Technicolor Part 1: The History | Episode 21

Adam and Charlotte tackle the history of Technicolor. They discuss watershed moments in technology and the films that propelled color forward. They name their favorite Technicolor films and even invent a theme song for Gone With the Wind.

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Transcript

Technicolor: A History

Adam: Okay. Welcome back to another episode of Perf Damage. Welcome. So this time we have a very special two-part episode that we don't, we call them all special. They're all special to us. Us. Are they all special to us? They are, yeah. To us. . But this time we actually conceived of this one ahead of time as a two-parter.

Adam: That's right. It's not just us rambling too long. Nope. That we have to cut it into two pieces. Yeah. 

Charlotte: Adam tends to go on and on and wax poetic. 

Adam: When I like movies, I like to talk about 'em. 

Charlotte: Okay. You could just stay. They're really good . 

Adam: They're really good

Adam: So anyway yeah. What is our topic? 

Charlotte: We are talking the history of technicolor, most people know about the three strip technicolor. That's the big guy. But before there was three strip, there was two. And before there was two strip, there was a different two strip. So we're gonna strip all that down and hit you with some facts. 

Charlotte: That's a lot of stripping.

Charlotte: There's a lot of stripping in this week's episode, folks. Oh, yeah, . All right. So if you like stripping, stay 

Adam: tuned. Mo

Charlotte: All right, so technol, let's start off at the 

Adam: beginning. Yeah. We'll tell it chronologically like we do. We can't talk about Technol without talking about one of the founders of Technol. Herbert Kalmus. Yes. 

Charlotte: Herbert Kalmus founded Technicolor. Actually it wasn't even technol to begin with. 

Adam: No, it was 

Adam: k C N 

Charlotte: W? Yes. For Kalma. Comstock and Westcott, right? Yep. I'm not even looking. And I got that. Dang. Yeah. You know your stuff. I, 

Adam: yeah. I tried . It's like you researched this for a couple months or something. So K C N W was founded in 1912. 

Charlotte: , same year that Queen Elizabeth was released in theaters, the first full length feature film in the us.

Charlotte: Wow. Yeah. How about that? 

Adam: 1912? 1912 a year to remember. So anyways, back to the real story. Okay. Whatever, nerd Casey and w where'd they meet? How'd they get together and form this company?

Charlotte: Two of them, Kalma and Comstock, met at m i t Oh, in college. . 

Adam: they were,

Adam: They were both studying physics, right?

Adam: They were the only two people. Physics was a new Right. Line of study back then. 

Charlotte: This was 1903 when Herbert Kalice graduated. So this was early physics. Yeah. 

Adam: So physics was a new field that kind of combined mathematics and science 

Charlotte: and new being taught in a university 

Adam: sense and Correct. And engineering it was the best of all of those worlds.

Adam: . So only the kind of most high minded would go into the field. And so there was only one other guy at m i t , that was Comstock, that was studying physics. So the two of them instantly bonded over the fact that they were both going through that program together. 

Charlotte: And after college they went on and they got PhDs, and then Kalice was teaching Yeah. and then as a side hustle, they decided to found this company, KC and w and they were an engineering firm that helped out 

Adam: People would come to them with ideas for things and they would figure out how to engineer it and make it real.

Adam: That was their idea. They were a consulting firm, basically. Gotcha. One of the first things that they did was this what was that called? 

Charlotte: The flash frame camera? 

Adam: Yes. The flash frame camera, it was basically like the first speed gun. It was a camera that took really quick frames and you would measure the distance of the object in the frame to calculate. 

Charlotte: so you ever got a speeding ticket? You got Kalma, Comstock and Westcott to thank for that.

Adam: Oh, those guys. I hate those guys. They owe me a lot of money. Now you know what, technol offsets all that, honestly. Okay. Okay. Yeah. I did get a lot of speeding tickets back in the day. You got a lot of parking tickets. I got those two when I met you tickets. Like 

Charlotte: I'm a ticket person.

Charlotte: When I met you, I got in your car I swear like 10 parking tickets fell out. Said, what is this? You're like, oh, there's parking tickets. You don't have to pay those. Guess what you do? Eventually you gotta pay.

Charlotte: Yeah. He likes to wait until they appreciate, 

Adam: Yeah. I like them to be four times more than they actually say they are. 

Charlotte: Hey, so anyways, back to the story. Oh, you got me there. All right. So they invented this camera. Funny 

Adam: thing though, is that they invented that camera and yet they were trying to market it to police departments and things like that.

Adam: . And they never sold a single one. 

Charlotte: Let's be. Were those model Ts, really flying down 

Adam: the street? ? I think back then, like 25, 30 was pretty fast. Woo. Yeah. Yeah. Speed demons. Yeah. There's a story in Herbert K's autobiography. Mr. Technol, about the first time he was trying to get the police department to buy one of these. He, it was a demonstration. So they're out on the street and they catch somebody speeding and they pull that person over and it's the heavyweight champion of the world at the time.

Adam: Boxing champion. . And so they didn't give him a ticket. And after that they were just like, yeah, this isn't gonna be something that we're gonna want 

Charlotte: because they're not gonna give a famous dude a ticket. . That's a weird 

Adam: story. Okay. Maybe we don't use that story 

Charlotte: then. Nah, I think because you told it and it's so weird.

Charlotte: We just have to include it. I thought it was funny when I read it, but let people see how weird your stories are 

Adam: because , cause of course the first person that you pull over for speeding, right? Ever. Is gonna be the world boxing champion, know? yeah. You don't wanna piss that guy off, right?

Adam: That guy is the guy, the last guy you wanna give a ticket to. Yeah. Nope. Nope. Anyway 

Charlotte: so they've got this consulting firm and they get a customer who comes in and he has a 

Adam: concept for a projector that will cut down on Flicker 

Charlotte: because at the time, in 1912, Kenne McCull was also around.

Charlotte: And if you're not familiar with Kenne McCull, this is a color film that alternated red and green frames. So as you're watching, it flickers back and forth between red and green and the way your brain processes it, it looks like color, but it gave a lot of people headaches because of the flickering.

Charlotte: So this guy had this idea that he was gonna have this projector, which w had a rotating mirror that was gonna reduce flicker. At least he hoped it would. 

Adam: He wanted them to build a working 

Charlotte: prototype. Because he had tried and not succeeded, 

Adam: He wanted these guys to figure out the problem with it. 

Charlotte: So after a couple failed attempts with this, they suggested that he should work on developing a color film instead of trying to perfect this color film method that they didn't think was worth putting any money into.

Charlotte: But the guy wasn't interested in. But the thought of developing color film stuck with them. So they decided hey, he's not gonna do it. Let's go 

Adam: find money 

Charlotte: elsewhere. Yeah. Let's figure this out. Let's do this ourselves. Yeah. So in 1914, 

Adam: they formed another company called Technol, technol to focus solely on the pursuit of color film. So 

Charlotte: the other company still 

Adam: go and Yeah, and they had, other things that they were working on, they had plants in Ontario and things that they were doing.

Adam: But they wanted to keep this one kind of separate , and they knew that it wasn't going to be profitable for quite some time because it was all research based. . So they used the other company to offset that company, and they looked to raise capital from a bunch of investors. That's why they formed the new company.

Adam: Right.

