jackh@zehntel.UUCP (jack hagerty) (04/10/85)
> > Whether or not GWTW was one of the "first" color films depends on how loosely > you define "first". Since "Becky Sharpe" in 1935 (5 years before GWTW), > three strip Techicolor had been in use. Two strip Technicolor had been in > use even longer. Lon Chaney's "Phantom of the Opera" (1926) had a short > Technicolor sequence, and an Anna Mae Wong movie in the early twenties is > reputed to be the first Technicolor feature. Generally, the larger studios > produced only two or three films per year in Technicolor, since both filming > and striking prints were very expensive in this process. > > -- The first Technicolor film for public release was the Disney short "Flowers and Trees" (1932). Apparently, Disney was so taken with the Technicolor process that he bought the exclusive rights to it (for anamation only?) for the next five years. If "Flowers and Trees" looks a little washed out today, it's because the drawings were painted with *watercolors*! -- Jack Hagerty, Zehntel Automation Systems ...!ihnp4!zehntel!jackh
hofbauer@utcsri.UUCP (John Hofbauer) (04/13/85)
> The first Technicolor film for public release was the Disney short "Flowers > and Trees" (1932). Apparently, Disney was so taken with the Technicolor > process that he bought the exclusive rights to it (for anamation only?) for > the next five years. > > If "Flowers and Trees" looks a little washed out today, it's because the > drawings were painted with *watercolors*! > -- > Jack Hagerty, Zehntel Automation Systems > ...!ihnp4!zehntel!jackh I saw a perfect 35mm print of "Flowers and Trees" direct from the Disney vault last year and it was gorgeous, as were all the other Disney cartoons produced in Technicolor shown in the program. If it looks "washed out", it must have been a 16mm TV print. I might add that "Flowers and Trees" was the first 3-STRIP technicolor film for public release. If memory serves me right, Disney became the first to use it only because no one wanted to try it. Its success convinced Hollywood that it was a viable process. Of course it is much easier to control drawings than live action so another three years passed before "Becky Sharp" appeared. Remember that the process required 3 different negatives be exposed through different filters. It took some doing to get this into a single camera suitable for location shooting. There is a fascinating article on the restoration of "Becky Sharp" in the Nov. 1984 issue of AMERICAN CINEMATOGRAPHER.
reiher@ucla-cs.UUCP (04/13/85)
In article <1814@zehntel.UUCP> jackh@zehntel.UUCP (jack hagerty) writes: > >The first Technicolor film for public release was the Disney short "Flowers >and Trees" (1932). I've only heard about the supposed 1920s Technicolor feature, but I'm given to understand that it does exist, and has even survived and is in the process of being restored. It was also supposed to be released. The Techincolor sequence in "Phantom of the Opera" was at least included for its first run showings in major cities. I've seen the sequence, which features Chaney as the Phantom, dressed as Poe's Red Death, crashing a costume party in the Opera House. The sequence isn't widely known today because most exposure to this film is through 16mm film collector's prints, which of course were entirely black and white. >Apparently, Disney was so taken with the Technicolor >process that he bought the exclusive rights to it (for anamation only?) for >the next five years. Almost certainly just for animation, as all of the big studios knew about and were interested in Technicolor. A small outfit like Disney could never have acquired exclusive rights for all formats, but animation is a possibility. It would also explain why the Fleischer brothers were fiddling around with inferior color animation techniques during this period. -- Peter Reiher reiher@ucla-cs.arpa {...ihnp4,ucbvax,sdcrdcf}!ucla-cs!reiher
urban@spp2.UUCP (Mike Urban) (04/15/85)
It seems to me that I've heard that films that were actually
shot in black and white were sometimes released in color,
by hiring an artist to hand-tint the film. I'm talking
silent movies circa 1915 (The Patchwork Girl of Oz was supposed
to have been presented this way, if the studio publicity
was to be believed). Can someone confirm or explain this? How
could they possibly release more than one or two prints this way?
As long as I'm mentioning the "Oz" film (and it seems appropriate,
what with the upcoming Disney Oz film), I should explain that
one of L. Frank Baum's many unsuccessful business ventures
during the early 1900s was a film studio in Hollywood (Santa
Monica Boulevard between Lodi and Gower, says the stationary)
called the Oz Film Company. They produced three Oz-related
films that represent interesting early experiments in stop-action
animation, double exposure, miniature model work, and other
effects that we now take for granted. Baum was a lousy businessman,
and watching "The Magic Cloak" you can see that he must have
blown a fairly big budget just for costumes. The studio soon
went bust and the facility became part of Paramount.
