Is technicolor still used at all?

[Rhodes]

Ehehehe! I also tried, but with out looking for info about the dicrector. Wiki has the infor about the technique used. I was in doubt bettween kinemacolor, two color kodachrome or cinecolor!

 

[Sirius Glass]

And, one of the Army pilots says he has trouble reading; if he was dyslexic, or illiterate, he wouldn't have been a pilot. Prewar Army pilots needed a minimum of two years college or university education, and the Navy required a university degree to be a pilot.

Actually dyxlexics have, can and do graduate college. Some with Masters of Science and PhDs.

Steve

 

[Mike1234]

Steev, one cannot alwyas edcuate ingorance.

 

[Photo Engineer]

Steve;

Prewar Army Signal Corps pilots did not even need a HS education. All they needed was a GED equivalent and to pass the flight physical and flight exam and solo. My dad, stationed at Wright Field right after WWI, said that many pilots were enlisted men and had little education beyond what I have stated. When the USAF was formed, then the rules changed, but even so, in the USAF, no pilot is enlisted and all pilots must have a college education but, this is still not so in the Army and Marine Corps where enlisted, non-college pilots are still in action.

I have not known of any dyslexic pilots per se, but do know that a lot of very highly educated people are dyslexic. Ignorant people can come in all types. There are some PhDs that wear aluminum helmets.

PE

 

[fschifano]

Actually dyxlexics have, can and do graduate college. Some with Masters of Science and PhDs.

Steve

That's true, but I sure wouldn't want a dyslexic flying an airplane.

 

[Kino]

Heres something from 1927, let's see if one can find out the process used.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwahIQz0o-M

That's a two color process, probably a two strip camera printed onto duplitized print stock with emulsion on both sides with a dye in between that blocks the light and allows the red and blue-green records to be printed on each side in sync without interference.

There were quite a few of these processes.

 

[Kino]

I don't remember the name of the process but it involves shooting alternate frames through red/green filters and then projecting them through their complimentary filters. You can see a flicker between the two colors and notice that when someone runs across the screen they blur into red and green people because the frames were not exposed simultaneously.

edit: AHA! http://www.widescreenmuseum.com/oldcolor/kinemaco.htm

That would be Kinemacolor. National Cash Register in Dayton, Ohio had a in-house Kinemacolor plant to make educational and sales films for their brass cash registers back in the 1910's.

They even shot color film of the Wright Brothers flying their airplane around Dayton, but bulldozed the film vault with the theater in 1984 to make way for an... empty field.

The mind boggles at what might have been in that vault...

 

[Sirius Glass]

That's true, but I sure wouldn't want a dyslexic flying an airplane.

It would not make a difference. Dyslexics flip around the out of place parts in their brains so fast, you cannot detect the time it took to make the correction.

Would you rather have the inarticulateness and stupidity of Baby Bush?

Steve

 

[DanielStone]

Would you rather have the inarticulateness and stupidity of Baby Bush?

Steve

bush flew planes, maybe only for the reserves, but he flew. his dad IIRC, flew in combat in WWII.

regrettably, he made some poor decisions. Just as everyone, even me(I make quite a few gaffes) does.

please can we leave politicians out of this forum? You may not like Bush, but there are things that can really get me mad about this current administration(obama).

photography, not flying or healthcare or politics. of course, unless it restricts our creative freedom or artistic abilities and processes.

-Dan

 

[DanielStone]

btw, I'm not trying to argue with you. just ask.

thanks

Dan

 

[ajuk]

I think the film in the three-strip Technicolor cameras was Super-XX. But as you see in the Technicolor page on Wikipedia, with all the light losses in filters and beam-splitters, the effective film speed of the camera was ASA 5. It took a lot of light.
They could obviously make whatever masking they wanted to when making the matrices from the camera negative. They also controlled exposure, called "timing".
There was a "colorist" on the set of three-strip Technicolor movies who made sure that the colors were "in gamut".
As for contrast build-up problems, the folks who light movies control contrast ratios very carefully. Nothing is shot in natural light. So they can cope with film processes which have very high contrast by dialing down the lighting contrast ratio.

