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How Technicolor created Ruby slippers without using color film

75 points by indigodaddy 5y ago

tablespoon 5y ago
> This video is unavailable Youtube unlisted video purge strikes again? https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/9230970?hl=en https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/9230970?hl=en
sxp 5y ago
This is a horrible article since it talks about color and images but lacks illustrations. I suggest something like https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/what-is-technicolor-definition/ https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/what-is-technicolor-defini... or YouTube videos on the topic since a color picture is worth 3 * 1000 words.
- khazhoux 5y ago
  > a color picture is worth 3 * 1000 words This is not exactly right. Because of the human eye's varying sensitivity to different wavelengths, the actual number is somewhat smaller. It is estimated that a color picture is in fact worth 2,780 words. https://ceciliavision.github.io/graphics/a6/images/human_vision.png https://ceciliavision.github.io/graphics/a6/images/human_vis...
Causality1 5y ago
It all looks dyed, not recorded — and that's because it was. This is wrong. Technicolor looked unrealistic because of insufficient technological development, not a weakness inherent to the method. The camera in your smartphone uses a very similar color-filtering technique to produce accurate colors.
- aidenn0 5y ago
  And plenty of color processes add dyes during development (most famously Kodachrome), yet I don't think people would call kodachrome "not color film" or claim that it "doesn't record color" [edit] Reading more about how Process 4 technicolor worked, the exposures caused varying thicknesses of gelatin, for each primary color, and the dyes were then transferred onto film via a mechanical process. This is different than the e.g. the Kodachrome process where the developer reacts with the exposed silver to form an insoluble dye.
bishoprook2 5y ago
There is a depressingly large body of technology attached to movie film and we'll be living with it for some time (especially aspect ratios). Probably just best to stick to Cinerama and be done with it.
- ghaff 5y ago
  To say nothing of terminology. While "clapping" is still sometimes legitimately used when there is separate audio recording, terms like "Speed," "B-roll," etc. are definitely rooted in film stock.
  - bishoprook2 5y ago
    In addition to the whole rigamarole of terms for film editing. Product idea of the day: Telecine for Cinerama. Now that I think of it, I wonder if the Cineon people ever thought about Cinerama.
- Animats 5y ago
  Probably just best to stick to Cinerama and be done with it. Right. This is Cinerama.[1] Widescreen the hard way. Three 35mm cameras, three projectors, and a lot of alignment. [1] https://youtu.be/vrzjdlyZCD8 https://youtu.be/vrzjdlyZCD8
khazhoux 5y ago
Article is a bit disappointing. Summary: Technicolor filmed simultaneously on three B&W films after passing through color filters. Each film strip was dyed red, green, blue, and the three were overlaid for the final film. Set lighting had to be extra bright. The ruby slippers were actually silver in the books.
- titzer 5y ago
  Perfect summary.
- paulmd 5y ago
  Yup, it's largely similar to the technique used by Prokuin-Gorskii for his photographic survey of Russia around 1900. He was using wet plates for still images rather than film for movies - but same idea. Take three monocrhome images, one of each primary color, and project them back together and you'll have a full-color image. http://www.loc.gov/pictures/search/?q=color&st=grid&co=prok http://www.loc.gov/pictures/search/?q=color&st=grid&co=prok Kind of a fun fact is that in a sense we use this same idea today for digital photography - modern camera sensors are almost entirely[0] monochrome, so we put a tiled color filter in front of the sensor, which makes each pixel pick up a different color (like the 3 colors of the film strip), and then we digitally reconstruct full color at all pixels from the individual colored-monochrome pixels. So it's basically just a 3-strip image, but shot on the same image and digitally reconstructed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_filter_array https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_filter_array https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayer_filter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayer_filter [0] the exception is Foveon sensors which actually do have three sensors at each "pixel", stacked on top of each other. The problem is this generally has lower resolution than an equivalent Bayer filter-based sensor - however somewhat offset by a relative lack of moire due to the higher color resolution. Most (but not all) Bayer sensor cameras use an antialiasing filter (optical low pass filter) over the sensor to combat this - which costs some resolution (eg Sony A7 vs A7r - the base model has the moire filter and the R doesn't, but the R model gets almost twice as much resolution).
  - klodolph 5y ago
    Color film works the same way, actually. Color film is "just" made up of three layers of monochromatic film, stacked on top of each other. There are color filters between each layer to filter the light. With color positive film, these layers are removed during processing. If you have a knife, you can scrape off the color layers in order. Starting from the emulsion side (the side which is less shiny), you'll scrape of the magenta layer first, then the yellow, and you'll be left with cyan on the bottom. It's always in this order, due to the physics of how film works.
ballenf 5y ago
