DOUBLE EFFECTS - COMBINATIONS OF TONING AND TINTING.

A combination of toning and tinting was used quite often. Scenes that were already toned were then tinted, or alternatively, by toning a film printed on a coloured base.

The result is an image in which darks and lights are coloured in two different colours.

Perhaps the commonest double effect was probably the Prussian blue [Iron-tone Blue] tone tinted yellow, red or pink. It is by no means certain how all these effect were done and probably there were many recipes that could have produced this effect. The appearance is both unnatural and fascinating - a toned Prussian blue combined with a tint in orange or pink produces a beautiful sunset at sea and yet it was used for many scenes especially, it seemed, to heighten the dramatic effect. In Hitchcock’s “The Lodger” made in 1926, the exterior scenes were toned with Prussian blue and tinted with a yellow to produce an effect similar to that of the old London pea-soup fogs, the “London particular” the scenes were intended to represent. The interiors, largely of lamp lit rooms and theatre dressing rooms at night, were tinted by the yellow alone.