Charlotte: So a few years later, they patented their first process, and it's called technical Process one. And. The film that they developed was similar to Kenna McCull. It shot a single frame onto a how do we even really

Charlotte: it was cinema. It was similar to Kenna McCull because you were alternating these frames. But instead of alternating frames, like in kenne color, 

Adam: there are two imagers that exposed two separate frames, but with the same image. 

Charlotte: So they caught the same frame 

Adam: twice, and they go through color prism, which strips out either red or green. 

Adam: The thing is that the projector is different. 

Adam: It had two separate bulbs. , that one shown through the red frame and one's shown through the green frame. And then they would go into a mirror, and then the mirror was focused down. So they'd overlap the two images. So it's like if you 

Charlotte: had two flashlights, you had a red and a green flashlight and you wanted to, and then you just join the beam, the beams together, you know, don't cross the streams, but join the beams.

Charlotte: Join the beams. Yeah. That's what they were trying to do. So instead of alternating, it was like, no, we're gonna do greener red at the same time. So that was their process. And 

Adam: when it came together, it was a, an approximation of, natural color. Of natural 

Charlotte: color. This worked really well in the lab.

Charlotte: But whenever they tried to implement this into a theater, it was a mess. 

Adam: They went and they shot a short called the Gulf between. And they were demonstrating it to people that they were hoping would invest in this technology.

Adam: And it didn't work. No, it broke . They could not focus the the mirrors down, like the mirror adjustment apparatus busted. And so it was a disaster. 

Charlotte: So, Back to the drawing board. Back to the drawing board. One thing we didn't mention is that when technical started, they realized early on that a lot of costs that were gonna be associated with developing color film are gonna be lab fees.

Charlotte: So they wanted to have their own portable lab so that they could develop film and process it on the spot. And they wouldn't have to rely on other labs to do the work for them. 

Charlotte: So what they do, they retrofitted a train car into a portable film lab. This is processing nitrate film people . . 

Charlotte: And they were in Boston, which they didn't think had the best natural light. So they actually moved it down to Florida, which had more natural light than Boston did

Charlotte: and that's where they shot the Gulf between 

Adam: was in Florida. Okay. Wow. That had to be one hot and sweaty train car is all I gotta say. 

Charlotte: Oh, boiling. So they go back to the drawing board after the gulf between disaster and they work on another one.

Charlotte: Some would say debacle. Yeah. They work on another process. And in 1922 they patent their second one, process two. So how's 

process 

Adam: two work, 

Charlotte: Charlotte? 

Adam: So this got rid of the need for the focusing mirrors. Which is a good thing, but it created other problems. 

Charlotte: They would bow, they would warp, they would sometimes come apart and they scratched super easily because there was emulsion on both sides 

Adam: and it's double thick, so it's not like a normal piece of film going through a projector. 

Charlotte: Projectionist around the country were complaining about these prints 

Adam: the results were so promising though when they showed them to a bunch of producers.

Adam: So Joseph Shank offered to give these guys a, a movie star and a crew to shoot another film. This would be their second technol film at this point. , and that was called The Toll of the Sea, and the star that they got was Anime Wong. 

Charlotte: So they released Toll of the Sea. Didn't you have a whole story about how difficult it was on the set? Yeah, 

Adam: No one was getting paid for this. , no one took it seriously. I think Anime Wong said that she didn't think the film would 

Charlotte: ever come out.

Charlotte: Yeah. Because color films were sort of a novelty and they just didn't think that this was anything 

Adam: that was marketable and the crew would never took it seriously. Mm-hmm. .. It was a difficult shoot, but it got a lot of press. it did pretty well. \ 

Charlotte: So this got released and

Charlotte: although it was cool, studios really weren't ready to gamble to do color film. It was still seen as a novelty. They could get studios to commit to maybe a color insert in a film, but not to doing a full feature,

Charlotte: but, Douglas Fairbanks happened to catch a screening of the Toll of the Sea and fell in love with it. 

Adam: He at that point was a major silent star. And he was working on his next film, he wanted to do a swashbuckling pirate film, and he used a bunch of paintings and drawings as the inspiration 

Charlotte: . And he just felt that you couldn't get that feeling with black and white and you needed color to really show what a pirate life was like.

Charlotte: Yeah. 

Adam: Sashes, the colorful ss, the colors of the sails. , the color of the seed. They did extensive pre-testing to see what colors and what exposures. This was technical's first film to really work out their process of color. 

Charlotte: And they spent, six months doing preparations for the shoot, testing colors and trying to find the right color palettes that would work.

Charlotte: And I read that they spent over 125,000. During this time, which is over $2 million today. That's, and that was before the cameras were rolling. That's crazy. 

Adam: On the film. Yeah. This was bankrolled all by Douglas Fairbanks. Mm-hmm. . . So all of this testing ahead of time was all out of his own pocket. 

Charlotte: And this was their biggest client to date. So they did his, every whim in demand. 

Adam: Yeah. Which was of, tons of testing. , Mm-hmm. , he was, not super worried about the way people looked on film. But was really interested in the environment. He wanted to see the water exposures.

Adam: He wanted to see trees. He wanted to see colors of sales. He wanted that kind of epic openness. , 

Charlotte: Which is different than what Technol was going for because they were focused on natural color and the red and the green allowed them to get a better skin tone, but he was not interested in that at all.

Charlotte: So he was pushing it in another directions, 

Adam: which is like part of the story of Technol when you put it into creative hands, they tend to do other things with it than what Technicolor would recommend. And this was probably their first run in with 

Charlotte: that. So the Black Pirate came out in 1926, shot entirely in technical's, two color process.

Charlotte: And it was huge. 

Adam: Yeah. Douglas Fairbanks, dude in color. Yes. Swashbuckling sword. Action. Hell yeah. In color. In freaking color. I'd be there. If I was alive in 1926, I would've been the first one in line. Yep. 

Charlotte: So there was a huge demand for Prince. And remember Technic color is making these double thick prints for the black pirate and they struggled to keep up with the demand and they actually had to turn new business down because they were making so many prints for this film.

Charlotte: But the prints had a problem. Uhoh what now? Like we were saying, they tended to scratch a lot or in dry or damp conditions, they would start it come, come apart. Coming apart. . So they spent tons of money replacing prints due to damage that. The prince encountered while being projected, and unfortunately what originally looked like a profitable venture turned out to be a really big loss for technol.

Adam: Yeah. This one took 'em to the precipice. They had to go out and find more money more investors, otherwise they were gonna go under . Yeah. On this single film. 

Charlotte: To make matters worse, in 1926 when they thought they would be moving on to work on a big MGM all color extravaganza, the mysterious island, the film got shelved because of massive cost overrun.

Charlotte: So they lost a huge client 

Adam: Yeah. Before even shooting started, so 

Charlotte: but they still found other people to work with. 

Adam: And like you said, they were doing a bunch of inserts and things like that , 

Charlotte: They would shoot with studios and they would do an insert, or they were doing their own travel logy shorts to showcase their process.

Adam: They were doing musical short numbers and things like that too, right? For the 

Charlotte: studios. But the thing that kind of sucked about this, when they would license their system to studio technol would advise the production how best to use the technol process, but the crews didn't have to follow their guidelines.

Charlotte: So they're getting their product out there, but they're in no way involved in how successfully it's used. 

Adam: So their name was on it, but they had no control over the end results. 

Charlotte: so You have a quote from Herbert Calis of Technol talking about this, right?

Charlotte: Yeah. 

