The First Colour Moving Pictures at the National Science and Media Museum

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11 жыл бұрын

The first colour moving pictures are on display in the Kodak Gallery at the National Science and Media Museum, Bradford. Find out more: www.scienceandmediamuseum.org...
Lee and Turner's invention has always been regarded by film historians as a practical failure but it has now been 'unlocked' through digital technology, revealing the images produced by the process for the first time in over a hundred years.
Turner developed his complex three-colour process with support, first from Lee and then from the American film entrepreneur, Charles Urban. Using a camera and projector made by Brighton-based engineer Alfred Darling, Turner developed the process sufficiently to take various test films of colourful subjects such as a macaw, a goldfish in a bowl against a brightly striped background and his children playing with sunflowers, before his death in 1903 aged just 29. Urban went on to develop the process further with the pioneer film-maker George Albert Smith which resulted in the commercially successful Kinemacolor system, patented in 1906 and first exhibited to the public in 1909. Sadly, Turner's widow never received a penny from her husband's invention.
On discovering the film, Michael Harvey, Curator of Cinematography, worked with film archive experts Brian Pritchard and David Cleveland to reconstruct the moving footage in colour following the precise method laid out in Lee and Turner's 1899 patent. They turned to experts at the BFI National Archive who were able to undertake the delicate work of transforming the film material into digital files, and so the team were able to watch these vivid colour moving pictures for the first time, over one hundred years since they had been made.

Пікірлер: 163

@MikeeMerge 11 жыл бұрын

I love early film. It's the closest thing we have to time travel.

@sikkuburo5267 4 жыл бұрын

Can we please have a high-quality version of these films in their entirety without the watermark?

@TheStockwell 11 жыл бұрын

Turner's ingenuity in creating this system in 1902, which he never saw in action (he died the next year) is astounding. The lengths gone through 110 years later to restore it are incredible. I'm assuming this might be a first attempt at what might be an even more thorough and meticulous fuller restoration.

@Linkage1992 11 жыл бұрын

Seeing old photos and videos in colour makes it seem like not that long ago.

@JMChladek 11 жыл бұрын

This color film process reminds me of one of the early color television processes which also used a mechanical color wheel to both film the images in color filters and re-output them at the receiving end. Nice to see that somebody was thinking along similar lines all those years ago and the images are fascinating to watch.

@CearyAuryn 11 жыл бұрын

I agree with you. It's like a separate life from that which we live now. We are privileged to be able to witness this! I was excited to see this. :)

@Ylop46 11 жыл бұрын

it is kinda cool that after hundred years we could shoot with something infinitesimally small

@GibsonVienna 11 жыл бұрын

HD in the 1900 Version. Unbelivable. Edward Turner was a Hero.

@axford 11 жыл бұрын

I was thinking along similar lines. However, a lot of archiving is done on 35mm as it has been proven to be a stable format for many decades. In the 'digital era' a system can come in to play for a while and then be deemed obsolete in just a short while. Also, no one can say what the shelf life of a digital master will be. Therefore, studios still archive films, even those shot with digital cameras on 35mm negative for this reason.

@recepakturk13n 4 жыл бұрын

That is amazing !! precursors

@Elrich89 10 жыл бұрын

You're totally missing the point. The point is that physical film - that exists in the real world - survives. Digital data is entirely too vulnerable. It's a very, very bad idea to have digital-only archives.

@DoubleMonoLR 4 жыл бұрын

Digital data can be stored on tapes etc if necessary, it shouldn't be particularly difficult for future generations to recover the data assuming the tapes(or other meda) survive. Traditional film etc is also vulnerable anyway unfortunately, such as the vast amounts lost to fires.

@debranchelowtone 2 жыл бұрын

@@DoubleMonoLR For such a short film we can make several 35mm copies and store them in different vaults.

@karynellis8404 3 жыл бұрын

Incredible! Just finding this now and I am utterly mesmerized.

