Technicolor
Encyclopedia
Technicolor is a color motion picture process invented in 1916 and improved over several decades.
It was the second major process, after Britain's Kinemacolor
, and the most widely used color process in Hollywood
from 1922 to 1952. Technicolor became known and celebrated for its saturated levels of color, and was used most commonly for filming musicals (such as The Wizard of Oz
and Singin' in the Rain
), costume pictures (such as The Adventures of Robin Hood
and Joan of Arc
), and animated
films (such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
and Fantasia
). Film noir
s (such as Leave Her to Heaven
or Niagara
) were also filmed in Technicolor.
"Technicolor" is the trademark for a series of color motion picture processes pioneered by Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation (a subsidiary of Technicolor, Inc.), now a division of Technicolor SA. The Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation was founded in Boston
in 1914 (incorporated in Maine in 1915) by Herbert Kalmus
, Daniel Frost Comstock
, and W. Burton Wescott. The "Tech" in the company's name was inspired by Massachusetts Institute of Technology
, where Kalmus received his undergraduate degree and was later an instructor. Technicolor, Inc. was chartered in Delaware in 1921.
. 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. The results were first demonstrated to members of the American Institute of Mining Engineers in New York on February 21, 1917. 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 in September 1917, primarily to interest motion picture producers and exhibitors in color. The near-constant need for a technician to adjust the projection alignment doomed this additive color
process. Only a few frames of The Gulf Between, showing star Grace Darmond
, are known to exist today.
). Originally cited by academics as "two-strip" Technicolor, the application of that term to Technicolor's two-component processes is now increasingly disparaged, since the well-established term "three-strip", widely used to describe Process 4, refers to the number of separate strips of film used in the camera, not to the printing process or the structure of the final print. As before, the special Technicolor camera used a beam-splitter that simultaneously exposed two frames of a single strip of black-and-white film, one behind a green filter and one behind a red filter.
The difference was that the two-component negative was now used to produce a subtractive color
print. Because the colors were physically present in the print, no special projection equipment was required and the correct registration of the two images did not depend on the skill of the projectionist.
The frames exposed behind the green filter were printed on one strip of black-and-white film, and the frames exposed behind the red filter were printed on another strip. After development, each strip was toned to a color complementary
to that of the filter—red for the green-filtered images, green for the red-filtered. 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 strips, made of film stocks thinner than regular film, were then cemented together base to base to create a projection print. The Toll of the Sea
debuted on November 26, 1922 as the first general release film to use Technicolor.
The second all-color feature in this process, 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), became the fourth feature to be filmed entirely in Technicolor.
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 focused at the same time. The significance of this problem depended on the depth of field
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. 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 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. The unusual thickness of the film and 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 obtrusive. Splicing a Process 2 print without special attention to its unusual laminated construction was apt to result in a bad 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.
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, every other frame of the camera negative was printed onto one strip of specially prepared gelatin film (or "matrix") to create a red record, and the remaining frames were printed onto a second strip of blank film to create a green record. On exposure to UV light, the gelatin hardened. Areas not exposed to light were washed away by the developer leaving a relief image created by the hardened gelatin. The two matrix films were then soaked in dye baths of their complementary colors. The strip containing the red record was dyed green and the green record strip was dyed red. The thicker the gelatin on each frame, the more dye it absorbed.
During the final printing, the matrices were placed in contact with a blank, emulsified strip of film (known as the "blank") and the dye was transferred from the matrices to the new print. A mordant
made from deacetylated Chitin
was applied to the blank before printing, which kept the dye from migrating.
As this dye-transfer process was introduced around the same time as sound-on-film
, the emulsion on the blank was adapted to a black-and-white film stock where the soundtrack and frame line were printed in black and white first, and then the dye-layer was added.
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 which removed grain from the Technicolor film, resulting in more vivid and vibrant colors. 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. Warner Brothers 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. Only one of these, Fanny Foley Herself (1931), was actually produced. Although Paramount Pictures
announced plans to make eight features and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
promised two color features, these never materialized. This may have been the result of the lukewarm reception to these new color pictures by 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 by its introduction of the talkies, incorporated Technicolor's printing to enhance their 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 audiences to the point where it was economical. This, and the Great Depression
severely strained movie studios' finances, and spelled the end of Technicolor's first financial success.
took its toll on the movie industry, and they 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 light passing through the camera lens was split into two beam paths by a prism block. Green light was recorded through a green filter on panchromatic film, while the other half of the light passed through a magenta filter and was recorded on bipack
film stock with two strips running base to base. On this stock, the front film was sensitized to blue light only, backed by a red gelatin layer which acted as a light filter to the panchromatic film behind it. This process accurately reproduced the full color spectrum when optically printed using a dye-transfer process
in cyan, magenta and yellow.
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, Walt Disney
negotiated an exclusive contract for the use of the process, continuing to September 1935 (when other studios could start producing cartoons in the process, but were barred from releasing them until 1936). Competitors 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 Animated Short Film
. All subsequent Silly Symphonies from 1933 on were shot with the three-strip process. One 1933 Silly Symphony, Three Little Pigs
, 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 utilized the Three-Strip camera, an improved "successive exposure" process was adopted circa 1937 mainly 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). 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 16mm Kodachrome Commercial principal photography element was first duplicated onto a 35mm fine-grain SE negative element in one pass of the 16mm element, thereby reducing wear on the relatively small 16mm element 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.
Technicolor's advantage over most early natural-color processes was that it was a subtractive synthesis
rather than an additive
one. Technicolor prints could run on any projector; unlike other additive processes, it could represent colors clearly without any special projection equipment or techniques. More importantly, Technicolor held the best balance between a quality image and speed of printing, compared to other subtractive systems of the time.
The Technicolor Process 4 used colored filters, a beam splitter
made from a thinly coated mirror inside a split-cube prism
, and three strips of black-and-white film (hence the "three-strip" designation). The beam splitter allowed ⅓ of the light to shine through a green filter onto one strip of film, capturing the green part of the image. The other ⅔ was reflected sideways by the mirror and passed through a magenta filter, to remove any green (which would have been redundant). The diverted non-green light exposed a pair of film strips spooled together; one which captured only blues, itself a filter, and another which picked up whatever was left (the red part of the image). The "blue" strip could act as a filter because it was a special type of film known as orthochromatic
, which is designed to absorb some light frequencies and not others. The "green" and "red" strips were both of the broad-spectrum, panchromatic
type.
To print the film, each colored strip had a print struck from it onto a light sensitive piece of gelatin film. When processed, "dark" portions of the film hardened, and light areas were washed away. The gelatin film strip was then soaked with a dye complementary to the color recorded by the film: 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 line
s printed in advance was first treated with a mordant
solution and then brought into contact with each of the three dye-loaded printing strips 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
, and not a photographic one, as the actual printing does not involve a chemical change caused by exposure to light.
In the early days of the process, the un-exposed blank receiver film would be pre-exposed with a 50% black-and-white image derived from the green strip, the so-called Key, or K, record. This process 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, therefore, eliminated.
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 board rooms.
Fortune magazine's October 1934 article 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.
Live-action use of three-strip Technicolor was first seen in a musical number of the MGM feature The Cat and the Fiddle, released February 16, 1934. On July 28 of that year, Warner Brothers released Service With a Smile, followed by Good Morning, Eve! on August 5, 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. 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 (20th Century Pictures/United Artists
) with George Arliss
and Kid Millions
(Samuel Goldwyn Studios
) with Eddie Cantor
.
Pioneer/RKO's Becky Sharp
(1935
) became the first feature film
photographed entirely in three-strip Technicolor. Initially, three-strip Technicolor was only used indoors. In 1936, The Trail of the Lonesome Pine
became the first 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.
