This video from George Eastman House is particularly instructive. https://www.youtube.com/embed/8iy_MjegGWY
Have you seen Scott MacQueen's restoration videos and heard his commentaries on Mystery of the Wax Museum and Doctor X? There's a wealth of information there.
They were not printed that way. This whole "debate" (as far as I can tell) seems to stem from one guy who keeps posting on YouTube about a special, secret, "proprietary" process that Technicolor used in order to put more blue in certain two-color scenes if the producers were willing to "pay extra" for it. It has something or other to do with running an extra printing over the existing color that included blue. I don't know WHERE he got this information (that's so secret no one BUT him has ever heard of it before) but not only is it not true, it's not even possible.
Two-color Technicolor recorded the red and green portions of the spectrum separately on a single black and white negative. Using the subtractive color system, that negative SHOULD have been represented on positive release prints by cyan dye for the red portion and magenta dye for the green (with yellow used for the blue portion of the spectrum had it been recorded.) Cyan and magenta alone would have made for an extremely unnatural and unbalanced picture, however, so the two-color system added yellow to both the cyan and magenta dyes to "suggest" the appearance of yellow in the scene even though none really existed. With this addition, cyan became a green-blue and magenta became an orange-red. The release print was no longer representative of what was shot on-set but the dye compromise allowed for a balanced picture that the eyes of the audience reacted well to. Adding ANY color (escpecially a primary) over the existing picture would have resulted in the colors turning to mud. Any change in the green-blue/red-orange dyes would have thrown the delicate compromise completely out of whack.
On an unrelated note, you're definitely NOT being pedantic.
They were not printed that way. This whole "debate" (as far as I can tell) seems to stem from one guy who keeps posting on YouTube about a special, secret, "proprietary" process that Technicolor used in order to put more blue in certain two-color scenes if the producers were willing to "pay extra" for it. It has something or other to do with running an extra printing over the existing color that included blue. I don't know WHERE he got this information (that's so secret no one BUT him has ever heard of it before) but not only is it not true, it's not even possible.
Two-color Technicolor recorded the red and green portions of the spectrum separately on a single black and white negative. Using the subtractive color system, that negative SHOULD have been represented on positive release prints by cyan dye for the red portion and magenta dye for the green (with yellow used for the blue portion of the spectrum had it been recorded.) Cyan and magenta alone would have made for an extremely unnatural and unbalanced picture, however, so the two-color system added yellow to both the cyan and magenta dyes to "suggest" the appearance of yellow in the scene even though none really existed. With this addition, cyan became a green-blue and magenta became an orange-red. The release print was no longer representative of what was shot on-set but the dye compromise allowed for a balanced picture that the eyes of the audience reacted well to. Adding ANY color (escpecially a primary) over the existing picture would have resulted in the colors turning to mud. Any change in the green-blue/red-orange dyes would have thrown the delicate compromise completely out of whack.
On an unrelated note, you're definitely NOT being pedantic.
OLDTIMER: Yes, Technicolor Process one was an additive two-color system, which was both photographed and projected from a single strip of film, so it was indeed a single-strip, two-color process and not a two-strip process. However, from a broader perspective, Process One was a total failure and was only used for The Gulf Between and some color sequences in Way Down East. Technicolor Process number two, a subtractive color process, continued to photograph the filtered images on a single strip of film, but the alternating images were split out during printing and became two separate strips which were dyed and projected together in a single projector, so it was two-strip Technicolor in my opinion. All Technicolor films that followed were photographed on a single strip of film and projected as two-strips until the Dye Transfer Process allowed printing on a single strip for projection. There were over 20 films, both feature films and color sequences made, which I believe qualify as two-strip Technicolor, until 1928 when Technicolor Process Number Three introduced Dye Transfer printing. I think it's appropriate to use the term two-strip Technicolor for the Technicolor films that were projected from two strips, even if they weren't photographed on two strips. And, so do a lot of other people who use the term two-strip for those films. Reference: Technicolor Movies, The History of Dye Transfer Printing by Richard W. Haines, 1957
But you forgot to mention that these two strips were cemented together to form ONE strip that went through the projector. Interesting point but I'll stick to "two-color Technicolor"
Well, I'm nit-picking, but it was still two separate strips of film stuck together and the cement didn't work most of the time, the cement broke down under the arc light and the strips separated so often that Technicolor gave it a name, they called it "cupping". Cupping was so bad when they showed the Black Pirate, that Technicolor had to keep calling the prints in after a few showings and re-cementing the two strips back together. This separation problem was so bad that it became one of the reasons the Dye Transfer process was perfected, so only a single strip had to run through the Projector.But you forgot to mention that these two strips were cemented together to form ONE strip that went through the projector. Interesting point but I'll stick to "two-color Technicolor"
I stand corrected on the publication date of Richard Haines book, it was 1993, as you said. Thanks for pointing out that error. Why his DOB was included with the publication information I don't know, but I admit that didn't read it carefully. I was out of high school by 1957 when Haines was born, so he is indeed a "Johnny come lately". When a term gets repeated long enough and often enough, by enough people, it becomes the De facto term, so whether we agree on this detail or not, I think the term two-strip is here to stay. If nothing else, it helps most people (who don't care about these technical details) to distinguish the early Technicolor films from the glorious three-strip films.
Wow, where and when did this happen? If public domain, who has the film materials, since you mentioned that they were "found and restored"?
I too would love to what happened with this material, anyone??