@IdentTelevision 11 жыл бұрын

Extraordinary, had no idea that a Field-sequential colour system had been developed as early as 1902! One assumes, using filter wheels and being mechanical, it works the same way as the much later US CBS colour TV format of the mid 1950's?

@CommunityGuidelines 11 жыл бұрын

An amazing achievement, by both the originators and the restorationists! Bravo, gentlemen. For those interested in early color photography, I highly recommend the marvelous book "The Dawn of the Color Photograph: Albert Kahn's Archives of the Planet" which contains beautiful color photographs taken in 1909!

@swallin19 11 жыл бұрын

Very interesting, it raise the question of why the film was not archived properly or researched before. It had been known in references to Lee Turner and was assumed lost. I wonder if other films exist abroad of early processes an film standards. The film industry barely looks after 20year old material, let alone 108+ years ago. It is also a pity it is in Bradford and difficult apart from the area), to get to. This is a national resource and should be in London.

@ExtraTerrestrials 11 жыл бұрын

the quality for that time is better than most youtube videos nowadays

@soulmercer 10 ай бұрын

Extraordinary! Great work!

@plsmodium 11 жыл бұрын

Thank you for your great and important work, brothers!

@DEricFranks 11 жыл бұрын

Amazing work, then and now.

@mllrgrl 10 жыл бұрын

This is so wonderful, the combination of such an amazing find by and the knowledge and patience of Mr Pritchard and Mr Cleveland lead to a gift for the entire world. :)

@BobDiaz123 11 жыл бұрын

That is amazing !!!!! It was a lot of work to restore the film.

@theprophet20 11 жыл бұрын

Have you seen the posting on KZfaq, "Panoramic View of the Morecambe Sea Front (1901)"? It's incredibly clear and vivid, and with its atmospheric music, and the fact that some of the women are in mourning dress for Queen Victoria who died that year, as well as the frolicking children - I confess I find it almost heartbreaking...

@lunatim 11 жыл бұрын

Unfreakingbelievable! I'm dimly aware of Kinemacolor by Urban and read somewhere that Friese-Greene made an experimental color clip, but I never heard of Edward Turner until now. This is really mind-blowing--whoo, hoo!

@patrickr991 10 жыл бұрын

The quality is amazing !!!!

@michaelterry1000 11 жыл бұрын

Thank you. More specifically I am looking for very early Television broadcasts. WWII in color is an excellent series. Thanks again

@logicforfirstgraders 11 жыл бұрын

It's because the 35mm is an image of the actual image rather than information of what the image is in an accepted code. It makes the copy into a standard format that is still useable without substantial knowledge of computing (if you're starting from scratch). All you need is a light and a screen. It's like an lp being an actual physical imprint of the noise, if you just have the needle following the grove you can hear the sound when you put your ear near to it.

@zonie9872 11 жыл бұрын

Absolutely unbelievable. Amazing

@leonardorosendodasilva 10 жыл бұрын

Incrível como naquela tempos já existia filme colorido

@nytecam 11 жыл бұрын

This is amazing news to see these first full colour movie clips of 110 yrs ago - it is a shame that Edward Turner died aged 28 and never perfected a projector to see his incredible work. Well done NMM for this 'discovery' BBC TV News interviewed Turner's granddaughter whose father is the little boy on the right in the garden movie.

@plsmodium 11 жыл бұрын

Awesome! Thanks mate!

@TeamCGS2005 11 жыл бұрын

Truly amazing.

@user-wk2uf5yo7x 6 жыл бұрын

So many things changed since 100 years ago it's disheartening

@dxdn_yt 11 жыл бұрын

This is super cool!

@SBARTSTV 11 жыл бұрын

Wonderful

@RoseBudpony1 5 жыл бұрын

i loved seeing world war 2 or 1 in color on TV, (thats the shows title i think) it was cool & vibrant!

