Movie Makers (Jun-Dec 1928)

When we all were seated, Dr. C. E. K. Mees, head of the Research Department of the Eastman Kodak Co., arose and said in part: "Mr. Eastman has asked me to describe to you the new development in photography which we have asked you here to see. From the very beginning of photography it has been the dream of every worker to produce pictures in natural colors instead of in monochrome, and an enormous amount of work has been done in this field. "The processes of color photography depend upon the fact first demonstrated in 1861 by Clark Maxwell in a lecture at the Royal Institution that colors can be duplicated in photography by taking advantage of the fact that any color can be matched by a mixture of three primary colors — red, green and blue-violet. Maxwell took three photographs of a colored ribbon — one through a red solution, another through a green solution, and a third through a blue, and from the three negatives he made three lantern slides and projected them on the same screen in register from three lanterns, placing the colored solutions in front of the lanterns so that the picture taken through the red solution was projected through the red solution, the one taken through the green solution was projected through the green solution, and the one taken through the blue solution projected through the blue solution. In this way, he got a reproduction of the colored ribbon on the screen. Maxwell had great difficulty in getting these results because in 1861 there was no way known of making the material used in the camera sensitive to green and red light. It was sensitive only to violet light, and in spite of enormous exposures, Maxwell could get only a very unsatisfactory result. With the use of the gelatine bromide emulsion and what are known as sensitizing dyes which make the film 'panchromatic,' that is, sensitive to all colors, there is no difficulty in getting good records through red and green filters, and Maxwell's experiment can be repeated today with the greatest ease and will give photographs of extraordinary beauty. In the development of processes of color photography the name of Mr. Ives, whom we have with us today, will be associated in all our minds. "The processes of color photography are divided technically into those which are similar to Maxwell's experiment — so-called additive processes, in which three pictures are projected simultaneously upon a screen, and those in which three prints are made and superimposed upon each other, these being the subtractive processes. The additive processes give the best results and are the easiest to work, but they have the disadvantage that the results can be viewed only by projection. The subtractive processes give results whicb can also be viewed in the hand. "For motion picture work, addi IN THE SPOTLIGHT The Amateur Movie Maker Held the Center of the Stage at the Recent Kodacolor Demonstration in Rochester. The Official Representative of the Amateur Cinema League, Hiram Percy Maxim, President, Is Shown (left) with E. E. Slosson, Editor of Science Service. tive processes would appear to present great advantages, but they ha\e one serious disadvantage; they require a modification of the projection apparatus, and this has hindered their introduction into the motion picture theatre field. The very beautiful Gaumont process of color motion picture photography, for instance, involved the taking of three pictures for every frame. These were taken one above the other through three lenses fitted with three filters, and were then projected through a triple lens also fitted with filters, the three pictures being superimposed on the screen to give a picture in color. "The processes which are in use at the present time for the production of colored motion pictures for the theatres are subtractive processes, and they usually take advantage of the fact that a film has two sides, so that one picture can be put on one side and the other on the other side of the film in register. We ourselves experimented with processes of this kind and have obtained some excellent results from a process which we term 'Kodachrome.' While these two-color processes represent a practical compromise, which may be useful in connection with the motion picture theatre, the quality of the results is not satisfactory for outdoor scenes and both the taking and the printing is too complicated for use by amateurs. A process of amateur color cinematography to be successful must be extremely simple, as in the present black and white amateur cinematography. "The process which we have to show you today and which we have termed the 'Kodacolor' process appears to us to fulfill this necessary condition. It is the introduction of a process of color photography by which any photographer can obtain motion pictures in color of the very highest quality and with as much ease as pictures in black and white. In order to do this, a photographer using a standard Cine Kodak fitted with an /1.9 lens, only has to insert a color filter into the lens and thread the Kodacolor film in the camera. After the film has been exposed, it is sent to us for processing and comes back to the photographer as a roll of black and white film which can be projected in an ordinary projector and will give a black and white picture on the screen. But if the projector is fitted with a special color filter like that which is used in the camera, then a colored picture will be obtained on the screen. "It will be seen that from the photographer's point of view the matter is simplicity itself, but I think 570