest, a fact that argues for the color picture; but a superabundance of color is unnatural. Psychologically, colors fall into the “warm” and “cool” groups, and each color and shade has its psychological implications: red – danger, blood, life, heat; green – nature, outdoors, freedom, freshness; etc. To build up personalities and to harmonize emotions and situations, these principles must apply, even to the extent of “color juxtaposition,” or the psychological relation of the various colors to each other. For example, of two adjacent or contiguous colors, each tends to “throw” the other toward its complement, considerably affecting the emphasis or import of the color.

On the walls of the cave in Altamira in Spain are found paintings, boldly sketched in three colors by Paleolithic man some fifty thousand years ago. These prehistoric paintings are quite artfully executed, and show that the artist possessed a fine sense of color and a desire to indicate motion as well as form. Various animals are depicted with the use of a red clay, an ochre earth, and a black pigment. One picture shows a wild boar in a standing position. In another picture, nearby, to show the same animal in a gallop, two sets of legs have been used. This ingenious method of showing action indicates the inherent desire of the artist to show motion in color. This ambition has come down through the intervening years to the present day. Now we see the culmination of that idea – motion pictures in color.

From a technical standpoint, motion pictures have been steadily tending toward more complete realism. In the early days, pictures were a mere mechanical process of imprinting light upon film and projecting that result upon a screen. Then came the perfection of detail – more accurate sets and costumes – more perfect photography. The advent of sound brought increased realism through the auditory sense. The last step – color, with the addition of the chromatic sensations – completed the process. Now motion pictures are able to duplicate faithfully all the auditory and visual sensations.

This enhanced realism enables us to portray life and nature as it really is, and in this respect we have made definite strides forward. A motion picture, however, will be merely an accurate record of certain events unless we guide this realism into the realms of art. To accomplish this it becomes necessary to augment the mechanical processes with the inspirational work of the artist. It is not enough that we put a perfect record upon the screen. That record must be molded according to the basic principles of art.

The principles of color, tone, and composition make painting a fine art. The same principles will make a colored motion picture a work of art. The precision and detail of Holbein and Bougereau, the light effects of Rembrandt, the atmosphere and arrangements of Goya, the color of Velasquez, the brilliant sunlight of Sorolla, the mysterious shadows of Innes – all these artistic qualities can eventually be incorporated into motion pictures through the medium of color. The design and colors of sets, costumes, drapes, and furnishings must be planned and selected just as an artist would choose the colors from his pallette and apply them to the proper portions of his painting.

In order to apply the laws of art properly in relation to color, we must first develop a color sense – in other words, we must become “color conscious.” We must study color harmony, the appropriateness of color to certain situations, the appeal of color to the emotions.

Above all, we must take more interest in the colorful beauties that lie about us – the iridescent brilliance of the butterfly’s wing, the subtle tones of a field of grain, the violet shadows of the desert, the sunset’s reflection in the ocean. By such observation and study we develop a sense of color appreciation and train our eye to notice an infinite variety of hues.

Serious cases of color blindness are comparatively rare; yet, because the average person is not trained in color appreciation, a decided lack of color consciousness is not at all uncommon. In order to appreciate operatic or classical music, people study music appreciation. Color appreciation, as a study, is almost entirely neglected, although color plays a most important and continuous part in our lives. The average person listens to music for only a short portion of the time, but every moment of the day he looks upon some form of color.

In the study of color appreciation we have two classes of objects. On the one hand, we have Nature, with its flowers, skies, trees, etc.; on the other hand, we have man-made objects of all kinds, including art pictures. In the first class the color is already created, and it remains for us only to enjoy and appreciate. In the second class we can exercise a certain amount of selectivity. Because of the general lack of color knowledge, that selectivity is not always tempered with wisdom. If the color schemes of natural objects were used as guides, less flagrant mistakes in color would occur. The use of black and white, however, to the complete exclusion of all color, is decidedly not in keeping with Nature’s rules. Natural colors and lights do not tax the eye nearly as much as man-made colors and artificial lights. Even when Nature indulges in a riot of beautiful colors, there are subtle harmonies which justify those colors. These harmonies are often overlooked by the casual observer. The most brilliant flower has leaves and stem of just the right hue to accompany or complement its gay color. As we grow in the understanding of color and its uses, we find that our color appreciation develops simultaneously. All the better things in life require a color consciousness for their fullest appreciation and enjoyment.

The eye is the organ of perception. The impulses of light received by the retina are transferred over the optic nerve path to the brain, and we become conscious of light and dark, motion, form, and color. Vision is a sense of ancient lineage and of early development in the individual life. Its characteristic is the clearness and precision of the data it furnishes the mind. Compared to sight, the other senses are dull and groping. It is the sense by which we receive the greatest number of stimuli from the world about us. It is the sense which most frequently affects the nervous system, dominates the attention, and stimulates the mind.

It is a psychological fact that the nervous system experiences a shock when it is forced to adapt itself to any degree of unnaturalness in the reception of external stimuli. The auditory sense would be unpleasantly affected by hearing an actor upon the screen speak his lines in a monotone. The mind would strive to supply the missing inflections. The same is true, but to a greater degree, of the visual sense. A super-abundance of color is unnatural, and has a most unpleasant effect not only upon the eye itself, but upon the mind as well. On the other hand, the complete absence of color is unnatural. The mind strives to supply the missing chromatic sensations, just as it seeks to add the missing inflections to the actor’s voice. The monotony of black, gray, and white in comparison with color is an acknowledged fact. It is almost a psychological axiom that monotony is the enemy of interest. In other words, that which is monotonous will not hold our attention as well as that which shows more variety. Obviously, it is important that the eye be not assailed with glaring color combinations, nor by the indiscriminate use of black and white. Again taking our cue from Nature, we find that colors and neutrals augment each other. The judicious use of neutrals proves an excellent foil for color, and lends power and interest to the touches of color in a scene. The presence of neutrals in our composition adds interest, variety, and charm to our colors. On the other hand, the presence of color in our picture gives added force to the neutrals, emphasizing the severity of black, the gloominess of gray, the purity of white.

From a broader point of view, the psychology of color is of immense value to a director. His prime motive is to direct and control the thoughts and emotions of his audience. The director strives to indicate a fuller significance that is specifically shown by the action and dialog. If he can direct the theatergoer’s imagination and interest, he has fulfilled his mission. The psychology of color is all-important in this respect, and we shall now show the manner in which certain colors upon the screen will give rise to certain emotions in the audience.

We have found that by the understanding use of color we can subtly convey dramatic moods and impressions to the audience, making them more receptive to whatever emotional effect the scenes, action, and dialog may convey. Just as every scene has some definite dramatic mood – some definite emotional response which it seeks to arouse within the minds of the audience – so, too, has each scene, each type of action, its definitely indicated color which harmonizes with that emotion.

The usual reaction of a color upon a normal person has been definitely determined. Colors fall into two general groups. The first group is the “warm,” and the second the “cool” colors. Red, orange, and yellow are called the warm or advancing colors. They call forth sensations of excitement, activity, and heat. In contrast, green, blue, and violet are the cool or retiring colors. They suggest rest, ease, coolness. Grouping the colors in another manner we find that colors mixed with white indicate youth, gaiety, informality. Colors mixed with gray suggest subtlety, refinement, charm. When mixed with black, colors show strength, seriousness, dignity, but sometimes represent the baser emotions of life.

As to the use of a single color alone, each hue has its particular associations. For example, red recalls to mind a feeling of danger, a warning. It also suggests blood, life, and love. It is materialistic, stimulating. It suffuses the face of anger, it led the Roman soldiers into battle. Different shades of red can suggest various phases of life, such as love, happiness, physical strength, wine, passion, power, excitement, anger, turmoil, tragedy, cruelty, revenge, war, sin, and shame. These are all different, yet in certain respects they are the same. Red may be the color of the revolutionist’s flag, and streets may run red with the blood of rioters, yet red may be used in a church ritual for Pentecost as a symbol of sacrifice. Whether blood is spilled upon the battlefield in an approved cause or whether it drips from the assassin’s dagger, blood still runs red. The introduction of another color with red can suggest the motive for a crime whether it be jealousy, fanaticism, revenge, patriotism, or religious sacrifice. Love gently warms the blood. The delicacy or strength of the shade of red will suggest the type of love. By introducing the colors of licentiousness, deceit, selfish ambition, or passion, it will be possible to classify the type of love portrayed with considerable accuracy.

Proceeding to the other colors, orange is bright and enlivening; it suggests energy, action. Yellow and gold symbolize wisdom, light, fruition, harvest, reward, riches, gaiety; but yellow also symbolizes deceit, jealousy, inconstancy in its darker shades, and particularly when it is tinged with green.

Green immediately recalls the garb of Nature, the outdoors, freedom. It also suggests freshness, growth, vigor. Dark green, blue, violet, and indigo are cooling, quiet colors. They are tranquil and passive. They do not suggest activity, as do the reds and orange. Blue is suggestive of truth (“true blue”), calm, serenity, hope, science, also cold steel, melancholy (we have the expression “blue as indigo”).

Purple is a color which does not occur in the spectrum. It is a combination of warm red and cool blue. It will be aggressive and vital if the red predominates, or dignified and quiet if the blue overbalances the red. Purple denotes solemnity, royalty, also pomp and vanity.

Magenta is the combination of purple and red. It is very distinctly materialistic. It is showy, arrogant, and vain. The neutrals, white, gray, and black, while theoretically not in the category of colors, also stimulate very definite emotional responses. Black is no color, but absorption of all color. It has a distinctly negative and destructive aspect. Black instinctively recalls night, fear, darkness, crime. It suggests funerals, mourning. It is impenetrable, comfortless, secretive. It flies at the masthead of the pirate’s ship. Our language is replete with references to this frightful power of black – black art, black despair, black-guard, blackmail, black hand, the black hole of Calcutta, black death (the devastating plague of medieval Europe), black list, black-hearted, etc.

Even the poets recognized this symbolism. Shelly, in his dramatic Alaster tells how,

“I have made my bed
In enamels and on coffins, where black death
Keeps record of the trophies won–”

The poet Keats, in The Prisoner of Chillon, says,

“I, only, stirred in this black spot,
I, only, drew the accursed breath of dungeon-dew.”

We are speaking a potent language to our audience when we make use of black.

Gray suggests gray skies and rain. It is gloomy, dreary, and represents solemnity and maturity. From its complete neutrality and lack of any color or distinctiveness, it represents mediocrity, indecisiveness, inaction, vagueness.

White reflects the greatest amount of light, it emanates a luminosity which symbolizes spirit. White represents purity, cleanliness, peace, marriage. Its introduction into a color sublimates that color. For example, the red of love becomes more refined and idealistic as white transforms the red to pink. White uplifts and ennobles, while black lowers and renders more base and evil any color. To the degree in which colors are lightened or darkened will the qualities that the color exemplifies be altered.

Thus we see that all the colors in the spectrum speak their particular language. The flush of anger, the vigor of a sun-tanned skin, the richness of gold velvet, the violet mystery of distant mountains, the serenity of blue sky – these colors alone speak with more eloquence than could be described by words.

The modification of a positive color by the introduction of another hue modifies the mental reaction to the degree of the intensity of that hue which is introduced. For example, a positive blue is a cool color, but to the extent in which a red hue is introduced, the coolness of the blue will be altered by the warmth of red. However, these complexities do not alter the basic principles of color or the general reactions which we have outlined. In the preparation of a picture we read the script and prepare a color chart for the entire production, each scene, sequence, set, and character being considered. This chart may be compared to a musical score, and amplifies the picture in a similar manner. The preparation of this chart calls for careful and judicious work. Subtle effects of beauty and feeling are not attained through haphazard methods, but through application of the rules of art and the physical laws of light and color in relation to literary laws and story values. In time first place, this chart must be in absolute accord with the story action. Again, it must consider the art, principles of unity, color harmony, and contrast. Again, it must consider the practical limitations of motion picture production and photography. The art director, however, in handling a color picture, must be forever mindful that the human eye is many times more sensitive than the photographic emulsion and many times greater in scope than any process of reproduction. Therefore, he must be able to translate his colors in terms of the process.

 

When we receive the script for a new film, we carefully analyze each sequence and scene to ascertain what dominant mood or emotion is to be expressed. When this is decided, we plan to use the appropriate color or set of colors which will suggest that mood, thus actually fitting the color to the scene and augmenting its dramatic value.

 

We plan the colors of the actor’s costumes with especial care. Whenever possible, we prefer to clothe the actor in colors that build up his or her screen personality. In a picture which we recently completed, two young girls play the parts of sisters. One is vivacious, affectionate, and gay. The other is studious, quiet, and reserved. For the first we planned costumes of pink, red, warm browns, tan, and orange; for the second, blue, green, black, and gray. In this way the colors were kept in unison with their film characters.

 

One very important phase of making color pictures is the necessity of obtaining distinct color separation. The term “color separation” means that when one color is placed in front of or beside another color, there must be enough difference in their hues to separate one from the other photographically. For example, there must be enough difference in the colors of an actor’s face or costume and the walls of the set to make him stand out from the colors back of him; otherwise, he will blend into the background and become indistinguishable, as does a polar bear in the snow. If the colors are properly handled, it is possible to make it appear as though the actors were actually standing there in person, thus creating the illusion of the third dimension. Because of the general warm glow of flesh tints, we usually introduce the cooler tones into the backgrounds; but, if we find it advantageous to use warmer tones in the set, we handle the lighting so that the particular section in back of the actor is left in shadow. This gives a cool contrast to the faces, even though we have a general feeling of warmth in the room. When there are a number of players, all wearing differently colored costumes, it is necessary to disregard those playing relatively unimportant parts, and make the background in contrast to those whose action is most significant to this particular scene.

It is important that the sets have interest and variety. They must not be flat. When the sets have depth it is much easier to introduce interesting shadows and colored lights for special effects. Unless the dramatic aspect dictates to the contrary, it is desirable to have all the colors in any one scene harmonious. Otherwise, we strike an unpleasant, discordant note.

A point to be considered in set dressing depends upon one of the rules of composition in art. The law of emphasis states in part that nothing of relative unimportance in a picture shall be emphasized. If, for example, a bright red ornament were shown behind an actor’s head, the bright color would detract from the character and action. Errors of this nature must be carefully avoided.

Color juxtaposition also plays a large part in the selection of colors for the screen. The effect of “color juxtaposition” is an apparent change of hue when different colors are placed one over the other, or side by side. If two cards, one orange, the other blue-green, are placed side by side, the orange will appear more red than it really is, the blue-green more blue. Each color tends “to throw” the other toward its complement. In other words, the complement of orange is blue; therefore, the orange makes the blue-green appear bluer. When any two colors are placed together, the first emphasizes in the second the characteristics which are lacking in the first.

It can readily be seen from this how exceedingly important it is to consider the movement in the scene in determining its color composition because the juxtaposition of colors is constantly changing due to this movement. Quite a different problem from that of an artist, who paints a still scene where the characters remain in their set places, and whose color values, therefore, are not subject to frequently changing contrast.

We must constantly practice color restraint. In the early two-color pictures, producers sometimes thought that because a process could reproduce color, they should flaunt vivid color continually before the eyes of the audience. This often led to unnatural and disastrous results, which experience is now largely eliminating. The synthesis of all these factors entails many conferences with directors, art directors, writers, cameramen, designers and others. Technicolor color directors, cameramen, and technicians act in a consulting and advisory capacity to the various studio departments during both the preparation and the shooting of the picture.

Music, graphic art, and acting have now been united, and become one expression of more ultimate art. Now for the first time a perfect expression of the combined inspirations of producer, writer, artist, actor, and musician can be adequately presented to an audience. Color has touched the sound picture and it fairly lives.

* Presented at a meeting of the Technicians Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Hollywood, Calif., May 21, 1935.

** Color Director, Technicolor Motion Picture Corp., Hollywood, Calif.”

(Kalmus, Natalie M. (1935): Color Consciousness. In: Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers, Vol. 25, No. 2, 1935, pp. 139-147.)

Tags

• blue
• red
• Natalie Kalmus
• color conventions
• color codes
• normative aesthetics
• color consulting

×

“Since the box-office is becoming color-minded and Hollywood is willing to pay for color, it is fitting that we pause a moment to look back on some of the pioneering attempts to achieve color films and to bring them to their present perfection.

Throughout the course of motion picture history the desire of its pioneers has been to broaden the scope of the camera by adding to it the ability to record color and to catch the everchanging flow and tapestry of nature’s coloration, thus improving screen with a truer and more dramatic picture.

[…]

Technicolor, which has developed the present three color system and which is responsible more than any other company or individual for the popular acceptance of color, was organized in 1915 in Boston. A group of trained men consisting of D. F. Comstock, H. T. Kalmus, and W. B. Wescott began work on a subtractive system in 1914. Three years later in the winter of 1916-17, they demonstrated and publicly showed a additive picture entitled, The Gulf Between. This picture while not a great success, gave the company much added impetus. Shortly thereafter they undertook to perfect a subtractive two-color system from which was developed the color process used in Toll of The Sea, released December 3, 1922. Several outstanding pictures were subsequently made in this color including Black Pirate, Wanderer of the Wasteland and millions of feet of musicals and other films prior to the obsequies of two color processes in 1930.

The first sound and color film, according to J. A. Ball head of the technical research for Technicolor, was deMille’s King of Kings.

Experimentation on the three color imbibition process now in use began in 1925 with J. A. Ball in charge of developments. The first showing of this color in a real-life picture was a short sequence in the M.G.M. film, Cat and The Fiddle. The first complete color subject was the single reel film, La Cucaracha, released on November 15, 1934, at the R.K.O.-Hillstreet Theater, Los Angeles, and the first complete feature length film was Becky Sharpe.

J. A. Ball may be largely credited with technical perfection of the three color process.

Originally Technicolor films cost the producers twenty cents a foot; then the cost was twelve cents, and now it is five and a half.

Technicolor colored a cartoon sequence drawn by Walter Lantz for the Universal film, King of Jazz, released in 1930. […] The first use of the three color imbibition process was in a Walt Disney Silly Symphony, Flowers and Trees, released on July 15, 1932 at Grauman’s Chinese, in Hollywood. This film took the world by the tail.

Now color is here; if you have any doubt in the matter see the film Dancing Pirate soon to be released by Pioneer Production.”

(Theisen, Earl (1936): Notes on the history of color in motion pictures. In: International Photographer, Vol. 8, No. 5, June 1936, pp. 8-9 and p. 24.)

×

“Becky Sharp (1935)

The Screen; The Radio City Music Hall Presents Becky Sharp, the First Full-Length Three-Color Photoplay.

Science and art, the handmaidens of the cinema, have joined hands to endow the screen with a miraculous new element in Becky Sharp, the first full-length photoplay produced in the three-component color process of Technicolor. Presented at the Radio City Music Hall yesterday for its first public showing, it was both incredibly disappointing and incredibly thrilling. Although its faults are too numerous to earn it distinction as a screen drama, it produces in the spectator all the excitement of standing upon a peak in Darien and glimpsing a strange, beautiful and unexpected new world. As an experiment, it is a momentous event, and it may be that in a few years it will be regarded as the equal in historical importance of the first crude and wretched talking pictures. Although it is dramatically tedious, it is a gallant and distinguished outpost in an almost uncharted domain, and it probably is the most significant event of the 1935 cinema.

Certainly the photoplay, coloristically speaking, is the most successful that has ever reached the screen. Vastly improved over the gaudy two-color process of four and five years ago, it possesses an extraordinary variety of tints, ranging from placid and lovely grays to hues which are vibrant with warmth and richness. This is not the coloration of natural life, but a vividly pigmented dream world of the artistic imagination.

Rouben Mamoulian and Robert Edmond Jones have employed the new process in a deliberately stylized form, so that Becky Sharp becomes an animate procession of cunningly designed canvases. Some of the color combinations make excessive demands upon the eye. Many of them are as soothing as black and white. The most glaring technical fault, and it is a comparatively minor one, is the poor definition in the long shots, which convert faces into blurred masses. In close-ups where scarlet is the dominant motif, there is also a tendency to provoke an after-image when the scene shifts abruptly to a quieter color combination.

The major problem, from the spectator’s point of view, is the necessity for accustoming the eye to this new screen element in much the same way that we were obliged to accustom the ear to the first talkies. The psychological problem is to reduce this new and spectacular element to a position, in relation to the film as a whole, where color will impinge no more violently upon the basic photographic image than sound does today. This is chiefly a question of time and usage. At the moment it is impossible to view Becky Sharp without crowding the imagination so completely with color that the photoplay as a whole is almost meaningless. That is partly the fault of the production and partly the inevitable consequence of a phenomenon. We shall know more about the future of color when its sponsors employ it in a better screen play than Becky Sharp.

The real secret of the film resides not in the general feeling of dissatisfaction which the spectator suffers when he leaves the Music Hall, but in the active excitement which he experiences during its scenes. It is important and even necessary to judge the work in terms of its best – not its worst or even its average. Becky Sharp becomes prophetically significant, for example, in the magnificent color-dramatization of the British ball in Brussels on the eve of Waterloo.

Here the Messrs. Mamoulian and Jones have accomplished the miracle of using color as a constructive dramatic device, of using it for such peculiarly original emotional effects that it would be almost impossible to visualize the same scene in conventional black and white. From the pastel serenity of the opening scenes at the ball, the color deepens into somber hues as the rumble of Napoleon’s cannon is heard in the ballroom. Thenceforward it mounts in excitement as pandemonium seizes the dancers, until at last the blues, greens and scarlets of the running officers have become an active contributing factor in the overwhelming climax of sound and photography.

If this review seems completely out of focus, it is because the film is so much more significant as an experiment in the advanced use of color than as a straightforward dramatic entertainment. Based upon Langdon Mitchell’s old dramatization of Vanity Fair, it is gravely defective. Ordinarily Mr. Mamoulian is a master of filmic mobility, but here his experimental preoccupation with color becomes an obstacle to his usual fluid style of screen narration. Thus a great deal of Becky Sharp seems static and land-locked, an unvarying procession of long shots, medium shots and close-ups. It is endlessly talkative, as well, which is equally a departure from Mr. Mamoulian’s ordinary style.

Perhaps it was inevitable that Thackeray’s classic tale of the ambitious Becky and her spangled career in English society would be reduced on the screen to a halting and episodic narrative. But the film is unconscionably jerky in its development and achieves only a minor success in capturing the spirit of the original. In many of the screened episodes, Thackeray’s satirical portraits come perilously close to burlesque, and they barge over the line in several places. Miriam Hopkins is an indifferently successful Becky, who shares some excellent scenes with many others in which she is strident and even nerve-racking. Frances Dee makes an effective Amelia, and photographs beautifully in addition. There are fine performances in the celebrated rôles by Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Alison Skipworth, Nigel Bruce and Alan Mowbray.

But one thing is certain about Becky Sharp. Its best is so good that it becomes a prophecy of the future of color on the screen. It forced this column to the conclusion that color will become an integral motion picture element in the next few years. If Mr. Mamoulian and Pioneer Pictures can be persuaded to film a modern story for their next venture, striving to repress their use of color to the more sombre hues of our twentieth century civilization, Becky Sharp will have fulfilled its great promise.”

(Sennwald, Andre (1935): Becky Sharp (1935). In: New York Times, June 14, 1935.)

×

“Meanwhile, many producers preferred working with the established masters of black-and-white cinematography, who had already demonstrated their ability to balance the demands of glamour, mood, and narrative clarity. As a result, most Technicolor films from the thirties were shot by two or more cinematographers— a situation that caused a number of on-set disputes about the best way to handle lighting and composition. In his early Technicolor production The Garden of Allah, Selznick endeavored to find the right combination of cinematographers for the job. He had originally wanted to use Charles Lang, a Paramount cinematographer expert in getting glamorous images of the film’s star, Marlene Dietrich.¹⁰

When he was unable to get Lang, Selznick borrowed MGM’s Harold Rosson to work with Howard Greene, a Technicolor cinematographer. This arrangement caused considerable confusion on the set.

In one of his memos, Selznick wrote:

The Technicolor people told Hal Rosson that they hoped he understood that he was not the head cameraman on the picture, but that Green[e] was; and that his, Rosson’s, job was merely to watch the closeups of Miss Dietrich. This is, of course, not our intention and it promises trouble. I wish you would immediately advise me whether or not there is anything in the Technicolor contract that prevents our putting on a director or supervisor of photography, such as Rosson, with authority over the Technicolor man…. I think on exteriors he [Greene] will probably do a finer job than any other black and white man could do. Furthermore, we certainly need him because while Rosson should be able to enormously improve the photography, without Green[e], Rosson would be lost.¹¹

The Technicolor Corporation had more faith in its own cinematographer, Greene, though it acknowledged that he might need some help with the glamour shots. Selznick trusted Greene with the exteriors, but he still wanted veteran black-and-white cinematographer Hal Rosson to supervise all the photography. Both men were assigned to the film; not surprisingly, they soon began competing for authority. In a handwritten response to the memo quoted above, Boleslawski sided with Greene, while noting that Rosson had a “slight Napoleonic complex.” Boleslawski proposed a solution: “I also suggested to Rosson to fall in love with Marlen[e]—in which case the billing and title would not matter because it all will be a work of heart, art and love—Rosson said he will seriously consider it.”¹² Unfortunately, Boleslawski was unable to solve the problem. In a later memo Selznick criticized Rosson’s work, while wondering if exterior expert Greene could be replaced by Technicolor cinematographer William Skall when the production switched to interiors.¹³ In the end, Rosson and Greene shared a special Academy Award for their work on The Garden of Allah, but they never worked together again.

References:
¹¹ [to be completed]
¹² [to be completed]
¹³ [to be completed]”

(Keating, Patrick (2010): Hollywood Lighting from the Silent Era to Film Noir. Columbia University Press: New York, pp. 205–206.)

×

“When color motion pictures are photographed by the three-strip method, a special camera is used. These cameras are manufactured by Technicolor and are furnished to the motion picture producer. They are available to him upon demand at his studio or on location.

This camera is unique. It is the only one used commercially in which three strips of motion picture film are successfully exposed simultaneously to exactly the same scene. The strips of film in this camera are negative films and each records a specific color aspect of a given scene. [The] green light coming from a scene is transmitted through the lens of the camera and thence through a special light-dividing prism. It is recorded on a negative film which is particularly sensitive to green light. The red and blue colors coming from the same scene pass through the same lens and enter the same special prism; but instead of being transmitted they are reflected to an aperture on the side of the camera. In this aperture two films are traveling. These films are placed one in front of the other; the front one records the blue light of the scene, while the back one records the red light.

When developed these negatives have silver images, and when held up to the light, appear the same as black-and-white negatives. These special cameras used in this taking process have traveled with location units to every continent of the globe. Cameras have been used in the air; under water; and even in the craters of volcanoes.”

(Anonymous (1956): Current Techniques of 35mm Color Film Photography and Printing. In: American Cinematographer, 37,1, January 1956, pp. 26-27 and 58, on p. 27.)

Tags

• camera
• Technology

×

“Successful printing of 35mm color motion picture film requires experience and laboratory skill. Faulty prints wipe out accurate color values achieved in photography and production.

Color printing procedures begin with white light. Optically speaking, white light consists of three primary colors – blue, green and red. This is one way of saying that when proper amounts of blue, green and red light are subtracted from white light, any color visible to the human eye will be produced.

Negatives used in color motion picture photography separately record the red, blue and green aspects of the scene.

After development, negative images may be silver (black and white to the eye) or dye-colored. Only Technicolor laboratories prepare dye-transfer release prints from both kinds of image.

Developed negatives are evaluated to determine the printing light required. The negative is then run through a matrix printer, a device in which special matrix film is exposed to light coming through the negative. Matrix means what it does in other forms of printing – a relief image from which multiple copies are made.

After printing, the matrix is developed and etched to produce a colorless gelatin relief image – the positive of the negative from which it was printed. A matrix is prepared for each color aspect of the scene.

While the matrices are being made, a special dye-receptive blank film is prepared, If the customer wants prints with optical sound tracks, the silver sound record is incorporated in the blank film at this stage; if the customer’s prints are to carry magnetic sound tracks, the silver sound record is omitted and the magnetic tracks are applied after the dye transfer.

The matrix film carrying the blue aspect of the scene passes through a yellow dye solution. It absorbs the yellow dye, and is then brought into contact with the blank film on a dye transfer machine. While the two films are traveling in contact, the yellow dye from the matrix is transferred to the blank film. At the end of the dye transfer machine the first matrix is removed.

The blank is now brought into contact with the second matrix, which corresponds to the red light in the scene. The second matrix has been traveling through a cyan (blue-green) dye solution, and the dye is transferred to the blank which is carrying the yellow image.

After the blank has imbibed cyan and the second matrix has been removed, it is brought into contact with die third matrix, which corresponds to the green light in the scene and has been immersed in magenta dye. Finally, the third matrix and blank are separated.

The blank film is no longer blank; it now has all the colors necessary for excellent reproduction of a color scene and is ready for delivery to exhibitors for projection. Where yellow dye is present, blue light is subtracted from the projector’s white light source; similarly red is subtracted where cyan is present and green where magenta occurs. Absence of all dyes results in white light on the screen and presence of all dyes in sufficient quantities creates an absence of light, or black on the screen.

Wet matrix and blank emulsions have a consistency approximating wet chewing gum, but all dyes have been transferred in super-imposed registration within tolerances of ten-thousandths of an inch.”

(Anonymous (1956): Current Techniques of 35mm Color Film Photography and Printing. In: American Cinematographer, 37,1, January 1956, pp. 26-27 and p. 58, on p. 27 and p. 58.)

Tags

• dye transfer printing
• Technology

×

“In 1929 and 1930, Technicolor developed a two-color system which employed orange-red and blue-green dyes. The process, although limited in reproductive quality, was immensely popular, and audiences flocked to such two-color films as Warner Brothers’ On With the Show (1929) and the Florenz Ziegfeld-Samuel Goldwyn production Whoopee (1930).

Reacting to public favor, Technicolor rapidly sought to perfect its color process, and in 1932 developed a three-color system first used in Walt Disney’s animated short Flowers and Trees (1932). Disney thought so much of the three-color process that he used it for The Three Little Pigs (1933) and eventually for his first animated feature, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937).

The three-color system was used with equally positive results on live-action films. The process, called “three strip,” involved the simultaneous exposure of three separate rolls of color-sensitive film (the three dyes involved were magenta, cyan, and yellow) in a large, bulky camera. Becky Sharp (1935) became the first film to utilize full Technicolor, followed by A Star Is Born (1937), The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), and Gone With the Wind (1939).

As Technicolor became firmly entrenched in the Hollywood of the Forties, it began to acquire a familiar look. Down Argentine Way (1940) featured a more vibrant Technicolor with bold primary colors, notably a saturated red. The words “In Technicolor” became synonymous with the best of Hollywood’s musicals and epics.

