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Re-creating Kinemacolor on the screen

by

David Cleveland and Brian Pritchard

 

The idea

 

The idea of re-creating Kinemacolor came out of some experiments attempting to colour a new black and white print section of Claude Friese-Greene’s New Natural Colour Process of the mid 1920s.  For this experiment, to try and find out how it was achieved, an original alternate frame staining machine made by W. Vinten of London was put back into use to colour alternate frames of print film red and green, followed by the projection of this print at 32 frames per second to attempt to see what the picture on the screen actually looked like.

This was only partially successful, mainly because it proved difficult to get an even colouring across the whole frame.  So how it was actually done so well (we looked carefully at the only surviving original stained nitrate print) still remains a bit of a mystery.  But at least it showed us how the projected film, with the colours, looked on the screen.  From this came the ambition to re-create a successful, though short-lived colour system, known as Kinemacolor.

One of the things that worry us is the lack of understanding and knowledge of colour systems of the past.  The fashion today is to copy these so they resemble images we see on the cinema screen and television today.  This is fine for new audiences who want to see these films for the first time.  These restorations are however, new films and should be acknowledged and catalogued as such.

For technical archivists doing this work, there are only modern ways of dealing with colour.  We only have colour inter-negs and colour positive stocks, which have been refined over the years for present day use, so when copying from one system to another, the new version will naturally take on some of the characteristics of Eastman colour or whatever colour stock is being used.

Likewise, mixing computer technology (scanning, digital restoring, recording out onto film) all add different yet subtle differences to the screened image compared with how the film was originally seen.  The next generation of restoration, when film is not the end product, but files - along with digital presentation – will take us just that bit further away from what audiences once saw.

This is inevitable, and we are not saying there is anything wrong with this, as this is how things will be.

However, during restoration (and conservation, and preservation) the technical archivist needs to know how the original colour system was made to work, how it was duplicated, how it was shown on the screen and what the audiences actually saw.

This can be achieved by a good library in an archive, original equipment on display (not necessarily in working order), occasional talks and lectures on particular colour systems, emulsions, speed of projection etc, and where they fit into motion picture history, and, if possible, reconstructions of film making, editing sound and picture, laboratory procedures, and presentation.

Recreating a showing as near as possible to how films were presented is fraught with problems, and of course some parts cannot be replicated (such as a nitrate print).  However, we think it is always worth trying, as it makes one realise the difficulties engineers, cameramen, laboratory staff, and projectionists had getting the film before the audience, in fact making the system work at all.

Here we are only dealing with one particular colour system used in the cinema.  There is so much more – such as sound, widescreen systems, home cinema and home moviemaking, non theatric presentations, television in 405 days etc etc – that need to be looked at before viewers in the future (100 years and more) have no idea where moving images came from, how and why they were made, that they have become processed, homogenised, synthesised, purified.  We probably cannot help this happening, but having the knowledge, understanding, feeling, and technical ability, technical archivists can help steer the processes of conservation, preservation, and restoration.

Taking just one example of a colour system from the early part of the twentieth century, Kinemacolor, we thought to demonstrate as near as possible how this worked and roughly what the images looked like on the screen.

 

 

 

Finding a projector

 

To re-create Kinemacolor, we considered the best way to do this was to present a modern print (we cannot show an original nitrate print for safety reasons) on an original Kinemacolor projector.

Because Kinemacolor was a system of photographing on black and white film alternate frames through red and green filters at high speed  - 32 frames per second – and showing at the same high frame rate on a projector with similar revolving red and green filters, special heavy duty projectors had to be manufactured.  We located one of these original machines, and sought permission to use it from the custodian.  The Principal Museums Officer of the Williamson Art Gallery and Museum, Colin Simpson, was sympathetic to our plan and helped us by loaning this 1910 projector in the possession of the museum in Birkenhead.

The Kinemacolor projector was in pieces, seized up, and generally in need of attention.  We managed to get it to Brian’s workshop, where much work was needed to get it into running order.

The projector had originally been installed in the Argyll Theatre at Birkenhead, but when Kinemacolor as a colour system faded away around 1916, it seems the projector was converted for running ordinary 35mm films at around 16 frames per second.

PIC 1

 

The Kinemacolor projector at Birkenhead Museum

 

When we collected the projector it had a shutter on the front, which had been damaged.  The mechanism would not turn over because the shaft that the shutter was fixed upon was bent.  The first job to be done was to remove this shaft and straighten it.  It was then found that the shaft had been extended so that the shutter could be attached.  Once the shaft had been straightened the projector was run using a handle that was made to fit the hand crank gear.  At this point we discovered that the shutter was revolving once for each frame pull down; fine for black and white but no use for Kinemacolor where alternate frames had to be projected through the red and green filters on the shutter wheel. After much investigation, including two visits to the Media Museum at Bradford where, with some great help from Michael Harvey, we discovered that the gear chain from the vertical drive shaft to the shutter shaft had a gear ratio of 2 to1 instead of 1 to1 as on the Bradford projector.

