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La vie et la passion de Jésus Christ (FRA 1907, Lucien Nonguet and Ferdinand Zecca). Credit: EYE Film Museum. Photographs of the stencil colored nitrate print by Olivia Kristina Stutz, ERC Advanced Grant FilmColors. Edge mark: Pathé (1911 onward), thin italic letters, on one edge, PATHE FRERES 14 RUE FAVART PARIS and on the other, EXHIBITION INTERDITE EN FRANCE EN SUISSE EN BELGIQUE ET EN ITALIE (partially visible). Cf.: Ill.PM.6: Brown, Harold (1990): Physical Characteristics of Early Films as Aids to Identification. Brussels: FIAF, on p. 9. View Quote on Page: Edge Codes and Identification Trade mark in scene: Pathé cockerel (until 1909). Cf.: Ill.TM.5: Brown 1990: on p. 30. View Quote on Page: Edge Codes and Identification
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Image

La vie et la passion de Jésus Christ (1907)

Color systemEdge Codes and Identification

GalleryTrade marks in scene

Hongarije (FRA 1926, Anonymous). Credit: EYE Film Museum. Photographs of the tinted, toned and stencil colored nitrate print by Olivia Kristina Stutz, ERC Advanced Grant FilmColors.
Tags
- decay

Image

Hongarije (1926)

Color systemPathécolor / Pathéchrome / stencil coloring

GalleryHongarije (1926)

Credit: Courtesy of BFI National Archive. Photograph by Barbara Flueckiger. Film: Kino the Girl of Colour (GB 1920, William Friese-Greene, Claude Friese-Greene).
Tags
- decay

Image

Kino the Girl of Colour (1920)

Color systemFriese-Greene

GalleryKino the Girl of Colour (1920)

Quote

Watkins, Liz (2013): Herbert G. Ponting’s Materials and Texts. In: Simon Brown, Sarah Street and Liz Watkins (eds.): Color and the Moving Image. History, Theory, Aesthetics, Archive. New York, London: Routledge, pp. 230–242, on pp. 230–240.

Toning / metallic toning (French: virage, German: Tonung)

“herbert g. ponting’s materials and texts

liz watkins

For as long as celluloid can last, the filmed record of Captain Scott’s last tragic journey to the Pole is at last completed. It has taken years of work, and now posterity can look on it, just as we do, for as long a time as discovered science can ensure (Ponting, 11 August 1924: 8)

The 2010 digital restoration of The Great White Silence (Ponting, 1924) commemorates the centenary of the departure of the British Antarctic Expedition (1910-13). Herbert G. Ponting’s photographic record of the expedition has been integral to the narratives that have emerged around the loss of the polar party. The stills and cine-photography formed a strand of the expedition’s scientific research by offering a visual record of the region. A study of the provenance of the 2010 restoration discerns a supplementary layer of information (residual marks of production and decay) beneath the fascia of image and narrative. The interpretation of instructions that are scratched into the film and attributed to Ponting have informed the “return” of color in the 2010 release of Silence. The restoration refers to and incorporates sections of film from diverse archives and pasts elaborating a historiographic process that embeds ideas of authorship and authenticity in a narrative of irresoluble loss.

Herbert G. Ponting, camera artist to Captain R. F. Scott’s fated polar expedition (1910-1913), re-edited his film footage across an initial twenty-year period in response to the technological and cultural contexts of each release. The material and textual alterations that can be tracked across the different versions reveal a tension between the film as scientific document, historical record and the continuing development of a narrative that underlies its remobilisation as a commercial enterprise in the film market. […]

This discourse, of authenticity and authorship, in which the return of color is keyed to Ponting’s instructions scratched into sections of leader, is invoked in the digital simulation of tinting and toning as applied color processes. These technical alterations open a space in which to address the impact of the digital on the film object and text. It is in this sense that the reconstruction (Busche 2006: 3) of the color scheme operates as a facet of historiography, imagination and memory.

The camera negatives were initially processed by Ponting in the Antarctic and returned to the UK in two consignments to be screened in two parts under the title With Captain Scott R.N., to the South Pole (1911 and 1912). Ponting, who held the rights to the expedition stills photography, subsequently purchased those for the cinematograph films from the Gaumont Company in 1914 for £5,100. […] Work on editing Silence began after the 1921 publication of his written account of the expedition, The Great White South.