Article references the debunked claim that the Wizard of Oz was an allegory about the gold standard. Or was that debunking debunked? Hard to keep up.
w0mbat 5y ago
Article confuses "filter" with "lens". There were various generations of the Technicolor system over the years, each system comprising special movie cameras (which could only be rented), film, and complicated film processing and printing. The early systems used two color layers, the later ones had three. By the time "The Wizard of Oz" was made, they were on Process 4, AKA 3 strip Technicolor. The effective ASA of the system used on that movie (taking into account filters and beam splitters) was 5 ASA, hence the need for very bright lighting. For a more informative article on the shooting of that movie see this article. https://ascmag.com/articles/beyond-the-frame-wizard-of-oz https://ascmag.com/articles/beyond-the-frame-wizard-of-oz
- ghaff 5y ago
  One of the probably underappreciated aspects of digital is that it makes what would have been considered extremely low light photography and film-making a few decades ago almost effortless. See what Kubrick did for Barry Lyndon candlelit scenes. As an undergrad in the late 70s, even B&W up to about 1600 ASA/ISO was pushing things and required special chemistry. For color you really wanted to shoot ASA 25 Kodachrome if you could. Could reasonably go up to about ASA 100 Ektachrome in subsequent decades. And could push things to maybe 400/800 with significant compromises. These days a full-frame DSLR can hit 6400+ without breaking a sweat. Probably higher with the newest equipment. I was being "filmed" for a documentary a couple of months back and the lighting was just some LED soft boxes.
  - acomjean 5y ago
    Still photography too. In the Early 90s I did some college newspaper photography. We'd push our "400iso" film to 1600 by changing the processing, which worked but made it grainy. Also manual focus, when shooting basketball and concerts was challenging as the depth of field is quite small. You quickly realize the price of a lens wasn't soo much the focal length (200mm) but increased rapidly depending on much light it let in. But back to color. Some of those slide films from the 60s and 70s rendered color quite accurately/vividly. I went to a slide presentation and someone was showing slides and I guess I was a little stunned and you associate certain decades with a "look" that may have been a limitation of print film at the time.
robbrown451 5y ago
"Technicolor cameras didn't film in color. Instead they filmed in black and white, with different filters." That's kind of semantics. It used a mechanism for capturing 3 color channels, red green and blue. The fact that this wasn't fully integrated into the film itself, via chemistry, is really irrelevant. The technology was fairly crude and unwieldy compared to using color film, which itself is pretty unwieldy compared to filming digitally. But saying it wasn't "filmed in color" is, to me, simply false.
- happytoexplain 5y ago
  Ehh, they recorded onto three film strips at once, each a grayscale representation of one color, then dyed each one and combined them. I totally get what you're saying, but I feel like the sentence you quoted is a reasonable interpretation of that. At least they explained what they meant by it.
  - sib 5y ago
    I guess... But it's sort of like saying "digital cameras[1] don't record in color, they record in greyscale," which is technically true, but also misses the point. By the definition they are using, even color film doesn't really record in color. [1] Other than the minuscule # of Foveon sensor cameras.
  - robbrown451 5y ago
    They explained what they meant by it, sure, but it is also a typical example of saying something that is not true to get attention, and then backing off of it. Gets clicks and such. A common example (also having to do with color) is "the color magenta doesn't exist." Yes it does, it is simply a non-spectral hue. "Magenta lasers don't exist" would be true, but less attention getting.
Johnny555 5y ago
As anyone who has seen an old Technicolor film knows, it looks weird. Blue eyes look like they glow. Pink faces look like they've been painted peach. Red looks scary. It all looks dyed, not recorded... It's also why most early films nearly cause eyestrain — especially the famous film The Wizard of Oz I never found technicolor (The Wizard of Oz, in particular) to be terribly unnatural or hard to watch due to bad coloring. Is this a common perception? The colors in the film are quite vibrant and I wish I could have been in a theater for the original release to experience the big reveal from black and white to color. That must have been amazing for those that were experiencing color film for the first time. (this wasn't the first color film, but it was an early color film) I've seen the film in a theater, but I don't know how close modern prints are to the original release, maybe they've fixed up the color.
- rrauenza 5y ago
  I believe they meant eyestrain for the actors - not the audience. I think the paragraph got kind of mixed up.
  - Johnny555 5y ago
    That's not how I read it since they mentioned actual eye damage for those on the set a bit later: Many regulars on The Wizard of Oz complained of eye damage from the studio lights, that lasted years.
one_off_comment 5y ago
>Technicolor film was not color film Well, it was technically color... ;-) I'll see myself out.
chiph 5y ago
For those that grew up the 70's, the Land of Oz theme park still exists, but is only open once a year, coming up in mid-September: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSnco3K0K7o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSnco3K0K7o https://www.landofoznc.com/ https://www.landofoznc.com/