, 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."
The process of splitting the image reduced the amount of light reaching the film stock. Since the film speed
of the stocks used were fairly slow, early Technicolor productions required a greater amount of lighting than a black-and-white production. It is reported that temperatures on the film set of The Wizard of Oz
from the hot studio lights 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 illumination.
Because of the added lighting and triple amount of film necessary, Technicolor demanded high film budgets.
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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 version of Kodachrome Commercial) 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. In 1952, an improved version suitable for Hollywood production was introduced. This allowed Technicolor prints to be struck from a single camera negative exposed in a standard camera. 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.
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. That same year, the Technicolor lab adapted its dye transfer process to derive matrices and imbibition prints directly from Eastmancolor negatives, as well as other stocks such as Ansco and DuPont color stocks.
Technicolor unveiled their stereoscopic camera for 3-D films in March 1953. The rig utilized two three-strip cameras, running a total of six strips of film at once (three for the left eye and three for the right). 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, utilizing two three-strip cameras side-by-side for a British short called Royal River.
In 1954, Technicolor made reduction dye transfer prints of the large format VistaVision
negative. Their process was also adapted for use with Todd-AO
, Ultra Panavision 70
and Technirama
formats. All of them were an improvement over the three-strip negatives since the negative print-downs generated sharper and finer grain dye transfer copies.
By the late 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. The last American film released before Technicolor closed their dye plant was The Godfather, Part II (1974).
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
. 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 in China. A great many films from China and Hong Kong were made in the Technicolor dye transfer process, including Zhang Yimou's
Ju Dou
and even one American film, Space Avenger (1989, director: Richard W. Haines). The Beijing line was shut down in 1993 for a number of reasons, including inferior processing.
, Rear Window
, Funny Girl
, and Apocalypse Now Redux
.
After its reintroduction, the dye transfer process was used in several big-budget, modern Hollywood
productions. These included Bulworth
, Pearl Harbor
, and Toy Story
. The distinct "look" this process achieves, often sought after by filmmakers looking to re-create the period of time at which Technicolor was at its most prominent, is difficult to obtain through conventional, high-speed printing methods and is one explanation for the enduring demand and credibility of the process.
The dye-transfer process was discontinued by Technicolor in 2002 after the purchase of the company by Thomson which in 2010 changed its name to Technicolor SA.
s, 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 many cases, after as little as five to ten years, only the magenta record is perceivable on the film.
An article on the restoration of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
claimed that a rare dye-transfer print of the movie, made for director George Lucas
at the British Technicolor lab during its initial run, had been used as a color reference for the restoration. The article claimed that conventional color prints of the movie had all degraded over the years to the extent that no two had the same color balance. However, because of the variation in color balance per print, dye-transfer prints are used in the professional restoration world as only a rough guideline.
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 negative through digital means and printing, onto low-contrast stock.
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.
PLC for $780 million. Technicolor, Inc. acquired the film processing company Consolidated Film Industries
in 2000
. Since 2001, Technicolor has been part of the French-headquartered electronics and media conglomerate Thomson. The name of Thomson group was changed to “Technicolor” as of February 1, 2010, re-branding the entire company after its American film technology subsidiary.
The visual aesthetic of dye transfer Technicolor continues to be used in Hollywood, usually in films set in the mid-20th century. Parts of The Aviator, the 2004 biopic
of Howard Hughes, were digitally manipulated to imitate color processes that were available during the periods each scene takes place. The two-color look of the film is incorrectly cited as looking like Technicolor's two-color systems, and is in fact a facsimile of Hughes' own color system, Multicolor
. The "three-strip" Technicolor look begins after the newsreel footage of Hughes making the first flight around the world.
It was the second major process, after Britain's Kinemacolor
Kinemacolor
Kinemacolor was the first successful color motion picture process, used commercially from 1908 to 1914. It was invented by George Albert Smith of Brighton, England in 1906. He was influenced by the work of William Norman Lascelles Davidson. It was launched by Charles Urban's Urban Trading Co. of...
, and the most widely used color process in Hollywood
Cinema of the United States
The cinema of the United States, also known as Hollywood, has had a profound effect on cinema across the world since the early 20th century. Its history is sometimes separated into four main periods: the silent film era, classical Hollywood cinema, New Hollywood, and the contemporary period...
from 1922 to 1952. Technicolor became known and celebrated for its saturated levels of color, and was used most commonly for filming musicals (such as The Wizard of Oz
The Wizard of Oz (1939 film)
The Wizard of Oz is a 1939 American musical fantasy film produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It was directed primarily by Victor Fleming. Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf received credit for the screenplay, but there were uncredited contributions by others. The lyrics for the songs...
and Singin' in the Rain
Singin' in the Rain
Singin' in the Rain is a 1952 American comedy musical film starring Gene Kelly, Donald O'Connor and Debbie Reynolds and directed by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, with Kelly also providing the choreography...
), costume pictures (such as The Adventures of Robin Hood
The Adventures of Robin Hood (film)
The Adventures of Robin Hood is a 1938 American swashbuckler film directed by Michael Curtiz and William Keighley. Filmed in Technicolor, the picture stars Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Basil Rathbone, and Claude Rains.-Plot:...
and Joan of Arc
Joan of Arc (1948 film)
Joan of Arc is a 1948 Technicolor film directed by Victor Fleming; starring Ingrid Bergman as the French religious icon and war heroine. It was produced by Walter Wanger. It is based on Maxwell Anderson's successful Broadway play Joan of Lorraine, which also starred Bergman, and was adapted for the...
), and animated
Animation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...
films (such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937 film)
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is a 1937 American animated film based on Snow White, a German fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm. It was the first full-length cel-animated feature in motion picture history, as well as the first animated feature film produced in America, the first produced in full...
and Fantasia
Fantasia (film)
Fantasia is a 1940 American animated film produced by Walt Disney and released by Walt Disney Productions. The third feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series, the film consists of eight animated segments set to pieces of classical music conducted by Leopold Stokowski, seven of which are...
). Film noir
Film noir
Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as extending from the early 1940s to the late 1950s...
s (such as Leave Her to Heaven
Leave Her to Heaven
Leave Her to Heaven is a 1945 American 20th Century Fox Technicolor film noir motion picture starring Gene Tierney, Cornel Wilde, Jeanne Crain, with Vincent Price, Darryl Hickman, and Chill Wills...
or Niagara
Niagara (1953 film)
Niagara is a 1953 thriller-film noir directed by Henry Hathaway and starring Joseph Cotten, Jean Peters, and introducing Marilyn Monroe. Unlike other film noirs of the time, Niagara was shot in Technicolor on location and was one of 20th Century Fox's biggest box-office hits of the year.-Plot:Ray...
) were also filmed in Technicolor.
"Technicolor" is the trademark for a series of color motion picture processes pioneered by Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation (a subsidiary of Technicolor, Inc.), now a division of Technicolor SA. The Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation was founded in Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
in 1914 (incorporated in Maine in 1915) by Herbert Kalmus
Herbert Kalmus
Herbert Thomas Kalmus was an American scientist and engineer who played a key role in developing color motion picture film...
, Daniel Frost Comstock
Daniel Frost Comstock
Daniel Frost Comstock was an American physicist and engineer....
, and W. Burton Wescott. The "Tech" in the company's name was inspired by Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
, where Kalmus received his undergraduate degree and was later an instructor. Technicolor, Inc. was chartered in Delaware in 1921.
