Technicolor

The "Tech" in the company's name was inspired by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where Herbert Kalmus and Daniel Frost Comstock received their undergraduate degrees in 1904 and were later instructors.

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.

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.

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.

(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).

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.

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.

Two independently produced features were also made with this improved Technicolor process: Legong: Dance of the Virgins (1934) and Kliou the Tiger (1935).

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.

This and the Great Depression severely strained the finances of the movie studios and spelled the end of Technicolor's first financial successes.

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 beam splitter allowed one-third 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.

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.

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 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).

[21] 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 original 16mm low-contrast Kodachrome Commercial live action footage was first duplicated onto a 35mm fine-grain SE negative element in one pass of the 16mm element, thereby reducing wear of the 16mm original, and also eliminating registration errors between colors.

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.

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.

On July 1, MGM released Hollywood Party with a Technicolor cartoon sequence "Hot Choc-late Soldiers" produced by Walt Disney.

I myself find it difficult to take seriously a movie made in technicolor: profundity seems out of key with the carnival spirit of the color, which is always gay and bright, mask-like, without substance.

[24] One major drawback of Technicolor's three-strip process was that the cameras required a special, bulky, large volume sound blimp.

It is reported that temperatures from the hot studio lights on the film set of The Wizard of Oz frequently exceeded 100 °F (38 °C), and some of the more heavily costumed characters required a large water intake.

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.

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.

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.

[citation needed] 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.

[41] The name of Thomson group was changed to "Technicolor SA" as of February 1, 2010[update], re-branding the entire company after its American film technology subsidiary.

[47] 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.