75 points by indigodaddy 5y ago

> This video is unavailable Youtube unlisted video purge strikes again? https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/9230970?hl=en https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/9230970?hl=en

sxp 5y ago

This is a horrible article since it talks about color and images but lacks illustrations. I suggest something like https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/what-is-technicolor-definition/ https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/what-is-technicolor-defini... or YouTube videos on the topic since a color picture is worth 3 * 1000 words.

khazhoux 5y ago
> a color picture is worth 3 * 1000 words This is not exactly right. Because of the human eye's varying sensitivity to different wavelengths, the actual number is somewhat smaller. It is estimated that a color picture is in fact worth 2,780 words. https://ceciliavision.github.io/graphics/a6/images/human_vision.png https://ceciliavision.github.io/graphics/a6/images/human_vis...

Causality1 5y ago

It all looks dyed, not recorded — and that's because it was. This is wrong. Technicolor looked unrealistic because of insufficient technological development, not a weakness inherent to the method. The camera in your smartphone uses a very similar color-filtering technique to produce accurate colors.

aidenn0 5y ago
And plenty of color processes add dyes during development (most famously Kodachrome), yet I don't think people would call kodachrome "not color film" or claim that it "doesn't record color" [edit] Reading more about how Process 4 technicolor worked, the exposures caused varying thicknesses of gelatin, for each primary color, and the dyes were then transferred onto film via a mechanical process. This is different than the e.g. the Kodachrome process where the developer reacts with the exposed silver to form an insoluble dye.

bishoprook2 5y ago

There is a depressingly large body of technology attached to movie film and we'll be living with it for some time (especially aspect ratios). Probably just best to stick to Cinerama and be done with it.

ghaff 5y ago
To say nothing of terminology. While "clapping" is still sometimes legitimately used when there is separate audio recording, terms like "Speed," "B-roll," etc. are definitely rooted in film stock.
- bishoprook2 5y ago
  In addition to the whole rigamarole of terms for film editing. Product idea of the day: Telecine for Cinerama. Now that I think of it, I wonder if the Cineon people ever thought about Cinerama.
Animats 5y ago
Probably just best to stick to Cinerama and be done with it. Right. This is Cinerama.[1] Widescreen the hard way. Three 35mm cameras, three projectors, and a lot of alignment. [1] https://youtu.be/vrzjdlyZCD8 https://youtu.be/vrzjdlyZCD8

khazhoux 5y ago

Article is a bit disappointing. Summary: Technicolor filmed simultaneously on three B&W films after passing through color filters. Each film strip was dyed red, green, blue, and the three were overlaid for the final film. Set lighting had to be extra bright. The ruby slippers were actually silver in the books.

titzer 5y ago
Perfect summary.
paulmd 5y ago
Yup, it's largely similar to the technique used by Prokuin-Gorskii for his photographic survey of Russia around 1900. He was using wet plates for still images rather than film for movies - but same idea. Take three monocrhome images, one of each primary color, and project them back together and you'll have a full-color image. http://www.loc.gov/pictures/search/?q=color&st=grid&co=prok http://www.loc.gov/pictures/search/?q=color&st=grid&co=prok Kind of a fun fact is that in a sense we use this same idea today for digital photography - modern camera sensors are almost entirely[0] monochrome, so we put a tiled color filter in front of the sensor, which makes each pixel pick up a different color (like the 3 colors of the film strip), and then we digitally reconstruct full color at all pixels from the individual colored-monochrome pixels. So it's basically just a 3-strip image, but shot on the same image and digitally reconstructed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_filter_array https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_filter_array https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayer_filter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayer_filter [0] the exception is Foveon sensors which actually do have three sensors at each "pixel", stacked on top of each other. The problem is this generally has lower resolution than an equivalent Bayer filter-based sensor - however somewhat offset by a relative lack of moire due to the higher color resolution. Most (but not all) Bayer sensor cameras use an antialiasing filter (optical low pass filter) over the sensor to combat this - which costs some resolution (eg Sony A7 vs A7r - the base model has the moire filter and the R doesn't, but the R model gets almost twice as much resolution).
- klodolph 5y ago
  Color film works the same way, actually. Color film is "just" made up of three layers of monochromatic film, stacked on top of each other. There are color filters between each layer to filter the light. With color positive film, these layers are removed during processing. If you have a knife, you can scrape off the color layers in order. Starting from the emulsion side (the side which is less shiny), you'll scrape of the magenta layer first, then the yellow, and you'll be left with cyan on the bottom. It's always in this order, due to the physics of how film works.

ballenf 5y ago

Article references the debunked claim that the Wizard of Oz was an allegory about the gold standard. Or was that debunking debunked? Hard to keep up.

w0mbat 5y ago

Article confuses "filter" with "lens". There were various generations of the Technicolor system over the years, each system comprising special movie cameras (which could only be rented), film, and complicated film processing and printing. The early systems used two color layers, the later ones had three. By the time "The Wizard of Oz" was made, they were on Process 4, AKA 3 strip Technicolor. The effective ASA of the system used on that movie (taking into account filters and beam splitters) was 5 ASA, hence the need for very bright lighting. For a more informative article on the shooting of that movie see this article. https://ascmag.com/articles/beyond-the-frame-wizard-of-oz https://ascmag.com/articles/beyond-the-frame-wizard-of-oz

ghaff 5y ago
One of the probably underappreciated aspects of digital is that it makes what would have been considered extremely low light photography and film-making a few decades ago almost effortless. See what Kubrick did for Barry Lyndon candlelit scenes. As an undergrad in the late 70s, even B&W up to about 1600 ASA/ISO was pushing things and required special chemistry. For color you really wanted to shoot ASA 25 Kodachrome if you could. Could reasonably go up to about ASA 100 Ektachrome in subsequent decades. And could push things to maybe 400/800 with significant compromises. These days a full-frame DSLR can hit 6400+ without breaking a sweat. Probably higher with the newest equipment. I was being "filmed" for a documentary a couple of months back and the lighting was just some LED soft boxes.
- acomjean 5y ago
  Still photography too. In the Early 90s I did some college newspaper photography. We'd push our "400iso" film to 1600 by changing the processing, which worked but made it grainy. Also manual focus, when shooting basketball and concerts was challenging as the depth of field is quite small. You quickly realize the price of a lens wasn't soo much the focal length (200mm) but increased rapidly depending on much light it let in. But back to color. Some of those slide films from the 60s and 70s rendered color quite accurately/vividly. I went to a slide presentation and someone was showing slides and I guess I was a little stunned and you associate certain decades with a "look" that may have been a limitation of print film at the time.

robbrown451 5y ago

"Technicolor cameras didn't film in color. Instead they filmed in black and white, with different filters." That's kind of semantics. It used a mechanism for capturing 3 color channels, red green and blue. The fact that this wasn't fully integrated into the film itself, via chemistry, is really irrelevant. The technology was fairly crude and unwieldy compared to using color film, which itself is pretty unwieldy compared to filming digitally. But saying it wasn't "filmed in color" is, to me, simply false.

happytoexplain 5y ago
Ehh, they recorded onto three film strips at once, each a grayscale representation of one color, then dyed each one and combined them. I totally get what you're saying, but I feel like the sentence you quoted is a reasonable interpretation of that. At least they explained what they meant by it.
- sib 5y ago
  I guess... But it's sort of like saying "digital cameras[1] don't record in color, they record in greyscale," which is technically true, but also misses the point. By the definition they are using, even color film doesn't really record in color. [1] Other than the minuscule # of Foveon sensor cameras.
- robbrown451 5y ago
  They explained what they meant by it, sure, but it is also a typical example of saying something that is not true to get attention, and then backing off of it. Gets clicks and such. A common example (also having to do with color) is "the color magenta doesn't exist." Yes it does, it is simply a non-spectral hue. "Magenta lasers don't exist" would be true, but less attention getting.

Johnny555 5y ago

As anyone who has seen an old Technicolor film knows, it looks weird. Blue eyes look like they glow. Pink faces look like they've been painted peach. Red looks scary. It all looks dyed, not recorded... It's also why most early films nearly cause eyestrain — especially the famous film The Wizard of Oz I never found technicolor (The Wizard of Oz, in particular) to be terribly unnatural or hard to watch due to bad coloring. Is this a common perception? The colors in the film are quite vibrant and I wish I could have been in a theater for the original release to experience the big reveal from black and white to color. That must have been amazing for those that were experiencing color film for the first time. (this wasn't the first color film, but it was an early color film) I've seen the film in a theater, but I don't know how close modern prints are to the original release, maybe they've fixed up the color.

rrauenza 5y ago
I believe they meant eyestrain for the actors - not the audience. I think the paragraph got kind of mixed up.
- Johnny555 5y ago
  That's not how I read it since they mentioned actual eye damage for those on the set a bit later: Many regulars on The Wizard of Oz complained of eye damage from the studio lights, that lasted years.

one_off_comment 5y ago

>Technicolor film was not color film Well, it was technically color... ;-) I'll see myself out.

chiph 5y ago

For those that grew up the 70's, the Land of Oz theme park still exists, but is only open once a year, coming up in mid-September: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSnco3K0K7o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSnco3K0K7o https://www.landofoznc.com/ https://www.landofoznc.com/