Perhaps the earliest film color footage that exists

[mego73]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_RTn...ayer_embedded#!

[SeattleEd]

NICE! Thanks for posting.
Of course what better way to show off colored film than to film beautiful women in gorgeously cut and colored clothes. I really like that redhead.

[palitoy]

As a young child, I assumed my parents grew up in black and white.

[phil]

Thanks for the post. This is interesting to see. In the earliest days of movies some were colored by hand, coloring each frame. Of course at time movies only lasted a few minutes.
Growing up my friends and I joked that WWII happened in black and white because at that time there were few color photos in circulation and even less color film.

[Hector]

That's truly amazing...it has the feel of real live people in the present time...like a true time machine.

We are so used to B&W...but we always perceive that as "movies".

We now take color for granted...but imagine seeing this back then...amazing.

[Werewolf]

That was beautiful. Thank you for posting this. It's amazing the colors are so vivid after all this time. The print must have been very well cared for.

[megoscott]

Haunting stuff. That was making the rounds on Facebook this week along with these amazing color photos of Russia at the turn of the century: Russia in color, a century ago - The Big Picture - Boston.com

[Brazoo]

Wow - fascinating and SO beautiful! Thanks so much for posting.

Phil - yeah, hand colour tinting, from what I recall, is the first method of colour processing. There were also other processes that involved different types of film dying or tinting as well.

I was curious to find out what gave this footage such a strange look. At first it looked like a biocolour film process, but I couldn't really see any missing colours, just strange hues of colour.

So I did some googling. Luckily I found this article which actually discusses this particular Kodachorome footage:

"First tests on the Two-Color Kodachrome Process were begun in late 1914. Shot with a dual-lens camera, the process recorded filtered images on black/white negative stock, then made black/white separation positives. The final prints were actually produced by bleaching and tanning a double-coated duplicate negative (made from the positive separations), then dyeing the emulsion green/blue on one side and red on the other. Combined they created a rather ethereal palette of hues."

Here's the full article. Very cool!
Kodak: A Thousand Words - Color Motion Pictures - The Earliest Days: 1922

[Brazoo]

Haunting stuff. That was making the rounds on Facebook this week along with these amazing color photos of Russia at the turn of the century: Russia in color, a century ago - The Big Picture - Boston.com

Yeah - those are so beautiful!

There's also a lot of great WWII colour film and photos around. Very displacing to see at first - at least for me!

[AAAAA]

Thanks for the post. This is interesting to see. In the earliest days of movies some were colored by hand, coloring each frame. Of course at time movies only lasted a few minutes.
Growing up my friends and I joked that WWII happened in black and white because at that time there were few color photos in circulation and even less color film.

you should see the History channel's " the color of war. "
many archive color combat films have been released in last 10 years .
60 years alot of of was mark top secret.

[HardyGirl]

Wow, that was really remarkable! So vibrant color after all these years! And to think that film is older than my parents! (born in '28 and '29). I wonder if the little kid in that film is still alive.

[Sandman9580]

Luckily I found this article which actually discusses this particular Kodachorome footage:

"First tests on the Two-Color Kodachrome Process were begun in late 1914. Shot with a dual-lens camera, the process recorded filtered images on black/white negative stock, then made black/white separation positives. The final prints were actually produced by bleaching and tanning a double-coated duplicate negative (made from the positive separations), then dyeing the emulsion green/blue on one side and red on the other. Combined they created a rather ethereal palette of hues."

Here's the full article. Very cool!
Kodak: A Thousand Words - Color Motion Pictures - The Earliest Days: 1922

Interesting, I didn't know there was a two-strip color process... I thought it had always been three. (Like Technicolor.) I really wish movies could be shot nowadays using the older processes. I re-watched The Adventures of Robin Hood last night and thought, why can't modern-day movies look more like this? I'm tired of seeing grey, muddy, metallic, super-sharp, "edgy" cinematography in everything. Back in the old days, tremendous care was taken on-set to achieve beautiful color. Now the assumption seems to be: shoot everything as fast as you can and color-time it however you need to later. Quick and cheap. The Godfather Part II was the last American movie released in Technicolor: that was 1974! The filming, and the printing process especially, were considered too time-consuming. Yeah... heaven forbid we spend the time and expense to make a film look beautiful, and unique.

