Silent Film 101 - Techniques & Technology

Brand new to silents? Wondering where to start? This section has quick, bite-size info on films, performers, directors, etc.

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Silent Film 101 - Techniques & Technology

Post by BettyLouSpence »

This thread will give a brief rundown on the film making techniques and technology of the silent era, both on the set and off. There will be multiple posts for different categories. This list can be expanded to accommodate more categories if needed.

Categories:


On Set Techniques
In the Lab
All About Color
Terminology

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Re: Silent Film 101 - Techniques & Technology

Post by BettyLouSpence »

Image

Mabel Normand at the camera.

On Set Techniques
  • What is undercranking?
In the silent era, cameras were hand cranked. The slower a camera is cranked during filming, the faster the footage is when viewed; conversely, the faster a camera is cranked, the slower the footage appears. This speed often varied scene to scene depending on what the filmmakers wanted to achieve. Undercranking (and its opposite, overcranking) is exactly what it sounds like: many slapstick two-reelers, for example, would crank the camera slower than normal* for a comedic effect when played back.

*Regarding normal... there was never a true industry standard regarding frame rate throughout the silent era; even then, as there is today, there was controversy over which was 'correct', and films weren't always shown at their intended speeds. But it typically varied between 16 - 24 fps, depending on the film.

  • What is double exposure/multiple exposure?
Multiple exposure is when the same strip of film is exposed to light more than once; after a scene is shot, the film can be rewound and used again to capture another image, and superimpose the two. Story elements involving ghosts, daydreams, guilt, flying, etc. have been expressed using multiple exposure. In Little Lord Fauntleroy (1921), Mary Pickford played both the title character and his mother. With double exposure - and with the help of a matte of her silhouette - Pickford was able to give herself a kiss on the cheek.

  • What is a matte?
A matte is a technique used to combine two elements of a scene into one. Usually this involves a painted background, foreground, or obscuring sections of the shot for later double/multiple exposure. In Ella Cinders (1926), Colleen Moore had her character perform impossible eye acrobatics via use of a matte: half the shot was obscured while Colleen wildly moved her eye in every direction, and she did the same when the film was rewound and shot again, this time with the other half obscured.

  • What is a glass shot?
A glass shot is a matte technique where a scene is shot with a piece of transparent glass placed in front of the camera. Details will be painted onto the glass, usually background and foreground elements, etc. A castle, for example, could be portrayed with the bottom being a real constructed set and the top being painted on glass, eliminating the need for expensive set construction or on location shots.

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Re: Silent Film 101 - Techniques & Technology

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Image

Beatrice Bentley, Anna May Wong, and Priscilla Moran in The Toll of the Sea (1922), filmed in two-color Technicolor no. 2. From Wikimedia.


All About Color

  • Were all silent movies black and white?
No, not all of them. While the majority were not filmed in natural color, that doesn't mean the rest were strictly in black and white. One way of bringing color to the screen was through tinting, which means the film is physically soaked in a dye. To make everything easier, filming could be done with pre-tinted film stock, which was introduced by Kodak in 1921. Amber was a popular choice, and different scenes could be tinted different colors, such as blue to signify night. The practice of tinting films with colors other than amber seems to have waned a bit in popularity by the late 1920s.

The earliest "color" films were hand tinted. Sections of the image were dyed by hand, which was painstaking considering the number of frames and small space to work with, though stencils could be used to ease the process. One of the most famous examples of hand tinting is Annabelle Serpentine Dance (1895), where Annabelle's billowing skirt appears to change color with each movement.


Image

However, these are not the same as actual color photography in motion pictures. For this, different motion picture color processes were developed. These could be additive or subtractive. Put very, very simply, additive relies on light traveling through color filters during filming and projection. Subtractive also relies on color filters for filming but not for projection, as the image already has the color information via dyes in the film itself. Think of it like this: additive = light. Subtractive = dye.

Early color cinematography utilized additive processes; subtractive processes were introduced around 1920. Buckle up! We're getting technical.

  • What happens in additive and subtractive processes?
In an additive color process, black and white film is exposed through alternating color filters. The print would then be projected through alternating color filters when screened. It's important to note that the print itself is not actually in color; it's still in black and white. But different colors show up differently on black and white film, so a frame exposed to light through a red filter and a frame exposed to light through a green filter will not look the same. These are the color records. Check out the images from Kinemacolor gallery at filmcolors.org as an example. This is why special projection equipment was required for films shot in an additive color process: the colors were synthesized when the frames were projected through the color filter they were shot in.

For example: in Kinemacolor, successive frames would contain red records and green records (so, from top down: red, green, red, green, etc.). During screening, when a frame exposed through a red filter is projected, it's through a red filter. When a frame exposed through a green filter is projected, it's through a green filter.

In a subtractive color process, color records are still recorded onto black and white film, but the different records are dyed their complementary colors, or the colors opposite them on the color wheel. In one two-color Technicolor process, System 2, two color records are used, red and green. The red record was dyed blue-green, and the green record was dyed red-orange. These two dyed records were then cemented together.

The reason the color records were dyed their complementary colors is because the complementary dyes would block the other colors light. For example, the blue-green dye would block red light. So, when the red record is dyed blue-green, the blue green is lighter where there was more red in the image.


Image

Clara Bow in a two-color Technicolor (no. 3) screen test for Red Hair (1928).