@A1Huxley 11 жыл бұрын

The UK had mechanical colour and an option for a big line count tv system ready in the 1940's. It was mechanical, very large and would not be from the USA. The US selected to go with a local product that was smaller, less mechanical and would bring cash back to the USA for many years. The US did not want to rush into imports, so they waited. They got a "made in the USA" electronic system in the end.

@nicholearaiza5543 11 жыл бұрын

Amazing!

@albear972 11 жыл бұрын

Nice! I have to get some 3-D glasses to see the film better!

@varnlestoff 11 жыл бұрын

amazing

@DaveYostCom 11 жыл бұрын

Facinating. Please also make a proper restoration with registration and color correction.

@toresbe 11 жыл бұрын

I'm sorry, but if we disregard Baird's dead-end system, I'm quite certain that the first hybrid electronic/mechanical colour TV work (electronic pickup tube with a spinning colour filter) was done in the US by CBS, using the field-sequential and dot-sequential systems. Then came RCA's brilliant fully electronic compatible-colour system, later standardised as NTSC, which was also used with minor changes in Europe as PAL.

@geebe 11 жыл бұрын

Show us the entire footage

@Elrich89 10 жыл бұрын

You should read Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes. He discusses something called 'punctum', the overwhelming sense of mortality when looking at a photo or film. It's very moving!

@invincibleservant 11 жыл бұрын

I find it moving when people spell their, there, and they're correctly.

@PeterKoperdan 11 жыл бұрын

Great stuff. Although it would have been nice if the Prime Focus London did some more post-processing wizardry to make color separations register bit better..

@michaelterry1000 11 жыл бұрын

Bravo, great story, I love early film/video technology. I have been looking for the earliest recorded television broadcasts. I cant seem to find anything previous to WWII. If anyone knows of 30's or WWII era video recording on the web please reply to this comment and tell me where it can be seen. Thank You.

@toresbe 11 жыл бұрын

It's a frame-sequential system, of course - since there is no interlacing on film. :) Are you familiar with the still-photo works of Prokudin-Gorsky? If not, I suggest you google it.

@SO_DIGITAL 11 жыл бұрын

I suppose to get the print scanned it would need to be in 35mm? It's a good point though. It would be interesting to see how a proper frame allignment, noise removal and color correction would make it look.

@dudeinthesea 11 жыл бұрын

2 people don't quite get that this technology is the earliest ancestor of KZfaq

@jmlbloom 11 жыл бұрын

where is the full video of the film?

@occasionalwind 11 жыл бұрын

The film historian Tom Trusky who passed away in 2009 would have loved to see this footage of the First Color Moving Pictures!

@sheenshinesheen 11 жыл бұрын

wow 110 years ago and they had colour!!!

@themrparticleman 11 жыл бұрын

you sir, are awesome. it's very rare nowadays you find an even remotely philisophical or intelligent comment. (srry i cnt spl)

@prwexler 11 жыл бұрын

Wow! How smart. 3 b/w photos through color filters to produce a color image.

@xFnKxfighten 11 жыл бұрын

When is it being remade in 3D?

@Asterra2 11 жыл бұрын

Fascinating and historically important, but the restoration process, particularly the 35mm optical copy, seems a little backward. Here's what I would have done: 2k scans of the original frames. Split into three video feeds, one for each color. Frame interpolation for each feed (at 3x the starting rate, to match the original film's framerate). Combine the result. This would give a smooth image without the heavy color bleeding you can see in anything that's actually moving or panning.

@debranchelowtone 2 жыл бұрын

I would love to do this. Is there a clean transfert of this film somewhere ?

@rg0057 11 жыл бұрын

Is there any information on who was the director/cinematographer of the seven clips excerpted here? Presumably Turner filmed his own family. But the rest?

@Rhythmicons 11 жыл бұрын

Is this film public domain and is it available for download?