In the early Fifties, however, an event occurred in color technology that would revolutionize color film. Eastman Kodak announced the development of a “multi-layer” film which already contained the three dye-sensitive layers necessary for color. This not only did away with the need for the bulky three-strip cameras, but also changed Hollywood’s method of striking prints. Until then, Technicolor struck prints utilizing the “imbibition” process, in which the three different color dyes were each applied separately to the film base, much in the manner of color lithography. But with Eastman’s new “multi-layer” film, colors could be obtained quicker and easier. Although the Eastmancolor prints were inferior in quality to Technicolor’s imbibition prints, they were less costly to produce and generally more economical in small print runs.”

(O’Connell, Bill (1979): Fade Out. In: Film Comment, 15,5, pp. 11-18, on p. 12.)

Tags

• Technicolor
• Eastman Kodak
• dye transfer printing
• economics
• film manufacturer
• Ciba-Geigy

×

“The Disney studio has kept expensive separations on all of its major releases, both animated and live-action. Disney also, as policy, keeps an original Technicolor imbibition print on each title as a check if a question of color balance or tone arises during a reissue. Ironically, as far as the animated films go, the Disney studio could actually consult the original animation “cels” if needed. Naturally, the Disney organization’s concern with preservation is well-founded, as Disney films have the potential to keep earning money on a reissue basis almost in perpetuity.”

(O’Connell, Bill (1979): Fade Out. In: Film Comment, 15,5, pp. 11-18, on p. 13.)

Tags

• animation
• dye transfer printing
• economics
• Disney
• re-release
• studios

×

“While distributors are understandably concerned over the significant problem of color fading, their concern tends to overshadow the additional problem of color consistency that occurs when films photographed in one color process are printed in another.

When new prints are needed on films originally shot in three-strip Technicolor, it is common practice for distributors to make up an Eastman internegative and strike prints on Eastman film. In the Fifties and Sixties this was done mainly for economic reasons, but now that Technicolor has phased out imbibition printing Hollywood no longer has a choice. This change from Technicolor to Eastmancolor results in a dramatic shift in color tone and balance. Hues that were rich and “warm” in the original Technicolor will become brighter and colder, almost neon-like, in Eastmancolor. Serious shifts in yellow tones occur, and Eastmancolor is simply not capable of reproducing the distinctive, saturated primary colors that distinguished three-strip Technicolor. Eastman prints of The Red Shoes (1948) struck recently lack the deep blacks and reds of the Technicolor imbibition prints. New prints of Meet Me In St. Louis (1944) and On The Town (1949) lack the vibrant quality they originally had.”

(O’Connell, Bill (1979): Fade Out. In: Film Comment, 15,5, pp. 11-18, on pp. 14-15.)

Tags

• dye transfer printing
• faded
• re-release

×

“Only a small percentage of The Museum of Modern Art’s 8,000-film collection is in color. But Eileen Bowser, a film curator at MOMA, cites color fading as the biggest problem in film preservation today – she fully expects the problem to get worse as the years go by. The Museum is currently putting its films into cold storage at just below freezing, in the hope that an economic method of dealing with color preservation will be developed in the next few years.

The Museum is also involved in making new prints of all the David O. Selznick color films, including Duel in the Sun (1946) and The Garden of Allah (1936), from Selznick’s original three-strip Technicolor negatives. The new prints will be prepared under the supervision of film technician Ralph Sargent and his staff at Film Technology Laboratory in California, specialists in the painstaking art of archival print manufacture. Sargent, who previously prepared two-color prints of Paramount’s 1929 film Redskin, is familiar with the difficulties involved in film restoration of this type. “The essence of this business is not only technical finesse, but also judgment,” he commented. “Many of these films require frame-by-frame checking.” This is taxing work that the larger laboratories are not equipped for, and so archivists rely more and more on the few specialists in this field.”

(O’Connell, Bill (1979): Fade Out. In: Film Comment, 15,5, pp. 11-18, on p. 15.)

Tags

• faded
• Paramount Pictures
• Museum of Modern Art
• David O. Selznick
• Archive
• producer
• film technician
• Ralph Sargent
• MGM Film Library
• curator

×

“Without exception, each archive questioned said that Technicolor imbibition prints were in almost as good a condition as when they were first struck, with no measurable color fading. They were all distressed that Technicolor had discontinued a print process that had provided archives with a reprieve from color deterioration.

Technicolor had continued to offer its superior imbibition process in the United States until 1975, and Hollywood opted for it on such large-quantity print runs as My Fair Lady (1964), Dr. Zhivago (1965), and The Godfather (1972 and 1974). Faced with waning interest and increased costs, Technicolor finally closed its Hollywood inhibition plant in February, 1975. Their Rome operations were discontinued on June 1, 1978, and the last imbibition plant, in London, was shut down on June 14, 1978.

The imbibition process did not go out, however, without a fitting hail and farewell. Some years ago, Eric Spilker, a film writer, historian, and sometime entrepreneur, was interested in re-releasing The Gang’s All Here, the flamboyant Fox musical featuring some of Busby Berkeley’s most hallucinogenic musical numbers. Determined to present the film to the public as it had originally been seen, Spilker arranged to have Technicolor make imbibition prints of The Gang’s All Here and, in 1973, opened it in New York. Critics were enthusiastic about the film – and ecstatic about the color quality. Pauline Kael rejoiced over “the electric reds and greens of 20th Century-Fox’s Technicolor”; Rex Reed stated that “this one has been preserved in a print so beautiful and richly endowed with fadeproof Technicolor, it looks like it has been kept in a drawer with Darryl Zanuck’s old socks.” This was a unique instance where the superior imbibition prints of Technicolor garnered a large share of attention and praise – solely due to the instincts of a film historian convinced of the very real assets of the process.

An amusing and perhaps ironic conclusion to the Technicolor imbibition saga concerns the fact that in 1974, the People’s Republic of China contracted with Technicolor, Ltd. of England to have a complete imbibition plant built in China. Operation of the plant began in 1977. The Chinese are using the process to make large numbers of release prints of documentaries and training films. This makes China the last place where Technicolor imbibition printing can be done. Recently, the Chinese let it be known that they would be delighted to contract work from U.S. archives or studios in need of imbibition prints. And so, as the Technicolor sun rises in the mystic East, we ponder the ultimate implications of a laboratory populated by hard-working, happy Chinese technicians, engaged in striking new prints of There’s No Business Like Show Business.”

(O’Connell, Bill (1979): Fade Out. In: Film Comment, 15,5, pp. 11-18, on p. 17.)

Tags

• United States
• dye transfer printing
• Hollywood
• London
• North America
• Rome
• Asia
• China
• Busby Berkeley

×

Drums Along the Mohawk (USA 1939, John Ford)

---

“The recent 20th Century Fox restoration of Ford’s first color feature, Drums Along the Mohawk (1939) provides an opportunity to explore the role of color in the compositional system familiar to his other works. This essay argues that Drums is an experiment in color cinematography that weds Ford’s late 1930s high contrast black-and-white aesthetic to developing norms of Technicolor mise en scène.

Drums was the only color feature Ford made between 1935, when the Technicolor three color system first became available to filmmakers, and 1948. Compared to the reception of both Ford’s later color works and the other productions of his fertile 1939-1941 period, Drums has been described as lackluster by biographers and Ford scholars including Tag Gallagher, Joseph McBride and, to a lesser extent, Scott Eyman (Gallagher 2007: 215–217; McBride 2004: 306–308; Eyman 1999: 212–214). There are several factors at play in the film’s lukewarm critical reception, not least the enduring appeal of Ford’s more famous 1939 releases, Stagecoach and Young Mr. Lincoln. However, this essay focuses on the tendency of scholars to caricature Drums‘s Technicolor design. For example, Gallagher’s analysis appears to be rooted in his understanding of two Technicolor design traditions: first, what Scott Higgins has labeled the “assertive mode” of design, and second, the practice of composing a color score around the costumes of the female lead:

compared to Young Mr. Lincoln, Drums is artful naiveté, airy and bright in its use of Technicolor (Ford’s first film in color and his least expressionistic since talkies began), and seemingly a particularly commercial enterprise for Ford – why does Claudette Colbert wear full glamour-puss makeup even while raking hay? (Gallagher 2007: 215–216)

However, describing the film’s color as assertive, or “airy and bright,” is inaccurate. The assertive mode is characterized by hues at high saturation (Higgins 2007: 19–20), whereas Ford prefers pastels for women and bleached or dark shades for men. […] It is more accurate to align Ford’s film with the low saturation color scores of Higgins’s “restrained mode,” which was associated with outdoor melodramas throughout the 1930s (Higgins 2007: 105–107). Indeed, contemporary reviews in Variety and The Los Angeles Times both emphasize Drums‘s “outdoor” setting and photography (Anon. 1939a; Schallert 1939).

Despite the fact that Colbert sports rather neutral make up and fabrics in the hay raking sequence Gallagher singles out, his accusation of “glamour-pussery” is somewhat more defensible than his description of the overall palette. Drums‘s color design does tend to revolve around its leading lady. Here again, though, Gallagher and others appear to have failed to properly contextualize the director’s use of color. I would therefore like to more carefully locate Drums‘s position within two distinct, yet overlapping, aesthetic systems in the late 1930s: Technicolor and Ford.

Technicolor aesthetics were partially shaped by its technological limitations as a color process. The Technicolor camera required a great deal of light to expose the three strips of film that ran through it, making deep focus effects a challenge. The sharpness of the film image was further limited by the dye imbibition printing process, which tended to soften lines. Technicolor aesthetics were also influenced by the company’s market driven desire to smoothly integrate its product with the norms of the studio system’s highly redundant, classical style (Bordwell 1985b; Higgins 2007). In practice, because color aesthetics were built largely out of costuming and set design, and because male costuming was often significantly less elaborate than female costuming, color palettes were usually developed around the costumes for the female lead, making the starlet the most salient chromatic point in frame (Higgins 2007: 37, 74, 99, 125).

[…]

Although it has often been caricatured as a conservative force in the shaping of film style (Merritt 2008), the Technicolor Company was invested in these same effects. In 1938, the firm met the demand for faster camera stock with reformulated film stocks for its three strip system. Cinematographer Ray Rennahan, who worked on Drums, claimed the improved film stocks were considerably faster than their predecessors in artificial light, allowing him to reduce the average illumination from 500-600 foot candles to a mere 250 (Anon. 1939b: 355). Rennahan was a Technicolor man and probably exaggerated the capability of the new materials; in fact, his “average” level of required light seems to have been closer to a minimum level of required light. In 1950, when Technicolor debuted the third (and final) generation of three strip negatives, average illumination levels for the generation Ford used were reported at 400-500 foot-candles, or double the amount Rennahan cited (Allen 1950: 414). […]

In the years leading up to the release of second generation Technicolor film stocks, Ford was becoming increasingly invested in the very photographic effects that were so difficult, if not entirely impossible, to achieve in color. As a result of his collaborations with cinematographers Arthur Miller, Bert Glennon, and Gregg Toland in the late 1930s and early 1940s, Ford was a participant in a larger black-and-white cinematography trend (one more often associated with Welles and Wyler) that we might loosely label the “hard-style.”² Like other films made in the hard-style, many of Ford’s works from this period (e.g., Wee Willie Winkie (1937), Young Mr. Lincoln (1939), The Long Voyage Home (1940), and How Green Was My Valley (1941)) favored deep, crisp focus, long takes, and high contrast lighting schemes (Gallagher 2007: 243). These were added to other compositional elements typifying Ford’s films as early as the 1910s, including aperture framing, darkened foregrounds against brightly illuminated backgrounds, and deep staging (Gallagher 2007: 27–34).

Although low key lighting and deep staging characterized many Technicolor productions prior to 1938, improvements to the sensitivity of the camera negatives may have been requisite for Ford to even consider working with the color system. The first film to be produced with the improved negatives was not Drums, but rather Gone with the Wind, for which Rennahan served as Technicolor associate. Notably, Ford had at one point been slated to direct Gone (McBride 2004: 282). However Ford elected to make Drums for Fox instead, and because of the Civil War epic’s lengthy production timetable, Ford’s Revolutionary War film was distributed before Gone with the Wind.³

Drums was made by Ford for 20th Century Fox, where he had made his larger budget, more commercial, 1930s works. For the studio, Drums was a big budget production that headlined a major female star in her first color film. It was shot by Technicolor’s Ray Rennahan and Ford’s hard style collaborator Bert Glennon, both of whom had a vested interest in pushing the limits of the new negatives. For Rennahan and Technicolor, Drums was one of a handful of films that could demonstrate the viability of a new product, whilst for Glennon and Ford it was part of a larger experiment with high contrast lighting schemes and deep focus.

A first approximation of the way these goals are reflected in the final work can be seen relatively early in Drums, when the newly wed couple of Gil (Henry Fonda) and Lana (Claudette Colbert) stop at a tavern on their way from her city home to his Mohawk Valley homestead. Passably glamorous treatment of the leading lady is required in this early scene not just for Colbert’s sake, but also for proper characterization of Lana, who undergoes a transformation from ornamental city girl to hardened frontier-woman. Lana and Gil enter, sit uncomfortably together as man and wife at a table frame right, are gently teased by the innkeeper, and then are startled by the appearance of the film’s villain, the one eyed Tory Caldwell (John Carradine), who, it turns out, has been lurking with his dog by the fire in the back all along.

The tavern set is constructed from pale neutrals, the emphatic color accents being arranged to frame Lana who is also bathed in light that spills in through the window. The innkeeper’s dark reddish brown vest almost exactly matches her auburn hair. Her Cobalt dress, meanwhile, is echoed by the pale blue beams and other painted woodwork in the background, and intensified by a cluster of bright objects on the table: two aquamarine glasses, a yellow cream stick of butter, and two brilliant yellow ears of corn. Though small, the objects are highly saturated and so take on greater compositional weight in contrast to the neutrals of the set. Along with the reddish auburn of Colbert’s hair, the set is dressed to form a loose triad of primary colors that intensifies their chroma. The combination of contrast of saturation and the triadic scheme (Zelanski and Fisher 1999: 44, 112) make Colbert the most emphatic point in frame; and even when Caldwell appears he sports a yellow gold vest. This scene typifies Technicolor leading lady design. The set and other characters’ costumes have all been coordinated with the female star. Yet, the overall palette of the sequence is far from assertive and its photography, with no true close-ups and little facial modeling is not particularly glamorous.

Perhaps more importantly, the tavern sequence is also about depth and the surprise reveal of the eye patch wearing Tory and his faithful canine in the background. The establishing shot flaunts the deep set, which extends from an empty table situated in soft focus in the extreme left foreground through Lana and Gil in the plane of focus in the right midground to a second anteroom at the back. The innkeeper moves through the space, from soft focus in the back, into the plane of focus with Lana and Gil. For the second shot, the camera is moved much closer to the young couple and to the right, so that Lana occupies center frame. The innkeeper stands frame left; Gil sits frame right. Whereas in the first shot the camera was angled to the right, in the second shot it is angled slightly to the left revealing a new space, the fireplace. Caldwell the Tory, however, remains concealed behind the innkeeper.

In the second set up, Technicolor design not only highlights the female star, it also helps distract us in service of a surprise effect, even as it keeps the depth activated due to the coordination of the yellow fire with the accents surrounding Colbert. After a shot reverse-shot exchange between the innkeeper and the newlyweds, Ford returns to the second set up, reactivating the fireplace. The innkeeper retreats and reveals Caldwell who turns in his chair to face the camera, a position he holds, giving the audience ample time to register his presence by the fire in an area of the image that is out of focus; this pose is held until Lana looks back at him. Ford does subsequently cut in to properly introduce the villain in focus, but we are first introduced to him by the director’s deft handling of staging and movement in depth. The tavern sequence, then, conforms to the norms of Technicolor design, but it also features deep staging in a deep set, patterned cast shadows, an emphatically foregrounded object, and surprise – all of which are hallmarks of Ford’s filmmaking in the late 1930s.

What Ford cannot achieve in the tavern sequence is truly sharp focus throughout his large set, regardless of the advancements in Technicolor film stock sensitivity. Instead, the director begins to articulate a functional equivalent to the hard-style that he had used in his black-and-white films when Lana and Gil finally arrive at their frontier home. The single roomed log cabin, hand built by Gil himself, proves severely disappointing to the exhausted Lana. She enters it for the first time in the dead of night as a thunderstorm rages outside and she encounters her first Native American within. Blue Back proves to be a friendly, dim witted stereotype, but the unexpected meeting in the shockingly bare interior disturbs Lana. At the advice of his Indian friend, Gil strikes Lana to quiet her screams.

The emotional charge of this scene, amplified by its overt sexism and racism, may have authorized Ford’s experimentation with much bolder color and lighting design. The costumes and set design are essentially reduced to a blue dress, a red blanket, and a yellow fire against a black background, while the lighting set up juxtaposes cool blue “moonlight” with warm yellow red “firelight.” […] Both the color and lighting design, therefore, are constructed around the visually arresting, high-contrast, painter’s primary triad of red, yellow, and blue. The exaggerated contrast which characterizes the overall design is further amplified by a lightning effect, which periodically interjects brilliant flashes of white light that briefly illuminate a classic Technicolor neutral background only to suppress it again in favor of black.

The cabin sequence negotiates a kind of Technicolor hard-style through strong color and lighting contrasts. The sequence is also an incarnation of two hallmarks of the color style Ford was to develop when he returned to color filmmaking beginning in 1948: primary hues in costumes and colored light. However, Ford’s late 1940s works reversed the relationship between these two elements. In Drums, the saturated red and blue of Lana’s and Blue Back’s costumes take up a large area of the frame, whereas in his later color films Ford seems to prefer bold accents instead. Consider, for example, the pops of red and yellow provided by the bandanas and military stripes in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949).

On the other hand, compared to She Wore, the colored light in Drums is relatively subdued. In the cabin scene, the light is clearly sourced. It is directional, and reflects, in the case of the moonlight, a long standing Hollywood norm, and in the case of the fireplace, measurable color temperature. Ford’s interest in colored light may begin with Drums, but it does not approach the excesses of the cemetery sequence in She Wore, where a sunset suffuses everything in frame with rich, thick magenta, red and orange. Lest too much be made of the expressive lighting in the cemetery sequence, though, it is worth noting that Ford and cinematographer Winton Hoch are careful to cast balanced, white light on John Wayne’s visage, adhering to what Patrick Keating has called the “number one priority” of most Technicolor cinematographers: “appropriate skin tones” (Keating 2009: 220). Ford’s taste for colored light may sometimes approach the boundary of normative Hollywood practice, but to my knowledge, it never crosses that boundary.

Perhaps the boldest cinematography in Drums can be found not in the cabin sequence, but rather in the sequence depicting the soldiers’ homecoming. While Lana and the other women anxiously wait, the men begin to return from their battle with the British. In the sequence’s first two long shots, the men march back into town. […] Here, the organization of a color scheme around the female star recedes. Colbert’s costume harmonizes with the rest thanks to the restraint of the overall palette, but it hardly organizes the palette. Against these neutral objects, the colored light becomes more assertive, contrasting the women bathed in warm light emanating from the windows with the long line of soldiers under a blue moonlight key light and a stark white backlight. As in the cabin scene, white lightning strikes are a prominent lighting effect, but here they are accompanied by heavy rain. In addition to further muting the colors in frame, the rain has the paradoxical effect of diffusing the stark backlighting. Thus, the exterior shots in the scene depicting the soldiers’ return are characterized by spectacular cinematography.

The celebrated shot of the homecoming sequence is the three minute, ten second long take of Fonda’s battlefield monologue. Colbert’s Lana nurses Fonda’s Gil in the foreground, while, out of focus in the extreme depth of the cavernous space, General Herkimer’s gangrenous leg is sawn off. Initially a long-shot, the composition features many elements common to Ford’s films: deep staging and minimal editing, as I’ve already noted, but also tiny primary accents such as blood, a darkened foreground against a background illuminated with yellow light, and an aperture frame. An ostentatious camera movement reframes the composition around a two-shot of Lana and Gil, but even in the closer set-up, while Fonda continues to speak uninterrupted on the soundtrack and as extras pass in and out of frame, the yellow glow of Herkimer’s surgery bed remains evident in the background.

The soldier’s homecoming is unquestionably the scene that most forcefully advertises the advantages of the improved Technicolor negatives, and it is also the sequence that best anticipates Ford’s compositions after his return to color filmmaking with 3 Godfathers (1948). As an experiment with a new product for Technicolor and with a new element of design for Ford Drums is less unified than his later color works. Nonetheless, many of the techniques that are first introduced in Drums resurface in Ford’s more assured color films a decade later such as She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) and The Quiet Man (1952). For example, his experience coordinating color accents around Lana (Colbert) anticipates the sumptuous compositions centered on Mary Kate (Maureen O’Hara) in The Quiet Man. The hues that will recur in his later films are already present in Drums: pastels for women’s costumes and deep or bleached hues for men’s, and saturated reds, blues, yellows, and greens, even though the latter is admittedly less prominent in Drums than in the Irish landscapes of Quiet Man or the masculine interiors of the Cavalry films. The diffusion of light through dust, sand, rain, sunsets and lightning storms. Whether natural or simulated, become typical motifs in Ford’s films and are used right through to his last production, 7 Women (1966). The director’s taste for colored backlight in high contrast, low key sequences, meanwhile, is most prominent in She Wore and What Price Glory (1952), but can equally be found in films of all genres from the last two-and-a-half decades of his career, from 3 Godfathers to Donovan’s Reef (1953).

Furthermore, while it may initially seem that Ford’s limited color filmography in the 1930s and 1940s attests to his distaste for the medium, the opposite argument could easily be made. Only thirty full color feature length films, made by as few as twenty four directors, were produced in the 1930s (Higgins 2007: 229–235); one of those films was Ford’s Drums Along the Mohawk. During World War II, Ford’s documentary unit, like many other United States propaganda units, worked routinely in color. […] Furthermore, if we expand our definition of “color film” beyond three color Technicolor, the number of color films Ford made prior to 1948 quickly multiplies. Not only were his silent films regularly tinted and toned, but his Wee Willie Winkie (1937), one of the foremost examples of his monochrome experiments with the hard-style, was also sepia toned. Sepia toning boosts contrast, offering a tantalizing suggestion that the Drums cabin sequence was not an isolated early experiment toward a color hard-style.⁴

In interviews, Ford downplayed the role color played in his work. Color, he boasted, is:

Much easier than black-and-white for the cameraman; it’s a cinch to work in, if you’ve any eye at all for color or composition. But black-and-white is pretty tough – you’ve got to know your job and be very careful to lay your shadows properly and get the perspective right. In color – there it is; but it can go awfully wrong and throw a picture off. […Y]ou’ll probably say I’m old-fashioned, but black-and-white is real photography. (McBride 2004: 306)

Yet as we have seen, close analysis of Ford’s films contradicts his rhetoric. In fact, he paid just as much – if not more – attention to photography in his chromatic works. We can conclude that John Ford’s reputation as a cinematographer’s director is fortified, not threatened, by his color works.

notes

² The group style to which I refer is also known as “deep-focus cinematography” (Bordwell 1985a). However, I like the parallelism between “hard-style” and “soft-style,” the latter being the label applied to the group style popularized by cinematographers in the late silent period. “Hard-style” has the additional advantage of more easily encompassing high contrast lighting schemes under its rubric.

³ According to the American Film Institute catalog (2003), Gone with the Wind went into production in December of 1938 and premièred in January of 1939, while Drums Along the Mohawk and The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (also shot with the new camera negatives) both went into production in June of 1939 and premièred in November of 1939. Drums beat Elizabeth and Essex to national theaters by one day, premiering on the 10th rather than the 11th of November. However, the late September Los Angeles première of Elizabeth and Essex almost certainly marked the first exhibition of a film shot with second generation Technicolor stocks.

⁴ Toning increases density in the dark areas of the positive image, where there are many silver grains, but has little effect in the light areas of the positive image, where there are fewer silver grains. At the Haghefilm Foundation, I was able to see firsthand the difference introduced by toning in experiments conducted with step wedges. The contrast increase is both perceptible and objectively measurable with a densitometer.

I wish to thank Lea Jacobs and the members of her spring 2008 “John Ford & Classical Cinema” seminar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (particularly Mark Minett) where this paper was born. Thanks also to Uli Ruedel and the wonderful staff at the Haghefilm Foundation for sharing their knowledge of early color with me.

references

Allen, L. (1950) “New Technicolor System Tested by Directors of Photography”, American Cinematographer (December): 414–415.

American Film Institute (2003-2011) Drums Along the Mohawk, Gone with the Wind, & The Private lives of Elizabeth and Essex catalog records. Online. Available at http://afi.chadwyck.com (accessed 4 January 2011).

Anon. (1939a) “Drums Along the Mohawk“, Variety (8 November): 14.

Anon. (1939b) “Faster Color Cuts Light in Half”, American Cinematographer (August): 355–356.

Bordwell, D. (1985a) “Deep-focus Cinematography”, in D. Bordwell, J. Staiger, and K. Thompson (eds) The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style & Mode of Production to 1960, New York: Columbia University Press: 341–352.

Bordwell, D. (1985b) “An Excessively Obvious Cinema”, in D. Bordwell, J. Staiger, and K. Thompson (eds) The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style & Mode of Production to 1960, New York: Columbia University Press: 3–11.

Eyman, S. (1999) Print the Legend: The Life and Times of John Ford, New York: Simon & Schuster.

Gallagher, T. (2007) John Ford: The Man and His Films. PDF online. Available at http://home.sprynet.com/~tag/tag/ (accessed 28 December 2010).

Higgins, S. (2007) Harnessing the Technicolor Rainbow: Color Design in the 1930s, Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.

Keating, P. (2009) “The Promises and Problems of Technicolor”, in P. Keating (ed.) Hollywood Lighting from the Silent Era to Film Noir, New York: Columbia University Press.

McBride, J. (2004) Searching for John Ford: A Life, London: Faber and Faber.

Merritt, R. (2008) “Crying in Color: How Hollywood Coped When Technicolor Died”, Journal of the National Film and Sound Archive, Australia 23: 1–16.

Schallert, E. (1939) “‘Drums Along the Mohawk‘ Strong Pioneer Subject”, Los Angeles Times (3 November): 10.

Zelanski, P. and Fisher, M. (1999) Color, 3rd edn, Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.”

(Heckman, Heather (2013): The Cameraman and the Glamour-Puss. Technicolor Cinematography and Design in John Ford’s Drums Along the Mohawk. In: Simon Brown, Sarah Street and Liz Watkins (eds.): Color and the Moving Image. History, Theory, Aesthetics, Archive. New York, London: Routledge, pp. 160–169.)

Tags

• 1930s
• Technicolor
• blue
• United States
• film stock
• red
• green
• 1940s
• negative
• yellow

×

Leave Her to Heaven (USA 1945, John Stahl)

---

Perhaps the most important precedent for [Douglas] Sirk’s [color] work is John Stahl’s 1945 Technicolor melodrama/noir Leave Her to Heaven with cinematography by Leon Shamroy. Shamroy, a noted master of colored lighting, balances blue tinged backlight against amber lamplight to lend an uneasy elegance to Ellen’s (Gene Tierney) family home. As she seduces Richard (Cornel Wilde) in the first act, Stahl gives the whirlwind romance a disconcerting undercurrent through performance, dialogue, and lighting. Ellen and Richard begin in the dark, a low-key effect evoked by the steely sidelight with which Shamroy dapples the set [web illustration 31].² As she begins to politely but insistently question Richard about his romantic life and family, Ellen takes control of the mise-en-scène and snaps on the end-table lamp, motivating a warm key light from off left. The new key glamorizes and centers the female star but also motivates chiaroscuro modeling on Richard, contrasting with the coolly lit back wall [web illustrations 32-34]. Ellen chillingly extols the pleasure of shooting wild turkeys that “are so big and clumsy that they hate to take wing … it’s a lot of fun” and invites Richard to join her hunt. She leaves him just as he realizes that she had carefully arranged their meeting, and he pauses in silence after snapping off the light [web illustrations 35-36]. The scene has an uncomfortable and disquieting quality, a love scene played in moody shadow with the characters separated by luminance and temperature. By 1945, this was a conventional, if beautiful, expressive use of a diegetic element. Colored lighting had nearly become a “fact of mise-en-scène,” a term Lea Jacobs uses to describe the developing conventions of artificial lighting in the teens when it ceased to require strongly marked motivation and became an accepted expressive device (Jacobs 1993: 416).

NOTES

² Full color illustrations for this essay are available online at: http://shiggins.blogs.wesleyan.edu/2012/03/ll/chromo-drama-innovation-and-convention-in-douglas-sirks-color-designs/

REFERENCES

Jacobs, L. (1993) “Belasco, DeMille and the Development of Lasky Lighting,” Film History 5 no. 4: 405-418.”

(Higgins, Scott (2013): Chromo-Drama. Innovation and Convention in Douglas Sirk’s Color Designs. In: Simon Brown, Sarah Street and Liz Watkins (eds.): Color and the Moving Image. History, Theory, Aesthetics, Archive. New York, London: Routledge, pp. 170-178, on pp. 173-174.)

Tags

• 1940s
• melodrama
• mood lighting
• thriller
• Leon Shamroy
• John M. Stahl

×

“‘… IN GLORIOUS TECHNICOLOR’

Color motion pictures can be divided into two major types, containing some problems in common, and many quite separate problems. The two types are the animated film and the ‘natural’ film.

The animated film has produced remarkably fine results. It is, by its very nature, the type most closely allied to painting-being, in essence, a succession of photographs of individually painted pictures. Any critical approach, therefore, must be based upon weighing the worth of the individual frame and the ‘time’ composition of the whole succession of frames. At first glance, there would seem to be no limit to what can be accomplished with this medium, and, in a sense, this is true. Certainly the finest work, so far, in the color motion picture has been done in the animated film. Some original ‘time composition’ has been extraordinarily fine, and when the material has great musical themes as its structural basis, as in Fantasia, the results are often superb.

