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March 2010, Week 4

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Subject:
From:
Dennis Doros <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Film and TV Studies Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Wed, 24 Mar 2010 20:43:22 -0400
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Norm,

Many silent films were tinted and/or toned with colors for several reasons.
One, to make them look more "colorful" obviously, and another, for artistic
reasons. Colors were used to express time of day (blue or purple for night,
golden for day for example), or for special effects like red  for scenes
with fire, et cetera. Sometimes, the fire flame would be hand painted red
frame by frame. Tinting, by the way, is a chemical bath that colors
everything in the frame, like a magic marker. Toning, would be a chemical
reaction that only colored the blacks of the image. You can see an excellent
example of a film that was tinted and toned with our film BIG
STAKES<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4h74gkOMPs>(1922) -- the link
gets you to a clip of it on Youtube. This video master
was directly done from the original nitrate print. You can see a B&W version
of the same film
here<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkAKwivw4mQ&feature=related>
.

Many silent films released on DVD have tinting and toning added by us
producers/distributors and it's sometimes based on educated guesses. A
beautiful example of the way tinting can effect a film is D.W. Griffith's
BROKEN BLOSSOMS.

These decisions, by the way, didn't seem to be always made by the director
but were mostly made by the editors or script writers (see the Caldwell and
Hilliker papers at MoMA). Paolo Cherchi Usai's books on restoration, Silent
Cinema<http://www.amazon.com/Silent-Introduction-Distributed-British-Institute/dp/0851707467/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1269477151&sr=8-1>
is
an excellent place to start to read about tinting and toning and Flicker
Alley's dvd release Discovering
Cinema<http://www.amazon.com/Discovering-Cinema-Paolo-Cherchi-Usai/dp/B000V9GDT2/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1269477198&sr=8-2>covers
a lot of the technical innovations of early cinema including sound
and early color. Paolo's book has color images from Kodak's amazing run of
books TINTING AND TONING OF MOTION PICTURES which were published almost
every year in the late 1910s and 1920s. It was a how-to book for the labs
with chemical formulas listed and actual frames from films that illustrate
the different colors and effects that can be achieved. It's one of my
favorite books I own.

Best,
Dennis Doros
Milestone Film & Video/Milliarium Zero
PO Box 128
Harrington Park, NJ 07640
Phone: 201-767-3117
Fax: 201-767-3035
email: [log in to unmask]
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On Tue, Mar 23, 2010 at 10:08 AM, Norman Holland <[log in to unmask]>wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Recently, I've taken to watching silents streamed from Netflix.  Often, the
> film willl change from a sepia color to blue or even red.  Are these color
> changes intentional?  If so, what do they signify?  If not, are they an
> artifact of preservation or what?
>
>                      --With warm regards,
>
>                                   Norm
> Norm Holland
>
> ----
> For past messages, visit the Screen-L Archives:
> http://bama.ua.edu/archives/screen-l.html
>

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