Shooting on location did not allow for the tight color control of shooting in soundstages, but set designers were still allowed to add bits of justified color into scenes…

Spectacle shifted away from color design and onto other elements of cinematography and art direction.  Of the winners for Best Cinematography from 1954 to 1964, six films were shot in CinemaScope, and all were shot in some kind of widescreen format.  With Eastmancolor’s flexibility, studios started focusing spectacle in Cinemascope, and VistaVision.  Color design fell in importance and filmmakers strove to show real, exotic locations in sweeping panoramic views.  Three Coins in a Fountain advertised its CinemaScope framing as, “Sweeping vistas of magnificence the screen has never seen before!”

…more to come.

I know that this is supposed to happen, but this is very disconcerting in what I perceive to be “this late in the game.”  In my perfect little schedule, I’d have all of my research done by the first few weeks of school and it would all fit in the lovely little box of my thesis and writing my first draft would be like riding a magical unicorn to Honors Thesis Land.  It’s a weird analogy, but you get my point.  I understood that there would be bumps, but I didn’t understand the bumps would be thesis-changing.

Ever since I decided to narrow my thesis down to the Technicolor-Eastmancolor switch, I’ve been flailing in research and direction.  Most of my previous research had been on the Golden Age of Technicolor, and by narrowing my thesis to the section where I’d done the least research, I decided to fill a gap in both my knowledge and the scholarly research I’d found so far.  I based a lot of my new proposal on a fantastic essay called Crying in Color by Russell Merrit.  That’s where I got the idea to study Rear Window.  On first viewing, Rear Window seemed perfect in terms of color design and technological background.

However, the more research I’ve done the more I’ve realized that Rear Window doesn’t fit my thesis idea.  Technologically, it’s great for analyzing why Technicolor fell short.  However, it doesn’t fit in the aesthetic shift.  At all.  Even a little bit.  So do I dump Rear Window?  Do I incorporate the technology, but ignore the aesthetics?  Do I talk about it as the exception to the rule?

I’m still going to present on Rear Window at Cinematheque and SCCUR because the design is brilliant and actually very simple to explain, but beyond that I seem to have researched myself into a corner.

Rear Window is the second film I dropped after I realized that Lawrence of Arabia doesn’t fit either.  That means I now need to replace two films, and I don’t know what to choose.  I don’t have enough research on Eastmancolor aesthetics to know which films to go after.  But I’ve over researched already.  And I’m running late.  I missed my ticket on the Thesis Unicorn.  And Unicorns fly fast.

(This analogy brought to you by the sleep deprivation this week which has caused many strange dreams about Technicolor Unicorns.)

I just found out this is a term on Urban Dictionary. For your own sake, don't look it up.

From 1935 to 1948, Technicolor had a virtual monopoly over color in film.  The three-strip Technicolor process, while effective, was extremely expensive.  In 1949, adding Technicolor to a film cost about $100,000, or roughly 10% of production costs (153).  This translated to roughly 7 cents per foot of film, versus 3 cents per foot for black and white film.  Because Technicolor was so expensive, the stakes were higher for Technicolor films to make more money.  In 1948, Variety estimated that Technicolor films earned about 25% more than black and white films; but in order to earn back the combined production and distribution costs, a Technicolor film would have to earn $1 million in distributor rentals (154).  Because the risks were so big, Technicolor was reserved for high budget films that were guaranteed to make money.  Most often, these films were genre films: westerns, epics, period pieces, and musicals (157).

Color and realism were not associated with each other until the 1960s.  Because Technicolor was so expensive, documentaries and newsreel footage were shot in black and white.  Outside of film, newspapers and magazines and eventually television were in black and white as well.  Despite Technicolor’s attempts to prove that “Technicolor is Real Color!” color was not fully accepted as real until magazines, newspapers, and eventually television created a market for realistic color (157).

