Technicolor Explained

In a world where flipping our images between color and black and white is as simple as the click of the mouse, photographers and cinematographers today aren’t often tasked with knowing the complexity of how those vibrant colors actually come into existence. But in the early days of cinema, when competing processes for color reproduction took turns as the next best innovation, one name reigned supreme: Technicolor.

Founded in Boston in 1914 by Herbert Kalmus, Daniel Frost Comstock, and W. Burton Wescott, the name was derived from the last initial of Kalmus and Comstock’s alma mater, M.I.T.  (Massachusetts Institute of Technology).  Originally starting with a two-strip process, the company is most known today for their durable three-strip process, combining three distinct strips of color film, a red, a blue, and a green, to create vibrant images that leapt off of movie screens for the majority of the 20th Century in films such as “The Wizard of Oz” all the way up to “The Godfather: Part II” in 1974.

But how exactly did it work?  In this awesome new video from Vox, Phil Edwards discusses the process and the history of Technicolor and offers some interesting behind the scenes insights into one of the most famous films of all time. Of particular note to me was learning exactly what was necessary to make Dorothy’s famous transition from black and white to color a reality.

Give it a watch a learn a bit of film history as well as the way you can use innovation to bring new life to your images.