@IdentTelevision 11 жыл бұрын

erm the CBS colour system was progressive scan not interlaced (that was purely a PAL, SCAM system requirement) and was partly mechanical.. this film system appearers to use almost an identical process, with the linear R G B filtered images and spinning colour wheel.... the only major difference being the use of a progressive scan CRT instead of the film negative.... anyway with out getting into an argument .... Fascinating stuff, well done Bradford!

@sneo1537 11 жыл бұрын

Awesome! ...Looks a bit like the CGI on Star Wars: Episode I.

@DrowningInTea 11 жыл бұрын

Sometimes SSDs die without a reason while magnetic drive will tell you there is a problem by making more noise. Also TRIM makes data recovery in SSD basically impossible.

@NYCForeverbaby 11 жыл бұрын

imovie has come a long way!

@VampyreCake 11 жыл бұрын

I think the same thing about everyone in old films, pictures, etc. What were they like? How did they live? Did they have a good life, or not? It's just too much to think that everyone there is dead and gone.

@johneygd 9 жыл бұрын

I guess that when a red filter was placed on the b&w camera, that it causes an chemical reaction on the film diodes,and the same thing with green and blue filters,and once those b&w filtered frames were taken out and scanned in another film at the standard order,with each frame filtered with it's corresponding filter with a light bulb,i guess that it again causes an chemical reaction on the foto diodes of the other film,and that even during digitizing,those shock signal pattern remain in tact,sothat once they were digitally applied with the right filter & combined together,that those colors magically appear to live after 110 years of waiting to be recovered ,but i think his projector could,ve work if he tweaked it in synch with the camera speed.

@oldbob1951 11 жыл бұрын

Here's a few pre-war tv broadcasts recorded on film directly from a tv receiver screen. Go to archive.org and search for these files: BbcTelevisionReceivedInNewYork-1938; GlimpsesOf1930sGermanliveTelevision; GlimpsesOf1938AmericanliveTelevision. There also exists filmed excerpts of pre-war American, British and German tv programs, but they were not recorded directly from a tv receiver like these were.

@atava85 6 жыл бұрын

I apologize if my question sounds silly or has already been answered, but couldn't we restore and use one of Turner's own projectors and then try the original films on that? That would make for a more faithful playback of his recordings, I think.

@Eyedunno 5 жыл бұрын

You could probably do that, but it wouldn't look as good as what they did, and what they did still works on the same principle as the original system, just with scanning rather than projection. They can combine, for instance, subframes R1/G2/B3 followed by G2/B3/R4, B3/R4/G5, R4/G5/B6 and so on, advancing one subframe and one color at a time for each frame that would have been projected.

@debranchelowtone 2 жыл бұрын

Film can shrink over time, and projector will tear it into confettis.

@DaveYostCom 11 жыл бұрын

If he shot all three colors simultaneously, why are there sequential RGB artifacts when there is motion?

@mickeyindahouse12 5 жыл бұрын

So the first color film isn't from 1902 but 2nd quarter of 1901 and is the knightsbridge of London.

@Rihodejaneiro 11 жыл бұрын

Nationalmediamuseum. Can u guys somehow to the exactly same film in St Ann's Well Hove and Brighton Pier to seafront. Surely there are more people who wants to see that different how the places changed in 1902 and 2012. Sorry about my English

@troysvisualarts 11 жыл бұрын

WOW, this is truly amazing to see!!!:D I am a fan of historical colour film n colour television n this is an absolute legendary discovery n very interesting n cool process that is like the predecessor of CBS's field sequential colour TV system of the 40s-50s! Thought I'd mention I've seen on KZfaq another little 3 coloured film from 1903 watch?v=LcIvm0YW_6A what do you's know of that little colour film as the details are a bit sketchy?

@kakhak 11 жыл бұрын

amazing. but maybe there is another similar moving pictures exist somwhere.

@Mediagix 11 жыл бұрын

I don't see the point in the 35mm copy, why not go digital straight away. A good DI & Compositor should be able to fix the colour misalignments as well.