Adam: This is from his book, Mr. Technol. He said finding good stories was always the most difficult problem. Broadway has a terrible struggle each season to find stories good enough for a dozen successes. Hollywood was trying to find several hundred. They simply didn't exist. There is no prospect of a weak story or a story badly cast or directed being made satisfactory to the public through the use of sound, color or any other embellishment.

Adam: And yet, producers were putting out second rate films with poor stories, monotonous formula, musicals with little story at all. And these mediocre films were not doing technical or any good.

Adam: We were doing anything possible to consult with and advise directors, script writers, art directors, wardrobe heads, paint departments, and other studio technicians. Our color control department was expanding as fast as practicable. Its services ranged from the color composition of sets and choice of materials and costumes and makeup to the broad planning and preparation of a picture by scoring it for color in much the same way the musical score is.

Charlotte: Hey, that makes sense. You'd have to conceive a, color film as a color film ahead of time. 

Adam: Yeah, he was saying that you can't simply just put what you would put on screen as a black and white film and just shoot it with color. You actually had to think about it beforehand, especially with two color, because it wasn't what you were seeing anyway.

Adam: Only certain colors would work. 

Adam: What he's saying there too, I don't think we've mentioned this, the way they set technicolor up, it wasn't just a process or you're renting their gear and they just handed off to you and expect you to work at, you would get camera operators, you would get technicians that kept the cameras running and then they had this whole consultancy department too that would help with. what colors you could use that would photograph the best . The 

Charlotte: color consultants. 

Adam: Yes. Color consultants. 

Adam: But at this point during this time, he didn't make it mandatory.

Adam: You used it if you wanted to. When you went to a studio, studios thought they knew better most of the time and despite what they would say, they would do whatever they wanted. 

Charlotte: It's like having this high performance vehicle like a Formula One race car and you're renting it to a little old lady 

Adam: Yeah.

Adam: And she's just gonna drive it to the store on the corner, down the street Yeah. And back 

Charlotte: and everybody's gonna see it. And that's not really gonna show off what that amazing Formula one car 

Adam: can do. Exactly. Yeah. That's a great analogy. Honestly, cuz that's what this is. Mm-hmm. At this point, these people really didn't know what they had in their hands.

Adam: And they weren't using it to the best of their ability. . 

Charlotte: So that was all going on, but all those double thick prints still remained an issue with the company. So they put a lot of energy into creating a way. To print those two color strips onto one piece of film. And they finally cracked the code in 1928 when they patented process number three, which was their ambi process.

Charlotte: So that was the process where they could take that red and green strip and instead of gluing them together, they would put 'em together and print 'em onto one piece of film. And this made things a lot easier for them. Prints were sturdier 

Adam: they were single thick, they didn't have any of the problems that the previous version did.

Adam: It was just like running any other piece of film through a 

Charlotte: projector at that point. . Yeah. And this was huge. But meanwhile in the company, there was turmoil going on and Comstock actually left the company around the same time. And Kalma took over. 

Adam: Yes. Yeah. Kalma ended up at this point making a choice.

Adam: And he went all in on Technol, cuz that's what he was spending most of his time 

Charlotte: on. Yeah,

Adam: They had several companies going at the same time. And this was kind of the breaking point within the other companies.

Adam: So their initial company was basically funding technol. It had never actually turned a profit at this point. And basically the other companies served to absorb all of the losses of technol and they got tired of that. So they asked to choose whether he was gonna stay with the one company or stay with Technol and then they divorce the two companies. It was a board meeting that just went really hostile and basically that was, they gave him the ultimatum right then and there.

Charlotte: I think he made the 

Adam: right decision. Oh, absolutely. When you go with color, heck yeah. It's way more exciting than technic blood transfer usage and things like that. Yeah. Who needs that 

Charlotte: when you 

Adam: have technical? Technical? So 

Adam: the MB process kind of changed everything up. , it made this a much more viable thing for exhibition, 

Charlotte: so studios weren't interested. So just to keep going, they decided to produce more of those shorts like they had done in the beginning

Charlotte: and that's when they formed Color Craft Pictures and they had a distribution deal with mgm, so they'd make all these travel log shorts just to show off their process a little bit more. 

Adam: They felt the only way to service Technol was to produce their own films.

Adam: Mm-hmm. at that point. 

Charlotte: Yeah. But they were having a really hard time breaking through that, exotic technology mold. Color was a novelty. And especially with the oncoming of sounds, studios weren't really interested, people stopped focusing on color for a bit, really focused on sound because that was a big game 

Adam: changer. Yeah.

Adam: One change is hard for producers. More than one change at once is impossible. But 

Charlotte: it was good though, because before that you would have these tried and true methods that studios were using and that's why trying to get them to do color was really hard. But once they made that change into doing sound, they were more open to doing changes at that point.

Charlotte: So it wasn't a, this is what we do, this is what's always worked. It was the industry's changing and how are we gonna change with it? So it wasn't all bad for them, at least in 

Adam: the long run. In Herbert did a really smart thing too. What he saw the oncoming of sound being the new normal. And so he created new blanks for film where the soundtrack would sit on the side, they would do the color development, and then that strip on the side would remain clear until they then put the soundtrack on it. So their fidelity was higher than most other companies at the time. No, it's awesome. I didn't know. So they were able to sell color and sound together Ah, as a package.

Charlotte: Dude, he's so smart. 

Adam: So smart. Ous man. He was really smart. So that's basically how they sold that Hey, you're not just getting, you're getting the best sound possible. . And you're getting color at the same time.

Charlotte: Adam, didn't you have a really good story about how makeup changed at the advent of sound at the advent of sound, makeup and sound 

Adam: It's a really loud makeup. . So loud. So loud. 

Charlotte: You had a really good story about how makeup had to change with the advent of color film, which I think is really fascinating cuz you don't really think about that.

Charlotte: Before it was all tones of black and white and gray so makeup had to 

Adam: change. Yeah. Max Factor was working on the short, the Vikings. . And he was using the old grease paint style makeup that he used to use for black and white. What is that exactly? It's this thick kind of stage makeup that would fill in pores and make everybody look flawless.

Adam: Mm-hmm. . But it was really thick.. And and it didn't really matter the tone of the skin color, because it photographed, it photographed, naturally. Yeah. In shades of white and gray. , depending on the power of the person. So he was using that on the Vikings, and then he would see the dailies come back and the people would be green or yellow because of the way the makeup was appearing on film.

Adam: . So he had to come up with a whole new makeup formula. Meanwhile the westmores at MGM were finding the same problem. So they said, this is a quote from a book called 

Adam: glorious Technol by Fred e Baston.

Adam: Perk Westmore was working on a Miller film called Sally in 1930. And he said we gave her the prettiest peaches and cream makeup. We knew using a very light touch because of the camera's color magnification, we were horrified. When her face turned up a bright red in the rushes, mine was almost equally red until on checking.

Adam: We found that her face had picked up a red re reflection from the red and white checkered cover of the table she was leaning on. And this discovery of the importance of color near the player was a keystone for much of our later work. So interesting. 

Charlotte: So it's a set that's actually affecting the makeup.