Name usage
The term "Technicolor" historically has been used to describe four concepts:- Technicolor process/format: the several image origination systems used in film production, which culminated in the "three-strip" process. (1917–1954)
- Technicolor dye imbibitionImbibition'Imbibition' is defined as the displacement of one fluid by another immiscible fluid. This process is controlled and affected by a variety of factors...
printing (or "dye transfer"): a process for making color motion picture prints that allows the use of dyes which are more stable and permanent than those created in chromogenicChromogenicChromogenic refers to color photographic processes in which a traditional silver image is first formed, and then later replaced with a colored dye image.- Description :...
printing processes. Originally used for printing from color separation negatives photographed on black-and-white film in a Technicolor camera, it was later applied to making prints from negatives photographed on standard color film in an ordinary camera. (1928–2002, with differing gaps of availability post-1974 depending on lab) - Technicolor labs: a collection of film laboratoriesFilm laboratoryA film laboratory is a commercial service enterprise and technical facility for the film industry where specialists develop, print, and conform film material for classical film production and distribution which is based on film material, such as negative and positive, black and white and color, on...
across the world owned and run by Technicolor for post-production services including developing, printing, and transferring films in all major developing processes, as well as Technicolor's proprietary ones. Films using these labs thus retain a "Color by Technicolor" credit even though no Technicolor format or printing have been offered recently. (1922–present) - Technicolor: an umbrella company encompassing all the above as well as other ancillary services. (1914–present)
Process 1
Technicolor originally existed in a two-color (red and green) systemRG color space
The RG or red-green color space is a color space that uses only two colors, red and green. It is an additive format, similar to the RGB color model but without a blue channel. Thus, blue is said to be out of gamut...
. In Process 1 (1916
1916 in film
The year 1916 in film involved some significant events.-Events:* October 17 - release of A Daughter of the Gods, the first US production with a million dollar budget, with the first nude scene by a major star....
), 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. The results were first demonstrated to members of the American Institute of Mining Engineers in New York on February 21, 1917. Technicolor itself produced the only movie made in Process 1, The Gulf Between
The Gulf Between (1917 film)
The Gulf Between was the first motion picture made in Technicolor, the fourth feature-length color movie, and the first feature-length color movie produced in the United States. Today, the film is considered a lost film, with only a few frames of film extant. The Gulf Between was directed by Wray...
, which had a limited tour of Eastern cities, beginning with Boston and New York in September 1917, primarily to interest motion picture producers and exhibitors in color. The near-constant need for a technician to adjust the projection alignment doomed this additive color
Additive color
An additive color model involves light emitted directly from a source or illuminant of some sort. The additive reproduction process usually uses red, green and blue light to produce the other colors. Combining one of these additive primary colors with another in equal amounts produces the...
process. Only a few frames of The Gulf Between, showing star Grace Darmond
Grace Darmond
Grace Darmond was an American actress from the early 20th century.-Early life:Grace Darmond was born Grace Glionna in Toronto on November 20, 1893. Her parents were James Glionna, a U.S.-born musician who had lived in Canada since 1877, and Alice Glionna, an Ontario native.-Career:Darmond was...
, are known to exist today.
Process 2
Convinced that there was no future in additive color processes, Kalmus focused his attention on subtractive color processes. This culminated in what would eventually be known as Process 2 (19221922 in film
-Events:* June 11 - United States première of Robert J. Flaherty's Nanook of the North, the first commercially successful feature length documentary film....
). Originally cited by academics as "two-strip" Technicolor, the application of that term to Technicolor's two-component processes is now increasingly disparaged, since the well-established term "three-strip", widely used to describe Process 4, refers to the number of separate strips of film used in the camera, not to the printing process or the structure of the final print. As before, the special Technicolor camera used a beam-splitter that simultaneously exposed two frames of a single strip of black-and-white film, one behind a green filter and one behind a red filter.
The difference was that the two-component negative was now used to produce a subtractive color
Subtractive color
A subtractive color model explains the mixing of paints, dyes, inks, and natural colorants to create a full range of colors, each caused by subtracting some wavelengths of light and reflecting the others...
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 strip was toned to a color complementary
Complementary color
Complementary colors are pairs of colors that are of “opposite” hue in some color model. The exact hue “complementary” to a given hue depends on the model in question, and perceptually uniform, additive, and subtractive color models, for example, have differing complements for any given color.-...
to that of the filter—red for the green-filtered images, green for the red-filtered. 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 strips, made of film stocks thinner than regular film, were then cemented together base to base to create a projection print. The Toll of the Sea
The Toll of the Sea
The Toll of the Sea is an American drama film, directed by Chester M. Franklin, produced by the Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation, released by Metro Pictures, and featuring Anna May Wong in her first leading role....
debuted on November 26, 1922 as the first general release film to use Technicolor.
Wanderer of the Wasteland (film)
Wanderer of the Wasteland is a silent Western film, and was the third feature film to be photographed entirely in Technicolor.-Production background:...
, was released in 1924. Process 2 was also used for color sequences in such major motion pictures as The Ten Commandments
The Ten Commandments (1923 film)
The Ten Commandments is a 1923 American epic silent film directed by Cecil B. DeMille, starring Theodore Roberts as Moses, Charles de Rochefort as Pharaoh Ramesses, Estelle Taylor as Miriam the sister of Moses, and James Neill as Aaron, the brother of Moses...
(1923), The Phantom of the Opera
The Phantom of the Opera (1925 film)
The Phantom of the Opera is a 1925 American silent horror film adaptation of the Gaston Leroux novel of the same title directed by Rupert Julian. The film featured Lon Chaney in the title role as the deformed Phantom who haunts the Paris Opera House, causing murder and mayhem in an attempt to force...
(1925), and Ben-Hur
Ben-Hur (1925 film)
Ben-Hur is a 1925 silent film directed by Fred Niblo. It was a blockbuster hit for newly merged Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. This was the second film based on the novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ by Lew Wallace...
(1925). Douglas Fairbanks
Douglas Fairbanks
Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. was an American actor, screenwriter, director and producer. He was best known for his swashbuckling roles in silent films such as The Thief of Bagdad, Robin Hood, and The Mark of Zorro....
' The Black Pirate
The Black Pirate
The Black Pirate is a 1926 silent adventure film shot entirely in two-strip Technicolor about an adventurer and a "company" of pirates. It stars Douglas Fairbanks, Donald Crisp, Sam De Grasse, and Billie Dove.-Plot:...
(1926), became the fourth feature to be filmed entirely in Technicolor.
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 focused at the same time. The significance of this problem depended on the depth of field
Depth of field
In optics, particularly as it relates to film and photography, depth of field is the distance between the nearest and farthest objects in a scene that appear acceptably sharp in an image...
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. 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 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. The unusual thickness of the film and 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 obtrusive. Splicing a Process 2 print without special attention to its unusual laminated construction was apt to result in a bad 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.
Process 3
Based on the same dye-transfer techniqueHandschiegl Color Process
The Handschiegl color process produced motion picture film prints with color artificially added to selected areas of the image. Aniline dyes were applied to a black-and-white print using gelatin imbibition matrices.-History of the process:...
first applied to motion pictures in 1916 by Max Handschiegl, Technicolor Process 3 (1928
1928 in film
-Events:Although some movies released in 1928 had sound, most were still silent.* July 28 - Lights of New York is released by Warner Brothers. It is the first "100% Talkie" feature film, in that dialog is spoken throughout the film...
) was developed to eliminate the projection print made of double-cemented prints in favor of a print created by dye imbibition
Imbibition
'Imbibition' is defined as the displacement of one fluid by another immiscible fluid. This process is controlled and affected by a variety of factors...
