Mondo Knows Facts
Technicolor prints were made by transferring dye
Three separate dye images were pressed onto one strip of blank film In the dye transfer process, three matrices were printed in relief and each was used to transfer its dye onto a single strip of blank film in register. The result had rich colour and very stable dyes. The method was expensive and stopped in Hollywood in the 1970s, though restorers have revived it for special prints. It sits in Mondo's movies & tv collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.
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More facts like this
Technicolor used a prism to split light three waysOne camera exposed three strips of film, one for each primary colourColour picture tubes aimed three beams through a maskA perforated steel sheet kept each electron beam landing on its own colour dotsA colorist grades the finished pictureThey even out colour and brightness shot by shot so the cuts do not jarSilent films were coloured by hand through stencilsWorkers painted dye onto the frames using a separate stencil for each colourA Trip to the Moon was tinted by handSome prints were hand-tinted by a workshop of women paintersSilent films were tinted to signal time of dayWhole scenes were dyed blue for night and amber for lamplight
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Tags: colour, technicolor, printing
Technicolor prints were made by transferring dye: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- Three separate dye images were pressed onto one strip of blank film. The figure is taken from Science and Media Museum, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a movies & tv fact?
- Yes. It sits on the Movies & TV shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
- What else can I read about it?
- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.