[…] During this period Ponting’s correspondence with Frank Debenham who, with his assistant Miss Winifred M. Drake, advised on the accuracy of the film’s illustrations, indicates the difficulties of revitalising the film in keeping with the full breadth of technological developments that would position his “ancient results equal to modern panchromatic photography” (Ponting, 22 October 1932; 15 August 1933).¹ Adaptations to the technique required to produce 90° South included the transfer of material to film stock with different perforations and the alteration from the speed of filming at 16 fps to that of the 24 fps of synchronised sound projection. The residual effects of these technical manipulations are visualised in the instabilities of the image in relation to the frame (Ponting, 12 January 1933). Ponting’s revision incorporates additional material including the commissioning of new maps, a 25-foot painting of the landscape, a diorama and an amended animated line and map sequence, each of which was filmed and inter-cut with still photographs to further illustrate the journey of Scott, Wilson, Oates, Bowers and Evans to the South Pole (Ponting, 15 August 1933). […]

In reformulating the film footage to the shifting interests of its anticipated reception the visual appeal of the image and the drama of the story are emphasised. The tension between the film as commodity and expedition record lies in the accumulation of information and its erasure and of the materials and detritus that invoke a direct relationship between the photographic imprint and the cinematic illusion projected of light. While the re-editing of the film footage is responsive to different innovations, indicating its potential to be deciphered as a tract of film history, such alterations in technique also affect the film as a text.

[…]

Ponting’s references to the use of color for his still photography primarily concern the selection of hues that enhance the subject: “Ice Blink” is printed “in the green [carbon] tissue” and another “in a very fine blue tissue, which seems to suit the subject exactly” (Ponting, 15 June 1926). In Silence, however, the fourteen different combinations of tinting, toning and hand coloring that are detailed by instructions scratched into sections of film indicate a color design that is also significant to its themes and narrative.

Cherchi Usai tracks the significance of certain colors in the silent period to suggest thematic associations, such as a shift to amber which could signal “when a table lamp was turned on in a room” (1991: 29–38). In Silence the thematic use of color, perhaps unintentionally, maps territory, both by delineating between areas associated with the ship and those inhabited by the Antarctic wildlife. In this context a shift from amber in the record of the expedition member’s daily work to the sepia tone and green tint of zoological studies indicates that of a different realm, whilst combinations of a blue tone and pink tint are associated with the effects of light refracted by the ice. Ponting’s use of color contributes to narrative progression through a historiography practice of editing and commissioning new material.

The initially black-and-white film footage and selected photographs of the Terra Nova seen through an ice cave can be linked to his written account of the expedition, which is particularly attentive to color:

During this first and subsequent visits, I found the coloring of the grotto changed with the position of the sun; thus sometimes green would predominate, then blue, and then again it was a delicate lilac. (Ponting [1921] 2000: 68)

[…] Such descriptions suggest what was not immediately recorded by the cinematography. The movement of the ice floe is evoked in Silence through inter-cut still and moving images of the grotto taken a year apart, each shot colored in jewel-like tones to be found in tinting and toning catalogues. The addition of color to these images offers the cinematographer’s perspective as a layer of interpretation over the “subtle shadows of the snow and […] wonderful transparent texture” that Scott notes of his black-and-white photography (Scott [1921] 2000: xv).

The significance of color to the narrative is established in the opening section of the film. The initial black-and-white images of Captain Scott and Ponting position them as auteurs of both the expedition and the diegesis before the color scheme is instigated as the Terra Nova sets sail. The changes in color that are contiguous with those of the film’s themes are reduced in the section detailing the final journey to the Pole. This also gives an inflection of coherence across a section that is assembled from a significant number of technical revisions including animation, still-photographs and drawings, to avoid distraction from the tale. A shift in color to a blue tint denotes their imminent demise in the “fateful tent” which persists across the memorial portrait photographs of the five men. The still images screened are the work of duplication across a strip of 35 mm film. This contrasts with the transcendent blue tone and amber tint that transfigures the remaining images: drawings of an angel reaching down to Captain Scott and a cairn of rocks surmounted by a cross that marks the graves of the expedition members. Notably the remaining inter-titles of Silence are dominated by a quote from Scott’s diary and marked by the imaged authorisation of his handwritten signature which forecloses the film.