There are, however, a couple of points to watch. One is a temptation to whimsey. Fairy tales often get the worst of fairy-tale treatment—with the thin and vapid Snow White as a good (bad) example. The second point is a technical one. The thousands of handpainted frames that go into a full length animated film present a great manual problem. The answer to the problem of the time necessary to paint thousands of separate pictures has been the development of a simple idiom—flat, two-dimensional painting, with no atmospheric attempts on the animated elements. However, too often these flat moving forms are played against a painstakingly worked out ‘background’ with minute color and value gradations and all the atmospheric elements which were eliminated from the animated elements. The result, of course, has all the falsity of a vaudeville team playing in front of a stock backdrop. There is little reason for this element of incongruity. There is no law to prove that a three-dimensional painting idiom is necessarily superior to a two-dimensional idiom. So long as each frame of the complete picture cannot be an individually worked out masterpiece of chiaroscuro (and probably it never can be), let us ask more of the extremely talented ‘background artists’ to conceive of their work within the same two-dimensional frame of reference as the animators. But the quarrel, if any, is not with the animated color film. Its popularity is well deserved, and there are no obstacles, in theory, to its becoming as fine and stimulating as the talents which go into it, and the material which it explores. With the ‘natural’ color film, however, the problems are exceedingly complex, and the results thus far, with lamentably few exceptions, are bad or, at best, dull. Unlike the complete and absolute control which one has over the elements that go into the animated film, the ‘natural’ color film has to deal with real people, clothes, settings, and natural landscape, and with the various mutations of these elements caused by artificial light, or varying natural light, distance from the camera, and atmospheric conditions. Let us suppose that we wish a completed film to contain certain qualities, or relationships, of color. What the human eye sees on the sound stage is not in itself the important thing. It is that which the projector flashes on the screen of a theater which must determine what is placed before the camera. Logically, therefore, we must know in advance what every color, texture, and shape, photographed at a given distance, under specific illumination, will look like when it is finally projected on a motion picture screen. Any other procedure means to gamble on the result. Certainly this general premise is not a new one. As far back as 1934, when Robert Edmond Jones designed La Cucaracha, the fundamental thesis, as herein stated, was accepted by all serious workers in the then infant medium of color films. In developing the Mexican theme which ran through La Cucaracha, exhaustive tests in the use of the new three-color system employed at this time were made. In addition to the tests of the three colors themselves, the problem of co6rdinating and developing the colors into a careful composition in time was given the most scholarly consideration. The problem of color composition, development, and modulation was handled with as much thought as that of a mural painter handling a large surface with three main color motifs, or a musician designing in time with three thematic elements. As a result, this film stands as a landmark, even though made at a time when the physical quality of the color obtainable in films was much less perfect than is now possible. It was to be hoped that this serious and scholarly approach to the problem would continue. But it has been the exception, unfortunately, not the rule, though one should, in fairness, point to the use of this method in such films as Becky Sharp, Blood and Sand, and, to a more limited degree, Heaven Can Wait and Blossoms in the Dust. If one were to compare the astronomical costs of all pictures produced in color with the amount of money spent on research, the ratio would be highly significant because the product, on the whole, has been bad.

Yet the purely technical aspect of this matter can be materially corrected. I submit that research can solve the problem of make-up so that the actor does not look either parboiled or stained with magenta. And there are not so many varieties, colors, and textures of silk, wool, cotton, etc., that they cannot be carefully catalogued for their appearance at certain distances and under certain lights. Interior settings present no real problem, for every set must be built and painted. Form and paint tests can be similarly made and catalogued. Landscape and sky present a different problem. Though the elements of nature cannot be ordered at will, the time of day most suitable for obtaining certain effects can be noted.

Thus it should be possible to assemble a complete palette the results of which are known beforehand. Let us even assume what may not be true, that this foolproof palette is more limited in size than the slap-happy conglomerate put in front of a camera today. When has a disciplined or limited palette stood in the painter’s way? The fresco painter is restricted to a narrow range of color, mostly earth pigments, because only these are lime-proof. The painter in oils cannot use pigments compounded of certain beautiful coal-tar dyes, because they are not lightproof. The commercial artist who works for color reproduction, limits his palette to those materials which can be duplicated by printer’s inks. None of these craftsmen cry their eyes out over what they cannot use, nor do they go beyond the natural discipline of their medium, since they know that to thus transgress is to lose control of the result. Can we not ask that the craftsmen in color motion pictures similarly limit themselves to what they know they will get as results? This kind of discipline may well have a salutary effect, and is sorely needed.

Now comes a larger question. Assuming the palette to be under full and complete control, what is to be done with it? We can provide both the man of talent, and the dolt, with good tools. It is what is done with the tools, much more than the primitive state in which we find the tools, that causes most painters to shudder slightly when passing a theater advertising a picture ‘… in glorious Technicolor.’ I intimated earlier that painting and color photography have many common problems. The serious painter is apt to be a fairly literate scholar in his field-drawing interest and direction from the fact that the history of painting antedates the recorded history of man. He is probably as familiar with the color plates of the prehistoric frescoes from the caves of Altamira as he is with Picasso’s ‘Guernica’ mural, and with most of the significant art periods between these two Spanish wall decorations. Are there, then, color-film designers other than Jones, in La Cucaracha, and those designers who achieved commendable results in the films already mentioned, who have made noteworthy contributions to the development of the color motion picture? Certainly no estimate of positive accomplishments in this field would be complete, or fair, which did not include an extensive examination of the splendid work in the Laurence Olivier production of Henry V. With respect to actors’ make-up, set construction, color composition, and thematic color sequence, this film must stand as the finest contemporary achievement in color films. What a refreshing change to see skin tones carrying the blue, green, and cool purple overtones of flesh, instead of the monotonous hot sun-tans of most Technicolor facial make-up! This is, I am sure, not a hidden and mysterious trade secret. What a delight to see sets constructed with a planned, artificially distorted perspective designed to carry out a frankly two-dimensional space idiom used extensively throughout the film! This deserved tribute to the general approach must not, however, be interpreted as a blanket approval of all the sets, some of which, bad in scale, had an unpleasant ‘miniature’ quality. How very canny the technique of constructing the interior of the Dauphin’s tent, on the eve of the Battle of Agincourt, with table tops slightly off the horizontal, and the goblets, decanters and candlesticks perceptibly off the vertical-devices which framed the principals in an artificially contrived flat picture plane. How completely acceptable the general theory that an obviously painted landscape backdrop can be used to limit the atmospheric uncertainties of a natural landscape. And how convincingly the entire mood of the film relates to the graphic conventions of tapestry design and painting of the period. No single color used in the film is any different from a similar color available in any other Technicolor film. But liere the choice and the arrangement have been made with great taste, and with an obvious thematic concept.

Watch the starkly luminous patterning of black and white in the clerics’ garb; the cool blues and translucent veils of the French princess’ headdress in close-up against the delicately distorted architectural colonnades; the simple yet rich opulence of the costumes of the French courtiers; and finally, the wonderful restraint of holding in reserve the most intense reds to build to a climax the mood of the battle scenes. All this and more, despite minor shortcomings of execution, must stand as a tribute to Paul Sheriff, the designer of the film, and as conclusive proof of the effectiveness with which the knowledge and experience derived from the painter’s problems can be applied to parallel needs in the color film. And, of course, it must be understood that this general approach is valid not only for ‘period’ films, but for much contemporary material as well, material which might well be thought of within the framework of current graphic idioms.

The past seventy-five years have been particularly exciting ones in the history of painting. For, as painters reacted violently to the social impacts and cleavages of the era, the formal aspects of the painters’ idiom underwent equally profound changes. This period of reaction against a saccharine naturalism and romanticism saw impressionism investigate the science of color, postimpressionism and cubism dig deep into the science of color and form, expressionism open wide the gates of the ego, and surrealism the realm of the subconscious. The formalism of the first three schools mentioned, and the ‘content’ implications of our atomic age with all its challenges, give evidence of crystallizing into a strong current of social realism that may result in an important period in the history of art.

Certainly the contemporary idiom of painting has had a profound influence on our world. Hardly a single aspect of our lives has not been touched by it. Our architecture, our industrial design, our furniture, our clothes, our tools, all things seem to reflect the clean, lean lines of visual research.

All, that is, except the one new art form of the twentieth century, the color motion picture, which seems to be growing up in less than a vacuum. It is not making its own laws; it is, most of the time, copying the worst aspects of the inane naturalism of the early nineteen-hundreds, copying these banalities and compounding them. Witness the recent musical Ziegfeld Follies: a dance team in the foreground of a motley-colored setting dances on a turntable-behind them a line of chorus men dancing on a treadmill moving to the left-behind that a treadmill moving to the right then a huge and monstrous shape in the background splits in two and opens up and the entire conglomerate of dizzy movement is photographed from a rapidly moving boom. And this unorganized hodgepodge of movement is only a counterpart of an equal anarchy in color. Did any overstuffed Victorian interior ever give a worse case of visual indigestion?

But in the very same film, another sequence stood out, in sharp contrast, as a real contribution to the all too small roster of achievement in color film. The setting was a courtroom, and the mood desired was one of frustration and the inability to obtain justice. The use of artificially elongated perspective, with slight distortion in the construction of the sets, a low camera angle, and a bare courtroom with a minimum of props—all this plus a color palette of somber browns, grays, and livid lights, gave an uncanny sense of despair. The emotional impact was similar to the bitterest caricature of justice by a Daumier or a Forain. And the means whereby it was obtained were similarnot by naturalism, but by the careful use of optical and emotional symbols to recreate a psychological reality which surface naturalism can never hope to attain.

Here we come to a problem with which painters have wrestled for several thousands of years. Realism and naturalism are not synonymous. The history of art has known great periods of realism, but they were periods when an idiom was forged which gave the sense of an emotionally heightened reality which a blind copying of nature can never hope to duplicate. And, conversely, late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century European painting, largely naturalistic and slavishly aping nature, natural colors, and forms, gave, in the name of realism, a pale reflection of life, but not its living core. How long will it take the color film to realize what every significant artist of past and present understands that reality can be re-created only by a translation of life into an art idiom and not by the attempt to tear a single portion of life in toto from one place, put it into another frame, and expect it to be anything but a withered branch of the tree from which it was torn?

But aside from the basic aesthetic question, examine the result of a false type of aesthetics as it affects monetary costs. The pitfalls of naturalism are not only bad art, but expensive art. Examples are numerous. Let me take one at random, because it involved a close painter-friend. This man spent several months, and was well paid for his efforts, in making full-size, full-color copies of Gainsborough’s important paintings for the film Kitty. The copies were excellent. When the film was shown, he went to the theater with a stop watch, and found that the total time the camera spent on these pictures, in close-up or in panning, was exactly seven seconds.

Any visitor, to any studio, is appalled at the staggering sums spent in reproducing the minutiae of sets, costumes, furniture, bibelots, bric-a-brac, etc. Here once again is the unreasoning passion for naturalism. Is the sense of realism truly obtained in this mannerrealism in the sense in which most creative artists use the term? I seriously doubt it.

If one-tenth the money spent on these false trappings of realism had been used, over the past decade, in determining how the color film could arrive at its idiom of reality, we might find ourselves with more of an art form at our disposal. For it is my earnest conviction that all significant art forms of the immediate future, at least, are moving inevitably toward another rich vein of realism. This, I feel, is part of the march of the people of the world toward a rational and full life.

With this direction established, the seemingly endless scientific labyrinth through which the painter has been groping during the past five decades seems to be coming to an end. And with it the long divorce of the artist from his fellows will end. A new art, rich in idea, ‘real,’ and with a clean contemporary idiom, is on the horizon. The color film can well use the rich possibilities of visual research uncovered by the painters. Let us have, in this twentieth-century art form, a combination of a perfected tool, scholarly craftsmanship, and an idea to project. When that realization obtains, the painter will go to the color motion picture not in envy, not in condescension, but as he goes to music or to literature, to a mature and serious art form.

La Cucaracha. RKO, 1935. Becky Sharp. RKO, 1935. Blood and Sand. Fox, 1941. Heaven Can Wait. Fox, 1943. Blossoms in the Dust. MGM, 1946. Henry V. Two Cities (UA), 1946. Fantasia. RKO, 1942. Snow White. RKO, 1938. Kitty, Par., 1944.

(Biberman, Edward (1946): ‘… In Glorious Technicolor’. In: Hollywood Quarterly. 2,1, S. 50–56.)

Tags

• 1930s
• 1940s
• reality effect
• normative aesthetics
• cultural context
• taste

×

THE TECHNICOLOR PROCESS

L. B. K. Happé

Read to a meeting of the Theatre Division on March 12, 1959

In presenting this demonstration of the Technicolor process I shall not spend very much time on the historical side, although the developments which have taken place since the first days of 1917 form a fascinating story on their own and could occupy all my available time this evening. However, to explain the technical form of the process which we now operate it is necessary to outline some of the background and I propose to start at the stage in the early 1930’s when the Technicolor three-colour process was established; it was this process which the London Laboratory of Technicolor Limited was set up to operate in 1936.

Technicolor’s aim has always been clear: to supply colour prints of the highest possible quality in quantities large enough to meet all the needs of distribution in the commercial cinema at a price which the industry could afford: this has meant that the ability to make substantial numbers of release prints has always been a major consideration in determining the form of the process. At the time to which I refer the photographic materials readily available were limited to black-and-white emulsions of various types and the answers to our requirements had to be found within this field. There were two basic problems: the first to analyse and record the colour characteristics of the original scene being photographed in the studio or on location; the second, to synthesize from this record colour prints which could be shown in cinema theatres with the existing projection equipment. In the early 1930’s the answer to the problem of analysis was the Technicolor three-strip camera, while the colour print synthesis was, achieved by a photo-mechanical process referred to as Imbibition Printing.

THE THREE-STRIP PROCESS

The colour analysis of the original scene by the Technicolor camera was effected by recording on three separate strips of 35mm panchromatic negative the three primary colour aspects of the scene, representing as it were the three appearances of the scene when illuminated separately by red, green and blue light only.

Diagrams showing the optical arrangement of the Technicolor camera have been published on numerous occasions¹ and I am sure are familiar to this audience; it will therefore be sufficient to remind you that it uses a beam-splitting prism behind a single taking lens of special design, exposing each frame of action on three negative films simultaneously, two being handled as a bipack. By a combination of the sensitivity of the stocks used and the associated filters, these films are exposed to blue, red and green light respectively and after development yield silver images which are the three separation negatives recording the three primary colour aspects of the original scene. Each of these separation negatives resembles a conventional black-and-white negative image and from each of them a recognizable positive print can be made.

The combination of their three positive images into a colour print involves the series of operations known as Imbibition Printing, whereby three transparent dye images are superimposed on a single strip of film, much as three coloured ink images are printed on to paper in photo-lithography. From each colour separation negative we must therefore prepare the equivalent of a printing plate which we refer to as a Matrix. A matrix is in fact a positive print on film, but in each frame the picture is formed not by heavier or lighter densities of silver as in a black-and-white print, but by varying thicknesses of hardened gelatine: a greater thickness where a positive print would be heavy, a less thickness for a lighter density and practically negligible thickness in the highlights.

The preparation and use of the matrix is in many ways similar to that used in the Kodak Dye Transfer Process […]. Each of the three silver separation negatives is printed on to a special stock, exposure being made through the base. After exposure, a tanning developer is used which hardens the gelatine in the exposed area in proportion to the density of silver developed; by subsequently etching with hot water the unhardened portions of the emulsion layer are removed and the result is a positive image in gelatine relief.

This relief image has the ability to absorb a suitable dye solution in proportion to its thickness of gelatine and when such a dyed matrix is brought into contact with a specially prepared gelatine emulsion under suitable conditions the dye can be induced to transfer from the matrix to the blank gelatine layer, again in proportion to the thickness of the matrix relief image. In this way a positive dye image can be printed having all the detail and gradation recorded by the original negative, and this process can be repeated over and over again on separate pieces of gelatine-coated blank merely by re-dyeing the same matrix and repeating the transfer operation.

To build up the final three-colour positive print the blank must have three dye images transferred on to it in exact registration; from each of the three separation negatives, therefore, a matrix is printed and is used to transfer a dye image complementary to the colour of the light used to expose that negative. Thus the matrix printed from the Blue record negative is used to transfer a yellow dye-image, yellow being the colour complementary to blue; from the Red record negative a matrix transfers the colour complementary to red, which is blue-green or Cyan; while from the Green record negative the corresponding matrix is used to transfer a dye complementary to green, a purple-red referred to as Magenta.

The raw stock for the blank on to which the dye image is transferred is coated with a fine-grain positive emulsion so that a standard silver sound-track can be printed and processed as in regular black-and-white practice; the blank film with its sound-track is then fed on to the Transfer Machine where it is brought successively into contact with the appropriate three matrices and receives the Yellow, Cyan and Magenta dye images which build up the final colour print. After each transfer is completed the matrix, having conveyed its dye to the blank, is ready to be used again, the dyeing and transfer operation being repeated on as many lengths of blank as are required for the print order.

It will be clear that from one set of three matrices a very large number of identical positive prints can be made without further use of the original negative; matrices can also be interchanged between different Technicolor laboratories without any despatch of the original negative so that prints of the same standard of quality will be produced wherever the matrices are used.

This then, was the Technicolor process as operated in Hollywood from 1932 and in London from 1936; it was for many years the method by which the vast majority of colour prints shown in the cinemas of the world was produced, and a measure of its extensive adoption is that between 1936 and 1951 more than 3,000,000,000 feet of imbibition prints were sold by those two Technicolor laboratories, most of it derived from original photography in Technicolor three-strip cameras.

SINGLE-STRIP METHODS

The attraction of using a single film as the original means of photography, and thus simplifying the camera equipment necessary, had always been recognized and over the years a great deal of work had been done on the development of possible single-strip methods. The earliest of these to come into commercial use, although limited in its application to the photography of static material such as cartoon and puppet originals, was the Successive-frame method. It is easy to understand that if the original subject matter is stationary, colour separation negative images […] can be obtained on a single strip of panchromatic black-and-white negative by exposing sets of three frames for each frame of action required, the first frame through a blue filter, the second through a red filter and the third through a green filter. The use of a skip-frame optical printer, exposing the positive only to every third frame of the negative, can then be used to prepare the set of three matrices and the dye transfer process then follows exactly as previously described.

Cartoon photography by the successive-frame method paralleled the first development of the three-strip camera in Hollywood and Walt Disney’s Silly Symphony Flowers and Trees was the first three-colour Technicolor print to be seen in this country in 1932; in the London plant our first production subject was also a successive-frame puppet short produced by George Pal. This method of photography is still being used and by courtesy of Rank Screen Services and Mr. Frank Hendrix I am glad to show you a recent example in their short Chessmen.

However, successive-frame photography cannot be used for live-action photography and in this field the alternative to the Technicolor camera must be a multi-layer material of the integral tri-pack type. The first materials of this type to become available were reversal colour positives, of which a typical example is 16mm Kodachrome; Technicolor made use of a 35mm reversal Monopack from about 1941, although processing was only carried out in their Hollywood laboratories, and there was also a 35mm Anscocolor reversal stock. The latest addition to this field is Kodak’s 16mm Ektachrome, recently demonstrated to the B.K.S.² and I shall take this as an example to illustrate the use of such stocks in the Technicolor process. From the original colour positive image produced on these materials three separation negatives similar to those produced by a three-strip camera can be obtained by printing through blue, red and green filters on to panchromatic duplicating stock. From such separations, matrices are made and final positive prints are produced by dye transfer as before. Although the use of 35mm Monopack is now obsolete, the 16mm materials, Kodachrome and Ektachrome are often used as the original source of Technicolor prints; the documentary films covering the Everest and Trans-Antarctic Expeditions were outstanding examples, made possible only by this method.

But it was not until the general use of integral tripack colour negatives that the three-strip camera was superseded; the outstanding example of this type of material is Eastmancolor Negative, introduced by Kodak in 1951 and described in several technical papers since.³ It is unnecessary for me to repeat the technical description of this process, but I will remind you by demonstration that the images produced in the individual layers of the tripack are negative images representing the blue, green and red colour aspects of the original and that the effect of separation negatives can be obtained by printing through the appropriate colour filters. The use of colour-sensitive matrix emulsions thus allows the preparation of a set of three matrices direct from the original negative and dye transfer prints are made from these as before.

Here again, once the matrices have been prepared they can be used over and over again to make numbers of identical release prints at any Technicolor plant and the original negative itself is only used a few times, however large the print requirements. Although my example is from Eastmancolor negative, the same procedure can be used for any other integral tripack colour negative and I have examples of Agfa, Gevaert, Ferrania and Sovcolor negatives from which Technicolor prints will be shown at the end of this talk.

SIZES AND SHAPES

So far my illustrations have shown the standard Movietone frame on 35mm film, but we are all very much aware of the changes in cinema presentation which have taken place over recent years and which have called for anamorphic optical systems on both camera and projector and the use of larger areas of negative and positive films. The Technicolor process with its essential features of optical printing methods and precise image positioning, has been able to deal with an exceptionally wide range of printing combinations, which I will try to outline in my next section.

An example of the Dynamic-Frame process which I illustrate by a sequence from Glenn Alvey’s Door in the Wall, processed by Technicolor, is of interest in showing what can be done by continuous alteration of the format presented to match the dramatic needs of the story, but this is an exceptional case. However, the sizes and shapes of the negative and positive films with which our laboratory has to deal in regular production are hardly less varied. In addition to 16mm Kodachrome, original negatives may be photographed as 35mm Movietone, Wide Screen, CinemaScope, Vista Vision, Technirama and 65mm with or without anamorphosis; for each of these there is a corresponding positive print – 70mm, Technirama double-frame, Vista-Vision double-frame, 35mm CinemaScope, 35mm Wide Screen and Movietone, as well as 16mm reduction prints with or without anamorphosis. The laboratory’s problem is then made really complex by the fact that from each type of original negative a number of different forms of positive print will almost always be required.

As a comparatively simple example, let us look at the manufacture of 16mm imbibition prints from a 35mm negative. In order to make use of existing processing machinery, matrices are printed by optical reduction so as to position the series of 16mm frames down the centre of 35mm film; these matrices are used on the Transfer Machine to print corresponding 16mm dye images down the centre of a strip of 35mm blank (which has been previously printed with the 16mm reduction sound-track in the correct position) and after transfer is complete the unwanted 35mm edges with their perforations are slit off, leaving the 16mm print.

As a more varied instance of printing procedure I should like to illustrate the derivatives from a Technirama original negative. As most of you are aware, the Technirama camera⁴ uses an anamorphic optical system to produce a double-sized frame eight perforations in length on 35mm film and having a lateral compression of 1.5 to 1. By the use of anamorphic optics in matrix printing a number of different positive prints can be made; the most generally used type combines optical reduction with a further stage of lateral compression of the image so as to produce a 35mm frame with a total horizontal squeeze of 2 to 1. Such a print is similar to a CinemaScope print with optical sound track and when appropriately projected presents a screen aspect ratio of 2.35 to 1. An alternative optical system at the matrix printing stage can be used to make a 35mm print in which the compression used in the camera has been offset, suitable for projecting with normal projector lenses to give a Wide Screen presentation with an aspect ratio of 1.85 to 1. Similar anamorphic printing systems involving larger optical reduction factors are employed to make 16mm prints of both the “Squeezed” and the “Unsqueezed” types.

For special “Road Show” presentations the large area of the Technirama negative frame permits outstanding results to be obtained from either of two forms of large area positive. In the first of these, Technirama Double-frame, the size and shape of the negative frame is directly copied on to the positive to yield a 35mm print with a horizontal frame eight perforations in length; this must be projected in a projector with a horizontal film path and gate using a projection lens with a lateral expansion factor of 1.5 to 1. The resultant screen aspect ratio is 2.35 to 1.

The second type of Road Show print possible from Technirama is the 70mm print, suited to the Todd-AO form of presentation. The height of the Technirama negative frame is practically the same as that of the five-perforation Todd-AO picture, so that an optical printing system having a lateral expansion of 1.5 to 1 is used to produce a 70mm print suitable for projection on the equipment now available in selected theatres for special presentations on the largest possible screens.

To complete this section of my demonstration I should like to show you some excerpts from a number of Technirama features now in the process of completion at our laboratory and express my thanks to the producers who have given permission for this preview presentation to you this evening.

(Short sequences from the following current Technirama features were then projected:

Honeymoon by permission of Mr. Michael Powell.
II Padrone Della Ferriere by permission of Flora Films.
Maja Desnuda (Goya) by permission of Mr. Goldsmith and M.G.M.
The Tempest by permission of Mr. De Laurentiis
John Paul Jones by permission of Mr. Samuel Bronston
For the First Time by permission of Mr. Goldsmith and M.G.M.)

Over the past few years Technicolor’s service to the industry has been greatly expanded by its ability to produce a wide range of print types from many forms of original photography and in comparison with the figure given for the period 1936 to 1951, when the three-strip camera was almost the only source of colour photography, the footage of Technicolor imbibition prints sold by the Technicolor laboratories for 1952 to 1958 amounted to more than 4,250,000,000 feet. Our use of all the types of colour negatives available in Europe and the setting up of Technicolor plants in Paris and Rome has further emphasized the international character of our operations, and to end this demonstration I should like to show you some examples of Technicolor prints from sources abroad which are of interest both technically and in their colour treatment.

(Excerpts from the following films were then shown:

I Quattro Del Getto Tonante. Italy. VistaVision photographed on Ferraniacolor negative.
Othello. Russia. Photographed on Sovcolor negative.
Mogul-E-Azzam. India. Photographed on Eastmancolor negative.
Ultimo Paradiso. Italy. An unsqueezed print from original CinemaScope photography on Ferraniacolor.
Ballon Rouge. France. Photographed on Eastmancolor negative.)

REFERENCES

¹ J. A. Ball, The Technicolor Process, J.S.M.P.T.E., 1935, Vol. 25, No. 2; D. A. Spencer, Colour Kinematography, Phot. Journal, Feb., 1937, Vol. 77.

² B. J. Davies, 16mm Ektachrome, Brit. Kine., 1959, Vol. 34, No. 1.

³ W. T. Hanson and W. Kisner, Improved Colour Films, J.S.M.P.T.E., 1953, Vol. 61, No. 6; G. J. Craig, Eastman Colour Films, Brit. Kine., 1953, Vol. 22, No. 5.

⁴ F. George Gunn, Technirama, Brit. Kine., 1959, Vol. 34.

(Happé, L.B.K. (1959): The Technicolor Process. In: British Cinematography, 35, 1959, pp. 4-9.)

Tags

• dye transfer printing
• wide screen
• matrices
• VistaVision
• Technirama

×

“TECHNOLOGY AND AESTHETICS. TECHNICOLOR CINEMATOGRAPHY AND DESIGN IN THE LATE 1930s

Scott Higgins

From the start of 1936 through 1938, twenty-four full-colour features were processed at the Technicolor plant. Each year, the production of the previous year nearly doubled, with thirteen features released in 1938 alone. Though far from staggering, these figures depict an industry slowly and steadily gaining confidence in Technicolor through the last half of the 1930s.

This period is perhaps best viewed as one of cautious experimentation. On one hand, Technicolor lobbied for the industry to cast aside associations of colour with pure novelty. If the new process was to last, it would have to prove its potential for enhancing drama and story, thus overcoming a short-lived attraction as a gimmick. On the other hand, Technicolor had to convince producers that the costs would be justified by adequate product differentiation and increased grosses.

While three-strip production before 1936 was dominated by an effort to demonstrate the technical capabilities of the new system, the latter half of the 1930s was marked by a complementary effort to establish colour’s commercial potential and the ease with which it could be integrated into major studio feature production.

Having proved three-colour a functional process with Becky Sharp, Technicolor set its sights on making the technology more flexible, so that it could better square with the standards of monochrome cinematographic practice.

THE CASE AGAINST COLOUR

The ease with which Technicolor could be integrated with the aesthetics and practices of conventional production formed the point over which supporters and detractors waged their debate about colour’s merits during the late 1930s. Few sources lay out the terms of this debate more forcefully than a series of bizarrely antagonistic articles run by American Cinematographer for three months in 1936. Emphasising the failings of colour processes, unsigned articles entitled “Why all this hubbub regarding color”, “Is all this color ballyhoo justifying itself”, and “Just what is so mysterious about color”, all appear to be authored by the same critic who claimed to write on behalf of the publication. The articles set out a fairly unified argument which questioned the value of colour for feature films, and defended black and white’s dominance.

At its most basic, this argument assumes that the Technicolor Corporation valued proper colour rendition at the expense of practical and artistic cinematography. As an example of this dynamic, the author related the following: “In one specific instance, the cinematographer worked in light key much lower than demanded by laboratory conceived charts and results were surprisingly eloquent. But the colourists continue to pump in their terrific light, in abject devotion to their elaborate chartings.”¹⁷

During the late 1930s the company laboured to demonstrate that colour need not mean the abandonment of long-standing ideals of well-crafted cinematography. From a technological standpoint, Technicolor faced the problem of proving that its system could complement rather than dominate standard production practices.

TECHNOLOGICAL CONSTRAINTS

The most prominent imposition on regular practices stemmed from three-colour Technicolor’s illumination requirements. Ultimately, the process’s famous appetite for light may be the prime technological determinant of the Technicolor look during the period. At the base of the Technicolor system was a set of film stocks with a collective speed equivalent to around sixteen ASA.¹⁹ However, a good deal of light was lost within the camera. In order to expose three negatives, a prism and mirror combination behind the lens was used to split the incoming light between two apertures. One third of the beam would pass directly through the prism and a green filter to expose a strip of panchromatic film with green light. The other two thirds of the beam was deflected ninety degrees to expose a blue and red bi-pack of films, placed emulsion to emulsion. This light first passed through a magenta filter which absorbed green light. Then, the light exposed a blue sensitive stock which was also equipped with an orange-red filter layer. The remaining light reached the second part of the bi-pack where the red record was generated.²⁰ The magenta filter had a factor of approximately five, while the green filter had a factor of around six.²¹ This meant that together, the filters accounted for a loss of light equivalent to at least two stops. This and other factors reduced the effective speed of the Technicolor system to around four ASA.²² Technicolor speed would remain near this level until the production of Gone With the Wind (1939) when a new set of stocks and filters were made available.

By comparison, in 1935, Kodak introduced Super X black-and-white stock with an ASA of forty, followed in 1938 by Plus X with a speed equivalent to eighty ASA.²³ Obviously there was a significant disparity between Technicolor and standard black-and-white lighting requirements.

In addition to increased intensity of illumination, three-component Technicolor required light of a colour temperature equivalent to sunlight in order to register hues properly.²⁵ Unlike Technicolor’s earlier two-colour camera which could be fitted with a prism and filter combination for either tungsten or daylight, or subsequent Eastman processes which offer stocks balanced for various conditions, colour adjustment for the three colour camera had to be carried out at the point of illumination.²⁶

In order to attain the required illumination and colour temperature, producers turned to arc lights. During the early 1930s the studios relied predominantly on incandescent lighting which was much quieter than the arc equipment used in the silent period.²⁸ In 1935, the Mole-Richardson company was commissioned to design improved and silent arc lamps.²⁹

The initial set of lighting tools imposed constraints on spotlighting and modelling, making difficult the manipulation of fine highlights and shadows.

A substantial improvement was presented by the High Intensity Arc (MR Type 90) and the Ultra High Intensity Arc (MR Type 170) based on research by the National Carbon Company. These arcs incorporated the Fresnel lenses used in recent incandescent spotlights, thus eliminating the “dark centres” of the older Sun Arcs and providing improved distribution of light within a beam.³⁴ In general, they offered lighter and more compact units that could provide more precise control of light, replacing the larger Sun Arcs for spotlighting and modelling.³⁵ At the same time, when flooded, they could generate general illumination and help reduce the number of Side Arcs and Scoops.³⁶ The Ultra High Intensity units were first used in 1936 on The Dancing Pirate.³⁷

At the 1937 spring meeting of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers, C.W. Handley reported that Technicolor had managed to reduce average illumination “by more than forty percent”, in part because of more efficient lighting equipment.³⁸ This reduction would bring Technicolor illumination levels into a range of around 460 to 580 footcandles, still substantially greater than that for black-and-white.³⁹ Nevertheless the new research in lighting had significantly decreased the quantity of units required on a Technicolor set. Handley estimated that with improved lighting equipment the ballroom set for Becky Sharp could be illuminated with only 167 units including new High Intensity Arcs, while in 1935 the production had required 384 lamps.⁴⁰ The trend was clearly toward lighting designs which used fewer, more powerful units.

