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Wikipedia

Technicolor

Technicolor is a series of color motion picture processes, the first version dating back to 1916,[1] and followed by improved versions over several decades.

"Technicolor is natural color" Paul Whiteman stars in the King of Jazz ad from The Film Daily, 1930

Definitive Technicolor movies using three black and white films running through a special camera (3-strip Technicolor or Process 4) started in the early 1930s and continued through to the mid-1950s when the 3-strip camera was replaced by a standard camera loaded with single strip 'monopack' color negative film. Technicolor Laboratories were still able to produce Technicolor prints by creating three black and white matrices from the Eastmancolor negative (Process 5).

Process 4 was the second major color process, after Britain's Kinemacolor (used between 1908 and 1914), and the most widely used color process in Hollywood during the Golden Age of Hollywood. Technicolor's three-color process became known and celebrated for its highly saturated color, and was initially most commonly used for filming musicals such as The Wizard of Oz (1939) and Down Argentine Way (1940), costume pictures such as The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) and Gone with the Wind (1939), the film Blue Lagoon (1949), and animated films such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Gulliver's Travels (1939), and Fantasia (1940). As the technology matured it was also used for less spectacular dramas and comedies. Occasionally, even a film noir – such as Leave Her to Heaven (1945) or Niagara (1953) – was filmed in Technicolor.

The "Tech" in the company's name was inspired by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where Herbert Kalmus and Daniel Frost Comstock received their undergraduate degrees in 1904 and were later instructors.[2]

Nomenclature

The term "Technicolor" has been used historically for at least five concepts:

  • Technicolor: an umbrella company encompassing all versions and ancillary services. (1914–present)
  • Technicolor labs: a group of film laboratories worldwide, owned and run by Technicolor for post-production services including developing, printing, and transferring films in all major color film processes, as well as Technicolor's proprietary ones. (1922–present)
  • Technicolor process or format: several custom imaging systems used in film production, culminating in the "three-strip" process in 1932. (1917–1955)
  • Technicolor IB printing ("IB" abbreviates "imbibition", a dye-transfer operation): a process for making color motion picture prints that allows the use of dyes that are more stable and permanent than those formed in ordinary chromogenic color printing. Originally used for printing from color separation negatives photographed on black-and-white film in a special Technicolor camera. (1928–2002, with differing gaps of availability after 1974 depending on the lab)
  • Prints or Color by Technicolor: used since 1954 when Eastmancolor (and other single-strip color film stocks) supplanted the three-film-strip camera negative method, while the Technicolor IB printing process continued to be used as one method of making the prints.[3] This connotation applies to nearly all films made from 1954 onward[4] in which Technicolor is named in the credits. (1953–present)[5]

History

Both Kalmus and Comstock went to Europe (Switzerland) to earn PhD degrees; Kalmus at University of Zurich, and Comstock at Basel in 1906.

In 1912, Kalmus, Comstock, and mechanic W. Burton Wescott formed Kalmus, Comstock, and Wescott, an industrial research and development firm. Most of the early patents were taken out by Comstock and Wescott, while Kalmus served primarily as the company's president and chief executive officer.

When the firm was hired to analyze an inventor's flicker-free motion picture system, they became intrigued with the art and science of filmmaking, particularly color motion picture processes, leading to the founding of Technicolor in Boston in 1914 and incorporation in Maine in 1915.[6]

In 1921, Wescott left the company, and Technicolor Inc. was chartered in Delaware.[7][8]

Two-color Technicolor

Process 1

 
A frame from a surviving fragment of The Gulf Between (1917), the first publicly shown Technicolor film

Technicolor originally existed in a two-color (red and green) system. In Process 1 (1916), a prism beam-splitter behind the camera lens exposed two consecutive frames of a single strip of black-and-white negative film simultaneously, one behind a red filter, the other behind a green filter. Because two frames were being exposed at the same time, the film had to be photographed and projected at twice the normal speed. Exhibition required a special projector with two apertures (one with a red filter and the other with a green filter), two lenses, and an adjustable prism that aligned the two images on the screen.[9]

The results were first demonstrated to members of the American Institute of Mining Engineers in New York on February 21, 1917.[10] Technicolor itself produced the only movie made in Process 1, The Gulf Between, which had a limited tour of Eastern cities, beginning with Boston and New York on September 13, 1917, primarily to interest motion picture producers and exhibitors in color.[11] The near-constant need for a technician to adjust the projection alignment doomed this additive color process. Only a few frames of The Gulf Between, showing star Grace Darmond, are known to exist today.[12]

Two-Strip Technicolor

Process 2

 
A frame from The Toll of the Sea (1922), the first generally released Technicolor film, and the first to use a two-strip subtractive color process

Convinced that there was no future in additive color processes, Comstock, Wescott, and Kalmus focused their attention on subtractive color processes. This culminated in what would eventually be known as Process 2 (1922) (often referred to today by the misnomer "two-strip Technicolor"). As before, the special Technicolor camera used a beam-splitter that simultaneously exposed two consecutive frames of a single strip of black-and-white film, one behind a green filter and one behind a red filter.[12][13]

The difference was that the two-component negative was now used to produce a subtractive color print. Because the colors were physically present in the print, no special projection equipment was required and the correct registration of the two images did not depend on the skill of the projectionist.

The frames exposed behind the green filter were printed on one strip of black-and-white film, and the frames exposed behind the red filter were printed on another strip. After development, each print was toned to a color nearly complementary to that of the filter: orange-red for the green-filtered images, cyan-green for the red-filtered ones. Unlike tinting, which adds a uniform veil of color to the entire image, toning chemically replaces the black-and-white silver image with transparent coloring matter, so that the highlights remain clear (or nearly so), dark areas are strongly colored, and intermediate tones are colored proportionally.

The two prints, made on film stock half the thickness of regular film, were then cemented together back to back to create a projection print. The Toll of the Sea, which debuted on November 26, 1922, used Process 2 and was the first general-release film in Technicolor.

 
A frame enlargement of a Technicolor segment from The Phantom of the Opera (1925). The film was one of the earliest uses of the process on interior sets, and demonstrated its versatility.

The second all-color feature in Process 2 Technicolor, Wanderer of the Wasteland, was released in 1924. Process 2 was also used for color sequences in such major motion pictures as The Ten Commandments (1923), The Phantom of the Opera (1925), and Ben-Hur (1925). Douglas Fairbanks' The Black Pirate (1926) was the third all-color Process 2 feature.

Although successful commercially, Process 2 was plagued with technical problems. Because the images on the two sides of the print were not in the same plane, both could not be perfectly in focus at the same time. The significance of this depended on the depth of focus of the projection optics. Much more serious was a problem with cupping. Films in general tended to become somewhat cupped after repeated use: every time a film was projected, each frame in turn was heated by the intense light in the projection gate, causing it to bulge slightly; after it had passed through the gate, it cooled and the bulge subsided, but not quite completely.[14]

It was found that the cemented prints were not only very prone to cupping, but that the direction of cupping would suddenly and randomly change from back to front or vice versa, so that even the most attentive projectionist could not prevent the image from temporarily popping out of focus whenever the cupping direction changed. Technicolor had to supply new prints so the cupped ones could be shipped to their Boston laboratory for flattening, after which they could be put back into service, at least for a while.[15]

The presence of image layers on both surfaces made the prints especially vulnerable to scratching, and because the scratches were vividly colored they were very noticeable. Splicing a Process 2 print without special attention to its unusual laminated construction was apt to result in a weak splice that would fail as it passed through the projector. Even before these problems became apparent, Technicolor regarded this cemented print approach as a stopgap and was already at work developing an improved process.[16]

Process 3

Based on the same dye-transfer technique first applied to motion pictures in 1916 by Max Handschiegl, Technicolor Process 3 (1928) was developed to eliminate the projection print made of double-cemented prints in favor of a print created by dye imbibition. The Technicolor camera for Process 3 was identical to that for Process 2, simultaneously photographing two consecutive frames of a black-and-white film behind red and green filters.

In the lab, skip-frame printing was used to sort the alternating color-record frames on the camera negative into two series of contiguous frames, the red-filtered frames being printed onto one strip of specially prepared "matrix" film and the green-filtered frames onto another. After processing, the gelatin of the matrix film's emulsion was left proportionally hardened, being hardest and least soluble where it had been most strongly exposed to light. The unhardened fraction was then washed away. The result was two strips of relief images consisting of hardened gelatin, thickest in the areas corresponding to the clearest, least-exposed areas of the negative.

To make each final color print, the matrix films were soaked in dye baths of colors nominally complementary to those of the camera filters: the strip made from red-filtered frames was dyed cyan-green and the strip made from green-filtered frames was dyed orange-red. The thicker the gelatin in each area of a frame, the more dye it absorbed. Each matrix in turn was pressed into contact with a plain gelatin-coated strip of film known as the "blank" and the gelatin "imbibed" the dye from the matrix. A mordant made from deacetylated chitin was applied to the blank before printing, to prevent the dyes from migrating or "bleeding" after they were absorbed.

Dye imbibition was not suitable for printing optical soundtracks, which required very high resolution, so when making prints for sound-on-film systems the "blank" film was a conventional black-and-white film stock on which the soundtrack, as well as frame lines, had been printed in the ordinary way prior to the dye transfer operation.

