Technicolor Movies

Early movies were silent and without colour. Movie companies realised that colour would obviously look better and they went to great lengths to achieve this. The very first colour movies were hand tinted with brushes. This method was both expensive and slow. A stencil system soon replaced this method of colouring movies.

Colour movies still did not become really successful until the Technicolor company produced their "Three-strip" camera in 1932. This camera recorded the red, blue and green parts individually. Colour movies were difficult to produce and expensive so many movies were still made in black and white.

Not all colours looked equally good in Technicolor. Some colours that were especially brilliant were reds and yellows, so fire was used in many Technicolor movies.

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