A História do Technicolor, Artigo
Artigo
Technicolor is a series of color
motion picture processes, the first version dating to 1916, and
followed by improved versions over several decades.
It was the second major color 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 highly saturated color, and was initially most
commonly used for filming musicals such as The Wizard of Oz (1939) and Down
Argentine Way (1940), costume
pictures such as The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
and Gone
with the Wind (1939), and animated films such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Gulliver's Travels (1939), and Fantasia (1940).
As the technology matured it was also used for less spectacular dramas and
comedies. Occasionally, even a film noir—such as Leave
Her to Heaven (1945) or Niagara (1953)—was
filmed in Technicolor.
"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 the French company 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 the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where
both Kalmus and Comstock received their undergraduate degrees and were later
instructors. Technicolor, Inc. was chartered in Delaware in 1921. Most
of Technicolor's early patents were taken out by Comstock and Wescott, while
Kalmus served primarily as the company's president and chief executive officer.
Name usage:
The term "Technicolor" historically has been used to describe
at least five concepts:
Technicolor: an umbrella company encompassing all of the
below as well as other ancillary services. (1914–present)
Technicolor labs: a collection of film laboratories across
the world owned and run by Technicolor for post-production services including
developing, printing, and transferring films in all major color film processes,
as well as Technicolor's proprietary ones. (1922–present)
Technicolor process or format: several custom image
origination systems used in film production, culminating in the
"three-strip" process in 1932. (1917–1955)
Technicolor IB printing ("IB"
abbreviates "imbibition",
a dye-transfer operation):
a process for making color motion picture prints that allows the use of dyes
which are more stable and permanent than those formed in ordinary chromogenic color
printing. Originally used for printing from color separation negatives
photographed on black-and-white film in a special Technicolor camera.
(1928–2002, with differing gaps of availability after 1974 depending on the
lab)
Prints or Color by Technicolor: used from 1954 on, when Eastmancolor (and
other single-strip color film stocks) supplanted the three-film-strip camera
negative method, while the Technicolor IB printing process continued to be used
as one method of making the prints. This meaning of the name applies to
nearly all Wikipedia articles about films made from 1954 onward in which Technicolor is named in the credits.
(1953–present)
History:
Two-color Technicolor
Process 1
Technicolor originally existed in a two-color (red and green) system.
In Process 1 (1916), a prism beam-splitter behind
the camera lens exposed two consecutive frames of a single strip of
black-and-white negative film simultaneously, one behind a red filter, the
other behind a green filter. Because two frames were being exposed at the same
time, the film had to be photographed and projected at twice the normal speed.
Exhibition required a special projector with two apertures (one with a
red filter and the other with a green filter), two lenses, and an adjustable
prism that aligned the two images on the screen. 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 on September 13, 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.
Process 2
Convinced that there was no future in additive color processes,
Comstock, Wescott, and Kalmus focused their attention on subtractive color
processes. This culminated in what would eventually be known as Process 2
(1922) (in the later 1900s commonly called by the misnomer, "two-strip
Technicolor"). As before, the special Technicolor camera used a
beam-splitter that simultaneously exposed two consecutive frames of a single
strip of black-and-white film, one behind a green filter and one behind a red
filter.
The difference was that the two-component negative was now used to
produce a subtractive
color print. Because the colors were physically present in the
print, no special projection equipment was required and the correct
registration of the two images did not depend on the skill of the
projectionist.
The frames exposed behind the green filter were printed on one strip of
black-and-white film, and the frames exposed behind the red filter were printed
on another strip. After development, each print was toned to a color
nearly complementary to
that of the filter: orange-red for the green-filtered images, cyan-green for
the red-filtered ones. Unlike tinting, which adds a uniform veil of color to
the entire image, toning chemically replaces the black-and-white silver image
with transparent coloring matter, so that the highlights remain clear (or
nearly so), dark areas are strongly colored, and intermediate tones are colored
proportionally. The two prints, made on film stock half the thickness of
regular film, were then cemented together back to back to create a projection
print. The
Toll of the Sea, which debuted on November 26, 1922, used
Process 2 and was the first general-release film in Technicolor.
