Technicolor

Technicolor wasn't the first process to render films into colour, and its inventors weren't the originators of the idea, either - it must have been on everyone's minds from the moment the earliest black and white films were first shown. First invented in 1916 and refined over the following years by Americans Herbert Kalmus, Daniel Frost Comstock, and W. Burton Wescott, the process had the advantage of being simple to achieve and easy to display. Since the colour was dyed onto the film negative itself, any projector could show it without the need for additional equipment, which meant that cinema owners and studios could guarantee a greater return on their investment by luring audiences in with the promise of colour at a time when most films could only be produced in black and white.

Kalmus, as the executive of the Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation, ensured that they kept firm control of the process and that they were involved in every use of the technique. As part of this strategy, his partner (and ex-wife) Natalie Kalmus was employed as ‘colour supervisor’ on most of the early productions using the technology. Kalmus, a notoriously difficult and disliked figure among directors, producers, and cinematographers, provided direction on the use of technicolor and composed the palettes used for films such as 'Gone With the Wind' as well as the aforementioned 'The Wizard of Oz' (both 1939). While it may look a bit dated now, Technicolor was cheap, easily achieved in any cinema with any projector, and resulted in films being shown in brilliant colour at a time when any innovation in cinematography was enough to cause a public stir, let alone one so memorable and striking.