In an earlier era, when Boston helped usher in the age of color movies, the building once had a proud sign above its entrance, in all capital letters: “Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation.” Scott Kirsner Two of Technicolor's first film processing labs are on Brookline Avenue in Boston, a block over from Fenway Park. Marzola says the magic act that Kalmus performed as entrepreneur “was to keep his investors happy, despite the fact that they didn’t turn a profit for 20 years. “For about the next five years, you have that split – the on-the-ground, practical side of the company in L.A., but you still have the lab, where they’re processing the film, in Boston.” But by 1931, she says, it proved to be “too much of a disconnect to be shipping things back and forth, and the volume of film processing is going up with the introduction of three-strip Technicolor.” (It was called that because red, green, and blue were captured on different strips of film.) Kalmus traveled west in 1924 to set up a permanent office in Hollywood, and he moved to California in 1926, says Luci Marzola, author of the book “Engineering Hollywood,” and a film history professor at the University of Southern California. The company was constantly shipping out new film prints to theaters- an expensive proposition.īy the time Technicolor was perfecting cameras and film processing techniques that would eventually persuade Walt Disney to adopt it, and lead to breakthrough movies like “The Wizard of Oz” and “Gone with the Wind,” the company’s center of gravity was already shifting to Hollywood. But despite attracting the backing of movie star (and producer) Douglas Fairbanks, who made a film with the refined Technicolor process called “The Black Pirate,” there were still snafus: Technicolor’s film would warp, go in and out of focus, and get scratched as it ran through the projector. After a road show of that film failed to wow the industry, the company worked to refine its approach so that showing a color film wouldn’t require special attachments on the projector. The first time an audience saw a Technicolor film was in September 1917, when the company held a screening of “The Gulf Between” at the Tremont Temple, next door to the Omni Parker House hotel. Technicolor founder Herb Kalmus joked that it required a projectionist “who was a cross between a college professor and an acrobat.” (Technicolor’s initial approach could not represent some colors well - like the blue of a sky.) Sadly, the hour-long movie’s print was lost in a fire in 1961.Īt the time, Technicolor’s approach to projecting color involved two strips of film running through the projector in sync, the light passing through color filters, and bringing the two images into alignment on the screen using a glass adjusting element. The car was hitched to a train heading to Jacksonville, Fla., where Technicolor made its first demonstration movie, “The Gulf Between.” In it, a young girl gets lost, is raised by a sea captain, and later finds love - as well as her family of origin. Technicolor set up one of its earliest offices and film processing labs in a railroad car. A still from the 1939 film "The Wizard of Oz." Turner Entertainment
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |