PICTURES IN NATURAL COLORS
WITH other improvements have come the admirable pictures in natural colors, all mechanically produced. For some time we have had hand-colored films, but these have required extraordinary patience on the part of the colorist, who had to treat each of the sixteen thousand pictures one at a time. Excessive care was also necessary as an overlap of a thirty-second part of an inch would show the color many inches out of place when the picture was shown enlarged on the screen. The work is so tedious that the capacity of the colorist is said to be limited to about thirty-five feet of film per day; the cost is thus made excessive. And the market needs, which frequently require two hundred reproductions of a reel, render the hand-colored film commercially impracticable.
The machine which now produces beautiful color pictures is known as the “kinemacolor.” It is the joint work of Mr. Charles Urban, an American who went to London a few years ago as a representative of manufacturers of an American motion-picture machine, and a London photographer. The machine differs from the ordinary cinematograph in several important particulars. The most noticeable difference is a rapidly driven, revolving skeleton frame known as a color-filter, which is located between the lens and the shutter. This color-filter is made up of different sections of specially prepared gelatin, two sections of which are colored, one red and the other green. The filter-screen is revolved while the pictures are taken, as well as when they are reproduced, being so geared that the red section of the filter appears in line with the lens for one photograph, and the green section for the next.
The photographs are all in pairs, and twice the number of pictures are taken and reproduced as in the ordinary machine, and the speed is also twice as great, the kinemacolor taking and reproducing thirty-two—and sometimes as many as fifty-five—per second, and the ordinary machine sixteen. Incidentally, to care for the greater speed the kinemacolor machine is also driven by a motor instead of by the ordinary hand-crank.
When a negative is produced through the red screen, red light is chiefly transmitted, and red-colored objects in the original will appear transparent on the copy produced from the negative. Where the next section of negative has moved into place the green section of the filter has come into position, and the red-colored objects on this part of the negative will appear dark. This can be noticed in the illustrations, where such objects as the red coats of the horsemen and the red of the flowers, as shown in the enlarged pictures, in the small pictures appear light in every second view, and dark in each succeeding one. When the pictures are thrown on a screen, the transparent parts allow the colors of the filter to pass through, and the revolutions of the filter are arranged for showing the appropriate color for every picture. This will cause confusion, if, in repairing a broken kinemacolor film, an uneven number of pictures are cut out and the “pairs” thus interfered with.
The successful reproducing of these wonderful colors is largely due to what we know as “persistence of vision” (the same principle on which the kinetoscope is based), and is easily recognized when we remember that the lighted point of a stick appears to our vision as a ring of fire when the stick is rapidly revolved. Just so with these pictures: they are produced so rapidly that the red of one lingers on the retina of the eye until the green appears, and the red of the first picture melts into the green of the next, which does not appear, however, until the red one has passed away. The green selected for the filter has in it a certain amount of blue, and the red a certain amount of orange, and in the fusion of the colors may be seen pleasing combinations of greenish-yellow, orange, grays, blues, and even rich indigos.
The early products of this kinemacolor process were the pictures of the George V “Coronation” and the “Durbar.” The coronation pictures are noteworthy for the brilliancy of the scenes, showing in action thousands of horses, some bay, some chestnut, while others are pure white, black, or of a peculiar cream color, all of them carrying gay horsemen, with bright red coats, before a sea of color shown in the gorgeous hats and exquisite gowns of the spectators and court attendants. The durbar pictures, of course, are more recent. They consist of 64,000 feet of pictures taken in Bombay, Calcutta, and Delhi, where the actual durbar ceremonial of coronation was held. The pictures at Calcutta, showing the royal elephants, are probably those which will most impress Americans, particularly those showing the superb control displayed when, at the mahout’s bidding, the elephants go into and under the water, head and all, and leave the mahout on his back apparently standing on the water’s surface. One set of pictures shows the elephants in the pageant, and illustrates the wonderful color capabilities of the process by distinctly reproducing on the enormous cloth of gold covering the elephants the sheen as its folds move with the elephants’ steps.
In another part of these durbar pictures is shown a sea of color where fifty thousand troops pass in review before the eyes of the spectator in ten minutes. Two sets of the pictures show how quick is the action of this particular process. These are the polo tournament at Delhi and the cavalry charge, the action in which was so rapid as to require the machine to take fifty-five pictures a second, in order to show faithfully all of the movement.
After witnessing pictures so full of interest and so wonderful in color effect and action, one accustomed to democratic ideas could but wonder to see moving upon the screen, on a mechanically revolved table, so inanimate an object as a crown of jewels. Interest, however, was aroused when it was learned that the appearance of this picture was due to the fact that, as a mark of high appreciation of the coronation and durbar pictures, the king broke many precedents and permitted his crown to be taken for photographing to the private studio of Mr. Urban, the inventor of the process. Incidentally, too, the crown was more wonderful than its appearance at a distance indicated; for the company informed the writer that it is made up of 6170 diamonds, 24 rubies, and 25 emeralds, the largest of which weighs thirty-four carats.
Another mark of the king’s appreciation was his storing away in the “Jewel Office” of the Tower of London, in hermetically sealed vessels, a complete set of the pictures, to show posterity at successive coronations the exact manner in which George V became King of England and Emperor of India.