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| - The Technicolor film process was the dominant technology for shooting movies in color in Hollywood in the 1930s and '40s. It affected the way two film projects on the Land of Oz reached (or failed to reach) their audiences. On the negative side, animator Ted Esbaugh was unable to distribute his 1933 Oz cartoon because of a legal dispute with the Technicolor Motion Picture Corp., which kept a tight control on its processes. The Oz project presented some unique challenges: the Tin Woodman's shiny surface and the sparkling ruby slippers could cast reflections into the cameras that spoiled shots.
- The Technicolor Process 4 used colored filters, a beam splitter made from a thinly coated mirror inside a split-cube prism, and three strips of black-and-white film (hence the "three-strip" designation). The mirror was semitransparent, and allowed part of the light to shine straight through into a green filter and onto a strip of panchromatic black-and-white film, which registered the green part of the image. The other part of the light, reflected sideways by the mirror, went through a magenta filter to remove green light, exposed a layer of blue-sensitive orthochromatic film, passed through a red filter to remove blue light, and exposed a final layer of panchromatic film, which registered the red part of the image. The "blue" film, red dye filter, and "red" film were layered into a single
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| abstract
| - The Technicolor film process was the dominant technology for shooting movies in color in Hollywood in the 1930s and '40s. It affected the way two film projects on the Land of Oz reached (or failed to reach) their audiences. On the negative side, animator Ted Esbaugh was unable to distribute his 1933 Oz cartoon because of a legal dispute with the Technicolor Motion Picture Corp., which kept a tight control on its processes. On the positive side, the 1939 MGM film The Wizard of Oz was triumphantly realized in Technicolor, in the company's new 3-strip color process. (The first Hollywood film using the 3-color process was made in 1935; five more were made in 1936, and twenty in 1937.) It was a major logistic achievement: the enormous cameras needed for the 3-strip Technicolor process had to be rented from the Technicolor Corp., and required daily testing and cleaning. For a complex shot that needed multiple cameras (and the Oz production needed as many as nine for some scenes), the MGM crew sometimes had to film at night, since that was the only time the needed number of cameras would be available. The Technicolor Corp. supplied its own consultant to oversee each Technicolor movie. (For The Wizard of Oz, that man was Henri Jaffa.) Technicolor also insisted that each studio hire at least one of its cameramen for each Technicolor film: either a Technicolor First Cameraman ($250 weekly), a Second Cameraman ($125), or a Third ($62.50). For Oz, MGM hired both a Second and Third Cameraman from Technicolor, but left its own man Harold Rosson in charge overall. Guidance was needed, since the Technicolor process did not reproduce colors with absolute fidelity, and adjustments were necessary. The color white was an established problem; costume and set designers learned to substitute off-white shades to get the appearance of white on the end-result film. Every scene that was shot needed a color test strip: a white test card called the "lilly" was inserted in the scene, and an extra three or four feet of film would be shot, so that the development could be adjusted toward the blue or yellow to result in white on the screen. (This type of care and adjustment was not new for Hollywood. Designers had previously learned to employ outlandish combinations of colors, to produce appealing shades of gray on black and white film.) The Oz project presented some unique challenges: the Tin Woodman's shiny surface and the sparkling ruby slippers could cast reflections into the cameras that spoiled shots. The process also required intense lighting; MGM used 150 36-inch arc lamps for the production, and had to borrow lights from other studios. (The final cost of merely lighting the movie was $226,307.) Temperatures on the sound stages sometimes reached 100 degrees F. It was common for people to faint from the heat. The elaborate set for Munchkinland was patrolled by a fire inspector, who looked for hot spots and sometimes ordered the lights turned down in specific places. The bright illumination caused cases of eyestrain (dubbed "klieg eyes"); some performers later complained that their eyesight was permanently affected.
- The Technicolor Process 4 used colored filters, a beam splitter made from a thinly coated mirror inside a split-cube prism, and three strips of black-and-white film (hence the "three-strip" designation). The mirror was semitransparent, and allowed part of the light to shine straight through into a green filter and onto a strip of panchromatic black-and-white film, which registered the green part of the image. The other part of the light, reflected sideways by the mirror, went through a magenta filter to remove green light, exposed a layer of blue-sensitive orthochromatic film, passed through a red filter to remove blue light, and exposed a final layer of panchromatic film, which registered the red part of the image. The "blue" film, red dye filter, and "red" film were layered into a single "bipack" strip. The "green" film was a separate strip. To print the film, each colored strip had a "relief-positive" print struck from it, which was then bleached to remove the silver and soaked with a dye that was the exact chromatic opposite of the color recorded by the film: cyan for red, magenta for green, and yellow for blue. A single clear strip of film was brought in contact with each of the three dye-soaked colored strips in turn, building up the complete color image. Such a process was referred to by Technicolor as "dye imbibition", which was commonly used in conventional offset printing or lithography but which the Technicolor process adapted to film. The final strip of film would have the dyes soaked into it and not simply printed onto its surface, which produced rich and deeply saturated color. Sometimes the clear film would be pre-exposed with a 50% density black-and-white positive image derived from the green matrix, as a way to deepen the blacks and heighten the contrast of the image.
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