Baum would have *loved* the MGM film just for the technical
gimmicks. I haven't seen more than a couple of clips for the
new Oz film, but suspect that the same remark applies.
Mike
--
Mike Urban
{ucbvax|decvax}!trwrb!trwspp!spp2!urban
"You're in a maze of twisty UUCP connections, all alike"reiher@ucla-cs.UUCP (04/16/85)
In article <539@spp2.UUCP> urban@spp2.UUCP (Mike Urban) writes: > >It seems to me that I've heard that films that were actually >shot in black and white were sometimes released in color, >by hiring an artist to hand-tint the film. >How >could they possibly release more than one or two prints this way? > Hand painting came in two flavors: tinting and toning. In tinting, some poor shmuck had to individually apply color to individual frames of the negative after exposure. Toning merely required dumping the whole negative in a bath of dye. In rare cases, tinting was done to the level of applying individual colors to objects in the film. In most cases, the entire frame was tinted with one or two colors, the latter providing some modestly interesting contrasts. Toning was invariably single color. Once the color was on the negative (by applying dye/paint/whatever-it-was to it), apparently there were processes to transfer the color to the prints. (I wouldn't swear that the dyes were applied to negatives rather than prints, but my sketchy references suggest this.) Since I bothered to look the subject up, yes, Anna Mae Wong's 1922 "The Toll of the Sea" was the first Technicolor film (two strip), and the first three strip Technicolor short was "La Cucaracha" in 1933, not "Flowers and Trees" (at least if Katz's "Film Encyclopedia" is to be believed.) -- Peter Reiher reiher@ucla-cs.arpa {...ihnp4,ucbvax,sdcrdcf}!ucla-cs!reiher
boren@randvax.UUCP (Pat Boren) (04/16/85)
Not only was tinting of B&W film tried years ago, but recently too. Somebody came up with a computer method of "coloring" Laurel & Hardy shorts, frame by frame. Apparently only a few colors could be used, and certain contrasts had to be maintained for the computer to distinguish the parts it was coloring (e.g., no pink shirts against pinkish beige skin). I think this method was developed to see if complete coloring of B&W films would ever be feasible (aside from hand painting each frame). The clip I saw looked good -- sort of washed out, pastel colors -- nothing harsh or shocking. Like the old post- cards that were later painted. While I'm on Laurel & Hardy, did anybody get a chance to see some of their silent films in a movie theater, complete with "live" piano accompaniment? I saw that a couple years ago here in L.A. Wish the same would be done for more films... -- decvax!randvax!boren
davew@shark.UUCP (Dave Williams) (04/17/85)
***REPLACE THIS LINE WITH YOUR TECHNICOLOR PRINTS***
The first Technicolor live action short was produced circa 1930. It
starred Eddie Cantor and was called, "The Bells Are Ringing". The first
Technicolor full length feature was "Becky Sharp", made in 1935.
This picture was recently restored by the American Film Institute.
The previously existing prints were in b&w or Cinecolor, which was
an inferior 2 color process. The first Technicolor animated short
was Disney's "Flowers and Trees" (1932). I dought he had exclusive
rights to the process, rather the economics of producing a color
animated short kept the others from using it immediately. Disney
was a pioneer and didn't mind taking risks. He also developed
a technique of using multiple layers of cels (celluloid sheets)
held in a special frame at different levels from the camera
to get the illusion of depth. He won an Academy Award for this
in about 1934 for a short titled (I think),"Tulips and Windmills".
The original Technicolor process was expensive to use as it took
a special Mitchell camera using 3 negatives. It also required much
more light to be used on the scene, because of the filters and optical
splitters used in the camera. The lighting also had to be color
corrected to provide the right color balance and at a time when
b&w 35mm prints cost about $.03 a foot, the Technicolor prints cost
about $.35 a foot. The first color animated picture was called
(again I believe), "The Ten Commandments", and was done in the
mid-twenties. The images were actually painted directly on the
nitrate film base. It looked like oil painting. I do not know
if any copies of this still exist.
In another article someone mentioned films that were made in one
color. This process was called sepia. The prints were dyed after
developing. I remember seeing a movie done in the 40's about
a leprechaun. The story moved between Ireland and the U.S.
When the scenes were suppose to be in Ireland they used green sepia.
When the scenes were in the U.S. they were regular, except your
eyes got use to the green and when they flashed back to the U.S.
you got the illusion that they had dyed the scenes in pink until
you eyes got accustomed to the regular light again. Very distracting.
--
Dave Williams
Tektronix, Inc.
