Technicolor closes its Hollywood Lab after 100 years

Another sad note of history. Thinking back to when I was a kid and watching a matinee on the big screen in Technicolor was a real treat.

No exposed film, no processing. Sad.

Very sad.

It IS a shame. But then, from what I can tell, most anything coming out of Hollywood these days is just claptrap anyway. I seriously doubt any of it will ever become a "classic".

Hollywood has always produced claptrap. That's part of its success. Who can believe that some hayseed through an absurd accident has to fill-in for a human fly? With no experience he climbs up the side of a building and winds up hanging from the minute hand of a huge clock while a mouse runs down his sleeve. I'd say the plot is ridiculous, but "Safety Last" is a masterpiece. Art takes many forms. If you can accept Hieronymus Bosch, why not "Porgy's Part II"? For me Technicolor ended when they stopped making dye transfer (DT) prints. That was because Kodak developed a color process that was much cheaper (though it couldn't produce the rich tones of DT). The original Technicolor DT plant was on Cole St. in Hollywood and the building is now owned by UCLA Film Archives, so that some of the artistic values Technicolor represented are preserved.

We can't be against progress. Charlie Chaplin said that movies would never talk and would never be in color. His films still last but that doesn't give him the right to limit others in the expression of their art. Converting a motion picture to a set of digital files is a much more efficient process than throwing off two thousand analogue prints. Hollywood has always been about the money, so if you save a production ninety per cent on distribution costs they'll take you up on it. Digital screenings have no splices or specks of dust, but the effect of watching a digital film is sort of like drinking Tang. Some people crave the values of a more natural medium.

There are more horses today in the US than when Henry Ford drove his first automobile. Electric guitars have not supplanted violins. Photography has not replaced oil paints. But a lot of silent film stars lost their jobs when sound came into the movie theatres. By the same token, the business models for the silver-halide companies will have to change. The problem is that they represented a huge capital investment and right now there is no money to maintain the process. It is disappearing--like Technicolor's plant in Glendale. We should have confidence that the public will always prefer quality at the right price. We just have to invent a way to do it.

falotico said:

The problem is that they represented a huge capital investment and right now there is no money to maintain the process. It is disappearing--like Technicolor's plant in Glendale. We should have confidence that the public will always prefer quality at the right price. We just have to invent a way to do it.

Click to expand...

The public has a rather poor track record, making the technically inferior into the commercial success for all the wrong reasons.

VHS over Beta
MP3 over CD sound quality
Now we have 4K digital cinema distributed digitally in its rather pixelated large screen glory, over film projection, due to studio execs catering to the bottom line. The viewing public does not complain.

wiltw said:

The public has a rather poor track record, making the technically inferior into the commercial success for all the wrong reasons.

VHS over Beta
MP3 over CD sound quality
Now we have 4K digital cinema distributed digitally in its rather pixelated large screen glory, over film projection, due to studio execs catering to the bottom line. The viewing public does not complain.

Click to expand...

Do not forget PC over Mac

Tom1956 said:

It IS a shame. But then, from what I can tell, most anything coming out of Hollywood these days is just claptrap anyway. I seriously doubt any of it will ever become a "classic".

Click to expand...

I think the term 'TV writer' has become an oxymoron. The problem is probably true of movies, too, with so many remakes of TV and movie classics. Tons of 'reality' shows, no imagination needed. No good story or amusing dialog needed for those.
My theory is that the writers in their 20's-30's all were given toys made to mimic so many real things, so their imaginations remain underdeveloped because as small children they didn't have to pretend that a stick was a rifle or their old doll had a new outfit.

Most definitely sad. This isn't progression - it's a race to the bottom. Yet another thing trashed by money and the lowest common denominator.

Prints I could concede but source material or OCN going digital is a death nail for the artform honestly. Process is important in movie making and digital breeds a lack of discipline and commitment.

Honestly I can't complain too much. I don't go to the theater much, but every film I have seen over the last ten years or so has left me upset by the quality of the projected image. With the ones projected from film there were scratches and poor registration on most of them. On the digitally projected ones I can see the pixels if I sit too close. Neither is really a better experience vs. getting a Blueray disk and watching on the home plasma.

My only issue with the switch to digital projection is that it will hurt Kodak and Fuji.

The writing has been on the wall since 2011 when color by technicolor became color by Deluxe. Since 2011 the US-Technicolor prints were done by Deluxe a similar deal has been struck for European Technicolor labs. Prints by Technicolor and closure of lab no wonder they haven't really done anything since 2011. While Technicolor closes a few other labs like Cinelicious, Alpha cine service take over. More Power to them.

L Gebhardt said:

My only issue with the switch to digital projection is that it will hurt Kodak and Fuji.

Click to expand...

It does not hurt Fuji anymore as they retracted from ther cine camera-&print-film business some time ago.

It does hurt Agfa and Kodak though.

despite being a film geek (obviously), a don't mind 35mm prints going away as the main distribution format, as long as it doesn't mean the death of film aqusition. although nothing comes close to a first generation contact print from the original camera negative, digital projection does come closer that an avarage film print. sad but true. if the majority of dcp showings will be 4K, it won't even be up for a debate. not to mention the billions of dollars to be saved, once the virtual print fees expire.

Sirius Glass said:

Do not forget PC over Mac

Click to expand...

And I-phone over Blackberry.

railwayman3 said:

And I-phone over Blackberry.

Click to expand...

Sorry, you are pretty much wrong on this one. This is validated they the numbers who migrated because they did not want a keyboard.

Sirius Glass said:

Sorry, you are pretty much wrong on this one. This is validated they the numbers who migrated because they did not want a keyboard.

Click to expand...

Actually plenty of people wouldn't mind a keyboard. I don't believe that's the primary switching reason from blackberry to iPhone but who cares as its off topic as it is.

All that matters to me is the original camera negative is shot on film.

In the case of IMAX there sure as heck is a difference between 15-perf 70mm projection and *any* kind of digital print distribution unless you expect them to be delivering 50 terabytes of data per release.

Anyways aside from all that the OCN being film changes both the approach and the process and that's what's most important.