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MOTION PICTURES IN NATURAL COLORS
Hal Hall and William Stull, A.S.C.
THE past year has witnessed phenomenal changes and developments in the motion picture industry. The advent of sound set the industry upon its toes, as it were, and progress was the watchword of everyone. Perhaps no greater progress was made during this year than that in the field of color cinematography. From what might almost be termed a glorious experiment, color leaped into prominence and became almost over-night one of the biggest factors in the production of motion pictures. The world became color conscious and color systems began springing up in all quarters.
Technicolor, which has been in the van for years, naturally has led the color parade, for it had at its command vast resources and laboratories; and in the past it was Technicolor which was mainly used in the color sequences which dotted pictures here and there. However, other processes have come rapidly during the past year, with Multicolor stepping forward as probably the most outstanding of the new processes. Others springing into prominence included Harris Color, Photocolor, a special color process of the Eastman Kodak Company which is now being called Fox Color, but which was formerly known as Kodachrome, and for the 16-millimeter film came Kodacolor and for a time Vitacolor. In addition to these there are many other processes in the experimental laboratories.
As color in motion pictures is apparently here to stay it might be well to go back at this point and see just what color is and what the developments have been. Naturally, the starting point of a discussion of any subject is a reasonably clear understanding of what is being discussed.
Color really is the mental result of the physical action of different light waves on our optic nerves; but what is it that makes these results differ? In the first place, we have not gone back far enough to reach the real source of color. We must recall that color is a manifestation of light — so our real beginning must be light
Light, we know, comes from all incandescent or burning bodies, and is reflected by all others. Now, light itself is an electromagnetic wave-motion in the ether. These light-waves are much the same as radio waves, but they are broadcast on a shorter wave-length and at a tremendously higher frequency. Instead of measuring their wavelength in metres, we measure it in ten-thousandths of a millimetre, and the frequency in hundreds of trillions per second. No wonder we can't tune it in on our radios! These waves cover a rather considerable range of frequencies and wave-lengths, and the differences of these are responsible for the effects we call color.
Pure white light, such as comes from the sun, is a complete and perfect mixture of all these frequencies, but that which is reflected
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