Differences in colour temperature between lights were routinely neutralised through the addition of gels. High Intensity Arcs would be fitted with light-straw coloured filters (no. 53, also known as the “Y-1”) to compensate for an excess of blue in their output, while incandescents could be fitted with light-blue filters to correct their yellowish light. Alternatively, the variations in colour were exploited for effect lighting.

As late as 1944, Ronald Neame wrote of his experience shooting This Happy Breed that: “Lighting for Technicolor is rather like drawing with a piece of charcoal after having got used to a very fine pencil.”⁴³

Only after the new stock appeared did technical writers admit a lack of flexibility or precision in Technicolor cinematography before 1939. Colour cinematographers were apparently handicapped when it came to the complicated shadow and modelling effects which were valued in glamorising close-up work. The problem lay in the fact that, in order to reach required illumination, light from High Intensity Arcs had to be kept hard and undiffused.

At the same time, the use of three-strip mandated a more consciously measured use of light. This is most clearly illustrated by Technicolor’s requirement of exposure-meter readings on the set. While black-and-white lighting was routinely balanced by eye, Technicolor insisted on foot-candle meters to determine light levels.⁴⁹ This rule seems governed by the Technicolor lab’s desire for dense negatives which properly registered colour values within the more restricted latitude of the system.

A more careful balance of light, coupled with the need for higher illumination, meant more accurate direction and placement of lighting equipment. As Ray Rennahan noted, the new arc units offered better control of the beam, but this also meant “there is less “spilled light” to rely on for general lighting. Our lighting must be done more accurately.”⁵¹ Where excess light could be counted on to take care of some background and general illumination on a black-and-white set, Technicolor required that such areas be carefully attended to and brought up to acceptable, measured levels.

The desire to register colour rather than a white highlight instigated a style which suppressed extreme contrast.

Given these constraints, two different general approaches to Technicolor lighting were articulated in the technical press of this period. One view saw colour as providing a means for separating planes, and thus encouraged flatter lighting schemes which would provide strong registration of hues within the frame. This approach is most clearly enunciated in Peter Mole’s review of arc lighting equipment:

In general, a rather flatter lighting balance than would be used for black-and-white seems to produce the best results in colour. This is to be expected; in monochrome photography, the only possible method of separating objects and planes is through contrast of light and shade, while in a natural-colour scene, much of this can be achieved by natural colour contrasts.⁵⁵

James Wong Howe, writing of his experience on Selznick International’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in 1937, offered a more nuanced description of how this approach might be brought to actual production. Howe recommended soft lighting accomplished by relying primarily on diffused Side Arcs for modelling rather than hard H-l Spotlights.⁵⁶ Rather than fall back on absolutely flat lighting, Howe advocated soft modelling from floor-level arcs “with a bare minimum of fill-in and backlighting from units above”. He differentiated this style of lighting from the trend in monochrome toward “having most, if not all of the light come from above projected by spotlights” which failed to give “natural results in colour”.⁵⁷ Similarly, back light and rim light, which Howe noted as standard for black-and-white cinematography, were “seldom necessary in colour, for we have inherent colour differences to serve the same process”. Howe’s description of Technicolor lighting is unusual for its emphasis on differences from standard practice.

An alternative solution to the problems of lighting for three-strip was proposed by the Technicolor Corporation’s own cinematographers. In general, these craftsmen stressed the similarities to black-and-white lighting, while arguing strongly against flatter illumination.

A flat lighting aesthetic, by placing more emphasis on the role of colour at the cost of varied illumination, would seem to encroach on the cinematographer’s traditional arena for creativity in establishing mood, stylising the image, and exhibiting virtuosity.

Throughout the 1930s, efforts were made to eliminate the necessity of flatter illumination.

Although a cinematographer’s desire to render strong shadow or high contrast had to be balanced against Technicolor’s desire for a thick (i.e. dense) negative, Technicolor cinematographers were at pains to prove that lighting could still serve the dramatic and pictorial functions established in black and white. A good example of the centrality of monochrome aesthetics to defining Technicolor lighting during this period is provided by the case of coloured lighting. The use of projected colour lighting, which had been exploited before 1936 to show off three-strip’s potential was discouraged in favour of adherence to black-and-white lighting schemes. While simulating moon or lamplight encouraged the introduction of coloured illumination, William H. Greene echoed general opinion when he stated “pictorialism and mood can both be served best by an uncoloured use of good dramatic lighting such as we would expect in a fine black-and-white production”.⁶¹ The potentials of colour would not be traded for the expressive possibilities of light and shadow.

Productions in this period often incorporate isolated instances of low key effect lighting and silhouette composition. W.H. Greene’s work on A Star is Born provides an excellent illustration of how Technicolor cinematographers sought to retain the expressive power of lighting effects developed in monochrome.

In several important instances, low-key lighting is used as the dominant device for achieving expressive and pictorial goals. A key example occurs when the film’s romantic couple, Norman Maine (Frederic March) and Esther Blodgett (Janet Gaynor), first kiss in the courtyard of her boarding house. […] His head and shoulder form a dark mass on the right side of the frame and cast a sharply defined shadow across half of Esther’s face at screen left. W.H. Greene achieves a striking effect by eliminating background illumination and composing the frame so that only the left half of Esther’s face, near the centre of the screen, receives key light, probably from a spotted High Intensity Arc.

Here, Technicolor mimics monochrome cinematography, subordinating rendition of hue in order to embrace codes of “artistic” cinematography based on light and shadow.

It is in this sense that the exercises in low key such as those found in A Star is Born are historically distinctive, the product of a period in which colour was still seeking out a place in the classical style.

Another element of technology which was directly related to the problem of Technicolor style, but was far less documented than lighting, was the area of processing.

Until the mid-1940s, problems with contrast and shadow quality were addressed through the use of a silver halftone image printed from the green negative record.⁶⁶ This black-and-white image was printed on the blank before transfer of the three dyes in order to improve shadow definition. Thus any contrast lost due to flashing or, perhaps, increased shadow illumination, might be compensated for by the silver image. The halftone image may have also helped increase the “apparent sharpness” of the red and blue bipack records which had slightly less definition than the green negative.⁶⁷

It is also probable that there were steady efforts to increase the efficiency of the transfer process. […] It is likely then, that mordant was another point of gradual improvement during this period, allowing more dye to be effectively absorbed into the blank and therefore increasing saturation and dye contrast.

In the end, the combination of inefficient mordants, and the use of a halftone silver image limited the saturation of colour and may partially explain the relatively muted look of many Technicolor prints from the 1930s compared to the more saturated look associated with productions from the 1940s and 1950s. Such factors may well have complemented an aesthetic that urged restraint in colour design, though the vivid displays in early interpolated sequences, such as the final sequence of Kid Millions (1934), attest to the fact that the technology could provide assertive colour if that was an important goal.

AESTHETICS OF COLOUR DESIGN

But assertive and brilliant colour does not appear to be the main goal during the late 1930s. Instead, as Technicolor worked to bring its system up to standards that monochrome cinematographers were used to, there was a coincident effort on behalf of colour designers to limit and control the palettes placed before the camera.

Since before the release of Becky Sharp, this had been a key note of Natalie Kalmus’ arguments about proper and tasteful colour use. Natalie Kalmus, former wife to company president Herbert Kalmus, headed Technicolor’s Color Advisory Service from the 1930s into the 1950s. […] Drawing on her training in the arts, Kalmus synthesised a set of four basic rules for organising and controlling colour in film. First, colour schemes should be coordinated with the mood or tone of dramatic action.⁷³ A second principle held that excessive use of bright, saturated colour should be avoided in favour of more “natural”, harmonious and less intense colour schemes. […] Third, warmer and brighter shades should emphasise only narratively important information, otherwise neutral colours were advised.⁷⁵ Finally, Kalmus proposed that elements of mise-en-scene should be coordinated so as to avoid distracting juxtapositions when characters move through space.⁷⁶ These four principles set the pattern for most discussions of proper and tasteful use of colour into the 1950s, with different commentators specifying and extending these ideas.

While Kalmus’ principles actually informed a broad range of colour design options throughout Technicolor’s history, during the 1930s special emphasis was placed on restraint and avoidance of high-contrast colour. For example American Cinematographer helped to specify and elaborate on Natalie Kalmus’ general observations about colour harmony and coordination when it published a talk given by Gilbert Betancourt to the ASC in 1937. […] After explaining the basic relationships of hue provided by a standard colour wheel, Betancourt suggested: “While contrasting or complementary colour combinations will continue being used for advertising, traffic signs, and posters, the trend of good taste is toward the more subdued types of harmony such as the analogous [closely related hues], the split complementary [combination of a hue with those that surround its direct opposite on the wheel], or even monochromatic [various shades and tints of a single hue].”⁷⁹

The principle of reserving warm and saturated hues for rare accents within a set was thus carried over into a temporal dimension. More importantly, this concession opened room for brief flourishes of colour which might foreground the element, renewing spectator awareness of it, as long as the design quickly reverted to one based on subtlety. Indeed, this appears to be a defining strategy of the restrained style, a strategy which encouraged the keying of colour to specific, transitory moments of narrative.

A STAR IS BORN

Colour for A Star is Born was planned by Lansing C. Holden, a production designer and art director who worked with Selznick previously on Garden of Allah (1936). It appears that Holden, who received screen credit as “colour designer”, worked in a capacity which mirrored the Technicolor Corporation’s “colour consultant”.⁸⁷ Holden described the duties of a colour designer: “His function is to supervise sets, costumes and properties; he must plot the colour scheme as a whole and for each individual scene; he must assure the most dramatic and harmonious use of colour in the same way that a musical director supervises the score of a picture.”⁸⁸ Although not an official employee of Natalie Kalmus’ department, Holden’s writing indicates that he held a similar set of assumptions about proper colour aesthetics.

Most of Holden’s specific prescriptions were based on the desire to anchor colour firmly to the tasks of guiding attention and supporting drama. For example, he noted “the centre of interest must be the centre of colour”, and that “the one key colour present in every scene is the colour of the face of the actor”.⁹⁰ This observation had ramifications for set design, as he argued that the background “should be kept a cool, neutral colour so that it will retreat behind the face, which is always warm”.⁹¹ Such ideas were fairly common in discussions about colour design following the production of Becky Sharp. However, Holden also offered a warning which seemed directed at Natalie Kalmus’ early ideas about deploying specific colours to enhance the emotional tone of a scene. After citing the ballroom scene in Becky Sharp, he conceded:

Colour can undoubtedly be used to assist the mood of the story and to arouse emotion. But audiences should not be conscious of these various effects any more than they should be conscious of incidental music in a dramatic scene. The danger in using colour for emotion is that it looks like a trick.⁹²

With characters often clad in shades of grey, brown, black and white, tonal contrasts and gentle back lighting generally account for separation of player from background. The restrained palette helps ensure that traditional cues for guiding attention are not displaced by the domination of colour.

However restrained A Star is Born may be, this tendency of design is countered by a clear interest in showcasing Technicolor, especially during brief and spectacular sequences. Technicolor’s goals with regard to the promulgation of colour during this period seem pertinent: on the one hand there is a clear drive to subdue the element of hue and downplay Technicolor’s novelty function; on the other, in order to justify the expenses and difficulties of using three-strip, colour needed to offer a visible mark of difference from black and white.

Colour restriction reaches its climax as Esther’s grandmother sees her off to Hollywood at the town’s train station. The scene is rendered entirely in low key and silhouette. This scene helps to set up the contrast between Esther’s North Dakota upbringing and her arrival in Hollywood. By suppressing chroma, the train station compositions reinforce the brilliance of the next sequence, a montage which introduces Hollywood.

Alternation between restraint and brief flashes of colour structures colour design in much of the film. In general, this illustrates how Technicolor could capitalise on the conventional motivations for spectacle and stylisation available to the classical paradigm.

One strength of a usually unobtrusive deployment of colour is the possibility opened up for tying hue to story. Within a simplified dominant palette, strong variations in hue clearly stand out and can generate colour motifs which underscore specific thematic and emotional developments. Though this film doesn’t seem very systematic in such deployment of colour, the use of red-orange accents performs such a function. This motif’s thematic associations are rather nebulous. Colour is not uniquely tied to a specific meaning or emotion. Instead, the chromatic motif in A Star is Born is repeated in shifting contexts, forming a pattern which can bolster the dramatic weight of an episode without becoming obvious or symbolic.

As noted earlier, the red-orange colour first appears in the opening credits, but it quickly becomes bound to Esther’s dreams of Hollywood. During the first scene, set in the drab farmhouse interior, Esther’s fan magazine generates a red highlight. […] The prop also helps coordinate costume and set, the red of the magazine picking up Esther’s muted red scarf. At once the colour guides attention to an important piece of mise-en-scène and helps define a character’s motives by linking her to an object which seems out of place in the subdued domestic set. These connections are more easily achieved within the restrained environment.

Though the connection between high-colour and the lure of Hollywood reaches a sort of climax with the montage that introduces Esther to the city, it still carries a thematic charge which is activated during Norman’s suicide. […] The point-of-view shot of the sun seems to signal Norman’s final resolve to end his life, and its subsequent appearance symbolises that act. At the same time, the return of the luminous red-orange hue recalls the motif in which that colour had been associated with Esther’s dreams of a Hollywood career, fitting nicely with the film’s explicit thematic contrast of rising and falling stars.¹⁰⁰ The sunset’s conventional associations with death and closure is reinforced by the colour association. That the chromatic motif is built into a more traditional cultural reference helps obviate the danger noted by Holden, that the emotional use of colour “looks like a trick”. As in many of the uses to which colour was put, the new element of style is redundant with other systems. Technicolor’s place in the classical mode tends to be one that duplicates and enhances extant devices.

A Star is Born responds to the challenges posed to Technicolor during the 1930s in a particularly rich manner. W.H. Greene’s use of low key lighting and extreme shadow brings colour into contact with cinematography’s traditional reliance on tonal contrast. Working at what must be the very limits of the system’s illumination requirements, sequences of chiaroscuro seem designed to prove three-strip’s potential to integrate with established practices and means of expression. While successful integration partly meant bending colour to fit codes of unobtrusiveness and allowing it to support rather than dominate common practices, A Star is Born also set out to showcase vigorously Technicolor’s unique contributions to the image.

In 1938, Robert Edmund Jones, stage designer and colour coordinator for early three-strip efforts including La Cucaracha and Becky Sharp, lamented the current trend in colour design:

The colour pictures now being made in the studios are not colour pictures at all, in any real sense, but coloured pictures. Their tones are agreeably subdued in order that they may not clash with one another and the individual “shots” often contain delightful pastel harmonies. But there is very little colour in these films and almost no colour composition as artists know it. Black-and-white thinking still dominates the screen.¹⁰¹

Jones’ criticism highlights the shift in style which took place in three-strip productions after 1935. Indeed, one would be hard pressed to find a more direct statement how emphasis on unobtrusiveness had come to dominate the field. That this shift involved a concerted compromise between the demands of the Technicolor lab and the sensibilities of working cinematographers, as well as between colour showcasing and reigning monochrome aesthetics, should now be clear.

Between 1936 and 1939, Technicolor was transformed from a source of novelty to a useful contributor to classical style. Technological developments and cinematographers’ techniques ensured that the process could serve rather than dominate standard production practices. But the preponderance of subdued colour and the emulation of monochrome effects proved to be transitional measures. Beginning with Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) and succeeded quickly by Wizard of Oz (1939), colour productions commenced to test the limits of restraint, eventually developing a group of fairly well-defined colour styles. The restrained mode, so central to gaining a place for colour in the classical cinema, ultimately became one of several stylistic options as three-strip production stabilised in the early 1940s.

NOTES

¹⁷ “Why All this Hubbub Regarding Color”, American Cinematographer (August 1936): 426.

¹⁹ Phone interview with Dr Richard Goldberg (16 September 1996). Dr Goldberg was Technicolor’s vice-president of research and development during the transition to Eastmancolor in the 1950s. He oversaw the reformulation of the dye transfer process for use with Eastmancolor stock, and has expert knowledge about the characteristics and limitations of three-strip processing.

²⁰ For explanation of the three-colour Technicolor camera, see: William Stull, “Explanation of the Trichrome Technicolor”, American Cinematographer (January 1935), 8-9, 12, 14; J.A. Ball, “Three Color Cinematography”, Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers (August 1935), 127-38; and Fred Basten, Glorious Technicolor (Cranbury NJ: A.S. Barnes and Co., 1989), 199-204.

²¹ Adrian Cornwell-Clyne, Colour Cinematography, third edition (London: Champan & Hall, 1951), 132.

²² Phone interview with Dr Richard Goldberg (16 September 1996). See also Clyne, 132. Clyne suggests that before 1940, Technicolor’s effective speed was Weston 3, approximately equivalent to an ASA of 4.

²³ Barry Salt, Film Style and Technology: History and Analysis, second edition (London: Starward, 1992), 195, 6.

²⁵ In the 1930s the industry considered a temperature of approximately 6,500°K as standard for daylight. See “Glossary of Color Photography”, Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers (May 1935): 437. The actual colour temperature of sunlight can vary somewhat. For example, Clyne indicates that a uniform overcast sky has a temperature of about 6,500 to 7,000°K, while late afternoon sun (around 4.30) dips to about 4,700°K. (86). Contemporary colour emulsions which are balanced for daylight use respond to a temperature of 5,600°K. See Kris Malkiewicz, Cinematography, second edition (New York: Prentice Hall, 1989), 66.

²⁶ Roderick Ryan, A History of Motion Picture Color Technology (New York: Focal Press, 1977), 79.

²⁸ For a discussion of Hollywood’s conversion to incandescent lighting, see David Bordwell, Janet Staiger & Kristin Thompson, The Classical Hollywood Cinema, Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1 985), 294-297; and Charles Handley, “History of Motion-Picture Studio Lighting”, in A Technological History of Motion Pictures (ed.) Raymond Fielding, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), 120-124.

²⁹ Bordwell, “Technicolor” in Classical Hollywood Cinema, 354.

³⁴ William Skall, “Artificial Sunlight”, International Photographer (October 1936): 14. For a brief, clear discussion of the optics involved in a Fresnel lens, see Malkiewicz, 90-94.

³⁵ Ibid., 16 and Peter Mole, “Arc Lights for Color”, International Photographer (October 1935): 23.

³⁶ C.W. Handley, “The Advanced Technic of Technicolor Lighting”, Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers (August 1937): 173.

³⁷ Mole, “Lighting Equipment for Natural-Color Photography”, International Photographer (June 1936), 16.

³⁸ C.W. Handley, “Advanced Technic”, 169.

³⁹ These figures are based on a presumed 42 per cent reduction. As noted earlier, monochrome sets averaged 250 to 400 foot-candles.

⁴⁰ Handley, “Advanced Technic”, 177.

⁴³ John Huntley, British Technicolor (London: Skelton-Robinson, 1948), 55. Also cited in Duncan Petrie, The British Cinematographer (London: British Film Institute, 1996), 43.

⁴⁹ Salt, 197. For a detailed discussion of the use of exposure readings in Technicolor cinematography, see Ralph A. Woolsey, “Lighting and Exposure Control in Color Cinematography”, Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers (June 1947): 548-553.

⁵¹ William Stull, “Technicolor Bringing New Charm to Screen”, American Cinematographer (June 1 937): 236.

⁵⁵ Mole, “Lighting Equipment”, 17.

⁵⁶ James Wong Howe, “Reaction on Making his First Color Production”, American Cinematographer (October 1937): 409.

⁵⁷ Ibid.

⁶¹ William H. Greene, “Creating Lighting Effects in Technicolor”, International Photographer (January 1937): 25.

⁶⁶ Dr Goldberg (July 1996). Personal interview with Richard May, July 1996. Richard May is Warner Brothers’ Vice-President of Film Preservation. He oversees the preservation of studio-era MGM and Warner Brothers Technicolor features, and has extensive knowledge about the process.

⁶⁷ Richard Haines, Technicolor Movies: The History of Dye Transfer Printing (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Company, 1993), 24.

⁷³ Natalie Kalmus, “Color Consciousness”, Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers (August 1935): 142.

⁷⁵ Ibid., 146-147.

⁷⁶ Ibid., 148.

⁷⁹ Gilbert Betancourt, “Present Color Trend is Toward Subdued Hues”, American Cinematographer (August 1937): 352. Parentheses are mine.

⁸⁷ Haver suggests that Holden’s position was created because Selznick International’s heavy schedule of colour production required “someone on the premises at all times to work out the kinks and rough spots in the colour scripts and schemes”. If so, the position doesn’t seem to have lasted since Holden is not credited with colour design work on any other Selznick film. Ronald Haver, David O. Selznick’s Hollywood (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980), 196.

⁸⁸ Holden, “Designing for Color”, We Make the Movies, (ed.) Nancy Naumburg (New York: Norton, 1937), 239.

⁹⁰ Ibid., 240.

⁹¹ Ibid.

⁹² Ibid., 243.

¹⁰⁰ The final sequence in which Esther attends her latest premier at Grauman’s, affirming her commitment to Hollywood, features red-orange spotlights as well as the name “Vickie Lester” spelled out in yellow lights. Perhaps here the motif reaches closure, riding alongside the repetition of Grauman’s, the site Esther first visited upon arriving in Hollywood.

¹⁰¹ Robert Edmund Jones, “The Problem of Color”, The Emergence of Film Art, (ed.) Lewis Jacobs (New York: Hopkinson and Blake, 1969), 206.”

(Higgins, Scott (1999): Technology and Aesthetics. Technicolor Cinematography and Design in the Late 1930″. In: Film History, 11,1, pp. 55-76.)

Tags

• 1930s
• lighting
• restrained
• color temperature
• color consulting
• chromophobia

×

“TECHNOLOGY AND AESTHETICS. TECHNICOLOR CINEMATOGRAPHY AND DESIGN IN THE LATE 1930s

Scott Higgins

---

A Star is Born (US 1937, P: Selznick International)

---

W.H. Greene’s work on A Star is Born provides an excellent illustration of how Technicolor cinematographers sought to retain the expressive power of lighting effects developed in monochrome.

In several important instances, low-key lighting is used as the dominant device for achieving expressive and pictorial goals. A key example occurs when the film’s romantic couple, Norman Maine (Frederic March) and Esther Blodgett (Janet Gaynor), first kiss in the courtyard of her boarding house. After pausing briefly in a medium profile shot, Norman turns his back toward the camera and manoeuvres Esther so that she is framed over his shoulder as the camera dollies in to a medium close-up. His head and shoulder form a dark mass on the right side of the frame and cast a sharply defined shadow across half of Esther’s face at screen left. W.H. Greene achieves a striking effect by eliminating background illumination and composing the frame so that only the left half of Esther’s face, near the centre of the screen, receives key light, probably from a spotted High Intensity Arc.

The lover’s first kiss offers conventional motivation for the cinematographer to glamorise the image. Rather than exploit three-strip through the more common technique of combining shallow focus with strong background illumination to create a soft wash of colour behind the actress’ head, Greene stylises the shot with some extremely careful modelling. The shadow area is actually translucent, allowing an eye-light to be reflected back through the darkness, displaying a meticulous lighting balance. When Norman bends forward to kiss her, his shadow briefly fills the frame with only Esther’s eye-lights remaining. This method for “working” a close shot to render pictorial effect seems part and parcel of a period in which various strategies for bringing colour into contact with established conventions were being tested and revised. Here, Technicolor mimics monochrome cinematography, subordinating rendition of hue in order to embrace codes of “artistic” cinematography based on light and shadow.

A Star is Born also deploys lighting effects to emphasise the somber mood of especially dramatic sequences. In a manner which seems fairly conventional for monochrome, the key lighting follows and emphasises broad dramatic developments. In the brief scene following Norman’s drunken disruption of Esther’s Academy Award acceptance, a single shot pans and dollies from Norman, stuporous in his easy chair, to Esther kneeling to remove his shoe, finally framing the Oscar laying beside her. The mood is reinforced by lighting that, while not low key, is significantly dimmer than surrounding scenes. When the camera dollies forward to a medium close-up of Esther, background illumination is especially low, and fairly heavy facial modeling renders a striking effect. Because such a correspondence of lighting to mood is so routine, the sequence is a good illustration of Technicolor following the dominant trends in cinematography.

But a much more pronounced manipulation of lighting to accentuate dramatic tone occurs near the start of Norman’s suicide scene. While recovering from another night of drinking, Norman overhears Esther’s plans to abandon her career so that she can devote more time to his care. Silently, he resolves that he can no longer burden his wife. After a brief shot of the partially opened bedroom door, the camera dollies in to a close-up of Norman lying in bed. In a nearly pitch-black frame, a single shaft of light from off right illuminates his eyes and forehead in centre frame, with some light spilling onto his pillow at right. The close-up is repeated three times, functioning as a reaction shot to Esther’s conversation in the next room. This really daring use of low-key lighting strips the image of colour and isolates Norman’s eyes, emphasising the moment when he closes them as Esther announces her plan to leave her studio.

Later in the scene, more subtle shadowing continues to accentuate the mood. When Norman emerges from his bedroom, shadows motivated by windows in an off-screen doorway form vertical and horizontal bars across his figure. Similar shadows occur more forcefully when Norman steps from his final embrace with Esther, and approaches the beach door. The camera tracks back, keeping him in medium shot as he moves in and out of shadows which pass over his face and body.

Such low-key lighting effects seem especially apt for supporting drama, making them particularly important in the context of Technicolor’s desire to broaden the range of its process beyond novelty. Moreover, Technicolor’s requirement of accurately measured and directed lighting may have encouraged the precision with which shadow and highlight were deployed.

In certain respects, A Star is Born does seem to follow the aesthetic of unobtrusive emphasis and harmony recommended by Betancourt and Holden. Lyle Wheeler’s sets tend to be rendered in neutral blue-grey, or a mixture of brown, grey and beige-gold tones. These choices square with the art director’s recollection that he and Selznick felt “colour should not be noticeable, that it should not get in the way of the story; we tried to lose the gaudiness…”⁹³ Often texture is accomplished through tonal gradations within a limited set of hues, lit to ensure variation in the background while avoiding sharp colour contrast.

Norman Maine’s bachelor apartment offers a good example; its high style is accentuated by the paucity of colour contrast. Featured early in the film, when Norman drunkenly phones Oliver (his producer, played by Adolph Menjou) and then calls Esther to arrange her screen test, the set’s strong lines and massive curving wall immediately lend the impression of modern luxury. At the left, Norman’s bed, with a vertically striped mauve-brown (ash rose and mauvewood) headboard built into a curved blond-beige panelled section of wall is covered with a tan (near desert dust) blanket.⁹⁴ Blond-beige dressers flank either side of the bed, and a brownish red (red earth) glossy vase sits on a shelf behind the headboard. The centre of the room is dominated by a large window with diagonally striped cream (between ecru and dawn) and almond brown (almond) outer curtains, flat blue-grey (pearl blue) inner curtains and a beige wood blind. Along the far right wall, from background forward, sit a large nearly black-brown (madder brown) easy chair, a highly polished caramel-brown dresser with a circular mirror and, toward the foreground, a horizontally striped cream-grey (cream pearl) and flat-brown (camel) easychair with a caramel brown end-table/dresser. A matching striped easychair and end-table are placed in the centre foreground. Other set dressings, including lamps, a few chairs and small objets d’art are rendered in varying shades of brown, black and beige.

This mixture of tan and grey walls with brown and caramel accents provides a neutralised background for Norman’s antics. But if the colours are fairly uniform, other elements ensure detail and visual interest. Texture and variation is achieved through contrasting patterns, such as the varied stripes on the bed, chairs and curtains. Similarly, the varied finishes of set materials, highly polished surfaces set against flat fabrics and walls, lend to the impression of complexity and texture within the limited range of colour. Though the lighting scheme is high key, directed pools of more intense spot-illumination motivated by onscreen practicals pick out specific furniture pieces and contrasting patterns. This lighting also emphasises depth by striking the cool blue-grey draperies, which offset the tan window blind at the rear, creating a graphic spike to accent the background while keeping assertive colour contrast to a minimum. Colour becomes a subtle addition to techniques for creating texture through a play of tone and pattern.

Other sets tend to follow the same principles of colour design, and the repression of colour contrast serves practical goals. It helps ensure that the performers will function as the “colour centre” of the compositions, and relegates the chore of providing background variation and texture to structure and lighting. With characters often clad in shades of grey, brown, black and white, tonal contrasts and gentle back lighting generally account for separation of player from background. The restrained palette helps ensure that traditional cues for guiding attention are not displaced by the domination of colour.

However restrained A Star is Born may be, this tendency of design is countered by a clear interest in showcasing Technicolor, especially during brief and spectacular sequences. Technicolor’s goals with regard to the promulgation of colour during this period seem pertinent: on the one hand there is a clear drive to subdue the element of hue and downplay Technicolor’s novelty function; on the other, in order to justify the expenses and difficulties of using three-strip, colour needed to offer a visible mark of difference from black and white.

Colour restriction reaches its climax as Esther’s grandmother sees her off to Hollywood at the town’s train station. The scene is rendered entirely in low key and silhouette. Esther and her grandmother, clad in dark coats and hats, receive flat facial illumination from the foreground, while stronger silver light is reflected from the snow-covered platform behind them and shows through the station window to the right. The frontal illumination is eliminated once the train pulls from the station, leaving figures in near darkness. The final shot of this sequence relies on the station manager’s practical light to provide the faintest level of visual contrast as he escorts Esther’s grandmother from the platform.

This scene helps to set up the contrast between Esther’s North Dakota upbringing and her arrival in Hollywood. By suppressing chroma, the train station compositions reinforce the brilliance of the next sequence, a montage which introduces Hollywood. The brief Los Angeles montage opens with a title card over a daytime panorama taken from the Hollywood hills. In contrast with the previous shot, this one provides high key lighting and more vivid colour, a function of the introduction of a soft-blue sky. Subsequent compositions are even more intent on stressing colour contrast. The next shot, a single leftward panning shot of the Ambassador Hotel swimming pool, begins by juxtaposing a red patio umbrella in the foreground right with the vivid blue pool water in midground, complemented by peach and grey accents on an awning at the rear. As the pan unfolds, revealing a studio’s camera equipment at the foreground left, red and blue contrast is carried by costume accents in the pool, and subtler shades of green and yellow are introduced by air mattresses in midground. Interestingly, the film takes up associations of high colour contrast with artifice and uses them to reinforce the presentation of a “Metropolis of Make Believe”, as the introductory title describes Hollywood.

