Technicolor is a famous name in the cinema industry. It is a film color processing company. Technicolor shaped the entire world of cinema with vibrant color films way ahead of its time.
Technicolor was founded in the early 20t century. The company took some time for development. After nearly a decade, they came to shape with their sophisticated coloring process that changed the film industry.
Their processing of color for motion pictures was so sophisticated that they were the only ones to process them. You will need to see a Technicolor film by yourself to truly admire them.
History of Technicolor
Technicolor was founded in the early 20th century. Technicolor was part of its parent company Technicolor SA (Founded on February 27, 1893, in Paris).
With some interesting folding of events, the company drove its focus into the art of filmmaking. This led to the creation of the Technicolor in 1914.
Technicolor did excellent in the color department of motion pictures. They had 4 methods of coloring. The first three steps are their two-strip method and the final one is under their three-strip method.
Technicolor Inc was purchased by MacAndrews & Forbes in 1982. They purchased Technicolor for $100 million.
Then in 1988, Technicolor was sold to Carlton Communications PLC for $780 million. In 2000, Technicolor bought Consolidated Film Industries, a film processing company to expand its operations.
Technicolor did face a lot of competition during its era of color capturing in motion pictures. But the company was able to move on. Technicolor technology is still used in Hollywood. But not as a mainstream method.
But their real three-strip method is now extinguished. It is possible to restore, but that will take millions of dollars.
The Process of Technicolor 300
During its peak time in the early and mid 20th century, Technicolor had two main methods. Their journey began with the two-strip method. After two improvements, they moved to a three-strip method.
Two Strip
Technicolor started its journey with the two-strip method. The two-strip method originally had a two-color system. Red and green.
In the very first version (Process 1) the camera will have a prism beam-splitter behind its lens. The prism will split the coming light into a red and a green projectile.
Films made with this method require extra effort for angling the camera. Then it would also require a special type of projector to show it to the audience.
The Gulf Between was the only film made with this process. This process did not make it because of one fatal issue. It required a skilled projectionist to align the beams perfectly.
So Technicolor worked on developing a better method which is known as process 2. Process 2 was marginally more successful than process 1. It was developed in 1922 and many Technicolor films were created with this method.
Process 2 used an identical method of beam splitter as process 1. But this time the negatives from the two strips were used for color prints. The two-color prints would get cemented together. As it has two prints cemented into one, the strip would get thicker compared to regular film strips.
This method eliminated the need for a special projector and so the skill of a protectionist was no longer necessary.
But it had some problems. The first issue comes with focusing. The two strips could not be focused perfectly at the same time. This puts a limit on the depth of focusing. Then there is the issue of cupping. The intense heat from the projector’s beam made the strips bulge after multiple uses. Those bulge strips had to be sent to Technicolor labs at Boson for flattening.
That brought up another issue. Scratching.
As the films had color on both sides, they were very vulnerable to scratching. The flattening process made a lot of scratches in the strips. They had to be repaired by adding in color. But those fixed spots would often appear brighter in the film.
Luckily Technicolor was already working on a new improved version, the Process 3.
Process 3 used the same method of process 2 for recording, but the strips were processed differently with gelatin. This solved the issue of cupping, but they were still vulnerable to scratching.
The strips created in the early versions of process 3 had grain issues. They were fixed in the next improvement.
Three Strip
The two-strip methods of Technicolor were very successful. The Process-3 was the most successful one and it was widely adopted by all film studios for producing films. Technicolor created its monopoly in the color motion picture market.
But after the great depression, things started to go down. To bring things back on track, Technicolor introduced their three-strip method.
The advantage of the three-strip method is that it is no longer limited to the red and green color spectrum. It can now produce natural films on the full spectrum.
In this three-strip method, the camera (made specially by Technicolor) would record three beams. One from the red spectrum, one green and the other blue. The negatives created from this would get positive copies.
The strips will then get soaked with complementary colors. The red spectrum strip will get soaked with cyan. The green stripe will be soaked in Magenta and the blue one will get yellow.
Then the dye will get transferred in a dye-transfer process
The process was so sophisticated at that time that only Technicolor was able to do it with their machine. The machine would take a whole facility.
The strips coming out of this method would be too thick. But the colors were natural and would not fade due to the heat from the projector’s beam.
You may have seen the Technicolor film, Wizard of the OZ. That film was made with this method.
Conclusion
Now the film industry works with more advanced color motion picture mechanisms for producing naturally colored films. The Three-strip method of Technicolor is an obsolete process of producing films now.
But this procedure was what drove the film industry in a different direction and it will forever remain an iconic process.
