Shooting In Technicolor


The old three-strip Technicolor process required behemoth-sized cameras. This one’s pointed at Deanna Durbin and Robert Paige during the production of Can’t Help Singing in 1944. Note the somewhat battered exterior. That equipment looks to have some miles on it. Technicolor cameras were never in abundant supply. They were rented out to studios by Herbert Kalmus’ company --- he owned the trademark and all the hardware. Producers waited in line for the use of his process. The camera shown here may have been the same one that photographed Gone With The Wind or The Wizard Of Oz. I wonder how many of these survive. It’s regrettable the process didn’t. By 1954, most of the studios were shooting on Eastman negative, although prints were often processed by Technicolor and retained that uniquely saturated color we associate with the name today. Universal held out the longest. They used three-strip cameras for several pictures shot in 1954, including This Island Earth and Man Without A Star (here’s the crew on location for that one). Universal’s August 1955 release of Foxfire has been cited as the final feature shot on three-strip Technicolor. The company’s manufacture of dye-transfer prints would end in 1975 with The Godfather-Part Two and a re-issue of Swiss Family Robinson. Efforts to revitalize the system in the nineties were regrettably unsuccessful.