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The three strip Technicolor Camera | Three Strip Camera in Sound Blimp |
Two students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Herbert Kalmus and Daniel Comstock, wanted to promote colour cinematography and since they were both 'Tech' graduates, named their company Technicolor. They started with a two-colour system balanced for daylight using red and green filters, with two images being formed by a prism behind the camera lens. But after difficulties with colour fringing in the special projection optics this system was soon abandoned. Process number two used a single negative in a camera with a two frame pull-down so that red and green images could be photographed on adjacent frames. Prints from each image were cemented together and floated over baths of their respective dyes. But with the coming of sound this idea was discarded in favour of process number three. This used separate negatives for the red and green images, from which positive matrices in relief were made which acted like a rubber stamp. These were dyed red and green, and then rolled into contact with a strip of clear film coated with a dye absorbing emulsion. This method had a normal silver sound track and enabled many prints to be made without wearing out the original negative. Messrs Kalmus and Comstock realised that to create a more natural colour they had to combine red, green and blue, in correct proportions.
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The three strip Technicolor Camera | Three Strip Camera in Sound Blimp |
So in 1932 they announced a new three colour process using a specially designed camera. Behind the single lens was a beam splitter consisting of two prisms and a partially reflective mirror at their joined faces, and two apertures. The rear aperture received an image through a green filter, and the side aperture an image through a magenta filter which passed both red and blue light. These three colours were photographed onto three separate films with matrices made from each negative used to make dye transfer prints. For the next twenty years 'Glorious Technicolor' reigned supreme but in 1950 Kodak introduced their multi-layer Eastmancolor negative negative and positive emulsions, balanced for artificial light, which could be used in any camera. This made the Technicolor three strip process virtually obsolete overnight, although it was many years before dye transfer prints were finally abandoned - 1975 in Hollywood and 1978 in London. But the laboratory equipment did not become obsolete and in the 1980s most of it was exported to China where there was need of an economic system for the mass production of 35mm colour prints. Today, three strip cameras can only be found in museums and private collections. For 80 years Technicolor has been at the cutting edge of colour film techniques and film handling, and their logo in the end credits has always been associated with a quality product. Today Technicolor provides picture processing 24-hours a day in any format (including the large 'Space Theatre' formats) from its plants in Hollywood, New York, London and Rome. There used to be a plant in Paris but it closed down in 1960 as London Airport developed and provided easy access worldwide to and from the UK plant. Each laboratory is fully equipped to make 35mm prints with modern digital sound tracks including Dolby SR.D, Sony SDDS, and DTS. The advent of Dolby Stereo photographic sound in the 1970s put an end to 35mm prints with magnetic stripe, and in doing so got rid of prints with the non-standard CinemaScope-type perforations which were always a problem. However 70mm prints are still provided with sound on magnetic stripes, either with or without Dolby noise reduction systems, or alternatively the special photographic time code track for the DTS system which is printed from a 35mm sound negative. But Technicolor are nowhere near the end of the road, as research continues into new and improved methods of colour film printing and negative processing. Who knows what the next century will bring? We shall not have long to wait and see. The history of Technicolor would not be complete without mentioning the name of Natalie Kalmus, the wife of founder Herbert Kalmus, who was for many years the Colour Consultant on numerous productions. She came to England in 1936 to work on Wings Of The Morning, and supervised all the English Technicolor productions made from that time until well after the outbreak of war