For a long time now cinema has been in colour but where did it start?

The very first colour films were hand coloured. When features were only around
10 minutes long this was actually quite a practical and effective way to colour a
film. This technique became so widely used that Charles Pathe began using
stencils and had employed around 400 women, by 1910, to hand tint his films by
physically colouring them in frame by frame. The problem with this technique
was that it was very time consuming and as films got longer it became
increasingly time consuming and less practical.

As demand increased however even this became impractical. One technique that
became more commonplace was filmmakers using dyes and bathing an entire
film in dye. This would tint the entire film a certain colour. Another technique
called toning would chemically convert the silver in the film to silver salts. This
would only colour the dark parts of a film. These became an issue as sound
became ran along the side of the film pre tinted film stock as offered but other
methods were coming in.

There were two methods of adding
colour to a film additive colour and
subtractive colour they were
slightly different. Additive colour
mixed red, green and blue to create
white light. Subtractive colour
mixes cyan, magenta and yellow
light to create black light.
Kinemacolor was an example of an
additive colour system. When it was being used for filming it had a rotating red
and green filter. This produced a good colour system the problem was that
around moving objects there was red and green fringing and there were huge
problems if the film was not synced properly with the filter. It could also not
record the colour blue.

A subtractive colour system was the better-known Technicolor. This was a
subtractive colour system meaning that it did not suffer from the colour
streaking and could pick up the colour blue. It also used a beam splitter and
filmed to reels of film at the same time meaning there was not the synching issue.
This system became widely successful and was used throughout the 1930s and
1940s the final system Technicolor 3 was widely used. The cameras cost
upwards of $30,000 but the quality was superb.









However after the war the German colour patents became available. As a result a
slightly lower quality but much cheaper system came in called Eastmancolor it
put three colour film separations in a single roll. It did not require a special
camera and as a result was much cheaper. The quality was a little lower but the
lower cost made it worth it. Based on the Nazi colour system it took over in 1952
and Technicolors three-strip system was no longer used within two years.
Eastmancolor was so cost effective it by 1967 nearly all films were colour.

Nowadays films are digitally treated the first being O brother where art thou.
This was toned down digitally to create a toned down dusty look. This is
obviously done on a computer and is often recorded in colour so unlike
Technicolor or Kinemacolor it is not filtered. It is very cheap and there are
endless techniques available.