Engineering Computing Systems
"6000"
"The workstations that made
Wilsonville famous."reiher@ucla-cs.UUCP (04/18/85)
In article <2414@randvax.UUCP> boren@randvax.UUCP (Pat Boren) writes: > >Not only was tinting of B&W film tried years ago, but recently too. >Somebody came up with a computer method of "coloring" Laurel & Hardy >shorts, frame by frame. The use of a computer adds a whole new dimension to tinting, as it becomes practical to tint portions of the frame. I never saw any footage of this process, but the stills I saw did indeed look like pastel renditions of the shots. I'm not sure if subdued tones are a requirement or not. (I'd guess not.) At any rate, the last I heard, the owners of the process were threatening to apply color to "Casablanca". I shudder at the prospect. > >While I'm on Laurel & Hardy, did anybody get a chance to see some of >their silent films in a movie theater, complete with "live" piano >accompaniment? I saw that a couple years ago here in L.A. Wish the >same would be done for more films... Silent films are shown with organ accompaniment on a semi-regular basis in LA. Probably in New York, too, and rarely anywhere else. The problem is a shortage of people who know how to do it. There are, it seems, four or five people in LA who still do this with varying degrees of skill. A young man named Robert Israel often accompanies silent films at UCLA (including all of the films in the Lillian Gish series last summer and the Lon Chaney series the summer before that). He is enthusiastic and does a great deal of research work, but is not very technically accomplished. He seems to be improving. The Erich von Stroheim restrospective just completed at the LA County Museum of Art featured at least three different accompaniests, including Israel and an older woman whose name I forget. She played for "The Wedding March", and was absolutely splendid. I think that she actually did play in theaters back in the silent era. Next month, on Wednesday evenings, the County Museum will be showing a restrospective of Murnau films, and I imagine that they will have organ accompaniment for them. The Vista theater in LA also shows occasional silent bills, and even the Nuart has organ accompaniment once in a while (for a couple of films in a Chaplin series six months ago). An even better way to see a silent film is accompanied by a full orchestra. This is very, very rare, and usually very expensive to see. -- Peter Reiher reiher@ucla-cs.arpa {...ihnp4,ucbvax,sdcrdcf}!ucla-cs!reiher
jackh@zehntel.UUCP (jack hagerty) (04/19/85)
> > Disney ... also developed > a technique of using multiple layers of cels (celluloid sheets) > held in a special frame at different levels from the camera > to get the illusion of depth. He won an Academy Award for this > in about 1934 for a short titled (I think),"Tulips and Windmills". > The technique is called the multiplane camera. Yes, he did get the academy award for developing it, but it was in 1936. The title of the short was "The Old Mill." It was used as a training exercise for his production people before they embarked on "Snow White." > > The first color animated picture was called > (again I believe), "The Ten Commandments", and was done in the > mid-twenties. The images were actually painted directly on the > nitrate film base. It looked like oil painting. I do not know > if any copies of this still exist. I can see how this would produce a colored original, but how would the distribution prints be made? -- Jack Hagerty, Zehntel Automation Systems ...!ihnp4!zehntel!jackh
msb@lsuc.UUCP (Mark Brader) (04/20/85)
reiher@ucla-cs.UUCP (Peter Reiher) writes: > Hand painting came in two flavors: tinting and toning. In tinting, some > poor shmuck had to individually apply color to individual frames of the > negative after exposure. Toning merely required dumping the whole negative > in a bath of dye. In rare cases, tinting was done to the level of applying > individual colors to objects in the film. ... One of Alfred Hitchcock's 1940's films ends with a gunshot directly at the camera. (Film identified in rot13 on the last line, to avoid risk of spoiling.) I've seen it twice; once was on black and white TV, and I don't remember where the other time was. But I think I recall reading that that gunshot was tinted. Perhaps it was tinted only in the original release prints and there are now prints where it isn't. Can anybody confirm or deny this? If true, would this be the last use of tinting ever? Mark Brader gur svyz v'z gnyxvat nobhg vf fcryyobhaq, fgneevat tertbel crpx
elb@hou5e.UUCP (Ellen Bart) (04/22/85)
One interesting fact about color films. The process was discovered in the middle of the filming of the Wizard of Oz. They decided not to reshoot all the parts they had already done. That's why the scenes in Kansas are in black and white and you don't have any color until they hit Munchkinland. ellen bart
thrush@spock.UUCP (Patricia White '88 cc) (04/23/85)
They don't just use hand-tint to color old black and white films. Coputers now put color in. There was an article in some magazine a year ago (I think it was Popular Science) in which they discussed this computer coloring technique. They also had 2 pictures comparing the B&W Topper and the computerized color frame of Topper. I saw this computer coloring in a special showing of "The Miniature" (it was an old hour long Twilight Zone that was just released into syndication) on WSBK Boston TV. They had the "magical" scenes glow with the computer generated color. It wasn't too hot. If I were you, I'd just stick with watching the films in B&W. In my opinion you shouldn't color such films made famous in B&W. Could you see Casablanca in a poor tinted color on your TV set or in your movie theater ? Patricia White.