One of the conditions under which we were able to borrow the projector was that we could not make any permanent alterations to it.  This meant that a new shutter shaft and a new vertical shaft had to be made and new gears purchased to change the ratio.  The job was made more difficult as the governor for the dowser was fixed to the vertical shaft and had to be moved to the new shaft.

The visits to Bradford also showed that the shutter between the lens and film was missing as was the dowser, the filter wheel and the shield for the filter wheel.  Eventually when we had made these parts we were able to test run the machine and, probably for the first time for many years, see Kinemacolor projected on a Kinemacolor projector, a very exciting moment after a year’s work.

The projector was fitted with a carbon arc in the lamp house.  This meant that we had to make a new lamp holder as we were unable to use an arc in the locations where we were aiming to use the projector.  We started with a 250 Watt tungsten halogen reflector lamp, which did not need a fan for the short periods we were using the projector.  After our first show at the University of East Anglia MA course in Film and Television Archiving we decided that we would use a 750 watt tungsten reflector bulb and had to modify the lamp holder to incorporate a fan.

According to Henry Joy’s “Book of Instruction for Operators of Kinemacolor Apparatus” published in 1910, the operator should adjust the size of the double green filter so that the colour of the light on the screen was a pale yellow; if the light was green then the segment should be reduced, if it was orange the segment should be increased.  Using our tungsten lamp we found it was necessary to use two thicknesses of the green filter across the full width of the green segment to achieve the required colour on the screen with no film in the gate.

PIC 2

 

 A close up of the heavy duty gears required for the machine to run at 32 frames per second

 

Development of Kinemacolor

 

George Albert Smith, a film maker living and working in Brighton, had worked out how to produce a colour system whereby the camera film actually recorded the colours in a scene on black and white film.  He mentioned this to Charles Urban, film producer and motion picture businessman, and on March 21^st 1904 wrote “Referring to our recent conversation about photography in colours, I am quite assured of the results, the only thing to do is to produce them on a commercial basis. The apparatus requires to be so simple that any good showman or Bioscope exhibitor can exploit it.”

“My object is to market the colour pictures without any dislocation of existing plant, i.e., exhibitors in possession of the best projectors (your new ones for instance) will be able to show the natural colour films.  As the new projection outfit which you have in preparation promises to become the standard, it seems desirable to carry out my methods in conjunction with yours, and therefore I should like to arrange a co-operative scheme – you to keep me posted and supply your new perfected machinery and I adapt my colour methods to it.  Under this suggested arrangement your company would handle the results of my method, and the advantage would be mutual.”

Charles Urban, of the Charles Urban Trading Company, replied in a letter dated March 24^th 1904, saying “I will thoroughly consider the matter and shall be prepared within a few days to outline the basis of co-operation, and the extent to which we will assist you with the mechanical part of the business.”

So the partnership was set up, and Smith continued his colour experiments. One of the problems Smith had been faced with was how to get the orthochromatic type of film stock used at the time (not sensitive to red, only a limited range of colours from blue to green) to record all the colours in a scene in black and white tones.  This necessitated “sensitising” the emulsion – making it panchromatic in fact.

A record of how Smith achieved this is described at a later date in a letter of September 12^th 1912, to Mr J Birch of the Kinemacolor Company of America.  He used a solution of Pinachrome in water and alcohol which was further diluted in filtered water.  He treated six 200ft rolls at a time.  The first film was bathed for eleven minutes, in absolute darkness, in the solution; it was then washed for 10 minutes before drying in warm air.  Subsequent films had longer bathing times to compensate for the dye being used up; the final film had 14 minutes in the solution. 

Smith also says that different batches of Eastman film varied in their capacity for becoming colour sensitive.  He added a little Pinacyanol Iodide to the bathing solution if the red sensitivity was considered insufficient.

Smith evidently had difficulty at first at sensitising the emulsion, for one of the early existing tests held by the BFI National Archive is covered in white spots on the print which have come through from the negative, where of course they would have been black.  This is a 1906 test which is titled “Two Clowns”.  Smith wrote a number of letters regarding sensitising and its problems.  A letter dated March 26^th 1913 to Mr Hickey, General Manager of the Natural Color Kinematograph Co. Ltd, from Smith refers to troubles with sensitising in the States.  Smith recommended testing several batches, and as soon as a suitable one was found, suggested buying up the rest of the batch.  He tested the film by taking a yard (approximately a metre) winding it on a developing frame, immersing it in plain water for 10 minutes then developing it for 10 minutes and fixing it.  If the film was only slightly veiled it was suitable.  He also says it should be “quite, nearly or very nearly, free from black spots (either pin point or pin head size).”