But thematic connections seem secondary to sheer chromatic indulgence. The next three shots continue the trend, featuring in particularly saturated hues a blue bus, yellow train and silver propjet, each approaching the camera with the words “City of Los Angeles” on their fronts. The montage finally meets back up with the central narrative at Grauman’s Chinese Theater. Red and blue contrast – initially presented by a tilt and pan of the theatre’s sign and awning framed against the sky – is quickly toned down by a return to Esther’s character, and the introduction of brown and tan tones into the sunny exterior. Cutting in to a plan américain, Esther’s two-tone black dress, her brown and tan (caramel and topaz) suitcase, a passing bus painted deep brown, and a passerby clad in a brown overcoat, serve to bring the palette back toward the hues of the restrained opening. Brilliant top illumination catches Esther’s face, localising the point of greatest contrast in her red hair which nearly glows in the light. The resources of colour, briefly displayed in the brash montage, are once again moored to the necessities of character-centred narration. The music track parallels the shift, the speedy full orchestra melody of “California Here I Come” which climaxes with shots of Grauman’s, slows down and is carried by the strings.

Alternation between restraint and brief flashes of colour structures colour design in much of the film. In general, this illustrates how Technicolor could capitalise on the conventional motivations for spectacle and stylisation available to the classical paradigm. The establishing shot offers one such area where the classical style seems open to embellishment. Just as unmotivated camera movement appears more acceptable at the start of a scene, the showcasing of pictorial elements becomes associated with shots that establish a general locale. This is clearly the motivation behind the introduction to Hollywood montage, but it is also continually at work on a much smaller scale. For example, when Norman visits the Santa Anita racetrack, establishing shots juxtapose primary colours, first in the red and blue “Christmas Week Racing” billboard, and immediately after in a shot of red-clad jockeys riding past a blue wall on their way to the track. In a similar fashion, Esther’s studio grooming sequence exploits the conventional inclination toward stylisation in montage sequences. The series of truncated, emblematic actions encourage more overtly designed and forceful images which offer strong impact and can be quickly comprehended. Colour showcasing, then, is both tied to broad plot articulations and norms of the classical cinema.

One strength of a usually unobtrusive deployment of colour is the possibility opened up for tying hue to story. Within a simplified dominant palette, strong variations in hue clearly stand out and can generate colour motifs which underscore specific thematic and emotional developments. Though this film doesn’t seem very systematic in such deployment of colour, the use of red-orange accents performs such a function. This motif’s thematic associations are rather nebulous. Colour is not uniquely tied to a specific meaning or emotion. Instead, the chromatic motif in A Star is Born is repeated in shifting contexts, forming a pattern which can bolster the dramatic weight of an episode without becoming obvious or symbolic.

As noted earlier, the red-orange colour first appears in the opening credits, but it quickly becomes bound to Esther’s dreams of Hollywood. During the first scene, set in the drab farmhouse interior, Esther’s fan magazine generates a red highlight. In a long shot which frames the entire living room area, the magazine appears on an end-table at the foreground left. The only red accent in the room, it receives directed spotlighting from above, making it glow like a beacon of Hollywood’s allure, developing the associations initiated by the credit sequence.⁹⁸ The prop also helps coordinate costume and set, the red of the magazine picking up Esther’s muted red scarf. At once the colour guides attention to an important piece of mise-en-scene and helps define a character’s motives by linking her to an object which seems out of place in the subdued domestic set. These connections are more easily achieved within the restrained environment.

Though the connection between high-colour and the lure of Hollywood reaches a sort of climax with the montage that introduces Esther to the city, it still carries a thematic charge which is activated during Norman’s suicide. Here, the careful restriction in Norman’s final conversation with Esther is contrasted with the orange-red sunset which he catches sight of through the window. The juxtaposition is emphasised by alternations between Norman standing in front of the doorway, sun behind him, and his final glance at Esther, clad in the deep-green velvet dress. The setting sun which sinks on the horizon as he swims out to sea in extreme long shot, rather conventionally stands in for Norman’s suicide.⁹⁹

Colour’s pictorial potential is distinctly employed to emphasise the dramatic developments of the scene. The point-of-view shot of the sun seems to signal Norman’s final resolve to end his life, and its subsequent appearance symbolises that act. At the same time, the return of the luminous red-orange hue recalls the motif in which that colour had been associated with Esther’s dreams of a Hollywood career, fitting nicely with the film’s explicit thematic contrast of rising and falling stars.¹⁰⁰ The sunset’s conventional associations with death and closure is reinforced by the colour association. That the chromatic motif is built into a more traditional cultural reference helps obviate the danger noted by Holden, that the emotional use of colour “looks like a trick”. As in many of the uses to which colour was put, the new element of style is redundant with other systems. Technicolor’s place in the classical mode tends to be one that duplicates and enhances extant devices.

A Star is Born responds to the challenges posed to Technicolor during the 1930s in a particularly rich manner. W.H. Greene’s use of low-key lighting and extreme shadow brings colour into contact with cinematography’s traditional reliance on tonal contrast. Working at what must be the very limits of the system’s illumination requirements, sequences of chiaroscuro seem designed to prove three-strip’s potential to integrate with established practices and means of expression. While successful integration partly meant bending colour to fit codes of unobtrusiveness and allowing it to support rather than dominate common practices, A Star is Born also set out to showcase vigorously Technicolor’s unique contributions to the image.

NOTES

⁹³ Lyle Wheeler, cited in Ronald Haver, David O. Selznick’s Hollywood (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980), 198.

⁹⁴ Colour names in italics refer to similar hues catalogued by Leatrice Eisman & Lawrence Herbert (eds.), The Pantone Book of Color (New York: Harry N. Adams, 1990). This is a reference volume of over 1000 colour standards, developed for use in the printing industry. Although comparisons between printed hues and those in a motion picture can be approximate at best, I provide the Pantone names in an effort to better signify important hues. Since these names have been tested and refined, they can help specify colours and give the reader a somewhat more precise idea of qualities I am describing.

⁹⁸ The splash of colour is directly tied to narrative concerns when Aunt Mattie (Clara Blandick) decries the magazine as an intrusion into the family’s quiet and sensible home life. Mattie’s line “House all covered up with movie magazines, and the other day I caught her talking to a horse with a Swedish accent” occurs just after Esther reaches for the magazine and begins reading.

⁹⁹ According to Haver, this effect is actually a glass painting by Jack Cosgrove.

¹⁰⁰ The final sequence in which Esther attends her latest premier at Grauman’s, affirming her commitment to Hollywood, features red-orange spotlights as well as the name “Vickie Lester” spelled out in yellow lights. Perhaps here the motif reaches closure, riding alongside the repetition of Grauman’s, the site Esther first visited upon arriving in Hollywood.

(Higgins, Scott (1999): Technology and Aesthetics. Technicolor Cinematography and Design in the Late 1930s. In: Film History, 11,1, pp. 55-76, on pp. 59-76.)

Tags

• 1930s
• red
• restrained
• David O. Selznick
• William A. Wellman

×

“TECHNOLOGY AND AESTHETICS. TECHNICOLOR CINEMATOGRAPHY AND DESIGN IN THE LATE 1930s

Scott Higgins

---

allgemeine (mediale) Rezeption des Farbfilms in den 1930ern

---

THE CASE AGAINST COLOUR

The ease with which Technicolor could be integrated with the aesthetics and practices of conventional production formed the point over which supporters and detractors waged their debate about colour’s merits during the late 1930s. Few sources lay out the terms of this debate more forcefully than a series of bizarrely antagonistic articles run by American Cinematographer for three months in 1936. Emphasising the failings of colour processes, unsigned articles entitled “Why all this hubbub regarding color”, “Is all this color ballyhoo justifying itself”, and “Just what is so mysterious about color”, all appear to be authored by the same critic who claimed to write on behalf of the publication. The articles set out a fairly unified argument which questioned the value of colour for feature films, and defended black and white’s dominance. The author proclaimed: “the multiple-hued films appear mainly to have enhanced appreciation for the superlative artistic and dramatic creations that have been evolved in monochrome”.¹⁰

Among general points about colour’s cost and production slow-downs, the critic offered several objections which relate specifically to film style. Colour should be rejected precisely because conventions for making it compatible with established style had not been developed, and the technology ran the risk of dominating other stylistic elements: “[colour] is not at this stage of the game, a controllable quantity in the sense that light-and-shadow is… Story, cast, sets, wardrobe – every item involved – must be whittled down to the narrow capacities of the process.”¹¹ Obtrusive colour designs were blamed for “the partial eclipse of drama and story or action”. The author complained “colours perform strange tricks at the most unexpected times and for no apparent good reason. One may suddenly decide to stand up and cheer, or roll over and play dead. And the perverse little devil usually does it at just the wrong time.”¹² Further, the very use of colour was held to encourage a distracting overemphasis on photography: “any competent Director of Photography, could, if he were so short-sighted, make his black and white so dominant in artistic content as to steal the picture. But he knows better.”¹³

Behind many of these assertions was an apparent animosity toward Technicolor’s emphasis on scientific principle rather than the craft-based knowhow of a working cinematographer. “Just what is so mysterious about color” referred to “budding young scientists fresh from campus lecture halls” who should “turn over their processes intact to practical studio production men”.¹⁴ Citing Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1936), the author noted that “men wise in picture making subdued the colour, de-emphasised it… not a high tribute to colour’s professed dramatic content”.¹⁵ Since colour was apparently incompatible with the goals of effective cinematography, the critic recommended bracketing it off from the main line of production. Colour might be best used for interpolated sequences since “ten to twenty minutes of colour comes as a pleasant and enjoyable change”, or “an occasional musical or spectacle fantasy” which would capitalise on its value as a curiosity.¹⁶ The commentator was willing to open space for colour as a technological novelty, but as a major addition to film style it was unacceptably intrusive without offering the requisite advances in narrative or artistic substance.

At its most basic, this argument assumes that the Technicolor Corporation valued proper colour rendition at the expense of practical and artistic cinematography. As an example of this dynamic, the author related the following: “In one specific instance, the cinematographer worked in light key much lower than demanded by laboratory conceived charts and results were surprisingly eloquent. But the colourists continue to pump in their terrific light, in abject devotion to their elaborate chartings.”¹⁷

NOTES

¹⁰ “Why All this Hubbub Regarding Color”, American Cinematographer (August 1936): 327.

¹¹ Ibid.

¹² “Just What is So Mysterious about Color”, American Cinematographer (October 1936): 414.

¹³ “Hubbub”, 327.

¹⁴ “Mysterious”, 424.

¹⁵ Ibid., 425.

¹⁶ “Hubbub”, 327, 34, 35.

¹⁷ Ibid., 426.

(Higgins, Scott (1999): Technology and Aesthetics. Technicolor Cinematography and Design in the Late 1930s. In: Film History, V 11,1, pp. 55-76, on pp 56-57.)

Tags

• normative aesthetics

×

“ADVANCED TECHNIQUE OF LIGHTING ON TECHNICOLOR

C. W. Handley

Abridged from a Paper Presented at the Spring Convention of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers, Held in Hollywood, May 27, 1937

A previous paper described the studio illuminating equipment used for Technicolor productions in 1935. Since then developments in arc lamps and changes in the Technicolor process have occurred which make possible a considerable advance in Technicolor lighting, which have not only resulted in much better lighting, but in the accomplishment of this result with a considerably smaller number of lamps.

The last report of the studio lighting committee (presented at the Fall, 1936, convention of the society) gives the average light intensity used on black and white sets as 250 to 400 foot-candles, and on Technicolor sets as 800 to 1,000 foot-candles.

During the past year Technicolor has been able to reduce its illumination to approximately the same levels as now used for a great deal of black and white work. These changes have been made possible by the use of more efficient lighting equipment, changes in the Technicolor photographic technique and advances in laboratory processing.

NEW ARC LAMPS

When the first Technicolor three-color picture was made the MR Type 39 twin-arc broadside and the MR Type 27 scoop were the only modern arc lamps available. These were placed around and above the set to establish an even overall illumination tion [sic].

The spotlamps and sun arcs used for creating areas of higher intensity were lamps which had been used for many years on black and white. They did not give an even field, nor were they satisfactorily quiet or suitable as to color quality. Therefore the broadside and scoop were used wherever possible. As a result, many more lamps were used on a set than would have been necessary if modern high intensity equipment had been available.

The MR Type 90 “H.I. Arc” is now used in place of the older 80 ampere rotary spot, the MR Type 150 “Ultra H.I. Arc” in place of the 24″ sun spot, and a new 65 ampere spotlight (MR Type 65) developed. The 36-inch sun arc is still used where a deep penetration of light is desired on particularly long throws or where a particularly sharp shadow is necessary.

The MR Type 90 and the older 80 ampere rotary are of approximately the same size and weight, but the Type 90 at a beam spread of 40 degrees delivers over three times the light of the 80 ampere rotary, and at a beam spread of 16 degrees twelve times.

Improvements in the laboratory processing of the film, details of which are outside the scope of this paper, have made it possible to reduce the light intensity on sets by as much as 40 per cent and to change the illuminating technique from that of a more or less flat lighting with a uniform overall light intensity to an advanced color technique with widely varying levels.

Because the lighting of a motion picture set is often a compromise between the cinematographer’s desire for a given effect and the limitations of the equipment and process it is difficult to attempt to state the number of lamps required for any given area. The table shows an estimate given by Ray Rennahan, chief cinematographer, of the number and types of units he used to photograph the huge ballroom set of Becky Sharp, the first three-color Technicolor feature.

In comparison is Rennahan’s estimate of the lamp equipment which would be required for the same set under present conditions of lighting. The reduction from the original requirements is apparent.”

(Handley, C.W. (1937): Advanced technique of lighting on Technicolor. In: American Cinematographer, June 1937, p. 236.)

Tags

• 1930s
• lighting
• carbon arc

×

STANDARDIZATION OF MOTION PICTURE MAKE-UP* M. FACTOR**

Summary. The use of make-up is traced briefly from its earliest application in the theaters of ancient Greece to the present time, and the relation between make-up and the various forms of lighting from one period to another is alluded to. The paper continues with a detailed discussion of the relation between the characteristics of the present make-up components and the color-sensitivities of various types of film. Data are given for the various make-up materials in units of color according to the Lovibond tintometer glasses; photographic reflecting powers are given; and curves are presented showing the spectral transmittance curves of the Lovibond glasses to match various make-up materials.

HISTORICAL

The use of make-up dates back to the earliest historical times. We know that it was used in all the ancient civilizations. During the Golden Age of Greece, the leisure classes used the various make-up mediums such as are used today. They knew of powder, foundation creams, lip pomade, mascaro, and nail staining. In Rome, during the time of Christ, the application of make-up became an art. The hair was bleached as well as dyed, and certain portions of the body were tinted; for example, the knee-caps and the bottoms of the feet were colored and the toes were tinted. The make-up powder known as Cyprius, came from the island of Cyprus.

In the theaters of both Greece and Rome, make-up had a position of lesser importance. The players, instead, depended upon masks for the various characterizations. However, during the revels of Dionysius, certain of the revelers, who were to mourn for dead persons, stained their bodies in appropriate symbolic colors. From these revels sprang the Greek tragic plays and the origin of the theater. In the Grecian theater, make-up was not used for character protrayal; but instead, the characters were indicated by the use of masks of various shapes and colors to symbolize the characters. In the beginning, by changing masks, one actor portrayed all the various parts.

Primitive masks were used in the ceremonial dances and theatricals of aboriginal peoples. In the Aleutian Islands, New Zealand, Siam, and other countries, the masks may still be seen. In the ceremonials, in addition to the masks, the bodies were often covered with grease and earthy pigments. The American Indian, who did not use masks as a rule, painted his features for war dances. In certain ceremonies he used masks representing animals.

The use of masks continued in practically all forms of dramatic entertainment until about 1600, the time of Queen Elizabeth, when they were discontinued and pigmented powders substituted for them. Between 1500 and 1600 the art of make-up was indeed crude. The actors at that time very carelessly made themselves up to represent Harlequin, Punchinello, and other characterizations of the period. They often used white chalk dusted over their bodies, and wigs for their heads. Make-up was of secondary importance. The theaters were crudely lighted by oil-burning lamps, tallow candles, and iron baskets with resinous woods. Because of the subdued lighting, make-up in light tones was used, and from that time on actors handed down their make-up secrets from generation to generation.

After 1800, stage lighting changed from crude oil illumination to the better, more efficient gas lighting. Through the passing years the art of make-up and theater illumination depended upon each other. Prior to 1850, dry colors were applied directly upon the natural skin or dusted upon a grease foundation. About 1880, when the electric light was invented, a new impetus was given the theater and a new demand placed upon make-up. It was about this time that stick grease paint made its first appearance, as an invention of a German actor touring the United States.

By 1890 the making of stage make-up materials came into such wide use that their manufacture attained a commercial scope. About 1900, when the first motion pictures were in practical use, make-up, borrowing the technic from the stage, came into use when the first studios installed electric lights.

The first motion picture make-up was of a pink color, due to the fact that the photographic emulsions were of the orthochromatic variety. However, since orthochromatic emulsion is not sensitive to the yellow-red of the spectrum, the faces of the players with pink make-up photographed in an artificial looking tone.

It may be recalled; that the very early motion pictures were cen tered around more or less standardized types of characters, among which were the villain, the hero, the heroine, and perhaps the father. The villain usually did not apply a coat of make-up that would have improved his appearance a little too much: a dark blemished skin was more to be desired. The villain usually wore a long mustachio, and heavily painted eyebrows. The hero, on the contrary, applied make-up in quantities. His lips were usually elaborately painted, and his face was as white as the heroine’s, which was, indeed, white.

The heroine affected long curls and bore much make-up. The secondary players in those early dramas depended upon a coat of the pinkish grease paint and penciled eyebrows. In the photographic processes, make-up is used to add certain pigmentations to those of the human face so that the photographic reproduction will coincide with the visual; that is, for correct and natural photographic reproduction, the face must monochromatically reproduce in a range such as the eye normally visualizes.

The eye sees yellow, more readily than any other color, with a relative proportion of more red than blue. The photographic emulsion, on the other hand, does not record in the same manner. As is known, the panchromatic photographic emulsion has a high sensitivity in the blue, with a proportionately lesser sensitivity in the red.

The characteristics of the Mazda illumination, on the contrary, as used on the motion picture sets are relatively low in the blue and very high in the red end of the spectrum. The characteristics of photographic emulsions that are particularly sensitive to the blue give rise to the condition of a too dark color rendering in the red end of the spectrum and too light in the blue.

The human face without make-up does not photograph smoothly because of the irregular distribution of the pigmentation that gives color to the skin. This difficulty is remedied in still photography by suitable retouching. Make-up in motion picture photography serves to correct the condition by presenting to the camera a well balanced and uniform distribution of color tones that reproduce upon the screen in monochrome an effective interpretation of what the eye would normally see. The purpose of make-up, then, is to add to the face sufficient blue coloration in proportion to red in order that the photographic tonal rendition will be such as the eye sees in real life, and to prevent excessive absorption of light by the face.

The psychological problem must also be, considered. A combination of the correct blue-violet and yellow-orange with sufficient blue in a range that would be desirable for a correct panchromatic recording would result in a brownish make-up. On the motion picture set before the camera, this brownish make-up would distinctly affect the psychological responses of the players ; for example, if two players were enacting an emotional scene and had to look at each other in unnatural colors, a certain interference of response would result. Even though containing the desirable panchromatic colors in the make-up composition, the make-up must be sufficiently natural to overcome this psychological factor.

This is accomplished by adding to the composition of the make-up a medium that has a comparatively high reflection in the yellow-orange range (about 6000 Å). In compounding the make-up with

this problem in mind, the dominant hue of the make-up material is held as near 6000 A as possible; at the same time sufficient pigments of the valuable photographic colors are added to assure correct photographic rendition while still maintaining a semblance of natural visual coloration of the skin.

This problem is solved to an extent by balancing the colors in the make-up; that is, a certain relative proportion between the yellow and blue in contrast to the red is maintained. To give body and to hold make-up in a natural skin color range, sufficient quantities of the red-yellow and non-color-selective material are added. The different densities and panchromatic values of make-up are controlled by thus balancing the three unit colors. The effect of these three colors in relatively equal concentrations results in a gray or black when applied to the face, as they act as subtractive colors, while a lesser color concentration of any one of the elements alters the hue in favor of the other two. For example, in the panchromatic moist rouges, series 5 to 9, the color concentration increases proportionately more in the yellow and red than in the blue (very little blue is needed to affect the make-up color materially). The increase in color results in a make-up that is darker both visually and photographically. This proportionate increase may be seen in Table I. The data were obtained with the Lovibond tintometer and glasses, [J. W. Lovibond, Salisbury, England] for analytical studies by the subtractive method, and the researches and comparisons were conducted by Capt. H. B. Haselden of the Henry E. Huntington Library, R. E. Farnham, G. A. Chambers, and W. E. Theisen in collaboration with the Max Factor staff.

The Lovibond tintometer glasses were used in lieu of other color analyzing systems because of their practicability. The color absorption of the glasses was analyzed and data presented by Gibson and Harris1 of the U. S. Bureau of Standards. According to these authors, certain irregularities appeared in the graduation of the Lovibond glasses, although for purposes of the present study of make-up these errors are too small to be of sufficient importance. In making the analysis of the color compositions of the make-ups in terms of the Lovibond tintometer glasses, a Bausch & Lomb comparison microscope was used. The usual calcium sulfate screen, which is employed as a standard white in the Lovibond tintometer, was placed in position so that light reflected from it filled one-half of the two-part comparison field. A sample of the make-up to be measured was likewise positioned so that light reflected from it filled the other part of the comparison field. The calcium sulfate screen and the sample were both illuminated by sunlight. In order to obtain a color balance in the comparison field, suitably selected Lovibond tintometer glasses were positioned so that the light reflected from the calcium sulfate screen was filtered thereby, thus modifying the color of the comparison field until it matched the part of the field illuminated by light reflected from the make-up sample. From a knowledge of the spectral absorption of the various Lovibond glasses found necessary to produce a match, it was possible to compute the spectral composition of the light in the comparison field. These spectral absorption data were taken from those published by Gibson arid Harris.¹

In Fig. 1 the dotted curves represent the spectral transmittance values for the 3.0 minus green and the 1.0 minus blue Lovibond tintometer glasses which were found necessary to match the No. 21 panchromatic foundation. By multiplying together the ordinates of the two curves, wavelength by wavelength, the solid curve is obtained, which gives the spectral transmittance of the combined glasses. This curve shows the spectral distribution of radiant energy that will produce a subjective match with the No. 21 panchromatic foundation. It should be kept in mind, however, that the spectral reflectance of

the No. 21 panchromatic foundation may not necessarily be the same as that indicated by the solid curve of Fig. 1. It is quite possible to find different spectral distributions of radiant energy that will produce a subjective match with the distribution as indicated by the solid curve. This follows from the fact that the eye, in terms of which the color match was made, is not an analytical sensitive receptor. It is well known that two colors that appear identical to the eye may differ markedly in spectral composition. However, the solid curve of Fig. 1 is of considerable value as an. indication of the appearance of the No. 21 panchromatic foundation. For instance, the fact that the ordinates of this curve in the region between 5500 and 7000 A are relatively high, as compared with the ordinates in the region between 4000 and 5000 A, indicates that the No. 21 panchromatic foundation is reflecting a predominance of the longer wavelengths, and is absorbing rather strongly the shorter wavelengths of the visible spectrum to which panchromatic photographic materials are relatively quite sensitive.

In Fig. 2 is shown a similar analysis of the data relative to the No. 31 panchromatic foundation. In this case three Lovibond tintometer glasses were required to produce the desired color match, and the dotted curves represent the spectral transmittance of the three glasses

used, while the solid curve is computed by multiplying the ordinates of all three of the components together, wavelength by wavelength. Here again the solid curve gives the spectral distribution of the light transmitted by the three glasses combined, and hence indicates a spectral distribution (but not necessarily the only one) that will match the No. 31 panchromatic foundation.

In Fig. 3 the same analysis is shown for the studio special rouge.

The fact that the ordinal values of the solid curves of Figs. 2 and 3 are appreciably less than those of the solid curve of Fig. 1 indicates that the No. 31 panchromatic foundation and the studio special rouge have appreciably lower total reflectances than the No. 21 panchromatic foundation. This conclusion is verified by the data shown in Table II.

In order to ascertain the photographic reflecting power of the makeup, L. A. Jones, of the Kodak Research Laboratories at Rochester, N. Y., furnished data obtained with the photographic reflectometer, described in 1932² in the JOURNAL. The Lovibond readings give a subjective evaluation of the color of the make-up materials as seen by the eye, while the photographic reflectometer values translate these colors into their relative monochromatic brightness as seen by the photographic emulsion.

In measuring the photographic reflecting powers of the samples, the

illumination of the samples was derived from a tungsten lamp operating at a color temperature of approximately 3400 K. This illumination was incident at an angle of 45 degrees from the normal to the surface, and observation was along the normal to the surface. The photographic material, in terms of which the evaluation was made, is the Eastman supersensitive panchromatic motion picture negative. The rouge and foundation were used in layers sufficiently thick to be practically opaque. The powders were dusted over a thin film of the foundation, the application being quite generous so as to attain a fairly complete coverage with the powder. Table II shows the values obtained.

Although the measurements were not made under what might be called practical studio conditions, the quality of the light was virtually identical to that of the Mazda illuminants used upon the set. The readings, therefore, represent the integrated actinic effect of the color with respect to the light-source and the color-sensitivity of the emulsion used for the determination.

The need of a standard make-up was particularly emphasized with the introduction of the panchromatic emulsion. As the result of a series of experiments made at Warner Bros. Studio in Hollywood in February, 1928, the Max Factor panchromatic make-up was adopted. Subsequently to these experiments, the panchromatic film, the Max Factor panchromatic make-up colors, and Mazda illumination were introduced.

To assist with these problems the author set out to introduce a standardized series of make-up colors. At that time, because of lack of suitable colorimetric instruments and a knowledge by the industry of its needs in this respect, a trial-and-error method was used to develop a practicable motion picture make-up. The primary purpose was to balance the make-up colors correctly, and to recognize the relations between the motion picture mediums. Second, it was necessary to present a make-up material in a form that would be practicable. Because the old theatrical stick make-up was not easily applied and was unsanitary, the unguent form of make-up, with a base composed of vegetable oils, was introduced in a collapsible tube. Soon the old theatrical stick make-up was discarded in favor of the unguent panchromatic foundation color.

The unguent base aided in the manufacturing processes since the pigments could be introduced in closer balance and could be added in finer and smoother forms. This makes possible a thinner application, permitting a freer use of the facial muscles and leading to better acting by the players. Because of the fineness of the pigment in the unguent panchromatic make-up, it is possible to apply a desired protective color coating adequately without an unduly heavy application of the make-up.

By experiment it was found that a range of panchromatic colors, numbered from 21 to 31, would be sufficient for motion picture use. From the 21 pan foundation make-up, with no blue in its composition, the photographic absorption increases proportionately up to the 31 pan. Referring to Table I, this increase from the 21 to the 31 is in the photosensitive colors; that is, in the blue end of the spectrum. In this range the photographic reproduction of the progressive numbers becomes proportionately darker. As the colors darken their yellow and blue contents increase, with relatively less increase in the red pigmentation.

The panchromatic powders ranging from No. 21 to 31 correspond in color pigmentation to the unguent foundation of the same numbers. Visually, because of the weaker total light absorption of all the spectral colors, they appear relatively lighter than the corresponding pan foundation. The powder serves the purpose in make-up practice of eliminating sheen and reflection, and of fixing the unguent foundation. It is desirable to use the powder of the same number as the foundation. The moist rouges in a paste-like unguent are designed chiefly for lip make-up. The red and blue are balanced sufficiently to attain the desired photographic tonal contrast with respect to the foundation colors. The studio special rouge, which is widely used in motion picture practice, visually appears redder than the series 5 to 9 rouges, due to the greater proportion of red and yellow in its composition. Correct application of make-up and subsequent correct balance of illumination and photographic exposure result in the desired photographic image in monochrome. When this balance is correctly attained the features of the players are well defined, and a certain roundness or perspective is maintained. Because the camera records in a two-dimensional plane, it is one of the problems of make-up so to control the photo-reproduction of the features of the players that their faces reproduced upon the screen have the appearance of roundness. The natural facial form is suggested by building contrasts of light and shadows, and the make-up composition is such as to give a correct photographic rendering in monochrome.

Throughout the various cinematic moods and characteristics of the settings, there is a great variation of intensity of illumination upon different parts of the set. For example, the face in strong, direct light reflects more yellow and orange, while the blue is, to an extent, absorbed. By contrast, in indirect illumination this condition is changed, and the reproduction has a tendency to be darker than natural. The results are different, too, in light containing an abundance of infrared, as is the case with certain of the studio lights and not so with other lights upon the same setting. The make-up provides a protective coloration that is theoretically a balance for a variable lighting condition.

It is the problem of make-up so to compose its colors and inherent characteristics that a wide photographic tonal range can be covered. That is, the player must be able to progress through light beams from various sources without too sharp contrasts. The made-up face must reflect relatively more light in the shadows than in the direct lighting. Make-up, besides furnishing the necessary protective coloration for the photographic processes, is also used to aid characterization. Angular faces may be softened by a cleverly balanced use of light and darker patches of make-up. Wide faces may be made to seem narrower by artificially adding shadows to the sides of the face. Certain features must be defined and outlined in keeping with the desired characterization. Many effects and results, which are beside the point of this paper, are gained by an artistic application of make-up. Make-up is an artist’s tool, and for clever characterizations its application depends upon artistic skill. The make-up artist must have a sense of light and shade, facial contours, and the relationship of the face to the desired characterization, all based upon the photographic reproduction in monochrome.

The author is particularly indebted to Mr. E. W. Theisen and Dr. L. A. Jones for assistance in the preparation of this manuscript.

REFERENCES

¹ GIBSON, K. S., AND HARRIS, F. K. : “The Lovibond Color System; a Spectrophotometric Analysis of the Lovibond Glasses,” Scientific Paper No. 547 (Feb. 17, 1927), p. 1, U. S. Bureau of Standards, Government Printing Office, Washington, D. C.

² JONES, L. A., AND MCFARLANE, J. W.: “The Precise Measurement of Filter Factors and Photographic Reflecting Powers,” /. Soc. Mot. Pict. Eng., (Oct., 1932), No. 4, p. 364.

(Factor, Max (1937): The Standardization of Motion Picture Make-up. In: Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers. 28,1, pp. 52–62.)

 

Tags

• lighting
• skin tone
• spectral sensitivity
• panchromatic
• make-up
• color temperature
• colorimetry
• orthochromatic

×

“Despite some nibbling by a few producers, most major producing companies continue to be wary of color for feature pictures.
Whether color for features is commercially profitable, and will the public pay more and in larger numbers to see such pictures, has the producers guessing.
Producers feel that there will be no big swing to color until it’s been placed on a black-and-white cost basis. Interests identified with the color field believe that such could be accomplished if all producers made the bulk of their features in color.”
(Anonymous (1935): Color’s Future Depends on Costs. In: Variety. July 13, p. 5.)

Tags

• 1930s
• economics

×

“COLOR! THE NEW LANGUAGE OF THE SCREEN

Lansing C. Holden

The addition of color to the screen is as natural a development as sound and as revolutionary as the influx of “talkies,” and just as coldly logical when viewed in the sober light of calm judgment.

So why dwell upon the future of color? Color is here; it has arrived, and must be treated in the present tense. Save for those who hide their heads in the sand, ostrich-like – the same ones who cried aloud in 1928 against sound – Hollywood regards color as a bouncing, healthy infant whose steady growth is assured.