The first feature made entirely in the Technicolor Process 3 was The Viking (1928), which had a synchronized score and sound effects. Redskin (1929), with a synchronized score, and The Mysterious Island (1929), a part-talkie, were photographed almost entirely in this process also but included some sequences in black and white. The following talkies were made entirely – or almost entirely – in Technicolor Process 3: On with the Show! (1929) (the first all-talking color feature), Gold Diggers of Broadway (1929), The Show of Shows (1929), Sally (1929), The Vagabond King (1930), Follow Thru (1930), Golden Dawn (1930), Hold Everything (1930), The Rogue Song (1930), Song of the Flame (1930), Song of the West (1930), The Life of the Party (1930), Sweet Kitty Bellairs (1930), Bride of the Regiment (1930), Mamba (1930), Whoopee! (1930), King of Jazz (1930), Under a Texas Moon (1930), Bright Lights (1930), Viennese Nights (1930), Woman Hungry (1931), Kiss Me Again (1931) and Fifty Million Frenchmen (1931).

In addition, scores of features were released with Technicolor sequences. Numerous short subjects were also photographed in Technicolor Process 3, including the first color sound cartoons by producers such as Ub Iwerks and Walter Lantz. Song of the Flame became the first color movie to use a widescreen process (using a system known as Vitascope, which used 65mm film).

In 1931, an improvement of Technicolor Process 3 was developed that removed grain from the Technicolor film, resulting in more vivid and vibrant colors.[17] This process was first used on a Radio Picture entitled The Runaround (1931). The new process not only improved the color but also removed specks (that looked like bugs) from the screen, which had previously blurred outlines and lowered visibility. This new improvement along with a reduction in cost (from 8.85 cents to 7 cents per foot) led to a new color revival.[18]

Warner Bros. took the lead once again by producing three features (out of an announced plan for six features): Manhattan Parade (1932), Doctor X (1932) and Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933). Radio Pictures followed by announcing plans to make four more features in the new process.[19] Only one of these, Fanny Foley Herself (1931), was actually produced. Although Paramount Pictures announced plans to make eight features and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer promised two color features, these never materialized.[20] This may have been the result of the lukewarm reception to these new color pictures by the public. Two independently produced features were also made with this improved Technicolor process: Legong: Dance of the Virgins (1934) and Kliou the Tiger (1935).

Very few of the original camera negatives of movies made in Technicolor Process 2 or 3 survive. In the late 1940s, most were discarded from storage at Technicolor in a space-clearing move, after the studios declined to reclaim the materials. Original Technicolor prints that survived into the 1950s were often used to make black-and-white prints for television and simply discarded thereafter. This explains why so many early color films exist today solely in black and white.

Warner Bros., which had vaulted from a minor exhibitor to a major studio with its introduction of the talkies, incorporated Technicolor's printing to enhance its films. Other producers followed Warner Bros.' example by making features in color, with either Technicolor, or one of its competitors, such as Brewster Color and Multicolor (later Cinecolor).

Consequently, the introduction of color did not increase the number of moviegoers to the point where it was economical. This and the Great Depression severely strained the finances of the movie studios and spelled the end of Technicolor's first financial successes.

Three-strip Technicolor

Process 4: Development and introduction

 
The ending card for a 1936 Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies cartoon with an "In Technicolor" credit. Many animation companies during the 1930s and 1940s used Technicolor for their cartoon shorts.

Technicolor envisioned a full-color process as early as 1924, and was actively developing such a process by 1929. Hollywood made so much use of Technicolor in 1929 and 1930 that many believed the feature film industry would soon be turning out color films exclusively. By 1931, however, the Great Depression had taken its toll on the film industry, which began to cut back on expenses. The production of color films had decreased dramatically by 1932, when Burton Wescott and Joseph A. Ball completed work on a new three-color movie camera.

Technicolor could now promise studios a full range of colors, as opposed to the limited red–green spectrum of previous films. The new camera simultaneously exposed three strips of black-and-white film, each of which recorded a different color of the spectrum. The new process would last until the last Technicolor feature film was produced in 1955.

 
A Three-strip Technicolor camera from the 1930s

Technicolor's advantage over most early natural-color processes was that it was a subtractive synthesis rather than an additive one: unlike the additive Kinemacolor and Chronochrome processes, Technicolor prints did not require any special projection equipment. Unlike the additive Dufaycolor process, the projected image was not dimmed by a light-absorbing and obtrusive mosaic color filter layer. Very importantly, compared to competing subtractive systems, Technicolor offered the best balance between high image quality and speed of printing.

The Technicolor Process 4 camera, manufactured to Technicolor's detailed specifications by Mitchell Camera Corporation, contained color filters, a beam splitter consisting of a partially reflecting surface inside a split-cube prism, and three separate rolls of black-and-white film (hence the "three-strip" designation). The beam splitter allowed one-third of the light coming through the camera lens to pass through the reflector and a green filter and form an image on one of the strips, which therefore recorded only the green-dominated third of the spectrum.

The other two-thirds was reflected sideways by the mirror and passed through a magenta filter, which absorbed green light and allowed only the red and blue thirds of the spectrum to pass. Behind this filter were the other two strips of film, their emulsions pressed into contact face to face. The front film was a red-blind orthochromatic type that recorded only the blue light. On the surface of its emulsion was a red-orange coating that prevented blue light from continuing on to the red-sensitive panchromatic emulsion of the film behind it, which therefore recorded only the red-dominated third of the spectrum.

Each of the three resulting negatives was printed onto a special matrix film. After processing, each matrix was a nearly invisible representation of the series of film frames as gelatin reliefs, thickest (and most absorbent) where each image was darkest and thinnest where it was lightest. Each matrix was soaked in a dye complementary to the color of light recorded by the negative printed on it: cyan for red, magenta for green, and yellow for blue (see also: CMYK color model for a technical discussion of color printing).

A single clear strip of black-and-white film with the soundtrack and frame lines printed in advance was first treated with a mordant solution and then brought into contact with each of the three dye-loaded matrix films in turn, building up the complete color image. Each dye was absorbed, or imbibed, by the gelatin coating on the receiving strip rather than simply deposited onto its surface, hence the term "dye imbibition". Strictly speaking, this is a mechanical printing process, very loosely comparable to offset printing or lithography,[21] and not a photographic one, as the actual printing does not involve a chemical change caused by exposure to light.

During the early years of the process, the receiver film was preprinted with a 50% black-and-white image derived from the green strip, the so-called Key, or K, record. This procedure was used largely to cover up fine edges in the picture where colors would mix unrealistically (also known as fringing). This additional black increased the contrast of the final print and concealed any fringing. However, overall colorfulness was compromised as a result. In 1944, Technicolor had improved the process to make up for these shortcomings and the K record was eliminated.

Early adoption by Disney

Kalmus convinced Walt Disney to shoot one of his Silly Symphony cartoons, Flowers and Trees (1932), in Process 4, the new "three-strip" process. Seeing the potential in full-color Technicolor, Disney negotiated an exclusive contract for the use of the process in animated films that extended to September 1935.[22] Other animation producers, such as the Fleischer Studios and the Ub Iwerks studio, were shut out – they had to settle for either the two-color Technicolor systems or use a competing process such as Cinecolor.

Flowers and Trees was a success with audiences and critics alike, and won the first Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film. All subsequent Silly Symphonies from 1933 on were shot with the three-strip process. One Silly Symphony, Three Little Pigs (1933), engendered such a positive audience response that it overshadowed the feature films with which it was shown. Hollywood was buzzing about color film again. According to Fortune magazine, "Merian C. Cooper, producer for RKO Radio Pictures and director of King Kong (1933), saw one of the Silly Symphonies and said he never wanted to make a black-and-white picture again."

Although Disney's first 60 or so Technicolor cartoons used the three-strip camera, an improved "successive exposure" ("SE") process was adopted circa 1937. This variation of the three-strip process was designed primarily for cartoon work: the camera would contain one strip of black-and-white negative film, and each animation cel would be photographed three times, on three sequential frames, behind alternating red, green, and blue filters (the so-called "Technicolor Color Wheel", then an option of the Acme, Producers Service and Photo-Sonics animation cameras).[23] Three separate dye transfer printing matrices would be created from the red, green, and blue records in their respective complementary colors, cyan, magenta and yellow.

Successive exposure was also employed in Disney's "True Life Adventure" live-action series, wherein the original 16mm low-contrast Kodachrome Commercial live action footage was first duplicated onto a 35mm fine-grain SE negative element in one pass of the 16mm element, thereby reducing wear of the 16mm original, and also eliminating registration errors between colors. The live-action SE negative thereafter entered other Technicolor processes and were incorporated with SE animation and three-strip studio live-action, as required, thereby producing the combined result.

Convincing Hollywood

 
1930 advertisement featuring Maurice Chevalier in Paramount on Parade

The studios were willing to adopt three-color Technicolor for live-action feature production, if it could be proved viable. Shooting three-strip Technicolor required very bright lighting, as the film had an extremely slow speed of ASA 5. That, and the bulk of the cameras and a lack of experience with three-color cinematography made for skepticism in the studio boardrooms.