Urban signed a contract on the February 5^th 1912 with Kodak Ltd “to supply cellulose nitrate “cine” film to the customer for the purpose aforesaid, of a width approximately thirty-five (35) millimetres, or one and three-eighths of an inch (1⅜) unperforated f.o.b. London at a price of one and forty-five one-hundredths (1.45) pence per running foot[1], all such film to be in standard “cine” lengths of two hundred (200) feet and four hundred (400) feet.”

The contract went on to say they could buy short lengths less than 100ft and more than 15ft at 1.0 pence per running foot[2] and had various stipulations about not buying other manufacturer’s film stock, preventing resale, not using the film for duplicating other company’s films, and offering a 5% rebate if the films bought in the last three calendar months were paid for within 15 days of the quarter day.

In a letter dated March 5^th 1912 Kodak Ltd referred to the contract and to Mr Eastman’s statement “that provision would be afforded you for testing, if you so desire, films produced by other manufacturers in competition with ourselves…..providing your consumption of Eastman film amounts to not less than 300,000 metres annually….not to exceed 10% of your total requirements from manufacturers other than ourselves.”  The letter continued that the 5% rebate depended on Kodak receiving a certificate from Price, Waterhouse & Co or other agreed accountants showing the percentage of other manufacturers stock purchased compared to the total film purchases.  The letter also offered a limited quantity of second quality film at a 20% discount but stipulating that this film could only be used for titles, sub-titles, Journal or Topical subjects.

But whatever success Smith had in enabling all colours to be recorded, the red and green filter basis of Kinemacolor was only capable of recording so much.  In fact this was well known at the time, and later even publicised.  An article in a supplement to the Kinematograph and Lantern Weekly of October 10^th 1912, states: “Where do the brilliant multi-colours come from, then – the bright yellows, brilliant blues, rich browns? There are no yellows, no blues, no browns.  These only exist in the brain of the observer.  As the old conjurors used to say, “Quickness of the hand deceives the eye”.  If the pictures could be made to fall on the screen slowly enough the spectator would see one picture all red, and the next one all green.  But they come so fast he has no time to distinguish them separately.  His eye receives a general impression, then his brain proceeds to sort out the colours for itself”. This was the secret of Kinemacolor, and some other colour processes around this time - the brain did most of the work.

It seems Smith’s first experiments involved colouring the film print frames red and green (the letter of March 21^st 1904 alludes to this method so that any projector could be used without alteration), but he soon abandoned this and settled for a revolving filter of red and green segments on the projector.  The filter wheel had to be behind the gate, between the light source and the projector, so that the light was coloured before it went through the film onto the screen.  If the filter had been in front of the lens, sharpness could suffer.

A few of Smith’s original test films survived thanks to a film collector who lived a road or two away from Smith in Hove, the late Graham Head.  Graham began collecting equipment and films from 1918, and knew Smith well, as he was a frequent visitor to the Head household.  Three of these negatives were passed to Ronald Grant at the Cinema Museum after Graham Head died in 1980.  Thanks to Andrea Kalas of the BFI National Archive, new prints have been made by Ben Thompson.

From 1908, we have been able to show “Woman Draped in Patterned Handkerchiefs” as well as “Cat Studies”.  In 1910, a year after Kinemacolor had been shown to the public, Smith filmed the “New Romney, Hythe and Sandwich Pageant”, but the BFI has recorded that Smith declared that this was “a reject taken with excessive contrast”.  This does seem so, but one thing this film does show us today is the problem of parallax error usually known as fringing.  Fringing is when the action is fast, and objects have moved between the red and green exposures, so that, for example, men walking quickly have red or green legs!

 

 

PIC 3

1910 Kinemacolor negative and a print from it made in 2007

 

Kinemacolor projectors

 

It was in 1908 that the first examples of Kinemacolor (though it was not known by that name at this time) were shown to selected audiences.  At first Urban’s own marketed projector, the Bioscope, was converted and used to show Kinemacolor films.  The name Bioscope was cast into the main upright plate that held the gears, gate, lens and feed spool. This machine had a beater movement for pull down (commonly known as a ‘dog’), which produced a reasonably steady picture, and was capable of being used with a powerful arc light.  The subsequent Kinemacolor projectors had a modified dog; because running at 32 frames a second caused the dog to put considerable strain on the film.  The dog was modified so that there were two rollers, a small roller and a larger roller.  The smaller roller started the film moving and the larger roller then pulled the film down quickly.  Even with this system the projector was noisy and hard on the film. 

