Re: Kodachrome.

[Fred Ward <fward@erols.com>]

The information about Technicolor and Kodachrome in the most recent
posting from our Swiss contributor is not quite right and could cause an
unnecessary confusion. The old Technicolor movie process is really not
like Kodachrome (you might think of it as a cousin, but not a sister).

Greatly simplified - - -

1. All current transparency films except Kodachrome - the color is in
the film when bought. Processing the film removes the unneeded color and
leaves the colors of the photographed scene. 

2. Kodachrome - basically a tri-pack of black and white films (with
filters). There is no color in the film when bought. The color dyes are
introduced during processing, when the film absorbs color dyes at the
lab and becomes a color transparency.

3. Technicolor (the original process, not the current brand name) - was
a system using a huge camera running three simultaneous reels of black
and white film, each of which was exposed through a filter (R-G-B) via a
beam splitter. This monster camera produced 3 reels of separated 35mm
film (black and white), with one reel representing red, one blue, and
one green. Because the film was b/w, the process was (is) archival.
There were (are) no color dyes involved. When the film was printed onto
color release film, the three original b/w negatives were used in the
same way that RBG or CMYK black and white film is used today to print
everything we see in color. Therefore, when you see GONE WITH THE WIND
or any other classic film from the 1930s or 1940s with perfect color,
what you are seeing is a new print made from the original b/w negatives.
That color release film will fade in time, as do all such color films,
but the Technicolor original b/w films are always available to make a
perfect new print. That is NOT the case with the color negative movie
films that pushed Technicolor out of business in the 1950s. Those
originals were and still are color negative masters (like Kodacolor),
and they fade rapidly, leaving no high-quality original. Thus, when the
less-than-30-year old MY FAIR LADY was fading badly, a $20 million
dollar restoration project did a frame by frame color-corrected
restoration of the original negative. 

All this has created a crisis in the movie industry. No one wants the
bulky and impossible-to-hand-hold or tuck-into-small-places Technicolor
camera to return. The light cameras and Steady-Cam approach to Action
Movies is the current look. But movie makers also do not want to put
$20-$100 million into a new movie only to see the color negative
original visibly fade in 10 years and be almost unusable in 30 years.
And digital storage is not the current answer. There have already been
some very interesting lawsuits and threats of suits over responsibility.
Some producers who have watched their precious work fade away want to
sue Kodak and others for never telling them if they used color negative
for original film that their originals would not last even one lifetime.
(It is generally accepted in the trade that color negative materials are
not as archival as E-6 transparencies.... and the ones done in 1-hour
shops are even less permanent.) 

So, please do not think that Technicolor movies from the past are the
same as Kodachrome. You actually project the Kodachrome film that runs
through your camera, once the color dyes are added at the lab. But with
Technicolor, what runs through the huge camera (3 reels of b/w film
negatives) are not projected, but instead are used to make a color
release film.

Fred Ward