COLOURED FILMS.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 141, 17 June 1929, Page 3

COLOURED FILMS.

PLANT FOR NEW ZEALAND. TO PICTURE BEAUTY SPOTS. TESTS REVEAL "FLICKER." (By Telegraph.—Special to "Star.") WELLINGTON, this day. Disappointment has attended the first tests of the new techni-colour process for the making of motion pictures which lias been purchased by the Government Publicity Department. The Department imported a special small-sized mechanism intending to use it in the manufacture of future Xew Zealand films, and to refilm all the country's principal beauty spots. The apparatus, which arrived from America last week, was tested out over the week-end and gave excellent results as far as colour photography was concerned, but shows a film "with "a distinct tendency to flicker. Properly to screen the new colour process film "a small special lens is necessary. This is fitted to the projector of the" picture theatre, and is obtainable at low cost. At the same time, the actual film is not taken in colour, but in black and white, the colour being gained from the special lens. Thus the. Department intended to continue its plan of picturemaking, theatres which felt so inclined being given the opportunity to insfcal the special lens, and other theatres being able to screen the black and white films as before. Unfortunately, the new equipment seems to print a film with every other "frame" for special little negative) darker than the one preceding it. This is the basis of the flicker. Cabled instructions have been sent to the United States to forward the bigger attachment for manufacturing colour-films, but a reply has been received that the new attachment is not yet upon the market. It is possible that a way out of the difficulty will be devised, and even if the films are not available for general screening and have to be restricted to those theatres which own the colour-projecting plant (which most theatres abroad now nosse.°s) the remarkable results which

have been trained in actual colour -work ■will make the new departure worth while.

Meantime, however, it seems that two series of films will have to be made—one in colour and the other the ordinary black and white negative.