Our prints were polyester and apart from some early tests where sticky rollers and corroded gate pressure pads caused us to slightly scratch the film, the projector handled film quite well.  We used a second print for the tests so as not to possibly damage our main show prints.  The small teeth on the feed sprockets and the lack of a normal intermittent meant the perforations remained undamaged, although our prints had Kodak Standard positive long pitch perforations whereas the original nitrate prints would have had Bell and Howell negative type short pitch perforations.

In Smith’s 1906 patent[3] he states; “If the speed of projection is approximately 30 pictures per second, the two colour records blend and present to the eye a satisfactory rendering of the subject in colours which appear to be natural”.  In fact later, at a lecture in December 1908, Smith said 32 frames per second were necessary. Henry Joy always stated; “run at twice the usual speed”.

The first public show of Kinemacolor took place at the Palace Theatre of Varieties in London on Friday February 26^th 1909.  The Palace is a big theatre with a large proscenium and stage, and plenty of light would have been needed to project a Kinemacolor picture.

The Bioscope trade journal of March 4^th 1909 reports: “At the Palace Theatre, on Friday afternoon last, Mr. G. Albert Smith and Mr. Charles Urban gave the first of a series of exhibitions of bioscope pictures in natural colours.”

The programme included a film shot only four days earlier.  This was a clear reference by Urban and Smith to the fact that Kinemacolor, recording on the film the colours of the scene in black and white tones, could be printed and reproduced like any ordinary monochrome film – quickly, instead of the laborious and time consuming business of hand colouring or stencil colouring that audiences were used to with coloured films. 

The article goes on to say: “In the pamphlet distributed to the audience, Messrs. Smith and Urban claim to present “the veritable hues and tints of nature.”  It was true of many of the scenes, but the least expert in the audience could tell that a leaden blue was not the veritable hue and tint of a young lady’s arm, or that a cornfield was all one dull, sandy yellow.  It may seem that these criticisms are captious, seeing that the bulk of the effects were excellent, but exaggeration at the present stage, which is so an experimental one, is to be deprecated, and Messrs. Smith and Urban would be the first to admit that they have still much to perfect in their system.  In the first place the successful manipulation of the panchromatic film which they use calls for very special knowledge and care, and from the exhibition on Friday it was clear that both the green and red filters easily get “out of register,” as the colour-printers call it, with the result that there are blinding flashes of red or green across the entire picture.  Again, one may object – and we have done so before in these columns – to the very vivid tones of the greens and reds in these pictures.  The green, in particular, is so aggressive that a single square inch of it in a picture is sufficient to swamp every other detail on the screen. Finally, there was a very general concensus of opinion on Friday that these colour-pictures entail a greater strain upon the eyes than ordinary black and white scenes.”

Because the film had to run at least at 30 frames per second, or 32 to get the illusion to work well for the viewer, Charles Urban realised that a more robust projector had to be made to stand up to repeated showings in a commercial environment.  For these he turned to a young engineer, William Vinten.

William Vinten was doing a variety of engineering jobs, when in 1906 he saw an advertisement from Charles Urban asking for sets of hardened steel dies and punches to be made to precise specifications for use in making perforations in 35mm wide film.  Vinten was able to supply these, and Urban was very happy with his work. In 1908 Urban offered him a job in charge of the new engineering workshop in Urbanora House in Wardour Street in London.  A year later Urban offered Vinten the tenancy of the workshops.  One of the jobs was developing Kinemacolor machinery in conjunction with Henry Joy.  On January 7^th 1910, Urban gave William Vinten an order for “25 Kinemacolor Machines (heavy type)” at £25 each.  Vinten was now in business (a company still in existence today) and Urban had his first machines.  In fact a total of 150 Kinemacolor projectors were made.  The projector that has survived in the museum at Birkenhead is No 19, presumably from that first batch.

 

 

 

Re–fitting the colour filter wheel

 

The colour filters on Kinemacolor projector No 19 were missing owing to the machine being used as a conventional projector following the demise of Kinemacolor. A new colour filter wheel therefore had to be made with the correct colour segments.

An existing Kinemacolor machine that has the original filters (or so it seems) were examined thanks to Michael Harvey at the Media Museum at Bradford.  Using a swatch of lighting gels we matched the colours by eye.  Those selected were No 25 Sunset Red, and No 122 Fern Green.  In order to complete our records the filters were measured on a densitometer using Status M Filters.  The results were: