Jump to content

Three Strip Technicolor.


Recommended Posts

Hello.

 

Here's a little fun thread (no spamming, you don't need to worry about that ;) ) to find the best pieces of three strip technicolor cinematography.

 

Normally I associate three strip film with garish lighting and an extremely "staged" feel. But the Limehouse Blues' Ballet from Ziegfeld Follies of 1946 really does impress me, there is a fantastic blue light filtering through the darkness. Later in song the light are suddenly thrown on and the camera cranes down to this spectacular lime green set.

 

Magic.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Here's a great excerpt from David Watkin's autobiography which mentions 3-strip:

 

One of my first jobs, as a third camera assistant, was to be my only experience of the original three-strip Technicolor. This was a process as interesting as it was cumbersome, involving three separate rolls of film passing through the camera together. Personally I have found threesomes to be unsatisfactory affairs - one member, in my limited experience, tending to get left rather out of things. However the photographic variety seemed to manage well enough; two of the emulsions being run face to face in what may be described as missionary fashion, and the right at right angles through a prism. Here analogy breaks down.

 

Each strip of film was sensitised to a different colour and the three resulting black and white records were then used to make prints in exactly the same way as is used to reproduce coloured illustrations in books. There is a gentle irony attached to all this because a print could be made today of a three-strip picture in the 1930s which would be as pristine as the original, whereas one taken from the more modern process dating from the mid-fifties, where the dyes are incorporated in the emulsion, would be faded and dull. It is often the case that people who initiate a thing care enough about it to get it right, and it is those who come along afterwards and "improve" (which usually means making it more convenient for somebody, often an accountant) who manage to get it wrong. Place a page from a Gutenberg Bible beside one from any 19th century book and the browned and crumbling relic will not be the one made in 1455.

 

To return to my part in the proceedings, this consisted solely in filling forms, one oblong folio for each shot, detailing the colour of everything in sight from the sky and the grass to the leading actor's face after lunch. Three-strip afforded an uncanny degree of colour control and my job is supposed to have originated because of a picture shot on location in southern Ireland, where the letter and phone boxes are painted green. After a titanic struggle the exhausted laboratory sent back the first batch of rushes with them red as ever, only to get a rough bollocking by way of thanks.

 

Technicolor three-strip was developed and patented by a scientist, unable to spell correctly and of a retiring disposition who, perhaps due to an attraction of opposites, had married a strong-minded wife with a liking for brash colours. The name of this Pre-Raphaelite lady was Natalie Kalmus and it appears on every three-strip picture as colour consultant, consultant in this context being a euphemism for dictator. It might be interesting to print a few of these movies with a somewhat calmer palette but it probably would not suit them.

 

Martin Hart at the Widescreen Museum webpage is somewhat more curt:

 

If you think Charles and Diana had problems.... No piece written about Natalie Kalmus has ever been found that didn't include the word "bitch". The Curator sees no need for name calling, especially when others have done it so eloquently.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's hard to find many non-musicals or comedies shot in 3-strip, but when you do, you see that many of them are fairly subtle in terms of color -- "Drums Along the Mohawk" for example, or "The Caine Mutiny".

 

Sandy Mackendrik's 'The Lady Killers' was the last British 3-strip movie, if not the last one period.

That had quite a subdued pallette.

 

Sandy said working with the huge blimp was awkward.

 

Movies like 'Northwest Passage' and 'Flying Leathernecks' had naturalistic pallattes.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Foxfire was the last American film to use Three strip, and it came out the same year as the Ladykillers. Come to think of it, I'm not sure which was filmed later...Foxfire, or the Ladykillers, so it's hard to say which one gets the sad honor of being the last. It is definitely one of the two. Interesting fact: several of the three strip cameras were converted to shoot VistaVision, hence the confusion when production photos on post 1955 films show what appears to be a three strip camera being used!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Premium Member
A thought occured to me, rather than trying to duplicate the original technicolor mechanism, could one make a new one utilizing modern 3-CCD trichromatic prisms?

 

Well, since the CCD's are more less right up against the filters/prism, youd have to get the film plane close to that, and probably it would have to be Super-16, not 35mm, since the prism-blocks are all for 2/3" cameras (or smaller). And then you'd have three Super-16 movements jutting out, one center, one on each side at an angle, making a rather wide camera body. But I suppose one could experiment with a prism block and see if there's room.

 

Remember that you'd still also need to make room for the shutter in front of the prism block, probably limiting you to longer lenses just to have all the back-focus room.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

BTW, Foxfire was photographed in 1954. :)

 

I must have been thinking of the release date, 1955. My mistake! That would mean that the Ladykiller's was the last three strip film, since I'm fairly certain that was shot in early 55, and released late that year.

Brian Rose

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, since the CCD's are more less right up against the filters/prism, youd have to get the film plane close to that, and probably it would have to be Super-16, not 35mm, since the prism-blocks are all for 2/3" cameras (or smaller). And then you'd have three Super-16 movements jutting out, one center, one on each side at an angle, making a rather wide camera body. But I suppose one could experiment with a prism block and see if there's room.

