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Cinecolor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Cinecolor

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Cinecolor was an early subtractive color-model two color film process, based upon the Prizma system of the 1910s and 1920s and the Multicolor system of the late 1920s and 1930s. It was developed by William T. Crispinel and Alan M. Gundelfinger, and its various formats were in use from 1932 to 1955.

Contents

[edit] How Cinecolor worked

Main article: bi-pack color

A bi-pack color process, the photographer would load a standard camera with two films, one orthochromatic, dyed red, and a panchromatic strip behind it. Color light would expose the cyan record on the ortho stock, which also acted as a filter, exposing only red light to the panchromatic film stock.

In the laboratory, the negatives were processed on duplitized film and each emulsion was toned red or cyan.

While Cinecolor could produce vibrant reds, oranges, blues, browns and flesh tones, its renderings of other colors such as bright greens (rendered dark green) and purples (rendered a sort of dark magenta) were muted.

[edit] History

The Cinecolor process was invented in 1932 by English-born cinematographer William T. Crespinel (1890–1987),[1] who joined the Kinemacolor Corporation in 1906, and who went to New York in 1913 to work with Kinemacolor's American unit.[2] After that company folded in 1916, he worked for Prizma, another color film company.[3] He later worked for Multicolor, and patented several inventions in the field of color cinematography.[4]

Crespinel founded the Cinecolor Corporation in 1932 as a response to the success of the Technicolor Corporation, which held a partial monopoly on motion picture color. William Loss, a director of the Citizens Traction Company in New York, was its principal investor. The company bought four acres of land in Burbank, California for its processing plant. Crespinel retired as president of Cinecolor in 1948.

The company was largely founded on the patents and equipment of William Van Doren Kelley and his Prizma Color system, and was in direct competition with Multicolor, which folded in 1932. At that point, Cinecolor bought its equipment. Although limited in tone by comparison, Cinecolor's chief advantages over Technicolor were that color rushes were available within 24 hours, that the process itself only cost 25 percent more than black and white photography (the price grew cheaper with the more Cinecolor film stock bought), and could be used in modified black and white cameras.[5]

Before 1945, Cinecolor was used almost exclusively for short films. Cinecolor was used in at least 22 cartoons during the years 1932 to 1935, when Walt Disney held an exclusive contract with the Technicolor Corporation for three-color Technicolor in cartoon use.[6] Among the notable animated short subjects series made in Cinecolor were Ub Iwerks' ComiColor cartoons, a number of late-1940s Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, and many of Famous Studios' late-1940s Popeye the Sailor cartoons.

The first feature-length picture filmed in Cinecolor was Monogram Pictures' release The Gentleman From Arizona (1939), although no other Cinecolor features followed until 1945. Low-budget companies such as Monogram, Producers Releasing Corporation, and Screen Guild Productions were Cinecolor's chief employers. A 1945 PRC Cinecolor release The Enchanted Forest was the highest grossing film of that studio. The commercial and critical success of the film led both major and minor studios to use Cinecolor such as MGM's Gallant Bess (1946). The system could produce acceptable color pictures at a fraction of what Technicolor cost. Most features made in Cinecolor were westerns, because the primary colors in those films were blues, browns and reds.

Cinecolor was also prominently employed in Paramount's Popular Science actuality shorts (though many of these are credited with having been filmed in the similar, earlier Magnacolor process, and even a "New Magnacolor" process of the late 1940s). Hal Roach Studios made all four of its features in Cinecolor in 1947-1948, becoming the first Hollywood studio to do an all-color schedule.

Republic Pictures began using a similar process called Trucolor from the end of 1946 for a variety of films ranging from Westerns, travelogues, and epics of the life of Richard Wagner (Magic Fire) and the battle of the Alamo (The Last Command).

[edit] SuperCineColor

Image:Cinecolor1.jpg
Cinecolor film poster - 1952

The year 1948 was a major one for the Cinecolor Corporation. Aside from growing stock prices, they introduced 1,000-foot (300 m) film magazines, which cut back on the on-set lighting costs by 50 percent, and kept the cost of shooting in Cinecolor only 20 percent more than black and white.

The same year, Gundelfinger also developed a three-color process called SuperCineColor, but did not begin using it until 1951 with The Sword of Monte Cristo. Other films of note that used the SuperCinecolor process were Invaders From Mars, Abbott and Costello Meet Captain Kidd, Jack and the Beanstalk, Gog, and Top Banana (the latter two were both shot in 3-D).