I worked on that ambitious effort in the color field, The Garden of Allah, and also the first modern story in color, A Star Is Born, starring Janet Gaynor and Fredric March. In those two films, every possible problem that could arise from the use of color, either in panoramic outdoor scenes or complicated indoor sets, was met and mastered. There now remains nothing to be added or taken away from the technique of applying color to the screen. There may be changes in the method of preparation, but none in the execution.

The Garden of Allah was hailed as one of the most beautiful pictures ever made. Not only did Technicolor capture the radiant scenes of the desert, but it also made Dietrich, the most glamorous woman in the world, more glamorous than ever, by enhancing in life-like tones the sheen of her hair and the soft creaminess of her complexion. We had the assistance of nature here, for nature has a way of balancing her own color schemes in beautiful panoramas, far better than any human designer could mechanize.

In A Star Is Born, however a radically different situation was encountered. Here was a picture laid in the racy tempo of Hollywood, with numerous interior scenes depicting the screen capital at its gayest. This called upon the color designer to plot his own color schemes, to make sure that each scene, each costume or combinations of costumes, reached the eye as a natural, acceptable view, and gave the observer a feeling that he might have been standing within the room pictured. In other words, perfect color on the screen must match the scenes we see in everyday life.

That, in itself, is one of the biggest reasons why color has come into its own in films. An artist painting a picture is mirroring life, but he does not confine his canvas to blacks, whites and grays. The screen, too, is a mirror of life, and picks up color as a natural component – something that should be there because it belongs there.

But it so happens that color has two other great purposes in motion pictures. It can be used to enhance mood, co-operating with the musical score which hitherto shouldered this burden alone. And it is used to heighten the illusion of depth, creating by its light and dark shades a third-dimensional quality.

Let me illustrate these points with concrete samples:

One of the most dramatic moments in The Garden of Allah was the confession scene, in which Boyer, kneeling atop a great sand dune, pours out the innermost secrets of his soul to his lover, Miss Dietrich. It is a dark, awesome moment in a great romance. The color design called for repression, a toning down of all colors, an effect as if a shadow had fallen across the scene. Thus, by sight and by sound the audience can feel the dark agony of the confessor’s heart.

In A Star Is Born, there is a series of scenes showing Miss Gaynor in the happy hours when she tours with her newly-married husband (Fredric March) her new home. Miss Gaynor’s costume of beige and blue colorfully reflects the light-hearted joy she feels. There are light green vistas of lawn and trees, a lily-bedecked pond, a swimming pool of shimmering blue beneath bright sunlight – colors of romance!

Attainment of third-dimensional qualities is possible through the simple knowledge that certain colors, such as red, instantly leap to the foreground, while others, such as darker shades of blue, naturally recede. We need only lo handle our color schemes as an artist wields his brush to achieve a real illusion of depth.

Yet at all times we must remember the lessons of the past. Never use color for the sake of color alone. It is only something which is added to the story, and the story should not be made for the sake of it. Do not let color run riot on the screen, for it does not run riot in real life. Again we come to the admonition – make it natural.

Here is something else seldom realized in this connection, and another reason why a color designer should keep repression uppermost in mind, and lean in that direction rather than toward flamboyance. Human eyes, in surveying the everyday scene, take in a radius of 180 degrees or more, and see almost everything on a tremendously broad scale. The screen, on the other hand, limits the observer to a comparatively small rectangular space, on which the figures of everything are enlarged. On this limited area the eyes are concentrated. Too much color in that one space makes it offensive to the eye – one of the mistakes of the past. Realizing that such limitations exist, we must handle color accordingly in order to attain realism.

I mentioned previously a possible change in the way we may prepare the color pictures of the future. By this time I mean I believe the time is coming when color designer and story writer will sit side by side in the same office, planning a “color story” along with the actual script. Scene by scene, sequence by sequence, the designer will map color schemes to fit mood and action, with both writer and designer making suggestions and concessions to achieve the finest possible dramatic result. Except for music, nothing affects mood so much as color does.

During the shooting of A Star Is Born, as was the case with The Garden of Allah, we took care that scene, set, players and props were kept in colorful harmony. Special liaison men were employed solely to maintain contact between art department, wardrobe and construction departments. One slip along the line could cost the producer high into the thousands. There could not be, for instance, a red dress worn on a red-colored set without offense to the eye, nor could the props be inharmonious with the whole. Nor could backgrounds be bright and foregrounds subdued. On the screen they would battle for attention.

All these lessons we have learned from the past. Contrary to popular belief, the idea of color motion pictures is not new. It goes back as far as 1895, when a few hundred feet of hand-tinted film started the ball rolling, at a time when motion pictures themselves were little more than an idea. The next step was a color version of The Miracle, half hand-tinted and half stencilled, but it proved too tedious a task, and by far imperfect. In 1914 came the first real step toward full-length color films, when William Coolidge, Boston attorney, financed three physicists, Dr. Herbert T. Kalmus, Dr. Daniel F. Comstock and W. Burton Wescott, in the development of what now is known as Technicolor.”

(Holden, Lansing C. (1937): Color! The New Language of the Screen. In: Cinema Arts, 1,2, July 1937, p. 64.)

Tags

• Technicolor
• United States
• Hollywood
• restrained
• normative aesthetics
• Daniel Frost Comstock
• color consulting
• Marlene Dietrich
• affect
• figure–ground

×

“DESIGNING FOR COLOR

Lansing C. Holden

With the increasing advances which have been made in the development of color pictures, a new job has been created – that of the color designer. His function is to supervise the sets, costumes and properties; he must plot the color scheme as a whole and for each individual scene; he must assure the most dramatic and harmonious use of color in the same way that a musical director supervises the score of a motion picture. The recent technical advances in the production of color pictures have given the color designer a much wider scope in his use of this new means of expression. We know from the past that we cannot use color as the eye sees it, because the human eye grasps a larger radius than the lens of a camera. Besides, in a dark theater with a jet-black frame, colors are increased in contrast; this concentration makes them seem even brighter than they are.

Since colors which may seem natural to the eye often appear too brilliant and artificial when confined to a small screen, it is best to avoid colors which are too brilliant or harsh. The color designer should keep them subdued and soft in tone. In the early color pictures, the problem of recording colors was more important than their control. But now that the technical aspects have improved so greatly, we can turn our attention to the use of color in enhancing the moods and dramatic structure of the motion picture.

In designing the sets and costumes there are certain considerations which the color designer must recognize. The one key color present in every scene is the color of the face of the actor. The background must be governed by this consideration. It should be kept a cool, neutral color so that it will retreat behind the face, which is always warm. If the background is a warm color, such as a red or orange, it will advance and interfere with the face, which is the center of interest. For the center of interest must be the center of color. In painting, a landscape of Corot’s might lead the eye to a single spot of red on the bonnet of a peasant. But in a color picture, a single spot of color in the background or away from the center of interest would be disconcerting, particularly if it were out of focus. Nothing in the background should interfere with the dominating characters or the main action of the scene.

When the color designer receives his copy of the script, he must plot the entire color scheme for the production. He must study the script to ascertain the mood of each scene, and concentrate his color on the key character in each scene. He must consult with the art director on the color of the sets, with the costume designer on the color of the costumes, and with the cameraman on the lighting to be employed. He first makes sketches in color of the scenes in which a particular effect is required, so that everyone connected with the production will have an idea of what is needed. Then he makes tests called material tests of a number of drapes. It is important to test these for texture as well, because some materials absorb too much light and others reflect too much. But these tests are hardly conclusive because a color photograph of a piece of cloth never gives the same effect as an actress wearing that cloth and walking through a scene. Besides, these tests are not taken under all the lighting conditions which will be used throughout the production.

Background tests are also made for the most important scenes. Samples of woodwork, doors, carpets and drapes must be photographed so that they will have the correct color value. Here the experience of the color designer should help him in discarding many samples which would not be suitable, so that testing can be cut down to a minimum.

In general, it is important to test the costumes of the principals, because the colors they wear will be the predominating or foreground colors. The backgrounds must consequently be designed to set off the costumes of the principals. The color designer must know what actors, bit players and extras will appear in a given scene. He must make sure that the costumes of the minor players do not conflict with each other and with those of the principals. In a costume picture, where the clothes are designed, selected and rented in advance, it is easier to control the color schemes. But in a modern setting, in which the extras provide their own clothes, the color director must continually be on the set to make last-minute changes in the wardrobe. Often he can plan the color combinations for one shot, but when the players present come in contact with others, he must consider the costumes of the others as well. For instance, if an actress appears in a blue dress in her most important scene and, similarly attired, she meets an actress in a purple dress in the next scene, the color designer must change the costume of the second actress to avoid a clash, even if another color is less becoming than purple to the second actress.

There are certain hues, textures and kinds of material which when photographed on different actresses give a pleasing result. This is largely dependent on the individual coloring of the actress. But even if an actress looks well in a certain costume, this may not be suitable when reproduced by the camera in a particular scene and under particular lighting conditions. Co-operation between the cameraman and the color designer is therefore extremely important in a color picture. The designer must know the type of lighting used in every scene, so that he can discuss it with the cameraman. For example, if the script calls for a night scene in a dimly lit street, the principal should not be dressed in a dark green evening dress, because the cameraman would have difficulty in bringing her out in detail. She should have a costume which picks up low key lighting, such as silver lamé. But if this costume were used in a brightly lit ballroom, it would give off halations and pick up too much light to show to its full advantage. In other words, a given costume can be beautiful under certain lighting conditions, and it is the job of the color designer to plan so that the lighting and costumes will be effective for each scene and the backgrounds harmonious.

In designing the sets and costumes, he should try to fit the mood of the story and build towards a climax. In general, color may be used like music to heighten the emotional impact of a scene. If the entire scheme of a picture is restrained so that there is little color in the early scenes, which are played mostly in shadow, then even moderately bright colors will give the effect of great brilliance in the climax. This problem had to be solved in David O. Selznick’s A Star is Born, in which in the early scenes the costumes, sets, extras and bit players were designed in subdued colors, so that as the story of the young girl who wanted to become a movie actress moved from the North Dakota farmhouse to the rooming house in Hollywood, and then to her first screen test, the contrast between the low and high key scenes became more marked, and once her success was established, the color reached its highest level.

Another emotional use of color was the scene at the ball when the officers were suddenly called to war in Becky Sharp. Here the use of red lights on the officers helped to create the sense of impending doom. Color can undoubtedly be used to assist the mood of the story and to arouse emotion. But audiences should not be conscious of these various effects any more than they should be conscious of incidental music in a dramatic scene. The danger in using color for emotion is that it looks like a trick. It is not so much the colors that evoke certain emotions but the way in which they are used which determines their emotional effect. Of course other considerations enter into the designing of sets and costumes to fit the mood of the story. For instance, if a director or editor decides to juxtapose shots which were not planned in the original script, the designer has no recourse and the color mood may be lost. Or, if it is necessary for an actress to change her dress for the next scene, the color designer should be forewarned of last-minute changes so that the harmony will not be lost.

In color pictures today, the designer must make sure that every attribute of the picture, each costume and each set appear natural to the eye and give the observer the feeling that he is standing in the room pictured. In other words, color on the screen must match the scenes we see in everyday life. We have accepted the convention of the black and white world of the screen, and now we must recondition ourselves to a closer approximation of our actual world. With this new tool comes a greater illusion of depth and of the third dimension. This is due to the fact that a cool color can recede, whereas a warm brilliant color can advance. The illusion of depth can be further obtained if a certain amount of color separation exists between objects as they recede into the background. In this way the recognition of one object behind another is obtained and the illusion of depth increased. However, the color designer can only try for this effect because the feeling may be destroyed by an entirely different camera set-up.

Scientists have been working on the idea of color photography ever since Sir Isaac Newton, in 1666, opened the field with his discovery of the solar spectrum. One of the first results was his theory of the three primary colors. In 1792, C. E. Wunsch established red, green and blue-violet as the three primary colors.

One of the earliest additive methods was the persistence-of-vision-method, first suggested for motion pictures by H. Isensee in 1897. The basis of all motion-picture projection is the fact that a picture formed on the retina persists for a short time and, if a succeeding series of images is formed in a short time thereafter, the result will be a composite in which the individual movements can no longer be distinguished. This applies to color as well. If red is projected, followed by green, before the red has a chance to fade from the retina, the green is superimposed and the resultant color in the brain will be yellow. If blue-violet is added the same way, the result will be white. The disadvantages in this persistence-of-vision-method are: first, that the rapid succession of colored images causes some eyestrain, called color-bombardment. Second, under this method, it is impossible to get a perfect composite result. For example, if successive pictures were taken of a man raising his arm above his head, we would see him in red in one arm position, in green in another and in blue-violet in a third, so that we would have color fringes and the images would not be correctly registered.

The subtractive method was the solution. In this the film is a complete color record in itself, and it has the added advantage of not cutting down the amount of projection light by using filters, as the three-color additive methods did. In the subtractive method, the operator can switch from color to black and white without appreciable loss of light and without special devices for registering or projection.

The most successful subtractive method to date is the Technicolor method, which was invented in 1914 by a firm of Boston engineers, Dr. Herbert Kalmus, Daniel Frost Comstock and W. B. Westcott. Their first experiments were with a two-color additive process, but they soon abandoned this in favor of a two-color subtractive method. In this, two gelatin reliefs, produced on thin celluloid, were glued together back to back and dyed in complementary colors. Douglas Fairbanks made The Black Pirate by this process in 1926. In 1928, the Technicolor engineers devised an imbibition process which consists of the transfer of the dye image from a gelatin relief or matrix to a gelatin film, and between 1929 and 1930 On with the Show, Gold Diggers of Broadway, The Mysteries of the Wax Museum, and many others were made.

But the two-color process was abandoned because it could not adequately reproduce the spectrum. In trying to compensate for blue, the missing primary, most colors were distorted and both red and green were exaggerated. It was not until 1932 that the spectral colors could be finally reproduced.

In the Technicolor camera three negatives are exposed simultaneously through a single lens. This is accomplished by a beam splitter made of two prisms of optical glass with silver-sputtered faces which produce a partially reflecting mirror. By this means, part of the light reflects through an aperture at the left of the lens, and the remainder passes through the normal aperture. A single Super X panchromatic film is exposed through this aperture behind a green filter, transmitting green light. Through the left aperture is passed a standard bipack (two films with their emulsion surfaces in contact), the front film being sensitive to blue, and carrying a red-orange dye which absorbs the blue rays so that only the red rays are affected by the rear emulsion.

When the three negatives have been developed, each must be printed in its appropriate color and the three-color images must be assembled on a single strip of film, and superimposed on one another in exact register. The Technicolor camera uses the imbibition method of printing. The three gelatin reliefs or matrices are each dyed with their complementary colors. The dye is then transferred onto another film strip which receives their images one above the other and contains a faint key image in gray silver to aid in registration and definition. The sound track has also been printed on the same positive film in silver.

The Technicolor camera can now reproduce both the color and light and shade of the scene to be photographed. Of course, it cannot reproduce the range of sensitivity of the eye any more than painting can. The ratio of the eye’s range from the brightest white to the darkest black is about one to thirty-two. The range of contrast in color transparencies is twice as great, about one to sixty-four. Both painting and photography seek to reproduce a great range of visual contrasts by the more limited contrasts available. In general, it may be said that whatever cannot be painted cannot be photographed. For example, if a color designer visualized a brilliant shaft of light in a particular scene, that shaft of light could be made no more brilliant in a motion picture than if it were painted on canvas. For the photographer, like the artist, is working with pigments also. And if the artist could not achieve the brilliance of that shaft of light, then neither could the photographer.

The difficulties of the color designer are similar to those of the painter and the stage designer. The painter must also work with a limited range of contrasts, but he differs from the color designer in having an unlimited choice of composition and in not having to subordinate all color to the center of interest. The stage designer, on the other hand, works with light so that his selection of sets and costumes must be harmonious from many different angles beyond his control. He may add more light to a given color to intensify his effect, but the color photographer cannot do this because it would mean overexposure of that one color, which would begin to affect the other negatives as well. So the color designer must work within the limited range of color photography and face the fact that the composition of moving images is difficult to control.

The color designer uses all the theories of painting in the selection of colors and backgrounds for a motion picture. Once the painter has established the background, foreground and intermediate distances, he has established a static relationship between them which does not change. But those colors in the painting which were good in their intensities and relative areas may become very disturbing when they move into a different composition, or into a series of different compositions, as in a motion picture. For instance, if the cameraman cuts to a close shot, the larger area of a particular color may not be as pleasing as in the long shot, where it occupied only a small area of the total picture.

The cameraman’s problem is to try to achieve the necessary light levels with as few sources of illumination as possible. The most favorable type of lighting for Technicolor is the arc lamp, in preference to the incandescent tungsten lamp which is used for black and white photography. The arc lamp gives greater light in fewer units, much less heat, and a more correct balance of the blue and red rays. Formerly much greater lighting intensities were necessary and only a universal flat lighting could be used. The number of lights used to photograph Becky Sharp in 1935 would be cut down one-half today. Fewer and better sources of illumination produce shadows and proper modeling. While flat or soft lighting may occasionally give pleasing effects, it should not be used for color photography, which requires a more careful balancing of shadows than black and white photography, because in the shaded areas the color values change, and all shadow detail may be lost. It is easier to keep parts of the set in a low key by keeping light away from them than to illuminate parts with more light which have been painted dark. In exteriors, colors must be designed darker because there is so much more light to contend with. Here the difference between color and black and white is even greater because color can reproduce contrasts of sky, water, trees and foliage more effectively. The cameraman must be careful to schedule his shots so that the difference in color between morning and late afternoon shadows will not be too great.

Trick effects can be done just as effectively in color as in monochrome. Fades, lap dissolves and wipe-offs can all be made by duping all three negatives and preserving the proper balance of exposure and register. Process shots using a projection background have not yet been successfully done on a large scale, because of the necessity of greater illumination for the projection screen.

The chief problem in make-up for color pictures is to achieve a natural effect. Heavy orange grease paint, which photographs naturally in black and white, cannot be used in color. The most recent type of make-up retouches any imperfections of contour or texture which were exaggerated in the early color pictures. This is no heavier than an ordinary street make-up, but it improves the natural coloring of the actor.

The demand for verity in color is the most dominant factor in color photography today. Perhaps as color progresses and begins to enter into every motion picture, the time will come when the color designer will be able to experiment with other than purely naturalistic effects, such as those achieved by Renoir and Cézanne, for example. Then it may be possible to get away from a literal translation of life, and design masques and mystery stories with imaginative color schemes. The convention of monochrome is certainly unreal, yet it is accepted by every person who sees a motion picture. Why, then, cannot audiences accept new uses and combinations of color?

There is no doubt that color is here to stay, that it is as important an element in motion pictures as sound or music. How soon color will become all-prevalent we cannot predict; perhaps in another year, perhaps not before several years. That depends on the quality of the color productions, which in turn stimulate the audience’s desire for color. Audiences are becoming more and more accustomed to it through cartoons, shorts and the increasing number of color features; they will demand good color features, to supplant black and white pictures, in the same fashion that the talkies supplanted the silent films. As color becomes general, it will make people more conscious of their surroundings, and they will begin to see the color around them. In this way the production of artistic color movies will do more to raise the standard of taste throughout the world than the movies of today. This is a task which the color designers of the future must not handle lightly.

The production of color pictures has not yet reached the point where a color script is prepared at the same time as the dialogue. When that time comes the color designer will get the script at the same time as the art director, so that he can prepare the color while the sets are being designed. Then color will be written into the picture with the same care as dialogue. At present the production of color movies is being forced into the black and white mold, in the script, direction and cutting. But perhaps the time will come when a totally different technique will be evolved. We know, for instance, that if a color shot is well arranged it can be held longer on the screen than the same shot in black and white, which would become dull. There will be a place for artists and painters. Directors who have definite ideas about color will be able to express them and experiment with them. The field which color opens to the motion picture is immense. Perhaps through color this youngest of the arts will in time reach its fruition.”

(Holden, Lansing C. (1937): Designing for Color. In: Nancy Naumburg (ed.): We Make the Movies. New York: Norton, pp. 239-252.)

Tags

• lighting
• costume design
• restrained
• reality effect
• emotion
• normative aesthetics
• make-up
• lighting scheme
• Lansing C. Holden

×

“During the switch to sound, Hollywood studios used Technicolor as an added attraction for many of their musicals, while a number of primarily black-and-white films contained some colour sequences. However, as we have seen, it was soon decided colour footage did not justify the extra expense and by 1932, when its initial novelty had worn off, few Technicolor films were made. But it was just at that point that Technicolor announced a breakthrough: a more advanced process, using three-color strip that would dominate the industry for many years to come. The process was made possible by the invention of a beam-splitter camera, equipped with two 45° degree prisms in the form of a cube. Light from a photographed object, entering the camera through a single lens, is deflected by the prisms and absorbed by negatives sensitive to each of the primary photographic colours: green, blue, and red. Each of the three negatives is printed as a positive relief image, called a ‘matrix’, from which the final release print is made.

The first film to be made using the three-strip camera and the three-colour printing technique was La Cucaracha (Lloyd Corrigan, 1933), and the first feature film was Rouben Mamoulian’s Becky Sharp (1935). The new process was praised for its pleasingly ‘natural’ effect and its aesthetic potential, and gradually colour again became important. One of Technicolor’s greatest successes was, of course, Gone With the Wind (Victor Fleming, 1939), whose iconic status was in no small part due to its dramatic use of colour. At the time it was made, Technicolor was in not wide use, but David O. Selznick, the film’s producer, believed that only Technicolor could achieve the epic quality he sought, and the brilliant and deeply saturated colours that were achieved certainly contributed to the film’s widespread success. Amongst the many Oscars it collected was one for Cinematography, and another for Colour, with a special prize being awarded for Technicolor. By no means, of course, could the colour in Gone With the Wind be considered realistic; on the contrary, its whole purpose was to enhance the film’s emotional impact and epic vision, and in this we can see continuing links to the colour aesthetic of silent cinema.

Between 1935 and 1955, Technicolor exercised more or less total control of its product in and beyond Hollywood. The special beamsplitter cameras had to be hired directly from the Technicolor company which, as part of the deal, insisted that their technicians and colour consultant (with the power to veto the chosen colours) were present throughout the shoot. The company also held sole rights for processing and printing the films. Inevitably, these conditions would have widespread implications for popular understanding of ‘suitable’ filmic colour for some time to come. However, while colour was briefly highlighted in the 1950s, as part of cinema’s campaign to win back audiences from (black-and-white) television, developments such as Cinemascope would prove detrimental to Technicolor, whose dyes were not well suited to its processes. Moreover, Eastman-Kodak had by then developed a cheaper and less complicated process, and Technicolor gradually lost its dominance.⁵

While the addition of ‘natural’ colour seemed likely to increase the realism of film, it continued, on the whole, to be used as a fantastic rather than a mimetic tool. For quite some time, colour tended to be restricted to the unrealistic world of musicals, to the lavish sets and fashions of costume dramas, and to cartoons, in which the potential for fantasy was limitless. Walt Disney, the pioneer in this field, at one point acquired sole rights for the use of Technicolor in cartoons, and examples of his most innovative use of colour include Silly Symphonies (1929-39), Animal Characters (1930), and his first feature-length cartoon, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1938). Gradually, of course, colour came to be considered an integral part of the ‘artistic’ identity of a film, as well as a key means of capturing the ‘natural’ colours of the real world. Nevertheless, it is important to remember the strong oppositions and conflicts that marked its development and still now continue to shape theoretical and critical debate.

⁵ Other successful three-colour systems on the market included the German Agfacolor, and its Russian derivative Sovcolor, the Italian Ferraniacolor, and the Belgian-French Gevacolor.”

(Everett, Wendy (2007): Mapping Colour. An Introduction to the Theories and Practices of Colour. In: Wendy Everett (ed.): Questions of Colour in Cinema. From Paintbrush to Pixel. Oxford: Peter Lang, pp. 7–38, on pp. 20–22.)

Tags

• 1930s
• Technicolor
• 1920s
• United States
• Eastman Kodak
• film stock
• 1940s
• negative
• animation
• emulsion

×

“The introduction of the Technicolor three-color process of color photography into the motion picture studios brought forth the need for improved studio lighting equipment. All known color processes involve filtering or breaking up the light entering the camera into the primary colors, and recording each color upon a separate emulsion. Obviously, in a three-color process, a lower intensity of illumination falls upon each of the three negatives than upon the single negative used in black-and-white photography, because the latter receives all the rays passing through the camera lens. It is therefore necessary that the stage illumination be of higher intensity than required for black-and-white photography in order to attain corresponding photographic speed. Furthermore, since the color-sensitivity of the three negatives and the color-balance of the process as a whole is designed to render accurate color tones under daylight illumination, it is highly desirable that the light-source used in the studio should have a spectral energy distribution conforming closely to that of natural sunlight.

It is true that the same photographic effect can be attained with a light-source differing in quality from that of sunlight by using suitable filters. This, however, involves the absorption of a portion of the light reflected from the set, and a consequent reduction of photographic speed. The fact must always be recognized that filters never add light of any color. They merely reduce the intensity of the colors they are designed to suppress. Any increase of temperature on the set over that experienced in black-and-white productions is highly undesirable. It is accordingly evident that changes in lighting equipment must be of a character to provide an increase of photographic light of daylight quality without exceeding the amount of radiant heat projected upon the stage by the lighting equipment used for black-and-white photography.

THE BROADSIDE

The white-flame carbon arc has long been recognized as a light-source of high photographic efficiency and as one providing photographic effects essentially equivalent to those of sunlight. The old type of broadside lamp, burning 1/2 by 12-inch white-flame carbons at 40 or 45 amperes were extensively used in the days of silent pictures. The mechanism of these lamps is of such design, however, that it is practically impossible to adjust it so that it will operate with the quietness necessary when used in proximity to sound recording equipment. Furthermore, higher intensities of illumination than these units are capable of supplying are required to meet the needs of the Technicolor process satisfactorily with a reasonable number of lamps upon the set. Since the broadside, used for floor lighting, and the scoop, for overhead lighting, provide the broad level of general illumination for the set as a whole, they constitute the most important elements of the lighting equipment. It is these units that establish the general color-tone of the scene in Technicolor photography.

The research laboratory of the National Carbon Company undertook the development of a new carbon to fulfill the specific needs of this new photographic process. The result of the research was a metal-coated carbon 8 millimeters in diameter, designed for operation at 40 amperes. Its characteristics have been described in detail by Joy, Bowditch, and Downes.¹ Due, in part, to the high current density at which these carbons are operated, their light departs somewhat from the normal characteristics of the white-flame carbon arc and takes on more of the character of the high-intensity arc. In fact, through the photographically effective range, the relative intensity of radiation at various wavelengths is almost identical to that of the 13.6-mm. high-intensity projector carbon arc operated at 125 amperes.

The development of a suitable lamp for use with these carbons was then accomplished through cooperation with an established lamp manufacturer. Two lamps were designed and made available to the motion picture studio: the twin-arc broadside lamp, MR-29, shown in Fig. 1, and the twin-arc scoop, MR-27, shown in Fig. 2. A detailed discussion of the development of these lamps has been given by Mole² together with a statement of the specifications that had to be fulfilled in adapting them to color photography. These units burning the new National motion picture studio carbons deliver somewhat more than the required 200 foot-candles at 15 feet; give an even distribution of light, constant in quality and intensity; provide a spectral energy distribution very similar to that of sunlight; and fully fulfill the requirements of silence imposed by the sound technicians. They have proved highly efficient for black-and-white photography, and practically a necessity for color photography. A comparison of the spectral energy distribution of the light from these lamps with that of natural sunlight is given in Fig. 3. A distinct advantage of this light, as pointed out by Joy, Bowditch, and Downes,¹ is that more than 40 per cent of the radiant energy emitted is photographically effective.

SUPPLEMENTARY LIGHTING UNITS

While broadsides and scoops provide the general level of set illumination and are highly satisfactory for the front and side lighting, their use without supplementary equipment would result in flat and uninteresting photographic effects. Accordingly, very powerful lighting units are placed in elevated and other strategic positions when strong shafts of light are required to pierce the even intensity of illumination supplied by the broadsides and the scoops. These larger units are used also for increasing the intensity of light in any given area, thereby separating points of special interest from the remainder of the set. The units used for this supplementary lighting are the spotlights and sun arcs, powerful carbon arc lamps that utilize the high-intensity principle first applied to searchlights and later extensively adopted for motion picture projection.

THE 80-AMPERE ROTARY ARC SPOTLIGHT

The 80-ampere rotary arc spotlight is used for back-lighting and to increase the intensity of illumination at any point where projected light is required, where the increase desired does not demand the power of a sun arc. It is in regular use in most of the studios and has been adapted to sound by the use of fiber gears which reduce mechanical noise. Some of them are fitted with snap-switches to cut out the control motor when the unit is close to the microphone. They are operated at 75-80 amperes with 50-55 volts at the arc. The operating element of an 80-ampere rotary spotlight is shown in Fig. 4.

To insure full efficiency and uniform photographic effect, reasonable attention should be given to the maintenance of these lamps and to preserving correct conditions of operation. A recent examination of several of them in operation revealed considerable variation in the quality and quantity of light emitted. This resulted from various causes, all easily removed or prevented. A badly pitted and soiled condenser was found to cut out as much as 40 per cent of the total light output. A variation of 1/2 inch in the arc-gap (not uncommon in practice) changed the spectral energy distribution sufficiently to be noticeable in the Technicolor negative. In order to arrive at a standard for this type of unit in one instance, a lamp was fitted with a clean condenser free from pit marks, the best arc length (approximately 1/2 inch) was maintained, a spot three feet in diameter was focused upon a white wall thirty feet from the unit, and the direct light was measured with a standard Weston photometer fitted with a filter that reduced the intensity to within the limits of the instrument. The figures so obtained are used in checking other units of this type.

The spectral energy distribution of the 80-ampere rotary spotlight is higher at the blue end of the spectrum than that of the broadside lamp. A satisfactory color balance is maintained by the use of straw-colored gelatin in front of the condenser. Although this filter is very light, it reduces by more than 20 per cent the photographically effective radiation of the lamp. The need for the development of a new lamp, to give the desired spectral energy distribution without the use of a filter, is therefore indicated. In all probability such a lamp should have a different carbon trim from that now being used in rotary spotlights.

THE SUNLIGHT ARC

Two sizes of Sunlight arc are in common use, the mirror diameters of which are, respectively, 24 inches and 36 inches. They are designated as 24-inch Sun arcs and 36-inch Sun arcs. A 36-inch Sun arc is shown in Fig. 5. These lamps are used where the highest intensity of projected light is required, as in back-lighting when the action calls for a high level of foreground illumination; where well-defined shadows are desired; where a clearly defined streak of light cuts through the general illumination; and for producing high intensities of general illumination of great penetration. In the latter case diverging doors composed of strips of cylindrical lenses are often used in front of the lamp houses.

