Cinecolor

Cinecolor was an early subtractive color-model two color motion picture process, based upon the Prizma system of the 1910s and 1920s and the Multicolor system of the late 1920s and 1930s. It was developed by William T. Crispinel and Alan M. Gundelfinger, and its various formats were in use from 1932 to 1955.

A bi-pack color process, the photographer loaded a standard camera with two film stocks, an orthochromatic strip dyed red, plus a panchromatic strip behind it. The ortho film stock recorded only blue and green, while its red filtration passed red light to the panchromatic film stock.

In the laboratory, the negatives were processed on duplitized film and each emulsion was toned red or cyan.

While Cinecolor could produce vibrant reds, oranges, blues, browns and flesh tones, its renderings of other colors such as bright greens (rendered dark green) and purples (rendered a sort of dark magenta) were muted.

The Cinecolor process was invented in 1932 by English-born cinematographer William Thomas Crespinel (1890–1987), who joined the Kinemacolor Corporation in 1906, and who went to New York in 1913 to work with Kinemacolor's American unit. After that company folded in 1916, he worked for Prizma, another color film company, founded by William Van Doren Kelley. He later worked for Multicolor, and patented several inventions in the field of color cinematography.

Crespinel founded Cinecolor, Inc. (later Cinecolor Corporation) in 1932 as a response to the success of the Technicolor Corporation, which held a partial monopoly on motion picture color. William Loss, a director of the Citizens Traction Company in New York, was its principal investor. The company bought four acres of land in Burbank, California for its processing plant. Crespinel retired as president of Cinecolor in 1948.

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