BLOG QUESTION ADV: THE HISTORY AND SCIENCE OF COLOR FILM P. 1

1. What is color? What principle did James Clerk Maxwell discover?
2. How was color used in early filmmaking? What were the two major types of colorizing film?

Color is our psychological reaction to a very narrow band of electromagnetic radiation aka light. To create any color of light, you only need 3 primary colors: Red, yellow, and Blue. James Clerk Maxwell discovered the principle that you could create colored photography by shooting something in these primary colors and layering them to create a colored photograph. One of the first uses of color in film was hand-tinting, where color was painted onto the film itself. The two major types of colorizing in film was tinting and toning. Tinting was when an entire frame of film was put into dye which would in turn make the entire frame that color. Toning only colored the dark parts of the frame by chemically converting the silver in the film to colored silver salts.