Charlotte: Yes. It's 

Adam: bounce, right? Like you didn't have to worry about bounce before cuz it would just show up as shadow. But now color bounce is a factor because they also had to use a lot of light 

Charlotte: for this film. Yeah. He goes 

Adam: on to say, in black and white, for instance, an actress may wear a pink and white makeup that photographs beautifully in white light, but let her get under a blue arc and her face comes out gray and muddy on the screen under a magenta light, a pink makeup goes ghostly white. So they were just discovering all of these crazy things, depending on the color of the light Yeah.

Adam: That you're shining on them. It picks up completely differently with the makeup. The Westmore's and Max Factor all work together to create a line of makeups that were good for film after this. That's awesome. Yeah. I thought it was pretty fascinating. Anyway. Yeah. Just stuff that you don't think of.

Adam: It seems nowadays that would just be second nature. , but they were so used to working in black and white that never even occurred to them. Think 

Charlotte: about it now. If you go and shoot something in black and white, you're not thinking in contrast and shadow and light.

Charlotte: You're looking at it in color, and so you might shoot something and then get it back and it looks really flat. , it's just the same thing. You're just not used to doing it, and you don't know how to properly use the medium to its full 

Adam: effect. Yeah. 

Charlotte: So while the industry was shifting and really focusing on sound, technol decided to go all in on. Producing natural color, which they always knew needed to be three colors, not just red and green.

Charlotte: They needed to add blue, right? Yeah. To reproduce all the colors. 

Adam: It was always Herbert Alma's conception to use all three primary colors. He 

Charlotte: just couldn't figure out how to do the three 

Adam: strips yet. Yeah, it wasn't technically available yet. 

Charlotte: And they always wanted to do three because Tri Chromatic theory had been around since the early 18 hundreds when people were experimenting with.

Charlotte: putting together layers of color to reproduce all color. 

Adam: He knew that the three primary colors, when you mix them in various ways, would produce every color. They've been working on this for years. Even during, two strip and all of that. 

Charlotte: That was the ultimate goal was to get to, was 

Adam: to get to three strip. 

Charlotte: So the most famous version of Technol, the full three strip technol.

Charlotte: Process number four was patented in 1932. And the way that this one worked, that was different. It still exposed two strips of film going through the camera at one time. But one of them was bi packed. And what that means is that two strips of films were put together.

Charlotte: They were able to send three strips of film through the camera by putting two of them together. And I'm not gonna go into the technology cuz it's really complicated just to explain. 

Adam: Oh. But you should do that. No I'm sure everybody would be completely fascinated with a 20 minute diversion here.

Adam: And that's about when 

Charlotte: they change the channel one . So we're not gonna go into that. But let's just say they figured it out. They got the three strips in there. Hey, they're smart guys. They are. So they built their first three strip camera and it cost $30,000 to build, which sounds like a steal until you look at what that is today, which is a little over half a million dollars.

Charlotte: Yeah. 

Charlotte: So they got this three strip. Method. And what else was different this time around? 

Adam: The technology was different, but this time he learned from the past, he said with this new technology, he was going to make everybody use the color consultancy program. So 

Charlotte: the color advisory team was now mandatory.

Charlotte: Mandatory, yes. So they weren't leaving it into somebody else's hands. They were gonna have their team come in and say, Hey, you can't have this kind of makeup near this kind of tablecloth cuz this is gonna happen. So they were there to advise on everything. Wallpaper, costumes. 

Adam: Yeah. What color goes next to what color, right?

Charlotte: . So they have this great process and they go around to the studios and they show all the studios, Hey, look at this looks amazing. And all the studios go eh, not 

Adam: interested. I don't think so. Yeah. We got this thing. It's called 

Charlotte: sound, yeah. We're busy with 

Adam: sound. 

Charlotte: So we took it around. Nobody was interested until he met with the, 

Adam: animator. A little tiny independent guy no one had heard of. Nope. What was his name again? Do you remember? 

Charlotte: I think it was a freaking Walt Disney. 

Adam: Walt Freaking Disney. That's his actual 

Charlotte: middle name too, right? Yeah. Walt Freak and Disney.

Charlotte: Yeah, that's what I thought. He meets with Walt. He shows him the process and Walt flips out. He's over the moon. He was never interested in the two strip process that they had, but the three strip, yeah. He saw hell yeah. What 

Adam: those colors were gonna do for cartoons. And so what's 

Charlotte: he do? He locks technically colored down right away with an exclusive three year deal.

Charlotte: Yeah, because 

Adam: Which is so Disney. Because even back then he was freaking Walt Disney . 

Adam: Oh, I'm sorry. Walt freaking Disney. Thank 

Charlotte: you. Yes. Yeah, that's correct. Yeah. Before this, he had tried a lot of things and had a. Failures. He had a lot of things where he was right on the cusp of making it, but then things would get taken away or, yeah.

Charlotte: He actually 

Adam: was just coming back from a nervous 

Charlotte: breakdown. And he decided, all right, I'm gonna give this Hollywood thing one more go, one last shot. And he sees this, and he had already started working on a short called flowers and trees in black and white, which he scrapped to do in color. 

Adam: Wouldn't you?

Adam: Mm-hmm. .. 

Charlotte: Disney sees this, he calls up his good buddy, Sid Graman, owner of the Chinese Theater, and he tells him about this process. And he said, if I do this, are you interested? And he got Sid to see a little demo of the color process. Sid Graman, he sees this demo, he's all excited. And what does he say 

Adam: Walt? If you make flowers and trees in the technical process, you've got a booking at my Chinese theater, the picture and technol are made for each other. Yeah, he 

Charlotte: sounds like a good 

Adam: indigestion or something.

Adam: No, he just smokes a lot of cigars, I think. Oh yeah. 

Charlotte: Okay. So they make flowers and trees. 1932 in color. It premieres at Groman's Theater in front of the film. Strange Intruder. A black 

Adam: and white film, by the 

Charlotte: way. It was an overnight sensation. . 

Adam: Yes, it was Overnight sensation. . It 

Charlotte: was such a big deal that the heads of MGM saw it and they went directly to Technol and they said, all right we wanna do stuff in this three strip. But it put technol in a really awkward position cuz they had just signed that three year with Walt freaking Disney.

Adam: Herbert had to go to Walt and say, Hey Walt. 

Charlotte: About that three 

Adam: year, about that three year deal, deal, deal. , can you do something about that? 

Charlotte: You know? And hey, Walt was a nice guy. Walt's a good dude. He was a good 

Adam: dude. Herbert and him were actually good friends for the rest of, they 

Charlotte: both had something to prove.

Charlotte: So I think they were kindred spirits. Yeah. In that sense. And they took 

Adam: gambles, both of 'em. 

Charlotte: Mm-hmm. So, with Walt's consent, shortened the exclusivity deal from three years to one year. And the rest is history. The end. Thanks for joining us, but , , 

Adam: No. Yeah. So what happened to flowers and trees?

Charlotte: Oh, it was 

Adam: huge. Yeah. But what did it end up doing? 

Charlotte: It was nominated for an Academy Award, the first ever Academy Award for Best Animated Short. And it won. Oh yeah, it won, of course. Yeah, it won. 

Adam: So that was Disney's first Oscar. That was technical's first. Oscar. The first of many. 

Charlotte: First of many.

Charlotte: So Hollywood at this point was a buzz about color film, they're all like Zzz colors. Colors. But it split Hollywood into two camps because there was the one side that. 

Adam: Color was the new realm, 

Charlotte: everything. 

Charlotte: color was the new 

Adam: sound. Yes. And 

Charlotte: then the opposition was saying, eh, it, plays no part in dramatic films and it will not advance the art of cinema.

Charlotte: Yeah. They were 

Adam: leaning into that novelty thing again. At that point. . They weren't running, into technicolor to make features. Not everybody was. 

Adam: He needed a Hollywood outsider to support Technol.

Charlotte: The first live action short 

Adam: to use technical orders by a new company.

Charlotte: , 

Charlotte: who was also looking to take a chance, gamble, make a name for themselves, and they made the short la 

Adam: which is absolutely 

Charlotte: beautiful. It is very beautiful. 

Adam: The usage of color in this Yeah. Is, it's a real showpiece 

Charlotte: it does. . The costumes are colorful. There's great uses of 

Adam: emotional lighting. Emotional lighting. Yeah. That is well put. Yeah. Emotional lighting in this film. Yes. When the guy gets angry and he pushes the girl against the wall and it's red, they're bathed in red. Yes. Yeah. But beautiful costumes. , light and fluffy. Yeah. 

Charlotte: I think this one gets a bad rap. It's okay. Yeah. It's not terrible, but guess what? It's 

Adam: pretty Look. Cucaracha goes on to winning Academy Award too. What? Can you believe it, man? 

Charlotte: This technical company's on two for two. 

Adam: So they're on a 

Charlotte: roll. By the time they're on a roll, Hollywood has taken notice so much so that the very next year, 1935,

Charlotte: becky Sharp is released. 

Adam: Becky Sharp, the first all technic color 

Charlotte: Feature film cost nearly $1 

Adam: million, which was unheard of back 

Charlotte: then. 

Charlotte: This one gets a bad rap for how the color is. . 

Adam: So you would say offensive in some, I'm just thinking of that scene when she's sitting at the table with the yellow flowers and all you can look at is the yellow, the bright yellow flowers.

Charlotte: . One critic said there's no sex appeal to a gal who appears to be in the last stages of scarlet fever. The actors all look like roasted turkeys. I think that's 

Adam: unfair. 

Charlotte: They do kind of look like roasted turkeys. They do 

Adam: not. They kind of do. No.

Adam: New York Times described how even the most delightful of colors will display the most detestable tendencies given the opportunity.

Adam: But 

Charlotte: possibly the best was Betty Davis's review of the color. And what'd she say? Garish Trie. Wow. That's a little, I think that was her comment on 

Adam: color in general. Yeah. That's a little rough. Yeah. She ends up in color a few years later. 

Charlotte: She looks good in color. Yeah, 

Adam: she pulled it off. 

Charlotte: But not everybody hated it. The New York Times in 1935 actually praised it. They said, science and art, the hand maidens of cinema have joined hands to endow the screen with the miraculous new element in Becky Sharp. 

Adam: So Herbert in his book, talked about how this was his last major experiment. This film wasn't wholly successful.

Adam: The end result. , but they were pushing the limits of color. That they could reproduce. So between the animated shorts, LA Cucaracha and Becky Sharp. , the experimental phase was over. , they knew exactly what they could do, what the limits of the technology was, and they were ready to go.

Charlotte: . Yeah. La Cucaracha, they were playing it maybe a little bit more safe, but it's beautiful. And then they just really pushed it with 

Adam: Becky Sharp. Yeah. They amped it up a little much. A little too much, little 

Charlotte: much. 

Adam: Take it back down from a living, but it's really not terrible. Image wise, the film isn't great.

Adam: Yeah. It's all right. Yeah, exactly. Just, alright. 

Charlotte: So in 1936, after all these experiments, after years of development, Technicolor had sort of served its apprenticeship and it was finally ready for the center stage.

Adam: So now we usher in the Golden Era? 

Charlotte: The Golden Era of Technol. 

Adam: Yeah. I think it starts in 1938. Yeah. I would say so. With a little movie called The Adventures of Robinhood. Absolutely. 

Charlotte: That showcases what Technol can do. Yep. And 

Adam: in the best, ways.

Charlotte: The color advisory group was not too happy with how much they were pushing the colors they were saying it was gonna look like a comic book, which was the point. Yeah. 

Adam: That was the point, right? , they were using illustrations and paintings as inspiration. And they wanted them to look like that. , so they really pushed it. So during this period, you really needed a lot of light for exposure. So shooting outside was good. Shooting on a sound stage was sweltering well, 

Charlotte: unlike black and white photography, which you could do key lights or creative lighting.

Charlotte: You couldn't really do that with technicolor yet. And part of that was the film stock just wasn't there yet. Yep. And the camera just wasn't there yet, so they had to brightly light everything. Yeah. 

Adam: So all the films from this period tend to be on the flat side . But it really works for Adventures of Robin.

Adam: It 

Charlotte: does, because a lot of it's exteriors 

Adam: and Yeah. And it's, you need to see the action. , it's the bright green forest, the colorful costumes that everybody said were not period appropriate, but looked wonderful on screen. Really good despite that. Yeah, they do. Yeah. And the huge giant sets you could see every inch of them.

Adam: . And I think that leads to the kind of epicness of that film. It. 

Charlotte: And there's a lot of fun backstory with Adventures of Robinhood. Oh, 

Adam: really? Do tell. 

Charlotte: \ did you know that James Cagney was originally cast to play Robinhood? 

Adam: Oh, you Dirty Rat . Can you imagine? 

Charlotte: He was a dancer, so I could kind of imagine the sword fighting, but he was also way littler than everybody.

Charlotte: So in all those wide fighting shots that might've 

Adam: looked funny, he'd be like the little pugnacious guy. Yeah, put your dukes up. Put your dukes up. But with swords. With 

Charlotte: swords and green tights. That's right. Hey, I think he could've done it. It would've been a much different 

Adam: film. Yeah. Errol Flynn was perfect, 

Adam: . I have a hard time imagining anybody else 

Charlotte: in that world. Errol Flynn was sorta unknown at that time. He had had one hit. Yeah. He was in Captain Blood, which directed by Michael Kurtis. And it's very similar to this. It is. And Hal Wallace had seen that film and whenever Cagney left, 

Charlotte: he walked off Warner Brothers lot. Yeah, yeah. Had 

Adam: a dispute with with Warners themselves and just walked off Warner. Jack Warner. Jack Warner, and yeah. Him did not see eye to eye. Mm-hmm. ,, I'm sure it was over pay. Threw up 

Charlotte: the birds and walked 

Adam: off the lot. Walked off the lot. Two and a half years. He did not do another Warner feature.

Adam: Yeah. For two and a half years. 

Charlotte: So Hal Wallace thought, Hey, let's take a chance on this young man from Tasmania. That guy from Captain Blood. Wait, he's from Tasmania? 

Adam: Yeah. No. Yeah. Wow. He's like the Tasmanian Devil. Sure. It's Warner Brothers. Sure. . You 

Charlotte: didn't know that's where 

Adam: came from. Had no clue. I had no clue.

Adam: He was from Tasmania. 

Charlotte: Yeah. I mean, people actually live there. Really? Yeah. They, they do. At least they did. 

Adam: Told all the devils. Ate them Anyway, so he's got jokes folks. Not good ones. Not good ones . But they are jokes, 

Charlotte: they're attempts. So how Wallace hires his guy and then he also decides, because at the time when they started this film, it was not gonna be a color film.