. 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, every other frame of the camera negative was printed onto one strip of specially prepared gelatin film (or "matrix") to create a red record, and the remaining frames were printed onto a second strip of blank film to create a green record. On exposure to UV light, the gelatin hardened. Areas not exposed to light were washed away by the developer leaving a relief image created by the hardened gelatin. The two matrix films were then soaked in dye baths of their complementary colors. The strip containing the red record was dyed green and the green record strip was dyed red. The thicker the gelatin on each frame, the more dye it absorbed.
During the final printing, the matrices were placed in contact with a blank, emulsified strip of film (known as the "blank") and the dye was transferred from the matrices to the new print. A mordant
Mordant
A mordant is a substance used to set dyes on fabrics or tissue sections by forming a coordination complex with the dye which then attaches to the fabric or tissue. It may be used for dyeing fabrics, or for intensifying stains in cell or tissue preparations. The term mordant comes from the Latin...
made from deacetylated Chitin
Chitin
Chitin n is a long-chain polymer of a N-acetylglucosamine, a derivative of glucose, and is found in many places throughout the natural world...
was applied to the blank before printing, which kept the dye from migrating.
As this dye-transfer process was introduced around the same time as sound-on-film
Sound-on-film
Sound-on-film refers to a class of sound film processes where the sound accompanying picture is physically recorded onto photographic film, usually, but not always, the same strip of film carrying the picture. Sound-on-film processes can either record an analog sound track or digital sound track,...
, the emulsion on the blank was adapted to a black-and-white film stock where the soundtrack and frame line were printed in black and white first, and then the dye-layer was added.
The first feature made entirely in the Technicolor Process 3 was The Viking
The Viking (1928 film)
The Viking was the first feature-length Technicolor film that featured a soundtrack, and the first film made in Technicolor's Process 3.-Production background:...
(1928), which had a synchronized score and sound effects. Redskin
Redskin (film)
Redskin is a feature film with a synchronized score and sound effects, filmed partially in Technicolor. Color film was used for the scenes taking place on the Indians' land, while black and white was used only in the scenes set in the white man's world. Roughly two-thirds of the film is in...
(1929), with a synchronized score, and The Mysterious Island
The Mysterious Island (1929 film)
The Mysterious Island is an MGM film directed by Lucien Hubbard, a film adaptation of Jules Verne's novel L'Île mystérieuse , published in 1874...
(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!
On with the Show (1929 film)
On with the Show! is a 1929 American musical film released by Warner Bros. The film is noted as the first ever all-talking all-color feature length movie, and the second color movie released by Warner Bros.; the first was a partly color, black-and-white musical, The Desert Song . -Plot:With unpaid...
(1929) (the first all-talking color feature), Gold Diggers of Broadway
Gold Diggers of Broadway (film)
Gold Diggers of Broadway is a 1929 Warner Bros. comedy/musical film which is historically important as the second two-strip Technicolor all-talking feature length movie . Gold Diggers of Broadway was also the third movie released by Warner Bros...
(1929), The Show of Shows
The Show of Shows (film)
The Show of Shows is a lavish all talking Vitaphone musical revue film which cost $850,000 to make. The Show of Shows was Warner Bros. fifth color movie, the first four were The Desert Song , On With the Show , Gold Diggers of Broadway and Paris . This movie featured most of the contemporary...
(1929), Sally
Sally (film)
Sally is the third all talking-all color movie ever made . The color process of Sally was Technicolor...
(1929), The Vagabond King
The Vagabond King (1930 film)
The Vagabond King is a 1930 American musical operetta film photographed entirely in two-color Technicolor. The plot of the film was based on the 1925 operetta of the same name, which was based on the 1901 play If I Were King by Justin Huntly McCarthy. The play told the story of a renegade French...
(1930), Follow Thru (1930), Golden Dawn
Golden Dawn (film)
Golden Dawn is a musical operetta released by Warner Brothers and photographed entirely in Technicolor. The film is based on the semi-hit stage musical of the same name by Oscar Hammerstein II and Otto Harbach.-Songs:...
(1930), Hold Everything
Hold Everything (1930 film)
Hold Everything is a 1930 early all-talking film. It was the first musical comedy film to be released that was photographed entirely in early two-color Technicolor. It was adapted from the DeSylva-Brown-Henderson Broadway musical of the same name that had served as a vehicle for Bert Lahr and...
(1930), The Rogue Song
The Rogue Song (film)
The Rogue Song is a 1930 romantic musical film which tells the story of a Russian bandit who falls in love with a princess, but takes his revenge on her when her brother rapes and kills his sister. It was directed by Lionel Barrymore and Hal Roach and released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer...
(1930), Song of the Flame
Song of the Flame (film)
Song of the Flame is a musical operetta film photographed entirely in Technicolor. It was the first color film to feature a widescreen sequence using a process called Vitascope, the trademark name for Warner Bros.' widescreen process...
(1930), Song of the West
Song of the West (film)
Song of the West is a musical operetta film photographed entirely in Technicolor. It was based on the 1928 musical play Rainbow by Oscar Hammerstein II and Laurence Stallings and was the first all-color all-talking feature to be filmed entirely outdoors. The film starred John Boles, Joe E. Brown...
(1930), The Life of the Party
The Life of the Party (1930 film)
The Life of the Party is a 1930 American musical comedy film photographed entirely in Technicolor. The musical numbers of this film were cut out before general release in the United States because the public had grown tired of musicals by late 1930. Only one song was left in the picture...
(1930), Sweet Kitty Bellairs
Sweet Kitty Bellairs (film)
Sweet Kitty Bellairs is a 1930 musical comedy film photographed entirely in Technicolor. In contrast to usual historical costume dramas, the picture never takes itself seriously and is a delightful satire of the England of 1793 in the city of Bath...
(1930), Bride of the Regiment (1930), Mamba
Mamba (film)
Mamba was released by Tiffany Pictures. It was shot entirely in Technicolor and stars Jean Hersholt, Eleanor Boardman, Ralph Forbes, Josef Swickard, Claude Fleming, William Stanton and William von Brincken...
(1930), Whoopee!
Whoopee! (film)
Whoopee is a 1930 "All-Talking All-Color" musical comedy film photographed in two-color Technicolor. The plot of the film closely followed the stage show produced by Florenz Ziegfeld in 1928.-Production:...
(1930), King of Jazz (1930), Under a Texas Moon
Under a Texas Moon (film)
Under A Texas Moon is a 1930 musical western film photographed entirely in Technicolor. It was based on the novel Two-Gun Man which was written by Stewart Edward White. It was the second all-color all-talking feature to be filmed entirely outdoors as well as being the second western in color...
(1930), Bright Lights (1930), Viennese Nights
Viennese Nights (film)
Viennese Nights is a musical operetta film photographed entirely in Technicolor and released by Warner Brothers. The movie was filmed in March and April 1930, before anyone realized the extent of the economic hardships that would arrive with Great Depression, which began in the autumn of that year...
(1930), Woman Hungry
Woman Hungry (film)
Woman Hungry is a 1931 musical western film photographed entirely in Technicolor. It was based on the play The Great Divide which was written by William Vaughn Moody...
(1931), Kiss Me Again
Kiss Me Again (1931 film)
Kiss Me Again is a musical operetta film filmed entirely in Technicolor. It was originally released in the United States as Toast of the Legion late in 1930, but was quickly withdrawn when Warner Bros. realized that the public had grown weary of musicals. The Warner Bros...
(1931) and Fifty Million Frenchmen
Fifty Million Frenchmen (film)
__notoc__Fifty Million Frenchmen is a 1931 musical comedy film photographed entirely in Technicolor. It was based on Cole Porter's 1929 Broadway musical. It was originally intended to be released, in the United States, late in 1930, but was shelved due to public apathy towards musicals. Despite...
