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How Technicolor Got Its Start in Classic FilmsTechnicolor is the trademark for a series of color film processes pioneered by Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation (later, Technicolor, Inc.)
Technicolor originally existed in a two-color (red and green) system. In Process 1 (1917), a prism beam-splitter behind the camera lens exposed two adjacent 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. Technicolor itself produced the only movie made in Process 1, The Gulf Between, which had a limited tour of Eastern cities, primarily to interest motion picture producers and exhibitors in color.
Technicolor became a subtractive color process with Process 2 (1922) (cited by academics originally as "two strip" Technicolor, although
the term is erroneously used for Technicolor's first three formats). As before, the special Technicolor camera used a prism beam-splitter to expose simultaneously two adjacent frames of a single strip of black and white film, one behind a green filter and one behind a red filter. The Toll of the Sea debuted on November 26, 1922 as the first general release film to use Technicolor.
Technicolor Process 3 (1928) was developed to eliminate the projection print made double-cemented prints, in favor of a print created by a process similar to rotogravure called dye-imbibition. As early as 1924, Technicolor envisioned a full-color process, and by 1929, the company was actively developing such a process. The production of color films had virtually ceased when Technicolor introduced its first three-color process in 1932. Light passed through the lens where it was broken down into magenta and green light by a beam splitter. The green record was recorded on one filmstrip, and then two bi-pack strips sensitized to red and blue light further broke down the magenta light. This process accurately reproduced the full color spectrum and optically printed using a dye-transfer process in cyan, magenta and yellow. 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, equated to skepticism in the studio boardrooms.
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 studios with the exception of 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. Live-action use of three-strip Technicolor was first seen in a musical number of the MGM feature The Cat and the Fiddle (1934). Pioneer Pictures produced the first short film shot in Technicolor's three-strip process, La Cucaracha (1934), a two-reel musical comedy that cost $65,000, approximately four times what an equivalent black-and-white two-reeler would cost. The spectacular success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), which became the top-grossing film of 1938, caused the studios to sit up and take notice.
Eastman Kodak introduced its first 35 mm color negative film in 1950, and then in 1952 an improved version of a quality suitable for Hollywood production. This change meant that Technicolor prints could be struck from a single camera negative exposed in a standard camera. Foxfire (1955), filmed in 1954, was the last American-made feature photographed with a Technicolor three-strip camera. In 1953 Eastman also 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. This is how Technicolor got its start in classic films.
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