An October 1934 article in Fortune magazine stressed that Technicolor, as a corporation, was rather remarkable in that it kept its investors quite happy despite the fact that it had only been in profit twice in all of the years of its existence, during the early boom at the turn of the decade. A well-managed company, half of whose stock was controlled by a clique loyal to Kalmus, Technicolor never had to cede any control to its bankers or unfriendly stockholders. In the mid-'30s, all the major studios except MGM were in the financial doldrums, and a color process that truly reproduced the visual spectrum was seen as a possible shot-in-the-arm for the ailing industry.

In November 1933, Technicolor's Herbert Kalmus and RKO announced plans to produce three-strip Technicolor films in 1934, beginning with Ann Harding starring in a projected film The World Outside.[24]

Live-action use of three-strip Technicolor was first seen in a musical number of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer feature The Cat and the Fiddle, released February 16, 1934. On July 1, MGM released Hollywood Party with a Technicolor cartoon sequence "Hot Choc-late Soldiers" produced by Walt Disney. On July 28 of that year, Warner Bros. released Service with a Smile, followed by Good Morning, Eve! on September 22, both being comedy short films starring Leon Errol and filmed in three-strip Technicolor. Pioneer Pictures, a movie company formed by Technicolor investors, produced the film usually credited as the first live-action short film shot in the three-strip process, La Cucaracha released August 31, 1934.[25]

La Cucaracha is a two-reel musical comedy that cost $65,000, approximately four times what an equivalent black-and-white two-reeler would cost. Released by RKO, the short was a success in introducing the new Technicolor as a viable medium for live-action films. The three-strip process also was used in some short sequences filmed for several movies made during 1934, including the final sequences of The House of Rothschild (Twentieth Century Pictures/United Artists) with George Arliss and Kid Millions (Samuel Goldwyn Studios) with Eddie Cantor.[26]

Pioneer/RKO's Becky Sharp (1935) became the first feature film photographed entirely in three-strip Technicolor. Initially, three-strip Technicolor was only used indoors. In 1936, The Trail of the Lonesome Pine became the first color production to have outdoor sequences, with impressive results. The spectacular success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), which was released in December 1937 and became the top-grossing film of 1938, attracted the attention of the studios.

Limitations and difficulties

One major drawback of Technicolor's three-strip process was that the cameras required a special, bulky, large volume sound blimp. Film studios could not purchase Technicolor cameras, only rent them for their productions, complete with camera technicians and a "color supervisor" to ensure sets, costumes, and makeup didn't push beyond the limitations of the system. Often on many early productions, the supervisor was Natalie Kalmus, ex-wife of Herbert Kalmus and part owner of the company. Directors had great difficulty with her; Vincente Minnelli said, "I couldn't do anything right in Mrs. Kalmus's eyes."[27]

Kalmus preferred the title "Technicolor Director", although British licensees generally insisted on "Colour Control" so as not to "dilute" the film director's title. She worked with quite a number of "associates", many of whom went uncredited, and after her retirement, these associates were transferred to the licensees, with, for example, Leonard Doss going to Fox where he performed the same function for Fox's DeLuxe Color.

The process of splitting the image reduced the amount of light reaching the film stock. Since the film speed of the stocks used was fairly slow, early Technicolor productions required a greater amount of lighting than a black-and-white production. It is reported that temperatures from the hot studio lights on the film set of The Wizard of Oz frequently exceeded 100 °F (38 °C), and some of the more heavily costumed characters required a large water intake. Some actors and actresses claimed to have suffered permanent eye damage from the high levels of carbon arc illumination with its highly actinic ultraviolet.[28]

Because of the added lighting, triple amount of film, and the expense of producing dye transfer projection prints, Technicolor demanded high film budgets.

The introduction of Eastmancolor and decline

 
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, an example of Technicolor filming in 1950s' Hollywood.

Color films that recorded the three primary colors in three emulsion layers on one strip of film had been introduced in the mid-1930s by Eastman Kodak in the United States (Kodachrome for 16mm home movies in 1935, then for 8mm home movies and 35mm slides in 1936) and Agfa in Germany (Agfacolor Neu for both home movies and slides later in 1936). Technicolor introduced Monopack, a single-strip color reversal film (a 35 mm lower-contrast version of Kodachrome) in 1941 for use on location where the bulky three-strip camera was impractical, but the higher grain of the image made it unsuitable for studio work.

Eastman Kodak introduced its first 35 mm color motion picture negative film in 1950. The first commercial feature film to use Eastmancolor was the National Film Board of Canada documentary Royal Journey, released in December 1951.[29] In 1952, Eastman Kodak introduced a high-quality color print film, allowing studios to produce prints through standard photographic processes as opposed to having to send them to Technicolor for the expensive dye imbibition process.[29] That same year, the Technicolor lab adapted its dye transfer process (internally known as 'tri-robo' – Italian for three-strip) to derive triple matrices and imbibition prints directly from Eastmancolor negatives, as well as other stocks such as Ansco and DuPont color stocks.

Foxfire (1955), filmed in 1954 by Universal, starring Jane Russell and Jeff Chandler, was the last American-made feature photographed with a Technicolor three-strip camera. One of the last British films to be shot in Process 4 by Otto Heller was the popular Ealing comedy from 1955 The Ladykillers.

In an attempt to capitalize on the Hollywood 3-D craze, Technicolor unveiled its stereoscopic camera for 3-D films in March 1953. The rig used two three-strip cameras, running a total of six strips of film at once (three for the left eye and three for the right).[30] Only two films were shot with this camera set-up: Flight to Tangier (1953) and the Martin and Lewis comedy Money From Home (1954). A similar, but different system had been used by a different company, using two three-strip cameras side by side for a British short called Royal River.

As the end of the Technicolor process became apparent, the company repurposed its three-color cameras for wide-screen photography, and introduced the Technirama process in 1957.[3] Other formats the company ventured into included VistaVision, Todd-AO, and Ultra Panavision 70. All of them were an improvement over the three-strip negatives, since the negative print-downs generated sharper and finer grain dye transfer copies.[31] By the mid-1960s, the dye-transfer process eventually fell out of favor in the United States as being too expensive and too slow in turning out prints. With the growing number of screens in the US, the standard run of 200–250 prints increased. And while dye-transfer printing yielded superior color printing, the number of high speed prints that could be struck in labs all over the country outweighed the fewer, slower number of prints that could only be had in Technicolor's labs. One of the last American films printed by Technicolor was The Godfather Part II (1974).[21]

In 1975, the US dye transfer plant was closed and Technicolor became an Eastman-only processor. In 1977, the final dye-transfer printer left in Rome was used by Dario Argento to make prints for his horror film Suspiria.[32] In 1980, the Italian Technicolor plant ceased printing dye transfer.

The British line was shut down in 1978 and sold to Beijing Film and Video Lab which shipped the equipment to China. A great many films from China and Hong Kong were made in the Technicolor dye transfer process,[33] including Zhang Yimou's Ju Dou (1990) and even one American film, Space Avenger (1989), directed by Richard W. Haines. The Beijing line was shut down in 1993 for a number of reasons, including inferior processing.

With Deluxe, Majors private technicolor systems, Hollywood managed to have all film productions in technicolor until year 2000 .

Post-1995 usage

Reintroduction of the dye transfer process

In 1997, Technicolor reintroduced the dye transfer process to general film printing. A refined version of the printing process of the 1960s and 1970s, it was used on a limited basis in the restorations of films such as The Wizard of Oz, Gone With the Wind, Rear Window, Funny Girl, and Apocalypse Now Redux.[34]

After its reintroduction, the dye transfer process was used in several big-budget, modern Hollywood productions. These included Bulworth, The Thin Red Line, Godzilla, Toy Story 2, and Pearl Harbor.[33][34]

The dye-transfer process was discontinued by Technicolor in 2002 after the company was purchased by Thomson.[34]

Dye transfer Technicolor in archival work

By the late 1990s, the dye transfer process still had its advantages in the film archival community. Because the dye transfer process used stable acid dyes, Technicolor prints are considered of archival quality. A Technicolor print from the dye transfer era will retain its original colors virtually unchanged for decades with proper storage, whereas prints printed on Eastmancolor stocks produced prior to 1983 may suffer color fading after exposure to ultraviolet light and hot, humid conditions as a result of less stable photochemical dyes. Fading on some prints is so rapid that in some cases, after as little as five to ten years, the colors of the print have faded to a brownish red.[citation needed]

Furthermore, three-strip camera negatives are all on silver-based black-and-white stock, which have stayed unaltered over the course of time with proper handling. This has become of importance in recent years with the large market for films transferred to video formats for home viewing. The best color quality control for video transfer by far is achieved by optically printing from Technicolor negatives, or by recombining the three-strip black and white negatives through digital means and printing, onto low-contrast stock. Director George Lucas had a three-strip archival negative, and one or more imbibition prints made of Star Wars; this "protection" copy was consulted for color values in putting together the 1997 Special Edition of Star Wars.[35]

One problem that has resulted from Technicolor negatives is the rate of shrinkage from one strip to another. Because three-strip negatives are shot on three rolls, they are subject to different rates of shrinkage depending on storage conditions. Today, digital technology allows for a precise re-alignment of the negatives by resizing shrunken negatives digitally to correspond with the other negatives. The G, or Green, record is usually taken as the reference as it is the record with the highest resolution.

