Cinecolor
Although its color spectrum was limited by comparison, Cinecolor had several advantages over Technicolor: color rushes were available within 24 hours (Technicolor took four days or more); the process itself cost only 25% more than black-and-white photography (the price lowered as larger amounts of Cinecolor film stock were bought), and it could be used in modified black-and-white cameras.
Lower-budgeted companies such as Monogram, Producers Releasing Corporation, and Screen Guild Productions were Cinecolor's chief contractors in the mid-1940s.
The commercial and critical success of those films led both major and minor studios to use Cinecolor as a money-saving measure.
International Projectionist noted that "Cinecolor's service charges are also lower than Technicolor's, and the cost differential on a standard feature will exceed $50,000 by the time prints have been made, an important sum for a low-budget picture.
The first to adopt an all-Cinecolor policy was pioneer comedy producer Hal Roach, who made all of his postwar featurettes in Cinecolor beginning in 1947.
Other studios followed Roach's lead, and Cinecolor enjoyed a popular vogue in the mid- to late 1940s with such features as MGM's Gallant Bess (1946),[14] Columbia's costume adventure The Gallant Blade (1948), and Eagle-Lion's Northwest Stampede (1948) and its Red Ryder westerns (1949).
Most features made in Cinecolor were outdoor adventures and westerns, because the main color palette in those films consisted of blues, browns, and reds, and so the system's limitations were less apparent.
Republic Pictures began using CFI's Trucolor from the end of 1946 for a variety of films ranging from Westerns and travelogues to major productions (the life of Richard Wagner, Magic Fire; and the battle of the Alamo, The Last Command).
Trucolor differed from Cinecolor, however, in that it used a dye-coupler already built into the film base, rather than the application of chemical toner.
Meanwhile, on the technical front, 1948 was important for the Cinecolor Corporation, which introduced a new supersensitive negative stock that cut back on the on-set lighting costs by 50 percent and 1,000-foot (300 m) camera film magazines.
[17] Cinecolor's Alan Gundelfinger developed a three-color process called SuperCinecolor in 1948. but did not begin using it until 1951 with The Sword of Monte Cristo.
Other films of note that used the SuperCinecolor process were Abbott and Costello Meet Captain Kidd (1952), Jack and the Beanstalk (1952), Invaders From Mars (1953), Gog (1954), and Top Banana (1954).
[18][dubious – discuss] The result of the combination of the color spectra was an oddly striking look to the final print.
The final prints had vivid dyes that did not fade and were of acceptable grain structure and sharp in focus.
