Disney Knowledge:
Few people realize just how influential and artistically revolutionary Walt Disney has been to the World. In 1932, Walt released the first ever technicolor animation with his debut of Silly Symphonies. From 1932 to 1935, Walt Disney's studio held the patent to the new three-color dye transfer system, which is recognized today as Technicolor. However, it must be mentioned that before the technicolor that we recognize today, there existed three other versions also known as Technicolor. In fact, only one film was made using each of these various systems. For example, The Gulf Between was released in 1917 as the one and only film to use the first version of Technicolor.
For your enjoyment and appreciation:
Silly Symphonies (of Mickey Mouse): Trees and Flowers 1932
The wonders of Technicolor:
System 1
The color motion picture process Technicolor was invented in 1916 and revolutionized the way we view film on the screen. The first ever Technicolor film was produced using the two-color system. Technicolor utilized a basic two-color system where red and blue-green filters consecutively covered two single strips of black-and-white negative film. The images were literally stacked one on top of the other. The film was then exposed by a prism beam splitter behind a camera lens that exposed both frames simultaneously, thus resulting in color. Unfortunately, this color was hard to project in a consistent fashion due to the difficulty of adjusting the projector's prism.
System 2
In 1922, technicolor released their newest color system that utilized a subtractive two-color cemented print system. In the older process, the black-and-white film itself was covered by colored filters that resulted in lost light and inconsistency due to the filters. In the new system, the image itself carries the color. Two negatives are made on matrix filmstrips and later dyed, one red and one a blue-green matrix. These matrix's are printed as mirror images of each other, placed back to back, and cemented together after they have been dyed in their respective colors. As a result, this process generated the matrices on a single matrix filmstrip that was not obscured by a filter and was consistent in its color representation due to the color of the matrix itself.
System 3
In 1928, Technicolor came out with a third system, a subtractive two-color dye transfer. The camera was the same in this third system as in the second system, but the main differences were that the matrices were optically generated. The optical matrices were produced from the negative camera and were used to make other prints.
System 4
Finally, in 1931 Dr.Herbert Kalmus developed an extremely reliable three-strip camera that allowed more than two color strips of film to be placed on top of each other. This allowed for the addition of a blue strip and resulted in a three-dye transfer Technicolor system. Today, this process is simply known as Technicolor. The first film ever to be filmed in this fourth system of Technicolor was Flowers and Trees released in 1932.
Sources and more information:
http://www.widescreenmuseum.com/oldcolor/technicolor1.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technicolor
http://www.justdisney.com/walt_disney/biography/long_bio.html
There you have it folks!