jackh@zehntel.UUCP (jack hagerty) (04/23/85)
> One interesting fact about color films. The process was discovered in > the middle of the filming of the Wizard of Oz. They decided not to > reshoot all the parts they had already done. That's why the scenes in > Kansas are in black and white and you don't have any color until they > hit Munchkinland. > > ellen bart Are you serious, Ellen? I don't see any smiley faces in your posting, but you must be kidding. TWoO was released in 1939, all of the other postings in this discussion date the beginning of color films in the late 20's or early 30's, depending on the process. TWoO was shot that way because that's the way Frank Baum (sp?) wrote the story. He described Kansas as being "gray, gray, gray. The towns were gray, the houses were gray and the people were gray." Now I ask you, is that a perfect setup for a b&w segue into color or what! Besides, by your explanation that means that they somehow lost the process for the last 2 minutes of the film! ;-) -- Jack Hagerty, Zehntel Automation Systems ...!ihnp4!zehntel!jackh
john@plx.UUCP (john butler) (04/24/85)
>One interesting fact about color films. The process was discovered in >the middle of the filming of the Wizard of Oz. They decided not to >reshoot all the parts they had already done. That's why the scenes in >Kansas are in black and white and you don't have any color until they >hit Munchkinland. > >ellen bart I hardly think so. Wizard of Oz was produced the same year as Gone With the Wind (1937-1938, which, by the way, is why it didn't do much on Oscar night--stiff competition). Gone With the Wind was all in color and took longer to film. Previous postings to the net have established that certain color films date to the early thirties. Actually, color filming techniques were not "discovered" in the 30's, anyway. There are color techniques that date back at least to the 1910's. Agfa of Germany had a color technique early in this century. It was one of our "spoils of war" that brought the technology to America after WWI. It took another 20 years to make color filming cost-effective at least for blockbusters like Wizard and GWTW. The "Oops! We discovered color! Let's do the rest of the film in it!" sounds typical of apocryphal stories. *** disclaimers & cute sign-off *** John B.
rwl@uvacs.UUCP (Ray Lubinsky) (04/25/85)
> One interesting fact about color films. The process was discovered in > the middle of the filming of the Wizard of Oz. They decided not to > reshoot all the parts they had already done. That's why the scenes in > Kansas are in black and white and you don't have any color until they > hit Munchkinland. > > ellen bart -- Is this really true? I always thought that it was a cinematic tech- nique in which the drabness of ``reality'' is put in contrast with the ``fantasy'' of a little girl. Now, I can't exactly remember, but I believe that the scenes in Kansas _after_ the return from Oz are also in color. This says to me that Dorothy has discovered a new approach to life; she is now willing to see the beauty of the real world. I would imagine that all of the scenes which needed the Kansas set would have been shot in the same stretch of time. If this is the case, there seems to be little support for the idea that the color process was developed in the midst of shooting the film. Corrections? Comments? -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Ray Lubinsky University of Virginia, Dept. of Computer Science uucp: decvax!mcnc!ncsu!uvacs!rwl
lauren@vortex.UUCP (Lauren Weinstein) (04/25/85)
I consider the computer-colored B&W films to be ruined. They claim that you can just turn your color off if you don't like the effect and then you've got monochrome again--but it's NOT THE SAME MONOCHROME AS IN THE ORIGINAL FILM! The B&W you see based on the "new" colors is not the same as the B&W on the print from the "original" colors during filming. --Lauren--
lwe3207@acf4.UUCP (Lars Warren Ericson) (04/25/85)
[]
On the other hand, if the colorization of Casablanca were done ala
Andy Warhol's Marilyn Monroe prints, with a human specifying the colors
for each major region in a scene and the computer doing the grunt work,
you could get a pretty interesting result. It wouldn't be Casablanca,
but it would be interesting.
Woody Allen's "What's up Tigerlily?" is an audio instantiation of this idea.