That was making the rounds on Facebook this week along with these amazing color photos of Russia at the turn of the century: Russia in color, a century ago - The Big Picture - Boston.com

Those are really beautiful. Some of them look surreal. It's interesting he was using the three-strip process, but that they were photographed "in quick succession" and not simultaneously; so any moving object created a rainbow-y halo. My favorite is the picture of the old, dignified ferryman, holding a magenta-limned oar while psychedelic water flows behind him. Beautiful stuff.

[UnderdogDJLSW]

I hadn't heard about the Russian photos. All of this is amazing. Absolutely like being in a time machine.

[mego73]

Interesting, I didn't know there was a two-strip color process... I thought it had always been three. (Like Technicolor.) I really wish movies could be shot nowadays using the older processes. I re-watched The Adventures of Robin Hood last night and thought, why can't modern-day movies look more like this? I'm tired of seeing grey, muddy, metallic, super-sharp, "edgy" cinematography in everything. Back in the old days, tremendous care was taken on-set to achieve beautiful color. Now the assumption seems to be: shoot everything as fast as you can and color-time it however you need to later. Quick and cheap. The Godfather Part II was the last American movie released in Technicolor: that was 1974! The filming, and the printing process especially, were considered too time-consuming. Yeah... heaven forbid we spend the time and expense to make a film look beautiful, and unique.




Those are really beautiful. Some of them look surreal. It's interesting he was using the three-strip process, but that they were photographed "in quick succession" and not simultaneously; so any moving object created a rainbow-y halo. My favorite is the picture of the old, dignified ferryman, holding a magenta-limned oar while psychedelic water flows behind him. Beautiful stuff.

The subdued color of today's movies is a style choice. I like the amped up, popping color of older Technicolor movies as well.

A few years ago, I saw a Techicolor dye transfer print of Vertigo, an old one that would be unprojectable in time. I'd never seen color like that in a movie and the DVD and HD broadcast of the movie still doesn't come up to the level of color I saw on the screen from that print. I also saw a Technicolor print of North By Northwest and was similarly impressed.

Two strip Technicolor was tried for a few movies (including 2 Fay Wray horror ones, Dr. X and Mystery Of The Wax Museum) but the color came out not quite natural and 2 strip movies would usually be re released and shown on TV in black and white in the face of the more advanced 3 strip technicolor. I think the not quite natual color of Dr. X helps out with the movie though .

Those Russia photos are unbelievable BTW.

[Sandman9580]

Two strip Technicolor was tried for a few movies (including 2 Fay Wray horror ones, Dr. X and Mystery Of The Wax Museum) but the color came out not quite natural and 2 strip movies would usually be re released and shown on TV in black and white in the face of the more advanced 3 strip technicolor. I think the not quite natual color of Dr. X helps out with the movie though .

Hmm, I'm intrigued. I just added both of those to my Netflix queue (which is dormant right now so it'll be awhile before I see them). It's possible I've seen two-strip color then, and maybe didn't notice it. I kind of have the memory of seeing films that looked a little faded and unnatural, but I chalked it up to being either a washed-out transfer, or "crappy Technicolor". (A few weeks ago I was watching some old Warner Bros. shorts, and the Technicolor was really bad. It looked thick and muddy, and the colors kept phasing in and out on a loop [uneven emulsion?] For a moment, I'd thought I was having a seizure.)

As for the modern style choice: yeah, I'm all for diversity, just not a huge fan of pseudo-hipness and wimpy imitation. Seven was the first movie I saw where I really became aware of bleach bypass (where the silver nitrate is left in, so you're essentially seeing an emergent combination of color and black-and-white.) And I love the over-exposed, different-film-stocks-patched-together look of Saving Private Ryan. But then when you see that look in every thriller and war movie that comes down the pike, it gets tiring. I want to see the full spectrum: an old-school, Technicolor comic book movie along with Sin City, or a rich, subtle, Maxfield Parrish-hued fantasy movie along with... all those other fantasy movies that look like they were shot on color-blind video cameras.

*That reminds me: when I was taking a video class some years ago, I found a Final Cut Pro recipe for achieving pseudo bleach bypass: basically creating a B&W copy and combining it with color at half transparency. It was sorta neat, but it had a flat, sterile quality about it that really underscored the unique beauty of real film. You can't fake it.