Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Interesting info on 3 strip Technicolor Processing!

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Posted by Steve Matz (Member # 1890) on 08-09-2014, 09:10 PM:

I have been meaning to post this for some time but never got around to it. This is a Reply from an Old School MP Processing Lab Technician and long time SMPTE Member that I was conferring with on 3 strip Technicolor and also asking about how much better a direct Print from the Camera Negative would be compared to a general theater release print...He really went into detail
but the info is both very interesting and informative...

FOR "WIZARD OF OZ" & "GONE WITH THE WIND"

STEVE:
Both those pictures were in Technicolor and aside

from the sepia opening to Wizard, Technicolor prints

were never from the camera negative. If there were

any fades or dissolves, the full scene was duped cut

to cut and put into the original negative. That meant

black and white master positive then shot to dupe

negative and that was spliced into the camera

negative. Technicolor would make a protection

master positive of the entire cut camera negative for

each color, yellow, magenta, cyan.

Then the camera negative would be used to make

the matrix for each color, a positive image in gelatin

relief. That was then dipped in the proper dye and

pressed on the "blank" stock which had the

previously printed black and white sound track. Each

color was pressed individually on a stainless steel

belt with registration pins. After the color had been

imbibed, the print was washed and sent back for the

next pass for the next color. The belt ran at 300 fpm

but making three passes reduced the output to 100

fpm just slightly more than projection speed.

The biggest problem Technicolor had was

registration and the toughest scene would be white

letters on a black background which would require

the highest degree of precision.

When Cinemascope broke out in 1953-54 Technicolor

was in big trouble since the prints weren't sharp

enough for the new screen size and were grainy.

Kalmus went to Messe at Kodak and threatened to

go to DuPont stock if Kodak couldn't work out the

problems (They had used some DuPont stock

manufactured to their specs with success earlier)

Kodak did and later Technicolor could make Scope

prints with Fox Hole Perfs and magstripe the prints

as well.

But prints shown to audiences on 1939 screens

weren't near the quality of the recent Warner Bros

new transfer from the original elements for both

Wizard and GWTW. I have seen clips from the original

1939 nitrate GWTW release at a SMPTE meeting back

in the 80s at MGM Cary Grant Theatre showing

variation in color, saturation of various releases and

difference between Tech and Eastman prints (Tech

holds better highlight detail, Eastman better shadow

detail).

One thing to remember, color--especially three strip

color--was rare in 1939 and would have been a treat

to any audience. GWTW was originally printed with

more subdued color compared to Oz and other Tech

releases. But every Tech release was "custom" back

then.

NITRATE FILM....Two things:
Nitrate had a number of attributes that had nothing to

do with the supposed "quality" of the image. The

stock itself would last longer and was more wear

resistant than the safety film stock that was

available at the time.
Nitrate produced "better" prints in part due to it's

shrinkage. The newly processed negative would

shrink to a point that it removed printer slip in a

contact printer. Up to this point negative and positive

film carried a .1870 pitch. Going to a safety film

required a new "short pitch" on film that would be on

the inner diameter of the printing sprocket of .1866.

As for safety film, the "slow burning film" was

introduced with 16mm for home use. There were

some 35mm projectors built for institutional use that

were designed for safety film and had sprockets that

added a round pin in between the 35mm sprocket

holes so that the machine couldn't run nitrate and

only the specially perforated 35mm safety film. The

definition of "safety film" or "slow burning" was a film

that would not support a flame once the source of

ignition (match) was removed. Still film and sheet film

in Speed Graflex cameras was also on nitrate base.

DuPont nitrate had a "curl" problem with sheet film.

This is why those blackmail negatives in 1940s

movies burst into flame when they're burned.

The reason that nitrate stayed on was there was no

desire in the industry to change to the new stock

which didn't last as long as the nitrate stock in

projection.

Many of the theatre "accidents" occurred once

safety film was introduced and projectionists

removed magazine doors, started smoking in booths

and generally were not as careful as during the

nitrate age. Then a children's matinee print would

come in and the projectionist wouldn't notice it was

nitrate and ..... You can only imagine what would

happen if a theater with a platter system had a

nitrate print running and something happened.

THEATER RELEASE PRINT COMPARED TO MASTER

NEGATIVE AND POSITIVE?

A color master positive couldn't be projected. It's on

a material like color negative which has colored

couplers that correct for cross talk with the color

dyes and therefore has an overall orange tint. They

can be used (and are) for telecine where the dye

mask can be corrected electronically. They are also

a flatter curve, i.e. lower gamma in B&W terms and

thus have a lower overall contrast...again something

that you can correct for in telecine.

GWTW was a 3-strip negative, however the 70mm

blow-up was done at MGM lab and also changed the

aspect ratio of the picture on that release to "wide

screen" or 2.21:1. In general, Technicolor would

make a protection master positive from the cut

negative (without light changes) and the cut negative

(with dupes) was timed and printed to the matrices

which were used to make the prints.

