Re: Technicolor

[Marvin Jones <72657.3276@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>Do you know, Bob, why the studios moves away from technicolor and started
>using the eastman films? I have heard that many of the DPs and directors
>considered technicolor a process which yielded fiarly "theatrical" results
>and was difficult to light and do make-up for. I also understand the
>technicolor process is more expensive...

I think the biggest single problem was that the camera was an unwieldy monster,
making shooting, especially on location, difficult. Cost wasn't much of a factor
because although answer prints (the first test prints made of a film) were
extremely expensive in Technicolor, the release prints were almost ridiculously
cheap. There wasn't much concern about the quality of the color, either. We tend
to remember the knock-your-eyes-out Technicolor of the MGM musicals, but it was
a lot more versatile than that.

Then, too, you are assuming that the industry of forty or fifty years ago KNEW
that Eastmancolor prints would fade in a decade or so, with they didn't. Nor
would they have cared much even if they did because the days of videotapes and
laserdisks and revival houses was all in the future, and the commercial life of
a movie was only a year or two, anyway.

Incidentally, it's kind of an irony that the two most stable color systems in
film history were the most expensive and elaborate (Technicolor) and the most
basic poverty-row system (Cinecolor), both of which were so-called imbibition
systems.


------------------------------