From the early days of cinema, the films we think of as silent and black-and-white were screened not only with live musical accompaniment but also in many cases in color. This was initially accomplished by laboriously hand-tinting individual frames. Later, tinting machines were developed, which involved bathing black-and-white positive film in a dye, producing a single overall color effect for a sequence. As early as 1908 a process called Kinemacolor used green and red filters both in photographing and in projecting black-and-white film to create an effective appearance of natural color.
In the 1920s efforts turned to recording color on the film negative so that filters or special projection equipment would not be needed. The process, known as Technicolor, at first utilized two color negatives that were pasted together in a positive print. Later, a dye transfer system enabled the two negatives to be printed as a single positive film. The first feature-length all-Technicolor film appeared in 1922. Two-color Technicolor remained in use until around 1930, often for special sequences within black-and-white films. During the 1930 Walt Disney first utilized a further improvement, three-color Technicolor, in animated films; Becky Sharp (1935), directed by Rouben Mamoulian of the United States, was the first feature-length film to use this process.
Color was used in only a minority of films until the 1950s, when Hollywood turned more frequently to color in an effort to differentiate movies from the increasingly popular medium of television, then available only in black-and-white. Further simplification and improvements in color technology meant that color movies had become the standard and black-and-white the exception by the 1960s in the United States and shortly thereafter in most other countries.
In the 1920s efforts turned to recording color on the film negative so that filters or special projection equipment would not be needed. The process, known as Technicolor, at first utilized two color negatives that were pasted together in a positive print. Later, a dye transfer system enabled the two negatives to be printed as a single positive film. The first feature-length all-Technicolor film appeared in 1922. Two-color Technicolor remained in use until around 1930, often for special sequences within black-and-white films. During the 1930 Walt Disney first utilized a further improvement, three-color Technicolor, in animated films; Becky Sharp (1935), directed by Rouben Mamoulian of the United States, was the first feature-length film to use this process.
Color was used in only a minority of films until the 1950s, when Hollywood turned more frequently to color in an effort to differentiate movies from the increasingly popular medium of television, then available only in black-and-white. Further simplification and improvements in color technology meant that color movies had become the standard and black-and-white the exception by the 1960s in the United States and shortly thereafter in most other countries.
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