Color in the Motion-Picture Industry

Man's interest in the use of color for visual presentation goes back in history to his earliest known attempts at pictorial representation. Its use has persisted in his art and architecture, costume and decoration up to the present time. It was only natural that it should be introduced into his entertainment, games, pageant plays and finally motion pictures. — The first attempts to produce color in motion pictures were crude and far from realistic. Many color systems were invented, developed and used, only to be abandoned when other systems emerged that were preferable from a technical or commercial standpoint. In the course of slightly more than sixty years, the names of over one hundred color processes have appeared in motion-picture advertising and on the theater screens. All of the processes were not individual processes, some were merely names given by a producing company or laboratory to an existing process and still others were foreign films that utilized a process popular in the country in which they were produced. Elimination of the name only and the foreign processes leave approximately fifty which originated or were used in the United States. Each of these systems has contributed to the technological advancement of motion pictures through photographic chemistry and/or optics.

Print ISSN

0036-1682

Published

1976-07

Content type

Original Research

DOI

10.5594/J13260