Spot the Frippet: something in technicolour.

Technicolor?

Yes, that will be a movie filmed simultaneously on two or three cameras, each one with its filter adjusted to produce a particularly lush, hot, and slightly migraine-ish picture.

The first Technicolor film was produced in...no, go on, guess*...

...and the first general release film, which was The Toil of the Sea, in 1925. 

But there were various technical problems with the Technicolor process, and filming required very bright lights and very big cameras, and it was some time before a big studio became willing to take on the risk and expense of it. 

And then Disney's Technicolor Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs became the most profitable film of 1937, and more people began to see the point.

There were still, though, technical difficulties. The bright lighting meant that temperatures on the set of The Wizard of Oz were sometimes as much as 38 degrees centigrade (that poor lion!), and the colour expert supplied by the Technicolor company was often Natalie Kalmus, who wasn't the easiest person to work with. But still, Technicolor was the most widespread colour system in use from 1922 to 1952.

Eventually, other, easier ways of making coloured film were made available, and Technicolor stopped being used except for archive purposes. But in its time it made a lot of popular films, including Gone With The Wind, The Lady Killers, and Calamity Jane.

Well, that's Technicolor, but how about technicolour? 

That'll cover anything that looks as if it's been filmed in Technicolor: a fruit stall at a market:


photo taken in Liverpool by Tetrisforaliens

 Ali Baba's laundry basket, or any toy shop or butterfly:


Common Zebra Blue. Photo by 
Hectonichus

near you.

Have your sun glasses at the ready, won't you.

Spot the Frippet: Technicolor/technicolour. Technicolor is named after the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where the inventors of Technicolor, Herbert Kalmus and Daniel Frost Cornstock, studied. The Greek word tekhnē means art or skill.

*1916.