(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
Ub Iwerks
Ub Iwerks, A.S.C. was a two-time Academy Award winning American animator, cartoonist, character designer, inventor, creator of Mickey Mouse, and special effects technician, who was famous for his work for Walt Disney....
and Walter Lantz
Walter Lantz
Walter Benjamin Lantz was an American cartoonist, animator, film producer, and director, best known for founding Walter Lantz Productions and creating Woody Woodpecker.-Early years and start in animation:...
. Song of the Flame became the first color movie to use a widescreen
Widescreen
Widescreen images are a variety of aspect ratios used in film, television and computer screens. In film, a widescreen film is any film image with a width-to-height aspect ratio greater than the standard 1.37:1 Academy aspect ratio provided by 35mm film....
process (using a system known as Vitascope
Vitascope
Vitascope was an early film projector first demonstrated in 1895 by Charles Francis Jenkins and Thomas Armat. They had made modifications to Jenkins patented "Phantoscope", which cast images via film & electric light onto a wall or screen...
, which used 65mm film).
In 1931, an improvement of Technicolor Process 3 was developed which removed grain from the Technicolor film, resulting in more vivid and vibrant colors. This process was first used on a Radio Picture
RKO Pictures
RKO Pictures is an American film production and distribution company. As RKO Radio Pictures Inc., it was one of the Big Five studios of Hollywood's Golden Age. The business was formed after the Keith-Albee-Orpheum theater chains and Joseph P...
entitled: The Runaround
The Runaround (1931 film)
The Runaround is a comedy-drama film that was photographed entirely in Technicolor. The film is important as the first to be filmed in a new Technicolor process which removed grain and resulted in a much improved color....
(1931). The new process not only improved the color but also removed specks (that looked like bugs) from the screen, which had previously blurred outlines and lowered visibility. This new improvement along with a reduction in cost (from 8.85 cents to 7 cents per foot) led to a new color revival. Warner Brothers took the lead once again by producing three features (out of an announced plan for six features): Manhattan Parade
Manhattan Parade (film)
Manhattan Parade is a 1931 musical comedy film photographed entirely in Technicolor. It was originally intended to be released, in the United States, early in 1931, but was shelved due to public apathy towards musicals. Despite waiting a number of months, the public proved obstinate and the Warner...
(1932), Doctor X
Doctor X (film)
Doctor X is a First National/Warner Bros. horror and mystery film based on the play of the same name. It was directed by Michael Curtiz and stars Lee Tracy, Fay Wray, and Lionel Atwill....
(1932) and Mystery of the Wax Museum
Mystery of the Wax Museum (film)
Mystery of the Wax Museum is a mystery/horror film released by Warner Brothers in two-color Technicolor and directed by Michael Curtiz. The movie stars Lionel Atwill, Fay Wray, Glenda Farrell, and Frank McHugh....
(1933). Radio Pictures followed by announcing plans to make four more features in the new process. Only one of these, Fanny Foley Herself (1931), was actually produced. Although Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
announced plans to make eight features and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. is an American media company, involved primarily in the production and distribution of films and television programs. MGM was founded in 1924 when the entertainment entrepreneur Marcus Loew gained control of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures Corporation and Louis B. Mayer...
promised two color features, these never materialized. 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 by its introduction of the talkies, incorporated Technicolor's printing to enhance their 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
Multicolor
Multicolor is a subtractive natural color process for motion pictures. Multicolor, introduced to the motion picture industry in 1929, was based on the earlier Prizma Color process, and was the forerunner of Cinecolor....
(later Cinecolor
Cinecolor
Cinecolor was an early subtractive color-model two color film process, based upon the Prizma system of the 1910s and 1920s and the Multicolor system of the late 1920s and 1930s. It was developed by William T. Crispinel and Alan M...
).
Consequently, the introduction of color did not increase the number of audiences to the point where it was economical. This, and the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
severely strained movie studios' finances, and spelled the end of Technicolor's first financial success.
Process 4: Development and introduction
As early as 1924, Technicolor envisioned a full-color process, and by 1929, the company was actively developing such a process. Hollywood made so much use of Technicolor in 1929 and 1930, that many believed the feature film industry would soon be turning out color films exclusively. By 1931, the Great DepressionGreat Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
took its toll on the movie industry, and they 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 light passing through the camera lens was split into two beam paths by a prism block. Green light was recorded through a green filter on panchromatic film, while the other half of the light passed through a magenta filter and was recorded on bipack
Bipack
In cinematography, bipacking, or a bipack, is the process of loading two reels of film into a camera, so that they both pass through the camera gate together...
film stock with two strips running base to base. On this stock, the front film was sensitized to blue light only, backed by a red gelatin layer which acted as a light filter to the panchromatic film behind it. This process accurately reproduced the full color spectrum when optically printed using a dye-transfer process
Dye-transfer process
-History:Technicolor introduced dye transfer in its Process 3, introduced in the feature film The Viking , which was produced by the Technicolor Corporation and released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Techicolor's two previous systems were an additive color process and a poorly-received subtractive color...
in cyan, magenta and yellow.
Kalmus convinced Walt Disney
Walt Disney
Walter Elias "Walt" Disney was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon, and philanthropist, well-known for his influence in the field of entertainment during the 20th century. Along with his brother Roy O...
to shoot one of his Silly Symphony cartoons Flowers and Trees
Flowers and Trees
Flowers and Trees is a 1932 Silly Symphonies cartoon produced by Walt Disney, directed by Burt Gillett, and released to theatres by United Artists on July 30, 1932...
(1932) in Process 4, the new "three-strip" process. Seeing the potential in full-color Technicolor, Walt Disney
Walt Disney
Walter Elias "Walt" Disney was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon, and philanthropist, well-known for his influence in the field of entertainment during the 20th century. Along with his brother Roy O...
negotiated an exclusive contract for the use of the process, continuing to September 1935 (when other studios could start producing cartoons in the process, but were barred from releasing them until 1936). Competitors such as the Fleischer Studios
Fleischer Studios
Fleischer Studios, Inc., was an American corporation which originated as an Animation studio located at 1600 Broadway, New York City, New York...
and the Ub Iwerks
Ub Iwerks
Ub Iwerks, A.S.C. was a two-time Academy Award winning American animator, cartoonist, character designer, inventor, creator of Mickey Mouse, and special effects technician, who was famous for his work for Walt Disney....
studio were shut out – they had to settle for either the two-color Technicolor systems or use a competing process such as Cinecolor
Cinecolor
Cinecolor was an early subtractive color-model two color film process, based upon the Prizma system of the 1910s and 1920s and the Multicolor system of the late 1920s and 1930s. It was developed by William T. Crispinel and Alan M...
.
Flowers and Trees was a success with audiences and critics alike, and won the first Academy Award for Animated Short Film
Academy Award for Animated Short Film
The Academy Award for Animated Short Film is an award which has been given by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as part of the Academy Awards every year since the 5th Academy Awards, covering the year 1931-32, to the present....
. All subsequent Silly Symphonies from 1933 on were shot with the three-strip process. One 1933 Silly Symphony, Three Little Pigs
Three Little Pigs (film)
Three Little Pigs is an animated short film released on May 27, 1933 by United Artists, produced by Walt Disney and directed by Burt Gillett. Based on a fairy tale of the same name, Three Little Pigs won the 1934 Academy Award for Best Short Subject: Cartoons. In 1994, it was voted #11 of the 50...