Lars Ericson
Arpa: ericson@nyu
Usenet: {floyd,ihnp4}!cmcl2!csd1!ericsonreiher@ucla-cs.UUCP (04/25/85)
In article <1117@hou5e.UUCP> elb@hou5e.UUCP (Ellen Bart) writes: >One interesting fact about color films. The process was discovered in >the middle of the filming of the Wizard of Oz. They decided not to >reshoot all the parts they had already done. That's why the scenes in >Kansas are in black and white and you don't have any color until they >hit Munchkinland. A simple examination of some dates will reveal that this is false. "The Wizard of Oz" was made in 1939. The three strip Technicolor process used in "The Wizard of Oz" was first used, in a feature, in "Becky Sharp", in 1935. Other color processes had been in use for over ten years. The mixture of black-and-white and color footage in "The Wizard of Oz" is purely an artistic decision, and a rather clever one. Now, in "If...", color shots and black-and-white ones are mixed in no special order. This occurred because Lindsay Anderson, the director, ran low on money half way through, and BW stock was cheaper than color. -- Peter Reiher reiher@ucla-cs.arpa {...ihnp4,ucbvax,sdcrdcf}!ucla-cs!reiher
urban@spp2.UUCP (Mike Urban) (04/26/85)
In article <1823@zehntel.UUCP> jackh@zehntel.UUCP (jack hagerty) writes: > >TWoO was shot that way because that's the way Frank Baum (sp?) wrote >the story. He described Kansas as being "gray, gray, gray. The towns >were gray, the houses were gray and the people were gray." Now I ask >you, is that a perfect setup for a b&w segue into color or what! > Well, that's not a literal quote, but "gray" occurs something like eight times in the first two paragraphs of the book. On the other hand, the Kansas scenes weren't made to be shown in black and white (gray), but were originally shown tinted in a brownish gray called "sepia". Nowadays (on TV or in re-release) they don't bother tinting these scenes, so they look gray. In the first few editions of the book (and in more recent facsimile editions) the illustrations in the Kansas chapters are black and white and gray, while the illos for the Oz sections are in the appropriate colors for the Oz geography (blue for the Munchkin Country, etc.) so the way they did it in the MGM film was particularly appropriate. -- Mike Urban {ucbvax|decvax}!trwrb!trwspp!spp2!urban "You're in a maze of twisty UUCP connections, all alike"
hkr4627@acf4.UUCP (Hedley K. J. Rainnie) (04/26/85)
I read in TV guide a few years ago that the color portions of The Wizard of Oz were all hand colored in France. This is how they did some of their special effects, such as the horse that changed colors. According to the article, the lavish production sucked Baum's finances dry. -r-
ted@usceast.UUCP (Ted Nolan) (04/27/85)
One thing I have always wondered about early color films is why we dont't
get color like that today. I saw Eroll Flyn's Robin Hood movie several
times in the last 4 or 5 years, and remember being impressed with how
vivid the color was in comparison to recent movies; I recall making the same
observation about other old color films too.
Is this a concious choice by today's film makers? Was the technology too
expensive to support after the demise of the studio system or what?
Ted Nolan ..usceast!ted
--
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ted Nolan ...decvax!mcnc!ncsu!ncrcae!usceast!ted (UUCP)
6536 Brookside Circle ...akgua!usceast!ted
Columbia, SC 29206 allegra!usceast!ted@seismo (ARPA, maybe)
("Deep space is my dwelling place, the stars my destination")
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------root@trwatf.UUCP (Lord Frith) (04/27/85)
> I read in TV guide a few years ago that the color portions of The Wizard > of Oz were all hand colored in France. This is how they did some of their > special effects, such as the horse that changed colors. According to the > article, the lavish production sucked Baum's finances dry. ARRRRGGGGGGGG!!!!!! Where do you people dream this stuff up!??? If you had seen The Wizard of Oz ... in colour ... in a movie theatre, then you would know that the colour was NOT tinted in. The horse of a different colour was done simply by dying a horse different colours. Trivia question... do you know how the soundtrack was actually played in the first showings? -- UUCP: ...{decvax,ihnp4,allegra}!seismo!trwatf!root - Lord Frith ARPA: trwatf!root@SEISMO "Markland needs women!"
yee@ucbvax.ARPA (Peter E. Yee) (04/28/85)
If I remember rightly, the book of the Wizard of Oz (yes, there was a book, not just a movie) made a point of how gray the whole of Kansas was. The house turning gray, the sky, etc. My edition had pictures, and the ones for Kansas were appropriately gray. The ones for scenes from Oz are all in color. This would make a good reason for why the movie uses black and white for the scenes in Kansas. -Peter Yee ..ucbvax!yee yee@Berkeley.ARPA
upstill@ucbvax.ARPA (Steve Upstill) (04/29/85)
The basic reason old color films look so vibrant today is the three-strip
Technicolor process. The color fidelity is so good because splitting and
filtering an image onto three black-and-white strips is simpler than having
three emulsion layers interacting on a single strip, as later color films have
done. The colors are more saturated because the studios were enthusiastic
about having their investment in color justified by spectacle.
