Year 11 Term 1: Independent Research - History of Technicolor

In a previous post, I mentioned how I was interested in the history of Technicolor. I have done my own independent research on the topic, and here's what I found.

The Technicolor Corporation was founded by Herbert Kalmus, Daniel Comstock and W. Burton Wescott, to develop a "flicker free" movie color system. The word "Tech" in Technicolor actually came from Kalmus' and Comstock's association with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Technicolor’s first color process was a two color additive system that recorded red and blue-green images simultaneously. It did this through a single lens using a beam splitter and color filters to record the images stacked one on top of the other. Their first camera, the Technicolor Process 1 was made in 1916. The first and only movie made using this process was ‘The Gulf Between’, produced in 1917.

How video is captured through the Process 1 camera.

How the video is projected. Note how it requires a specialised projector
as well as manual adjustment of the prism to get both colours aligned.
Images above are taken from www.widescreenmuseum.com.

A surviving still from The Gulf Between.
Image taken from America Pink

Technicolor’s second innovation was the Process 2 in 1922. Unlike its predecessor, Process 2 uses subtractive color. This made a huge difference in overall color quality and also made it easier to project the colors on screen. Additive systems used a black and white image projected through color filters, resulting in loss of the light absorbed by the filters. The film strips were also able to be played on normal projectors, unlike in Process 1 which required specialized projectors. The first film to be shown in Process 2 was “The Toll of the Sea” produced in 1922.

How the Technicolor Process 2 camera captures video.
Image taken from www.widescreenmuseum.com.

The camera negative carries both the red and blue-green records of the scene. The blue green record is upside down to the red record, and two separate prints are made on matrix films that are half as thick as standard matrix films. The red and blue-green matrices are printed as mirror images because they need to be placed back to back after dye application, which is also why each matrix are half the thickness of standard matrices.

From Left to Right: Camera matrix, red filtered matrix, blue-green filtered matrix.
Image taken from www.widescreenmuseum.com.

After Process 2 came Process 3, which had similar technology to Process 2, but mostly used in a different way. The camera used was the same, but instead of producing a duplicate negative that generated the matrices that would be dyed and cemented, the matrices were optically generated from the camera negative and were used to make other prints. This process eliminated some problems with Process 2 and used the matrices to transfer dye to a specially prepared clear base film. Process 3 received critical acclaim and Technicolor's output increased from 1928 through 1930. The first film to use Process 3 technology was The Viking, produced in 1928.

A still from The Viking (1928), the first sound film produced in Technicolor.
Image taken from www.widescreenmuseum.com.

In 1931 Technicolor went on to develop a three strip camera that would be able to capture red, green and blue rather than only red and green and to refine the dye transfer printing that had been introduced in 1927. In 1932 the first 3-strip camera was completed, becoming known as Process 4. The first commercial film to use the 3 color system was Flowers and Trees, produced in 1932, by none other than Walt Disney. 

The Technicolor Process 4 three-strip camera.
Image taken from the-culture-counter.com

How the camera worked.
Image taken from www.widescreenmuseum.com.

Flowers and Trees (1932). Produced by Walt Disney.
Image taken from www.widescreenmuseum.com.

Later on, Becky Sharp, produced in 1935, was the first live action film to be recorded in 3-strip Technicolor.

Comparison between Becky sharp in the inferior Cinecolor (left) and Technicolor Process 4 (right).
Click to zoom in.

Technicolor's 3-strip film process ended up becoming a huge success and raised the standard for color film in the industry. Their innovations have been used to create hugely successful films such as The Wizard of Oz (1939), Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) and more. While films now are much more sophisticated and do not require 3-strip film to record colour, some films try to recreate the look and feel of these old colour technologies in post-production for reasons such as achieving the early 20th century look. Without Technicolor, films probably would have taken longer to reproduce natural colours, and maybe colour films would decline in popularity during those days.

Sources:
http://www.widescreenmuseum.com/oldcolor/technicolor1.htm
http://www.infoplease.com/cig/movies-flicks-film/condensed-history-color.html