Charlotte: But when Kaney left and he just was looking for a reset, he hires Earl Flynn and he decides that he wants to use this new and very expensive technical process. So he started with the script. He was smart enough to know that they needed to rewrite the script to incorporate clear opportunities to showcase color.

Charlotte: In fact, there's a memo from 1937. Written to screenwriter Norman Riley. That says, keep color in mind when rewriting the script, Mr. Warner wants to be sure that every advantage is taken of the color medium.

Adam: So they start 

Charlotte: shooting this, 

Adam: they'd hired a guy named William Keeley, right? . 

Charlotte: He was the original director who 

Adam: was just a studio guy that they hired he was a contract director, basically.

Charlotte: . But Hal Wallace was not happy with the way that he was shooting the outdoor scenes and the action. He didn't feel like this guy had a good handle of action to do it. So where does he go? He thinks Captain Blood, and he goes and he grabs Michael Curte, who comes in and. He's like the ringer 

Adam: you just bring He's the ringer.

Adam: Yeah. Yeah. You bring Michael Curte when you want the movie to come out. Way better than it should. 

Charlotte: It said that Kurtis did most of the studio shooting, though, that most of the action scene by that point had been done and they didn't redo it. Oh, seriously. That's what, . I've read. That's funny, 

Adam: but it sounds about right.

Adam: Hey, I need you to come in and punch up the action. Okay. But 

Charlotte: we're done with the action. 

Adam: Yeah. The action is all done. So you guys, you do all the talking scenes, sounds about right, 

Charlotte: but make sure the action's punched up. Okay? Yeah. You punched that action up in 

Adam: the, and the dialogue threw the talking scenes

Charlotte: They 

Adam: were weird back then. Yeah. I don't know though. There's a lot of action inside, on the sets. I'm thinking specifically of the fight up and down the stairs. Right. There's a lot of that kind of stuff. He does cut loose a curtain and sails across the room on it, remember?

Adam: , yeah. There's action. 

Charlotte: Michael Curte would end up directing Errol Flynn 12 times. Damn. 

Adam: 12 times. 

Charlotte: , that's a Mm-hmm. And Olivia de Halan, who was hired to play made Marion. They worked together. Errol Flynn and Olivia Havilland worked together eight times. 

Adam: Wow. That's a lot of times. I know, right? It was rumored they were having an affair on the set of this film.

Charlotte: Have you seen Errol Flynn in this film? I'm sure everybody was trying to have an affair with Errol Flynn. 

Adam: Hey, have you seen Olivia de Havelin in this film? Yeah. She cute. Yeah, she good looking. They both good looking. Yeah, she cute. . She cute. She cute. . 

Charlotte: One of my favorite little facts about this film is that the horse that Olivia de Halan is riding whose name was Golden Cloud only a few years later was known as Trigger What?

Charlotte: No, that's right, This Golden Cloud was one of the horses brought to Roy Rogers to test out for his westerns that he was doing with Republic Pictures and he ended up buying Trigger cuz they got along so well and the horse was incredibly smart. Smartest horse in the movies. TM . So you get to see Trigger in a very early role, a 

Adam: young trigger, early, young, like early performance by trigger a young trigger. I like that. Yeah. I actually like that. That's very cool. Yeah. His name was Golden Cloud Trigger. Probably the most famous movie horse of all time. 

Charlotte: Yeah. He was one of my most watched actors of Oh, 2022.

Charlotte: 2222. Yes. He was, he tied with Roy Rogers. Surprisingly weird. 

Adam: Yeah. Very weird. It would be great if you had watched Adventures of Robinhood and he beat Wright Rogers, 

Charlotte: but would he have been credited as trigger? He wouldn't have, so I wonder if it was, I guess it would've been trigger, but like in Es like as Golden Cloud.

Charlotte: As Golden 

Adam: Cloud, yeah. If he even got credit, it was like before he got married he probably 

Charlotte: didn't even his name get credit for that film. Oh. Which is just such a uncredited, so sad. I hope he's on imdb uncredited. I haven't checked, but I hope it's there. We should submit it. I got other stuff 

Adam: to do. Okay. . I don't

Charlotte: but this film is so great with Errol fun. He's just at the top of his game in this film. He's got such charisma, dashing, if you look up dashing in the dictionary, 

Adam: there's a picture of his must. There's a just his mustache 

Charlotte: actually. Yeah it's Errol Flynn. That's who's there. 

Adam: Didn't John Waters say that he based his mustache on, he based his mustache onto Errol Flynns?

Adam: He did. I'm pretty sure if he didn't, 

Charlotte: I'm pretty sure if he didn't then well, he should No, I think he did. Yeah. 

Adam: I think we heard that story.

Charlotte: Seth. Adventures of Robinhood. A very vivid, vividly colored picture.

Charlotte: So how do you follow Adventures of Robinhood? 

Adam: You just make one of the greatest movies of all time. 

Charlotte: Or you have the best year of all time. Yeah, that's true too. 1939 was the year of the 

Adam: technol. Oh, absolutely. And why was that, Charlotte? 

Charlotte: Because of Adventures of Robinhood and ar Flynn's Mustache people were starting to feel more confident with the three strip system, and Technicolor could see that they knew they had gold, they started getting inquiries by all the big guys. 

Adam: Herbert in his book said he wanted to focus on a list films.

Adam: , Mm-hmm. , he wanted technol to be associated with those films that they not only put more money into, but they'd have to for technol. And they would be more important because of that. Mm-hmm. ,, they would spend more time and more effort on them because they were a-list films. was smart branding right from the very beginning.

Adam: , this guy knew what he was doing. He did. So 1939, the year of the technol. What's that? Bring us, what's the first movie? 

Charlotte: The first one you're gonna think about is definitely The Wizard of Oz. 

Adam: Yeah. I'm always thinking about the Wizard of 

Charlotte: Oz and very similar to Adventures of Robinhood.

Charlotte: This one was shot with really bright lights because that's how they had to do it. And it's one of the most colorful films of all 

Adam: time. It is. I read that they tested hundreds of different shades of yellow for the yellow brick road. They did. And then ended up with going with fence yellow at the local.

Adam: Yeah. Like some 

Charlotte: cheap hardware store. They imported all this yellow from all over the world, everywhere. And then went with the ace hardware. Yellow paint. Yeah. Yellow fence paint. It worked the best. They also, because of technical, the silver slippers in the Wizard of Oz got changed to the ruby red slippers because the red would photograph the silver would've just reflected the yellow brick road.

Charlotte: They would've been 

Adam: yellow. Yeah. And the red shoes contrast against the yellow. And they 

Charlotte: pop. 

Adam: We all know Wizard Oz's a wonderful, beautiful film. , 

Charlotte: Because of the Technol three strip. 

Adam: Yep. That one shot really sells that technol when she walks through the door and Oz for the first time mm-hmm. ,, it goes from that sepia that opens the film mm-hmm. into color, all in a single shot. And you know how they did that, right? I don't how they do that. 

Charlotte: It's actually that whole shot was shot in color and they painted the interior of the house, they painted it all sepia, and they had Judy Garland's stand in, stand in. They had her painted in that sepia color, including the, the dress that she was wearing and everything.

Charlotte: And she goes up and opens the door, and then Judy Garland walks in and walks out into color. So it was actually all shot in color, but they used paint. 

Adam: Yeah. The way they do that shot. Really. It's beautiful. It, that is it's going from. a muted world into technol. It basically is the description of technol , in visual terms.

