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] www.milestonefilms.com www.arayafilm.com www.exilesfilm.com www.wordisoutmovie.com www.killerofsheep.com AMIA Philadelphia 2010: www.amianet.org Join "Milestone Film" on Facebook! 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 > ---- Learn to speak like a film/TV professor! Listen to the ScreenLex podcast: http://www.screenlex.org