It is also a record with the correct "wind" (emulsion position with respect to the camera's lens). Shrinkage and re-alignment (resizing) are non-issues with Successive Exposure (single-roll RGB) Technicolor camera negatives. This issue could have been eliminated, for three-strip titles, had the preservation elements (fine-grain positives) been Successive Exposure, but this would have required the preservation elements to be 3,000 feet or 6,000 feet whereas three-strip composited camera and preservation elements are 1,000 feet or 2,000 feet (however, three records of that length are needed).

One issue that modern reproduction has had to contend with is that the contrast of the three film strips is not the same. This gives the effect on Technicolor prints that (for example) cinematic fades cause the color balance of the image to change as the image is faded. Transfer to digital media has attempted to correct the differing color balances and is largely successful. However, a few odd artifacts remain such that saturated parts of the image may show a false color. Where the image of a flame is included in shot, it will rarely be of the expected orange/yellow color, often being depicted as green.[36][failed verification]

Technicolor today

 
Technicolor logo since 2010

The Technicolor company remained a highly successful film processing firm and later became involved in video and audio duplication (CD, VHS and DVD manufacturing) and digital video processes. MacAndrews & Forbes acquired Technicolor, Inc. in 1982 for $100 million,[37] then sold it in 1988 to the British firm Carlton Communications PLC for $780 million.[38] Technicolor, Inc. acquired the film processing company CFI in 2000.[39] Since 2001, Technicolor has been part of the French-headquartered electronics and media conglomerate Thomson Multimedia SA.[40] The name of Thomson group was changed to "Technicolor SA" as of February 1, 2010, re-branding the entire company after its American film technology subsidiary.[41] In May 2021, Technicolor's post-production unit was acquired by Streamland Media.[42] On September 27, 2022, Technicolor SA, which maintains the IoT, broadband and video solution businesses, rebranded as Vantiva, while the VFX, motion graphics and animation businesses now operated by Technicolor Creative Studios; these two were spun-off as the publicly independent companies.[43][44]

The visual aesthetic of dye transfer Technicolor continues to be used in Hollywood, usually in films set in the mid-20th century.[45] Parts of The Aviator (2004), the biopic of Howard Hughes, were digitally manipulated to imitate color processes that were available during the periods each scene takes place.

Mostly, during the credits of a film, the text “Color by Technicolor” or “Prints by Technicolor” is shown.

See also

References

  1. ^ US patent 1208490, issued December 12, 1916 
  2. ^ "How MIT And Technicolor Helped Create Hollywood". July 31, 2015.
  3. ^ a b . Technicolor100, Eastman Museum. Archived from the original on December 25, 2015. Retrieved February 4, 2016.
  4. ^ see section The introduction of Eastmancolor and decline
  5. ^ "The Rise of Technicolor Is Colorful Hollywood History". Los Angeles Times. December 4, 1998. Retrieved October 14, 2019.
  6. ^ "What? Color in the Movies Again?" Fortune, October 1934.
  7. ^ "$1,000,000 Company Will Color Movies", The New York Times, September 21, 1922, p. 1.
  8. ^ "Technicol.-Prizma Controversy", The Wall Street Journal, December 7, 1922, p. 12.
  9. ^ Cinematographic Multiplex Projection, &c. U.S. Patent No. 1,391,029, filed February 20, 1917.
  10. ^ "Moving Pictures in Color", The New York Times, February 22, 1917, p. 9.
  11. ^ "The first Technicolor film was a total disaster a century ago". CNET. September 9, 2017. Retrieved June 27, 2018.
  12. ^ a b Trenholm, Richard. "The first Technicolor film was a total disaster a century ago". CNET. Retrieved October 14, 2019.
  13. ^ "The First Successful Color Movie", Popular Science, Feb. 1923, p. 59.
  14. ^ "Kalmus, Herbert. "Technicolor Adventures in Cinemaland", Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers, December 1938"
  15. ^ "Kalmus, Herbert. "Technicolor Adventures in Cinemaland", Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers, December 1938"
  16. ^ "Kalmus, Herbert. "Technicolor Adventures in Cinemaland", Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers, December 1938"
  17. ^ Los Angeles Times, June 7, 1931, Page C9.
  18. ^ Los Angeles Times, June 7, 1931, p. C9; The Washington Post, September 11, 1931, p. 12; Los Angeles Times, July 9, 1931, p. A9.
  19. ^ Radio Pictures announced plans to make four color features under the titles of "The Runaround" (produced), "Babes in Toyland" (never produced), "Macheta" (never produced) and "Bird of Paradise" (changed to black and white).
  20. ^ MGM announced plans to make The Merry Widow in color and also to rework a revue called The March of Time with a storyline for release. The only Paramount feature that seems to have been announced was a picture called Rose of the Rancho, which was to have starred Richard Arlen and Dolores Del Rio.
  21. ^ a b . Technicolor100, Eastman Museum. Archived from the original on July 8, 2015. Retrieved February 4, 2016.
  22. ^ Other studios could then start producing cartoons with the three-strip process, but were still barred from releasing them until 1936. "Technicolor Signs With Disney", The Wall Street Journal, April 17, 1934, p. 10; "Mickey Mouse Falls Under Technicolor's Sway", The New York Times, February 3, 1935, p. X5; Nelson B. Bell, "The New Trichrome Process Is About to Meet Test on Screen", The Washington Post, June 2, 1935, p. SO1. Douglas W. Churchill, "Advices From the Film Citadel", The New York Times, June 9, 1935, p. X3.
  23. ^ "Two key advantages to SE as opposed to three-strip photography is that the optical path is far simpler resulting in a single focal plane for each frame, and the alignment of frames from a single strip of film as opposed to three separate records is far easier. This is clearly evident when we are working with our nitrate negatives." Interview with Theo Gluck, Director of Library Restoration and Preservation for Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures April 2, 2009, at the Wayback Machine, by Robert A. Harris, 2008.
  24. ^ "Activities on the Western Front" (PDF). The New York Times. November 5, 1933. Retrieved December 6, 2008.
  25. ^ Higgins, Scott (2000). "Demonstrating Three-Colour Technicolor: "Early Three-Colour Aesthetics and Design"". Film History. 12 (4): 358–383. doi:10.2979/FIL.2000.12.3.358. ISSN 0892-2160. JSTOR 3815345.
  26. ^ Higgins, Scott (2000). "Demonstrating Three-Colour Technicolor: "Early Three-Colour Aesthetics and Design"". Film History. 12 (4): 358–383. doi:10.2979/FIL.2000.12.3.358. ISSN 0892-2160. JSTOR 3815345.
  27. ^ Vincente Minnelli, I Remember It Well, New York: Doubleday, 1974.
  28. ^ Richard B. Jewell. The golden age of cinema: Hollywood, 1929–1945. Blackwell Pub. 2007 p. 103
  29. ^ a b . Kodak. Archived from the original on January 13, 2010.
  30. ^ March 14, 1953 "New Technicolor 3-D Camera" BoxOffice Magazine. p. 10.
  31. ^ Haines, Richard W. (2000). "Technicolor Revival". Film History. 12 (4): 410–416. doi:10.2979/FIL.2000.12.3.410. ISSN 0892-2160. JSTOR 3815348.
  32. ^ "Dario Argento's Suspiria: A Visual and Aural Masterwork". Indiana Public Media. Retrieved September 29, 2010.
  33. ^ a b . Technicolor100, Eastman Museum. Archived from the original on December 25, 2015. Retrieved February 4, 2016.
  34. ^ a b c Flueckiger, Barbara. "Technicolor No. VI: Dye-transfer prints from enhanced process". Timeline of Historical Film Colors. Retrieved February 4, 2016.
  35. ^ "Untouched is impossible: the story of Star Wars in film". 25 May 2010.
  36. ^ Helmenstine, Anne Marie; sciences, Ph D. Dr Helmenstine holds a Ph D. in biomedical; Writer, Is a Science; educator; school, consultant She has taught science courses at the high; college; Levels, Graduate. "See What Flame Test Colors Look Like". ThoughtCo. Retrieved October 14, 2019.
  37. ^ "MacAndrews & Forbes Group Inc reports earnings for Qtr to Sept 30". November 12, 1983 – via NYTimes.com.
  38. ^ "History of Carlton Communications PLC – FundingUniverse". fundinguniverse.com.
  39. ^ . www.technicolor.com. Archived from the original on November 13, 2006.
  40. ^ . www.technicolor.com. Archived from the original on November 13, 2006.
  41. ^ Cohen, David S. (January 26, 2010). . Variety. Archived from the original on February 3, 2010.
  42. ^ "Streamland Media Finalizes Acquisition of Technicolor Post". PR Newswire. May 4, 2021. Retrieved November 17, 2022.
  43. ^ "Technicolor Creative Studios: We Are Now an Independent Company". Technicolor Creative Studios. September 27, 2022. Retrieved November 17, 2022.
  44. ^ "Technicolor officially becomes Vantiva". Vantiva. September 27, 2022. Retrieved November 17, 2022.
  45. ^ Kindem, Gorham A. (1979). "Hollywood's Conversion to Color: The Technological, Economic and Aesthetic Factors". Journal of the University Film Association. 31 (2): 29–36. ISSN 0041-9311. JSTOR 20687473.