The other major reason they look so good is that, since Technicolor is
stored as black-and-white separations, there is no problem with the dyes
fading, as with single-strip processes.boren@randvax.UUCP (Pat Boren) (04/29/85)
> I read in TV guide a few years ago that the color portions of The Wizard > of Oz were all hand colored in France. This is how they did some of their > special effects, such as the horse that changed colors. According to the > article, the lavish production sucked Baum's finances dry. > > -r- I'd always heard that the only part of that movie that was hand colored was in the transition scene, with Dorothy opening the door of her house (in B&W) and seeing Munchkin land (in color). You can tell looking at it how that color differs from the color in the next scene -- the regular real color. Pat -- decvax!randvax!boren
upstill@ucbvax.ARPA (Steve Upstill) (04/29/85)
About Technicolor being "discovered in the middle of filming" the Wizard of Oz: Something nobody seems to realize is that films are almost never photographed in plot-order. Rather, they are assembled as logistics dictate: when sets are finished, cast scheduled, etc. Any engineer can easily see the advantage to this. It only makes more impressive the ability of good actors to have their characters change subtly in the course of the film. See Kathleen Turner in Romancing the Stone for a good example. A notable exception to this rule was "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?". I remember the director specifically mentioning them taking the unusual (and expensive) step of shooting (the film) in chronological order to help the actors out.
davew@shark.UUCP (Dave Williams) (04/29/85)
In article <2197@usceast.UUCP> ted@usceast.UUCP (System Programmer) writes: >One thing I have always wondered about early color films is why we dont't >get color like that today. I saw Eroll Flyn's Robin Hood movie several >times in the last 4 or 5 years, and remember being impressed with how >vivid the color was in comparison to recent movies; I recall making the same >observation about other old color films too. As has been stated earlier, the original Technicolor process involved a 3 film negative. The camera used was a special unit owned by Technicolor and was rented to the film company. In addition, Technicolor insisted that one of their color consultants be present for all shoting. Further, all film had to be processed by Technicolor. Because of the optical splitters and filters used in the camera a much greater amount of lighting had to be used on the sets. All this drove the cost of production up, so during the 30's and 40's only the big budget productions that were felt to benefit from color were shot in Technicolor. If you look at screen credits for these films you will see Technicolor Consultant mentioned. The name that appears the most is Natalie Kalmus, who was the wife of Technicolors president Dr. Kalmus. All this changed around 1953 when Eastman developed a good single film color negative. They also licensed film labs to process the film. Many of the studios set up their own color film labs and used names such as Metrocolor, Warnercolor and Deluxe(Twentieth Century Fox). Technicolor finally bought in to the Eastman process so as to be competitive. There were several competing processes before the entry of Eastman. Cinecolor was a two film process of inferior quality. Several Roy Rogers movies were shot with this process. Blue jeans appeared torquise green. Another process was by CCOA (Color Corp. of America), it was worse than Cinecolor, the colors were off and it appeared faded. -- Dave Williams Tektronix, Inc. Engineering Computing Systems "The 6000 Family" "The workstations that made Wilsonville famous."
root@idmi-cc.UUCP (Admin) (04/30/85)
> > One interesting fact about color films. The process was discovered in > > the middle of the filming of the Wizard of Oz. They decided not to > > reshoot all the parts they had already done. That's why the scenes in > > Kansas are in black and white and you don't have any color until they > > hit Munchkinland. > > ellen bart > > Are you serious, Ellen? I don't see any smiley faces in your posting, but > you must be kidding. TWoO was released in 1939, all of the other postings > in this discussion date the beginning of color films in the late 20's or > early 30's, depending on the process. > > Jack Hagerty, Zehntel Automation Systems As I remember hearing it, what poped up in the middle of shooting was not color film but the process called TECHNICOLOR(tm). The major benifits of TECHNICOLOR(tm) were 1) a "truer" more vibrant color reproduction (redder reds, greener greens, etc...) and 2) The color didn't fade (!!!!!), until the advent of the TECHNICOLOR(tm) process color films were only good for a few dozen showings before the colors started becomeing dull and fading into the primaries. It was for this reason that a bunch of film was trashed and a few scenes were reshot. (I believe TECHNICOLOR is a tradmark of somebody.) ----- "Adventure is when you toss your life on the scales of chance and wait for the pointer to stop." - Murray Leinster (First Contact) The views expressed herein are probably not worth much to anyone and therefore should not be mistaken to represent I.D.M.I, it's officers or any other people heretofore or hereafter associated with said company. Everything is probably trademarked or copyrighted by somebody who could care less about how I use it as long as I mention that fact. Andrew R. Scholnick Information Design and Management Inc., Alexandria, Va. ...seismo!rlgvax!idmi-cc!andrew
reiher@ucla-cs.UUCP (05/01/85)