, 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
Fortune (magazine)
Fortune is a global business magazine published by Time Inc. Founded by Henry Luce in 1930, the publishing business, consisting of Time, Life, Fortune, and Sports Illustrated, grew to become Time Warner. In turn, AOL grew as it acquired Time Warner in 2000 when Time Warner was the world's largest...
magazine, "Merian C. Cooper
Merian C. Cooper
Merian Caldwell Cooper was an American aviator, United States Air Force and Polish Air Force officer, adventurer, screenwriter, and film director and producer. His most famous film was the 1933 movie King Kong.-Early life:...
, producer for RKO Radio Pictures and director of King Kong
King Kong (1933 film)
King Kong is a Pre-Code 1933 fantasy monster adventure film co-directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, and written by Ruth Rose and James Ashmore Creelman after a story by Cooper and Edgar Wallace. The film tells of a gigantic island-dwelling apeman creature called Kong who dies in...
(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 utilized the Three-Strip camera, an improved "successive exposure" process was adopted circa 1937 mainly 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). 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 16mm Kodachrome Commercial principal photography element was first duplicated onto a 35mm fine-grain SE negative element in one pass of the 16mm element, thereby reducing wear on the relatively small 16mm element 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.
Shooting Technicolor footage, 1932–1955
Subtractive color
A subtractive color model explains the mixing of paints, dyes, inks, and natural colorants to create a full range of colors, each caused by subtracting some wavelengths of light and reflecting the others...
rather than an additive
Additive color
An additive color model involves light emitted directly from a source or illuminant of some sort. The additive reproduction process usually uses red, green and blue light to produce the other colors. Combining one of these additive primary colors with another in equal amounts produces the...
one. Technicolor prints could run on any projector; unlike other additive processes, it could represent colors clearly without any special projection equipment or techniques. More importantly, Technicolor held the best balance between a quality image and speed of printing, compared to other subtractive systems of the time.
The Technicolor Process 4 used colored filters, a beam splitter
Beam splitter
A beam splitter is an optical device that splits a beam of light in two. It is the crucial part of most interferometers.In its most common form, a rectangle, it is made from two triangular glass prisms which are glued together at their base using Canada balsam...
made from a thinly coated mirror inside a split-cube prism
Prism (optics)
In optics, a prism is a transparent optical element with flat, polished surfaces that refract light. The exact angles between the surfaces depend on the application. The traditional geometrical shape is that of a triangular prism with a triangular base and rectangular sides, and in colloquial use...
, and three strips of black-and-white film (hence the "three-strip" designation). The beam splitter allowed ⅓ of the light to shine through a green filter onto one strip of film, capturing the green part of the image. The other ⅔ was reflected sideways by the mirror and passed through a magenta filter, to remove any green (which would have been redundant). The diverted non-green light exposed a pair of film strips spooled together; one which captured only blues, itself a filter, and another which picked up whatever was left (the red part of the image). The "blue" strip could act as a filter because it was a special type of film known as orthochromatic
Orthochromatic
- Orthochromatic photography :Orthochromatic photography refers to a photographic emulsion that is sensitive to only blue and green light, and thus can be processed with a red safelight. The increased blue sensitivity causes blue objects to appear lighter and red ones darker...
, which is designed to absorb some light frequencies and not others. The "green" and "red" strips were both of the broad-spectrum, panchromatic
Panchromatic
Panchromatic film is a type of black-and-white photographic film that is sensitive to all wavelengths of visible light. A panchromatic film therefore produces a realistic reproduction of a scene as it appears to the human eye. Almost all modern photographic film is panchromatic, but some types are...
type.
To print the film, each colored strip had a print struck from it onto a light sensitive piece of gelatin film. When processed, "dark" portions of the film hardened, and light areas were washed away. The gelatin film strip was then soaked with a dye complementary to the color recorded by the film: cyan for red, magenta for green, and yellow for blue (see also: CMYK color model
CMYK color model
The CMYK color model is a subtractive color model, used in color printing, and is also used to describe the printing process itself. CMYK refers to the four inks used in some color printing: cyan, magenta, yellow, and key...
for a technical discussion of color printing).
A single clear strip of black-and-white film with the soundtrack and frame line
Frame line
A frame line is the unused space that separates two adjacent images, or film frames, on the release print of a motion picture. They can vary in width; a 35 mm film with a 1.85:1 hard matte has a frame line approximately 8 millimeters high, whereas both a full frame negative and the anamorphic...
s printed in advance was first treated with a mordant
Mordant
A mordant is a substance used to set dyes on fabrics or tissue sections by forming a coordination complex with the dye which then attaches to the fabric or tissue. It may be used for dyeing fabrics, or for intensifying stains in cell or tissue preparations. The term mordant comes from the Latin...
solution and then brought into contact with each of the three dye-loaded printing strips 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
Offset printing
Offset printing is a commonly used printing technique in which the inked image is transferred from a plate to a rubber blanket, then to the printing surface...
or lithography
Lithography
Lithography is a method for printing using a stone or a metal plate with a completely smooth surface...
, and not a photographic one, as the actual printing does not involve a chemical change caused by exposure to light.
In the early days of the process, the un-exposed blank receiver film would be pre-exposed with a 50% black-and-white image derived from the green strip, the so-called Key, or K, record. This process was used largely to cover up fine edges in the picture where colors would mix unrealistically (also known as fringing
Purple fringing
In photography, and particularly in digital photography, purple fringing is the term for an out-of-focus purple or magenta "ghost" image on a photograph...
). 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, therefore, eliminated.
Convincing Hollywood
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 speedFilm speed
Film speed is the measure of a photographic film's sensitivity to light, determined by sensitometry and measured on various numerical scales, the most recent being the ISO system....
of ASA 5. That, and the bulk of the cameras and a lack of experience with three-color cinematography
Cinematography
Cinematography is the making of lighting and camera choices when recording photographic images for cinema. It is closely related to the art of still photography...
made for skepticism in the studio board rooms.
Fortune magazine's October 1934 article 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
Ann Harding
Ann Harding was an American theatre, motion picture, radio, and television actress.-Early years:Born Dorothy Walton Gatley at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas, to George G. Gatley and Elizabeth "Bessie" Crabb. The daughter of a career army officer, she traveled often during her early life...
starring in a projected film The World Outside.
Live-action use of three-strip Technicolor was first seen in a musical number of the MGM feature The Cat and the Fiddle, released February 16, 1934. On July 28 of that year, Warner Brothers released Service With a Smile, followed by Good Morning, Eve! on August 5, both being comedy short films starring Leon Errol
Leon Errol
Leon Errol , was an Australian-born American comedian and actor, popular in the first half of the 20th century.-Biography:...
and filmed in three-strip Technicolor. Pioneer Pictures
Pioneer Pictures
Pioneer Pictures, Inc. was a Hollywood motion picture company, most noted for its early commitment to making color films. Pioneer was initially affiliated with RKO Pictures, whose production facilities in Culver City, California were used by Pioneer, and who distributed Pioneer's films...
, 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
La Cucaracha (1934 film)
La Cucaracha is a 1934 short musical film directed by Lloyd Corrigan. It was designed by Pioneer Pictures to display the new full-color Technicolor Process No. 4 , which had been used since 1932 mainly in Walt Disney cartoons. Jock Whitney and his cousin C. V. Whitney, the owners of Pioneer, were...
released August 31, 1934. La Cucaracha is a two-reel musical comedy that cost $65,000, approximately four times what an equivalent black-and-white two-reeler would cost. Released by RKO, the short was a success in introducing the new Technicolor as a viable medium for live-action films. The three-strip process also was used in some short sequences filmed for several movies made during 1934, including the final sequences of The House of Rothschild (20th Century Pictures/United Artists
United Artists
United Artists Corporation is an American film studio. The original studio of that name was founded in 1919 by D. W. Griffith, Charles Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks....
