COLOURED FILMS

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 690, 15 June 1929, Page 16

COLOURED FILMS

NEW ZEALAND BEAUTY SPOTS SPECIAL LENS NEEDED (From Our Resident Reporter) WELLINGTON, Friday. Disappointment has attended the first tests of the new technicolcur process for the making of motion pictures which has been purchased by the Government Publicity Department. The department imported a special small-sized mechanism, intending to us© it in the manufacture of future New Zealand films, and to refilm all th© country’s 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 colourprocess film a srrfall spec-iai lens is necessary- This is fitted to the projector and is obtainable at low cost. At the same time the actual film is not taken in colour, but in black and white, th© colour being gained from th© special lens. Thus the department intended to continue its plan of pic-ture-making, theatres which felt so inclined being given the opportunity to install 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” (or 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 lias been received that the new attachment is not yet upon the market. However, 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 possess), the remarkable results which have been , gained in actual colour work will j make the new departure worth while, j Meantime, however, it seems that two j series of films will have to be made j —one in colour and the other the ordinary black and white negative.