SuperCineColor utilized black and white matrices made primarily by monopack color negatives made with Ansco/Agfa, DuPont, Kodachrome, or the popular Eastmancolor film, for principal photography. After the negative was edited, it was copied through color filters into three black and white negatives. An oddity of the system was that rather than use the typical cyan, magenta and yellow primary subtractive colors, SuperCineColor printed their films with red, blue and yellow matrices in order to create a system that was compatible with the previous printers. The result was an oddly striking look to the final print. Printing entailed using duplitized stock, in which one side contained a silver emulsion toned red-magenta, and on the other side, cyan-blue. A yellow layer was added on the blue side through means of imbibition. The soundtrack was subsequently printed on the blue-yellow side in a blue soundtrack, but separate from those records. The final prints had vivid dyes that did not fade, and contrary to popular opinion, were no grainier than Technicolor prints and were just as sharp in focus. Both of these myths seems to be perpetrated by 16 mm, regular-process Cinecolor prints.

[edit] The last years of Cinecolor

Cinecolor Corp. operated at a net loss from 1950 through 1954, partly because the weak financial position of its division in England made it necessary for the parent company to refinance it.[7][8] Donner Corporation, a private investment organization, acquired Cinecolor Corp. in June 1952.[9] In 1953, it became the Color Corporation of America, and specialized in SuperCineColor printing, as well as being a major Anscocolor processor. It also made Eastmancolor prints, did commercial film processing and printing of non-theatrical films, and black and white film processing for television. To stimulate its theatrical film business, Color Corp. financed independent movie producers.[10] The last theatrical feature with a SuperCinecolor credit was The Diamond Queen, released by Warner Bros. in November 1953. Thereafter, "Color by Color Corp. of America" was used for films like Shark River (1953) and Top Banana (1954).

Color Corporation of America was bought out on April 8, 1954 by Houston Color Film Laboratories, which processed Anscocolor at its plant in Los Angeles, and Houston Fearless Corp., which made processing and developing equipment, and it became strictly an Anscocolor processor.[11] Color Corp. sold its film processing laboratory in mid-1955 to provide its television and motion picture equipment-making division a laboratory in which to test its equipment.[12]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Social Security Death Index.
  2. ^ "William Crespinel, 96; Pioneer in Color Films", New York Times, June 24, 1987, p. B10. Passenger list of the S.S. Carmania, Port of New York, 3 February 1913, p. 16.
  3. ^ World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917–1918, State of New Jersey, County of Bergen, Draft Board 3, 5 June 1917.
  4. ^ Gate for Multiple Films, 1930; Method and Apparatus for Placing Sound Records in Color Photography, 1930; Method of Producing Films in Natural Color, 1930; Colored Photograph and Method of Making Same, 1932.
  5. ^ Gene Fernett, Hollywood's Poverty Row 1930-1950 (Coral Reef Publications, 1973), pp 15-19.
  6. ^ Including Betty Boop in Fleischer's Poor Cinderella (1934); two Merrie Melodies cartoons, Honeymoon Hotel (1934) and Beauty and the Beast (1934); two of M-G-M's Happy Harmonies cartoons, The Discontented Canary (1934) and The Old Pioneer (1934); and Ub Iwerks' Comicolor series that began in November 1933. The Big Cartoon Database. Two-color Technicolor became available for non-Disney cartoons in September 1934, and three-color Technicolor in September 1935.
  7. ^ "Cinecolor Corp. Plans To Lay Off 'Substantial' Personnel Temporarily", The Wall Street Journal, April 2, 1952, p. 8.
  8. ^ "Abreast of the Market", The Wall Street Journal, August 26, 1955, p. 15.
  9. ^ "Abreast of the Market", The Wall Street Journal, June 22, 1953, p. 11.
  10. ^ "Abreast of the Market", The Wall Street Journal, June 22, 1953, p. 11.
  11. ^ "Donner Corp. Sells Interest In Color Corp. of America", The Wall Street Journal, May 5, 1954, p. 6.
  12. ^ "Abreast of the Market", The Wall Street Journal, August 26, 1955, p. 15.

[edit] Further reading

  • John Belton, "Cinecolor," Film History 12:4 (2000), pp. 344-357.
  • Gene Fernett, Hollywood's Poverty Row 1930-1950 (Coral Reef Publications, 1973), pp 15-19.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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