jeb@eisx.UUCP (Jim Beckman) (10/12/83)
While we're giving credit to Harold Arlen, the composer for the Oz songs, let's not overlook the lyricist who collaborated with him. Who can remember that name? Technicolor - One other color film released in 1939 was Gone With the Wind. I can't think of the third. The black-and-white part of the Wizard of Oz was actually washed out to more of a sepia tone in the film lab, and the transition to color was an important part of the script. The Technicolor process didn't actually photograph in color. I believe there were actually three separate reels of black-and-white film running through the camera, being exposed through different color filters. The incoming image was split by some type of prism. Does anybody know how the final print of the film was then produced in the lab? The process was such a secret that Technicolor delivered the cameras to the studio in the morning and picked them up again at the end of the day's shooting. Jim Beckman ATTISL, South Plainfield, NJ
davew@shark.UUCP (Dave Williams) (10/14/83)
I didn't answer this in my last article so here goes. The negatives used were standard b/w negative film. The camers had an optical system that gave 3 identical images at the 3 film gates. A red, yellow and blue filter was used at the 3 gates so that the 3 primary colors (subtractive) had the most density on each negative. The 3 negatives were then edited in sync using a Moviola machine and then step printed by a dye seperation technique to produce the color print. It was a very costly process costing about 3.5 to 5 times more for prints alone. Production costs were also much higher due to lighting, set design and over head costs such as camera rental, film stock costs and of course Natalie Kalmus didn't work cheap.