The 2010 restoration of Silence, which sees the return of the chromatic schema, is drawn into a discourse of authenticity and authorship through reference to the color instructions scratched into sections of leader that accompany the film negatives. For Silence, as with many examples from the 1920s, the instructions do not consistently distinguish between tinting, toning and hand painting as possible methods of coloring the film. Luciano Berriatúa notes “the variety of these tints and their intensity from year to year. And also from laboratory to laboratory”, indicating potential points of divergence from the color instructions (Berriatúa 1998: 135–139).³ Both Paul Read and Nicola Mazzanti indicate material inconsistencies that occur between prints of what is ostensibly the same film due to differences in the concentration of dye solution and the duration of the submergence of each strip of film (Mazzanti 2009: 67–93; Read 2009: 9–46; BJP 1924: 611–614). For example, the recurrence of a color instruction could incur a variation in color intensity. It is in this sense that the salience of color in the study of Silence encounters numerous factors affecting the variations in hue, transparency and intensity that result from different dyes and processing methods.

[…] In the 1990s Angelo Lucatello’s comparative work, which contributed to the later digital restoration, identified several differences between the 1923 nitrate soft print of Silence and the EYE Film Institute’s holdings which include additional material such as a still-photograph of Dr Atkinson’s frost bitten hand. Such combinations of elements also extend to the duplication of fragments of leader and instructions in the fine grain contact print assembled in the 1990s by the NFTVA. The diversity of materials that informed the reconstruction (see workflow chart in Figure 21.3 […]) indicates the potential for the film image and text to alter.

[…] For Mazzanti the collation of different versions and generations of prints toward what Busche calls a reconstruction (2006: 3) can elicit shifts in the film text by decomposition or design to constitute a “variant” rather than new “version” of a film (Mazzanti 2009: 76–77). While Ponting’s re-editing constructs new versions, the trajectory of the digital reconstruction forms a variant within the cultural context of its production. The “return of color” through digital grading encounters inconsistencies in the filmic elements sourced. The inflection of color across the configuration of assembled materials (see the workflow chart) noted in the exhibition of the 2010 print contributes to the discourse of authorship and authenticity. […]

In evaluating the concepts of “authorship” and “variants”, Ponting’s correspondence with Debenham is significant in its recognition of the involvement of four assistants. The assistants include Mr Gent, who had been the Gaumont Company’s representative in Australasia and acted as their signatory on the agreement with the expedition. Gent was in Ponting’s employment from 1918 until at least 1930 on a wage of £400 per annum. Ponting states that in addition to his work on the cinematographic films Gent was responsible for the care “of the negatives and everything appertaining to them” (Ponting, 29 July 1929; 8 January 1930). […]

In a sense, the process of reconstruction resonates with Ponting’s own practice. The assembled materials therefore map the path of the digital reconstruction to formulate an image of the film elements and a digital simulation of the applied color processes of tinting and toning. Each transfer to a new medium signals a shift in the image and text. The assembled “film” accumulates the characteristics of each medium and process; alterations remain visible through the details that they add or erode from the image. […]

The subsequent image sustains a trace of previous generations of film material. The residual imprints of processing and the simulacra of marks specific to other film elements reveal fragments and images drawn from diverse pasts into a new narrative form. […]

Although an assumption of objectivity underlies the subjective selections made, there are layers of interpretation from Ponting and his assistants, through to those of the reconstruction. The NFTVA’s work documents a trajectory through previous generations of materials now detailed and in storage. A study of the restoration trajectory tracks alterations in design and the contingent marks that register the susceptibility of celluloid and photosensitive emulsion to the impact of the environment during filming and storage. Traces of the technologies of production and decay constitute data which can be read as a supplementary record of the expedition and form a strand of the historiography of its materials and texts. Ponting’s photographic work is integral to the narratives that have emerged around the expedition. The restoration underscores and distances photography and detail as paradigmatic of authenticity. It also offers a new point of access to Silence as film text and to a narrative that plays on imagination, memory and the historicity of the subject. For its historical, narrative and pictorial significance the chromatic scale of the film, like the deictic salience of marks and scratches, offers the illusion of the past in the present that allows the spectator to invest in the digitally colored image as an image of authenticity.

notes

1. Debenham was a geographer on the British Antarctic Expedition (1910-13). He was later Director of the Scott Polar Research Institute.

