International photographer (Jan-Dec 1934)

Eight The INTERNATIONAL PHOTOGRAPHER January, 1934 The Wonders of Hessercolor New Process of Making Still Pictures in Natural Colors Bids Fair to Become a Box Office Stimulus. One of the greatest advancements affecting the motion picture industry as a whole will be possible through the use of a new process of making still pictures in natural color, thus greatly improving the theatre lobby displays throughout the entire exhibitors' market. The weakness of motion picture advertising — in comparison to other major industries — is widely acknowledged. Much of this is due to the lack of quality in still pictures from productions ; this being specially noticeable when they are "hand colored" and lithographed or printed in various other methods for lobby display sets. It is not unusual to see a set of pictures in a lobby where obviously the girl's same dress is pink in one poster and blue in another. These prints are naturally turned out cheaply — the expense in this direction has been pared down to an absolute minimum. Yet, particularly in theatres other than first run, the lobby stills are an all important factor in patron determination as to whether or not they care to see the picture that is being advertised. This same fact holds true of the billboard lithographs; many of these are cheaply developed from motion picture stills, with crudities of coloring and printing that certainly do not do their fullest duty in bringing patrons into the theatre. National advertisers in many lines are using color photography, while the magazine pages are being more and more filled with advertising copy produced from natural color photography. Any effect that an artist, painting with a brush, can produce, is possible with modern natural color photography, and certainly the magazine covers already produced, of movie stars, are much superior to the paintings that adorn similar covers. Perfected Color Process Edwin Bower Hesser, one of the early members of Local No. 659, International Photographers, has returned to Hollywood after an absence of two years with his now perfected invention and method of producing natural color still pictures, the Hessercolor Process. To a group of officers and members of the International Photographers he displayed recently a selection of about fifty pictures produced by his method. These examples included everything from natural color portraits of Joan Crawford, Billie Dove, Barbara Stanwyck, Thelma Todd, Jeanette MacDonald, Janet Gaynor and other prominent stars, to interiors of surprising beauty taken aboard steamship and elaborate exteriors of architecture and classic gardens. Still life groupings for advertisings, such as Heinz products, fruits, baskets of orchids and cigarettes were remarkable for their fidelity to nature, while decorative head studies, for advertising purposes, showed a range of artistic effects using colored lightings that rival the variations of a painter's palette — it being possible to "paint with colored lights" just as in stage lighting. Cameramen To Be Trained Hessercolor Process is the result of a number of years of great effort, starting while the inventor was captain, Photographic Section, Signal Corps, U. S. Army. The first application was to aerial photography in color, primarily for military use. His efforts in recent years have been devoted to simplification in the all important matters of speed, accuracy and financial economy of operation, to make it practical for the motion picture industry. On his recent visit to Local No. 659, Captain Hesser outlined his idea of operation to include the training of a number of members of No. 659 in the skillful handling of the Hessercolor Camera, by which the pictures are taken on motion picture sets or in the portrait galleries of a studio; then turned over, undeveloped, for finishing in full color. Hessercolor Camera The Hessercolor Camera is a mechanical affair, by which three pictures are made in rapid succession, with proper filters, to produce blue printing, yellow printing and red printing negatives. These three negatives are taken in a total of less than three seconds ; slight movement of the subjects, for instance, in a scene with many players, can easily be corrected in the printing. The three negatives are printed separately on a new substance discovered and manufactured by Captain Hesser ; impalpably thin, yet tough and flexible, it makes registration easy and certain. The printing of a picture, in the three colors, its superimposition and final blending — similar chemically to "firing" of pottery — is a matter of half an hour's laboratory work. The final picture looks almost as if it were glazed ; it has a very bright finish like decoration on china, making it particularly adaptable to reproduction in process plate engraving or any other commercial form of printing. Hessercolor pictures have been reproduced in many leading national ads in the past year, while Captain Hesser was in charge of the natural color photographic department of The New York Times. Easy To Master It is claimed that any skillful cameraman can learn to use the Hessercolor camera properly in two or three experiments ; the resulting pictures, strange to say, have very little possibility of failure, if made on a properly lighted motion picture set. Naturally, the more highly developed arts of portraiture or poster-making in Hessercolor need special lightings in color ; magazine covers, too, require the skill of an artist who knows the art of colorappeal in display work. Scenic shots are particularly wonderful by this new method and while there are still certain limitations, as to exposure of two or three seconds, it is possible to get a "one-shot camera" which is instantaneous, though not as good in quality as three shot. Several Types of Cameras There are several types of Hessercolor cameras, in various sizes and types of mechanism, some of them taking upright portrait pictures and others in landscape proportion for stills on motion picture sets. The average time exposure for color stills on sets is about two seconds and even a movement of a person, if not too great, can be undetectably corrected in the finished print. Practically every photographer is familiar to some extent with the workings of color photography ; the photographing of a subject through minus-yellow, minus-red and minus-blue filters. This is carried out with great speed in the Hessercolor Cameras, which have a feature, for motion picture work, which permits photographing players wearing regular panchromatic make-up with brown lips so that the lips in the final print are red — without altering the relative value of the colorings of clothes or of the set. It is also possible at all times to "step up" the red printing filament, so that a more natural flesh tint is ob tained than is actually before the camera, when panchroPlease mention The international Photographer when corresponding with advertisers.