Metrocolor

Jarin Blaschke · March 10, 2004

I saw this title card at the end of a film. What is it?

John Pytlak RIP · March 10, 2004

For many years, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) ran their own film laboratory on their Culver City CA studio lot. "Metrocolor" is their trade name for film processed in the Kodak EASTMAN color processes they ran.

The laboratory was closed a few years after Ted Turner bought MGM, then resold the lot to Lorimar, which sold it to Sony Pictures Corp.

Here's a history:

http://www.seeing-stars.com/Studios/MGM.shtml

Here is a map of the studio lot in 1988:

http://www.seeing-stars.com/ImagePages/LorimarMapPhoto.shtml

MGM Labs was the large building just to the lower right of Building 20, along Culver Boulevard.

David Mullen ASC · March 10, 2004

When the only viable full-color movie process was Technicolor (not counting Kodachrome, which duped poorly), studios had to rely on an outside company for all their color work, i.e. the Technicolor Corporation. All their b&w work was done in-house in their own labs.

When Kodak introduced Eastmancolor negative in 1950, the big studios began dropping 3-strip Technicolor -- not because Eastmancolor was better (it was about the same ASA and had worse color) but because it allowed them to use their own cameras and labs. By the last year of 3-strip photography (1955), only the smaller independent companies and studios were using Technicolor's cameras.

However, dye transfer was still a superior way of making large numbers of release prints so the studios continued to use Technicolor for some of their major releases print orders, but shot on Eastmancolor negative instead of 3-strip.

Eastmancolor print and duplicating stocks came out too around this time. Kodak had a rule that if a lab did not follow exact Kodak processing guidelines, they couldn't call the results "Eastmancolor" -- so studios started calling their Eastmancolor work "Deluxe" (20th Century Fox) or "Metrocolor" (MGM), etc.

There were also some (inferior) color products of the 1950's that these labs combined with Eastmancolor, hence the name change (i.e. they didn't always use Eastmancolor print stock.)

In the early days of Eastmancolor, MGM decided to go with a rival process called Anscochrome (even though it was a color negative process.) A few big MGM films were shot in Ansco (basically Agfa technology) like "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers" and "Lust for Life". These movies were also shot in CinemaScope. The process was a little grainier and more pastel than Eastmancolor.

Anyway, "Metrocolor" eventually just came to be a lab doing Eastmancolor work, just like Deluxe did. Technicolor started also doing Eastmancolor work but also offered dye transfer printing from b&w separations until the mid 1970's.