) with George Arliss
George Arliss
George Arliss was an English actor, author and filmmaker who found success in the United States. He was the first British actor to win an Academy Award.-Life and career:...
and Kid Millions
Kid Millions
Kid Millions is an American film directed by Roy Del Ruth, produced by Samuel Goldwyn, and starring Eddie Cantor.-Plot:The story features Eddie, a kid from Brooklyn, New York,...
(Samuel Goldwyn Studios
Samuel Goldwyn
Samuel Goldwyn was an American film producer, and founding contributor executive of several motion picture studios.-Biography:...
) with Eddie Cantor
Eddie Cantor
Eddie Cantor was an American "illustrated song" performer, comedian, dancer, singer, actor and songwriter...
.
Pioneer/RKO's Becky Sharp
Becky Sharp (film)
Becky Sharp is a 1935 film directed by Rouben Mamoulian and starring Miriam Hopkins. Other supporting cast were Frances Dee, Cedric Hardwicke, Billie Burke, Alison Skipworth, Nigel Bruce, and Alan Mowbray. It is based on the play of the same name by Langdon Mitchell, which in turn is based on...
(1935
1935 in film
-Events:*Judy Garland signs a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer .*Seven year old Shirley Temple wins a special Academy Award.*The Bantu Educational Kinema Experiment started in order to educate the Bantu peoples.-Top grossing films:-Academy Awards:...
) became the first feature film
Feature film
In the film industry, a feature film is a film production made for initial distribution in theaters and being the main attraction of the screening, rather than a short film screened before it; a full length movie...
photographed entirely in three-strip Technicolor. Initially, three-strip Technicolor was only used indoors. In 1936, The Trail of the Lonesome Pine
The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1936 film)
The Trail of the Lonesome Pine is a 1936 romance film based on the novel of the same name. It was directed by Henry Hathaway. It was the second full length feature film to be shot in three-strip Technicolor and the first in color to be shot outdoors, with the approval of the Technicolor Corporation...
became the first production to have outdoor sequences, with impressive results. The spectacular success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937 film)
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is a 1937 American animated film based on Snow White, a German fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm. It was the first full-length cel-animated feature in motion picture history, as well as the first animated feature film produced in America, the first produced in full...
(1937
1937 in film
The year 1937 in film involved some significant events, including the Walt Disney production of the first full-length animated film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.- Events :*April 16 - Way Out West premieres in the US....
), 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 it required a special, bulky, and very heavy Technicolor camera. 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 KalmusNatalie Kalmus
Natalie Kalmus , was credited as the "color supervisor" of virtually all Technicolor features made from 1934 to 1949. She was the wife of Technicolor founder Herbert T...
, ex-wife of Herbert Kalmus and part owner of the company. Directors had great difficulty with her; Vincente Minnelli
Vincente Minnelli
Vincente Minnelli was an American stage director and film director, famous for directing such classic movie musicals as Meet Me in St. Louis, The Band Wagon, and An American in Paris. In addition to having directed some of the most famous and well-remembered musicals of his time, Minnelli made...
said, "I couldn't do anything right in Mrs. Kalmus's eyes."
The process of splitting the image reduced the amount of light reaching the film stock. Since the film speed
Film speed
Film speed is the measure of a photographic film's sensitivity to light, determined by sensitometry and measured on various numerical scales, the most recent being the ISO system....
of the stocks used were fairly slow, early Technicolor productions required a greater amount of lighting than a black-and-white production. It is reported that temperatures on the film set of The Wizard of Oz
The Wizard of Oz (1939 film)
The Wizard of Oz is a 1939 American musical fantasy film produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It was directed primarily by Victor Fleming. Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf received credit for the screenplay, but there were uncredited contributions by others. The lyrics for the songs...
from the hot studio lights 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 illumination.
Because of the added lighting and triple amount of film necessary, Technicolor demanded high film budgets.
The introduction of Eastmancolor and decline
Eastman Kodak
Eastman Kodak Company is a multinational imaging and photographic equipment, materials and services company headquarted in Rochester, New York, United States. It was founded by George Eastman in 1892....
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
Agfacolor
thumb|An Agfacolor slide dating from the early 1940s. While the colors themselves hold up well after 60 years, damages visible include dust and [[Newton's rings]].Agfacolor is a series of color photographic products produced by Agfa of Germany...
for both home movies and slides later in 1936). Technicolor introduced Monopack, a single-strip color reversal film (a 35 mm version of Kodachrome Commercial) 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
National Film Board of Canada
The National Film Board of Canada is Canada's twelve-time Academy Award-winning public film producer and distributor. An agency of the Government of Canada, the NFB produces and distributes documentary, animation, alternative drama and digital media productions...
documentary Royal Journey
Royal Journey
Royal Journey is a National Film Board of Canada documentary film chronicling a five-week Royal visit by then-Princess Elizabeth and the Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh to Canada and the United States in the fall of 1951...
, released in December 1951. In 1952, an improved version suitable for Hollywood production was introduced. This allowed Technicolor prints to be struck from a single camera negative exposed in a standard camera. Foxfire
Foxfire (1955 film)
Foxfire is a 1955 Hollywood motion picture, that starred Jane Russell and Jeff Chandler.-Main cast:*Jane Russell as Amanda Dartland*Jeff Chandler as Jonathan Dartland*Dan Duryea as Hugh Slater*Mara Corday as Maria...
(1955), filmed in 1954 by Universal
Universal Studios
Universal Pictures , a subsidiary of NBCUniversal, is one of the six major movie studios....
, starring Jane Russell
Jane Russell
Jane Russell was an American film actress and was one of Hollywood's leading sex symbols in the 1940s and 1950s....
and Jeff Chandler
Jeff Chandler (actor)
Jeff Chandler was an American film actor and singer in the 1950s.-Early life:Chandler was born Ira Grossel to a Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York, the only child of Anna and Phillip Grossel. He attended Erasmus Hall High School, the alma mater of many stage and film personalities...
, was the last American-made feature photographed with a Technicolor three-strip camera.
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. That same year, the Technicolor lab adapted its dye transfer process to derive matrices and imbibition prints directly from Eastmancolor negatives, as well as other stocks such as Ansco and DuPont color stocks.
Technicolor unveiled their stereoscopic camera for 3-D films in March 1953. The rig utilized two three-strip cameras, running a total of six strips of film at once (three for the left eye and three for the right). Only two films were shot with this camera set-up: Flight to Tangier (1953) and the Martin and Lewis
Martin and Lewis
Martin and Lewis were an American comedy team, comprising singer Dean Martin and comedian Jerry Lewis as the comedic "foil". The pair first met in 1945; their debut as a duo occurred at Atlantic City's 500 Club on July 24/25, 1946....
comedy Money From Home
Money From Home
Money From Home is a 1953 film starring Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. The comedy was the first for the Martin and Lewis team to be shot in color and was their only film in 3-D. The picture was premiered as a special preview screening across the U.S...
(1954). A similar, but different system had been used by a different company, utilizing two three-strip cameras side-by-side for a British short called Royal River.
In 1954, Technicolor made reduction dye transfer prints of the large format VistaVision
VistaVision
VistaVision is a higher resolution, widescreen variant of the 35mm motion picture film format which was created by engineers at Paramount Pictures in 1954....
negative. Their process was also adapted for use with Todd-AO
Todd-AO
Todd-AO is a post-production company founded in 1953, providing sound-related services to the motion picture and television industries. The company operates three facilities in the Los Angeles area.-History:...
