G A M E C H A N G E R S

How technological innovation has shaped film history

BY PAUL SCH RA D ER
Editorial collaborator: Robert Brink
In Spring 2011 Paul Schrader taught a
15-week course at Columbia University,
“Films That Changed Filmmaking,”
about the influence o f technology on film
throughout the history o f cinema. Work­
ing with Robert Brink, Schrader has now
produced a series o f articles based on the
talks for publication in F il m C o m m e n t .

A M esm erian E xperim ent

DARI JUST LIKE PHOTOGRAPHY, CINEMA BEGAN IN

black and white. The technology derived
from a chemical, silver halide, which reacted
to light. Depending on the brightness of a
subject, it produced shades of white. The
particularly in Japan. The idea wasn’t orig­
inal or difficult, but the execution was.
How do you hand-color frame after frame
and have any kind of real continuity? The
answer is: you don’t.
result was black-and-white film. Melies advertised and hired 21 girls to
From the beginning there was a lot of work at his little factory outside Paris.
interest in the possibility of color photog­ They would sit at long tables and each one
raphy. The first two methods of coloring would do a color and pass the film down
motion pictures were to do it by hand and the line. If you were doing the red skirt,
chemically. Georges Melies, one of the cin­ you’d do red skirt after red skirt, frame by
S C H R A D E R : © M A X S. G ERBER

ema’s pioneers, did hand-coloring—liter­ frame. (Probably not great on the eyes.)
P a u l S c h r a d e r is a screenwriter and ally coloring in each frame, one by one. Hand-coloring was progressively perfected
director o f 19 films to date. He has been con­ There had been a rich tradition of hand- and stencils were developed that were
tributing to F il m C o m m e n t for over 40 years. colored photographs since the mid-1850s, more accurate. Pathe topped Melies with

52 filmcomment November-December 10 ij
 GAME CHANGERS: C R

Carrying color to the next level meant dealing with physics. Light is full of color—with a prism you
can see all of them. In painting, you're taught that the primary colors are red, blue, and yellow.

Greed

Pathechrome, a stencil-based process, scenes were yellow, firelight was amber, projector was required, featuring two
claiming that they had an assembly line of and green was used for sea scenes. Erich apertures, one fitted with a magenta filter
100 girls coloring their films. You can see von Stroheim’s Greed (24) uses both tinting and the other cyan; two lenses; and an
their color system in A Mesmerian Experi­ and hand-coloring. Von Stroheim makes adjustable prism that superimposed one
ment (1905). But obviously there was no the gold at the end really look golden, while image over the other on the screen. (In
real future in that method. leaving the rest in black and white. some ways this method is similar to the
The other method of coloring was tint­ original 3-D process.)'There were other
ing, using metallic dyes. When exposed to ARRYING COLOR TO THE NEXT drawbacks: the process produced a haloing
light the silver halide in the film’s gelatin
emulsion is converted to metallic silver,
which blocks light and appears as the
black part of the film negative (but prints
as white). By adding a so-called sensitiz­
ing dye, it could come out another
color—blue and white, red and white,
C level meant dealing with physics.
Light is full of color—with a
prism you can see all of them. In
painting, you’re taught that the
colors are red, blue, and yellow. In pro­
jected light, the three colors that matter
are magenta, cyan, and yellow. Magenta
effect on the image when the projected
images weren’t correctly aligned, and cine­
matographers needed enormous amounts
primary
of lighting to compensate for the light
absorbed by the filters. The process was
invented in Boston by Technicolor, who
also produced the first (now lost) American
etc. But by the Twenties, the most wide­ approximates to purple-red, and cyan to feature to be shot in color, Wray Bartlett
spread process for the artificial coloring blue-green. In a process that became Physioc’s The G ulf Between (1917). A
of movies was the dye-transfer method known as additive color, a scene would be good extant example of the additive color
invented by Max Handschiegl for Cecil B. shot with a prism beam splitter mounted process is a documentary about a military
DeMille’s Joan the Woman (1916). Black- behind the camera lens that exposed two ceremony shot in India, With Our King
and-white prints were made for each color consecutive frames of a single strip of and Queen Through India (1912).
and synthetic dyes were applied to desig­ black-and-white negative film simultane­ The additive color process was primi­
nated areas of each image. Through a ously, one through a red filter, the other tive, however, and didn’t work well. And
process known as “gelatin imbibition,” through a green one. Because two frames so Technicolor devised a new approach,
the emulsion of each print absorbed the were being exposed at the same time, the known as subtractive color, which was
dyes. The dyed prints were then brought film had to be shot at twice the normal achieved not just through camera lens
into contact with a positive print, to speed. In the lab, every other frame of cam­ optics but also by chemical means at the
which the dye was transferred in the era negative was then printed onto one film processing and printing stage: the
appropriate areas, with the print making strip of film, and the remaining frames separate magenta and cyan negative strips
several passes through the dye transfer were printed onto a second strip. were laid on top of each other and
machine for each color. When these two strips were combined cemented together to produce a composite
The use of tints, as in The Birth o f a in projection, the result was an almost color print that could be run through a
Nation (1915), Napoleon (27), Broken full spectrum of color. (Yellow was the standard movie projector. (The films were
Blossoms (1919), and The Lonedale Oper­ least essential of the three so the first sys­ shot on stock that was half the thickness of
ator (1911), for the most part followed tems focused on putting magenta and standard 35mm film.) This process became
convention. Night scenes were blue, sunlit cyan together.) But a cumbersome special known as two-strip Technicolor.