The spectral energy distribution of the light from this lamp is similar to that from the rotary spotlight, and, likewise, requires the use of a light straw filter to establish accurate color balance. There is accordingly evident need for further development of this type of unit to eliminate the necessity of using a filter.

THE 36-INCH SUN SPOT

The 36-inch Sun spot is similar in appearance and design to the 36-inch Sun arc except that it uses as a light-source a 10-kw. special tungsten lamp. It is used where a color contrast is desired and where warmer tones predominate; as behind windows, where the effect of the increased red radiation creates the illusion of the yellow-orange of afternoon sunlight.

JUNIOR SOLAR SPOT

The Junior Solar spot is a newly developed unit fitted with a special prismatic front lens and a spherical mirror. It is equipped with a 2000-watt, G-48 tungsten lamp which may be moved to a flood position or to a focus where it delivers a highly concentrated beam. The type of trim, as well as the arc current and voltage used by the different types of lighting units, is shown in Table I.

DIFFUSING MEDIUMS AND LAMP COLOR FILTERS

As previously stated, some of the high-intensity Sun arcs and 80-ampere, rotary-arc spotlights are fitted with straw-colored gelatin filters to cut out an excessive amount of blue. In addition to these, gelatin hangers of various colors are available so that the spectral energy distribution of any lamp may be changed at will to suit the requirements of the scene. Frosted gelatin hangers are used to soften the light from certain lamps. The Sun arcs have, as auxiliary equipment, diverging doors for use in spreading the beam on its horizontal transverse axis. The broadsides are fitted with “Factorlite” glass screens. These are sand-blasted on one side and molded on the other, making excellent diffusing mediums.

ARC-SILENCING DEVICES AND METHODS

Methods of silencing arc lights have been perfected by the studios. In 1930, W. Quinlan, Chief Engineer of the Fox Studios, produced and equipped that studio with complete sound filtering devices. These units consist of high-capacity electrolytic condensers connected across the bus-bars of the generator, and individual choke-coils mounted as an integral part of each lamp.³ Other studios use high-capacity condensers of the dry type, and individual choke-coils for the various types of units. L. Kolb, Chief Electrical Engineer of M-G-M Studios, has developed larger choke-coils rated at 1000 amperes, which are mounted upon rollers and may be used at the power house. These developments, together with the previously mentioned development of the new motion picture studio carbon arc, make possible the use of 100 per cent carbon arc illumination of the motion picture stage without the slightest interference with sound recording.

REFERENCES

¹ JOY, D. B., BOWDITCH, F. T., AND DOWNES, A. C.: “A New White-Flame Carbon for Photographic Light,” J. Soc. Mot. Pict. Eng., XXII (Jan., 1934), No. 1, p. 58.

² MOLE, P.: “A New Development in Carbon Arc Lighting,” J. Soc. Mot. Pict. Eng., XXII (Jan., 1934), No. 1, p. 51.

³ Report No. 2, Producers and Technicians Committee, Acad. Mot. Pict. Arts & Sciences (May 7, 1930).”

(Handley, C. W. (1935): Lighting for Technicolor Motion Pictures. In: Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers, 25,5, Nov., pp. 423–431, on pp. 423–431.)

Tags

• 1930s
• Technicolor
• lighting
• sound track
• Twentieth Century-Fox
• lighting scheme
• sunlight
• carbon arc
• optical diffusion

×

“In 1932, Technicolor itself introduced a three-colour system that was so accurate and predictable that it would give the company a virtual monopoly over the production of colour films for many years.⁵ Yet because Technicolor had been damaged by earlier criticisms of its two-strip process, it insisted on itself controlling most features of how the studios produced Technicolor films. Not only did the company insist that its cameras be rented; not bought, by the studios,⁶ it also controlled the supply and processing of film stock, insisted studios hire its own cameramen and colour consultants, and rationed out colour films amongst the studios themselves. As a consequence, relatively few films were actually made in colour. Not until the legal break-up of the Technicolor monopoly was demanded by the U.S. Department of Justice in 1947 and the invention by Eastman Kodak in 1949 of Eastmancolor, which – unlike Technicolor – did not need to be shot through a special three-process camera, could the number of colour, films released increase markedly. Between 1947 and 1954, the number of coloured films produced in Hollywood rose from 12 per cent of the total in 1947 to almost 50 per cent in 1954 (Cook, 462).

NOTES

⁵ The first full use of the new process was by the Walt Disney Studio in Flowers and Trees (1933), a “Silly Symphonies” cartoon film.

⁶ There were only seven Technicolor cameras in existence in 1939: all were used in the filming of Gone With the Wind.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cook, David, A History of Narrative Film, New-York: WW. Norton, 3^rd ed. 1996.”

(Stokes, Melvyn (2009): Colour in American Cinema. From The Great Train Robbery to Bonnie and Clyde. In: Raphaëlle Costa de Beauregard (ed.): Cinéma et couleur. Paris: M. Houdiard, pp. 184–192, on pp. 186–187.)

Tags

• 1930s
• Technicolor
• United States
• Eastman Kodak
• 1940s
• animation
• dye transfer printing
• Hollywood
• economics
• production

×

“The cause, and the cures, for the problem of colour fading are inevitably bound up with economics. Until the 1940s, ‘colour’ in Western cinema almost invariably meant Technicolor. Prints of old Technicolor films are of course subject to the ills that befall all nitrate material; but the three-strip Technicolor system itself was a stable one, and although the colours will not last for ever they are not subject to any kind of rapid fading. In the early 1950s, the system changed. Bill O’Connell puts it succinctly in an article in Film Comment (September/October 1979), one of several informative articles in American magazines which predated the Scorsese campaign. ‘Eastman Kodak announced the development of a “multilayer” film which already contained the three dye-sensitive layers necessary for colour. This not only did away with the need for the bulky three-strip cameras, but also changed Hollywood’s method of striking prints. Until then, Technicolor struck prints utilising the “imbibition” process, in which the three different colour dyes were each applied separately to the film base… But with Eastman’s new “multi-layer” film, colours could be obtained quicker and easier. Although the Eastman colour prints were inferior in quality to Technicolor’s imbibition prints, they were less costly to produce and generally more economical in small print runs.’”

(Anonymous (1980): Colour Problem. In: Sight and Sound, 50, pp. 12–13, on p. 12.)

Tags

• 1930s
• Technicolor
• United States
• Eastman Kodak
• 1940s
• dye transfer printing
• Hollywood
• Martin Scorsese

×

“Technicolor itself moved away from the old methods. And, when it came to making prints, Technicolor gradually closed down its ‘imbibition’ plants. The Hollywood plant, according to Bill O’Connell, went in 1975, the London and Rome plants in 1978. Rather curiously, the only one now left is in Beijing. It was built by the Chinese on licence from Technicolor and under the supervision of Technicolor experts and opened in 1978.”

(Anonymous (1980): Colour Problem. In: Sight and Sound, 50, pp. 12–13, on p. 13.)

Tags

• Technicolor
• Hollywood
• London
• Rome
• China

×

“COLOUR AS THE APPROPRIATE LANGUAGE FOR DREAMS

The averred Technicolor tradition of using a black and white embedding film to locate the action of the Technicolor fiction within the dream motif (Basten, 131-2), which is so characteristic of The Wizard of Oz, is grounded in the early use of embedded narratives initiated by Griffith and by DeMille.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Basten, Fred E., Glorious Technicolor: The Movies’ Magic Rainbow, Cranbury (New Jersey): A.S. Barnes & Co., 1980.”

(Costa de Beauregard, Raphaëlle (2009): Technicolor and Jack Cardiff’s Art and Craft in Powell and Pressburger’s A Matter of Life and Death (1946). In: Raphaëlle Costa de Beauregard (ed.): Cinéma et couleur. Paris: M. Houdiard, pp. 225–236, on p. 225.)

Tags

• Cecil B. DeMille
• narration
• D. W. Griffith

×

“The history of Technicolor and Walt Disney shows an extensive set of references to this Shakespearean comedy; conversely, the cultural ties between American audiences and British ones are presumably suggested in the film by the reference to this comedy insofar as it already embodied aspects of Disney’s association between Technicolor and fantasy (Basten, 48). The comedy’s remarkable staging of the invisible fairies, and the references to colour as a means of imagining their nearly constant ‘invisible’ presence on the stage, makes the world of fantasy and the world of reality cohabit on the same stage within the same time unit. The constant metamorphosis ensures our interest in fantasy world of little relevance to topical issues, a device which gives a subtext to the fantasy in Powell’s film, as is the case in The Wizard of Oz.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Basten, Fred E., Glorious Technicolor: The Movies’ Magic Rainbow, Cranbury (New Jersey): A.S. Barnes & Co., 1980.”

(Costa de Beauregard, Raphaëlle (2009): Technicolor and Jack Cardiff’s Art and Craft in Powell and Pressburger’s A Matter of Life and Death (1946). In: Raphaëlle Costa de Beauregard (ed.): Cinéma et couleur. Paris: M. Houdiard, pp. 225–236, on pp. 229–230.)

Tags

• Technicolor
• United States
• Great Britain
• animation
• comedy
• fantasy
• Disney

×

“But, on the other hand, the interiors which are shot in Technicolor by George Périnal [Georges Périnal] show that chiaroscuro colour is already part of ‘British Technicolor’. Périnal had already filmed chiaroscuro in Alexander Korda’s Rembrandt in black & white, (1936), and British awareness that light was the main means of expression is not only traceable to the German expressionist films (famous mostly for “the threatening shadows and disorienting camera angles” (Petrie, 164)) but also to the close study of chiaroscuro, as a painterly code. This was of course the source of disagreements with Technicolor advisors such as Nathalie Kalmus who altogether rejected the use of shadowing in colour, since in The Four Feathers, one finds interior scenes in which candlelight allows colour to have a rich intensity due to shadowing.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Petrie, Duncan, The British Cinematographer, London: B.F.I, 1996.”

(Costa de Beauregard, Raphaëlle (2009): Technicolor and Jack Cardiff’s Art and Craft in Powell and Pressburger’s A Matter of Life and Death (1946). In: Raphaëlle Costa de Beauregard (ed.): Cinéma et couleur. Paris: M. Houdiard, pp. 225–236, on pp. 230–231.)

Tags

• 1930s
• Technicolor
• Great Britain
• Natalie Kalmus
• chiaroscuro
• Georges Périnal

×

“Technicolor was thus understood by Powell to be a matchless vehicle for the re-appropriation by British cinema of the literary tradition of the multiple layered meaning of imagery (Petrie, 41), as A Matter of Life and Death shows.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Petrie, Duncan, The British Cinematographer, London: B.F.I, 1996.”

(Costa de Beauregard, Raphaëlle (2009): Technicolor and Jack Cardiff’s Art and Craft in Powell and Pressburger’s A Matter of Life and Death (1946). In: Raphaëlle Costa de Beauregard (ed.): Cinéma et couleur. Paris: M. Houdiard, pp. 225–236, on p. 233.)

Tags

• Technicolor
• aesthetics

×

The Four Feathers (GBR 1939, Zoltan Korda)

---

“The Four Feathers provides an illustration of the characteristic divide in the British early approach to Technicolor: the shots on location are a fine example of Technicolor as the appropriate visual code for documentary views of foreign landscapes (Cardiff, 50-71), while the use of red as the standard chromatic key for pomp and circumstance is also well exemplified, in particular with the following telling anecdote about the sequence of Aubrey Smith’s ball. It is recalled by John Clements in an interview by Duncan Petrie as a case of preference for Technicolor effect rather than documentary accuracy. The military advisers who had been called had said, that, in a private house, the officers should be in blue, but Alexander Korda made them all have a new uniform, a red one instead, exclaiming: “What is this blue uniform?…this is Technicolor!”(Petrie, 42).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Petrie, Duncan, The British Cinematographer, London: B.F.I, 1996.”

(Costa de Beauregard, Raphaëlle (2009): Technicolor and Jack Cardiff’s Art and Craft in Powell and Pressburger’s Matter of Life and Death (1946). In: Raphaëlle Costa de Beauregard (ed.): Cinéma et couleur. Paris: M. Houdiard, pp. 225–236 on p. 230.)

Tags

• Technicolor
• red
• Great Britain

×

A Matter of Life and Death (GBR 1946, Michael Powell/Emeric Pressburger)

---

“In Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane (1941), the chiaroscuro lighting by Gregg Toland is used to expressive effect to highlight the faked essence of the documentary image itself, as the shot showing Kane and Hitler amply demonstrates⁵.

This hierarchy is actually inverted in A Matter of Life and Death: the events which take place in the hero’s life in the embedding fiction are shot in colour, while those taking place in his dream are in black and white. The use of black and white is thus free from connotations such as those of the documentary which were attached to it (the hardships of everyday farm-work which characterize Dorothy’s life in Texas as indicated by the opening and closing sequences of The Wizard), since it is used to shoot heaven in the hero’s dream. However it is appropriate to recall the ‘scientific’ source of the dream, Karinthy’s account of his brain tumour which was translated into English in 1938 as Journey Round My Skull (Christie, 20). The dramatic construction of the film’s plot echoes Karinthy’s autobiography in two main aesthetic choices: the parallel between the hero’s hallucinations and the hospital in which his brain tumour is operated on, and the tension which his dream of a trial in Heaven introduces in the hallucination scenes. Interestingly, the trial is about his ultimate death which has been postponed, suggesting that man’s mortality is essential to his life on earth⁶. His falling back upon earth and life is due to a mistake in Heaven, but another plot causes him to oppose the attempt by Heaven to retrieve him, the love plot which disrupts Heaven’s plans as far as he is concerned.

As for the pseudo-scientific sources for the mise-en-scène of the surgery performed on Peter’s brain, they motivate an uncanny similitude between the real hospital on earth, where the dominant monochrome composition is appropriate for a convincing view of the surgeons and nurses in an operating theatre – and only red is introduced for the ‘breathing’ apparatus epitomizing the struggle between life and death which is going on – and the monochrome compositions showing scenes in Heaven. It seems that the art of the documentary which then was the dominant visual style of British cinema (Grierson⁷) is used as an alternative aesthetics to the Technicolor world, rather than reflexively⁸.

More striking still is the fact that the hospital ward sequences also include subjective shots – another form of documentary realism, this time focused on the phenomenology of perception and the Goethian theory of colour as pure percept⁹. The ceiling of the passage leading to the surgery theatre is in Heaven’s monochrome ‘documentary’ style, but it renders reality as seen by Peter who is passing out – which is indicated by a subjective view of his closing lids imaginatively rendering the transparency of light through a thin film of red veins. Here it might be argued that Technicolor is used to give us a visual equivalent for a documentary view of the world through closed eyelids, but, ironically, the shots then focus on a painter’s canvas where red watercolour is made to flow from top to bottom, and later fuse with the Heaven which we have already seen. Technicolor is now put to a different use, becoming the vehicle for the shift into a different genre, the uncanny, and its pervasive foreignness. Our vision of Heaven as a cold place with rigid laws is paralleled with the same chromatic key of the hospital: but when the representatives of Heaven come to fetch Peter for the trial, they are fully dressed in Technicolor costumes, and look more ‘real’ – or at least weirdly alive and threateningly ‘in the flesh’ – than the hospital staff do. And yet, paradoxically, while the celestial monochrome is devoted to the inexorable character of time’s rigid laws which Heaven implements, the hospital ward monochrome allows for the intrusion of colour as part of its reality. The strict hospital discipline proves supple enough to accept Dr Reeves on his first visit before he is killed, and in the freeze shot showing Peter going to Heaven where he is summoned, the interruption in the time continuity of the surgery is felt as an unfair intrusion of a lethal and merciless power (Moor, 144-5) within the struggle of human beings to preserve a human life, Peter’s. The reception of the film shows wide differences in views: for leading critics, ‘essential realism’ was the ‘true business of the British movie’, and the film contributed nothing to the ‘tradition of solid native skill’, as it lacked a ‘dramatic link with real life people and their problems’ (Christie, 62). However other critics were more receptive to the artistic achievement of the film: for those who preferred ‘fantasy and beauty and allegory’, the film was a ‘bold and imaginative tour de force […] fascinating’ (Christie, 61).

The transfer from one world to the next and back is visualized in The Wizard by a dark grey tornado, a climatic phenomenon which becomes magic in Dorothy’s dream as she imagines her house is transported over the rainbow and into a world of vivid colours, while it also retains the status of a plausible event, as Dorothy is actually hit unconscious. Whether the tornado is a modernisation of the Biblical motif of Jacob’s ladder or not does not seem to be an issue, until one realizes the similitude between the tornado and the actual ladder which materializes in A Matter of Life and Death (its American tide is actually Stairway to Heaven).¹⁰ Whether an icon borrowed from a natural phenomenon or from religious iconography, the staircase introduces the world of fantasy and dream as a political Utopia involving the whole of mankind rather than a single protagonist in both Technicolor productions: colour is indeed at the centre of a cosmic debate about the frontier between two worlds, in a manner which is reminiscent of Turner’s symbolic quest of cosmic forces in chromatic encounters between complementary but also antagonistic realms of the rainbow, mainly red vs. blue.¹¹ Moreover, the second sequence focusing on the stairway actually steeps the white architecture in a golden light against an ultramarine blue background, conveying a sense of the sublimation of desire and the unconscious by means of a chromatic composition which recalls medieval religious iconography and its secular use in royal regalia.

Moreover, the use of black and white for Heaven in A Matter of Life and Death re-appropriates the Doomsday trial and the separation of the good from the bad, while, on the contrary, the clash between colours is a vehicle for a moral dichotomy in Dorothy’s dream, the ‘cold’ green of the Wicked Witch competing with the ‘warm’ pink of the Good Witch. The Technicolor context is thus replaced by the political context and the necessity of defining the topical British values which the trial in Heaven refers to by a debate between British and American lawyer over the issue of their different political interests in WWII. The use of Technicolor for the scenes on Earth is thus motivated by the very choice of a trial plot in Heaven and the topical necessity of enshrining this debate in an atmosphere of objectivity, if not neutrality.

However, the choice of monochrome for Heaven is attested by Jack Cardiff as having been quite unexpected at the time: hired by Powell because of his ten years experience with Technicolor, he was taken aback by the choice of monochrome black & white-and secretly worried by the fact he lacked experience in this field¹².

[…]

And indeed it is noticeable that, in A Matter of Life and Death, Technicolor is not only used to locate the action in the real world within a given (and topical) time-space unit, but also to depict the constant presence of the supernatural among the real world, as the sudden appearance of the Conductor among rhododendron bushes in full blossom or in Dr Reeves’s study tends to prove (Cardiff, 86).

In the earlier Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, colour had already been used to suggest the presence of the past in the present. For instance, the flashback to the trenches of WWI is steeped into a mud colour very near black and white, while the flashback to the earlier lepisode in Germany uses sharply delineated colours for women’s dresses and men’s uniforms. This actually suggests yet another filmic intertextuality between A Matter of Life and Death and The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, mainly Korda’s own second Technicolor film The Four Feathers (Petrie, 41-2). The use of Technicolor for a film staging an episode of the history of the British Empire is echoed in the flashback of Blimp by the sharp sense of colour as a picturesque reconstruction of a bygone set of stereotyped codes of behaviour. Such is also the case with George Périnal’s [Georges Périnal] use of Technicolor in The Four Feathers. Devoted as it is to the ‘pomp and circumstance’ of British imperial power, the film’s use of colour is between fantasy Technicolor as in The Thief of Bagdad, and Blimp, the controversial Powell and Pressburger film, both of which he is credited for (Petrie, 132-3).

Being a significant part of the filmic context of Technicolor in A Matter of Life and Death, The Four Feathers provides an illustration of the characteristic divide in the British early approach to Technicolor: the shots on location are a fine example of Technicolor as the appropriate visual code for documentary views of foreign landscapes (Cardiff, 50-71), while the use of red as the standard chromatic key for pomp and circumstance is also well exemplified, in particular with the following telling anecdote about the sequence of Aubrey Smith’s ball. It is recalled by John Clements in an interview by Duncan Petrie as a case of preference for Technicolor effect rather than documentary accuracy. The military advisers who had been called had said, that, in a private house, the officers should be in blue, but Alexander Korda made them all have a new uniform, a red one instead, exclaiming: “What is this blue uniform?…this is Technicolor!”(Petrie, 42).

But, on the other hand, the interiors which are shot in Technicolor by George Périnal [Georges Périnal] show that chiaroscuro colour is already part of ‘British Technicolor’.

[…]

COLOUR AND AMBIVALENCE: THE BRITISH ‘WARTIME UNCANNY’ (CHRISTIE, 74-5)

In the original script of A Matter of Life and Death, the transition from colour to black and white had been imagined as gradual: the early draft uses the visual shift from coats to pairs of wings in a cloakroom – a typically surrealist association of icons from totally foreign semantic fields to create an original ‘coincidence’ and an entirely new visual composition – was meant to be framed by ‘Heaven still in colour’ (Christie, 44), but in the shooting script stage, Heaven was simply monochrome. However this celestial monochromy was also the creation of a visual effect due to the use of colour film-stock instead of black and white.The decision of printing the monochrome scenes on colour stock and of treating them as drastically reduced colour allowed for controllable transitions. Powell writes in his memoir:

What will three-strip without the three primary colours look like? We all wanted to know.
‘Sort of pearly’ said Jack [Cardiff] vaguely.
I [Powell] looked at Alfred [Junge] ‘Did you hear, Alfred? Open wide them pearly gates’.
(Christie, 42-3; Cardiff, 89).

The effect is to convey through indeterminate colour the ambiguity of Heaven, both as the location of after-life for the casualties of what was becoming the most costly war in human lives ever recorded in human history, and as the rejected image of heroic death in battle. It is reminiscent of Max Ernst colourless skies as a backdrop for surrealist images of ‘coincidences’.

The example of the photogram which was used for the advertising for the film is indeed a case of a pearly Heaven framing a colour photograph of the stars, with no suggestion of a matte technique. In that shot, the film is commenting on the progress of war on the planet earth in colour with the Anglo-American couple reunited in a love embrace declaring with their eyes raised to the skies above: “We have won”. At the diegetic level, this is a comment on the issue of their struggle to live and love each other in peace, but it is also addressed to the powers of death and destiny in a defiant manner, deconstructing the traditional view of war as heroism and the hero-cult. One recognizes here the definition of modern war, i.e., war to end war.

This shot of the couple at the bottom of the stairs is angelical: their curls frame their faces, and the vivid colours of their complexions contrast with the brown hues of their military uniforms, while the use of a high angle suggests that their celestial addressee is real and not the creation of an hallucination. Heaven’s several changes of status is indeed one of the achievements of the film: while it is introduced as a real place in black and white, it becomes associated with the hero’s hallucinations, but recovers its authentic, though only ‘poetic’, existence in the conclusion with this shot. The book which has been taken to Heaven and falls down on earth again, is a narrative visualization of the agreement of Heaven to the legitimacy of the livings’ claim to live and love each other on earth. Conversely, another icon has been taken from earth to Heaven, a rose with a tear and its special semantic status which is enhanced by its colour changes.

The use of an ambivalent pearly monochrome to convey a sense of light and immensity in space and time also pervades the futurist furniture and architecture of the celestial place. From a semiotic point of view it reminds us that colour in itself has no particular meaning but is a vehicle for expression. Technicolor was thus understood by Powell to be a matchless vehicle for the re-appropriation by British cinrma of the literary tradition of the multiple layered meaning of imagery (Petrie, 41), as A Matter of Life and Death shows. In the second sequence, as Peter comes to his senses on the beach, the already uncanny status of the screen space which brings within talking distance two characters who cannot see each other but nevertheless ‘fall in love at first sight’ through the sound of their voices in a tragic context of mutual loss, now expands to the locale itself: a limitless stretch of land and sea, and the character discarding his uniform as if shedding his identity, while the reality of his projected shadow on the sand brings him into a world of sunlight and shadows, which is our own. The hesitation of the character about the place where he is, earth or Heaven, embodies our own uncertainty about the status of reality in the fiction. A closer examination of the above quoted rose from this point of view also focuses on the quintessential ambivalence of appearances in the film.

Its status as a sign encapsulates the film since it is a link between earth and Heaven; it bears the ‘allegorical’ tradition of British literature as said above, and was recognized as such. But the way Technicolor conveys this semantic structure makes it more than a mere allegory of love vs death, as inherited from the Renaissance sonnets. The rose is first monochrome and fastened on the Conductor’s coat: it is a detail which captures our eye, the whole costume of this fantasy figure being weirdly out of place and thus deconstructing our accepted view of Heaven as an imaginary place for dead pilots. When it gradually achieves colouring, its status changes from that of a Renaissance emblem with a literary referent, i.e. courtly poetry, to an icon with a diegetic status, and its various semiotic levels of meaning, as a sign conveying a message of true love to the court in Heaven, when bearing June’s tear, but also as an index for us spectators of the hybridisation of the screen space. Indeed, the rose comes to refer both to the world on earth, i.e. the real world for June, Dr Reeves and Peter, and to the world in Heaven, i.e. the world of Peter’s hallucinations which he discusses with June and Dr Reeves as if they were quite as real. However, instead of being plucked from a rose tree to become a sign of love as in a sonnet, the rose is unfastened from the Conductor’s jacket where it was a sign of love to become a real flower collecting an actual tear. As a result the rose is made into a reflexive symbol for the whole film’s hybrid world, and one can generalise by suggesting that because of its ambiguity/ubiquity, colour in the film foregrounds the concept of hybridity as a metaphor of tolerance, as will now be argued by way of conclusion.

In A Matter of Life or Death colour is indeed the locus of such a hybridisation of screen space, as it is actually used in two different ways: while it serves to contrast the world of reality and the earth with the world of hallucination and Heaven, it also serves to introduce the dream world within the very world of reality. When the Conductor appears to Peter among blazing rhododendron bushes, it is not division which is achieved, but, on the contrary, coexistence of reality and fantasy within the same frame – and in the same world. Just as in A Midsummer Night’s Dream characters from Chaucer’s text ‘The Knight’s Tale‘ actually speak on the stage with Elizabethan mechanicals, and one of them, Bottom, can exchange a conversation with the Fairies, or just as in The Wizard Dorothy can talk with fairies whom the Wizard cannot control, so can Peter enjoy a coherent conversation with June and Dr Reeves both in the real world and in the dream world. By enabling colour, in particular red, the epitome of colour, and grey, the epitome of black and white, to stand coherently within one and the same screen-space, though they belong to different codes, Technicolor creates a chromatic grafting which embodies the United Nations ideal of cultural hybridization between various cultures.

[…]

In A Matter of Life and Death, colour helps to visualize the ambivalence of appearances which is at the core of such a rhetorical strategy. Such a hybridisation of languages and plots thanks to monochromy and polychromy, becomes an indictment of human mutual destruction, as well as a vindication of tolerance.

NOTES

⁵ For a discussion of the suspicion of image as essentially fake in Citizen Kane, see my “‘Fournissez poèmes en prose, je fournirai la guerre’ ou l’image de la lettre dans Citizen Kane d’Orson Welles (1941)” in Nicole Cloarec ed. Le cinéma en toutes lettres: jeux d’écritures à l’écran, Paris: Michel Houdiard, 2007, pp. 145-159.

⁶ F. Borzage, Liliom, (1930), and F. Lang, Liliom (1934) had used the dichotomy; see K. Por in this volume.

⁷ Paul Swann, The British Documentary Film Movement – 1926-1946, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.

⁸ Pat Jackson the director of Western Approaches (1944), in his book A Retake Please! ‘Night Mail’ to ‘Western Approaches’, London: Royal Naval Museum Publications, 1999, p. 117-8, discusses his use of a fiction within his documentary on the British Merchant Navy as having been a rather risky decision of his own; he sees Technicolor rather as a means to emphasize the authenticity of the documentary than as an aesthetic form, which is contradicted by the way Cardiff photographed the film. See my oncoming paper “The avatars of the American Technicolor Dream in Great Britain in the 1940s: from The Wizard of Oz (1939) to Black Narcissus (1947) and Western Approaches (1944)” at the 11th Sercia conference in Bologna 2006.

⁹ Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie de la perception, Paris: Gallimard, (1945), 1974.

¹⁰ Jacob’s Ladder is found in William Blake’s illustration of the Bible by a tornado like staircase spiralling its way from the Earth high up to Heaven (ill. Ian Christie, p. 38), but it is simplified into a straight ladder in an anonymous illustration from The Pilgrim’s Progress (Ian Christie, p. 38). Jack Cardiff relates the shooting of a circular staircase with a Technicolor camera which proved nearly impossible, which might also explain the preference for a straight staircase in Powell’s film. Jack Cardiff, Magic Hour – The Life of a Cameraman, London: faber and faber, 1996, pp. 28-9.

¹¹ For a study of Turner’s seminal understanding of colour, see M. Adrien, in this volume.

¹² That there are great differences between black and white stock and lighting is developed in Basten. Jack Cardiff solved the difficulty by shooting the monochrome grey sequences with Technicolor film stock.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Christie, Ian, A Matter of Life and Death, London: B.F.I, 2000.

Moor, Andrew, Powell-Pressburger – A Cinema of Magic Spaces, London: Tauris, 2005.

Petrie, Duncan, The British Cinematographer, London: B.F.I, 1996.”

(Costa de Beauregard, Raphaëlle (2009): Technicolor and Jack Cardiff’s Art and Craft in Powell and Pressburger’s Matter of Life and Death (1946). In: Raphaëlle Costa de Beauregard (ed.): Cinéma et couleur. Paris: M. Houdiard, pp. 225–236, on pp. 226–236.)

Tags

• Technicolor
• Great Britain
• monochrome
• fantasy
• Jack Cardiff
• chiaroscuro

×

“The Man who was Colourblind

an example of chromatic continuities

“Although colour in films is no longer a novelty, it seems that its use has been entirely misunderstood,” claims LEN LYE in this striking article. And he points out, by means of a treatment of a typical short story, the great asset colour would lie to dramatic films if they were really scripted for production in this medium

To consider colour in film superfluous is tantamount to considering colour in paintings superfluous. Of course if the tradition of painting had developed through the use of black and white pigments only, then, no doubt, the public would go to the National Galleries and be content with masterpieces in black and white paint. But now, if suddenly all paintings were deprived of colour, most of their appeal would be lost.

Although colour in films is no longer a novelty, it seems that its use has been entirely misunderstood. These notes attempt to point out how colour could be a great asset to dramatic films if they were really scripted for production in colour. An example is given of a particular story, with suggestions for a particular colour treatment for it. Upon this suggested colour treatment the final colour continuity would be based. For in a colour film the colour continuity should be as integral a part of the production as the action and the dialogue.

What is Meant by Colour Continuity

By a colour continuity I mean a strict selective colour discrimination applied to the visual clues of a given story so that those clues seen in continuity are part of a recognisable colour composition which clearly assists the telling of the story.

In a static colour scene, colour composition is obtained by contrasts and harmonies of tones and hues. But film is not static, and colour composition should be obtained through the harmonies and contrasts of the progressive colour scenes. The action of scenes must also be planned to include a control of the movement of colours within each scene.

If film is visual movement and progression of scene, then colour, the external aspect of scene, must be considered in terms of progression and movement too. For instance, if in the progression of a colour composition the action has been in predominant hues of red followed by predominant hues of blue, then the blues would of course seem more vivid than they really were owing to their contrast with the memory of the reds previously seen.

Similarly a knowledgeable and creative use of the whole chromatic range of colours in continuity would create an aesthetic quality according to the nicety of their relationship with the outline of the story and with one another. The accenting and pianissimo of hues could assist emphasis of over- and under-statement as desired in defining the dramatic nuances of the story.

No Previous Attempt

Strictly speaking there has never been in all film history an attempt to script a film for a continuity to apply the great emotional value of colour in heightening a story’s dramatic outline. To do so a story would have to be broken down for scripting much further than is usual in terms of normal black and white film production. The colour script would have to be the final preparatory phase guiding the production of the story in every shot.

As it is, popular films in colour have not advanced much beyond the scripting methods employed for the production of normal black and white films, with the result that colour is felt to be an adjunct which merely makes the film more costly to produce, and its entertainment value, as a colour film, a superficial one. Certainly little sense of added artistic creation has been achieved by the use of colour in films up to now.

A colour script should be a guiding factor in the presentation of the story. For instance, if the colour black were a necessary link in continuity of colour, then a black form such as a black teapot, head of hair, pair of shoes, etc., might be included in the script according to the logic and literary licence of the story at the point where the movement of black was required. If by any chance no object or form could be devised to carry black at that point of the story line, then the colour continuity and action of the previous scenes would have to be adjusted so that black became unnecessary and the logical colour of the scene in question became the right one for the colour continuity.

Indeed it is because the scenes of present-day colour films are still scripted for in much the same terms as the black and white story-telling formula that often the colour itself detracts from the clarity of the story. There occurs an uncontrolled galaxy of colours in scene upon scene which distracts the eye away from a scene’s main visual story clue, and provides a hotchpotch of discordant colour continuity.

It is for this reason that many people unconsciously prefer to see an honest-to-goodness black and white film without the trimmings and paddings of colour. Yet any art follower knows that harmonies and contrasts of colours are of great value in a painting to direct and hold the eye to the important shapes of a composition as well as to convey the “feeling” or “mood” of the whole.

People go to the cinema to “see” a story. If it is in colour they should “see” the story in colour. Therefore the story script of a film should be fully adapted for presentation in colours leading the eye to the main story clues in each scene bound up within a carefully annotated colour continuity.

Example

These notes so far have been theoretical because there are no known examples of a sustained constructive use of colour in films. It would be interesting to take a short story and see how it could be adapted for colour treatment. For even in a short film it would be possible to show several definite advantages of “telling” a story in colour.

A short dramatic fiction film should have a compact and easily defined plot, preferably with a “twist” in it. It would be ideal for our purpose of illustration if the colour treatment for the plot could also be a given “twist”. A suitable plot can be found in Peter Fleming’s The Face, published by Penguin Books, No. 170, Selected Modern Short Stories. The film synopsis might be as follows:

A man regains consciousness on a railway track but has lost his memory. He looks at the objects in his pockets to find out who he is. From a newspaper he finds in his coat he could be either one of two men. One, with a small dark moustache, has inherited a fortune. The other, with red hair, has killed his wife. He feels his upper lip and finds it clean shaved. But he “feels rich” and is sure he has recently shaved his moustache off. Yet his mind is torn in doubt. Is he a murderer? Plodding along the railway track he rationalises his recent life as being that of a rich man. He arrives at a small country railway station and goes inside. He approaches the mirror of a slotmachine to look at his face. With a shock his memory returns. His hair is red.

Sequences of dramatic colour scenes would define the “flash-back” element of the man’s thoughts when he is trying to establish his identity in his mind. These sequences would gradually depart from realistic colour. The man’s hair would be of a mouse colour until the final theatrically coloured scene in which the operative colour is entirely red.

On the other hand, the realistic scenes showing the man actually suffering from loss of memory would be shown in a special tone of black and white, representing the man’s loss of memory – the inference being that as he does not know the colour of his hair, neither should the audience, who are experiencing his emotions through his mind’s eye.

The final scene in black and white, in which he is still suffering from loss of memory – the one in which he looks at his face in the mirror – could indicate to the audience the return of his memory by the colour treatment itself; e.g. as he looks at his face in the mirror, in black and white photography, he sees the colour of his hair although the audience cannot. The shock of what he sees makes his memory return. Then the scene changes to natural colour photography, and the audience too, see that the man’s hair is red. Here the climax of the colour red is held. And in a sequence comprised of theatrical hues of red and chrome only, the quarrel, and accidental killing of his wife, is portrayed. The final scene shows the man voluntarily walking into a police station.

Production Notes

Colour

The technical treatment for the black and white scenes would assure good colour treatment, inasmuch as they would be printed in the real black of Technicolor dyes as opposed to the false black of normal films. The Technicolor black is made up of dyes printed on to film from printing matrices. The false black of the ordinary black and white film is produced by developing black grains of silver in a gelatine layer.

The advantage of portraying the realistic “loss of memory” scenes in black and white would be twofold. Namely, a black and white of true colour hue would blend readily with scenes of three colour hues. So the absolute incongruity of mixing three-colour sequences with the ordinary silver nitrate “black” of normal films would be avoided. (An instance of this incongruity could be seen in M.G.M.’s The Women, when a Technicolor sequence abruptly changes to the ordinary black and white of silver nitrate emulsion. The audience gasps at the “bleached out” appearance of the tones of the scene.) The contrast of the lacquer tones of the black and white scenes with the dramatic colours of the flash-back scenes would be a literary convention by which the audience could understand what the colour was “getting at”.

Story

The film could be of either two or four reels, depending on the ability of a writer to build up cameo plots in the flashback sequences and write in characterisations of interest.

A short colour prologue of a train journey – hoardings, station names, wheels, railway tracks, tickets, signals, roofs, trees, fences, telegraph poles and wires, green hills, clouds, etc., would prepare an audience for the subsequent dramatic colour sequences and would merge effectively with the opening scene of the story, namely, that of a man lying inert alongside a railway fine. The climax of the prologue would also be made to indicate that someone had fallen from a train.

The beauty of the train effects in Renoir’s La Bete Humaine, and in Ruttman’s Berlin, are an indication of what could be achieved in a train theme prologue planned for colour effects.

The opening scene of the story is in realistic three colour. The man’s shoulders are hunched, his arms protect his head, his feet are away from the camera. The white smoke of a train is seen in the distance. A cow grazes nearby. The man is sitting up holding his head. As he stares in front of him, the natural three-colour rendering of the scene slowly changes to tones of black and white. He is looking at personal objects taken from his pocket.

He cannot recognise any of them. He tries to reconstruct his previous life from them. Etc. The first rendering of theatrical colour treatment occurs in a flash-back from this sequence. It is a dramatic episode associated with a photograph in a newspaper which the man finds in his possession.

It would be pointless to further sketch in the story outline so far as these notes on colour continuity are concerned. Subtleties of colour on the screen can rarely be conveyed and visualised by written examples, no more, say, than music can.

As for the story, it could be made quite rich in dramatic detail. There are many case histories of loss of memory which would afford a writer inspiration for fine fiction material, as well as affording a good part for an actor.”

(Lye, Len (1940): The Man Who Was Colourblind. In: Sight and Sound, 9,33, Spring 1940, pp. 6–7.)

Tags

• red
• 1940s
• black and white
• color contrast
• harmony
• dominant hues
• dramatic tension

×

“Es ist ein besonderes Paradox der Geschichte, daß ausgerechnet die Farbsysteme der dreißiger Jahre, die alle die Realität nachahmen wollten, zum genauen Gegenteil führten. Das ausgereifteste war das amerikanische Technicolor-Verfahren, das unvergeßliche und wunderbar falsche Töne hervorbrachte. Gerade als man am lautesten Natürlichkeit forderte, erreichte man sie am allerwenigsten. Die Kritik attackierte vor allem Natalie Kalmus, die in Hollywoods Filmstudios den Einsatz von Technicolor überwachte und deren Namen eine gewisse übertriebene Farbgebung symbolisierte.

Auch hier gilt für den Archivar bei der Restaurierung, Treue gegenüber dem Original zu wahren. Er muß gewissenhaft das zu lebhafte Rot, das überwältigende Blau, die eindrucksvollen Rosatöne beibehalten, auch wenn er sie gern abschwächen würde. Die Technicolor-Ära war eine privilegierte Zeit des Kinos, und die jüngste Restaurierung eines der schönsten Filme jener Epoche, The Garden of Allah von Richard Boleslawski mit Marlene Dietrich, offenbart, welche Faszination diese exzessive Kunst ausüben kann.”

(Borde, Raymond (1988): Die Filmarchive und der Farbfilm. Eine Einführung. In: Gert Koshofer: Color. Die Farben des Films. Berlin: Wissenschaftsverl. Volker Spiess, pp. 7–10, on p. 9.) (in German)

Tags

• 1930s
• United States
• Hollywood
• saturated
• Natalie Kalmus
• color reconstruction
• ostentatious
• Marlene Dietrich
• restoration ethics

×

“Technicolor’s supremacy resulted from several factors. The firm carefully developed, revised, and publicized its process. The company was generally sensitive to the business and engineering requirements of Hollywood film production. Moreover, Technicolor Corporation worked effectively with the professional associations, especially the SMPE (in which Technicolor staff members were prominent). The success of Technicolor during the 1930s and 1940s can be measured both by its increased volume of business and its several Academy Awards.

Technicolor is an instance of a service firm initiating research within a specialized area. In such situations, major production firms tended to let smaller firms initiate a new technology, withholding investment until severe problems had been ironed out. This explains why Technicolor lived precariously for such a long time – sixteen years without making a profit. It took that long to harness a significant novelty to Hollywood’s standards of cost efficiency and quality.”

(Bordwell, David; Staiger, Janet; Thompson, Kristin (1985): The Classical Hollywood Cinema. Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960. London: Routledge, on p. 353.)

Tags

• 1930s
• Technicolor
• United States
• 1940s
• Hollywood

×

“In 1932, Joseph A. Ball created a three-strip method that offered much better color rendition. (For this method, Ball added a three-color beamsplitter and a third strip of film, so that each matrix – red, blue, green – had its own separation negative.) Tested on Walt Disney cartoons (beginning with Flowers and Trees [1932]), a live-action short (La Cucaracha [1934]), and then on a feature (Becky Sharp [1935]), Technicolor attracted attention again. The success of Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1935), A Star Is Born (1937), Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1938), and Gone With the Wind (1939) confirmed Technicolor’s new powers. Soon the firm could not keep up with the producers’ demands. Presided over by Herbert Kalmus, Technicolor virtually monopolized Hollywood color filming until the early 1950s.³

To win Hollywood’s support, Technicolor employed a time-tested business tactic, that of supplying research prototypes. Every new Technicolor process was demonstrated in a sample film financed by the company itself or by a sympathetic backer. Kalmus and his colleagues produced The Gulf Between (1917) to display the additive process, Toll of the Sea (1922) to exhibit the initial two-color procedure, and The Flag (1927) and The Viking (1928) to publicize the revised two-color process. By the time Technicolor was ready to showcase the three-strip process in a feature film, Merriam C. Cooper and John Hay Whitney formed an independent firm, Pioneer Films, to make La Cucaracha and Becky Sharp.⁴ Again and again Kalmus’s company had to assume responsibility for proving that its color method could meet the industry’s standard of quality.

The issue of production economies also dogged Technicolor. Even after the three-strip method was proven viable, the studios did not rush to convert. One principal reason was that Technicolor was hard to adjust to demands of cost and labor-time. In 1936, Technicolor could increase a picture’s budget by $100,000 to $300,000, an enormous amount during the Depression. A Technicolor film consumed more production time, required more electrical power, and could not draw upon the studio library of stock footage. Many producers doubted that Technicolor’s novelty compensated for the expense. As American Cinematographer put it, if the color was unnatural, the audience noticed it (and that was bad); if the color was good, the audience forgot about it (thus it was not worth the cost).⁵

Technicolor was sensitive to demands for cost effectiveness because its founders were experienced engineers. Both Kalmus and Comstock were graduates of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and had taught there; they employed three MIT physics students to work on the process; even the firm’s name paid tribute to ‘Tech.’ As industrial consultants, Kalmus, Comstock, and Wescott had gained a sound reputation for research. And as engineers, Technicolor’s directors decided on a ‘progressive step development’ strategy for nurturing their color process little by little, with a three-color process as the ultimate goal. It was Ball, one of Comstock’s students and a prominent member of the SMPE and the Academy, who designed the three-color camera and guided Technicolor research through the 1930s.⁶ It was generally acknowledged that Comstock, Leonard Troland, and Ball were the inventors while Kalmus was the promoter: ‘Businessmen regard Dr. Kalmus as a scientist and scientists regard him as a businessman.’⁷ But even Kalmus continued to experiment in solving engineering problems in his spare time.

Throughout the years, Technicolor followed many industrial-engineering principles to maximize efficiency. The company started a research laboratory. It retained a staff to design and build special printers and processing machinery. Laboratory chief Gerald Rackett pointed to his operation as a model of successful engineering. Although the cameras were built by Mitchell, they were designed and repaired in the optical and machine shops of Technicolor. The plant was a paragon of industrial organization. Management carefully divided the labor, limited knowledge to specialties, and discouraged transfers across departments. Entering sensitive areas required security passes. Only the firm’s executives had a total view of research development and patented processes.⁸

After the 1935 color boom, Technicolor controlled its quality by placing restrictions on production practices. Because the 1929-31 color vogue had resulted in untrained cinematographers using the process, the firm wanted to supervise production to a great degree. Filming procedures became standardized. To make a Technicolor film, a producer had to rent the cameras, hire a Technicolor cameraman (eventually to be called a ‘camera optical engineer’), use Technicolor make-up, and have the film processed and printed by Technicolor. The producer would also have to accept a ‘color consultant’ who would advise what color schemes to use on sets, costumes, and make-up. Every day the camera magazines were inspected in the Technicolor laboratory, checked out by the cinematographer, and returned at the end of the day. Only trained crews could operate the camera, and the production’s cinematographer had to work closely with the Technicolor cameraman. The firm also adjusted itself to studio differences, supplying motors for various studios’ electrical and sound requirements.⁹

Before 1950, few of Technicolor’s research innovations spilled over beyond the improvement of its own color process. In the mid-1930s, the firm devised a remote-control focusing device that was occasionally used on black-and-white films. Technicolor also spurred the development of bright process-projection equipment. The most significant innovation of all occurred in 1935. Since the three-color process was balanced for daylight, arc lighting most closely approximated the film’s needs. But most studios’ arc equipment dated back to the 1920s. Technicolor commissioned Mole-Richardson to design silent, efficient arc units that would yield a uniform, flat distribution of light. Two years later, Mole-Richardson introduced a new line of side arcs, overhead ‘scoops,’ and spotlights. These lamps soon became common in both color and black-and-white filming.¹⁰

As a service company, Technicolor maintained almost complete control of its product; as a color process, it had to conform to classical norms. Hollywood’s use of Technicolor was almost entirely motivated by genre. It was to the firm’s advantage to stress that color was simply an increase in realism applicable to any film, but the argument did not convince.¹¹ On the whole, Technicolor was identified with the musical comedy, the historical epic, the adventure story, and the fantasy – in short, the genres of stylization and spectacle. […]

Even after Ball devised the more ‘realistic’ three-strip color method, color films remained codified by genre. There were musicals (The Dancing Pirate [1935], Vogues of 1938 [1937], Goldwyn Follies [1938], Down Argentine Way [1940], The Gang’s All Here [1943]). There were historical spectacles and adventure tales in exotic locales (Adventures of Robin Hood [1938], Drums Along the Mohawk [1939], Northwest Mounted Police [1940], Western Union [1941], The Black Swan [1942], For Whom the Bell Tolls [1943]). A Western (e.g., Jesse James [1939]), a comedy (e.g., Nothing Sacred [1937]), or a romance set in an exotic locale (e.g., The Garden of Allah [1936]) also had an occasional chance of being filmed in color. The Women (1940) justified color by its lengthy interpolated fashion show, while *An American Romance (1944) uses color to reinforce its ‘epic’ account of an immigrant making good. It is probable that two films of 1939 played a central role in defining color’s generic range: Gone With the Wind, a historical spectacle, was credited with having proven that color could add to a film’s box-office appeal, and The Wizard of Oz used Technicolor only for the central Oz fantasy, not for a rendering of Dorothy’s everyday life in Kansas. Like certain kinds of music or lighting, the presence of color was governed by genre conventions.¹³

Other conventions of the classical paradigm limited Technicolor’s use. While Technicolor could play up the spectacular and the artificial, the industry cautioned that color must not distract from the story. It was widely felt that two-strip Technicolor musicals had been weak films bolstered by the novelties of color and sound; this diagnosis was confirmed by the lukewarm response given to Becky Sharp (1935). ‘Never use color for the sake of color alone,’ warned a Selznick art director in 1937. ‘It is only something which is added to the story, and the story should not be made for the sake of it.’¹⁴

Technicolor was aware of Hollywood’s demands. From the outset, the firm had understood that in order to succeed commercially color would have to favor principal narrative elements. Around 1920, a producer explained the problem to Comstock:¹⁵

The human being is the center of the drama, not flowers, gardens, and dresses. The face is the center of the human being. And the eyes are the center of the face. If a process is not sharp enough to show clearly the whites of a person’s eyes at a reasonable distance, it isn’t any good no matter what it is.

The plausible rendering of complexion and expression became the chief goal of Technicolor’s research. One critic pointed out problems of definition in the 1916-23 efforts: ‘When the figures retreat to any distance, it is difficult to distinguish their expression.’¹⁶ Complaints about Becky Sharp‘s ‘overripe’ and ‘scarletina’ skin tones made Technicolor ask Max Factor to devise pancake make-up. Throughout the 1930s, Technicolor calmed cinematographers’ fears that color would aggravate facial blemishes.¹⁷ The firm was at pains to compromise between developing a ‘lifelike’ rendition of the visible spectrum and developing a treatment of the human face that would accord with classical requisites of beauty and narrative centrality.

To fit Technicolor’s recording capacities smoothly to Hollywood’s needs, the firm created the role of color consultant. Natalie Kalmus, Herbert’s wife, had been the first model for Technicolor filming. She and Kalmus were divorced in 1921 (although they continued to live in the same house for another twenty-five years), and one condition of the divorce made Natalie the color supervisor on most Technicolor productions. A former art student, she insisted that sets and costumes be in cool colors, the better to set off the tones of the characters’ faces. She is sometimes credited with Technicolor’s reluctance to film bright or saturated colors, the assumption being that pastels were less harsh and distracting. The same worry that Technicolor would look artificial governed the ban on symbolically colored lighting, a constraint not completely overcome until South Pacific (1958).¹⁸

Natalie Kalmus also promoted the idea that Technicolor could yield not a flat and candy-box image, but actually a more rounded and deep one. With the proper color separation of foreground and background, she wrote, ‘it is possible to make it appear as though the actors were actually standing there in person, thus creating the illusion of a third dimension.’¹⁹ On the whole, cinematographers accepted this dictum. They shot Technicolor with softer and flatter light, using less backlight and letting the color difference separate the planes. […] As late as 1957, the SMPTE was still advocating low-contrast lighting for color (no more than a 3:1 key-fill ratio). Most cinematographers used the same arrangement of lighting units for color and black and white; only the intensity and number of the sources differed.²⁰ The effect was far from transgressive, as can be seen from almost any shot in a 1930s or 1940s Technicolor film. High-key Technicolor shooting yielded an image that conformed to the norms of softness, low contrast, and diffusion characteristic of 1930s cinematography […]. The rarer low-key Technicolor shot still possesses a softness, especially in shadow areas, consistent with Hollywood norms. Classical ideals of volume, separation of planes, and dim backgrounds were amply satisfied by Technicolor cinematography.

Just as sound filming practices strove to recover the standardized procedures of the silent era, so Technicolor filming attempted to become as much as possible like monochrome filming. Color brought with it three changes: a very slow film stock, the need for arc lighting, and the awkward three-strip camera. Many cinematographers accepted certain inevitable demands, such as the necessity of gauging light by exposure meters. But knowing that light levels were a problem, Technicolor constantly tried to increase its film speed. The company’s efforts resulted in a faster, fine-grained stock first used on Gone With the Wind (1939). Combined with Mole-Richardson’s portable arc units, this film stock put color cinematography somewhat closer to monochrome methods. Nonetheless, by 1948, a cinematographer could still point out that for low-key filming, color required ten lighting units for every two used in black and white, and that changes in light intensity affected not only exposure but color gradations, often for the worse.²¹

From an engineering standpoint, Technicolor filming could not become fully consonant with mainstream production practice as long as it utilized a three-strip method. The bulky cameras were hard to maneuver, complicated to thread, difficult to maintain. It is clear that Herbert Kalmus set as a goal a monopack film that could be used in any camera. In 1939, he announced that in a year Technicolor would employ a single camera negative. Monopack was used for sequences in some films (Dive Bomber [1941], Captains of the Clouds [1942], Forest Rangers [1942], Lassie Come Home [1943]) and for one entire film (Thunderhead – Son of Flicka [1944]), but the process was declared unsatisfactory. It was even slower than ordinary Technicolor stock, it rendered interior sets poorly, and the processing often gave contrasty results. Researchers were uncertain as to whether a single-strip negative film could ever yield consistently good release prints in large quantity. World War II delayed research on the process, but Kalmus was also hesitant, probably recalling the difficulties he had faced after rushing into an untried process in 1929. Expecting monopack to come eventually, Technicolor built no more three-strip cameras.²² (This decision caused further problems, since Technicolor could not satisfy the postwar demand for color.) When a color negative film arrived, however, Technicolor was not its originator.

³ F.J. Taylor, ‘Mr. Technicolor,’ Saturday Evening Post, 222 (22 October 1949): 131-3; ‘Technicolor,’ Fortune, 13 (June 1936): 40, 46, 54; Joseph Mascelli, ‘The million dollar bubble,’ IP, 23, no. 10 (October 1951): 6, 8-10; William Stull, ‘Technicolor bringing new charm to screen,’ AC, 18, no. 6 (June 1937): 237; Fred Basten, Glorious Technicolor (New York: A.S. Barnes, 1980), pp. 23-197; ‘Abstracts,’ JSMPE, 14 no. 1 (January 1930): 139-40; ‘Progress in the motion picture industry,’ JSMPE, 14, no. 2 (February 1930): 245; ‘Technicolor orders 18 new cameras,’ Hollywood Filmograph, 10, no. 16 (3 May 1930): 26; ‘Technicolor expansion program in operation,’ Technicolor News and Views, 1, no. 1 (April 1929): 1-2; ‘Increase in popularity of Technicolor productions graphically shown by 35-millimeter positive print footage output, 1932-1947,’ Technicolor News and Views, 10, no. 2 (August 1948): 2; ‘Technicolor gaining,’ AC, 25, no. 5 (May 1944): 178; J.A. Ball, ‘The Technicolor process of 3-color cinematography,’ IPro, 8, no. 6 (June 1935): 12; Howard C. Brown, ‘Will color revolutionize photography?’ AC, 17, no. 7 (July 1936): 284-5.

⁴ See Basten, Glorious Technicolor, pp. 29-58; ‘Color film increase,’ Business Week (22 May 1937): 47.

⁵ Jimmie Stone, ‘The assistant cameraman,’ IP, 11, no. 11 (December 1939): 23; ‘Why all this hubbub regarding color?’ AC, 17, no. 8 (August 1936): 327, 334-5;’ Ziegfeld Girl,’ AC, 22, no. 4 (May 1941): 223.

⁶ ‘Eliminating guesswork in cinematography,’ Scientific American, 115 (9 December 1916): 532, 535-6; Taylor, ‘Mr. Technicolor,’ p. 131; Basten, Glorious Technicolor, pp. 20-3, 29, 81, 199; ‘What? Color in the movies again?’ Fortune, 10, no. 4 (October 1934): 93-4, 161.

⁷ ‘What? Color in the movies again?’ p. 166.

⁸ Stull, ‘New charm,’ p. 236; ‘A cinema world wonder,’ IP, 2, no. 5 (June 1930): 84-6; Robert L. Greene, ‘The camera optical engineer,’ IP, 22, no. 5 (May 1950): 8-9; Basten, Glorious Technicolor, pp. 84-93.

⁹ ‘Technicolor system,’ IP, 10, no. 1 (February 1938): 9-10; Ira B. Hoke, ‘Grooming camera battery for 1931,’ IP, 2, no. 11 (December 1930): 15, 40; Stone, ‘Assistant cameraman,’ p. 13; Basten, Glorious Technicolor, pp. 66-7.

¹⁰ William Stull, ‘Following focus by remote control,’ AC, 17, no. 2 (February 1936): 53, 60; William Stull, ‘Process shots aided by triple projector,’ AC, 20, no. 8 (August 1939): 363-6, 376; Farciot Edouart, ‘The evolution of transparency process photography,’ AC, 24, no. 10 (October 1943): 380, 382; Elmer C. Richardson, ‘Production use tested the “Ultra H.I. Arc,”‘ IP, 8, no. 3 (April 1936): 26-7; Peter Mole, ‘Twice the light and twice the sunlight for color cinematography,’ AC, 16, no. 8 (August 1935): 332- 3; R.E. Farnham, ‘Lighting requirements of the three-color Technicolor process,’ AC, 17, no. 7 (July 1936): 282-3, 292; E.C. Richardson, ‘Recent developments in high-intensity arc spotlamps for motion picture production,’ JSMPE, 28, no. 2 (February 1938): 206-12; W. Howard Greene, ‘Low-key lighting may be as easy in color as it is in monochrome,’ AC, 19, no. 4 (April 1938): 146, 151; ‘Pan and sound put inkies on top,’ IP, 10, no. 3 (April 1938): 47; Ray Rennehan, ‘Rennehan talks Technicolor,’ IP, 9, no. 8 (September 1937): 24.

¹¹ See, for example, Lyle Wheeler, ‘Art direction for color by Technicolor,’ Technicolor News and Views, 11, no. 2 (June 1949): 2-3.

¹³ For a good discussion of how color can be seen as lacking realistic motivation, see Ed Buscombe, ‘Sound and color,’ Jump Cut, no. 17 (1978): 23-5.

¹⁴ Lansing C. Holden, ‘Color: the new language of the screen,’ Cinema Arts, 1, no. 2 (July 1937): 64. See also Philip E. Rosen, ‘Believe color will not aid dramatic cinematography,’ AC, 4, no. 5 (August 1923): 4.

¹⁵ Quoted in Basten, Glorious Technicolor, p. 30.

¹⁶ Ibid., p. 27.

¹⁷ Ibid., p. 57; D.K. Allison, ‘Common sense of color,’ IP, 9, no. 8 (September 1937): 7-9.

¹⁸ Taylor, ‘Mr. Technicolor,’ p. 27; Basten, Glorious Technicolor, pp. 54, 70; Lansing C. Holden, ‘Designing for color,’ in We Make the Movies, ed. Nancy Naumburg (New York: Norton, 1937), p. 240; Natalie Kalmus, ‘Color consciousness,’ IPro, 8, no. 6 (June 1935): 17; Arthur E. Gavin, ‘South Pacific – New concept in color photography,’ AC, 39, no. 5 (May 1958): 294-6, 318-19.

¹⁹ Natalie Kalmus, ‘Colour,’ in Behind the Screen: How Films Are Made, ed. Stephen Watts (New York: Dodge, 1938), p. 122.

²⁰ ‘Rennehan talks Technicolor,’ p. 25; Peter Mole, ‘Lighting equipment for natural-color photography,’ IP, 8, no. 5 (June 1936): 17; John Arnold, ‘Cinematography – professional,’ in The Complete Photographer vol. 2, ed. Willard D. Morgan (New York: National Education Alliance, 1943), p. 767; James Wong Howe, ‘Reaction on making his first color production,’ AC, 18, no. 10 (October 1937): 409-11; SMPTE, Elements of Color in Professional Motion Pictures (New York: SMPTE, 1957), pp. 44, 70; E.C. Richardson, ‘Recent developments in motion picture set lighting,’ JSMPE, 29, no. 2 (August 1937): 183.

²¹ Ray Rennehan, ‘Natural-color cinematography today,’ AC, 16, no. 7 (July 1935): 288, 294; ‘Faster color film cuts light a half,’ AC, 20, no. 8 (August 1939): 355-6; C.W. Handley, ‘Advanced technic of Technicolor lighting,’ IP, 9, no. 5 (June 1937): 10; William Stull, ‘New charm,’ p. 236; W. Howard Green, ‘Creating light-effects in Technicolor,’ IP, 8, no. 12 (January 1937): 10-11, 25; Winton Hoch, ‘The Technicolor cameraman,’ IPro, 21, no. 10 (October 1946): 20-2, 34; Robert Surtees, ‘Color is different,’ AC, 28, no. 1 (January 1948): 10-11, 31; Joe Valentine, ‘Lighting for Technicolor as compared with black and white photography,’ IP, 20, no. 1 (January 1948): 7-10.

²² Basten, Glorious Technicolor, pp. 137-46; Technicolor to employ standard camera negative in year, Dr. Kalmus predicts,’ Technicolor News and Views, 1, no. 8 (November 1939): 1-2; ‘Company’s feature volume largest in history,’ Technicolor News and Views, 3, no. 2 (April 1941): 1-2; Winton Hoch, ‘Technicolor cinematography,’ in The Technique of Motion Picture Production, ed. SMPE (New York: Interscience, 1944): 20-2, 34; Taylor, ‘Mr. Technicolor,’ pp. 133-4; ‘Technical news,’ JSMPE, 43, no. 1 (July 1944): 68; Charles G. Clarke, ‘Practical utilization of monopack film,’ IP, 18, no. 1 (February 1946): 11-12, 29; ‘Technicolor establishes new records in a troubled year,’ Technicolor News and Views, 4, no. 2 (April 1942): 1, 3; ‘The Technicolor monopack process,’ Technicolor News and Views, 7, no. 3 (September 1945): 1-2; Herbert T. Kalmus, ‘Technicolor’s post war plans,’ Technicolor News and Views, 5, no. 4 (December 1943): 1, 4; Herbert T. Kalmus, ‘Future of Technicolor,’ IP, 16, no. 4 (May 1944): 29; Charles G. Clarke, ‘We filmed Kangaroo entirely in Australia,’ AC, 33, no. 6 (July 1952): 292-3, 315-7; William J. Kenney, ‘Monopack as medium for three-color process,’ IP, 16, no. 12 (January 1945): 12.”

(Bordwell, David; Staiger, Janet; Thompson, Kristin (1985): The Classical Hollywood Cinema. Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960. London: Routledge, on pp. 353-357.)

Tags

• 1930s
• Technicolor
• 1920s
• United States
• 1940s
• animation
• dye transfer printing
• Hollywood
• commercial success
• saturated

×

“None the less, Technicolor’s use in motion pictures declined. In 1947, 90 per cent of 35mm color was Technicolor; ten years later, the firm met only half the industry’s color needs. After 1953, Technicolor operated as primarily a laboratory and a researc