  • What color processes were there?
There were a lot! Here are four major ones used during the silent era:

Kinemacolor

A two-color additive process in commercial use from 1908 until 1914 when World War I began. It was the first successful color system, though it found more appeal in Europe than in the US. Red and green optical filters were used in filming and projection. Kinemacolor built upon a three-color additive process - the earliest known color motion picture process - patented by Edward Raymond Turner in 1899; unfortunately, he died in 1903 of a sudden heart attack at only 29 before he could develop it any further.

Prizma Color

Started off as a two-color additive system (Prizma I; 1916) before becoming a two-color subtractive system (Prizma II; 1918). Prizma was the predecessor for future subtractive color systems. The last films using the Prizma system were shot in about 1924.

Kodachrome

This is not the same Kodachrome for color still photography that would launch in 1935. Developed in 1915, this two-color subtractive system printed red and blue-green color records onto a single strip of film, which would be dyed red on one side and cyan on the other. There were a few experimental films shot in this two-color process, including a series of screen tests from 1922 shot in Rochester, New York that featured screen actresses such as Mae Murray.

Two-color Technicolor

The first Technicolor system, System 1/no. 1, was a two-color additive one developed in 1917; the two-color subtractive process that's more familiar to us today, System 2/no. 2, was developed in 1922. For the subtractive process, red and green records were captured on a black and white negative during filming via a special camera. Two positives were made of the red and green records in the lab; these two strips were cemented together and each side of the print dyed their corresponding complementary colors: blue-green and red-orange.

Unfortunately, the green dye has a tendency to fade over time, leaving just the orange. System 2 Technicolor prints also had a tendency to "cup", caused by the expansion of the strip facing the arc lamp in the projector. A third two-color Technicolor process, System 3/no. 3, was developed in 1927 and used until 1933; the dyes were transferred to a single strip of film, eliminating the need for two strips to be cemented and thus the cupping issue.

  • Why weren't more movies filmed in color?
Expense and practicality. In the case of an additive process such as Kinemacolor, the specialized projection equipment proved rather infeasible in use. The alternating color filters had to be lined up before screening, and even then there was always some amount of color fringing (when you can see the red and green "bleed" out, sort of like viewing 3-D footage without the glasses).

Subtractive processes were not without their own issues. With two-color Technicolor, the process was very expensive. The special camera used twice as much film and specialists from Technicolor needed to be hired for filming. The negatives also had to be sent to the Technicolor labs, which added to the cost. The aforementioned cupping of System 2 prints was also a problem, though this was rectified via improvements to the technology in System 3.

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Re: Silent Film 101 - Techniques & Technology

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Image

Florence La Badie in The Evidence of the Film (1913).

In The Lab
  • How did they make intertitles?
With no recorded dialogue, silents relayed their story through intertitles.* These were physical cards with text that were filmed, with the footage being spliced at various intervals throughout the reel, conveying narrative and/or dialogue. The text was most commonly printed onto the card, but they could also be handwritten. At their most basic, titles simply contained text with no extra flourish. Early on, there were already more elaborate and artistic cards being created; these are known as art titles, and they could contain some truly breathtaking visuals. Some titles would also contain text superimposed over live-action or animated footage; these effects would've been achieved with double exposure.

*The term intertitle is a more modern one; during the silent era, the proper name was actually subtitle, which was shortened to title. They were also referred to as leaders and title cards, among other terms.


Image

An example of an art title. From The Blue Bird (1918). Note the purplish tint.

  • What's the difference between tinting and toning? And how did they do it?
Many silent films employed the use of color through tinting and toning. When a film is tinted, the highlights of the original black and white are colored. When a film is toned, it's the shadows that are colored. These processes could be combined, making for some truly gorgeous visuals.

Here are some examples of both from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) and Fool's Paradise (1921) to check out at filmcolors.org:

Tinting in Caligari

Toning in Caligari

Tinting and Toning in Fool's Paradise

Before learning how they did tinting and toning, let's get familiar with what motion picture film (film stock) is made of. At its most basic, film stock consists of a transparent base which is coated on one side with a photosensitive emulsion. In the silent era, the industry standard for professional motion pictures was nitrate film stock. The emulsion was a gelatin containing microscopic silver halide particles; the film base was cellulose nitrate (aka nitrocellulose), which is why it's called nitrate film.

During tinting, the positive print is physically soaked in a dye bath, which stains the gelatin emulsion with the color. During toning, the positive print is soaked in a chemical solution, which causes a reaction that replaces the silver in the gelatin emulsion with another metallic compound.

First, the scenes to be tinted* would be taken from the original camera negative and assembled in whatever order the different colors would be arranged (e.g. yellow first, then blue, then green, and so on) onto their own reel. A positive print is struck, and the different groups of scenes would be dyed their appropriate color. Lab technicians were helped out by tint slugs - frames between the scenes that had the required color written on them.

Finally, the reels were left to dry before being spliced back into the release print in correct order; instructions for assembly would've been printed to aid in this. Now it was ready for distribution to theaters. The introduction of pre-tinted film stock cut down on the labor somewhat, as the scenes could be shot directly onto the colored stock, though they still had to be spliced into the film in order.

Here is an example of a splice, from Malombra (1917):

Splice from Malombra

And here are images of the room for tinting, toning and washing, and the negative inspection room, from the tinting page at brianpritchard.com:

Tinting, toning and washing room

Negative inspection room


*Save for the different soaking solution, the process for toning was essentially the same.

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