The second all-color feature in Process 2 Technicolor, Wanderer of the Wasteland, was released
in 1924. Process 2 was also used for color sequences in such major motion
pictures as The Ten Commandments (1923), The Phantom of the Opera (1925),
and Ben-Hur (1925). Douglas Fairbanks' The Black Pirate (1926)
was the third all-color Process 2 feature.
Although successful commercially, Process 2 was plagued with technical
problems. Because the images on the two sides of the print were not in the same
plane, both could not be perfectly in focus at the same time. The significance
of this depended on the depth of focus of the
projection optics. Much more serious was a problem with cupping. Films in
general tended to become somewhat cupped after repeated use: every time a film was
projected, each frame in turn was heated by the intense light in the projection
gate, causing it to bulge slightly; after it had passed through the gate, it
cooled and the bulge subsided, but not quite completely. It was found that the
cemented prints were not only very prone to cupping, but that the direction of
cupping would suddenly and randomly change from back to front or vice versa, so
that even the most attentive projectionist could not prevent the image from
temporarily popping out of focus whenever the cupping direction changed.
Technicolor had to supply new prints so the cupped ones could be shipped to
their Boston laboratory for flattening, after which they could be put back into
service, at least for a while. The presence of image layers on both surfaces
made the prints especially vulnerable to scratching, and because the scratches
were vividly colored they were very noticeable. Splicing a Process 2 print
without special attention to its unusual laminated construction was apt to
result in a weak splice that would fail as it passed through the projector.
Even before these problems became apparent, Technicolor regarded this cemented
print approach as a stopgap and was already at work developing an improved
process.
Process 3
Based on the same dye-transfer
technique first applied to motion pictures in 1916 by Max
Handschiegl, Technicolor Process 3 (1928) was developed to eliminate the
projection print made of double-cemented prints in favor of a print created
by dye imbibition. The
Technicolor camera for Process 3 was identical to that for Process 2,
simultaneously photographing two consecutive frames of a black-and-white film
behind red and green filters.
In the lab, skip-frame printing was used to sort the alternating
color-record frames on the camera negative into two series of contiguous
frames, the red-filtered frames being printed onto one strip of specially
prepared "matrix" film and the green-filtered frames onto another.
After processing, the gelatin of the matrix film's emulsion was left
proportionally hardened, being hardest and least soluble where it had been most
strongly exposed to light. The unhardened fraction was then washed away. The
result was two strips of relief images consisting of hardened gelatin, thickest
in the areas corresponding to the clearest, least-exposed areas of the
negative.
To make each final color print, the matrix films were soaked in dye
baths of colors nominally complementary to
those of the camera filters: the strip made from red-filtered frames was dyed
cyan-green and the strip made from green-filtered frames was dyed orange-red. The
thicker the gelatin in each area of a frame, the more dye it absorbed. Each
matrix in turn was pressed into contact with a plain gelatin-coated strip of
film known as the "blank" and the gelatin "imbibed" the dye
from the matrix. A mordant made
from deacetylated chitin was
applied to the blank before printing, to prevent the dyes from migrating or
"bleeding" after they were absorbed.
Dye imbibition was not suitable for printing optical soundtracks, which
required very high resolution, so when making prints for sound-on-film systems
the "blank" film was a conventional black-and-white film stock on
which the soundtrack, as well as frame lines, had been printed in the ordinary
way prior to the dye transfer operation.
The first feature made entirely in the Technicolor Process 3 was The
Viking (1928), which had a synchronized score and sound
effects. Redskin (1929),
with a synchronized score, and The Mysterious Island (1929), a part-talkie, were
photographed almost entirely in this process also but included some sequences
in black and white. The following talkies were made entirely – or almost
entirely – in Technicolor Process 3: On with the Show! (1929) (the first all-talking
color feature), Gold Diggers of Broadway (1929), The
Show of Shows (1929), Sally (1929), The Vagabond King (1930), Follow
Thru (1930), Golden
Dawn (1930), Hold Everything (1930), The
Rogue Song (1930), Song
of the Flame (1930), Song
of the West (1930), The Life of the Party (1930), Sweet Kitty Bellairs (1930), Bride
of the Regiment (1930), Mamba (1930), Whoopee! (1930), King of Jazz (1930), Under
a Texas Moon (1930), Bright
Lights (1930), Viennese
Nights (1930), Woman
Hungry (1931), Kiss
Me Again (1931) and Fifty Million Frenchmen (1931). In addition,
scores of features were released with Technicolor sequences. Numerous short
subjects were also photographed in Technicolor Process 3, including the first
color sound cartoons by producers such as Ub Iwerks and Walter Lantz. Song of the Flame became
the first color movie to use a widescreen process
(using a system known as Vitascope,
which used 65mm film).
In 1931, an improvement of Technicolor Process 3 was developed 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
Bros. took the lead once again by producing three features (out
of an announced plan for six features): Manhattan
Parade (1932), Doctor X (1932)
and Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933). Radio Pictures
followed by announcing plans to make four more features in the new process. 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
with its introduction of the talkies,
incorporated Technicolor's printing to enhance its films. Other producers
followed Warner Bros.' example by making features in color, with either
Technicolor, or one of its competitors, such as Brewster Color and Multicolor (later Cinecolor).
Consequently, the introduction of color did not increase the number of
moviegoers to the point where it was economical. This and the Great Depression severely
strained the finances of the movie studios and spelled the end of Technicolor's
first financial successes.
Three-strip Technicolor
Process 4: Development and introduction
Technicolor envisioned a full-color process as early as 1924 and was
actively developing such a process by 1929. Hollywood made so much use of
Technicolor in 1929 and 1930 that many believed the feature film industry would
soon be turning out color films exclusively. By 1931, however, the Great Depression took
its toll on the movie industry, which began to cut back on expenses. The
production of color films had decreased dramatically by 1932, when Burton
Wescott and Joseph A. Ball completed work on a new three-color movie camera.
Technicolor could now promise studios a full range of colors, as opposed to the
limited red-green spectrum of previous films. The new camera simultaneously
exposed three strips of black-and-white film, each of which recorded a
different color of the spectrum. The new process would last until the last
Technicolor feature film was produced in 1955.
Technicolor's advantage over most early natural-color processes was that
it was a subtractive
synthesis rather than an additive one: unlike
the additive Kinemacolor and Chronochrome processes,
Technicolor prints did not require any special projection equipment. Unlike the
additive Dufaycolor process,
the projected image was not dimmed by a light-absorbing and obtrusive mosaic
color filter layer. Very importantly, compared to competing subtractive
systems, Technicolor offered the best balance between high image quality and
speed of printing.
The Technicolor Process 4 camera, manufactured to Technicolor's detailed
specifications by Mitchell
Camera Corporation, contained color filters, a beam splitter consisting
of a partially reflecting surface inside a split-cube prism, and three separate
rolls of black-and-white film (hence the "three-strip" designation).
The beam splitter allowed ⅓ of the light coming through the camera lens to pass
through the reflector and a green filter and form an image on one of the
strips, which therefore recorded only the green-dominated third of the spectrum. The other ⅔ was
reflected sideways by the mirror and passed through a magenta filter, which
absorbed green light and allowed only the red and blue thirds of the spectrum
to pass. Behind this filter were the other two strips of film, their emulsions pressed
into contact face to face. The front film was a red-blind orthochromatic type
that recorded only the blue light. On the surface of its emulsion was a
red-orange coating that prevented blue light from continuing on to the
red-sensitive panchromatic emulsion
of the film behind it, which therefore recorded only the red-dominated third of
the spectrum.
Each of the three resulting negatives was printed onto a special matrix
film. After processing, each matrix was a nearly invisible representation of
the series of film frames as gelatin reliefs, thickest (and most absorbent)
where each image was darkest and thinnest where it was lightest. Each matrix
was soaked in a dye complementary to the color of light recorded by the
negative printed on it: cyan for red, magenta for green, and yellow for blue.
A single clear strip of black-and-white film with the soundtrack
and frame lines printed in
advance was first treated with a mordant solution and
then brought into contact with each of the three dye-loaded matrix films in
turn, building up the complete color image. Each dye was absorbed, or imbibed,
by the gelatin coating on the receiving strip rather than simply deposited onto
its surface, hence the term "dye imbibition". Strictly speaking, this
is a mechanical printing process, very loosely comparable to offset printing or lithography, and not a
photographic one, as the actual printing does not involve a chemical change
caused by exposure to light.
During the early years of the process, the receiver film was preprinted
with a 50% black-and-white image derived from the green strip, the so-called
Key, or K, record. This procedure was used largely to cover up fine edges in
the picture where colors would mix unrealistically (also known as fringing). This additional
black increased the contrast of the final print and concealed any fringing.
However, overall colorfulness was compromised as a result. In 1944, Technicolor
had improved the process to make up for these shortcomings and the K record was
eliminated.
Early adoption by Disney
Kalmus convinced Walt Disney to
shoot one of his Silly Symphony cartoons, Flowers and Trees (1932),
in Process 4, the new "three-strip" process. Seeing the potential in
full-color Technicolor, Disney negotiated an exclusive contract for the use of
the process that extended to September 1935. Other animation producers,
such as the Fleischer
Studios and the Ub Iwerks studio, were
shut out – they had to settle for either the two-color Technicolor systems or
use a competing process such as Cinecolor.
Flowers and Trees was a
success with audiences and critics alike, and won the first Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.
All subsequent Silly Symphonies from
1933 on were shot with the three-strip process. One Silly Symphony, Three
Little Pigs (1933), engendered such a positive audience
response that it overshadowed the feature films with which it was shown. Hollywood was buzzing
about color film again. According to Fortune magazine,
"Merian
C. Cooper, producer for RKO
Radio Pictures and director of King
Kong (1933), saw one of the Silly Symphonies and said he never wanted to make a
black-and-white picture again."
Although Disney's first 60 or so Technicolor cartoons used the
three-strip camera, an improved "successive exposure" process was
adopted circa 1937. This variation of the three-strip process was designed
primarily for cartoon work: the camera would contain one strip of
black-and-white negative film, and each animation cel would be photographed
three times, on three sequential frames, behind alternating red, green, and
blue filters (the so-called "Technicolor Color Wheel", then an option
of the Acme, Producers Service and Photo-Sonics animation cameras). 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.
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 speed of
ASA 5. That, and the bulk of the cameras and a lack of experience with
three-color cinematography made
for skepticism in the studio boardrooms.
An October 1934 article in Fortune magazine
stressed that Technicolor, as a corporation, was rather remarkable in that it
kept its investors quite happy despite the fact that it had only been in profit
twice in all of the years of its existence, during the early boom at the turn
of the decade. A well-managed company, half of whose stock was controlled by a
clique loyal to Kalmus, Technicolor never had to cede any control to its
bankers or unfriendly stockholders. In the mid-'30s, all the major studios
except MGM were in the financial doldrums, and a color process that truly
reproduced the visual spectrum was seen as a possible shot-in-the-arm for the
ailing industry.
In November 1933, Technicolor's Herbert Kalmus and RKO announced plans to
produce three-strip Technicolor films in 1934, beginning with Ann Harding starring
in a projected film The World
Outside.
