Prizma

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The Prizma Color system was a technique of color motion picture photography, invented in 1913 by William Van Doren Kelley. Initially, it was a two-color additive system, similar to its predecessor, Kinemacolor. However, Kelly eventually transformed Prizma into a two-color subtractive system that itself became the predecessor for future color processes such as Multicolor and Cinecolor.

1 Prizma I (additive)
2 Prizma II (subtractive)
3 List of Films Made in Prizma Color
4 External links
5 See also

[edit] Prizma I (additive)

The first system of Prizma was similar to Kinemacolor in that the camera took alternating frames of red-orange and blue-green colors through color filters placed within the camera's shutter. Projection involved running a colored disc again in synchronization with the black and white color record film, and through persistence of vision, the two frames combined on the screen to form a color image.

The first film shown in Prizma color on 23 December 1917 was the feature, Our Navy at the 44th Street Theatre in New York City. General reception to the system was positive, but the rotating filter wheel technique proved impractical. To counteract the issue of having a special projector with a filter wheel, Kelley began tinting alternate frames of his film red and green. However, fringing, flicker, and light loss were major issues which plagued not only Prizma, but also all of the other additive systems of the Kinemacolor nature.

In counteracting this, Kelley had filed a patent in February of 1917 which proved to be the beginnings of Prizma's second color system.

[edit] Prizma II (subtractive)

On 28 December 1918, Kelley announced that Prizma would release a color film (usually a short) every week, a film which would be projectable on any standard projector. Kelley's idea was two years in the making, but was a valid one which became the springboard for all future color systems to follow -- two films were filmed simultaneously with a camera of his own design. One strip was sensitive to red-orange, the other to blue-green (cyan). Both negatives were processed and printed on duplitized film, and then each emulsion was toned its complimentary color, red or blue. The final result was a color image that was subtractive in nature -- no flicker and a bright projection. But as a result of the way the camera was designed, a constant fringe was apparent, as the strips were being recorded side-by-side.

In January 1919, this new process was premiered at the Rivoli Theatre in New York City with the short Everywhere With Prizma. Kelley, based in Jersey City, New Jersey, was a friend of the Rivoli's manager and music director Hugo Riesenfeld (1879-1939) and so did business with Samuel Roxy Rothafel's Roxy Theaters chain, which the Rivoli was part of.

In February 1921, another Prizma film, Bali the Unknown was premiered at Roxy's Capitol Theatre in New York. The four-reel feature garnered lukewarm reviews, but enough positive audience response that more films were produced in the system.

The Prizma process only took off in 1922, when J. Stuart Blackton of Vitagraph Studios shot his feature film The Glorious Adventure in Prizma. The film, starring Diana Manners and Victor McLaglen, premiered in April 1922 to lukewarm success in the US, but much appeal in the UK. With the prestige of a Vitagraph production, Prizma was considered the apex of color photography at that point in motion picture producer's minds.

Prizma sued the Technicolor Corporation in September 1922 on the grounds that Technicolor was infringing upon Prizma's patents, but lost.

In April 1923, Robert Flaherty took a both a black-and-white camera and a Prizma color camera to Samoa, hoping to film part of his documentary film Moana (1925) in that process, but the Prizma camera malfunctioned and no color footage was shot. (Moana became famous as the first feature film shot using panchromatic black-and-white film rather than orthochromatic.)

With William K. Fairall and Robert F. Elder's 3-D feature, The Power of Love opening 27 September 1922 in Los Angeles and the December 1922 unveiling of Laurens Hammond's Teleview system in New York City, Kelley used his Prizma camera for stereoscopic purposes. As his camera took side-by-side pictures, Kelley mounted a set of prisms on his rig, thus expanding his point of convergence, and utilized his red/blue color system to make an anaglyphic print of his product. His final product was the first of Kelley's Plasticon Pictures entitled Movies of the Future, which was premiered at the Rivoli on 24 December 1922. The film consisted largely of shots of New York City, including Times Square, the New York Public Library, and Luna Park.

Based on the success of Movies of the Future, Kelley had his chief photographer, William T. Crispinel, shoot another short film entitled Through the Trees - Washington D.C. during the Spring of 1923. The film was not shot with the Prizma rig -- which was being used by Flaherty in Samoa -- but by one designed by Frederick E. Ives, a technician that specialized in 3-D photography. Although the short was technically shot better, Riesenfeld rejected it because it did not have the 3-D gimmicks that the recent films of that nature included.

The last few years of Prizma were somewhat fruitful. Samuel Goldwyn produced Vanity Fair (1923) in Prizma, and D.W. Griffith utilized the process in a couple of his films, including a scene in Way Down East (1920). Flames of Passion (1922), directed by Graham Cutts and starring Mae Marsh and C. Aubrey Smith; The Virgin Queen (1923), directed by J. Stuart Blackton; and I Pagliacci (1923), co-starring Lillian Hall-Davis, were all U.K. productions with one reel filmed in Prizma.

One of the last films using Prizma was Venus of the South Seas (1924), starring Annette Kellerman, where Prizma was used for one reel of a 55 minute film. Venus was recently restored by the Library of Congress.

In 1928, Prizma was bought by Consolidated Film Industries and was reintroduced as Magnacolor (and later Trucolor). Kelley, who held many patents in color photography, sold his patents and equipment to Cinecolor, which benefited from Kelley's advanced printing techniques. Ironically, Cinecolor was co-founded by Kelley's former photographer, William T. Crispinel.