The History and Science of Color Film: From Isaac Newton to the Coen Brothers

Heyy love the video, I was wondering if you had any sources for students who watch this video❤ I want to use you as a source but would appreciate a place to read further into the topic .

The only time colorizing is great is for historical stock footage, where it makes the people and world look so much more real and relatable.

Question about early technicolor: Your graphic implied red went on frame 1 and green went on adjacent frame 2. For subtractive, would it be more correct to shoot on 2 separate rolls, develop and tint them separately, and then project them with the 2 rolls sandwiched together througth the shutter/light so that it becomes subtractive?

one of the best explanations i've seen.

That was so well explained! And I agree about the 1938 version of "Robin Hood". That is a beautiful film. No Robin Hood ever came close.

I find it amusing that I just rented Citizen Kane from the local library and it's actually the reason I searched the invention of color film and found this video.

My grandfather worked under the owner of technicolor, who also happened to own the patent on the Bic ballpoint pen. They were the first to bring full feature length films to the airline industry. It involved the creation of a micro film to prevent change overs, self projecting sound and most importantly silent projectors.

Pathecolor looks shit

Thank you!

Does anyone know something about the score of "The Toll of the Sea" in the short clip? I have the impression that it wasn't composed especially for the movie, because it sounds so familiar, like a classical piece I heard elsewhere. But I can't get what it is.

i laughed my asses off when i saw the sponsor's name (ikan).

it literally means FISH in my language

35 mm

i remember almost suffocating myself by these chemical fumes, trying to develop a 5 second coloured film roll.

It was interesting how you made your viewers look up Panchromatic film to realize that there was a color sensitive black and white film.

Great video

I revisit these often. Even though I "should" know this stuff. Thank you for this content.

Great explanation

Great one mate. Very good documentation. But felt you speeded it up after 1980's.

A history of film colour that missed out Kodachrome- the most superior colour system ever with truly real colour that Technicolor could only dream of. Kodachrome was a single strip full colour additive process which began development in the 1920s as a two colour system. As a reversal process the film processes straight to positive, no negative required but could be reprinted like any other film. It could run in any camera and any projector. In 1936 the full colour Kodachrome was made available to amateur film makers in the new 8mm format which paved the way for the most extensive capturing of everyday life in colour in the hands of ordinary people.
There were other successful reversal additive processes such as Dufaycolor which was also a three colour single strip process. Its process has a distinct look from its monochrome emulsion over the colour-giving lenticular film base. The colour values erred towards reds and greens as the blue element in the film base had a smaller share of the frame real estate but it was still capable of rendering a satisfying colour image.
As a process Technicolor in it's heyday was better for cartoons than live action with its live actions shots dominated with an orange golden hue. In the case of Robin Hood, the whole thing has a dusty look. While it could clearly render colour the spectrum of it is a tad limited and if you look at a single frame it looks more like a well tinted black and white image. There were only certain types of shots that Technicolor could do really well after which every Technicolor film looks the same. Kodachrome was then and remains now, the best colour film ever produced.

I love this channel

I doesn't know they've been through all this complicated process till we get the right color for all films today they are really great people who work in this industry to put the Cinematic film today up to IMAX

from where did you get all this knowlegde. please tell me. it will help me alot!! please

Love all this information. Thank You!

That’s not friese greene. That’s Robert Donat.

EXCELLENT!

Make a part 2 of this. Talk about grading.

Why is this video about film blurry oh, maybe it's a few years old?

Would love to get a lesson in 3D cinema history from you :)

Extremely informative.

So Kodachrome didn't exist I guess...

boo

The early 2 color processes imitate, how color blind people see the world or think, that the color palette should refer to a rusty tank (as seen in Betty Boot as Cinderella) or turn the Rhapsody in blue into an Irish one.

Dude. You're amazing.

when you say technicolor is a three strip camera, that means three rolls of film are exposed to light at the same time using a light beam spliter. Now if you don't know this, three rolls of BLACK AND WHITE, yes, three rolls of BLACK AND WHITE film were used, and exposed through three color filters. (red, green, and blue) But the three color filters don't turn the black and white film into red, green and blue color. This may seem confusing. Let me explain.