I knew once (having been through an entire evening

with GWTW at MGM at an SMPTE Meeting), but have

forgotten which element was used to make the

blow-up. There would have been a couple of ways to

go, considering the aspect ratio change the most

likely would have been the 35mm master positives to

a 65mm dupe negative and contact prints to 70mm

release prints. MGM Labs was one of two labs in

Hollywood that did 65mm and 70mm release printing.

(We also did 70mm release printing at Alpha Cine

when I was there). The other Hollywood lab was

Technicolor (although never IB prints).

So the comparison is really academic since you

could never see a color print directly from the

Technicolor 3 strip negatives (they were black and

white) so it would have to go through some process

unless you had lots of money and time and had a

color positive print exposed from each of the color

negatives on an optical printer. The system that

Warner Bros uses now is the closest to that system,

they use the individual negative or positive (as close

as they can get) to create a new digital master. The

various elements are combined on an aerial image

optical three head printer and instead of a film

camera, a digital scanner is used.

WRS (when it was still alive as a film lab) had a set-up

like that as well. There may be other set-ups like

that, I just don't know what CineTech is doing as part

of their restoration work right now.
It used to be all photo-chemical but people have
stopped restoring to film now days.

FWIW:
JAWS Eastman color negative, first generation

contact print would have been used for timing and

look better than any release print.
TEN COMMANDMENTS was three strip Technicolor.
BEN HUR was 65mm Eastman color negative at MGM

Labs, the contact first trial would be like looking at

picture postcards--incredible...

Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 08-09-2014, 10:15 PM:

Thanks Steve for your in depth report on three strip Technicolor. To go a little further, the photography of three strip Technicolor films is shot with B&W film and a primary color filter for each strip of film. The filters are RED , GREEN and BLUE..

When it is time to print, three secondary color matrices are made. First one is Cyan made from the negative that was photographed with a Red filter. The 2nd one is Magenta, made from a Green filtered negative. The 3rd one is Yellow produced from the Blue filtered negative.

-Claude

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 08-09-2014, 10:18 PM:

Probably the most comprehensive source of technical info on Technicolor and every other color photography system that was in existence or had existed at the time of writing (1951) is Adrian Cornwell-Clyne's Color Cinematography. Wanna know the precise chemical formulations of the dyes used by Technicolor London in the 1930s? The data is in there. Want to recreate your own Gasparcolor processing line? That book probably has all the information you'd need to do so. Sadly, the original print run wasn't very big and as a result, secondhand copies now go for silly money on the rare occasions that one appears on Ebay. The library of the university in England I used to work for had a copy in pretty good shape, and one of my very few regrets about emigrating is that I didn't borrow it and scan the whole lot before going. At 780 pages I just couldn't summon up the persistence to do it (or deal with the thought of destroying the spine).

Posted by Steve Matz (Member # 1890) on 08-09-2014, 11:38 PM:

I always wondered what kind of success "Gone with the Wind" would of had if filmed in B&W or Sepia. When you read about the complications of Filming 3 Strip Tech and the Amount of Extra Time and Money it took to do the Dye Tranfer Process back then;it amazes me that any Studio back in 1938 wanted to Spend that kind of Money and Time for a Color Feature Film;Yet the TECHNICOLOR CORP had a 2 year backlog of Studios wanting to shoot a Technicolor Feature.

Because the First TECH Film Stock needed such intense Lighting;They had to use the Powerful Krieg Lamps which on "The Wizard of Oz" cost the Studio over a 1/4 million Dollars in just the Electricity Bill alone.Another Back Lash from these Lights was numerous Law Suits against MGM from Actors after Post Production that suffered permanent vision problems resulting from being subjected to these Lights for long periods of time.

This was such a powerful Film to begin with,it still might have been just as successful and MGM would have saved considerable amounts of money and Time; and probably no Lawsuits either...

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 08-10-2014, 12:39 AM:

New Line - Division of Warner Bros, in 1998, released "GWTW" for a limited run, printed on IB Technicolor with the image sqeezed 2:1 for anamorphic presentation so the image on the screen was the academy 1.37:1 playback.

Sound was Quad, but the silver soundtrack was hard for the DTS reader, the basement SRD readers to pick up, thus I had to present it in 05 Dolby SR optical.

In short, it was very impressive (and wonderful to see again), but sad in parts at the same time due to the shrinkage of the three nitrate negative strips causing sight color bleed, especially in the first reel.