3. The NFTVA consulted a Pathé catalogue of tints and tones and additional individual frames that form part of the Kodak collection at the National Media Museum Bradford. These sources were used as a point of reference for the 2009-2010 restoration of Silence. Additional reference material included prints of Silence from the EYE Film Institute and La Cinémathèque de Toulouse, and a research screening of tinted and toned prints of The Lodger (Hitchcock, 1926) and South (Frank Hurley, 1919) for NFTVA restoration project members and technicians from Deluxe Digital, London.

references

Berriatúa, L. (1998) “Regarding a Catalogue of the Tints Used on the Silent Screen”, All the Colors of the World: Colors in Early Mass Media 1900-1930, Reggio Emilia: Edizioni Diabasis: 135–139.

British Journal of Photography [BJP] (1924) “A Review of Dye Toning Processes”, British Journal of Photography [BJP], 71, 3360: 611–614.

Busche, A. (2006) “Just Another Ideology? Ethical and Methodological Principles in Film Restoration”, The Moving Image, 1: 1–28.

Cherchi Usai, P. (1991) “The Color of Nitrate”, Image, 34, 1-2: 29–38.

Lucatello, A. (2010) “How Do They Do It? The Great White Silence“, The Discovery Channel, 27 October. Online. Available at http//ww.yourdiscovery.com/ video/how-they-do-it-how-they-do-it-the-great-white-silence/

Mazzanti, N. (2009) “Colors, Audiences and (Dis)continuity in the ‘Cinema of the Second Period'”, Film History, 21: 67–93.

Ponting, H. G. ([1921] 2000) The Great White South, New York: Cooper Square.

Ponting, H. G. (17 December 1913) Letter to Apsley Cherry Garrard, British Antarctic Expedition 1910-1913, MS559/102/2, Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge.

– (11 August 1924) “The Great White Silence Programme Notes”, D. 1500/1/1, Bournemouth Electric Theatre, Dorset History Centre: 3–10.

– (22 October 1932) Letter to Padre Hayes, MS964/7/22, Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge.

Ponting, H. G. British Antarctic Expedition 1910-1913, Volume 7, MS280/28/7, Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge.

– (15 June 1926) Letter to Frank Debenham.

– (29 July 1929) Letter to Frank Debenham.

– (8 January 1930) Letter to Frank Debenham.

– (12 January 1933) Letter to Frank Debenham.

– (15 August 1933) Letter to Frank Debenham.

Read, P. (2009) “‘Unnatural Colors’: An Introduction to Coloring Techniques in Silent Era Movies”, Film History, 21, 1: 9–46.

Scott, R. F. ([1921] 2000) “Kathleen Scott’s Foreword”, in H. G. Ponting, The Great White South, New York: Cooper Square: xv.”

(Watkins, Liz (2013): Herbert G. Ponting’s Materials and Texts. In: Simon Brown, Sarah Street and Liz Watkins (eds.): Color and the Moving Image. History, Theory, Aesthetics, Archive. New York, London: Routledge, pp. 230–242, on pp. 230–240.)

Salomé (1922)

Color systemHandschiegl / DeMille-Wyckoff / Wyckoff Process

GallerySalomé (1922)

The Affairs of Anatol (USA 1921, Cecil B. DeMille). Credit: Library of Congress. Photographs of the tinted and toned nitrate print with Handschiegl intertitles by Barbara Flueckiger.
Tags
- decay

Image

The Affairs of Anatol (1921)

Color systemTinting

GalleryThe Affairs of Anatol (1921)

Technicolor Collection, frame no. 14. Credit: George Eastman House Moving Image Collection. Photograph by Barbara Flueckiger.
Tags
- decay

Image

Technicolor Collection

Color systemTechnicolor No. II

GalleryTechnicolor Collection

Gallery | (8 images)

Massafra (1911)

Color systemToning / metallic toning (French: virage, German: Tonung)

Salomé (USA 1922, Charles Bryant). Credit: George Eastman Museum. Photographs of the tinted, toned and Handschiegl nitrate print by Barbara Flueckiger.
Tags

Image

Salomé (1922)

Color systemHandschiegl / DeMille-Wyckoff / Wyckoff Process

GallerySalomé (1922)

Gallery | (17 images)

Technicolor Collection

Color systemTechnicolor No. II

The Affairs of Anatol (USA 1921, Cecil B. DeMille). Credit: Library of Congress. Photographs of the tinted and toned nitrate print with Handschiegl intertitles by Barbara Flueckiger.
Tags
- decay
- butterfly

Image

The Affairs of Anatol (1921)

Color systemHandschiegl / DeMille-Wyckoff / Wyckoff Process

GalleryThe Affairs of Anatol (1921)

