Prizma
The Prizma Color system was a
Experimental
Prizma gave a demonstration of color motion pictures in 1917 that used an additive four-color process, using a disk of four filters acting on a single strip of
- The results by this process are characterized by extreme delicacy of color, and subdued shades are most admirably rendered.… The blue-green element of the projecting filter appears to favor the blue rather than the green, and as a result, skies and water are well reproduced. We have not noticed anything approaching a true green in any of the subjects so far exhibited, although this is probably by reason of the fact that no prominent greens existed in the subjects photographed. Yellow is not in evidence in the current Prizma films, although a wide variety of warm tones are apparent, ranging from chestnut-brown to a deep red-orange. Colors in full saturation are hardly within the scope of this process.[3]
Prizma I (additive)
The first commercial system of Prizma was similar to Kinemacolor in that the camera took alternating frames of red-orange and blue-green colors through color filters placed within the camera's shutter. Projection involved running a colored disc again in synchronization with the black and white color record film, and through persistence of vision, the two frames combined on the screen to form a color image.
The first film shown in Prizma color was the feature Our Navy at the 44th Street Theatre in New York City on 23 December 1917. General reception to the system was positive, but the rotating filter wheel technique proved impractical. To counteract the issue of having a special projector with a filter wheel, Kelley began tinting alternate frames of his film red and green. However, fringeing, flicker, and light loss were major issues which plagued not only Prizma, but also all of the other additive systems of the Kinemacolor nature.
In counteracting this, Kelley had filed a patent in February 1917 which proved to be the foundation of Prizma's second color system.
Prizma II (subtractive)
On 28 December 1918, Kelley announced that Prizma would release a color film (usually a short) every week, a film which would be projectable on any standard projector. Kelley's idea was two years in the making, but was a valid one which became the springboard for all future color systems to follow — two films were filmed simultaneously with a camera of his own design. One strip was sensitive to red-orange, the other to blue-green (
In January 1919, this new process was premiered at the Rivoli Theatre in New York City with the short Everywhere With Prizma. Kelley, based in Jersey City, New Jersey, was a friend of the Rivoli's manager and music director Hugo Riesenfeld and so did business with Samuel Roxy Rothafel's Roxy Theaters chain, which the Rivoli was part of.
In February 1921, another Prizma film, Bali, the Unknown was premiered at Roxy's Capitol Theatre in New York. The four-reel feature garnered lukewarm reviews, but enough positive audience response that more films were produced in the system.
The Prizma process only took off in 1922, when
Prizma sued the Technicolor Corporation in September 1922 on the grounds that Technicolor was infringing upon Prizma's patents. However, Prizma eventually lost the case.
In April 1923,
Work in 3D film
With
Based on the success of Movies of the Future, Kelley had his chief photographer, William T. Crispinel, shoot another short film entitled Through the Trees — Washington D.C. in the spring of 1923. The film was not shot with the Prizma rig — which was being used by Flaherty in Samoa — but with one designed by Frederic E. Ives, a technician specializing in 3D photography. Although the short was technically shot better, Riesenfeld rejected it because it did not have the 3D gimmicks that the recent films of that nature included.
Decline
The last few years of Prizma were somewhat fruitful.
One of the last films using Prizma was Venus of the South Seas (1924), starring Annette Kellerman, where Prizma was used for one reel of a 55-minute film. Venus was restored by the Library of Congress in 2004.
In 1928, Prizma was bought by Consolidated Film Industries and was reintroduced as Magnacolor (and later Trucolor). Kelley, who held many patents in color photography, sold his patents and equipment to Cinecolor, which benefited from Kelley's advanced printing techniques. Ironically, Cinecolor was co-founded by Kelley's former photographer, William T. Crispinel.
List of films made in Prizma Color
- An Afternoon With Nanki San (1921)
- Arabian Duet (1922)
- Artist's Paradise (1921)
- Bali, the Unknown (1921)
- Beautiful Things (1920)
- Bird Island (1919)
- Broadway Rose (1922)
- Butterflies (1921)
- Canoe and Campfire (1919)
- Capetown (1922)
- Catalonian Pyrenees (1919)
- China (1919)
- Children of the Netherlands (1919)
- Color Sketches (1922)
- Color-Land Review (1919)
- The Cost of Carelessness (1920)
- Danse Arabe (1922)
- Danse du Ventre (1921)
- Dawning (1921)
- Everywhere With Prizma (1919)
- Fashion Hints (1922)
- Flames of Passion (UK, 1922)
- Florida Sports (1919)
- From the Land of the Incas (1920)
- Gardens of Normandy (1921)
- The Gilded Lily (1921)
- Glacier Park (1919)
- The Glorious Adventure (UK, 1922)
- Gowns Venus Would Envy, starring Edith Varian Cockcroft (1919)
- Hagopian the Rug Maker (1920)
- Hawaii (1919)
- Hawaiian Islands (1920)
- Heart of the Sky Mountains (1920)
- Heidi (Heidi of the Alps) (1920)
- Here and There (1919)
- The Heritage of the Red Man (1922)
- I Pagliacci(UK, 1923)
- Ice Fields, Glaciers, and the Birth of Bergs (1919)
- The Impi (1922)
- In Nippon (1920)
- In School Days (1920)
- An Indian Summer (1921)
- Japan (1921)
- Japanese Fishing Village (1920)
- Kilauea-The Hawaiian Volcano (1918)
- The Land of the Great Spirit (1919)
- Lest We Forget (1922)
- A Little Love Nest (1922)
- Lure of Alaska (1919)
- Magic Gems (1921)
- Marimba Land (1920)
- May Days (1920)
- Memories (1919)
- The Message of the Flowers (1921)
- Mining in Alaska (1919)
- The Mirror (1923)
- Model Girls (1919)
- Moonlight Sonata (1922)
- Neighbor Nelly (1921)
- Oahu (1919)
- Oases of the Sahara (1923)
- Old Faithful (1919)
- Our Navy (Our Invincible Navy) (1918)
- Out of the Sea (1919)
- Picturesque Japan (1919)
- Pinto's Prizma Comedy Revue (1919)
- A Prizma Color Visit to Catalina (1919)
- The Refreshing Riviera (1920)
- Rheims (1921)
- The Sacred City of the Desert (1921)
- The Sno-Birds (1921)
- So This Is London (1922)
- Sunbeams (1923)
- Sunshine Gatherers (1921)
- Swaziland South Africa (1920)
- Teddy in Glacier Land (1922)
- Vanity Fair (1923)
- Venus of the South Seas (1924) final film made in Prizma
- The Virgin Queen (UK, 1923)
- La Voix du Rossignol (France, 1924) directed by Ladislas Starevich
- Way Down East (1920) directed by D. W. Griffith
- Way Up Yonder (1920)
- Where Poppies Bloom (1923)
- Wonderful Water (1922)
See also
- Color motion picture film
- Color photography
- List of early color feature films
- List of color film systems
- List of film formats
- List of motion picture film stocks
- Technicolor
- RG color space
References
External links
- Prizma I and II on Timeline of Historical Film Colors, with primary and secondary sources, patents, and photographs of historical film prints.
- List of Prizma films at the IMDb (incomplete)
- U.S. Patent: Method of Producing Colored Photographic Images, filed 1914. The patent describes systems using two-color or three-color filter wheels.broken link
- U.S. Patent: Film or the Like for Color Photography, filed 1914.broken link