When was color film invented

But the element that helped the movie transcend to greatness was Technicolor, the most famous color process in Hollywood. With its highly saturated hues and completely natural representation of real-life color, the process marked the precedent for the mainstream use of color in every film that came afterward. Yet, as is the case with most innovations such as sound, special effects, and CGI , the film that popularized it is not the one that invented it.

Color films existed long before the idea for the iconic Hollywood adaptation of the Wizard of Oz book was even conceived. Around motion pictures experimented with some sort of color techniques prior to the phenomenon, but unfortunately, many of them were lost.

As far back as , Thomas Edison was already exhibiting short hand-painted frame by frame non-narrative films for the Kinetoscope - a predecessor for movie projectors designed for individual viewing through a peephole window - the first and most famous of which is Annabelle's Serpentine Dance.

However, the first motion picture projected in natural color Kinemacolor was A Visit to the Seaside , an eight-minute British short film that shows small snippets of people living their everyday lives, followed by the first feature-length silent drama using the same technique: The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. This means that the latter is actually the first non-documentary full-color feature film in history.

The reason why The Wizard of Oz is widely regarded as the first color movie is because of the effect it had on the industry. After exposure and reversal processing, the black and white positive image was carefully placed in register with another filter screen. The result was a colour transparency which could be viewed by transmitted light. The Joly process was introduced commercially in , and remained on the market for a few years.

However, the limited colour sensitivity of the plates then in use meant that the results were not very successful. In they gave the first presentation of their process to the French Academy of Science and by had begun to produce autochrome plates commercially. News of their discovery soon spread and examples of the new plates were eagerly sought. Critical reaction was rapturous. Alfred Stieglitz wrote:.

Manufacturing autochrome plates was a complex process. First, pulverised starch grains were passed through a sieve to isolate individual grains between 10—15 microns in diameter.

Many different types of starch were tried, but the humble potato gave the best results. These microscopic grains were then dyed red, green and blue-violet, mixed and spread over a glass plate, and coated with a sticky varnish. Next, charcoal powder was spread over the plate to fill any gaps between the coloured starch grains.

A roller submitted the plate to a pressure of five tons per square centimetre to flatten out and spread the grains before the plate was varnished to make it waterproof.

The final plate was a three-coloured filter screen, on every square inch of which were about four million transparent starch grains, each one acting as a coloured filter. The final stage was to coat the plate with a panchromatic emulsion. Autochrome plates were simple to use. They required no special apparatus and photographers were able to use their existing cameras.

Exposure times, however, were long—about 30 times those of conventional plates. Even in bright sunshine, an exposure of at least one second was needed, and in cloudy weather this could be increased to 10 seconds or more. Even in a well-lit studio, portraits could require an exposure of as long as 30 seconds. Following exposure, autochrome plates were reversal-processed to produce a positive image.

When viewed by transmitted light passing through the plate, the millions of tiny red, green and blue-violet grains combined to give a full-colour photograph, accurately reproducing the colours of the original subject. In theory, the grains were mixed and distributed randomly on the surface of the plate.

In practice, however, mathematical probability meant some grouping of grains of the same colour was inevitable. These screens used either a random grain pattern or, more commonly, different geometric patterns of lines and squares. Most of these processes are now long forgotten, but one remained popular for years.

Dufaycolor first appeared in as a 16mm cine film, followed in , by a rollfilm version. Devised by Louis Dufay, Dufaycolor employed a regular geometric screen of red lines alternating with rows of green and blue rectangles. Colour reproduction was good and it was comparatively fast—although only one-third of the speed of contemporary black and white film. Whereas autochromes appealed to photographers who liked to do their own processing, Dufaycolor was aimed at the snapshot market.

A processing service which returned finished transparencies, mounted and ready for viewing, opened up colour photography to a whole new class of photographers. Dufaycolor, the last of the screen processes, remained on the market up to the s. Most early colour processes worked on the principle of mixing, or adding together, appropriate combinations of red, green and blue light.

All additive processes share one great disadvantage—they rely on the use of filters which, by their nature, block out a great deal of light, resulting in long exposure times and very dense transparencies. Moreover, the colour photographs made by using these processes can only be viewed by transmitted light—by projection or by using special viewing devices. The original theory for subtractive colour reproduction can be traced back to the fertile mind of Louis Ducos du Hauron who, as early as the s, explained the method in his book Les Couleurs en Photographie.

Du Hauron proposed that colour separation negatives be used to produce three positive images which were then dyed the complementary colours of cyan bluegreen , magenta blue-red and yellow. Each of these complementary colours absorbs, or subtracts hence the name , one of the primary colours. Cyan absorbs red light, reflecting a mixture of blue and green light. A cyan image, therefore, performs the same function as the red filter used in an additive process.

Similarly, magenta absorbs green light and yellow absorbs blue light. By accurately superimposing these three complementary colours, all other colours can be reproduced. The colour in subtractive processes comes from dyes or pigments rather than coloured filters.

With subtractive colour, white, for example, is represented by clear glass or by white paper rather than by light passing through three filters. This means that subtractive processes are much less wasteful of light. More importantly, they work with reflected rather than transmitted light which means that they can be used to produce colour photographs on paper. The development of subtractive colour processes followed two distinct paths. First, the design of specialised cameras, for taking sets of colour separation negatives and, secondly, the search for practical methods of making and superimposing three positive images in the complementary colours.