Further reading

  • Fred E. Basten, Glorious Technicolor: The Movies' Magic Rainbow. Easton Studio Press, 2005. ISBN 0-9647065-0-4
  • Adrian Cornwell-Clyne, Colour Cinematography. London Champman & Hall, 1951.
  • Layton, James – Pierce, David: The Dawn of Technicolor, 1915–1935. George Eastman House, Rochester (N.Y.), 2015. ISBN 978-0-93539-828-1
  • Richard W. Haines, Technicolor Movies: The History of Dye Transfer Printing. McFarland & Company, 2003. ISBN 0-7864-1809-5
  • John Waner, Hollywood's Conversion of All Production to Color. Tobey Publishing, 2000.
  • Herbert T. Kalmus with Elenaore King Kalmus, Mr. Technicolor: The Fascinating Story of the Genius Who Invented Technicolor and Forever Changed the History of Cinema. MagicImage Filmbooks, 1993. ISBN 1-882127-31-5

External links

  • Technicolor SA corporate website
  • Technicolor on Timeline of Historical Film Colors with many written resources and many photographs of Technicolor prints.
  • Technicolor History at the American WideScreen Museum
  • Technicolor100: Explore Technicolor's History 2017-09-11 at the Wayback Machine

technicolor, this, article, about, film, processing, company, trademark, former, parent, company, known, vantiva, other, uses, disambiguation, series, color, motion, picture, processes, first, version, dating, back, 1916, followed, improved, versions, over, se. This article is about the film processing company and trademark For the former parent company known as Technicolor SA see Vantiva For other uses see Technicolor disambiguation Technicolor is a series of color motion picture processes the first version dating back to 1916 1 and followed by improved versions over several decades Technicolor is natural color Paul Whiteman stars in the King of Jazz ad from The Film Daily 1930 Definitive Technicolor movies using three black and white films running through a special camera 3 strip Technicolor or Process 4 started in the early 1930s and continued through to the mid 1950s when the 3 strip camera was replaced by a standard camera loaded with single strip monopack color negative film Technicolor Laboratories were still able to produce Technicolor prints by creating three black and white matrices from the Eastmancolor negative Process 5 Process 4 was the second major color process after Britain s Kinemacolor used between 1908 and 1914 and the most widely used color process in Hollywood during the Golden Age of Hollywood Technicolor s three color process became known and celebrated for its highly saturated color and was initially most commonly used for filming musicals such as The Wizard of Oz 1939 and Down Argentine Way 1940 costume pictures such as The Adventures of Robin Hood 1938 and Gone with the Wind 1939 the film Blue Lagoon 1949 and animated films such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs 1937 Gulliver s Travels 1939 and Fantasia 1940 As the technology matured it was also used for less spectacular dramas and comedies Occasionally even a film noir such as Leave Her to Heaven 1945 or Niagara 1953 was filmed in Technicolor The Tech in the company s name was inspired by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where Herbert Kalmus and Daniel Frost Comstock received their undergraduate degrees in 1904 and were later instructors 2 Contents 1 Nomenclature 2 History 2 1 Two color Technicolor 2 1 1 Process 1 2 2 Two Strip Technicolor 2 2 1 Process 2 2 2 2 Process 3 2 3 Three strip Technicolor 2 3 1 Process 4 Development and introduction 2 3 2 Early adoption by Disney 2 3 3 Convincing Hollywood 2 3 4 Limitations and difficulties 2 3 5 The introduction of Eastmancolor and decline 3 Post 1995 usage 3 1 Reintroduction of the dye transfer process 3 2 Dye transfer Technicolor in archival work 3 3 Technicolor today 4 See also 5 References 6 Further reading 7 External linksNomenclature EditThe term Technicolor has been used historically for at least five concepts Technicolor an umbrella company encompassing all versions and ancillary services 1914 present Technicolor labs a group of film laboratories worldwide owned and run by Technicolor for post production services including developing printing and transferring films in all major color film processes as well as Technicolor s proprietary ones 1922 present Technicolor process or format several custom imaging systems used in film production culminating in the three strip process in 1932 1917 1955 Technicolor IB printing IB abbreviates imbibition a dye transfer operation a process for making color motion picture prints that allows the use of dyes that are more stable and permanent than those formed in ordinary chromogenic color printing Originally used for printing from color separation negatives photographed on black and white film in a special Technicolor camera 1928 2002 with differing gaps of availability after 1974 depending on the lab Prints or Color by Technicolor used since 1954 when Eastmancolor and other single strip color film stocks supplanted the three film strip camera negative method while the Technicolor IB printing process continued to be used as one method of making the prints 3 This connotation applies to nearly all films made from 1954 onward 4 in which Technicolor is named in the credits 1953 present 5 History EditBoth Kalmus and Comstock went to Europe Switzerland to earn PhD degrees Kalmus at University of Zurich and Comstock at Basel in 1906 In 1912 Kalmus Comstock and mechanic W Burton Wescott formed Kalmus Comstock and Wescott an industrial research and development firm Most of the early patents were taken out by Comstock and Wescott while Kalmus served primarily as the company s president and chief executive officer When the firm was hired to analyze an inventor s flicker free motion picture system they became intrigued with the art and science of filmmaking particularly color motion picture processes leading to the founding of Technicolor in Boston in 1914 and incorporation in Maine in 1915 6 In 1921 Wescott left the company and Technicolor Inc was chartered in Delaware 7 8 Two color Technicolor Edit Process 1 Edit A frame from a surviving fragment of The Gulf Between 1917 the first publicly shown Technicolor film Technicolor originally existed in a two color red and green system In Process 1 1916 a prism beam splitter behind the camera lens exposed two consecutive frames of a single strip of black and white negative film simultaneously one behind a red filter the other behind a green filter Because two frames were being exposed at the same time the film had to be photographed and projected at twice the normal speed Exhibition required a special projector with two apertures one with a red filter and the other with a green filter two lenses and an adjustable prism that aligned the two images on the screen 9 The results were first demonstrated to members of the American Institute of Mining Engineers in New York on February 21 1917 10 Technicolor itself produced the only movie made in Process 1 The Gulf Between which had a limited tour of Eastern cities beginning with Boston and New York on September 13 1917 primarily to interest motion picture producers and exhibitors in color 11 The near constant need for a technician to adjust the projection alignment doomed this additive color process Only a few frames of The Gulf Between showing star Grace Darmond are known to exist today 12 Two Strip Technicolor Edit Process 2 Edit A frame from The Toll of the Sea 1922 the first generally released Technicolor film and the first to use a two strip subtractive color process Convinced that there was no future in additive color processes Comstock Wescott and Kalmus focused their attention on subtractive color processes This culminated in what would eventually be known as Process 2 1922 often referred to today by the misnomer two strip Technicolor As before the special Technicolor camera used a beam splitter that simultaneously exposed two consecutive frames of a single strip of black and white film one behind a green filter and one behind a red filter 12 13 The difference was that the two component negative was now used to produce a subtractive color print Because the colors were physically present in the print no special projection equipment was required and the correct registration of the two images did not depend on the skill of the projectionist The frames exposed behind the green filter were printed on one strip of black and white film and the frames exposed behind the red filter were printed on another strip After development each print was toned to a color nearly complementary to that of the filter orange red for the green filtered images cyan green for the red filtered ones Unlike tinting which adds a uniform veil of color to the entire image toning chemically replaces the black and white silver image with transparent coloring matter so that the highlights remain clear or nearly so dark areas are strongly colored and intermediate tones are colored proportionally The two prints made on film stock half the thickness of regular film were then cemented together back to back to create a projection print The Toll of the Sea which debuted on November 26 1922 used Process 2 and was the first general release film in Technicolor A frame enlargement of a Technicolor segment from The Phantom of the Opera 1925 The film was one of the earliest uses of the process on interior sets and demonstrated its versatility The second all color feature in Process 2 Technicolor Wanderer of the Wasteland was released in 1924 Process 2 was also used for color sequences in such major motion pictures as The Ten Commandments 1923 The Phantom of the Opera 1925 and Ben Hur 1925 Douglas Fairbanks The Black Pirate 1926 was the third all color Process 2 feature Although successful commercially Process 2 was plagued with technical problems Because the images on the two sides of the print were not in the same plane both could not be perfectly in focus at the same time The significance of this depended on the depth of focus of the projection optics Much more serious was a problem with cupping Films in general tended to become somewhat cupped after repeated use every time a film was projected each frame in turn was heated by the intense light in the projection gate causing it to bulge slightly after it had passed through the gate it cooled and the bulge subsided but not quite completely 14 It was found that the cemented prints were not only very prone to cupping but that the direction of cupping would suddenly and randomly change from back to front or vice versa so that even the most attentive projectionist could not prevent the image from temporarily popping out of focus whenever the cupping direction changed Technicolor had to supply new prints so the cupped ones could be shipped to their Boston laboratory for flattening after which they could be put back into service at least for a while 15 The presence of image layers on both surfaces made the prints especially vulnerable to scratching and because the scratches were vividly colored they were very noticeable Splicing a Process 2 print without special attention to its unusual laminated construction was apt to result in a weak splice that would fail as it passed through the projector Even before these problems became apparent Technicolor regarded this cemented print approach as a stopgap and was already at work developing an improved process 16 Process 3 Edit Based on the same dye transfer technique first applied to motion pictures in 1916 by Max