The big budget films Technicolor was reserved for used Technicolor as part of their spectacle.   Epics like Samson and Deliliah, swashbucklers like Scaramouche, and musicals like Meet Me in St. Louis all used Technicolor as yet another larger-than-life selling point.  When Eastmancolor made color cheaper, it opened new genres and smaller-budget pictures to storytelling with color.  Alfred Hitchcock’s film Rear Window, shot in 1954 in Eastmancolor, did not fit into the typical Technicolor genres.  It was not a western, a period piece, or a musical.  Instead, it was a small thriller.  Hitchcock’s previous color film, Dial M For Murder, was also a small thriller which was actually shot in 3D.

When color became pervasive, producers looked for different ways to make their films spectacular.  3D, Cinemascope, and Vista Vision, were all used to pull audiences back into the theaters as television drew them away.  These new technologies actually helped Eastmancolor’s dominance over Technicolor.  The way a Technicolor movie camera worked, three strips of film were threaded into the camera.  A beam splitter divided the light so that it hit a single green strip, and a red strip behind a blue strip.  Because the light had to travel through the blue strip to get to the red strip, the red strip was always slightly out of focus.  When printed, the soft red became a soft cyan.  This led to the famous Technicolor “look” of warm, creamy tones.  However, this softness was murder for the new visual technologies (Merrit 2).  There were actually eight different widescreen technologies in the early 1950s.  Each one required absolute image clarity from its film stock.  For instance, the worst two were Cinemascope and Vista Vision.  Cinemascope warps its images to be anamorphic, while Vista Vision uses double frame lenses.  Because these processes already had resolution problems with warping images, Technicolor could not be used for any of the processes (Merritt 2).  In fact, as Merrit says: “It can be taken as an article of faith: if the film has been shot in any wide screen format, it cannot have been shot in Technicolor, no matter what the screen credits imply” (Merritt 2).

When Hitchcock decided to make Rear Window, he decided to shoot it in Eastmancolor because of Technicolor’s limitations.  Most of Rear Window is shot looking from Jimmy Stewart’s apartment to the other apartments 80 feet away.  From that distance, the camera needs to catch subtle details from the actors.  This is something Technicolor could not do (Merrit 2).  Added to this was Hitchcock’s decision to shoot the film in widescreen, which—as has already been noted—Technicolor could not do.

For class, I will be writing each week on my own research for my thesis and in response to others’ research.  My thesis is a study of the transition from Technicolor to Eastmancolor from 1952 to 1962.  I will work my way through historical and technological research to understand the reasons behind the switch, and focus my attention on how color-use changed over that time period as color became ubiquitous and the Technicolor Advisory Board lost its monopoly.

To reflect the change in focus I have changed the blog format and style.  (The picture in the header is the inside of a three-strip Technicolor camera!)  Get ready for some exciting and informative blog posts!  Next post will come soon and will either be about Mad Men or TV statistics.  I haven’t decided yet.

Welcome back!

In 1998, another special edition of Gone with the Wind was restored and released to the general viewing public. This particular version was a big deal because it represented the Technicolor company’s decision to go back to the old dye transfer process, the process which created the beloved Technicolor classics of the 30s, 40s, and 50s.  However, under this joyous occasion sinister things were brewing: improvements.

Color correction for restoration is tricky.  Since the prints you get are old and faded, its nearly impossible for you to replicate the exact viewing experience of the original.  But with digital restoration, almost anything is possible, including the ability to eradicate the mistakes of the original prints.  Color’s too dull?  Change it!  Post production error? Fix it!  With digital technology we can erase the mistakes of the past.

Which is exactly what happened with this 1998 version.  The colors of the film were sharpened and brightened to reflect the type of color viewing experience modern audiences expected.  Of course, purists were furious.  This was NOT how Gone with the Wind was supposed to look!  Critics argued that restoration is supposed to be a form of preservation, and that “cleaning up” Gone with the Wind was a travesty  on par with colorizing The Maltese Falcon.