The Affairs of Anatol (USA 1921, Cecil B. DeMille). Credit: Library of Congress. Photographs of the tinted and toned nitrate print with Handschiegl intertitles by Barbara Flueckiger.
Tags
- splice
- decay

Image

The Affairs of Anatol (1921)

Color systemTinting

GalleryThe Affairs of Anatol (1921)

Salomé (USA 1922, Charles Bryant), long exposure. Credit: George Eastman Museum. Photographs of the tinted, toned and Handschiegl nitrate print by Barbara Flueckiger.
Tags
- decay

Image

Salomé (1922)

Color systemHandschiegl / DeMille-Wyckoff / Wyckoff Process

GallerySalomé (1922)

Salomé (USA 1922, Charles Bryant). Credit: George Eastman Museum. Photographs of the tinted, toned and Handschiegl nitrate print by Barbara Flueckiger.
Tags
- splice
- decay

Image

Salomé (1922)

Color systemHandschiegl / DeMille-Wyckoff / Wyckoff Process

GallerySalomé (1922)

[Kaleidoscope] by Loyd A. Jones. Credit: George Eastman House Moving Image Collection. Photograph of the nitrate positive by Barbara Flueckiger.
Tags
- decay

Image

[Kaleidoscope]

Color systemKodachrome Two-color 1915, after 1930 renamed Fox Nature Color

Gallery[Kaleidoscope]

Credit: Courtesy of BFI National Archive. Photograph by Barbara Flueckiger. Film: Kino the Girl of Colour (GB 1920, William Friese-Greene, Claude Friese-Greene).
Tags
- decay

Image

Kino the Girl of Colour (1920)

Color systemFriese-Greene

GalleryKino the Girl of Colour (1920)

De Mode der taschjes te Parijs (FRA 1924, Anonymous). Credit: EYE Film Museum. Photographs of the stencil colored nitrate print by Olivia Kristina Stutz, ERC Advanced Grant FilmColors.
Tags
- decay

Image

De Mode der taschjes te Parijs (1924)

Color systemPathécolor / Pathéchrome / stencil coloring

GalleryDe Mode der taschjes te Parijs (1924)

[Kaleidoscope] by Loyd A. Jones. Credit: George Eastman House Moving Image Collection. Photograph of the nitrate positive by Barbara Flueckiger.
Tags
- decay

Image

[Kaleidoscope]

Color systemKodachrome Two-color 1915, after 1930 renamed Fox Nature Color

Gallery[Kaleidoscope]

Quote

Watkins, Liz (2013): Interview. Ulrich Rüdel and Daniela Currò. In: Simon Brown, Sarah Street and Liz Watkins (eds.): British Colour Cinema. Practices and Theories. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 219–227, on pp. 221–226.

Toning / metallic toning (French: virage, German: Tonung)

“Daniela Currò is preservation officer in the Motion Picture Department at George Eastman House in Rochester, NY. Previously, she was project manager at the Haghefilm Foundation and film preservation specialist and colour grader at Haghefilm Conservation B.V. in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. She has also collaborated in research and restoration projects with Italian film archives such as Museo Nazionale del Cinema in Turin. Ulrich Rüdel holds a doctorate in Analytical Chemistry from the University of Münster and worked on biosensors and intellectual property rights before turning to film preservation. He is conservation technology manager at the British Film Institute, and was formerly R&D manager at Cineco/Haghefilm Conservation B.V. and project manager for the Haghefilm Foundation. Both Currò and Rüdel worked at Cineco/Haghefilm Conservation BV at the time of the interview.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Currò, Daniela, Claudy Op den Kamp and Ulrich Rüdel, ‘Towards a More Accurate Preservation of Color: Heritage, Research and the Film Restoration Laboratory’, in Simon Brown, Sarah Street, Liz Watkins (eds). Color and the Moving Image (London and New York: Routledge, 2012), pp. 307–19.

Rüdel, Ulrich, ‘The Technicolor Notebooks at the George Eastman House’, Film History vol. 21 no. c1, 2009, pp. 47–60.

Cherchi Usai, Paolo, Daniela Currò and Ulrich Rüdel, ‘The Haghefilm Foundation, Amsterdam: A Learning Laboratory’, Journal of Film Preservation vol. 82, 2010, pp. 87–93.

