Hand coloured films.

Already in 1896 films were coloured by hand, frame by frame, using a very fine brush, and the technique probably originated from the hand colouring of lantern slides. The results obtained with this technique could be extraordinarily good, for example some of the works by George Melies.

The dyes used were translucent inks, paints or dyes in a water, or sometimes spirit base, and were applied by a brush or stippled on with a stippling brush onto the emulsion side. The gelatine of the emulsion absorbs water-based dyes easily. Opaque dyes were unsuccessful, as they would appear neutral or black on projection. Probably the dyes used most were those used for stencilling and were the same aniline dyes used for lantern slides, but there is almost no literature on the subject.

The technique was limited to the capacity of the colouring artist and was never developed industrially. Furthermore, it was very difficult to apply the colour to a regular area of the frame without smearing and each frame has a slightly different amount of dye, covering a different area. In order to recognise this technique and separate a hand brushed film from a stencilled one, it is necessary to look at the variations from frame to frame, and in particular the difference in the spreading of the colour, the different amount of colour spread in an area, the lack of clean definition on the edges. This is often best seen as a fluttering of the coloured areas on the projected image.

It is quite common to be uncertain as to whether a film has been coloured by hand brushing or by stencilling if the hand brushing is well done, the stencilling haphazard or the dye rather pale or faded.