Technicolor News & Views (April 1955)

Color Motion Picture Printing SILVER SEPARATION NEGATIVES 16MM KODACHROME FILM DYE-TRANSFER RELEASE PRINT MATRICES DYE TRANSFER PRINT FROM 16MM KODACHROME FILM When the scene is initially recorded on 16mm Kodachrome film, enlarged 35mm silver separation nega- tives are optically printed and developed. Matrices and sound tracks are utilized as explained opposite. Release prints for "The Living Desert" and "The Vanishing Prairie," among others, were made in this way. light in the scene and has been immersed in magenta dye. Finally, the third matrix and blank are separated. The blank film is no longer blank; it now has all the colors necessary for ex- cellent reproduction of a color scene and is ready for delivery to exhibitors for pro- jection. Where yellow dye is present, blue light is subtracted from the projector's white light source; similarly red is sub- tracted where cyan is present and green where magenta occurs. Absence of all dyes results in white liqht on the screen and presence of all dyes in sufficient quantities creates an absence of light, or black on the screen. Wet matrix and blank emulsions have a consistency approximating wet chew- ing gum, but all dyes have been trans- ferred in super-posed registration within tolerances of ten-thousandths of an inch. Only TECHNICOLOR offers the producer the alternative of having film printed on color positive stock or by the dye transfer method. Dye transfer release prints offer a cost advantage when a large number of prints are required for world-wide re- lease. And by dye transfer printing from matrices valuable negative is saved from constant re-use. DYE TRANSFER PRINT FROM SUCCESSIVE FRAME NEGATIVE For cartoon color release prints 35mm suc- cessive frame silver negative is used. Alternate use of blue, green and red filters permits ex- posure of succeeding frames to each color as- pect of t^ie scene. From each third frame of the negative, one matrix is printed which has all the color information of one aspect of the scene, e.g., green. Sound tracks and pictures for release prints are made as described opposite. MATRICES COLOR POSITIVE RELEASE PRINTS Color positive release prints are manu- COLOR POSITIVE PRINT FROM COLOR NEGATIVE Color negative is also used to contact print color positive film. Optical sound tracks are printed from a second negative (not shown) after picture printing but be- fore picture development. factured only from color nega- tive. Color positive stock is sim- ilar to color negative in that it has three superposed emulsion layers. Color positive stock is contact-printed by light coming through the color negative. Color negative has different colors correlated to the sensitiv- ities of color positive emulsion layers. Color positive stock records one color image aspect in each of its three emulsion layers and, after printing, is developed. When optical sound tracks are required for color positive release prints, the picture images are printed first. The sound track image is then printed and developed. Devel- opment of the picture image is the last step. When magnetic sound tracks are required, they are placed on the release prints after print- ing and developing. From squeezed (anamor- phosed) or large area nega- tives, TECHNICOLOR manufac- tures Cinerama, CinemaScope, Vista-Vision and SuperScope high quality color release prints for world-wide distribution. — FIVE —