Brewster Color was an early subtractive color -model film process.
33-421: A two color process was invented by Percy Douglas Brewster in 1913, based on the earlier work of William Friese-Greene . It attempted to compensate for previous methods' problems with contrast . Brewster introduced a three color process in 1935, in an unsuccessful attempt to compete with Technicolor . In his first patent application , filed February 11, 1913, American inventor Percy Douglas Brewster described
66-417: A "method and apparatus for color cinematography." On October 7, 1941, the judge overruled defense objections to some of the plaintiff's interrogatories . This procedural decision has been cited in some subsequent cases, as "2 F.R.D. 186, 51 U.S.P.Q. 319". No further public filings were made by Brewster, suggesting that the case may have been settled out of court. RG color space An RG color model
99-477: A linear gamut of colors , which can reproduce only a fraction of the colors possible with a trichromatic color space. The appearance of the color gamut changes depending on the primary colors chosen. When the primaries are complementary colors (e.g. red and cyan), then an equal mixture of the primaries will yield a neutral color (gray or white). However, since red and green are not complementary colors, an equal mixture of these primaries will yield yellow, and
132-417: A neutral color cannot be reproduced by the color space. Until recently, its primary use was in low-cost LED displays in which red and green LEDs were more common and cheaper than the still nascent blue LED technology. However, this preference no longer applies to modern devices. In modern applications, the red and green primaries are equal to the primaries used in typical RGB color spaces . In this case,
165-418: A new color film process: The exposure is made through a ray filter, preferably light yellow in color and adapted to cut off all the violet and ultra-violet rays of light. The green and blue light with the addition of some yellow, after passing through the ray filter, acts upon the panchromatic emulsion on the front of the film, while the red and orange light with some yellow passes through the film and acts upon
198-527: A patent for the Kinemacolor process in 1907. "How to Make and Operate Moving Pictures" published by Funk & Wagnalls in 1917 notes the following: Of the many attempts to produce cinematograph pictures... the greatest amount of attention so far has been attracted by a system invented by George Albert Smith, and commercially developed by Charles Urban under the name of "Kinemacolor." In this system (to quote from Cassell's Cyclopædia of Photography , edited by
231-427: A report to l'Académie des sciences describing how to project three-dimensional magic lantern slide shows using red and green filters to an audience wearing red and green goggles. Subsequently he was chronicled as being responsible for the first realisation of 3D images using anaglyphs. Kinemacolor Kinemacolor was the first successful colour motion picture process . Used commercially from 1909 to 1915, it
264-546: A three color process which added yellow tinting. Though demonstration films received praise from members of the Royal Photographic Society for their "remarkable steadiness" and "extraordinarily good reds", this method failed to meet with commercial success. Brewster filed a lawsuit against Technicolor, Inc. and Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation on April 1, 1941. It sought $ 100,000 in damages and an injunction , stating that they had infringed on patents for
297-411: Is a dichromatic color model represented by red and green primary colors . These can only reproduce a fraction of the colors possible with a trichromatic color space, such as for human color vision . The name of the model comes from the initials of the two primary colors: red and green. The model may be either additive or subtractive . It was used to display 3D images using anaglyphs since
330-715: The French Riviera . On 6 July 1909, George Albert Smith presented a programme of 11 Kinemacolor films at Knowsley Hall before King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra . The films included military subjects as well as a party at Knowsley Hall and the King himself. Edward was pleased with the films. The process was first seen in the United States on 11 December 1909, at an exhibition staged by Smith and Urban at Madison Square Garden in New York City. In 1909, Urban, who had acquired
363-674: The Fukuhōdō film studio in 1910 and were passed on to Toyo Shokai. Emperor Taishō was presented with a three-hour long Kinemacolor programme in August 1913. Two months later, the first Kinemacolor programme was shown in Tokyo . Toyo Shokai reformed itself to Tenkatsu in March 1914 and produced primarily fiction films. With World War I film stock became more expensive, so the company limited production of Kinemacolor films. The last Japanese film produced in Kinemacolor
