I'm going to recreate technicolor, but I have one problem

[Brian Rose]

I wasn't quite sure where to post this, but I figured you all would have the best knowledge on this subject. Okay, I'm looking at shooting an animated short, and being a big technicolor afficionado, I realized that I could shoot my film in black and white using the successive exposure technique used by Disney in the 30s, 40s and 50s. Thus, I can do true technicolor (save for the imbibition printing). Now, I know how to tint my film in post (I use adobe premiere pro 1.5) to recreate YCM separations, but I'm at a lost for how to combine the three to form the full color image. I'd love to hear any tips! Thanks a lot!

Best,

Brian Rose.

Edited October 16, 2005 by Brian Rose

[Scott Fritzshall]

I wasn't quite sure where to post this, but I figured you all would have the best knowledge on this subject. Okay, I'm looking at shooting an animated short, and being a big technicolor afficionado, I realized that I could shoot my film in black and white using the successive exposure technique used by Disney in the 30s, 40s and 50s. Thus, I can do true technicolor (save for the imbibition printing). Now, I know how to tint my film in post (I use adobe premiere pro 1.5) to recreate YCM separations, but I'm at a lost for how to combine the three to form the full color image. I'd love to hear any tips! Thanks a lot!

Best,

Brian Rose.

You can do this in a program such as After Effects or Combustion. There are channel operators that allow you to select the red, green, and blue channels for your image. In Combustion it's the operator called Compound RGB Arithmetic.

[Brian Rose]

Another question: I don't have after effects, so I'm not familiar with it, but is it intended as a post-production tool? Could I import my footage into after effects, create my rgb composites, then export it to premiere for editing?

Best,

BR

[John Pytlak RIP]

For many years after 3-strip Technicolor was discontinued, Disney continued to use sequential separation exposures for their animated features, even though color duplicate negatives and EASTMAN Color prints were the release method.

 

But shooting with separation exposures is only a very small part of what gave the Technicolor "look".

[Joseph White]

don't know how helpful this will be, but it's an interesting read regardless if you haven't encountered it before. Its the online version of the American Cinematographer article on "The Aviator" - a movie that rather successfully emulated the Technicolor look:

 

http://www.theasc.com/magazine/jan05/aviator/index.html

 

Best of luck

[Scott Fritzshall]

Another question: I don't have after effects, so I'm not familiar with it, but is it intended as a post-production tool? Could I import my footage into after effects, create my rgb composites, then export it to premiere for editing?

Best,

BR

Yup, that's exactly how you do it. This method can give you a pretty substantial amount of control over the look of your image, but as John said, there's more to the technicolor look than just this. Now that I'm thinking about it, this may not be the best way for you to go about it. For a short film, you may be better off simply using AE or Combustion to do a color grade until you've got the sort of look you want.

 

You may also want to check out www.vfxtalk.com, they might be able to give you more thorough advice. I think I recall seeing a tutorial a few months back on getting the techincolor look of The Aviator, but I can't find it at the moment. That would probably be helpful for you.

[Rolfe Klement]

it would be more effecient to do a test run on one or two sequences - rather than do all the rushes. The usual process is to edit the film first then apply SFX - otherwise you waste time and money on shots that don't ever make a final edit.

 

In my view the best thing would be to shoot in colour - extract each colour (RGB) - then have three composite layers to tweak. I think "Avaitor" did something similar but they used LUT's - which is a real time preview of the effect (NOTE : associated hardware and software costs are quite hgh to get LUTs working in realtime)

 

If you have the time and money you should tailor wardrobe and art direction based on some tests

 

thanks

 

Rolfe

[Brian Rose]

I realize that. Unfortunately, I cannot do dye transfer printing. But, I believe that if I color the ycm separations properly, and since I would be transferring the footage to dvd, I can preserve much of the original color, and come quite close to it.

best,

br

[Dickson Sorensen]

Now, I know how to tint my film in post (I use adobe premiere pro 1.5) to recreate YCM separations, but I'm at a lost for how to combine the three to form the full color image.

 

In P Pro try this:

 

Put the same clip on three layers. Apply video effect "Color Balance" and "Gamma Correction" to all three, apply "Screen Key" to the top 2 clips. for each layer set Color Balance at 100 % for one color only- Red, Blue, Green(0% for all others) -this gives you each layer as a seperate color. Screen Key makes them transparent in the black areas so you can see the other layers below. Now use gamma correction for each layer to adjust the look the way a film lab would process the negative for different densities. There are also other effects you can apply to fool with the highlights and shadows. Now you have a lot of control over the look as each color layer is subject to your whims. If you want to "film out" send each layer to a lab for conversion back to film.

 

Experiment and use your creativity!

[David Mullen ASC]

I don't think shooting it on b&w seps would give you superior color reproduction or a Technicolor look for animation ending up on DVD, compared to using color neg, where the transfer and color-correction process would have a much greater effect on color.

 

In animation, the Technicolor look would much more be a factor of design.

 

The main advantage of shooting successive exposure animation onto b&w negative is just long-term archivability.

[Nate Downes]

Without the dye-transfer process, I don't see a really pressing need for this. But, that being said, I'd love to see it done. 8)

[David Mullen ASC]

I just saw a new print of "The River" (1951) shot in 3-strip Technicolor. Even though this was not a dye transfer print, it was interesting how I could tell it was shot in 3-strip right from the credits, which are white against a gray cement ground as someone paints a white drawing. Because of the fuzziness of the red record in 3-strip, plus the lack of an anti-halation backing on the blue record (since the light had to pass through the blue record, which was dyed red, to record an image on the red record) white objects in a scene sometimes had a faint magenta glow to them.

[John Pytlak RIP]

The red record in 3-strip is the least sharp, since the image had to go through the base and emulsion of the film recording the blue record:

 

http://www.widescreenmuseum.com/oldcolor/technicolor7.htm

 

As David notes, the effects of light scatter and halation can be seen.