, Ultra Panavision 70
Ultra Panavision 70
Ultra Panavision 70 and MGM Camera 65 were the photographic marketing brands — ca. 1957 to 1966 — that identified movies photographed with Panavision-brand anamorphic lenses using a 65mm negative and 70mm release print...
and Technirama
Technirama
Technirama is a screen process that was used by some film production houses as an alternative to CinemaScope. It was first used in 1957 but fell into disuse in the mid 1960s...
formats. All of them were an improvement over the three-strip negatives since the negative print-downs generated sharper and finer grain dye transfer copies.
By the late 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. The last American film released before Technicolor closed their dye plant was The Godfather, Part II (1974).
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
Dario Argento
Dario Argento is an Italian film director, producer and screenwriter. He is best known for his work in the horror film genre, particularly in the subgenre known as giallo, and for his influence on modern horror and slasher movies....
to make prints for his horror film Suspiria
Suspiria
Suspiria is a 1977 Italian horror film directed by Dario Argento and co-written by Argento and Daria Nicolodi. The film follows an American ballet student who transfers to a prestigious dance academy in Germany, only to discover that it is controlled by a coven of witches. The film's score was...
. 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 in China. A great many films from China and Hong Kong were made in the Technicolor dye transfer process, including Zhang Yimou's
Zhang Yimou
Zhang Yimou is a Chinese film director, producer, writer and actor, and former cinematographer. He is counted amongst the Fifth Generation of Chinese filmmakers, having made his directorial debut in 1987 with Red Sorghum....
Ju Dou
Ju Dou
Ju Dou is a 1990 Chinese film directed by Zhang Yimou and Yang Fengliang and starring Gong Li as the title character. It is notable for being shot in vivid Technicolor long after the process had been abandoned in the United States...
and even one American film, Space Avenger (1989, director: Richard W. Haines). The Beijing line was shut down in 1993 for a number of reasons, including inferior processing.
Reintroduction of the dye transfer process
In 1997, Technicolor reintroduced the dye transfer process to general film production. 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 OzThe Wizard of Oz (1939 film)
The Wizard of Oz is a 1939 American musical fantasy film produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It was directed primarily by Victor Fleming. Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf received credit for the screenplay, but there were uncredited contributions by others. The lyrics for the songs...
, Rear Window
Rear Window
Rear Window is a 1954 American suspense film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, written by John Michael Hayes and based on Cornell Woolrich's 1942 short story "It Had to Be Murder"...
, Funny Girl
Funny Girl (film)
Funny Girl is a 1968 romantic musical film directed by William Wyler. The screenplay by Isobel Lennart was adapted from her book for the stage musical of the same title...
, and Apocalypse Now Redux
Apocalypse Now Redux
Apocalypse Now Redux is a 2001 extended version of the epic war film Apocalypse Now, which was originally released in 1979. Unlike other new cuts of the film, Redux is usually considered by fans and critics, as well as director Francis Ford Coppola a completely new movie altogether...
.
After its reintroduction, the dye transfer process was used in several big-budget, modern Hollywood
Cinema of the United States
The cinema of the United States, also known as Hollywood, has had a profound effect on cinema across the world since the early 20th century. Its history is sometimes separated into four main periods: the silent film era, classical Hollywood cinema, New Hollywood, and the contemporary period...
productions. These included Bulworth
Bulworth
Bulworth is a 1998 American film co-written, co-produced and directed by the film's star, Warren Beatty. It was loosely based on the life of Beatty's friend, Tennessee political figure John Jay Hooker. It co-stars Halle Berry, Oliver Platt, Don Cheadle, Paul Sorvino, Jack Warden, and Isaiah...
, Pearl Harbor
Pearl Harbor (film)
Pearl Harbor is a 2001 American action drama war film directed by Michael Bay and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and Randall Wallace, who wrote the screenplay...
, and Toy Story
Toy Story
Toy Story is a 1995 American computer-animated film released by Walt Disney Pictures. It is Pixar's first feature film as well as the first ever feature film to be made entirely with CGI. The film was directed by John Lasseter and featuring the voices of Tom Hanks and Tim Allen...
. The distinct "look" this process achieves, often sought after by filmmakers looking to re-create the period of time at which Technicolor was at its most prominent, is difficult to obtain through conventional, high-speed printing methods and is one explanation for the enduring demand and credibility of the process.
The dye-transfer process was discontinued by Technicolor in 2002 after the purchase of the company by Thomson which in 2010 changed its name to Technicolor SA.
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 dyeAcid dye
An acid dye is a dye, in chemical regard a sodium salt of a sulfonic, carboxylic or phenol organic acid. Acid dye is soluble in water and possesses affinity for amphoteric fibers while lacking direct dyes' affinity for cellulose fibers. When dyeing, ionic bonding with fiber cationic sites accounts...
s, 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 many cases, after as little as five to ten years, only the magenta record is perceivable on the film.
An article on the restoration of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, originally released as Star Wars, is a 1977 American epic space opera film, written and directed by George Lucas. It is the first of six films released in the Star Wars saga: two subsequent films complete the original trilogy, while a prequel trilogy completes the...
claimed that a rare dye-transfer print of the movie, made for director George Lucas
George Lucas
George Walton Lucas, Jr. is an American film producer, screenwriter, and director, and entrepreneur. He is the founder, chairman and chief executive of Lucasfilm. He is best known as the creator of the space opera franchise Star Wars and the archaeologist-adventurer character Indiana Jones...
at the British Technicolor lab during its initial run, had been used as a color reference for the restoration. The article claimed that conventional color prints of the movie had all degraded over the years to the extent that no two had the same color balance. However, because of the variation in color balance per print, dye-transfer prints are used in the professional restoration world as only a rough guideline.
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 negative through digital means and printing, onto low-contrast stock.
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.
Technicolor today
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, then sold it in 1988 to the British firm Carlton CommunicationsCarlton Communications
Carlton Communications was a British media company. It was led by Michael Green and listed on the London Stock Exchange from 1983 until 2 February 2004, when it taken over by Granada plc to form ITV plc with Carlton gaining 32% of the new company....
PLC for $780 million. Technicolor, Inc. acquired the film processing company Consolidated Film Industries
Consolidated Film Industries
Consolidated Film Industries was a film laboratory, and film processing company, and was the leading film laboratory in the Los Angeles area for many decades. CFI processed negatives and made prints for motion pictures and television...
in 2000
2000 in film
The year 2000 in film involved some significant events.The top grosser worldwide was Mission: Impossible II. Domestically in North America, Gladiator won the Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Actor ....
. Since 2001, Technicolor has been part of the French-headquartered electronics and media conglomerate Thomson. The name of Thomson group was changed to “Technicolor” as of February 1, 2010, re-branding the entire company after its American film technology subsidiary.
The visual aesthetic of dye transfer Technicolor continues to be used in Hollywood, usually in films set in the mid-20th century. Parts of The Aviator, the 2004 biopic
Biographical film
A biographical film, or biopic , is a film that dramatizes the life of an actual person or people. They differ from films “based on a true story” or “historical films” in that they attempt to comprehensively tell a person’s life story or at least the most historically important years of their...
of Howard Hughes, were digitally manipulated to imitate color processes that were available during the periods each scene takes place. The two-color look of the film is incorrectly cited as looking like Technicolor's two-color systems, and is in fact a facsimile of Hughes' own color system, Multicolor
Multicolor
Multicolor is a subtractive natural color process for motion pictures. Multicolor, introduced to the motion picture industry in 1929, was based on the earlier Prizma Color process, and was the forerunner of Cinecolor....
. The "three-strip" Technicolor look begins after the newsreel footage of Hughes making the first flight around the world.
See also
- List of film formats
- List of color film systems
- ImbibitionImbibition'Imbibition' is defined as the displacement of one fluid by another immiscible fluid. This process is controlled and affected by a variety of factors...
- List of early color feature films
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.
- 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 1882127315