Tunes of Glory?

**auld argonian** · 13th July 10, 03:10 PM

The film's color issue may be more complex than you think.

True Technicolor was filmed in a huge camera that ran three strips of film in synch to make color separations from which one print (essentially a dye transfer type print) was made. It was amazing and expensive so when true color reversal stock came along, a lot of the release prints were made by printing the final technicolor filmstock to color reversal stock. For those of you who might be familliar with early color photography, think of the Technicolor stock as Kodachrome and the color reversal as Ektachrome.

Anybody with old family slides made on the early Ektachrome can see that, even with good storage, those early dyes were less than stable and some color shift has occurred. Most home scanners have a software feature that can "restore" the color by making an educated guess about what they originally looked like. The transfers from film to videotape that we have seen on TV were most likely transfers from a second or third generation color reversal print made from the Technicolor original...thus, some shifting of color no matter how good the playback equipment is.

To make it even more involved, Technicolor had to come up with some single strip processes to respond to competition from Kodak so the whole thing got all garbled up in the late 1950's through the early 1960's...Tunes was made in 1960 and by then "Color by Technicolor" could have meant any one of four different processes, each with varying degrees of archival quality. As film ages, the dyes fade and color shift...the only totally foolproof way to maintain perfect color is a set of black and white separation negatives stored in total darkness in a freezer...and do you think that Hollywood cared that much about future generations that they would go to that kind of expense?

This is why these "Criterion Edition" DVD's and their like are worth the extra coupla' pence that they charge for them...they go back to the original negatives and do a good print. Several good documentaries in the "extra features" sections of some DVD's where they show just how the crew restores the visuals to original quality.

It's pretty obvious to me that the tartan is the Brown Scott but I can see the shift in the color quality of the film might cause confusion.

Best

AA

**creagdhubh** · 13th July 10, 05:50 PM

Wow, thanks for the information mate.

**Nick the DSM** · 13th July 10, 07:41 PM

Originally Posted by BoldHighlander

Reminds me of how in recent years the trend in Hollywood WWII inspired stories is to make the colours more drab, for a more gritty, period look (Saving Private Ryan & Band of Brothers are two examples that spring to mind).

They actually stretched panty hose fabric over the lense to give it an older feel as well.