Cinecolor

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Cinecolor was an early subtractive color-model two color film process, based upon the Prizma system of the 1910s and 1920s and the Multicolor system of the late 1920s and 1930s. It was developed by William T. Crispinel and Alan M. Gundelfinger, and its various formats were in use from 1932 to 1955.

1 How Cinecolor worked
2 History
- 2.1 SuperCineColor
- 2.2 The last years of Cinecolor
3 Further reading
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] How Cinecolor worked

Like most early color processes, Cinecolor used two color records on negative: a red strip and a blue/cyan strip to produce color tones. A camera capable of loading bi-pack film recorded color with both a blue sensitive and red sensitive negative. Both negatives were printed separately on Eastman duplitized film. Both sides were toned by floating each side in a tank the appropriate toner. One side was toned red and the other was blue.

While Cinecolor could produce vibrant reds, oranges, blues, browns and flesh tones, its renderings of other colors such as bright greens (rendered dark green) and purples (rendered a sort of dark magenta) were muted. Nevertheless, Cinecolor was used extensively by the film industry, particularly in animation, where Walt Disney held an exclusive contract to use three-strip Technicolor from 1932 until the end of 1935.

[edit] History

The Cinecolor Corporation was created in 1932 as a response to the success of the Technicolor Corporation, which held a partial monopoly on motion picture color. William Loss, a director of the Citizens Traction Company in New York, was its principal investor.

The company was largely founded on the patents and equipment of William Van Doren Kelley and his Prizma Color system, and was in direct competition with Multicolor, which folded in 1932. At that point, Cinecolor bought its equipment. Although limited in tone by comparison, Cinecolor's chief advantages over Technicolor were that color rushes were available within 24 hours and that the process itself only cost 25 percent more than black and white photography.

Before 1945, Cinecolor was used almost exclusively for short films. Among the notable animated short subjects series made in Cinecolor were Ub Iwerks' Comicolor cartoons, the Fleischer Studio's early Color Classics, a number of late-1940s Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, and many of Famous Studios' late-1940s Popeye the Sailor cartoons.

The first feature-length picture filmed entirely in Cinecolor was Monogram Pictures' release The Gentleman From Arizona (1939), although no other Cinecolor features followed until 1945. Low-budget companies such as Monogram Studios, Producers Releasing Corporation, and Screen Guild Productions were Cinecolor's chief employers. The system could produce acceptable color pictures at a fraction of what Technicolor cost. Most features made in Cinecolor were westerns, because the primary colors in those films were blues, browns and reds.

Cinecolor was also prominently employed in Paramount's Popular Science actuality shorts (though many of these are credited with having been filmed in the similar, earlier Magnacolor process, and even a "New Magnacolor" process of the late 1940s). Hal Roach Studios made all four of its features in Cinecolor in 1947-1948, becoming the first Hollywood studio to do an all-color schedule.

[edit] SuperCineColor

Cinecolor film poster - 1952

The year 1948 was a major one for the Cinecolor Corporation. Aside from growing stock prices, they introduced 1000-foot film magazines, which cut back on the on-set lighting costs by 50 percent, and kept the cost of shooting in Cinecolor only 20 percent more than black and white.

The same year, Gundelfinger also developed a three-color process called SuperCineColor, but did not begin using it until 1951 with The Sword of Monte Cristo. Other films of note that used the SuperCinecolor process were Invaders From Mars, Abbott and Costello Meet Captain Kidd, Jack and the Beanstalk, Gog, and Top Banana (the latter two were both shot in 3-D).

SuperCineColor utilized black and white matrices made primarily by monopack color negatives made with Ansco/Agfa, DuPont, Kodachrome, or the popular Eastmancolor film, for principal photography. After the negative was edited, it was copied through color filters into three black and white negatives. An oddity of the system was that rather than use the typical cyan, magenta and yellow primary subtractive colors, SuperCineColor printed their films with red, blue and yellow matrices in order to create a system that was compatible with the previous printers. The result was an oddly striking look to the final print. Printing entailed using duplitized stock, in which one side contained a silver emulsion toned red-magenta, and on the other side, cyan-blue. A yellow layer was added on the blue side through means of imbibition. The soundtrack was subsequently printed on the blue-yellow side in a blue soundtrack, but separate from those records. The final prints had vivid dyes that did not fade, and contrary to popular opinion, were no grainier than Technicolor prints and were just as sharp in focus. Both of these myths seems to be perpetrated by 16 mm, regular-process Cinecolor prints.

[edit] The last years of Cinecolor

In 1953, the Cinecolor corporation became the Color Corporation of America, and specialized in SuperCineColor printing, as well as being a major Anscocolor processor. Color Corporation of America were bought out by Houston Fearless on April 8, 1954, and became strictly an Anscocolor processor.