Cartoons made in Cinecolor

[Vdubdavid]

We know that Warner's can still restore their shorts because cartoons made in Technicolor don't fade, at least as long as the negatives are kept in good condition. But what about the shorts like "Riff Raffy Daffy" and "A Horsefly Fleas", which were made in Cinecolor? Are the negatives for these films fading into obscurity as we speak?

[Patrick McCart]

It depends...

Cinecolor used a single strip of film with emulsion on both sides. (It had one side for blue-green, the other magenta) The final print has been tinted blue to "fake" a full spectrum.

To make things more confusing, most of the Cinecolor cartoons made in the late 1940's for WB were printed by Technicolor. (The first two Cinecolor cartoons in 1934 were printed by Cinecolor)

It's very likely the 1934 Cinecolor cartoons still exist on nitrate (read: volitile!) film stock, so it's just a matter of color recompositing (which can be aided digitally.)

The others may be in a less fortunate condition...saftey "acetate" stock turns into a brittle plastic after a while and turns yellow-amber. This screws up the color.

Chances are, WB had all their color cartoons color separated (have one strip of black & white film for each color: yellow, cyan, magenta) which could be tinted in the correct color and re-composited.

Color separations are the most important thing next to the negatives. Many films have been restored via these when the negative is missing.

[Tintin]

For more info for Cinecolor cartoons, Jack Tatay are a Cinecolor website by click here (http://home.wi.rr.com/tatay/cartoons/Cinecolor.html)

[Dave Mackey]

Originally posted by Patrick McCart

Chances are, WB had all their color cartoons color separated (have one strip of black & white film for each color: yellow, cyan, magenta) which could be tinted in the correct color and re-composited.

Not quite. I believe what WB has in its vaults are what are called "Successive Exposure Negatives", meaning the picture negative has one frame each, representing each color of the three color Technicolor process. If you were to run it in a projector, it would run at one third the speed and look really weird. WB can use these successive exposure negatives to make new IB technicolor prints, or possibly even electronically master right off the negative.

[Patrick McCart]

To make the actual prints, color separations were made from the SEN's.

Each separation made 1/3 of a print so that when cemented together, they formed a complete print. This is why restored versions of many Disney cartoons and other Technicolor films from the 1930's/1940's will sometimes have frames that don't match up. The separations shrunk a little, usually at splices.

[Paul Penna]

Originally posted by Patrick McCart
To make the actual prints, color separations were made from the SEN's.

Each separation made 1/3 of a print so that when cemented together, they formed a complete print. This is why restored versions of many Disney cartoons and other Technicolor films from the 1930's/1940's will sometimes have frames that don't match up. The separations shrunk a little, usually at splices.

Just to nail it down a bit more precisely, there wasn't any physical cementing involved in the making of Technicolor prints (though there was in the early days of 2-strip Technicolor). The three color records were used to create printing matrices which were imbibed with the appropriate color dye, then successively impressed upon the carrier film strip. Similar to rubber-stamping, in fact.

Here's a great site that covers both the Technicolor and Cinecolor processes:

http://www.widescreenmuseum.com/oldcolor/oldcolor.htm