November-December 2015 filmcomment 53

 The first two-strip Technicolor film to be released was Chester M. Franklin’s The Toll o f the Sea.
The following year Cecil B. DeMille’s black-and-white version of The Ten Commandments featured
two-strip color sequences. But Douglas Fairbanks’s production of The Black Pirate, directed
by Albert Parker, is the first extant film using the two-strip system.

rich colors. Because it didn’t require a

special Technicolor camera, panchromatic
film rapidly became the industry standard.
Thereafter, Technicolor prints could be
struck from a single camera negative.
(Since the colors can’t be separated, when
panchromatic film deteriorates, it turns red
on screen, because the yellow fades faster
than the magenta. By contrast, the dyes
used in three-strip were very stable and
The Ten Commandments The Black Pirate so IB Technicolor prints survive better.)
Although many directors still preferred to
This was the first system that really Academy Award-winning Walt Disney Silly shoot in black and white well into the Six­
worked. The first tw o-strip Technicolor Symphony Flowers and Trees (32). Disney ties, those who embraced widescreen also
film to be released was Chester M. immediately negotiated a three-year contract embraced this new form of color: Vincente
Franklin’s The Toll o f the Sea (22), the last for the exclusive use of the process. Minnelli with The Band Wagon (53); John
two reels of which are now lost. The follow­ W hen people speak of “Technicolor” Sturges, Bad Day at Black Rock (55);
ing year Cecil B. DeMille’s black-and-white they’re usually referring to three-strip. It Nicholas Ray, Rebel Without a Cause (55)
version of The Ten Commandments fea­ gives you the most vivid color and the most and Bigger Than Life (56). And of course,
tured two-strip color sequences. But D ou­ control over it by separating and accentuat­ there was Douglas Sirk, who did a number
glas Fairbanks’s production of The Black ing them during the dye-transfer process. of floridly colorful films: Magnificent Obses­
Pirate (26), directed by Albert Parker, is the sion (54), All That Heaven Allows (55), and
first extant film using the two-strip system. A N C H R O M A T IC F I L M STOCK , IN Written on the Wind (57). In fact, Sirk’s films
The final refinement of two-strip came in
1928 when Technicolor went back to Hand-
schiegl’s dye-transfer technique in order to
replace troublesome double-cemented prints
w ith prints created by dye imbibition.
P which one strip of emulsion
records the entire color spectrum,
was first produced by Eastman
Kodak in 1913, but it only became afford­
able as 35mm negative at the end of the
are so vivid that people mistakenly refer to
them as three-strip Technicolor films. When
Todd Haynes and Ed Lachman tried to re­
create this sense of color in Far from Heaven,
they w ent back to the same kind of lights
The first color feature made entirely using Forties. The first film shot in Eastmancolor that Sirk was using. But even so they had
this process was The Viking (28). was the N ational Film Board of Canada to m anipulate the film digitally to get the
Thanks to advances in film emulsion docum entary Royal Journey (51). Techni­ color they w anted. This was done at w hat
chemistry in the Twenties, Technicolor was color followed with their own panchro­ is known as the digital intermediate (DI)
able to take the subtractive process to the matic stock, which they steadily refined stage, which entails the digitizing of every
next level with w hat would come to be until by 1955 they had developed a one- frame of 35mm film and modifying the
known as three-strip color—a format in strip that held its own and produced very color and other image characteristics.
which magenta and cyan were now com­
plemented by yellow, supplying a full-range
chrom atic, as opposed to the limited
red-green spectrum of two-strip. Techni­
color introduced a camera that could simul­
taneously expose three strips of film,
corresponding to red, blue, and yellow. The
three resulting negatives were then
processed through the dye-transfer method
and used to print a single full-color projection
print. The first use of three-strip was in the A ll That Heaven Allows The Red Shoes

