Making Natural-Color Motion Pictures 



Light filters through a four-colored attachment 

 which is rotated in front of the projector lenses 



NATUR.\L-COLOR 

 motion pictures 

 have not been a 

 success in the past. 

 Color results were too 

 poor to warrant the 

 mechanical complica- 

 tions and the consequent 

 expense of the necessary' 

 processes. A new sys- 

 tem is being commer- 

 cialized, however, which 

 is unusually simple and 

 which produces pictures 

 more truly colored than 

 ever before. 



Like its predecessors, 

 the new system depends 

 upon the fact that beams 

 of certain primary- colors 

 when mixed together in 

 varying proportions of 

 intensity will produce a 

 ray of light which will 

 show forth every color 

 in the spectrum. In the 

 new process, the pictures are taken by 

 the camera through a four-colored 

 rotating filter, so that one primary 

 color will affect one picture of the film, 

 a different primary- color will affect the 

 next picture on the film, and so on in 

 very rapid succession. The developed 

 film is run in the projector with a 

 corresponding colored filter, and the 

 color pictures are thrown on the screen 

 in the same rapid sequence as they 

 were taken in the camera. Twenty- 

 four color pictures follow each other in 

 a second. The eye has not the time 

 to distinguish one color from the other. 

 They blend all together and pro- 

 duce almost the same effects of color 

 which appeared in the original scene. 



This process is therefore similar to 

 that of the ordinary motion picture, 

 with the colored filter thrown in. It 

 is no more complicated. Even the 

 film looks black and white like the 

 others; only of course, each film pic- 

 ture instead of containing the com- 

 plete outline as in ordinary- motion 

 pictures, contains only the part of the 



complete outline which 

 corresponds to one of 

 the four primary colors. 

 The colors which have 

 been found to produce 

 best effects are red and 

 green-blue, yellow and 

 blue. Blends of these 

 produce colors so real- 

 istic that the separate 

 figures on the screen 

 seem actually to stand 

 out in relief. A system 

 as simple and effective 

 as this brings us much 



At left: The four-colored 

 rotating filter through 

 which pictures in four 

 different • colors are 

 taken in rapid succession 



Photographing natural scenery in all the beauty of 

 its own coloring, by means of the filter camera 

 attachment whidi "ttxies in" the primary colors 



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