Film tinting

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An example of light amber tinting and blue toning. From the Harold Lloyd comedy, Why Worry? (1923)

Film Tinting is the process of adding color to black and white film, usually by means of soaking the film in dye and staining the film emulsion. The effect is that all of the light shining through is filtered, so that what would be white light is, in fact, another color.

Film toning is the process of replacing the silver particles in the emulsion with colored, silver salts, by means of chemicals.

Contents

1 History

1.1 Tinting in the Silent Era
1.2 Tinting in later years

2 Common Tints
3 Process
4 Tinting in Restoration
5 References
6 See also

History

Tinting in the Silent Era

The process began in the late 1900s/1910s, originally as a copy-guard against film pirates. The film was tinted amber, the color of the safelight on film printers. The discovery of bleaching methods by pirates soon put an end to this.

Starting in the early 1910s, both the Edison Studios and the Biograph Company began tinting their films for setting moods. Because orthochromatic film stock could not be used in low-light situations, blue became the most popular tint, applied to scenes shot during the day and when projected, signified night.

By the early teens, with the onset of feature-length films, tinting was expanded upon as another mood setter, just as commonplace as music. The Society of Motion Picture Engineers estimated that by 1920, tinting was used for 80 to 90 percent of all films.

In 1921, Kodak introduced pre-tinted stocks, with stained plastic rather than dyed emulsion. The colors available originally were lavender, red, green, blue, pink, light amber, dark amber, yellow, and orange.

By the mid to late 1920s, tinting and toning were phased out for a number of reasons, the largest being that it was expensive and time consuming. The introduction of panchromatic film stock, which registered all light rather than just blue light, also lessened the need for tinting. This meant that it was possible to shoot dark scenes and not have to tint them to relate to the audience that it was night.

Another major factor was the coming of sound. In 1929, Kodak added to their tinted stocks a brand known as Sonochrome — pre-tinted stocks for sound films that did not interfere with the soundtrack. Although reference books stated for years that the death of tinting was because of the interference with optical sound, the actuality was that it interfered more with sound-on-disc processes such as Vitaphone, which needed to be frame accurate to keep in synchronization. Extra splices in a print were prone to human error and out of sync pictures.

Tinting in later years

Tinting was utilized for years up until the early 1950s in select sequences, full monochromatic pictures and short trailers and snipes.

MGM invented an interference-free toning process, which was used extensively in films such as The Wizard of Oz (1939) and The Sea Hawk (1940). Many MGM movies of the 1930s carried a sepia-like tone called "Pearl".

The Technicolor Corporation continued to experiment with both tinting, toning and colorizing. The last reel of Portrait of Jennie contained both green and amber tints by Technicolor. Mighty Joe Young displayed a further concept of tinting by Technicolor, with various shades of red, orange and yellow creating a fire-like effect for the last reel.

The Cinecolor Corporation also created similar effects, and sepia-toned several films as well as tinted select scenes in chapters of the 1951 Columbia serial, Captain Video.

Common Tints

Over the years, general rules developed for what color to use in certain scenes. Many of them were obvious, but a few artistic. Specific names were given to tints to specify certain colors. Striking effects could be achieved by both tinting and toning sequences.

In order of most common:

Amber Tint (variations: straw amber, light amber, night amber) - used for daylight interiors. Night amber was sometimes used for exterior night scenes that were lit. Orange was common for night time interiors

Yellow Tint (aka: Sunshine) - Used for daylight exteriors exclusively.

Blue Tint (variations: Azure, Nocturne) - For night scenes that had no visible light source other than the moon. Blue tone (processed in Ferric ferrocyanide solution) was also somewhat common and usually an amber tint were used for scenes well lit by lamps, candles, etc.

Sepia tone - Processed through a Silver Sulphide ferrocyanide or Uranium ferrocyanide solution. Popular as an alternative to Sunshine or Amber. Was very popular in westerns and other pictures of the 1930s through the 1950s because of the dusty tone it gave and technically for its low interference rate on the soundtrack.

Red Tint (variations: Scarlet, Inferno, Firelight) - Used for scenes of fire, fury or explosion. Firelight was a light orange/yellow that was used with red tone to create realistic flames. Red tone was created by processing through a Copper ferrocyanide solution.

Lavender Tint (variations: Purple Haze, Fleur de Lis) - Used in romantic, dusk or dawn, or oriental scenes primarily. Lavender tint was also used as a processing technique to cut down on contrast with duplicate negatives before fine grain positives were popular.

Rose (variations: Rose Doreé, Peachblow, Candleflame) - Similar to lavender, sometimes used for low-key lit night interiors.

Green Tint (variations: Verdante, Aqua Green) - Scenes tinted in green were generally mysterious or sea-faring scenes. Green tone, achieved by processing through Vanadium ferrocyanide solution, was commonly used in jungle and nature scenes.

Process

The process for tinting was quite simple. Editing was done in rolls based on tint color, with numbered frames of film in between scenes for later assembly. Once these rolls were printed from the negative, they were immersed in aniline dyes, specified to the colors that were listed in the script or continuity. Once they had dried on large film drums, they were assembled in correct order and rewound onto reels.

Toning was similar, but instead of aniline dyes, it used chemicals to change the silver image into colored salts.

Tinting in Restoration

Tinting and Toning are viewed upon as important factors in the film restoration community today. They were an integral part of the moviegoing experience and the processes have been duplicated with modern methods for both video and film, based on the specifications of existing documentations on each film.