Handschiegl Technicolor Process 3 1928 was developed to eliminate the projection print made of double cemented prints in favor of a print created by dye imbibition The Technicolor camera for Process 3 was identical to that for Process 2 simultaneously photographing two consecutive frames of a black and white film behind red and green filters In the lab skip frame printing was used to sort the alternating color record frames on the camera negative into two series of contiguous frames the red filtered frames being printed onto one strip of specially prepared matrix film and the green filtered frames onto another After processing the gelatin of the matrix film s emulsion was left proportionally hardened being hardest and least soluble where it had been most strongly exposed to light The unhardened fraction was then washed away The result was two strips of relief images consisting of hardened gelatin thickest in the areas corresponding to the clearest least exposed areas of the negative To make each final color print the matrix films were soaked in dye baths of colors nominally complementary to those of the camera filters the strip made from red filtered frames was dyed cyan green and the strip made from green filtered frames was dyed orange red The thicker the gelatin in each area of a frame the more dye it absorbed Each matrix in turn was pressed into contact with a plain gelatin coated strip of film known as the blank and the gelatin imbibed the dye from the matrix A mordant made from deacetylated chitin was applied to the blank before printing to prevent the dyes from migrating or bleeding after they were absorbed Dye imbibition was not suitable for printing optical soundtracks which required very high resolution so when making prints for sound on film systems the blank film was a conventional black and white film stock on which the soundtrack as well as frame lines had been printed in the ordinary way prior to the dye transfer operation The first feature made entirely in the Technicolor Process 3 was The Viking 1928 which had a synchronized score and sound effects Redskin 1929 with a synchronized score and The Mysterious Island 1929 a part talkie were photographed almost entirely in this process also but included some sequences in black and white The following talkies were made entirely or almost entirely in Technicolor Process 3 On with the Show 1929 the first all talking color feature Gold Diggers of Broadway 1929 The Show of Shows 1929 Sally 1929 The Vagabond King 1930 Follow Thru 1930 Golden Dawn 1930 Hold Everything 1930 The Rogue Song 1930 Song of the Flame 1930 Song of the West 1930 The Life of the Party 1930 Sweet Kitty Bellairs 1930 Bride of the Regiment 1930 Mamba 1930 Whoopee 1930 King of Jazz 1930 Under a Texas Moon 1930 Bright Lights 1930 Viennese Nights 1930 Woman Hungry 1931 Kiss Me Again 1931 and Fifty Million Frenchmen 1931 In addition scores of features were released with Technicolor sequences Numerous short subjects were also photographed in Technicolor Process 3 including the first color sound cartoons by producers such as Ub Iwerks and Walter Lantz Song of the Flame became the first color movie to use a widescreen process using a system known as Vitascope which used 65mm film In 1931 an improvement of Technicolor Process 3 was developed that removed grain from the Technicolor film resulting in more vivid and vibrant colors 17 This process was first used on a Radio Picture entitled The Runaround 1931 The new process not only improved the color but also removed specks that looked like bugs from the screen which had previously blurred outlines and lowered visibility This new improvement along with a reduction in cost from 8 85 cents to 7 cents per foot led to a new color revival 18 Warner Bros took the lead once again by producing three features out of an announced plan for six features Manhattan Parade 1932 Doctor X 1932 and Mystery of the Wax Museum 1933 Radio Pictures followed by announcing plans to make four more features in the new process 19 Only one of these Fanny Foley Herself 1931 was actually produced Although Paramount Pictures announced plans to make eight features and Metro Goldwyn Mayer promised two color features these never materialized 20 This may have been the result of the lukewarm reception to these new color pictures by the public Two independently produced features were also made with this improved Technicolor process Legong Dance of the Virgins 1934 and Kliou the Tiger 1935 Very few of the original camera negatives of movies made in Technicolor Process 2 or 3 survive In the late 1940s most were discarded from storage at Technicolor in a space clearing move after the studios declined to reclaim the materials Original Technicolor prints that survived into the 1950s were often used to make black and white prints for television and simply discarded thereafter This explains why so many early color films exist today solely in black and white Warner Bros which had vaulted from a minor exhibitor to a major studio with its introduction of the talkies incorporated Technicolor s printing to enhance its films Other producers followed Warner Bros example by making features in color with either Technicolor or one of its competitors such as Brewster Color and Multicolor later Cinecolor Consequently the introduction of color did not increase the number of moviegoers to the point where it was economical This and the Great Depression severely strained the finances of the movie studios and spelled the end of Technicolor s first financial successes Three strip Technicolor Edit Process 4 Development and introduction Edit The ending card for a 1936 Warner Bros Merrie Melodies cartoon with an In Technicolor credit Many animation companies during the 1930s and 1940s used Technicolor for their cartoon shorts Technicolor envisioned a full color process as early as 1924 and was actively developing such a process by 1929 Hollywood made so much use of Technicolor in 1929 and 1930 that many believed the feature film industry would soon be turning out color films exclusively By 1931 however the Great Depression had taken its toll on the film industry which began to cut back on expenses The production of color films had decreased dramatically by 1932 when Burton Wescott and Joseph A Ball completed work on a new three color movie camera Technicolor could now promise studios a full range of colors as opposed to the limited red green spectrum of previous films The new camera simultaneously exposed three strips of black and white film each of which recorded a different color of the spectrum The new process would last until the last Technicolor feature film was produced in 1955 A Three strip Technicolor camera from the 1930s Technicolor s advantage over most early natural color processes was that it was a subtractive synthesis rather than an additive one unlike the additive Kinemacolor and Chronochrome processes Technicolor prints did not require any special projection equipment Unlike the additive Dufaycolor process the projected image was not dimmed by a light absorbing and obtrusive mosaic color filter layer Very importantly compared to competing subtractive systems Technicolor offered the best balance between high image quality and speed of printing The Technicolor Process 4 camera manufactured to Technicolor s detailed specifications by Mitchell Camera Corporation contained color filters a beam splitter consisting of a partially reflecting surface inside a split cube prism and three separate rolls of black and white film hence the three strip designation The beam splitter allowed one third of the light coming through the camera lens to pass through the reflector and a green filter and form an image on one of the strips which therefore recorded only the green dominated third of the spectrum The other two thirds was reflected sideways by the mirror and passed through a magenta filter which absorbed green light and allowed only the red and blue thirds of the spectrum to pass Behind this filter were the other two strips of film their emulsions pressed into contact face to face The front film was a red blind orthochromatic type that recorded only the blue light On the surface of its emulsion was a red orange coating that prevented blue light from continuing on to the red sensitive panchromatic emulsion of the film behind it which therefore recorded only the red dominated third of the spectrum Each of the three resulting negatives was printed onto a special matrix film After processing each matrix was a nearly invisible representation of the series of film frames as gelatin reliefs thickest and most absorbent where each image was darkest and thinnest where it was lightest Each matrix was soaked in a dye complementary to the color of light recorded by the negative printed on it cyan for red magenta for green and yellow for blue see also CMYK color model for a technical discussion of color printing A single clear strip of black and white film with the soundtrack and frame lines printed in advance was first treated with a mordant solution and then brought into contact with each of the three dye loaded matrix films in turn building up the complete color image Each dye was absorbed or imbibed by the gelatin coating on the receiving strip rather than simply deposited onto its surface hence the term dye imbibition Strictly speaking this is a mechanical printing process very loosely comparable to offset printing or lithography 21 and not a photographic one as the actual printing does not involve a chemical change caused by exposure to light During the early years of the process the receiver film was preprinted with a 50 black and white image derived from the green strip the so called Key or K record This procedure was used largely to cover up fine edges in the picture where colors would mix unrealistically also known as fringing This additional black increased the contrast of the final print and concealed any fringing However overall colorfulness was compromised as a result In 1944 Technicolor had improved the process to make up for these shortcomings and the K record was eliminated Early adoption by Disney Edit Kalmus convinced Walt Disney to shoot one of his Silly Symphony cartoons Flowers and Trees 1932 in Process 4 the new three strip process Seeing the potential in full color Technicolor Disney negotiated an exclusive contract for the use of the process in animated films that extended to September 1935 22 Other animation producers such as the Fleischer Studios and the Ub Iwerks studio were shut out they had to settle for either the two color Technicolor systems or use a competing process such as Cinecolor Flowers and Trees was a success with audiences and critics alike and won the first Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film All subsequent Silly Symphonies from 1933 on were shot with the three strip process One Silly Symphony Three Little Pigs 1933 engendered such a positive audience response that it overshadowed the feature films with which it was shown Hollywood was buzzing about color film again According to Fortune magazine Merian C Cooper producer for RKO Radio Pictures and director of King Kong 1933 saw one of the Silly Symphonies and said he never wanted to make a black and white picture again Although Disney s first 60 or so Technicolor cartoons used the three strip camera an improved successive exposure SE process was adopted circa 1937 This variation of the three strip process was designed primarily for