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#1732851205111396-769: The Kinemacolor Company of America was formed, which initially relied on showing British Kinemacolor films. They filmed The Clansman in 1911, based on the controversial novel of the same name by Thomas Dixon . The film was finished and never released or left unfinished, and inspired D. W. Griffith to produce The Birth of a Nation (1915). The Kinemacolor Company of America produced several narrative and documentary films, such as Making of The Panama Canal (1912) and The Scarlet Letter (1913). The company had studios in Hollywood from 1912 until 1913 and ceased production in 1915. The Japanese Kinemacolor rights were acquired by
429-586: The Royal Society of Arts on 9 December 1908. On 26 February 1909, the general public first saw Kinemacolor in a programme at the Palace Theatre in London. By this time, the process was known as Kinemacolor, a suggestion from Arthur Binstead, a journalist at Sporting Life , after Urban offered a £5 prize to anyone who could come up with a name. The programme consisted of 21 films mainly shot around Brighton and
462-571: The documentary films With Our King and Queen Through India (1912) and the notable recovery of £750,000 worth of gold and silver bullion from the wreck of P&O's SS Oceana in the Strait of Dover (1912). The dramas The World, the Flesh and the Devil (1914), and Little Lord Fauntleroy (1914) were among the last feature films released in Kinemacolor. Kinemacolor enjoyed the most commercial success in
495-561: The 1850s. Despite its shortcomings in color reproduction , the RG model was used in early color processes for films from 1906 to 1929 ( Kinemacolor , Prizma , Technicolor , Brewster Color , Kodachrome I and Raycol ). The additive RG color model uses red and green primaries. It was used in several processes during the early innovations of color photography, including Kinemacolor , Prizma , Technicolor I, and Raycol . The primaries are added together in varying proportions to reproduce
528-694: The Kinemacolor patent from Smith, formed the Natural Color Kinematograph Company , which produced most Kinemacolor films. Urban sold Kinemacolor licences around the world through the Natural Color Kinematograph Company. Outside of the United Kingdom, the only successful Kinemacolor companies were located in Japan and the United States. The Natural Color Kinematograph Company produced The Funeral of King Edward VII (1910),
561-610: The Natural Color Kinematograph Company in order to protect the shareholders. He took the case to the House of Lords and continued the company as Color Films Ltd., which produced the documentary With The Fighting Forces of Europe during World War I . In April 1915, the House of Lords upheld the Court of Appeal's decision and the patent was revoked. Charles Urban filmed the British fleet in Kinemacolor for
594-403: The RG color model can be achieved by disabling the blue light source. The subtractive RG color model uses red and green filters for film exposure, but complementary cyan-green (for red) and orange-red (for green) for the developed prints. This allows the generation of white, although the color model cannot achieve black, regardless of the primaries chosen. It was used in several processes during
627-769: The UK where, between 1909 and 1918, it was shown at more than 250 entertainment venues. Kinemacolor was popular with members of the British royal family . Pope Pius X saw Kinemacolor films in 1913. The Natural Color Kinematograph Company re-purchased the French rights for Kinemacolor. In 1913, Urban built the Théâtre Edouard VII in Paris for the purpose of showing Kinemacolor, but the process remained commercially unsuccessful in France. In April 1910,
660-774: The documentary film Britain Prepared in late 1915. Most Kinemacolor films are now considered lost . With his associate Henry W. Joy, Charles Urban continued his research in colour cinematography and developed a process called Kinekrom, an improved version of Kinemacolor. Kinekrom was shown to the public in New York in November 1916. The process was intended to enable Urban to continue showing his vast library of old Kinemacolor films. However, public interest for Kinemacolor had faded and there were few screenings. The first (additive) version of Prizma Color , developed by William Van Doren Kelley in
693-634: The early innovations of color photography, including on Brewster Color I, Kodachrome I , Prizma II, and Technicolor II. A similar color model, called RGK adds a black channel, which allows for the reproduction of black and other dark shades. However, it does not allow the reproduction of neutral colors (gray/white) because the primaries are not complementary. Outside of a few low-cost high-volume applications, such as packaging and labelling , RG and RGK are no longer in use because devices providing larger gamuts such as CMYK are in widespread use. In 1858, in France, Joseph D'Almeida delivered
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#1732851205111726-508: The editor of this present book), only two colour filters are used in taking the negatives and only two in projecting the positives. The camera resembles the ordinary cinematographic camera except that it runs at twice the speed, taking thirty-two images per second instead of sixteen, and it is fitted with a rotating colour filter in addition to the ordinary shutter. This filter is an aluminium skeleton wheel... having four segments, two open ones, G and H; one filled in with red-dyed gelatine, E F; and