Adam: , especially you go through a doorway where everything's small and it, the world opens up. And color for the first time. , it's amazing. It's beautiful. And that one shot sold te color in a way that nobody else could. 

Adam: All right. We all like Wizard of Oz. Do we, 

Adam: I 

Charlotte: mean, I'm sure there's some wizard, some Oz haters out there. There's some Oz heads. 

Adam: I mean, I would consider myself a sort of Oz head. I'm not 

Charlotte: an Oz head. Yeah. Do you have a certificate 

Adam: that says you're a I don't have a, I haven't, I haven't asked for a certificate yet.

Adam: You can get certified. 

Charlotte: Be an Oz head. An Oz head. 

Charlotte: , but anyways, back to 

Adam: the story . But let's talk about one of your absolute favorite Technol films that happened in the same year, and that would be 

Charlotte: gone with the wind. Do

Adam: Do. That 

Charlotte: was in my head too.

Adam: I wish there were lyrics. Do

Adam: Go on. Woo.

Adam: - Yeah. We need to get a Frankie Lane. Yeah, he did. Frankie Lane Lewis killed that song. The Wind Gone with the Wind. Wind, 

Adam: It's the Civil War. What we fighting for? God with the Wind. , 

Charlotte: I think you really missed your calling as a songwriter.

Adam: Oh man, I can spin a tune. Can I? Of 

Charlotte: songs that are, that get stuck in your head that everybody would hate. This is a terrible song and I can't stop singing it. It's 

Adam: Pitiful, but yeah, it's in my head. 

Charlotte: It is. And now it's gonna be my head. Gone with the Wind. Okay, anyways. Gone with the Wind, 1939.

Charlotte: Completely different in terms of looks than the Wizard of Oz and there's a very good reason for 

Adam: this. 

Adam: New negative film stock had been developed and David Selznick insisted that they use it on Gone With the Wind.

Charlotte: It's freaking gone with the wind. Only the 

Adam: best, the new negative offered substantial gains in speed. So it reduced the amount of light that was needed to expose the film. 

Charlotte: So they didn't have to brightly light the sets like they did with Wizard of 

Adam: Oz. So they could take down all that flat lighting and they gained a bunch of nuance because of it. Mm-hmm. .. So now you can bring the art of lighting back into the film. 

Charlotte: And this is the game changer. It is. Because a lot of people questioned David Osn and they said, why are you shooting a drama in color?

Charlotte: This is only for spectacles. This is for musicals. This isn't for drama. And he said, oh, you just wait. And he showed 'em. Yeah, 

Adam: he did. Absolutely. 

Charlotte: And it wasn't just the film stock that changed, they actually fixed an issue with the camera. They had inefficient filters and they were losing two F stops on the camera because of these inefficient filters.

Charlotte: So they replaced those and that gained a lot. Plus the new film stock, they were able to shoot in really low lighting conditions.

Charlotte: It allowed them to have more intricate use of shadows while maintaining detail so they could get back to that moody look. Yeah. 

Adam: The Char Scro lighting that we were used to in film noir, the things that brought film lighting to an art form.

Charlotte: Yeah. And this was really important to Selznick. He actually sent a memo to the cinematographer. 

Adam: As to the intrusiveness of sets, it is my opinion based upon very solid experience and technical error, that this largely, if not entirely a matter of photography and lighting.

Adam: Mr. Gars is familiar with our desires in this respect, and is completely in accord with Mr. Coor and myself on the obvious folley of the old fashioned technol photography that indulged in lighting every detail of a set with resultant and great distractions from the players. Hey, there 

Charlotte: you go. He didn't want that look.

Charlotte: Can you imagine gone with the win lit the way that Adventures of Robinhood or Wizard Oz. Wizard Oz or Lit? No. That is one of the most gorgeously lit films. 

Adam: You get nuance, , you get gradations of color for the first time. before you got flat colors. You got, this is purple and this is red, right?

Adam: And this is green. But now you've got, this is purple that goes into Mav, which goes into it's the sunset. 

Charlotte: Yeah. When you think of, oh, that beautiful shot. Yes. It's the very end of act one before the intermission when she vows to never go hungry again. And she's silhouetted by the sunset and 

Charlotte: you can barely see her face and the camera kind of pans back and that's gorgeous. Sunset. I'm getting chills just thinking about it. It's so beautifully shot. Yeah. And they couldn't do that before that, that would never have happened before. No. They were taking black and white style photography and applying it to a color film for the first time ever.

Charlotte: And 

Adam: that's why this is a seminal film in technical's history . , this is the game changer again. There was a game changer when three Strip came in and this is the game changer within three strip. . 

Charlotte: And at the time, this was also the longest movie ever made. 

Adam: Yeah, it was funny. When they originally made this deal Kalma was afraid that this film wasn't gonna reach the number of feet because they would make a deal for each foot would cost a certain amount of money.

Adam: And he was worried that they weren't gonna meet their mandatory minimum on this film when they went into it. Oh, he did not have exceeded wronged by four times. Yeah. Yeah.

Charlotte: Technol knew how important this film was going to be. they were so worried about getting things right, especially with the new film stock that they sent all seven technical cameras to the set to film this one scene.

Charlotte: This movie has a famously nightmarish production. They cycled through five directors. They had about 15 screenwriters,

Charlotte: and they had constant budget problems. 

Charlotte: One of the first scenes that they shot was the Atlanta fire scene, and they actually shot that before Vivian Lee had been cast. And if you look, there's a stunt double in the horse cart when they're driving and you never see your face.

Adam: Clark Gable was a loan out from another company, and He would lose Clark Gable if he didn't start shooting by a certain date.

Charlotte: Oh. So that's why they started shooting before Scarlet was cast? Yes. Oh, 

Adam: I didn't know that. Yeah, so that whole they scene during the burning of Atlanta. . 

Charlotte: Yeah. He's there. You can see his face. You can see him clearly. But you can't see 

Adam: her face. No. Because that was a stand-in . Yeah. . I think that's a fun 

Charlotte: little fact.

Charlotte: And the big building that you see burning down in the background of that shot is actually the gate that King Kong goes through in 1933 

Adam: Oh yes. In the village, right? . Yeah, 

Charlotte: That's the gate that was burning down in that on the sun.

Adam: No way. They were actually burning a piece of the King Kong set. Sure were. 

Adam: This demonstrates to everybody that Technol has grown 

Charlotte: up to after this.

Charlotte: There was no question. 

Adam: And so it dominated it was the only color format all through the forties and into the fifties. It wasn't the only, I there were other formats. It was the premium. It was the Yes premiere. That's a good way to put it. Yes. The premiere. 

Charlotte: There were other competing color formats. There was true color, there was magna color, there was Warner Color. Everybody had their. . 

Adam: Yeah. Because everybody didn't want to pay for a service. . They provided everything from the cameras to the stock, to the processing, all the way through.

Adam: , that service was 

Charlotte: a premium. . So now that's why other studios created their own color. Yeah. Started 

Adam: coming up with their own, processing, their own film. So 

Charlotte: And a lot of 'em were two color processes, although Republic had both a two color and a three color true color process.

Adam: Yeah. I really like, like the look of true color. I do 

Charlotte: too. So Technicolor was the big guy in town until the wide screen craze happened, 

Adam: Television came and it became a dominant force and everybody was afraid. That no one would come to the movies anymore. Yeah. So they did the wide screen. So you had to 3D offer an experience that you couldn't see at home. Yeah. 