Black and white still photographs can be very beautiful. Look at photos from Ansel Adams for example. When you take a picture of a scene in black and white that has a blue sky, the blue sky will come out as a very pale gray, almost white, and the clouds won't show up too well. For some reason which I don't know, black and white film is very sensitive to the color blue. So when light strikes the b&w film, it darkens. The more the light, the darker it becomes. Different colors reflect different amounts of light, and there's where you get the different shade of gray for the different colors.


So if you place a YELLOW filter on the camera, the YELLOW filter will filter out (hold back) some of the blue light of the sky, and that area on the negative film will be more transparent. When the negative film is placed in the enlarger and a light shines through the film on to the paper, the paper also darkens when exposed to light. More light will shine through the area of the sky, and the sky will now be a shade of gray instead of being almost white looking.


A color filter will lighten its own color, and darken the other colors in proportion to the percentage of light it filters out. Now let's take a bowl of fruit. One in color, and one in b&w with no filter. Then lets take pictures of the fruit using different color filters. A red filter will make the apple appear light, while the banana dark, but not too dark.


When you look at the three rolls of b&w film shot in TECHNICOLOR, each roll of film will look different. Now I must be honest, I don't understand the rest of the process. That is how the b&w film is turned into color. But it is very technical. The camera must be loaded, properly lit and exposed, the b&w film developed (I know how to develope b&w film, I had a darkroom in my basement when I was a kid) And made into color somehow.


When printing a color picture in a magazine or newspaper, the color picture is exposed to four b&w negatives. I'm not going into the process which I know., too long to explain

I turned my device on grayscale and I'm watching a video about the history of color.

We have no digital media as durable as film. Magnetic media fades within a few decades, flash memory fades within a decade. DVD lasts until the plastic coating dissolves. What will become the film archive medium of the future?

Quite Interesting!
There's some lovely examples of two-strip Technicolor in:
Ben Hur 1925 and
Cecil B DeMille's
King of Kings 1927.
Brilliant early silent epics.
KAN 6.19 UK

Amazing how quickly technology advanced, between the 1920's and 1930's.. barely a generation to go from blurry black and white silent films to rich full colour :D

Thank you for this - what a fascinating video on film color - both the history and the technology. So, was the new film stock that faded fast acetate film, aka "safety film"? Just wondering.

Can you release a video about color film in cameras

Hope I could have a friend like john, whom knows literally everything...

how they used to copy these films

I'm watching this video again, as it's been about a year or so since I first watched it, and a thought occurred to me as you said that in the early 30s, Kodak introduced a new panchromatic film that produced great results and was much cheaper to use than two-strip Technicolor: was this new film something Technicolor had been waiting for, and what was new about it? Was it faster than previously available panchromatic films? I'm wondering if this new film was needed to make 3-strip Technicolor practical.

Just discovered this channel via this video. Not a bad history of colour film. Obviously not exhaustive, but enough to cover the highlights and point the viewer in the right direction to find out more.

I have personal knowledge of Martin Scorsese's preservation project, as I saw his lecture at the BFI in London. He showed two trailers for "Gone With The Wind". The first was on Eastman stock and was what we had come to expect. Faded and mainly pink. The other was an original Technicolor print released to first run theatres in the US in 1939. It drew audible gasps from the audience. The colour was all there in full and the film looked almost 3D. Another think he showed us was clips from "The Leopard" (1963) with Burt Lancaster. Again the difference was astonishing.

Eastman Kodak, thankfully, got such a fright they did the work and produced more stable chemicals for both the film base and the colour layers so film stock is now much more stable. They also invested heavily in Digital Imaging and produced some of the earliest CCD image sensors. Now the main aid to preserving film is the digital intermediate, and this in fact is the only way to preserve the old 3-strip Technicolor movies. Technicolor no longer have any die-transfer printers, and I haven't been able to find out what happened to the equipment they sold to China.

This is a good instructional video but where are the lenticular colour systems like Dufaycolor? These monochrome colour films which render excellent colour pallets on otherwise regular black and white film are worthy of mention. Generally used on the domestic market Dufaycolor did also make commercial features. Colour reversal processes should also be mentioned as they are integral to colour film history.

licc

Well presented. Great historical information.