In article <2197@usceast.UUCP> ted@usceast.UUCP (System Programmer) writes: >One thing I have always wondered about early color films is why we dont't >get color like that today. > >Is this a concious choice by today's film makers? Was the technology too >expensive to support after the demise of the studio system or what? Up till the 1950s, the major color process was 3-strip Technicolor (that is, after it replaced 2-strip Technicolor in the mid-30's). This process involved taking 3 different black and white negatives of each frame, one for each primary color. The incoming light was passed through prisms and filters before hitting the negatives. The three negatives were then processed into a single positive, called a matrix, which was used to strike prints. Special dyes were used to produce the color. In addition to being richer and warmer than the dyes used in modern color cinematography, these dyes were extremely long-lived. Thus, a color film from the 30s still looks beautiful, while color prints from the fifties are pallid and faded. (The red dye fades slowest, so these faded prints look pink.) The reason the process went out was that it was (obviously) very expensive. Special cameras (which were very bulky) were needed, as well as three times as much negative. Moreover, Technicolor had troubles photographing certain colors, so much care was needed to get the color right. The Technicolor company had full rights to it, so they required one or two of their consultants to work on every film; their job was to force the filmmakers to use colors, lighting, and contrasts which looked particularly good in Technicolor. This was a secondary reason why the films look so good. It also upped the costs. Technicolor was so expensive that each studio only did a few color films each year. Other color processes were perfected about the same time as television. These, while not so beautiful, merely involved film stocks sensitive to color differences, so they were quite cheap. Color was thus used as one more reason to get people away from their TV sets, which couldn't handle color for some years. By the late sixties, color technology was so cheap and audience expectations such that one was making an artistic statement by not using color. Technicolor got lost in the shuffle. It was so expensive that none of the studio heads wanted to use it. The Technicolor company came up with its own single negative color process and phased out its old system. Currently, it is impossible to produce colors like those in "Gone With the Wind", "The Adventures of Robin Hood", and "The Wizard of Oz", because cameras and processing equipment are no longer available. There's only one country in the world which still has the equipment to make 3-strip Technicolor: surprise, it's the People's Republic of China. From the Chinese films I've seen, it looks like they don't use it much. -- Peter Reiher reiher@ucla-cs.arpa {...ihnp4,ucbvax,sdcrdcf}!ucla-cs!reiher
martys@ISM780.UUCP (05/01/85)
A illustrator friend of mine was hired by a company (i forget it's name) to work on coloring in Casa Blanca as well as other great black and white films. They are hoping to release the new Casa Blanca around the end of 85 if all goes well.
root@idmi-cc.UUCP (Admin) (05/01/85)
> About Technicolor being "discovered in the middle of filming" the Wizard > of Oz: Something nobody seems to realize is that films are almost never > photographed in plot-order. Your point is a good one but does not change the fact that TWoO's color process was scrapped about 1/3 of the way through the filming in favor of the 'revolutionary new process' Technicolor. Facts, after all, is facts :-). ----- "Adventure is when you toss your life on the scales of chance and wait for the pointer to stop." - Murray Leinster (First Contact) Andrew R. Scholnick Information Design and Management Inc., Alexandria, Va. ...seismo!rlgvax!idmi-cc!andrew
jpg@sdchema.UUCP (Jerry Greenberg) (05/03/85)
> Moreover, Technicolor had troubles photographing certain > colors, so much care was needed to get the color right. There are rumors that "Son of Frankenstein" was photographed in three color technicolor but was released in B&W becuse the color of Boris Karloff's monster makeup did not come out right. Jerry Greenberg Dorothy: "If you don't have a brain, how can you talk?" Scarecrow: "I don't know, but some people without brains do an awful lot of talking"
davew@shark.UUCP (Dave Williams) (05/06/85)
In article <158@idmi-cc.UUCP> root@idmi-cc.UUCP (Admin) writes: >> About Technicolor being "discovered in the middle of filming" the Wizard >> of Oz: Something nobody seems to realize is that films are almost never >> photographed in plot-order. > >Your point is a good one but does not change the fact that TWoO's color >process was scrapped about 1/3 of the way through the filming in favor >of the 'revolutionary new process' Technicolor. Facts, after all, is facts :-) *** REPLACE THIS LINE WITH THE FACTS *** I went to the library and checked in "The Film Encyclopedia" by Ephraim Katz about Technicolor. Some of the facts stated: o The original Technicolor process was developed in 1917 by Kalmus and Canfield. They produced a movie in that same year using the process. The original process used two strips of film exposed in a special camera and projected using two projectors running in sync with red and green filters. The process was improved upon and a Douglas Fairbanks picture was shot in 1926 with this process. o The 3 strip process was developed in 1932. Several shorts were made with this technique. In 1935 "Becky Sharp" was made. It was the first full length feature to use the 3 strip process. 1939 was a watershed year for Technicolor as both GWTW and TWoO were released in Technicolor. There was no mention of any other changes to the process, although I'm sure they kept improving the dyes, etc. I have seen clips of "Becky Sharp" and of course GWTW and the colors looked as good as that in TWoO. If you have some facts pertaining to the re-filming of Oz I would be interested in seeing them presented here. Until then I will have to remain skeptical. -- Dave Williams Tektronix, Inc. Graphic Workstations Division "The 6000 Family" "The workstations that made Wilsonville famous."