 

Remember that you'd still also need to make room for the shutter in front of the prism block, probably limiting you to longer lenses just to have all the back-focus room.

 

I've found a supplier making them for much larger setups, up to and including 4/3, which would cover 35mm.

 

And yes, they are readily available. I've located a few suppliers for them over the years.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Interesting fact: several of the three strip cameras were converted to shoot VistaVision, hence the confusion when production photos on post 1955 films show what appears to be a three strip camera being used!

 

Here are a couple:

 

vvhitch-r.jpg

 

'The Trouble with Harry'.

The blimp is larger than normal 3-strip blimp to accomadate the coaxial 2000' magazine.

The at the top front is the give away.

 

hitch2.jpg

 

'The Man who Knew Too Much'

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest Tim Partridge
Sandy Mackendrik's 'The Lady Killers' was the last British 3-strip movie, if not the last one period.

That had quite a subdued pallette.

 

Sandy said working with the huge blimp was awkward.

 

Movies like 'Northwest Passage' and 'Flying Leathernecks' had naturalistic pallattes.

 

THE FEMININE TOUCH I think was three strip too and that was 1956 (Paul Beeson BSC)- please correct me if I am wrong!

 

I think it is three strip- 1955's A KID FOR TWO FARTHINGS directed by Carol Reed is like a social realist fantasy of sorts, set in the East End market area of London but from a naive child's fairytale point of view. The colours are HIGHLY saturated (Diana Dors at times looks neon), but it cuts from availably lit location shots of East London to a Shepperton backlot, often hard lit with pounding old arc lamps. Intriguingly, the result is often seamless AND naturalistic. It is mainly the characteristic portrait work (for the most part Ms. Dors) that calls attention to the stylised lighting. Edward Scaife was the DOP. You would never know it was not shot entirely on location.

 

Not sure if you've seen GENEVIEVE from 1953, British classic lit by Christopher Challis. Very beautifully subdued on the locations. I'm pretty sure it's three strip. I remember reading in Challis' autobiography that he was really unhappy with the film as they were making it and watching back the footage. Challis had wanted the film, a road movie, to be shot at Pinewood's North tunnel (a big special effects stage with a rear projection set up by the Rank group with the idea of shooting whole movies in front of a process screen and such- George Lucas mentality). There was a maintenance problem of sorts (or something like that) forcing them to shoot GENEVIEVE's car shots on locations. Challis felt the shots were way too inconsistent, often he couldn't get an exposure on many dull overcast days that had to cut with stuff shot on days with bright blue skies and hard shadows.

 

GENEVIEVE has really stood the test of time, and there's not one process shot in the whole movie, and it's all the better for it. Not one cringeworthy process shot in sight!

 

Here's the famous scene in which Kay Kendall plays a trumpet (which is lit more typically high key given the glammed location):

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-aB_RLeyrs

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Interesting site, but I'm not sure what the special process is they talk about. That effect is also known as the Harris shutter, and fairly simple. Just mount a camera loaded with color film on a steady tripod and photograph the scene once with a red filter, backwind, expose again with the green, and again with the blue. It can also be done with BW neg, but unlike the color footage, you have to shoot color separations, then recombine in post...it's a little more complex, and uses triple the normal footage, but the color (in my opinion) is much better and more "far out." Once I get back to school I'll post some of my footage to demonstrate this. Great link though!

Brian

Link to comment
Share on other sites

'special process' isn't anything but what we already know about - the site is geared towards the general public, written by someone maybe with less knowledge of the details or at least attempting to keep them arcane enough to distract copy-cats (typical cynical viewpoint of your truly) - not sure exactly of the spex of the writer and its besides the point anyway ...

 

Anyhoos, I've been involved with another project that screened in the same festival as this footage last year and also was present for the filming of the new upcoming version (they used my lens) ...

 

It was three runs of 16mm double-x shot with RGB filters around 2hrs or so apart (enough for a nice lunch and glass of wine or three in between, I also paid some library fines) ...

 

Combined optically into a 16mm positive print so the process is completely analog (and costly)

 

I haven't had a chat with the maker about how much I should really 'spill' here - but like you say it certainly isn't a new system and process-wise whatever I've talked about has been public knowledge for a millennia/20 - One of those instances where concept is key though ...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Premium Member

There's a blimped 3-strip Technicolor camera on temporary display at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in DC. They've moved a "greatest hits" collection there from the Museum of American History while it's under renovation. It's in the same gallery as a pair of Dorothy's red slippers, a Strawman costume, original R2D2 and C3PO, etc.

post-10210-1181101372_thumb.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My Friend Bruce Heller owns two Technicolor cameras and is restoring them. Here is a link to his blog: http://www.galaxyanimation-and-effects.com/blog

 

I have talked with him about the viability of shooting with his cameras. The film is the real trick. It has to be perforated with a perforation's machine that is matched to the camera for accurate registration. Fortunately he has the perforators. He has been in contact with a few labs to have film made but the cost is fairly high. It would require a very special project, or a very special patron, to generate the funds to actually shoot with either of his cameras. He expects to have one of them fully operational by early fall.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...