759-596: The first notable Kinemacolor film which proved to be a financial success. That year, the company released the first dramatic film made in the process, By The Order of Napoleon . In 1911, the Scala Theatre became Urban's flagship venue for showing Kinemacolor films, which included From Bud to Blossom (1910), Unveiling of the Queen Victoria Memorial (1911), Coronation of George V (1911), The Investiture of The Prince of Wales (1911). The company also produced
792-431: The fourth containing green-dyed gelatine, A B. The camera is so geared that exposures are made alternately through the red gelatine and the green gelatine. Panchromatic film is used, and the negative is printed from in the ordinary way, and it will be understood that there is no colour in the film itself. To shoot Kinemacolor films, cameramen had to choose between a variety of red/orange and blue/green filters depending on
825-487: The full color spectrum due to being a two-colour process. Other issues included eye strain and frame parallax because it used a successive frame process, as well as the need for a special projector. The color filters absorbed so much light that studios had to be built open-air. At the press opening of the Urbanora House in London on 1 May 1908, Charles Urban presented Kinemacolor films which he stated were not taken with
858-685: The intention to be shown in front of an audience. A second demonstration in England took place once again in the Urbanora House on 23 July 1908, in front of the Lord Mayor of London as well as 60 other guests. Kinemacolor was shown in Paris on 8 July 1908, featuring a film of the Grand Prix motor race taken the previous day. Among the guests were the Lumière brothers , inventors of the autochrome color photography process. George Albert Smith presented Kinemacolor before
891-556: The late 1920s, in favor of the Prizma process. In April 1944, a syndicate was formed to purchase the rights to the Brewster Color process and use it to produce films at studios in New York and Washington, D.C. Stanley Neal, member of the syndicate and owner of its laboratory, was mainly known for the production of industrial films and advertising shorts . In 1935, Brewster introduced
924-410: The panchromatic emulsion on the back of the film. The color that the transparent emulsion is stained prevents the passage of a substantial amount of blue and green light through the film to act upon the panchromatic film on the back. Over the next eight years, Brewster filed a series of further patents pertaining to photographic film, film development , color cinematography, and various improvements to
957-723: The process. In 1917, a patent for a method of "Coloring or Dyeing Photographic Images" was issued to Hoyt Miller, chief chemist of the Brewster Color Film Corporation, and assigned to the corporation. Brewster's process was used for the first color animated cartoon , 1920's The Debut of Thomas Cat . However the production company, Bray Pictures , deemed the process to be too expensive, and did not employ it again. As other color processes became available, Brewster Color continued to be preferred by some filmmakers due to its relatively low cost and greater availability for small production runs. It began to fall out of use in
990-470: The subject. Despite this, the films were projected through a single set of red and green filters. Modern research has matched the red projection filter to 25 Sunset Red (with a peak transmission above 610 nm ) and the green projection filter to 122 Fern Green (with a peak of around 510 to 540 nm). Projected frame rate was also confirmed to be between 30 and 32 frames per second. Kinemacolor faced several issues, including its inability to reproduce
1023-409: The world. Edward Raymond Turner produced the oldest surviving colour films around 1902. They were made through three-colour alternating-filters. Turner's process, for which Charles Urban had provided financial backing, was adapted by George Albert Smith after Turner's sudden death in 1903 into Kinemacolor. Smith was also influenced by the work of William Norman Lascelles Davidson . He was granted
Brewster Color - Misplaced Pages Continue
1056-482: Was Saiyûki Zokuhen (1917). In 1913, after years of dispute, William Friese-Greene , inventor of the rival Biocolour system, challenged Smith's Kinemacolor patent at the Royal Courts of Justice . Although the court initially favoured Kinemacolor, the original verdict was overturned in March 1914. Consequently, Kinemacolor lost not only its patent protection but its commercial value and exclusivity. Urban liquidated
1089-509: Was invented by George Albert Smith in 1906. It was a two-colour additive colour process, photographing a black-and-white film behind alternating red/orange and blue/green filters and projecting them through red and green filters. It was demonstrated several times in 1908 and first shown to the public in 1909. From 1909 on, the process was known and trademarked as Kinemacolor and was marketed by Charles Urban ’ s Natural Color Kinematograph Company , which sold Kinemacolor licences around
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