allynh@ucbvax.ARPA (Allyn Hardyck) (05/08/85)
In article <5003@ucla-cs.ARPA> reiher@ucla-cs.UUCP (Peter Reiher) writes: > Now, in "If...", color shots >and black-and-white ones are mixed in no special order. This occurred because >Lindsay Anderson, the director, ran low on money half way through, and >BW stock was cheaper than color. I think this may have also been the case in Andrei Tarkovsky's "Solaris", which despite this is magnificent.
dbb@aicchi.UUCP (Burch) (05/12/85)
The actual history of color photography goes back to just after the tintype process was invented. The first instance was a fluke in which due to a pecular batch of chemicals a plate was exposed which had dim color reproduction. Not long later, photographers were exposing three color separations of still lifes, landscapes, and people who were willing to sit very still. The first hand painted color in a film was probably a 1901 french film about a trip to the moon which has a puff of orange smoke. -Ben Burch, AIC
jims@hcrvax.UUCP (Jim Sullivan) (05/15/85)
>..............................The first hand painted color in a film >was probably a 1901 french film about a trip to the moon which has a >puff of orange smoke. Film is by the French magician and filmmaker George Melis (possible spelling error there). He was one of the first filmmakers, and made hundreds of short films 2-4 minutes in length. Is credited with the first use of fade in/out and stopping the cammera. But, he did all his editing inside the camera. As a magician, he used the camera to create fasinating effects, heads getting chopped off and people disappearing. Unfortunately, most of his films were pirated, and as the industry progressed, he didn't. Died a poor and broken man (how sad). Just thought you'd like to know. Jim Sullivan
don@oakhill.UUCP (Don Weiss) (05/16/85)
[] Another reason that the old Technicolor color-separation masters have exhibited such great longevity is that the master strips are not in color at all, but rather are black-and-white film stocks merely *representing* the tonal variation of each of the three colors. The point here is that well-processed black-and-white negatives have their images in the form of metallic silver, which yields a much more stable image over time than a color film stock, whose image is made up of three layers of organic dyes. This, of course, is a factor only when you're looking at a release print that has recently been remade from the color-separation masters. Somewhere (on this net perhaps?) I heard that a previously unknown set of separation masters were found to an old movie (seems like it was GWTW), enabling distributors to get a very fresh looking color print.
reiher@ucla-cs.UUCP (05/23/85)
In article <422@oakhill.UUCP> don@oakhill.UUCP (Don Weiss) writes: >Another reason that the old Technicolor color-separation masters have >exhibited such great longevity is that the master strips are not in >color at all, but rather are black-and-white film stocks merely >*representing* the tonal variation of each of the three colors. ... > >Somewhere (on this net perhaps?) I heard that a previously unknown set of >separation masters were found to an old movie (seems like it was GWTW), >enabling distributors to get a very fresh looking color print. My impression, which could be mistaken, is that, while the original three negative masters may exist for old Technicolor films, there is no longer equipment in the US capable of converting those masters into color prints. I could be wrong about this, but I believe that all Technicolor films are kept in special prints called matrices from which color prints are struck. The matrices were originally made from the 3 black and white strips. A Technicolor print seen today is either an original print or struck from the matrix. The advantage is that the Technicolor process used long-lived, but fabulously expensive, dyes to produce the matrix. (And the original prints, for that matter. I suspect that modern prints use the same stock and dyes as all other films.) -- Peter Reiher reiher@ucla-cs.arpa soon to be reiher@LOCUS.UCLA.EDA {...ihnp4,ucbvax,sdcrdcf}!ucla-cs!reiher
dianeh@ism70.UUCP (05/29/85)
As a side note (not that this lengthy discussion necessarily needs one), you might find it interesting that most black&white films that are done today are actually shot in color -- it's cheaper. Diane