cartoon work the camera would contain one strip of black and white negative film and each animation cel would be photographed three times on three sequential frames behind alternating red green and blue filters the so called Technicolor Color Wheel then an option of the Acme Producers Service and Photo Sonics animation cameras 23 Three separate dye transfer printing matrices would be created from the red green and blue records in their respective complementary colors cyan magenta and yellow Successive exposure was also employed in Disney s True Life Adventure live action series wherein the original 16mm low contrast Kodachrome Commercial live action footage was first duplicated onto a 35mm fine grain SE negative element in one pass of the 16mm element thereby reducing wear of the 16mm original and also eliminating registration errors between colors The live action SE negative thereafter entered other Technicolor processes and were incorporated with SE animation and three strip studio live action as required thereby producing the combined result Convincing Hollywood Edit 1930 advertisement featuring Maurice Chevalier in Paramount on Parade The studios were willing to adopt three color Technicolor for live action feature production if it could be proved viable Shooting three strip Technicolor required very bright lighting as the film had an extremely slow speed of ASA 5 That and the bulk of the cameras and a lack of experience with three color cinematography made for skepticism in the studio boardrooms An October 1934 article in Fortune magazine stressed that Technicolor as a corporation was rather remarkable in that it kept its investors quite happy despite the fact that it had only been in profit twice in all of the years of its existence during the early boom at the turn of the decade A well managed company half of whose stock was controlled by a clique loyal to Kalmus Technicolor never had to cede any control to its bankers or unfriendly stockholders In the mid 30s all the major studios except MGM were in the financial doldrums and a color process that truly reproduced the visual spectrum was seen as a possible shot in the arm for the ailing industry In November 1933 Technicolor s Herbert Kalmus and RKO announced plans to produce three strip Technicolor films in 1934 beginning with Ann Harding starring in a projected film The World Outside 24 Live action use of three strip Technicolor was first seen in a musical number of the Metro Goldwyn Mayer feature The Cat and the Fiddle released February 16 1934 On July 1 MGM released Hollywood Party with a Technicolor cartoon sequence Hot Choc late Soldiers produced by Walt Disney On July 28 of that year Warner Bros released Service with a Smile followed by Good Morning Eve on September 22 both being comedy short films starring Leon Errol and filmed in three strip Technicolor Pioneer Pictures a movie company formed by Technicolor investors produced the film usually credited as the first live action short film shot in the three strip process La Cucaracha released August 31 1934 25 La Cucaracha is a two reel musical comedy that cost 65 000 approximately four times what an equivalent black and white two reeler would cost Released by RKO the short was a success in introducing the new Technicolor as a viable medium for live action films The three strip process also was used in some short sequences filmed for several movies made during 1934 including the final sequences of The House of Rothschild Twentieth Century Pictures United Artists with George Arliss and Kid Millions Samuel Goldwyn Studios with Eddie Cantor 26 Pioneer RKO s Becky Sharp 1935 became the first feature film photographed entirely in three strip Technicolor Initially three strip Technicolor was only used indoors In 1936 The Trail of the Lonesome Pine became the first color production to have outdoor sequences with impressive results The spectacular success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs 1937 which was released in December 1937 and became the top grossing film of 1938 attracted the attention of the studios Limitations and difficulties Edit One major drawback of Technicolor s three strip process was that the cameras required a special bulky large volume sound blimp Film studios could not purchase Technicolor cameras only rent them for their productions complete with camera technicians and a color supervisor to ensure sets costumes and makeup didn t push beyond the limitations of the system Often on many early productions the supervisor was Natalie Kalmus ex wife of Herbert Kalmus and part owner of the company Directors had great difficulty with her Vincente Minnelli said I couldn t do anything right in Mrs Kalmus s eyes 27 Kalmus preferred the title Technicolor Director although British licensees generally insisted on Colour Control so as not to dilute the film director s title She worked with quite a number of associates many of whom went uncredited and after her retirement these associates were transferred to the licensees with for example Leonard Doss going to Fox where he performed the same function for Fox s DeLuxe Color The process of splitting the image reduced the amount of light reaching the film stock Since the film speed of the stocks used was fairly slow early Technicolor productions required a greater amount of lighting than a black and white production It is reported that temperatures from the hot studio lights on the film set of The Wizard of Oz frequently exceeded 100 F 38 C and some of the more heavily costumed characters required a large water intake Some actors and actresses claimed to have suffered permanent eye damage from the high levels of carbon arc illumination with its highly actinic ultraviolet 28 Because of the added lighting triple amount of film and the expense of producing dye transfer projection prints Technicolor demanded high film budgets The introduction of Eastmancolor and decline Edit This section includes a list of general references but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations Please help to improve this section by introducing more precise citations December 2010 Learn how and when to remove this template message Gentlemen Prefer Blondes an example of Technicolor filming in 1950s Hollywood Color films that recorded the three primary colors in three emulsion layers on one strip of film had been introduced in the mid 1930s by Eastman Kodak in the United States Kodachrome for 16mm home movies in 1935 then for 8mm home movies and 35mm slides in 1936 and Agfa in Germany Agfacolor Neu for both home movies and slides later in 1936 Technicolor introduced Monopack a single strip color reversal film a 35 mm lower contrast version of Kodachrome in 1941 for use on location where the bulky three strip camera was impractical but the higher grain of the image made it unsuitable for studio work Eastman Kodak introduced its first 35 mm color motion picture negative film in 1950 The first commercial feature film to use Eastmancolor was the National Film Board of Canada documentary Royal Journey released in December 1951 29 In 1952 Eastman Kodak introduced a high quality color print film allowing studios to produce prints through standard photographic processes as opposed to having to send them to Technicolor for the expensive dye imbibition process 29 That same year the Technicolor lab adapted its dye transfer process internally known as tri robo Italian for three strip to derive triple matrices and imbibition prints directly from Eastmancolor negatives as well as other stocks such as Ansco and DuPont color stocks Foxfire 1955 filmed in 1954 by Universal starring Jane Russell and Jeff Chandler was the last American made feature photographed with a Technicolor three strip camera One of the last British films to be shot in Process 4 by Otto Heller was the popular Ealing comedy from 1955 The Ladykillers In an attempt to capitalize on the Hollywood 3 D craze Technicolor unveiled its stereoscopic camera for 3 D films in March 1953 The rig used two three strip cameras running a total of six strips of film at once three for the left eye and three for the right 30 Only two films were shot with this camera set up Flight to Tangier 1953 and the Martin and Lewis comedy Money From Home 1954 A similar but different system had been used by a different company using two three strip cameras side by side for a British short called Royal River As the end of the Technicolor process became apparent the company repurposed its three color cameras for wide screen photography and introduced the Technirama process in 1957 3 Other formats the company ventured into included VistaVision Todd AO and Ultra Panavision 70 All of them were an improvement over the three strip negatives since the negative print downs generated sharper and finer grain dye transfer copies 31 By the mid 1960s the dye transfer process eventually fell out of favor in the United States as being too expensive and too slow in turning out prints With the growing number of screens in the US the standard run of 200 250 prints increased And while dye transfer printing yielded superior color printing the number of high speed prints that could be struck in labs all over the country outweighed the fewer slower number of prints that could only be had in Technicolor s labs One of the last American films printed by Technicolor was The Godfather Part II 1974 21 In 1975 the US dye transfer plant was closed and Technicolor became an Eastman only processor In 1977 the final dye transfer printer left in Rome was used by Dario Argento to make prints for his horror film Suspiria 32 In 1980 the Italian Technicolor plant ceased printing dye transfer The British line was shut down in 1978 and sold to Beijing Film and Video Lab which shipped the equipment to China A great many films from China and Hong Kong were made in the Technicolor dye transfer process 33 including Zhang Yimou s Ju Dou 1990 and even one American film Space Avenger 1989 directed by Richard W Haines The Beijing line was shut down in 1993 for a number of reasons including inferior processing With Deluxe Majors private technicolor systems Hollywood managed to have all film productions in technicolor until year 2000 Post 1995 usage EditReintroduction of the dye transfer process Edit In 1997 Technicolor reintroduced the dye transfer process to general film printing A refined version of the printing process of the 1960s and 1970s it was used on a limited basis in the restorations of films such as The Wizard of Oz Gone With the Wind Rear Window Funny Girl and Apocalypse Now Redux 34 After its reintroduction the dye transfer process was used in several big budget modern Hollywood productions These included Bulworth The Thin Red Line Godzilla Toy Story 2 and Pearl Harbor 33 34 The dye transfer process was discontinued by Technicolor in 2002 after the company was purchased by Thomson 34 Dye transfer Technicolor in archival work Edit By the late 1990s the dye transfer process still had its advantages in the film archival community Because the dye transfer process used stable acid dyes Technicolor prints are considered of archival quality A Technicolor print from the dye transfer era will retain its original colors virtually unchanged for decades with proper storage whereas prints printed on Eastmancolor stocks produced prior to 1983 may suffer color fading after exposure to ultraviolet light and hot humid conditions as a result of less stable photochemical dyes Fading on some prints is