54 filmcomment November-December 2015

 GAME CHANGERS: C

Michelangelo Antonioni’s Red Desert is the film that changed everyone’s attitude
toward color and completely freed its use from realism. It’s never been the same since.
Even though Antonioni and Pedro Almodovar are very different artists, without Antonioni
there couldn’t have been an Almodovar—his freedom of color came from Red Desert.

W hen it comes to panchromatic Techni­

color, there are any number of examples
that define the point at which color started
to become a tool. The Red Shoes (48) was an
emotive backstage drama that allowed for
vivid expressionist color, but for the most
part, employers of early color sought to be
realistic. If colors weren’t realistic, the studio
wasn’t happy. It took a while before directors
started using color in a stylized way, for an
artistic advantage. The most famous instance
of this was Hitchcock’s use of green in Ver­
tigo (58), which was a real attempt to take
color and start making it more of a charac­
ter, rather than simply an adornment.
Hitchcock still felt he needed to justify
that color in some way—-I’m not quite sure
how that one bit of neon signage was able to
light just the back walls and not the side
walls of the room. But it didn’t matter,
because that color was being used to express
an emotional state—and w hat’s so very com­ R ed
plex and beautiful about the use of green is
that it’s not normally thought of as a roman­ W hen Hitchcock moves the camera not realistic values. I don’t know why the
tic color. So it’s really expressing Jimmy toward Jimmy Stewart’s face with the green woman played by Monica Vitti is sick, but I
Stewart’s obsession, and it’s clearly his point in the background in Vertigo, th at’s a psy­ know it has something to do with that green
of view. Green is the color of his obsession. chological move. Antonioni isn’t using color coat. In an interview with Godard at the
psychologically. H e’s using color like a mod­ time Red Desert came out, Antonioni said:
IC H E L A N G E L O A N T O N IO N I’S ern painter. Eric Rohmer wrote: “Modern “I would like to make clear that it is not her
R ed Desert (64) is the film painting’s great idea is to have given color a environment that causes her crisis. T h at’s
that changed everyone’s atti­ life of its own. O r at least to have made it just the trigger. Even though we don’t realize
tude tow ard color and com ­ the absolute ruler of the canvas, the supreme it, our lives are dominated by industry. And
pletely freed its use from realism. It’s never value. For van Gogh, Cezanne, and Matisse, by industry, I don’t mean just factories, but
been the same since. Even though Antonioni the sky is blue before it is sky. The green I also mean their products. They are all over
and Pedro Almodovar are very different of a fruit spills onto a table or a face, our houses, made of plastic or materials
artists, without Antonioni there couldn’t if harmony so demands . . . We know, as that a few years ago were totally unknown.
have been an Almodovar—his freedom of Gauguin said, that oranges are brighter, They are brightly colored, and they chase
color came from Red Desert. Antonioni more ‘orange,’ when the weather is gray. after us everywhere. They haunt us from
didn’t adhere to a realistic palette. When We have learned to see like painters.” advertisements, they appeal more subtly to
Richard H arris and M onica Vitti meet on When Rohmer wrote this in the Fifties, our psychology, to our subconscious.”
the street, Antonioni paints the entire street the films he was talking about didn’t exist That’s what Antonioni brought to the
gray, including the garbage and the fruit yet. But 10 years later, Antonioni made the dance: the idea that color is an aesthetic tool
stand. In the bedroom scene all the furniture kind of film that Rohmer was talking about. that may or may not be related to what’s hap­
is painted the same color as the room. And the values of Red Desert are the values pening on screen, but is related to what’s hap­
A ntonioni’s use of color is the artistic of Barnett Newman and M ark Rothko and pening in the storyteller’s frame of mind.
equivalent of the unmotivated tracking shot. Ellsworth Kelly—they are painters’ values, That’s the true liberation of the sense of color.

November-December 20 i s filmcomment 55
 In the old days, DPs would shoot a movie and then they’d do the color tim ing in
postproduetion, once editing was complete. The cinematographer would usually spend
four or five days tim ing each shot. Now a cinematographer can shoot a film for four or five
weeks and then w ork on the digital intermediate for another five to six weeks.

When it comes to color theory, there are

some very good ideas about the aesthetics of
color, and there are some stupid ones out
there, too. But I know of no theory of color
that really works. Different degrees on the
spectrum affect you in different ways; red has
an effect, blue has an effect, but not all one-
to-one connections are necessarily correct.
A great proponent of the idea that colors Tears o f the Black Tiger
have meaning is V ittorio Storaro. H ere’s
w hat he said in an interview that he gave and M ark Lee Ping Bin on In the M ood for usually take four or five days. The cine­
after shooting W arren Beatty’s Bulwortk: Love (00), Doyle would change the lighting m atographer would sit in the screening
“During Bulworth’s campaign, he goes to between doing the master shots and the cov­ room and say one point more cyan or one
a church in the black community, and the erage. He would re-light and re-gel right up point less magenta, and he’d color-time the
color of the costumes and props is red—the to the point when Wong said “Rolling!” If film. N ow a cinematographer can shoot a
symbol of birth and life. From the church, he he didn’t say “rolling,” Doyle would never film for four or five weeks and then work on
goes to a meeting with Hollywood film pro­ stop lighting. And the lighting didn’t match. the digital intermediate for another five to
ducers; it is a rich setting, where he raises his But it didn’t need to— lighting was a thing six weeks. He spends more time doing the
money. Orange symbolizes a feeling of com­ unto itself. If the master was red-hued and DI than he does shooting. Which is why DPs
fort. And then he goes to an after-hours club the single was yellow-hued, so what? today need to revise their standard con­
where we used yellow, cyan and magenta, tract— because so much of their w ork is
which symbolize daylight. We used blue to N THE DIGITAL ERA, POSTPRODUCTION being done in post.
signify freedom. Next he meets a drug dealer
who explains he uses children to sell drugs.
Indigo symbolizes material power. We don’t
use white in this film until he completes his
whole journey as a person...
I has become the new frontier in cine­
matic color. Thai filmmaker Wisit
Sasanatieng’s Tears o f the Black Tiger
(00) dem onstrates how far along the line
we’ve gone, now that we can control color
When you talk about an influential film,
w hat you need to know is w hat came
before and what came after. For example,
Fleasantville (98) was shot in color and
then desaturated, and then mixed color
“Each color has a specific energy wave­ entirely. In the film’s opening, the dress worn w ith black and white, but O Brother,
length, and we perceive it the same way we by the woman was not that color when they Where A rt T hou? (00) was the first Holly­
feel vibrations. Even if we aren’t consciously shot the movie. And the roof w asn’t that wood film in which color was timed in the
aware of it, the audience can feel the dif­ red; they heightened it in post. If your frame digital intermediate, and Star Wars: Episode
ference between a high and low wavelength is fixed, it’s possible to manipulate color II -A tta c k o f the Clones (02) was the first
of energy. They are reacting to that feeling very easily. If your frame is moving, then m ainstream film shot on digital.
in addition to what they see on the screen.” you have to create a traveling matte. Either I was listening to a panel 10 years ago
I agree with that last paragraph. I way, it can be done—you can change the where a cinematographer said, maybe in
don’t agree with anything else. Yes, these eye color, you can change the lipstick, you the future we can just have our assistants
wavelengths do have energy and they do can change anything you w ant in a scene. go out, light everything flat, and shoot it.
affect you, but they don’t affect you in this It’s just a matter of time and money. Then, we’ll show up in post and we won’t
sim plistic w ay th a t indigo indicates In the old days, cinem atographers have to light any of the shots that didn’t
“material power.” would shoot a movie and then they’d do the make the cut. And we’ll also know how the
It took 40 years for movies to reach the color timing or grading in postproduction, film is working so that we can light it much
point at which color is fair game. It’s ironic once editing was complete. Color timing better. We will put in the key light, put in
that some of the masters of color don’t care is the process by which the cinem atogra­ the fill, and light it all afterward, and it will
much for story. They want tone poems that pher would alter and enhance a film’s color be less expensive and better. T hat hasn’t
they can elaborate on. When Wong Kar Wai and exposure, shot by shot, in the lab where happened yet, but the way things are
worked with cinematographers Chris Doyle the final film is to be printed. This would going, w ho’s to say it w on’t? □

56 filmcomment Noi'etnber-Deceniber 201 s

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