Paletz, Gabriel M., ‘The Finesse of the Film Lab: A Report from a Week at Haghefilm’, The Moving Image vol. 6 no. 1, 2006, pp. 1–32.

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT [EXTRACT]

DATE OF INTERVIEW: 14 SEPTEMBER 2010

INTERVIEWER: LIZ WATKINS

[…]

LIZ WATKINS: So how do you gauge the colour for a restoration?

ULRICH RÜDEL: Well, for instance, I promised to show you this copy of this Agfacolor tint-and-tone manual because at first for me, it was like a little culture shock. I’m still not 100 per cent sure from when it actually dates, but there’s an article that refers to a toning recipe in here that seems to exactly fit a toning recipe that was published elsewhere in 1921 or 1922 which would date it around that time.¹⁰ The copy I have here I think came with a letter from the late 1920s or even 1930, but when we first saw it we were absolutely stunned by how intense these colours were.

LW: It has actual frames of coloured film in it?

UR: Yes and this is also very interesting when we talk about whether or not the so-called ‘nitrate effect’ exists, because here you see indeed that the film base is as clear as glass. This is something you only see with nitrate, but whether that shows up on screen or not or substantially translates into something on the screen, well that I’m not quite sure about.

LW: They’re almost jewel-like colours, aren’t they? They are incredibly intense.

DANIELA CURRÒ: They are, yes, but then what we also have to consider is that this is a sample book from Agfa. What about the tints from other companies? Could they have had a different look?

UR: I’m not so sure about that. I don’t know what orange they have, for instance, but in other cases I think they might have arrived often at similar dyes, in different places, different geographical locations.

DC: What I mean is that looking at nitrates, I can see patterns coming from a given production company, which usually employed the same colours.

UR: But maybe it’s different choices made using the same palette of dyes?

DC: Of course, but how many dyes are there? Were these the only dyes available? And which were the concentrations and mixes used?

UR: Well I guess there are quite a few even just in this book if they have twelve recipes. I mean, this was the conclusion: there’s so much we don’t know. If you look at the prints, they’re usually in a much worse condition. So we can only make observations, but we don’t actually know. Maybe the other ones were once as vibrant and have decomposed. Are we looking at a deliberate difference in colours here, between Agfa and Kodak, or Europe and the US, or from 1910–20 or into the 1920s? Or does Agfa just happen to have used better paper to mount these frames, so that they survive better than the Kodak tint-and-tone manuals or say, are the storage conditions in Europe on average better (e.g. cooler) than those on the US West Coast?

DC: So what you normally do you’re when looking for a reference point when you get a reel of tinted nitrate on your table, is that you use the colour on the perforation area because you assume it is not as faded as the centre of the frame. Fading in fact could have occurred as a consequence of the heat of the projector’s lamp, but sometimes even in a brand new film that has just been tinted, the edges are a little darker than at the centre, regardless of whether the film has ever been projected. So this assumption is not always correct.

UR: Indeed, we confirmed that, on occasion, and it’s not really surprising because you know you have to shake your tinting solutions or agitate it at least once in a while to make sure to always get fresh solution to the film. The perforations would create some extra stirring, some agitation which would help the colouring process. So that might be an explanation for that, but it’s a subtle difference. Sometimes in films we’ll see the effects; we see the films with different colours but without drawing any definite conclusion. For instance, in one project we were looking at the homogeneity of the colour but in some cases we saw variation depending on how we did it. These slight differences in colour intensity perhaps would be not very noticeable with very dark colours. I think we would probably see that well in a colour that is lighter, so that’s tricky because you have the combination of chemistry and photography, but also vision and psychology.

DC: Often it is experience that helps you understand what the colour that you see was supposed to be like, because sometimes you are lucky enough to find the same decomposition pattern as you’ve seen on a film that you’ve inspected previously. That’s why I keep my camera nearby and I always take pictures. For example, in a film I worked on recently, the first shot looked almost to be green-toned and then the shots after it were blue-toned. So then the choice was whether I should select green toning or whether the fact that all the rest of the film is blue-toned should make me think about something else? There was another film that I had inspected previously that had exactly the same kind of green toning, but occurring only in the middle of a shot that apart from this decayed area was toned blue; that particular shot had decomposed further. That made me think that the first shot in the roll I was inspecting had actually for some strange reason a higher level of decomposition. So, it should have been blue-toned like the rest of the film. The subject of the film was a trip to Niagara Falls too, so it made sense that the tone of the film was blue since all the shots were set in a water environment. There are many considerations to take into account. That’s why you document the choices you make and keep the originals. Somebody else could judge the same phenomenon differently.