-Monte

Posted by Steve Matz (Member # 1890) on 08-10-2014, 01:14 AM:

quote:
When it is time to print, three secondary color matrices are made. First one is Cyan made from the negative that was photographed with a Red filter. The 2nd one is Magenta, made from a Green filtered negative. The 3rd one is Yellow produced from the Blue filtered negative.
Claude

Yes Claude and it all came out of this complicated Technicolor DF-24 3 Strip Beam Splitter Camera that incorporated a special Prism for doing the Task. Not that many of these Projectors made back in the day and only a handful or less still in existence.They were responsible for the Beautiful Rich Color we saw in those Films from back in the Day...

Technicolor DF-24 3 Strip Beam Splitter Camera w/ sound Blimp afixed

Posted by Randy Pryde (Member # 7488) on 08-10-2014, 02:09 AM:

Monte,

My recollection is that when we played a well used print of the 1998 "squeezed" IB Tech GWTW it was the SDDS and SRD tracks that did not hold up well. The DTS time code ran perfectly.

Posted by Rick Raskin (Member # 1561) on 08-10-2014, 07:12 AM:

quote: Steve Matz
There were

some 35mm projectors built for institutional use that

were designed for safety film and had sprockets that

added a round pin in between the 35mm sprocket

holes so that the machine couldn't run nitrate and

only the specially perforated 35mm safety film.

I recall seeing some 35mm prints that had a hole punched every 4th perf. I wonder if that was for those "protection" projectors?

I have some 70mm film that has the punch every 5th perf. What's the reason for that?

Posted by Richard P. May (Member # 3598) on 08-10-2014, 11:25 AM:

Steve, thanks for posting the description of Technicolor. It's one of the most accurate I've seen.
The question of would GWTW have been such a big hit if in B&W or Sepia is interesting. My opinion is that it would not. It was the first really BIG picture to use Technicolor, rivaled only by THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD the previous year in production quality. It was the first color picture to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. It's negative cost was about $4.5 million, but the returns, adjusted for inflation, are over a Billion $$$. The use of color, even though expensive, had to have been a major factor in the public "want to see" factor.

Posted by Steve Matz (Member # 1890) on 08-10-2014, 12:29 PM:

You may be correct Richard on GWTW.I remember my Mother telling me the 1st time she saw GWTW in 1939(she was 13) She was awestruck at seeing this Technicolor Classic and remembered the 1939 Audience oohing and awhing when it started playing, Audiences back then were accustomed to seeing B&W Films;so this
3 Strip Technicolor Marvel was probably like going to Disneyland for her back then. She said the same thing happen when viewing "Wizard of Oz" Audience members who may not have already seen GWTW Literally Gasp when Dorothy opens the Door going from Sepia to the Rich Technicolor. She actually liked Wizard better than GWTW as far as Color Factor; saying things like Flowers,sky,etc seemed more rich in color than the real thing...

BTW: When Technicolor & Deluxe were auctioning off their Equipment awhile back. I remember looking at one of their High Speed Color Optical Printers. It said this Printer had a speed rate of 1200FPM That's like a Reel of Film every Minute and a half or so. When you consider what the Speed of a Contact Printer like the B&H C which is something like 250-300FPM; that is truly amazing but also disheartning because even with the precision optics of this printer it still wouldn't produce the quality Print that a contact print would. However when a couple thousand Prints are needed in modern cinema contact printing is too slow and cost effective even though a theater Audience would be seeing a Superior Image...

Bell & Howell Model C 35mm Contact Printer

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 08-10-2014, 06:55 PM:

quote: Randy Pryde
The DTS time code ran perfectly.

The one small house we played it in, even with fine tuning the scanner drum to the LED pickup, I was losing timecode off and on. Thus I "forced" the CP500 to run optical with this week long engagement.

Posted by Mitchell Dvoskin (Member # 751) on 08-11-2014, 08:31 AM:

In 1997, Warner Brothers digitally restored re-released The Wizard Of Oz, striking both full 1.37 frame dye transfer (IB) Technicolor prints, and "windowboxed" 1.37 in a 1.85 frame Eastman color prints. Both looked good, but one of the complaints at the time was that the "windowboxed" prints wasted so much of the available frame.

In 1998, Warner Brothers re-release Gone With The Wind, dye-transfer (IB) Technicolor "windowboxed" 1.37 in an anamorphic frame, thus using more of the available frame space. Unfortunately, unlike Oz, the quality control was terrible on these prints, with focus and fringing issues that varied widely from print to print.

Back in 1976, MGM re-issued Gone With The Wind in anamorphic wide screen by cutting off the top and bottom of the 1.37 frame. The first home video LaserDisc of GWTW came out in Japan a few year before USA LaserDisc. This Japanese release was mastered (pan and scanned) from one of the 1976 prints, so the top/bottom/left/right sides were cut off. What were they thinking...

Posted by Martin McCaffery (Member # 37) on 08-11-2014, 10:12 AM:

They were thinking they could make a lot of money;>

We ran the "scope" 1.37 version of GWTW here. As we had to mask down for scope, it looked like a postage stamp on the screen.