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COLOR RENDITION
A Series of Practical Tests of the Monochromatic Rendition of Color
with Commercial Motion Picture Negative Film.
Jackson J. Rose, A. S. C.
THE past year has seen tremendous advances in the popularity of natural-color cinematography for the production of dramatic feature pictures and short subjects. Nevertheless the motion picture industry as a whole continues to operate on a blackand-white basis. Yet even so, the question of color and its rendition is of vital importance to cinematographers, for black-and-white pictures are nothing more nor less than representations of the form and color of a scene in monochrome. Therefore it is of the utmost importance that cinematographers and art-directors and others interested, know exactly how every color and shade will photograph under every condition of lighting and filtering, and upon every available make of film.
The long years of experience behind most cinematographers and art-directors is sufficient to give them a fairly accurate judgment of such things in most cases, but there are times when even the most extensive experiment must be at a loss to find the right answer to such problems. Furthermore, the opinions of experienced cameramen as to the photographic value of certain materials may often be diametrically opposed. An instance of this occurred in the writer's experience some time ago: in the course of his work in photographing a picture at one of the larger studios he had to photograph a set whose background was largely composed of green cloth. According to his judgment this background should have photographed in a very light tone, while according to the judgment of one of his colleagues — an equally experienced cinematographer — the set should have photographed in a very dark tone. They both were careful in giving a decision, in this case both the Pan glass viewing filter as well as the Blue glass were brought into play. In the projection room the next day the film was viewed, and it was found that neither man was right, and that the green of the set photographed as a dark grey, midway between the two values predicted.
In itself, this incident had no practical value; but it very clearly showed the writer that something was wrong. Here were two experienced, veteran cinematographers, whose judgments of the photographic value of a certain color were diametrically opposed, and who were both proven to be wrong by actual practice. Furthermore, every practicing cinematographer can easily cite a dozen similar instances from his personal experience. This pointed to an alarming state of affairs, for the keynote of the cinematograpber's work is his exact knowledge of the photographic value of every object and color he is to photograph before money is needlessly expended on construction and photography. He is almost the only man in a studio who cannot say, "This ought to photograph thus and so." He must know, positively, how it will appear.
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