When taking colour separation negatives of subjects that did not move—for example, a vase of flowers—a conventional camera could be used. All that was needed was to change the colour filter after each exposure. If a great deal of colour work was being done, this procedure could be made simpler through the use of repeating backs. A number of different devices of this sort were marketed. The simplest type were long plateholders, fitted with three filters, which could be slid along the camera back in three steps.

The most complex were fitted with clockwork motors, enabling three negatives to be exposed in rapid succession in as little as two or three seconds. When photographing subjects where movement was likely to occur—such as portraits—even automatic repeating backs were not fast enough. For these, a camera that could expose all three negatives simultaneously was needed. Colour was its direct response as television posts could only screen black-and-white films.

But when television itself switched to colour in the mids, it could only follow it, and the transition was completed, turning colour into a standard. Economic reasons played an essential part in the difficult adaptation to colour film; but the slow demand was nurtured by aesthetical doubts as people did not believe in the potential of screen colour.

The difficult adoption of colour partly resulted from the psychological, ideological and aesthetical impediments shared by artists, critics and audiences.

The abjection for colour was a rooted phenomenon, and this impacted the transition to colour cinematography. Visually and stylistically, screen colour did not convince everyone. As Douglas Fairbanks stated, colour:. Not only has the process of colour motion picture photography never been perfected, but there has been a grave doubt whether […] it could be applied, without detracting more than it added to motion picture technic.

The argument has been that it would tire and distract the eye, take attention from acting, and facial expression, blur and confuse the action. Screen colour was apprehended in a total different form than human natural vision, and people did not believe that film could expose colour as we see it every day.

But the field of vision is saturated and confused. Becky Sharp was the first Technicolor long-feature released, and most people were very critical of its use of saturated colours for costuming and neutrals in the background, juxtaposing hues that dispersed the attention and constantly pulled the eye away. Colour should not mean gaudiness. So colours appeared garish and inaccurate mainly because of the aesthetical choices made by Technicolor consultants as they wanted to display their new technology, but failed to convince.

One of the most serious fear about using colour was that it would distract the viewer from important elements within a film, like the narrative or the performance. Using colour meant exploiting the set, costumes, make-up and props, therefore granting the spectator with more visual information and giving him the chance to focus on specific details. Colour was seen as distracting from the story and unsuited for intense dramas. It was commonly used in light-hearted genres like Westerns, musicals or cartoons.

Black-and-white was favoured for darker dramas and was treated very distinctly from colour. The Academy Awards for example had two separate categories, one for best black-and-white film and one for best colour-feature. Even Herbert Kalmus said:. The story should be chosen and the scenario written with colour in mind from the start, so that by its use effects are obtained, moods created, beauty and personalities emphasised, and the drama enhanced.

Because colour came later, many people denied its right to exist as one separate medium, and conceived it as an addition to black-and-white. In The Case of Colour Film , Brian Winston writes that technological evolution is embedded in the social sphere and is a direct expression of our culture.

Colour film is a cultural creation that responds to the social addiction to realism in the Bazinian sense, this necessity to mould art through our perception of reality. So on one side, film-makers worked on bringing screen image as close as possible to human vision. On the other hand, the transition to colour became complete when film-makers understood its creative potential beyond the realms of realism, and started treating it as a new artistic tool to empower their imagination.

A colour can mould a specific mood or carry out certain symbols and emotions; for instance, red is associated to passion, anger and danger. Natalie Kalmus explains that colours mixed with white suggests youth; with grey, it implies refinement and with black, dignity. All colours speak their own language, and it is up to the director to play with their connotations and sharpen the meaning of a film.

They had more control over lighting, exposure, choice of set, costumes and props, but also over the colours of an exterior scene by deciding what weather, season of the year, or time of day to shoot in. Colours also provide cues to read the face and body of actors, and forge connections between characters through costumes.

She always wears white, red, green and blue, and her lipstick symbolises the dangerous femme fatale. The only time she wears a different colour the peach nightgown is when she is pregnant and feels imprisoned by the baby growing inside her. Colours highlight the antagonism between the two sisters, and even if they appear plausible and naturalistic, their systematic patterning constitutes a subtle channel of expression and allegories, thus reinforcing the drama.

Hence colour offered many aesthetical possibilities which encouraged its complete adoption by film-makers, who enriched their creations and gained a tighter control over film techniques. As we have seen, the thirty years in which cinema shifted from black-and-white cinematography to screen colour were full of obstacles, but by s the film industry had completely accepted colour.

Scepticism disappeared as the technology became more efficient and more accessible. Prices for the colour equipment went down, and profit increased.

Even more importantly, artists and critics overstepped their psychological barrier towards colour technology and learned to appreciate and praise it. As black-and-white films disappeared, film-makers started to understand that the important thing was not to use colour because they would suffer at the box-office with black-and-white, but because they simply wanted to, in order to unfold their creativity.

Consequently, it gave them more freedom to enlarge their aesthetical palette and offer a greater variety of technique to the audience. I know this is a little redundant, but color is important to film in many ways.

Without it, we may of never had color symbolism, and it has become important to the character of the setting of the film. So great! So thanks for that!! I like how Roger Ebert was against the attempts by Ted Turner to colorize black and white classics. There actually was! Some critics were very negative about colour and their responses were quite radical. I would also like to see the importance and use of broadcast colors.

You really should make a history lesson on Movie Sound because it was evolutionary like color film. That would really also be compelling… maybe even a side by side study of the two topics. Excellent article! Digital is only a facsimile. Just like a fax, it can only reproduce so much.

My nephew is in the digital theater projection industry and he tells me that they are still adding colors to the digital process. Film was so much better. What an interesting piece!