Many More Coloured Films

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 105, 28 January 1938, Page 16

Many More Coloured Films

Producers Prepared For Great ChangeOver In Picture Industry TTOLLYWOOD has decided that the public likes coloured films, and 11 so with its usual wliole-heartedness it is going to make a great number of coloured films this year. Producers are said to have changed their attitude to the new type of film entirely in the last 12 months, largely as a consequence of the success of one or two features. Tin position is compared with that in the early days of sound, and even an entirely coloured screen is predicted.

TTAVID SELZNICK’S “A Star Is Born” was the turning point in the career of colour films. One of the most successful pictures of the year, it has earned 3,500,000 dollars gross already and made other producers realise that colour will bring in more money to the box office than black and white. “A Star Is Born” would have been a success in black and white, because it was a good story and capably acted, but there is no doubt colour made it doubly successful. Unlike! most colour films it was shot in four weeks, a record for colour films as well as most 1,000,000-dollar productions. The overnight success of this picture sent producers scrambling madly to make pictures in colour. To prove that colour is no flash in the pan, here are the names of important productions that will be filmed entirely in colour. They are: “Ebb Tide” (released in America), “Marco Polo,” “Tom Sawyer,” “Goldwyn Follies,” “Food For Scandal,” “Robin Hood,” .“Gold Is Whqre You Find It.” and “Golddiggers In Paris.” How will colour affect the stars I That is a question worrying most of the big stars in Hollywood to-day. Many of them are afraid of it, because it may mean they will not photograph as well as they do in black and white. Some of them might look too natural and that would be fatal to them. Some of the glamorous beauties do not look the same sleek, exotic creatures off the screen. Make-up is all important to them. They have the features that photograph well, but beyond that their fates are in the hands of the expert make-up artists, who are the real creators of the stars. Make-up Artists to Rescue. But again, these men. who receive no screen credits, have come to the rescue with a special make-up for tinted films. It is a liquid make-up and had its first real test in Walter Wanger’s “Vogues of 1938.” He demanded perfect make-up before he would go ahead with the picture, and he got it after make-up men experimented for months in their laboratories.. It is actually a lacquer make-up that has no grease paint base, does not rub off, is impervious to perspiration, and, what is more important to some of the stars, conceals blemishes. Many of the glamour girls breathed sighs of relief when they heard the new make-up would conceal skiu blemishes. The heavy yellowish-brown powder used for black and white concealed all blemishes. Colour will bring the red-headed stars to the front. Now they photograph light brunette and the really beautiful colouring of their hair is lost. It is believed here that red heads (will be in greater demand from now on. Blondes will be in greater demand than ever, because they photograph so perfectly in colour. A new colour is making its debut in Hollywood.. It is called "chromium.” It is brighter than platinum and for those it suits it is very becoming. Colour is the biggest adventure for Hollywood since the introduction of sound. It has not come overnight. It has taken years of study to bring it to

its present state. Colour films were made in Hollywood 20 years ago. but they were very poor and very expensive. Walt Disney, a pioneer in more ways than one in Hollywood, paved the way for colour films with his tinted Silly Symphonies. Tinted pictures will always l>e more costly than black and white. The special camera, whieh takes six months to build and costs £-1000. is not even owned by a studio. Technicolor has al! the patents of these intricate cameras and they merely rent them together with a chief cameraman to the studios. They are monster cameras weighing 275011). each, compared with an ordinary black and white camera’s 12001 b. Colour shots are photographed m three colours, red, bine and green, which means three reels of film instead of one. Lighting is different. An intense white light is used instead of the usual yellow, because technicolour cameras pick up yellow and spread it all over the film. A colour set needs three times as much light as ordinary sets. New Task For Art Staffs. Set painters have had to learn their jobs all over again. They knew what would photograph well in black and white, but now they have to experiment to find the exact colours to register in tints. Fashion designers have to design costumes in colours that will register well. All these things make colour films about four times as expensive as black and white. But Hollywood producers are shrewd men, and they would not invest millions of dollars in colour films if they thought they would not get their money back with profits. David Selznick began “Tom Sawyer” as a black and white film, but after a few weeks’ shooting he began all over again in colour. He saw what a success big “A Star Is Born” was. Selznick, like Goldwyn, one of the shrewdest men in the picture business, has discovered that colour is the best medium for telling a story on the screen. Both men saw “Vogues of 1938” before it was released and they were entirely won by colour. Warners are now shooting in colour “Gold is Where You Find It,” “Robin Hood,” and “Food for Scandal,” and they are preparing “Gold-diggers in Paris.” Selznick will shoot “Gone With the Wind” in colour, and he expects to start it in March. It will cost about 1,500.000 dollars. .Strangely enough, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Fox are lagging behind in colour. They are probably waiting to gee how their competitors get on. No doubt they will rush into it very shortly. In two years colour, it is predicted, will dominate Hollywood. It will be rare to see a black and white film, just as it is rare now to see a silent picture. Hollywood will not go into colour unprepared as it did into sound. Cameramen, set artists, make-up men and fashion designers have been trained for the new process and the changeover will take place without any fuss or bother.

The producers will get all the credit for making films -in colour, while the men responsible for the change—the chemists and scientists —wjll remain unsung. They are now probably looking for something new to lure you into the movie theatres.