Blu-ray Review A Few Words About While we wait for A few words about...™ Invaders from Mars - in 4k UHD & Blu-ray (1 Viewer)

[Peter Apruzzese]

Wasn't this shot in Cinecolor?

Cinecolor was the printing process.

 

[Will Krupp]

Wasn't this shot in Cinecolor?

It was shot in Eastman Color and printed in Super Cinecolor, which was Cinecolor's three-color work around. No films were shot in Super Cinecolor because it was a printing process only and not a photographic process. I hope I have this right, but the Eastman negative was separated into primaries (via filters, I believe) as dupe negatives. The cyan and magenta colors were contact printed via toning on opposite sides of duplitized stock (emulsion on both sides) just as they were with regular two-color Cinecolor (which WAS a photographic process as well) and then the yellow dye layer (with, perhaps, the soundtrack?) was added separately via dye transfer printing, which is what gave original Super Cinecolor prints their unusual look. Again, I hope I have that right but someone please correct me if I've misrepresented anything.

 

[TheSteig]

From what I read its coming later this year and we can pre-order it as early as April. This is exciting news !

 

[Bob Furmanek]

There’s a great deal of wrong information out there. The facts and misconceptions about Cinecolor and SuperCinecolor will be debunked and clarified in a featurette from Jack Theakston on our upcoming restoration of JACK AND THE BEANSTALK. The Blu-ray and DVD release is from ClassicFlix.

 

[Will Krupp]

There’s a great deal of wrong information out there. The facts and misconceptions about Cinecolor and SuperCinecolor will be debunked and clarified in a featurette from Jack Theakston on our upcoming restoration of JACK AND THE BEANSTALK. The Blu-ray and DVD release is from ClassicFlix.

Did I get it wrong?

 

[jayembee]

Best news I've read in a while. Better not be another April Fool's day post. (Although RAH hinted at this the other day.)

I was a bit nervous, though, at the line in the announcement article, "Invaders will be released on Bluray, 4k UHD streaming and DVD sometime in the fall". The lack of a comma (Grammar Police!) after "4k UHD" made it look like they were saying it would be available in 4K for streaming, but not on physical disc. But "UHD" says "disc".

Suck on it, Wade Williams!

 

[Bob Furmanek]

Did I get it wrong?

I’m not sure Will, it’s really not my area of expertise. That said, I know there’s a ton of wrong information out there including the myth claiming they were put out of business by Technicolor.

 

[Bob Furmanek]

I’m not sure Will, it’s really not my area of expertise. That said, I know there’s a ton of wrong information out there including the myth claiming they were put out of business by Technicolor.

I’ll add that Jack has done a great deal of research into this unique color process over the past decade and has gone to primary source documents as opposed to taking what’s been written as gospel. It’s really the only way to separate fact from fiction.

 

[Will Krupp]

I’m not sure Will, it’s really not my area of expertise. That said, I know there’s a ton of wrong information out there including the myth claiming they were put out of business by Technicolor.

If I had to guess, I'd guess they were put out of business by user friendly Eastmancolor positive stock!!

 

[Malcolm R]

But "UHD" says "disc".

I thought UHD was "Ultra High Definition"?

 

[jayembee]

I thought UHD was "Ultra High Definition"?

I didn't mean the "D" stood for "disc", just that I've always seen "UHD" used for physical media, not for streaming.

 

[Johnny Angell]

I haven't seen Invaders from Mars since about 1976, when I saw it at a revival at the Balboa Theater in Southern California, I think as part of a double feature with War of the Worlds. Especially since it's restored from the original camera negative I'm likely to get this gem.

Was that in San Diego? I used to live there and there was a Balboa Theater.

Can’t wait for this. Will the disc include both endings?

Somewhere in the far recesses of my brain, 2 endings sounds familiar. I had forgotten that, if there really are two.

 

[jayembee]

Somewhere in the far recesses of my brain, 2 endings sounds familiar. I had forgotten that, if there really are two.

Invaders from Mars (1953 film) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

It's been a while since I've seen this. I'm looking forward to seeing those wonderfully expressionist sets (like the police station) again.

 

[benbess]

Was that in San Diego? I used to live there and there was a Balboa Theater....