Live-action use of three-strip Technicolor was first seen in a musical
number of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer feature The Cat and the Fiddle, released February 16, 1934. On
July 1, MGM released Hollywood Party with a Technicolor cartoon
sequence "Hot Choc-late Soldiers" produced by Walt Disney. On July 28
of that year, Warner
Bros. released Service
with a Smile, followed by Good
Morning, Eve! on September 22, both being comedy short films starring Leon Errol and filmed
in three-strip Technicolor. Pioneer Pictures, a movie
company formed by Technicolor investors, produced the film usually credited as
the first live-action short film shot in the three-strip process, La
Cucaracha released August 31, 1934. La Cucaracha is a two-reel
musical comedy that cost $65,000, approximately four times what an equivalent
black-and-white two-reeler would cost. Released by RKO, the short was a success in introducing
the new Technicolor as a viable medium for live-action films. The three-strip
process also was used in some short sequences filmed for several movies made
during 1934, including the final sequences of The
House of Rothschild (Twentieth Century Pictures/United Artists) with George Arliss and Kid Millions (Samuel Goldwyn Studios)
with Eddie
Cantor.
Pioneer/RKO's Becky
Sharp (1935) became the first feature film photographed
entirely in three-strip Technicolor. Initially, three-strip Technicolor was
only used indoors. In 1936, The Trail of the Lonesome Pine became
the first color production to have outdoor sequences, with impressive results.
The spectacular success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937),
which was released in December 1937 and became the top-grossing film of 1938,
attracted the attention of the studios.
Limitations and difficulties
One major drawback of Technicolor's three-strip process was that the
cameras required a special, bulky, large volume sound blimp. Film studios could
not purchase Technicolor cameras, only rent them for their productions,
complete with camera technicians and a "color supervisor" to ensure
sets, costumes, and makeup didn't push beyond the limitations of the system.
Often on many early productions, the supervisor was Natalie Kalmus, ex-wife of
Herbert Kalmus and part owner of the company. Directors had great difficulty
with her; Vincente
Minnelli said, "I couldn't do anything right in Mrs.
Kalmus's eyes." The ex-Mrs. Kalmus preferred the title "Technicolor
Director", although British licensees generally insisted on "Colour
Control" so as not to "dilute" the film director's title. She
worked with quite a number of "associates", many of whom went
uncredited, and after her retirement, these associates were transferred to the
licensees, with, for example, Leonard Doss going to Fox where he performed the
same function for Fox's DeLuxe Color.
The process of splitting the image reduced the amount of light reaching
the film stock. Since the film speed of the
stocks used 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, triple amount of film, and the expense of
producing dye transfer projection prints, Technicolor demanded high film
budgets.
The introduction of Eastmancolor and decline
Color films that recorded the three primary colors in three emulsion
layers on one strip of film had been introduced in the mid-1930s by Eastman Kodak in the
United States (Kodachrome for
16mm home movies in 1935, then for 8mm home movies and 35mm slides in 1936)
and Agfa in Germany (Agfacolor Neu for both
home movies and slides later in 1936). Technicolor introduced Monopack, a single-strip color reversal film (a
35 mm lower-contrast version of Kodachrome) in 1941 for use on location
where the bulky three-strip camera was impractical, but the higher grain of the
image made it unsuitable for studio work.
Eastman Kodak introduced its first 35 mm color motion picture
negative film in 1950. The first commercial feature film to use Eastmancolor
was the National Film Board of Canada documentary Royal Journey,
released in December 1951. 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. 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 an attempt to capitalize on the Hollywood 3-D craze, Technicolor
unveiled its stereoscopic camera
for 3-D films in March
1953. The rig used two three-strip cameras, running a total of six strips of
film at once (three for the left eye and three for the right). Only two films
were shot with this camera set-up: Flight
to Tangier (1953) and the Martin and Lewis comedy Money From Home (1954).
A similar, but different system had been used by a different company, using two
three-strip cameras side-by-side for a British short called Royal River.
As the end of the Technicolor process became apparent, the company
repurposed its three-color cameras for wide-screen photography, and introduced
the Technirama process in
1957. Other formats the company ventured into included VistaVision, Todd-AO, and Ultra
Panavision 70. All of them were an improvement over the three-strip
negatives, since the negative print-downs generated sharper and finer grain dye
transfer copies. By the mid-1960s, the dye-transfer process eventually
fell out of favor in the United States as being too expensive and too slow in
turning out prints. With the growing number of screens in the US, the standard
run of 200–250 prints increased. And while dye-transfer printing yielded
superior color printing, the number of high speed prints that could be struck
in labs all over the country outweighed the fewer, slower number of prints that
could only be had in Technicolor's labs. One of the last American films printed
by Technicolor was The
Godfather Part II (1974).
