The Cine Technician (1935-1937)

52 The Journal of the Association of CineTechnicians Aug. -Oct., 1936 Opportune Book on Colour Cinematography Desmond Dickinson Reviews "COLOUR CINEMATOGRAPHY," by Major Adrian Bernard Klein, M.B.E., A.R.P.S. (Chapman ik. Hall, 25/ net.) This book which, so far as I know, is the first book deahng entirely with COLOUR Cinematography, has arrived at just the right time, when the film business is thinking and talking about colour. Had it been published some years ago, many investors who had been shown apparently satisfactory examples of colour cinematography, might not have wasted their money in backing various inventors who were trying to iron out snags which were inherent to their particular process. I am glad to see the author has the courage to say, for example, "It is likely that all the work lavished upon the 'additive' method of synthesis, in which three separate images in the primary colours are projected in superposition upon the screen, was wasted, though for many years this appeared to offer a simple and elegant solution." It is interesting to see that practically all modem developments in colour photography were originally suggested by M. Louis Ducos du Hauron, who in 1862 described a 'photochromoscope' (an optical instrument for the additive admixture of three primary colour images), additive projection, the mosaic screen process, bipacks and even tripacks ; thus he anticipated nearly all subsequent practice. The Academic des Sciences refused to allow the presentation of the paper. Indeed, it was not published until 1897. It is of further interest to note that the type of colour process which the author suggests will be the ultimate, will be on the lines of M. du Hauron's conception in 1895 — a multilayer process called the Polyfolium Chromodialytique. "It is remarkable that in this approach to the solution of the problem we should again retmn to one of the proposals of Ducos du Hauron, namely the 'Polyfolium Chromodialytique' in which he had conceived an ideal multi-layer emulsion, in each layer of which a different part of the spectrum could be recorded. Only rarely has such imaginative foresight been equalled in the history of invention." I think I am right in saying that M. Louis du Hauron died in extreme poverty. Major Klein treats the historj' of colour cinerrtatography very completely. It is very noticeable that many colour processes appear to have been re-invented by many different people at different times and worked in the same manner or with very slight variations from their predecessors. The similarity of the working of most of the two-colour processes both additive and substractive is striking. The number of additive processes that have had a great deal of money spent on them, which were doomed to failure owing to inherent paralla.x, appear to be many. Major Klein gives the working details of apparently every additive and substractive colour cinematography process that has any commercial pretensions at all. He deals exhaustively with the Technicolor process and demonstrates the wonderful way in which the workers in this process stuck to it. They seem to have tried practically every way of developing a completely .satisfactory colour sy.stem. The patience of these workers is something to be wondered at, as the snags they came up against must have been enormous. The complexity of some of the beam-splitting systems described and illustrated is very remarkable. The ingenuity of the optical workers in separating the colour-analysis records, in keeping the light paths of the same length and in attempting to avoid parallax, can be described only in the words of Sam Weller when he said that his knowledge of London was "extensive and peculiar." Major Klein is, of course, the Technical Director of Gasparcolor Ltd. He suggests that perhaps the eventual colour-system might be a merging of two existing processes, "It is probable that it is the intention of Kodak to wed the Gasparcolor process to the Kodachrome process in such a way as to present an elegant solution of the entire complex problem of negative-positive." There appears to be no aspect of Colour Cinematography which has been overlooked by the author. If this book, as it probably won't, should get into the hands of anv person about to put money into a colour process, it would be very greatly to their advantage to note the following passage : — "When approached by people who state that they are the owners of the world rights of a perfect three-colour process, if sufficiently impressed by a demonstration reel and desirous of giving the process a practical test, the following trials of the system are suggested : — (1) A perfectly neutral grey set must be reproduced. Black, grey and white costume. In fact, black, white and grey, everywhere except the flesh of the actor. If the set is photographed minus actors, when it is projected it .should be practically indistinguishable from a black-and-white film. This condition is very difficult indeed to fulfil. (2) No fringing whatever must be visible, even on closest inspection. Such fringing as occurs is due to faulty registration in printing, unequal size of images, parallax, etc. (3) Adequate exposure must be obtained with less than twice the illumination briglitness normally used. (4) A lemon yellow band should be painted on a white background and photographed. The lemon yellow should be accurately reproduced. Against a neutral grey background photograph a band of vivid emerald green ; ditto with violet, ultramarine blue, magenta, cerise, pink, olive green, turquoise blue. Note the reproduction of the.se. (5) Finally, photograph a close-up of a face with no make-up and inspect the reproduction of that particular complexion, simj)ly for sheer accuracy of colour photography. ((S) Photograph a draped curtain of some desaturated colour such as pale blue. Take 100 ft. of film and examine the print for \ariation, flushing, and steadiness generally. (7) For definition test, photograph a new.spaper so as to just fill the frame and .see how much you can read on the screen, and also how mucii can be read through a magnifying glass when the film is inspected in the hand. ^