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Volume 39
INTERNATIONAL PROJECTIONIST
January, 1964
Number 1
A Neglected Asset:
TINTED RELEASE-PRINT FILM
By ROBERT A. MITCHELL
PART II
Tinting the screen with a dominant color tone to match the mood of the scene, with an appropriate change of color with each change of mood, time, or locale, is a trick of the trade so well known and so emphatically effective in the days of the silent films that it seems almost ridiculous to belabor the manifold virtues of tinted-base print films. But hammer away we must: the art of utilizing tinted release positive for monochrome ("black-andwhite" ) productions is at present totally neglected to the detriment of screen and boxoffice alike.
Interference with the reproduction of the optical soundtrack is no longer a valid excuse for the abandonment of this effective instrument of cinematic art. The first installment of this article demonstrated conclusively that no color of tinted film noticeably attenuates sound volume when the common infrared-sensitive photocell or phototransistor is used in the soundhead. The entire question boils down to a matter of showmanship, an alert recognition of the uniquely visual character of entertainment motion pictures. Why should the theatre screen remain stripped bare of a most useful dramatic embellishment? Why should moviegoers be subjected in the theatre to the same monotonously unexpressive and vis
4
ually unattractive gray image tones that they see all the time at home on black-and-white TV?
Remember — about 90 per cent of all feature-film print footage was tinted in the days when black-andwhite movies were undeniably very attractive pictorially and dramatically powerful. Of course, we have superb natural color today, but the majority of feature pictures are still photographed in monochrome, a practice that should continue because monochrome seems best suited to the more emotional type of screen play.
The theatre screen is vastly superior to television as an audiovisual medium. It is large and panoramic: it is pictorially superior to TV, presenting images of greater clarity and with a wider range of lifelike photographic contrasts: it does not "fog over" on low-key scenes: it has no disturbing scanning-line pattern: it presents natural color of much higher quality than even the very best color TV: it is able to offer stereophonic sound of the highest audio fidelity. The theatre screen formerly did. and could right now, appropriately color by means of tinted-base film and toned photographic images its monochrome offerings, thus enhancing the pictorial values and scene-to-scene moods of pictures not photographed
International Projectionist Januarv. 1964