UR: This brings up another issue that might be a bit of a concern, that regardless of which route by which you choose to reproduce a tint and tone, I would say that the standard and usually the preferred one is the Desmet process. You could question how well it preserves colour, because what you’re recording are the timing values made in a particular lab, at a particular time, for a particular film stock, and to match the light source of a modern projector.¹¹ The properties of a segment of film are certainly not comprehensively documented by timing values. You can’t predict it very well because every component has a little influence on the actual colour rendition. So it might already be arguable how faithful at all the image is a match to the original experience, and how good a colour preservation for posterity is achieved by using this method. I mean, if you need new prints twenty years from now, you will have to struggle yet again with similar issues to re-recreate the Desmetcolor from two decades before.

NOTES

¹⁰ Elfriede Ledig and Gerhard Ullmann, ‘Rot wie Feuer, Leidenschaft, Genie und Wahnsinn. Zu einigen Aspekten der Farbe im Stummfilm’, in Elfriede Ledig (ed.), Der Stummfilm: Konstruktion und Rekonstruktion (Munich: Verlegergemeinschaft Schaudig/Bauer/Ledig, 1988), pp. 89–116, 105.

¹¹ Noël Desmet and Paul Read, ‘The Desmetcolor Method for Restoring Tinted and Toned Films’, in Luciano Berriatua (ed.), All the Colours of the World: Colours in Early Mass Media 1900-1930 (Reggio Emilia: Edizioni Diabasis, 1998), pp. 147–50.”

(Watkins, Liz (2013): Interview. Ulrich Rüdel and Daniela Currò. In: Simon Brown, Sarah Street and Liz Watkins (eds.): British Colour Cinema. Practices and Theories. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 219–227, on pp. 221–226.)

Kino the Girl of Colour (1920)

Color systemFriese-Greene

GalleryKino the Girl of Colour (1920)

Technicolor Collection, frame no. 18. Credit: George Eastman House Moving Image Collection. Photograph by Barbara Flueckiger.
Tags
- faded
- decay

Image

Technicolor Collection

Color systemTechnicolor No. II

GalleryTechnicolor Collection

Gallery | (11 images)

Farbige Fragmente

Color systemToning / metallic toning (French: virage, German: Tonung)

Technicolor Collection, frame no. 15. Credit: George Eastman House Moving Image Collection. Photograph by Barbara Flueckiger.
Tags

Image

Technicolor Collection

Color systemTechnicolor No. II

GalleryTechnicolor Collection

[Kaleidoscope] by Loyd A. Jones. Credit: George Eastman House Moving Image Collection. Photograph of the nitrate positive by Barbara Flueckiger.
Tags
- decay

Image

[Kaleidoscope]

Color systemKodachrome Two-color 1915, after 1930 renamed Fox Nature Color

Gallery[Kaleidoscope]

Gallery | (11 images)

Massafra (1911)

Color systemPathécolor / Pathéchrome / stencil coloring

Technicolor Collection, frame no. 14. Credit: George Eastman House Moving Image Collection. Photograph by Barbara Flueckiger.
Tags

Image

Technicolor Collection

Color systemTechnicolor No. II

GalleryTechnicolor Collection

The Virgin Queen (USA 1928, Roy William Neill). Credit: George Eastman Museum. Photographs of the Technicolor No. III dye-transfer nitrate print by Olivia Kristina Stutz, ERC Advanced Grant FilmColors.
Tags
- decay

Image

The Virgin Queen (1928)

Color systemTechnicolor No. III

GalleryThe Virgin Queen (1928)

Credit: Lichtspiel / Kinemathek Bern. Film: Dagli Appennini alle Ande (ITA 1916, Umberto Paradisi). Photograph by Barbara Flueckiger.
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Image

Dagli Appenini alle Ande (1916)

Color systemTinting

Gallery | (18 images)

Magie Fantastique (1907)

Color systemPathécolor / Pathéchrome / stencil coloring

Whoopee! (USA 1930, Thornton Freeland; Busby Berkeley (Choreography)). Credit: George Eastman Musem. Photographs of the Technicolor No. III dye-tranfer nitrate print by Barbara Flueckiger.
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Whoopee! (1930)

Color systemTechnicolor No. III

GalleryWhoopee! (1930)

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