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 which shipped the equipment to China. A great many films from China
and Hong Kong were made in the Technicolor dye transfer process, including Zhang Yimou's Ju Dou (1990)
and even one American film, Space Avenger (1989), directed
by Richard
W. Haines. The Beijing line was shut down in 1993 for a number of
reasons, including inferior processing.
Post-1995 usage
Reintroduction of the dye transfer process
In 1997, Technicolor reintroduced the dye transfer process to general
film printing. A refined version of the printing process of the 1960s and
1970s, it was used on a limited basis in the restorations of films such
as The Wizard of Oz, Gone
With the Wind, Rear Window, Funny Girl,
and Apocalypse
Now Redux.
After its reintroduction, the dye transfer process was used in several
big-budget, modern Hollywood productions. These included Bulworth, The Thin Red Line, Godzilla, Toy Story 2,
and Pearl
Harbor.
The dye-transfer process was discontinued by Technicolor in 2002 after
the company was purchased by Thomson.
Dye transfer Technicolor in archival work
By the late 1990s, the dye transfer process still had its advantages in
the film archival community. Because the dye transfer process used stable acid dyes, Technicolor
prints are considered of archival quality. A Technicolor print from the dye
transfer era will retain its original colors virtually unchanged for decades with
proper storage, whereas prints printed on Eastmancolor stocks produced prior to
1983 may suffer color fading after exposure to ultraviolet light and hot, humid
conditions as a result of less stable photochemical dyes. Fading on some prints
is so rapid that in some cases, after as little as five to ten years, the
colors of the print have faded to a brownish red.
Furthermore, three-strip camera negatives are all on silver-based
black-and-white stock, which have stayed unaltered over the course of time with
proper handling. This has become of importance in recent years with the large
market for films transferred to video formats for home viewing. The best color
quality control for video transfer by far is achieved by optically printing
from Technicolor negatives, or by recombining the three-strip black and white
negatives through digital means and printing, onto low-contrast stock.
Director George
Lucas had a three-strip archival negative, and one or more
imbibition prints made of Star Wars; this
"protection" copy was consulted for color values in putting together
the 1997 Special Edition of Star
Wars.
One problem that has resulted from Technicolor negatives is the rate of
shrinkage from one strip to another. Because three-strip negatives are shot on
three rolls, they are subject to different rates of shrinkage depending on
storage conditions. Today, digital technology allows for a precise re-alignment
of the negatives by resizing shrunken negatives digitally to correspond with
the other negatives. The G, or Green, record is usually taken as the reference
as it is the record with the highest resolution. It is also a record with the
correct "wind" (emulsion position with respect to the camera's lens).
Shrinkage and re-alignment (resizing) are non-issues with Successive Exposure
(single-roll RGB) Technicolor camera negatives. This issue could have been eliminated,
for three-strip titles, had the preservation elements (fine-grain positives)
been Successive Exposure, but this would have required the preservation
elements to be 3,000 feet or 6,000 feet whereas three-strip composited camera
and preservation elements are 1,000 feet or 2,000 feet (however, three records
of that length are needed).
One issue that modern reproduction has had to contend with is that the
contrast of the three film strips is not the same. This gives the effect on
Technicolor prints that (for example) fades cause the color balance of the
image to change as the image is faded. Transfer to digital media has attempted
to correct the differing color balances and is largely successful. However, a
few odd artifacts remain such that saturated parts of the image may show a
false color. Where the image of a flame is included in shot, it will rarely be
of the expected orange/yellow color, often being depicted as green.
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
Communications 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 SA” 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 (2004), the biopic of Howard Hughes, were
digitally manipulated to imitate color processes that were available during the
periods each scene takes place.
