I just watched this and some of the scenes had certain objects in color (the girl at the train station, the women dancing with the robbers). Maybe it was just the version I saw, but I found it rather strange. The color doesn't look original, more like someone colored on the film, but I was wondering when this was added and why?
shareThe color was original. It was painted onto the negative.
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Really? It was a practise to fill in negatives with colour. It all started back in the early stages of photography, oddly enough.
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It wasn't heard of before. I'm in a film studies class right now so i know. They had to individually color each of the slides. And the projector ran about 100 slides a second, so they had thousands of slides to color. Thats why jerry porter didnt' color the whole thing, just little segments. And he thought it looked better
"Foreman's black"
"What? How long have you been sitting on this information?!" ~ House, MD
In the later versions it was tinted.
"The last step of insanity is when you're in denial of your own existence."
They wouldn't have tinted the negative since back then the print stock was still black and white and the color would not have come through on the prints. They would have had to tint the final projection prints, and this is probably why there are some prints that aren't colored.
After color stock came out, they would have had to tint a positive master print, strike a color negative off that, then print final color projection prints off that. That's at least two generations of prints and not great for quality, especially on a film that was shot with primitive stock and equipment in the first place.
By the way, a film this old was probably shot at 16 Frames per second, and certainly no more than 24.
Since the movie was directed by Porter, i'm assuming he used Edison's Kinetograph, which shot at 46 frames/sec. (Film History: An Introduction. by Thompson & Bordwell)
sharethe 100 slides was a literary device exaggeration used to make a point of thayt there are too many slides to color, hence only few fragments of the movie were colored
shareThe original had certain frames and objects colored in, but some versions, especially modern copies, lose the color through getting the film online and such. Original versions can still be seen online with the colored frames.
shareThe film was issued originally in black and white and in a stencil colored version. In the early 1970's, I believe, Blackhawk Films released the stencil version in 16mm for home use. (Probably Super 8mm also) It looked like it was struck from a 35mm print and was excellent in quality. The color process was a series of color dyes applied to prints from a master stencil device, done on an assembly line. Each color had it's own stencil. It was used a lot, such as in the famous French Pathe' silent films. Primitive at first, it got quite good by the late teens. As far as film speed, I'm almost sure it was done at 16 fps, being such an early silent....although there was no specific designated speed then. If it were done at 48fps it would be going in slow motion on the reprints. I'm sure the most recent DVD's show the great quality of this film, which has survived very well.
shareThanks for putting the record straight. Having grown up and worked in film I was wincing at some of the "explanations" for the colour process used and film speeds. The painted version would have been made in the 20's when the Pathe Stencil process was in use. Blackhawks prints were made by making reversal reduction prints from an original 35mm print.
Yeah I was wondering the same thing. Now thanks to you guys I know the answer
I always followed my heart, and I never missed a beat.
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They added color as they do for so many black and white films
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