The one I went to was in Newport Beach on the Balboa peninsula. It closed in the early 1990s, and eventually the city bought it. There are long-delayed plans to open it again someday.

Historic Balboa Theater Plans Postponed - Newport Beach News

Newport Beach Planning Commission scheduled to hold a public hearing on the planned renovations for the 90-year-old Balboa Theater, but the item was unexpectedly removed from the agenda. Discussion of the proposal, submitted by the entity of LAB Holdings, was continued to an unspecified future date.

www.newportbeachindy.com

Balboa Theatre - RockyWiki

www.rockyhorrorwiki.org

Your San Diego Balboa is much grander!

Balboa Theatre - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Robert Harris]

Wasn't this shot in Cinecolor?

There is no taking mechanism. It’s Eastman 5248.

 

[Jack Theakston]

It was shot in Eastman Color and printed in Super Cinecolor, which was Cinecolor's three-color work around. No films were shot in Super Cinecolor because it was a printing process only and not a photographic process. I hope I have this right, but the Eastman negative was separated into primaries (via filters, I believe) as dupe negatives. The cyan and magenta colors were contact printed via toning on opposite sides of duplitized stock (emulsion on both sides) just as they were with regular two-color Cinecolor (which WAS a photographic process as well) and then the yellow dye layer (with, perhaps, the soundtrack?) was added separately via dye transfer printing, which is what gave original Super Cinecolor prints their unusual look. Again, I hope I have that right but someone please correct me if I've misrepresented anything.

Close. The soundtrack is printed with the blue layer on the dupe negative that has been A/B rolled from the B&W positive seps made from the Eastman Color negative.

Unfortunately, the constant reprinted error here is that the yellow layer was somehow dye-transferred to the print (a typo which I believe stems from a 1938 Cinecolor patent that wasn't ever put into practice for three-color.) What the process did to achieve three-color was to print the cyan and magenta records onto the stock and float-tone the cyan side in the company's patented float tank. Without fixing, what is left on the cyan side is the Prussian Blue dye and two other chemical compounds. The latter two are turned into slightly photo-sensitive silver bromide, which in combination with a precise chemical treatment, and with the Prussian Blue dye surrounding it, becomes an extra photosensitive layer within one emulsion. The yellow record is then printed into this, leaving cyan particles that won't be toned (there's an extra step here I'll leave out for simplification of this already convoluted process) and silver particles developed to a B&W version of the yellow record. The yellow side is then dye-mordant toned, and the film is washed, flipped, and the magenta side is dye-mordant toned. The film is washed and then finished.

Cinecolor had been developing this three-color process since the early '40s, but couldn't do anything with it past animation. Technicolor held both patents on three-strip photography and a handshake deal with Kodak based on a patent stalemate between the two companies that allowed for Kodak to produce Kodachrome in 16mm, in trade for Technicolor's exclusive use of 35mm Kodachrome and their exclusion of dye-transfer printing in 16mm. Kodachrome's patent expired in 1941, and the Troland Patent (ie. monopack color film) that Technicolor was holding over Kodak expired in 1948, so that became the watershed year for Kodak to unleash their new R&D: Eastman Color. The only problem is that EK could not sort out intermediate stocks and print stocks of usable quality.

That is why SuperCinecolor was, for all intents and purposes, entirely a stop-gap process for the lab. Technicolor could A/B roll Eastman color when they made printing matrices, but an all-Eastman show had several methods they could take advantage of, including doing the opticals as seps, and none of them were satisfactory. Yet by 1953, EK had straightened out all of the kinks in their color process (well, enough to make it work on an industrial level), and I don't think Cinecolor thought their SuperCinecolor process would be long for the world, because as soon as they rolled it out, a Philadelphia investor firm called Donner Corporations bought the company and the lab began investing in Ansco Color equipment they purchased from Houston-Fearless, who were also based in Burbank. I suspect this is also at the point where the trade name "SuperCinecolor" became unnecessary, as is seen in INVADERS FROM MARS. Houston-Fearless eventually expanded into the lab business, and once Cinecolor had changed their business to Color Corporation of America, sold all of their shares (and equipment) to HF.

 

[haineshisway]

Not April Fool's - I've known about it for a couple of months - and it IS the best news ever. I'm so glad this company was not cowed and did what they needed to do.

 

[Robert Harris]

Close. The soundtrack is printed with the blue layer on the dupe negative that has been A/B rolled from the B&W positive seps made from the Eastman Color negative.

Unfortunately, the constant reprinted error here is that the yellow layer was somehow dye-transferred to the print (a typo which I believe stems from a 1938 Cinecolor patent that wasn't ever put into practice for three-color.) What the process did to achieve three-color was to print the cyan and magenta records onto the stock and float-tone the cyan side in the company's patented float tank. Without fixing, what is left on the cyan side is the Prussian Blue dye and two other chemical compounds. The latter two are turned into slightly photo-sensitive silver bromide, which in combination with a precise chemical treatment, and with the Prussian Blue dye surrounding it, becomes an extra photosensitive layer within one emulsion. The yellow record is then printed into this, leaving cyan particles that won't be toned (there's an extra step here I'll leave out for simplification of this already convoluted process) and silver particles developed to a B&W version of the yellow record. The yellow side is then dye-mordant toned, and the film is washed, flipped, and the magenta side is dye-mordant toned. The film is washed and then finished.

Cinecolor had been developing this three-color process since the early '40s, but couldn't do anything with it past animation. Technicolor held both patents on three-strip photography and a handshake deal with Kodak based on a patent stalemate between the two companies that allowed for Kodak to produce Kodachrome in 16mm, in trade for Technicolor's exclusive use of 35mm Kodachrome and their exclusion of dye-transfer printing in 16mm. Kodachrome's patent expired in 1941, and the Troland Patent (ie. monopack color film) that Technicolor was holding over Kodak expired in 1948, so that became the watershed year for Kodak to unleash their new R&D: Eastman Color. The only problem is that EK could not sort out intermediate stocks and print stocks of usable quality.

That is why SuperCinecolor was, for all intents and purposes, entirely a stop-gap process for the lab. Technicolor could A/B roll Eastman color when they made printing matrices, but an all-Eastman show had several methods they could take advantage of, including doing the opticals as seps, and none of them were satisfactory. Yet by 1953, EK had straightened out all of the kinks in their color process (well, enough to make it work on an industrial level), and I don't think Cinecolor thought their SuperCinecolor process would be long for the world, because as soon as they rolled it out, a Philadelphia investor firm called Donner Corporations bought the company and the lab began investing in Ansco Color equipment they purchased from Houston-Fearless, who were also based in Burbank. I suspect this is also at the point where the trade name "SuperCinecolor" became unnecessary, as is seen in INVADERS FROM MARS. Houston-Fearless eventually expanded into the lab business, and once Cinecolor had changed their business to Color Corporation of America, sold all of their shares (and equipment) to HF.

Jack,

I’ve read this before, and it’s wonderful information. Can you please add the source?

Thank you for adding this!

 

[Will Krupp]

Close. The soundtrack is printed with the blue layer on the dupe negative that has been A/B rolled from the B&W positive seps made from the Eastman Color negative.

Unfortunately, the constant reprinted error here is that the yellow layer was somehow dye-transferred to the print (a typo which I believe stems from a 1938 Cinecolor patent that wasn't ever put into practice for three-color.) What the process did to achieve three-color was to print the cyan and magenta records onto the stock and float-tone the cyan side in the company's patented float tank. Without fixing, what is left on the cyan side is the Prussian Blue dye and two other chemical compounds. The latter two are turned into slightly photo-sensitive silver bromide, which in combination with a precise chemical treatment, and with the Prussian Blue dye surrounding it, becomes an extra photosensitive layer within one emulsion. The yellow record is then printed into this, leaving cyan particles that won't be toned (there's an extra step here I'll leave out for simplification of this already convoluted process) and silver particles developed to a B&W version of the yellow record. The yellow side is then dye-mordant toned, and the film is washed, flipped, and the magenta side is dye-mordant toned. The film is washed and then finished.

Thanks muchly, Jack!

(all of that is ummm, what I MEANT, of course -cough cough) Lol

 

[Robert Harris]

Thanks muchly, Jack!

(all of that is ummm, what I MEANT, of course -cough cough) Lol

Cinecolor was an astoundingly complex process, which I’m certain had a great deal to do with why it failed.