Shooting In Color Caused Some Problems Behind The Scenes Of Singin’ In The Rain

If you, pricey reader, ever see a repertory screening promoting an I.B. Tech print — brief for imbibition Technicolor — you may see that the colour is as dazzling now because it was 65 years in the past. Acetate shade inventory tended to degrade and fade sooner, leaving older Kodak-developed prints wanting purple and washed out. Prints made in Fujicolor laboratories tended to fade to a delicate blue. When acetate begins to interrupt down, it provides off a robust chemical odor harking back to vinegar, a dire degradation that many projectionists imagine can unfold from print to print. This is what the insider movie time period “vinegar syndrome” refers to.

The three-strip Technicolor course of was not new in 1952. Indeed, it was just a few years from being retired altogether. The first three-strip Technicolor characteristic movie was Rouben Mamoulian‘s “Becky Sharp” from 1935, photographed by Ray Rennahan of “Gone with the Wind” fame. The first brief three-strip brief movie was the Disney animated brief “Flowers and Trees,” additionally photographed by Rennahan. Disney was an early adopter of the method. 

Stanley Donen, in a 2009 interview with DGA Quarterly, remembers what it was prefer to movie with three-strip cameras. Because there was actually triple the movie inventory in every digicam, the machines have been heavy and large, requiring enlarged lenses and monstrous movie canisters. Donen additionally remembers that three-strip Technicolor required extra gentle than any earlier cameras. There was no method to make something look “pure” within the three-strip course of.