I can see why it fell out of favor it sounds asinine.

 

[fschifano]

I don't think asinine is accurate. Fact is, the process worked and it worked well. Witness some of the older Technicolor films. Often they were beautiful with very rich saturated colors. That's a far cry from the monotonous B&W fare most movie goers were used to, and must have been quite a thrill to see. Despite the high production costs, there were profits to be made and a market demand to fund R&D on better and more efficient processes was created. What's asinine about that?

 

[robertjonesphoto]

As a movie reviewer, a few years back, I saw a projection of the film "Miss Potter," which starred Renee Zellweger as children's book author and illustrator Beatrix Potter. From the moment the opening titles ran, and Zellweger dipped a brush with blue paint into a glass of water, I instantly knew the print was made by Technicolor, because no other process I've seen is capable of rendering that precise hue of royal blue with such luminous clarity. As I watched the rest of the movie, I was likewise astounded by the rich saturation and brilliance of the film's colors. Of course, when the final credits rolled, I was not at all surprised to see "Prints by Technicolor."

Knowing that they no longer manufactured the old three-color prints, I called Technicolor and was informed by an executive there that they are now using a proprietary photochemical process that recreates the original Technicolor "look" with amazing faithfulness to the Technicolor IB process.

I have been equally impressed with any number of recent releases printed by Technicolor.

 

[nworth]

An important point got lost here - Technicolor was a company and also a series of processes. I'm afraid all are gone now. "Color by Technicolor" simply tells you that they did the processing. The most famous Technicolor process used their patented three strip cameras to produce direct separation negatives on black and white stock. These were printed by a dye transfer process onto the release film. This process did not need masking to produce reasonably accurate color. Many variations on this process were also used. Later in its history, Technicolor made separations from color negative (or sometimes even positive) film and printed them by the same method. I've heard that masking was used to produce the separations on some of these, but that seems like a very difficult process. The color quality of this work seems to be quite variable. Late in its life Technicolor even made direct color prints, like what is done today. An interesting sideline (not much used, unfortunately) was to make separation black and white films from color negatives for archival purposes.

 

[dr5chrome]

From a direct copy 'film to film' aspect Pos-pos of coarse would not be a good method of reproduction. "The Print" from negative film stock was easier adapted for cine use due to obvious reasons. Also, the 'shooting latitude' is broader with neg stock in cine use. Neg stock became the standard due to the copy aspect even though positive stock is and was preferred by most cinematographers [we have several Hollywood clients]. Cinematographers not worried about short exposure latitude call us all the time for small B&W projects. Without the latitude issues, today positive stock produces a better image on screen & simply because the positive stock is easier to scan into post. The lack of positive services in the cine industry is the lack of use, not quality. EVERYTHING in cine today is scanned into post, so once the original is shot and scanned it is never used again. We're not in Kansas anymore...

dw

To reproduce accurate color, the capture process needs to include some method of masking to correct for unwanted color absorptions of the dyes. No positive system, to my knowledge, uses one. IDK if Technicolor did.

But, in addition to that, Pos-Pos reproduction is a "lossy" system that compresses data in the toe and shoulder during the print process. Neg-Pos processes are not and therefore survive multiple duplications without loss.

So, in regard to the OP, the color is not more accurate, but rather less accurate from a color rendition and a tone scale standpoint.

PE

 

[AgX]

An important point got lost here - Technicolor was a company and also a series of processes. I'm afraid all are gone now.

The company Technicolor is still around. It has about 13,000 employees and amongst other activities is still offering cine-lab services.

 

[ajuk]

I don't think asinine is accurate.

Maybe the word I was after is laborious.

When they say scan The Wizard of Oz forx example for BD or DVD do they use a print of the original 3 strips of film?

