History of Technicolor Film Process

[Rajneesh Kassin]

[Moderator Note: These posts were separated into their own thread from Nx 3-Strip (Technicolor Process 4) for DaVinci Resolve]

I worked for Technicolor in Hollywood for more than 20 years, and my belief is there's no easy way to reproduce that look digitally. Doing it is not a node structure -- it's art direction, lighting, and very specific choices on set. You can use visual references from the usual suspects (like Shotdeck) and then just eyeball it as best you can. But it really starts with sets, costumes, exposure, lighting, and all that stuff.

The other thing is: Nitrate Film has a look all its own, and (assuming you mean the Technicolor films of the 1930s and 1940s), that's a very distinct look as well. LA LA LAND and THE AVIATOR are two films that went to extreme lengths to create a Technicolor look in digital. Todd Haynes' FAR FROM HEAVEN (2002) did it more recently... but again, it was lighting, diffusion, and art direction more than anything else. And a lot of time and tests.

If you want to know more about what Technicolor really is, read these books:

Technicolor Movies: The History of Dye Transfer Printing by Richard W. Haines

Glorious Technicolor: The Movie's Magic Rainbow by Fred Basten

The Dawn of Technicolor by David Pierce and James Layton

Mr. Technicolor: The Autobiography of Dr. Herbert Kalmus by Herb Kalmus

Color Mania: The Material of Color in Photography and Film by Barbara Flückiger

Color Cinematography (1951) by Adrian Cornwell-Clyne

That will give you a lot more technical insights as to what made the original Technicolor look the way it did. The latter book is long out of print, but it's the only source I know of that reveals some interesting secrets about Technicolor and how they were able to pin-register the yellow / cyan / magenta / black images at high speed on the final IB prints sent to theaters. It's an interesting process.

Until I read that book, I didn't understand that 3-strip Technicolor was actually 4-strips, including a black contrast source (a luminance signal derived from the green layer) that kind of "unified" all three images with a very subtle outline. My belief is there's no easy way to reproduce that look digitally. Again, doing it is not a node structure -- it's art direction, lighting, and very specific choices on set. What makes "the Technicolor look" really starts with art direction, costumes, exposure, lighting, makeup, and all that stuff.

 

[Tony Sal]

A short video about the history of Technicolor and the movies to employ it on set.

Additional reading resources.

Timeline of Historical Colors in Photography and Film

is a comprehensive resource for the investigation of film color technology and aesthetics, analysis and restoration, developed and curated by Barbara Flueckiger since 2012. In 2024 Sylvie Pénichon joined the Timeline as a co-curator for still photography.

filmcolors.org

https://www.eastman.org/technicolor-online-research-archive

Color Consciousness by NATALIE M. KALMUS COLOR DIRECTOR (1878-1965)
Natalie was the executive head of the Technicolor art department and credited as the director or "color consultant" of all Technicolor films produced from 1934 to 1949.

Natalie Kalmus - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Color Consciousness PDF

https://www.eastman.org/sites/default/files/technicolor/pdfs/ColorConsultants_ColorConsciousness.pdf

Snipets from the pdf.

Summary.-Color constitutes another step in the steady advancement of the motion picture toward realism, the same principles of color, tone, and composition applying to the motion picture as to the art of painting. In order fully to appreciate the color picture, a "color consciousness" must be adopted, the lack of which is tantamount in a degree to color blindness.
Monotony is the enemy of interest, a fact that argues for the color picture; but a superabundance of color is unnatural. Psychologically, colors fall into the "warm" and"cool"groups,andeachcolorandshadehasitspsychologicalimplications: red- danger, blood, life, heat; green-nature, outdoors, freedom, freshness; etc. To build up personalities and to harmonize emotions and situations, these principles must apply, even to the extent of "color juxtaposition," or the psychological relation of the various colors to each other. For example, of two adjacent or contiguous colors, each tends to "throw" the other toward its complement, considerably affecting the emphasis or import of the color.

We must constantly practice color restraint. In the early two- color pictures, producers sometimes thought that because a process could reproduce color, they should flaunt vivid color continually before the eyes of the audience. This often led to unnatural and disastrous results, which experience is now largely eliminating.
The synthesis of all these factors entails many conferences with directors, art directors, writers, cameramen, designers and others. Technicolor color directors, cameramen, and technicians act in a consulting and advisory capacity to the various studio departments during both the preparation and the shooting of the picture.
Music, graphic art, and acting have now been united, and become one expression of more ultimate art. Now for the first time a perfect expression of the combined inspirations of producer, writer, artist, actor, and musician can be adequately presented to an audience. Color has touched the sound picture and it fairly lives.

 

[Rajneesh Kassin]

Color Consciousness by NATALIE M. KALMUS COLOR DIRECTOR (1878-1965)
Natalie was the executive head of the Technicolor art department and credited as the director or "color consultant" of all Technicolor films produced from 1934 to 1949.

Yeah, Herb Kalmus (the inventor of Technicolor) has some things to say about his ex-wife Natalie in his book cited above. Basically, she was a very opinionated woman with a lot of time on her hands, so he gave her a job as the "Color Consultant" on many of the early 3-strip color films done in the 1930s and 1940s. She was generally disliked by directors, cinematographers, and art directors, because she put sharp limitations on what they could and could not do in front of the camera in terms of makeup, paint, props, backgrounds, and so on.

You can see that Natalie was a barrel of fun.

I'll say this: Natalie generally had great taste, and you can see how great the first 200 or so Technicolor films looked during that era. Many hold up extraordinarily well, and that's all part of what we think of today as a "Techicolor Look." But in Natalie's Color Consciousness report, she cites the need for great lighting, great exposure, avoiding background colors that clash with the foreground, reducing saturation for costumes, makeup, and backgrounds so things don't wind up looking too "garish." There was actually a concern in the 1930s that if a movie was too colorful, it would exhaust the audience if used in a 90-minute or 2-hour feature film. (Disney was particularly concerned about that for Snow White.) All that proved to be much ado about nothing.

Once cinematographers and art directors fought and overruled Natalie Kalmus enough, she was effectively out of a job by 1950, about where her 400 (!!!) credits on IMDB dry out. Of course, 3-strip Technicolor itself ended by about 1953-1954, when Kodak's cheaper tri-pak Eastman stock became available. Technicolor IB dye-transfer prints continued for many years after that, but their high cost eventually caused them to largely disappear from the industry by the 1970s. It's an interesting story.

BTW, I worked for Technicolor for more than 20 years, and whenever clients asked for a "Technicolor Look," we'd just shrug, crank up the overall saturation, then pull down the skintone so the people didn't look like tomatoes. In general, that was what they wanted... but the reality was the classic Technicolor look was much more complicated than that.