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.