To be fair, I don’t think tweaking color in Gone with the Wind is as bad as colorization, but I do see the critics’ point.  I want to see the film as close as it can be to the artists’ original vision.  When Selznick made the picture, he knew exactly how to  use the technology he had to create the picture he wanted.  Congruently, as an amateur film historian, watching the supposedly duller-colored Gone with the Wind shows how far Technicolor progressed.  And the colors aren’t as dull as the proponents of color correcting made them out to be.

It should be noted that later restorations of Gone with the Wind did not color correct as severely as the 1998 version.  Here’s the latest restoration:

Looks pretty good to me!  But it looks radically different from the 1998 version:

The 1998 version is more saturated, with blue coloring in the sky that wasn’t there before.

Another Controversy is Born

On the flip side, here’s an example of how purists can get too extreme in their preservations.  A Star is Born (1954) is a fantastic movie, and Judy Garland’s performance in it may be the best of her career.  The film tells the story of a singer-turned-movie start in love with an alcoholic man whose career is failing.  I highly suggest it.

When it was released in 1954, Warner Brothers severely cut the film’s length.  However, in 1983 a man named Ronald Haver supervised a reconstruction of the film that included almost all of the cut sequences.  Key word here: almost.

For the scenes Ronald Haver couldn’t replace, he added fake production stills and recorded dialogue.  The production stills are either photoshopped images of James Mason and Judy Garland together or things Ronald Haver reshot himself using original locations.  A good 10 minutes of the movie run like this, and I have to admit it is an EXTREMELY distracting way to watch the film.  Also, it is easy to see which scenes were added in because of the poorer image quality, and I have to admit that I find those scenes to be mostly fluffy filler.

Really this is an example of preservationists going too far.  As a DVD extra it’s fine to throw in the extra scenes you found, but interrupting an audience’s view of the film just to draw attention to your own preservation work is ridiculous.  It’s like the people who cleaned the Sistine Chapel ceiling and left little black patches to show how dirty it had been before they restored it.

See that black square in the upper left? That's how HARD they worked. Aren't they cool? Screw Michelangelo, the preservationists are the stars here!

My point is: just like the improvers, the preservationists can be too extreme.  Both are examples of people forcing their own idea of what a film should be onto the film instead of letting the film speak for itself.  As the audience for restored films grows thanks to DVD and BluRay, these issues of improvement and preservation become more heated.  At least we can thank our lucky stars that Ted Turner’s colorization phase is mostly over.

Colorized Casablanca? Why, Ted Turner? WHHHYYYYY?

(EDIT: I’ve removed some of the information that I was told is incorrect.  Thanks Stan!)

In brief summary: Spielberg and Lucas added CGI elements to ET and the original Star Wars trilogy which actually stick out rather than helping the movies.  Those movies were products of their time and altering them is akin to Ted Turner colorizing Casablanca.

I don’t want to sound like I’m against CGI.  I’m really not.  However, bad CGI makes me wince, and poorly used CGI makes me hurt even more.

For instance, Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland is the most computer special-effects laden film since Avatar to come out.  Alice has its moments of great graphics–Helena Bonham Carter’s gigantic head springs to mind–and awful ones.  Every time the Knave of Hearts did anything I marveled at how poorly they mimicked human action when they stretched him out.

My real problem with Alice, however, was much the same as my problem with Avatar.  Alice in Wonderland has plot holes large enough to drive a truck through, and there were some serious problems with the third act.  However, as Alice fought the Jabberwocky in an anticlimactic battle, I felt like Tim Burton was saying, “Ignore the plot holes!  Look how cool the Jabberwocky is!!”  The Jabberwocky was cool, but even Christopher Lee’s voice acting couldn’t cover faulty screenwriting.

I couldn't find a picture of the Jabberwocky

Plus, in my opinion, Alice in Wonderland ended up looking way too much like an HD version of Katamari Damacy.

