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The fade and shift in early-1960’s films…
I’m perusing the online INTERNET ARCHIVE of ephemeral films. In their collection is a remarkable set of brief clips that American drive-in theaters used to show to encourage trips to the snack bar. Those of us d’un certain âge may remember them…
Most of these date from the period 1960–1966.
In nearly all of these films, the color has shifted dramatically, so badly in fact that in nearly every instance, the foods depicted look highly unappetizing to say the least.
One film will have a frightful red shift; still another will have a ghastly greenish-yellow shift. Then, mid-film, for unknown reasons, the image will shift to a dramatic cyan cast (again making the food look horrible.) Today, these tendencies make for an overall risible, quaint viewing experience— probably not what their creators initially intended…
My dad’s a scientist (not a film/video guy at all) but he told me something fascinating, if it’s true: He said that, to date, humans have not invented a colorsafe film… ie., a color film that will not deteriorate over time. Is this true? He did say, however, that we’ve managed to create a B&W film that is stable.
All this is very much on my mind at the moment, as I seek to emulate some of the nasty color shifts typical of that era in AECS3…
Thanks! DAVE
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2 Replies
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Hi,
I guess the concept of deteriorating over time is based on your time scale.
Actually the Technicolor process is one of the few really stable color processes, but mainly because it uses black and white stock and stable color dyes which are chemically separated from the photo sensitive process. A properly fixed silver halide image should be stable for a good long time, usually much longer than the stock base (although modern Estar bases are fairly dimensionally stable).
My understanding is that no single strip color process is really stable since there is a trade off between the stability of the dyes used in the process and their ability to work with the color couplers and other chemicals that convert a silver halide, black and white image to the cyan, magenta or yellow layers. The early Eastman color process was bad enough, but some development formulations were better than others. Many films from the 60s and 70s have that harsh red tint from presumably because the yellow and cyan layers in the print stock were less stable than magenta.
Early Technicolor had some problems, but they quickly perfected the process and even today, prints from the 30s and 40s can be just as brilliant and clear as when they were first projected. The real problem in preserving these films is the differential shrinkage of the original black and white records.
It makes sense to investigate what is actually happening in these film stocks if you are going to duplicate the look. You might be able to find some technical papers that discuss chemical breakdowns in different color layers. But since these problems were at their worst in the 60s and 70s, you might have more luck digging around a good library than on the internet.
Then again, you could just start tweaking the gammas of each of the RGB levels until you get a look that works.
Lars
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Andrew Kramer came out with a new plugin called Twitch that may do what you need. Nice and automated.
https://www.videocopilot.net/twitch/
— TL
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