1922 Kodachrome Test

[Uranium City]

This is simply beautiful:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_RTnd3Smy8

Sort of like motion portraits, I suppose. It might be Kodacolor and not true Kodachrome as indicated, but it's gorgeous and fascinating nevertheless.

 

[Buddy Greenfield]

I love the 1st 1:49, it’s like seeing ghosts or into a dream or something, very cool find.
Any info on camera or gauge or frame rate or anything?

-Thanks-

 

[Zensteve]

Chicks were hot even back in the '20s!

That was almost eerie, tbh. Looking so fresh and young - and knowing they are almost certainly dead when first seen.

Amazing clip.

 

[Adeimantus]

I love the 1st 1:49, it’s like seeing ghosts or into a dream or something, very cool find.
Any info on camera or gauge or frame rate or anything?

-Thanks-

No idea on the camera. As for the frame rate, the Kodak site says:

"the flicker that you will see is a result of two different things. First, early cameras were hand cranked, or hand wound, to feed the film through. This could result in slight variations in speed. Second, there could be uneven densities in the film itself because of its age. These two physical characteristics combine to produce the "flicker" that you see."

Further on, they discuss in more detail:



"In these newly preserved tests, made in 1922 at the Paragon Studios in Fort Lee, New Jersey, actress Mae Murray appears almost translucent, her flesh a pale white that is reminiscent of perfectly sculpted marble, enhanced with touches of color to her lips, eyes, and hair. She is joined by actress Hope Hampton modeling costumes from The Light in the Dark (1922), which contained the first commercial use of Two-Color Kodachrome in a feature film. Ziegfeld Follies actress Mary Eaton and an unidentified woman and child also appear.

George Eastman House is the repository for many of the early tests made by the Eastman Kodak Company of their various motion picture film stocks and color processes. The Two-Color Kodachrome Process was an attempt to bring natural lifelike colors to the screen through the photochemical method in a subtractive color system. First tests on the Two-Color Kodachrome Process were begun in late 1914. Shot with a dual-lens camera, the process recorded filtered images on black/white negative stock, then made black/white separation positives. The final prints were actually produced by bleaching and tanning a double-coated duplicate negative (made from the positive separations), then dyeing the emulsion green/blue on one side and red on the other. Combined they created a rather ethereal palette of hues."




So, am I correct in assuming this isn't really filming "in color," it's filming in black and white and the color is added, via the process described, after the fact?

-C

 

[Buddy Greenfield]

Sweet info Charles. (Thanks)

The ingenuity of film (cameras, stock, chemical processes) as a whole is astonishing, even almost a 100 years later.


-Thanks-

 

[bird]

That's so pretty it almost looks like a contemporary, fabricated work posing as an antique piece. Thanks for posting!

 

[sonnyboo]

So, am I correct in assuming this isn't really filming "in color," it's filming in black and white and the color is added, via the process described, after the fact?

-C

This is a complicated answer.... Yes and No. The process described, which is taking the Chroma and Gamma on 2 different strips of black and white film, then using the different dyes of blue, green, and red onto the 2 strips BG on 1 and R on the other), then combined into one, is not that far off from how an S-video signal or component cable creates color in video.

The only significant difference with color film today is that they take 1 strip of film and run it through a red chemical, a green one, then a blue one instead of 2 separate ones...

Maybe someone with a little more photochemical experience can state this more succinctly and far more accurate than myself.

 

[knightly]

That's about right SB!

If you map the Green > Blue channel or Blue > Green (Channel Swap in Final Cut), you can emulate this look (although it would be more accurate to combine the blue and green channels into one and push it through as cyan).

The resulting cyan-red 2 color process is essentially the earlier 2 strip technicolor process as well. Set design and costume design was much different as you had to avoid certain colors (YELLOW) which would go pink... eggs look horrible in 2-strip.

Modern color is a single strip with layers of color on the film. Red Green and Blue specifically. Developing them leaves the exposed particles from each layer on the film and washes the un-exposed particles away (negative image)... exposing this to another piece of film produces a "Reversal Image" which is the way we see the world. The layers contain the color, so isn't technically black and white, although they each contain only the values for their respective color, so they can be represented as black and white.