Katamari Damacy: A video game on acid

That’s right!  A Facebook page called “Betty White to Host SNL (please?)!” popped up a couple of months ago, and has since gained almost 500,000 fans!  Since apparently Lorne Michaels pays more attention to Facebook pages than most figureheads at whom Facebook groups are aimed, he offered the position to Betty White and she accepted.

Finally, proof that Facebook petitions work!!  I have been invited to hundreds of group petitions, everything from “For every person that joins this group I will give $1 to <insert topical illness here>” to “Help <insert topical social issue here” to “oMg I lOst mY pHonE,” and in my 4 year experience on Facebook, the only groups that have had any actual effect have to do with lost phones.

I stopped joining those groups when I realized that these petitions (minus the phone ones) don’t actually do any good.  When I joined, no money was donated to research for Autism, Lupus, or Cancer, nor did my petition reach the ears of leaders in New Orleans, Haiti, China, or Rwanda.  After a while, the groups became a little monotonous because everyone was joining them and nobody was doing anything about it once they did!

Most of the groups out there on Facebook aren’t even petitions.  They’re high school or middle school reunion pages, state/city/school/general location pride pages, common interest pages, and random miscellaneous things like “This Seemed Like a Good Idea Last Night” or over 500 “Zombie Apocalypse” groups.

But here is proof that I was wrong!  Somebody out there is listening!  Facebook can be used for change, even on a completely frivolous scale.

Still, I’ll be excited when Betty White hosts.  Here are some of my favorite Betty moments:

(Tina Fey, Molly Shannon, Rachel Dratch, and a few other past female members of SNL are slate to appear with her.  If the writing is as good as it was when they were on it, then I really can’t wait!)

So when I found out that Avatar was nominated for Oscar for cinematography, I was initially really upset.  But as I watched Mauro Fiore walk up to accept his Oscar last night, I decided to do some snooping.  Maybe what I thought was just astounding CGI actually had some cinematographic quality to it.  I mean, the Acadamy is NEVER wrong!!

I found a couple of articles on Avatar that helped.  The first, from Vanity Fair, described the difficulties Mauro Fiore had to overcome working with the new 3D technology James Cameron developed.  Also difficult was lighting the set around the giant greenscreens.  This only deals with the live-action sequences, however, and about 70% of Avatar is computer graphics.  So, how influential was the director of photography in that?

I can’t tell.  That’s the problem.  People will say that the digital landscapes have Fiore’s lighting touches, but at the same time he admits that he wasn’t brought in until motion capture was done.  He had no direct influence in most of the film’s aesthetics.

All of this makes me wonder, what is the Director of Photography’s role in this blooming digital world?  When geeks at computers (God love ‘em) decide on “camera” angles and lighting techniques for their beautiful creations, it seems like the guys holding the camera are going to get lost in the dust.

My pick for cinematography this year was The Hurt Locker.  This is partially because I’m still somewhat oldschool (the entire film was shot on 16 mm to give it a documentary feel), but also because it was a movie where I could point to a shot and say, “that is cinematography.”  With Avatar, I wasn’t (and still am not) sure.

This is cinematography I understand. Lights and camera!

This is cinematography I don't understand. Does it count?

Digital media is here to stay, and honestly I’m happy that it is.  It has never been easier for student film makers *cough*me*cough* to make movies on their own.  Plus digital media in conjunction with the web has allowed webseries like The Guild and InfoMania to thrive and even redefine how and what we watch.  Maybe Avatar is the next step in the computer graphics/cinematography hybrid to come.  Or maybe it’s the writing on the wall for directors of photography.  Either way, digital media keeps soldiering on.

Since New Media is over and I am no longer required to write a weekly blog, I’ve fallen a bit behind.  Class has gotten insanely busy this semester and I don’t have much time to write because of it, but I will update with tidbits here and there that I find amusing or interesting.  Sorry for the delay!