so rapid that in some cases after as little as five to ten years the colors of the print have faded to a brownish red citation needed Furthermore three strip camera negatives are all on silver based black and white stock which have stayed unaltered over the course of time with proper handling This has become of importance in recent years with the large market for films transferred to video formats for home viewing The best color quality control for video transfer by far is achieved by optically printing from Technicolor negatives or by recombining the three strip black and white negatives through digital means and printing onto low contrast stock Director George Lucas had a three strip archival negative and one or more imbibition prints made of Star Wars this protection copy was consulted for color values in putting together the 1997 Special Edition of Star Wars 35 One problem that has resulted from Technicolor negatives is the rate of shrinkage from one strip to another Because three strip negatives are shot on three rolls they are subject to different rates of shrinkage depending on storage conditions Today digital technology allows for a precise re alignment of the negatives by resizing shrunken negatives digitally to correspond with the other negatives The G or Green record is usually taken as the reference as it is the record with the highest resolution It is also a record with the correct wind emulsion position with respect to the camera s lens Shrinkage and re alignment resizing are non issues with Successive Exposure single roll RGB Technicolor camera negatives This issue could have been eliminated for three strip titles had the preservation elements fine grain positives been Successive Exposure but this would have required the preservation elements to be 3 000 feet or 6 000 feet whereas three strip composited camera and preservation elements are 1 000 feet or 2 000 feet however three records of that length are needed One issue that modern reproduction has had to contend with is that the contrast of the three film strips is not the same This gives the effect on Technicolor prints that for example cinematic fades cause the color balance of the image to change as the image is faded Transfer to digital media has attempted to correct the differing color balances and is largely successful However a few odd artifacts remain such that saturated parts of the image may show a false color Where the image of a flame is included in shot it will rarely be of the expected orange yellow color often being depicted as green 36 failed verification Technicolor today Edit Technicolor logo since 2010 The Technicolor company remained a highly successful film processing firm and later became involved in video and audio duplication CD VHS and DVD manufacturing and digital video processes MacAndrews amp Forbes acquired Technicolor Inc in 1982 for 100 million 37 then sold it in 1988 to the British firm Carlton Communications PLC for 780 million 38 Technicolor Inc acquired the film processing company CFI in 2000 39 Since 2001 Technicolor has been part of the French headquartered electronics and media conglomerate Thomson Multimedia SA 40 The name of Thomson group was changed to Technicolor SA as of February 1 2010 update re branding the entire company after its American film technology subsidiary 41 In May 2021 Technicolor s post production unit was acquired by Streamland Media 42 On September 27 2022 Technicolor SA which maintains the IoT broadband and video solution businesses rebranded as Vantiva while the VFX motion graphics and animation businesses now operated by Technicolor Creative Studios these two were spun off as the publicly independent companies 43 44 The visual aesthetic of dye transfer Technicolor continues to be used in Hollywood usually in films set in the mid 20th century 45 Parts of The Aviator 2004 the biopic of Howard Hughes were digitally manipulated to imitate color processes that were available during the periods each scene takes place Mostly during the credits of a film the text Color by Technicolor or Prints by Technicolor is shown See also EditList of film formats List of color film systems Imbibition Dye transfer process List of early color feature films List of three strip Technicolor filmsReferences Edit US patent 1208490 issued December 12 1916 How MIT And Technicolor Helped Create Hollywood July 31 2015 a b 1955 1975 Technicolor100 Eastman Museum Archived from the original on December 25 2015 Retrieved February 4 2016 see section The introduction of Eastmancolor and decline The Rise of Technicolor Is Colorful Hollywood History Los Angeles Times December 4 1998 Retrieved October 14 2019 What Color in the Movies Again Fortune October 1934 1 000 000 Company Will Color Movies The New York Times September 21 1922 p 1 Technicol Prizma Controversy The Wall Street Journal December 7 1922 p 12 Cinematographic Multiplex Projection amp c U S Patent No 1 391 029 filed February 20 1917 Moving Pictures in Color The New York Times February 22 1917 p 9 The first Technicolor film was a total disaster a century ago CNET September 9 2017 Retrieved June 27 2018 a b Trenholm Richard The first Technicolor film was a total disaster a century ago CNET Retrieved October 14 2019 The First Successful Color Movie Popular Science Feb 1923 p 59 Kalmus Herbert Technicolor Adventures in Cinemaland Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers December 1938 Kalmus Herbert Technicolor Adventures in Cinemaland Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers December 1938 Kalmus Herbert Technicolor Adventures in Cinemaland Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers December 1938 Los Angeles Times June 7 1931 Page C9 Los Angeles Times June 7 1931 p C9 The Washington Post September 11 1931 p 12 Los Angeles Times July 9 1931 p A9 Radio Pictures announced plans to make four color features under the titles of The Runaround produced Babes in Toyland never produced Macheta never produced and Bird of Paradise changed to black and white MGM announced plans to make The Merry Widow in color and also to rework a revue called The March of Time with a storyline for release The only Paramount feature that seems to have been announced was a picture called Rose of the Rancho which was to have starred Richard Arlen and Dolores Del Rio a b Dye Transfer Process Technicolor100 Eastman Museum Archived from the original on July 8 2015 Retrieved February 4 2016 Other studios could then start producing cartoons with the three strip process but were still barred from releasing them until 1936 Technicolor Signs With Disney The Wall Street Journal April 17 1934 p 10 Mickey Mouse Falls Under Technicolor s Sway The New York Times February 3 1935 p X5 Nelson B Bell The New Trichrome Process Is About to Meet Test on Screen The Washington Post June 2 1935 p SO1 Douglas W Churchill Advices From the Film Citadel The New York Times June 9 1935 p X3 Two key advantages to SE as opposed to three strip photography is that the optical path is far simpler resulting in a single focal plane for each frame and the alignment of frames from a single strip of film as opposed to three separate records is far easier This is clearly evident when we are working with our nitrate negatives Interview with Theo Gluck Director of Library Restoration and Preservation for Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures Archived April 2 2009 at the Wayback Machine by Robert A Harris 2008 Activities on the Western Front PDF The New York Times November 5 1933 Retrieved December 6 2008 Higgins Scott 2000 Demonstrating Three Colour Technicolor Early Three Colour Aesthetics and Design Film History 12 4 358 383 doi 10 2979 FIL 2000 12 3 358 ISSN 0892 2160 JSTOR 3815345 Higgins Scott 2000 Demonstrating Three Colour Technicolor Early Three Colour Aesthetics and Design Film History 12 4 358 383 doi 10 2979 FIL 2000 12 3 358 ISSN 0892 2160 JSTOR 3815345 Vincente Minnelli I Remember It Well New York Doubleday 1974 Richard B Jewell The golden age of cinema Hollywood 1929 1945 Blackwell Pub 2007 p 103 a b Chronology of Motion Picture Films 1940 1959 Kodak Archived from the original on January 13 2010 March 14 1953 New Technicolor 3 D Camera BoxOffice Magazine p 10 Haines Richard W 2000 Technicolor Revival Film History 12 4 410 416 doi 10 2979 FIL 2000 12 3 410 ISSN 0892 2160 JSTOR 3815348 Dario Argento s Suspiria A Visual and Aural Masterwork Indiana Public Media Retrieved September 29 2010 a b 1975 2015 Technicolor100 Eastman Museum Archived from the original on December 25 2015 Retrieved February 4 2016 a b c Flueckiger Barbara Technicolor No VI Dye transfer prints from enhanced process Timeline of Historical Film Colors Retrieved February 4 2016 Untouched is impossible the story of Star Wars in film 25 May 2010 Helmenstine Anne Marie sciences Ph D Dr Helmenstine holds a Ph D in biomedical Writer Is a Science educator school consultant She has taught science courses at the high college Levels Graduate See What Flame Test Colors Look Like ThoughtCo Retrieved October 14 2019 MacAndrews amp Forbes Group Inc reports earnings for Qtr to Sept 30 November 12 1983 via NYTimes com History of Carlton Communications PLC FundingUniverse fundinguniverse com Technicolor Technology driven company for Media amp Entertainment www technicolor com Archived from the original on November 13 2006 Technicolor Technology driven company for Media amp Entertainment www technicolor com Archived from the original on November 13 2006 Cohen David S January 26 2010 Technicolor reinventing itself Variety Archived from the original on February 3 2010 Streamland Media Finalizes Acquisition of Technicolor Post PR Newswire May 4 2021 Retrieved November 17 2022 Technicolor Creative Studios We Are Now an Independent Company Technicolor Creative Studios September 27 2022 Retrieved November 17 2022 Technicolor officially becomes Vantiva Vantiva September 27 2022 Retrieved November 17 2022 Kindem Gorham A 1979 Hollywood s Conversion to Color The Technological Economic and Aesthetic Factors Journal of the University Film Association 31 2 29 36 ISSN 0041 9311 JSTOR 20687473 Further reading EditFred E Basten Glorious Technicolor The Movies Magic Rainbow Easton Studio Press 2005 ISBN 0 9647065 0 4 Adrian Cornwell Clyne Colour Cinematography London Champman amp Hall 1951 Layton James Pierce David The Dawn of Technicolor 1915 1935 George Eastman House Rochester N Y 2015 ISBN 978 0 93539 828 1 Richard W Haines Technicolor Movies The History of Dye Transfer Printing McFarland amp Company 2003 ISBN 0 7864 1809 5 John Waner Hollywood s Conversion of All Production to Color Tobey Publishing 2000 Herbert T Kalmus with Elenaore King Kalmus Mr Technicolor The Fascinating Story of the Genius Who Invented Technicolor and Forever Changed the History of Cinema MagicImage Filmbooks 1993 ISBN 1 882127 31 5External links Edit Wikimedia Commons has media related to Technicolor Look up technicolor in Wiktionary the free dictionary Technicolor SA corporate website Technicolor on Timeline of Historical Film Colors with many written resources and many photographs of Technicolor prints Technicolor History at the American WideScreen Museum Database of 3 strip Technicolor Films Technicolor100 Explore Technicolor s History Archived 2017 09 11 at the Wayback Machine Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Technicolor amp oldid 1138671167, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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