 

[PHOTOTONE]

It can be very confusing to those who are not familiar with the many different combinations of labs and lab services the cinema industry uses. Color by DeLuxe, for instance, means a standard Eastmancolor film printed at DeLuxe labs. Color by Technicolor may mean a Dye Transfer print (in the past) or just a standard Eastmancolor print, produced by the Technicolor lab., as they did both for many many years. Some films may have prints made by several labs, one of which might be Technicolor, and at one time those made at the Technicolor lab may have been their Dye Transfer process. One can usually tell, at least on older films, by visual examination of the print (holding the film in your hands). Technicolor prints have a different look to them. Metrocolor, DeLuxe, and others were just standard film processing operations using common Eastman, Agfa and Fuji filmstocks.

Also, films shot with the original Technicolor cameras using the 3 b/w negative rolls, can be and are often printed onto standard Eastmancolor film stocks. Any new film prints of subjects such as The Wizard of Oz, Gone With The Wind, etc, would be on Kodak print films, even though these productions were designed to be printed by the Technicolor process.

 

[PHOTOTONE]

Maybe the word I was after is laborious.

When they say scan The Wizard of Oz forx example for BD or DVD do they use a print of the original 3 strips of film?

They will often make a brand new print on current Kodak film stocks from which to derive the digital master.

 

[hrst]

They will often make a brand new print on current Kodak film stocks from which to derive the digital master.

This makes no sense. Source for this?

 

[PHOTOTONE]

This makes no sense. Source for this?

http://digitalcontentproducer.com/mag/video_first_person_restoring/

 

[AgX]

Well, they made a master negative from their digital files for two reasons: the archival issue and the economics of digitally printing a master negative from which directly or via internegatives the final release prints are printed.
That however copies are made especially for telecine is strange to me. It would mean that there are still stations that cannot handle data files.
I got the answer: that article is from 2000.

 

[hrst]

http://digitalcontentproducer.com/mag/video_first_person_restoring/

This case includes both direct scanning of original separations, and making traditional analog (optical or contact) print that is scanned or telecined afterwards.

This is from 1999, so I'm not surprised. Scanning was called telecining and used more expensive and inferior technology compared to today's --- analog lab operations still being the mainstream way to do things, including telecining. Due to limited dynamic range of telecine CCD's, usually they made special positive prints on telecine film stock, having lower contrast and Dmax than theatrical release print films, to match the dynamic range of CCD's and camera tubes. (See: http://motion.kodak.com/US/en/motion/Products/Distribution_And_Exhibition/h12395t.htm )

So, they used this older telecining technology for most rolls, and digitized the original seps directly for one roll. (And then exposed digital files to film with expensive laser printer, processed it, and digitized again. Does this sound wise? Nope. It's probably not done this way anymore.)

Although I'm not sure about this, I would believe that nowadays digital scans of three-strip separations are supposedly made directly from the very first negatives whenever possible (just like they did for roll 1A on the given case), because every analog duplicating stage (optical or contact) will lose some image detail and will also cost extra; as scanning and digital postprocessing is not rocket science anymore. If you have some other information about the current situation, please provide a bit more recent source.

 

[Photo Engineer]

Up to 11 intermediate stages are used to produce complex special effects. Then they are projected on the wide screen. They seem pretty sharp to me. The films (camera, interneg and print) were designed to retain a constant tone scale, sharpness and grain through multi stage processes.

At one time, Kodak made a masked positive film for direct production of a dupe negative from the master camera roll. This film failed in the market IIRC.

PE

 

[hrst]

In older films (from the 60's) effects like crossfade can dramatically reduce sharpness and affect tone scale, which can be seen even in small picture on TV. I actually like the effect .

Here is a study about sharpness loss in multiple generations using modern films:
http://www.cst.fr/IMG/pdf/35mm_resolution_english.pdf

So yes, they are quite good. Still I would guess that today the separations are scanned directly for the easiness and price, if the target is only a digital blu-ray or DVD release.