Charlotte: And there was 3d and there were actually a couple 3D films shot in 3s.

Charlotte: Strip technicolor. Yes. Wrap your head around that one. That would be a lot of film. It would be. And I think we're gonna have another episode where we discuss these films in detail a little later, so 

Adam: well that look forward to that one. Let's 3D technical films. Yeah. 

Charlotte: 3d three strip technical films. So if you want, that is six strips of film 

Adam: people.

Adam: If you wanna to hear something that's really difficult to understand. Wait for that episode. Yeah, . 

Charlotte: So the last American film to be shot in three strip technicolor was in 1954. And what film was that? 

Adam: Charlotte. That 

Charlotte: film was called Fox Fire. 

Adam: Do we know anything about that film? We don't. It does it matter?

Adam: It doesn't . Okay. So 1954, that was the last American three strip. , they were still making them in Europe. Yep. Then people like Daria ATO in the eighties, he made a film. SEIA three strip just because he could. Yeah. There was a technical lab in Rome still at that point, so they were able to do the three strip to process it.

Adam: But technic color adapted. They went into film processing, mainly. . Yeah. They shifted gears, highly sought after the ambition, the print color, IB prints, they don't fade.

Charlotte: Yeah. In the world of restoration. If you can get your hands on an IB print, that is such a great color reference when you're restoring a film, to be able to look and see not just the color, but the shadows or the contrast. If you can get one of those to screen when you're working on something that's just, it's a great reference.

Charlotte: It's such a great reference, especially because. . A lot of the older films, you don't have the talent around anymore to advise. So either you look for an old reference master that was approved by someone on the film, hopefully the director, the cinematographer. But if you don't have that, finding an IV print is a goal.

Charlotte: They don't fade unlike metro color or some of the Eastman color, 

Adam: and why don't they fade? It's just something in the process.

Adam: Yeah. It 

Charlotte: was their di their technology, their dye transfer process. 

Adam: Yeah. The dyes were really strong. And stable. That's cool. That's really interesting. . Yeah. And, they were able to pivot right before DVD became a big thing. . technic color adapted. They turned their plant here in Hollywood into a replication plant for dvd.

Adam: Oh. And they were the number one DVD replicator in the world for like a decade when that was the thing. 

Charlotte: Yeah. And technical is still around, still doing things. They've sold off some of their post-production facilities. One of them's picture Shop now owned by Stream Land. But , they still say technical on the building and it will always be referred to as technical.

Charlotte: As technical because that name just carries so much weight. 

Adam: It's like Kleenex, right? Or Xerox technol is associated with color. That vibrant color that, it's something that will always be, when you say technical, you think of the Wizard of Oz. You think of, 

Charlotte: When you think technical film, you think Bright.

Charlotte: Bright and color film Beautiful. Yeah. And a technical film and h d R is a glorious thing. 

Adam: Yes, it is. 

Charlotte: . So Adam, before we go here, what is your favorite Technicolor film of all time?

Adam: That's a hard one to answer cuz I like so many of them, but. It's an American Paris, 1951. 

Charlotte: And why is that your favorite one? 

Adam: I'm a huge Gene Kelly fan.

Adam: I love singing In the Rain also. That's another technic color film. But the use of color in an American in Paris is amazing. The ballet sequence at the end , is absolutely stunning When Sid Charice unwraps herself in that giant fabric just comes rolling out. Yes. The vibrancy of that color is so rich.

Adam: It has those very abstract backgrounds, which are also very bright and colorful. It's just an incredible achievement. , you know mm-hmm. , , that film is just beautiful I love musicals. , and that's one of the ones that is my absolute favorite. okay. What's your favorite 

Charlotte: one then? . It's funny that yours has a ballet sequence because mine also has a ballet sequence. It is The Red Shoes 19 48, 1 of the most beautiful technical films ever 

Adam: made. Oh, absolutely. Most people will argue that might be the most beautiful technical film all time.

Adam: It 

Charlotte: is gorgeous. And it's all about ballet Powell and 

Adam: Pressburger captured dance in a way that a lot of people didn't understand, especially ballet at that point. . Yeah. My ballet is years after that and definitely pulls from that, the way they visually represent the ballet.

Charlotte: But what I love about the red shoes, you have a ballet sequence that turns into a surreal kind of fantasy, and it keeps blending those two back together and you're not really sure what's reality and what's reality and what's not. Yeah. 

Adam: And the color of those shoes in that sequence, they are iridescent.

Adam: It's amazing. 

Charlotte: And her makeup, and Jack Cardiff did the cinematography. And apparently he manipulated the camera speed to make the dancer seem to linger at the top of their jumps. 

Adam: Oh, that's cool. 

Charlotte: And it's nominated for a lot of Oscars, and it won a couple, yeah. 

Adam: American in Paris. Won six Academy Awards. Won Best Picture, bragger. Best Writing. Best Cinematography Color. Best Art direction. Best costume design.

Adam: Best music. What'd you just 

Charlotte: Look up the technical film that won the best awards and pick that one. 

Adam: Nope, I did not. But weirdly, Vincent Minnelli did not win. Best Director for that.

Charlotte: Hey, you know what I have to say about people not winning Oscars that should have won Oscars . 

Adam: This was a fun trip down the history of Technol. . So part two, next week, what are we gonna focus 

Charlotte: on?

Charlotte: Next week, we are gonna talk about the people behind Technol, and it's sort of a technol love story, if you will, because we're gonna focus on Herbert Kalma and his wife, Natalie Kalma, who has over 300 credits to her name as the color advisor on so many films. 

Adam: Oh, we're gonna talk about what an interesting character she was and the mad drama that went behind the scenes So yeah, we're gonna dive into that deep drama ghost.

Adam: there's so much drama there. There's drama on the sets. There's drama behind the scenes. There's so much drama on the sets. There's drama in Herbert's Life. Oh 

Charlotte: man, 

Adam: we got some good juicy tidbits about this one. We do. That's gonna be a fun deep dive. I think 

Charlotte: it is. So if you wanna hear that, come back next week. 

Charlotte: If you wanna talk to us about Technol or your favorite Technol films, you can send us an email. We are perf damage podcast gmail.com. We're also on Twitter at perf Damage, where we post little accoutrements to the episodes. And who knows what we'll post this week.

Charlotte: We'd love to hear from you. We love talking movies and we'd love to know you 

Adam: guys. Yeah. We'd love to know your favorite technical movies.

Charlotte: If you have great ideas that you want us to talk about. 

Adam: Oh, absolutely. Send in your 

Charlotte: ideas. Yeah. Even weird random things. I got some weird random things coming up. The weirder the better. Yeah. I have some user recommended, or let's say user requested topics.

Charlotte: That's true that I'm working on. Anyhow. Hope you will join us for the Mad Drama. That will be the love story of Herbert and Natalie Kalma in 

Adam: technical part two.

Charlotte: Technical part two. Coming soon, guys. 

Adam: All right. Until next week, thanks for joining us here on On Perf Damage. 

Charlotte: The studios still weren't interested. 

Adam: And there was also another thing right on the horizon called World War I that had already 

Charlotte: passed, sir.

Adam: Oh, sorry. World War ii . No, that's not yet. 

Charlotte: That's either not for another decade 

Adam: or so. It's called the Depression. There you go, . Yes. It's called the Depression