@sarpsarp8987 Жыл бұрын

I dont understand how b&w pictures have different colors in themselves with blue, green and red filters.

@johneymute 9 жыл бұрын

I assume that it is an chemical reactionof those foto diodes,once those pictures were recaptured for a modern projector, each foto was taken from the gate with it's corresponding color filter along with a light bulp,my idea is that this may also work with b&w images because each part of those images shut retain some color traces,so what if we shine a light bulp trough those images to force a chemical reaction in those foto diodes along with 3 rgb color filter one after another,then put those 3 filtered images together to get color,my voice say's that all b&w images,video's have traces of color information left.

@aureanR4 11 жыл бұрын

hit 1080p for the best colors!

@transitionmusic09 11 жыл бұрын

Someone should stop those kids bashing that fishtank with sunflowers. They'll stress the carp.

@Vicvines 11 жыл бұрын

oh i didnt know that

@iwasadeum 11 жыл бұрын

Oh my God. There, their, and they're are three different words. They cannot be used interchangeably. There - location. "Look over there." Their - possessive. "That's their dog." They're - THEY ARE. "I see very old film footage of children and knowing THEY'RE gone....joy of THEIR childhood." For fucks sake, it isn't difficult. on the other hand I understand what you think. Watching that amazing WW2 in HD documentary and seeing that almost all those people are now passed on...crazy.

@AdurianJ 11 жыл бұрын

I just hope these cute kids didn't end up in the Great War when they where on the verge of adulthood

@shellyljackson 11 жыл бұрын

No, you are mistaken. There is no possible way that a human being who was alive in 1890 is still living and breathing in 2012. The oldest living person to record lived to 122 years old.

@aquenwisey 11 жыл бұрын

true

@Vicvines 11 жыл бұрын

the best way to preserve history is to use current technology. solid state drives are replacing hard drives and are made to last a lot longer. if we were to put all of our human history onto them, we could easily preserve them for hundreds of years until better technology comes out.

@gabyalmazan7581 11 жыл бұрын

the film reminds me of a dream i had

@shebotnov 11 жыл бұрын

I was talking about dead actors in 2100. And HD is still HD. It wont get WORSE in 2100.

@senorverde09 10 жыл бұрын

All early colour films using an additive RGB process (even really early two colour RG films) suffer from colour fringing.

@seamonkeys12y 7 жыл бұрын

Surely you could of just wound the tape through at a set speed and get the camera to take a photo at the time the frame is centered or record the film going through and use software to automatically/manually cut out any irrelevant parts. Unless this was done before the 1990's then I guess my point is mute.

@EpicMegaDude 11 жыл бұрын

haha! these videos have much better qualities than most KZfaq Videos!..... ... these videos obviously weren't recorded with potatoes.

@satootto 11 жыл бұрын

驚いた。1901年～1902年と言えば、「映像」というメディアが作られた最初期だ。この時期で既にカラー映像が存在したとは。

@aquenwisey 11 жыл бұрын

vsauce said that there are only 37 people from 1800's in the world

@Walkman0007 11 жыл бұрын

amazing that would potentially mean there is also color-picture of titanic somewhere?

@theprophet20 11 жыл бұрын

And did you notice that apparently the little girl died young, in her 25th year in 1920, according to the caption?

@woowooNeedsFaith 10 жыл бұрын

The color wheel at 2:57 rotates in the wrong direction...

@MellohiTube 7 жыл бұрын

@Linkage1992 11 жыл бұрын

You can see the places in Google Street View.

@kruszielski 10 жыл бұрын

Probably it had to be copied to 35mm first to be able to use a proper film scanner to digitalize it. Also, The color could be perfectly corrected, however, it would change the results from the original technology. The raw imperfect material is far more important than the content of the movie.

@omarkhanlilcurry 11 жыл бұрын

sorry bout . was referring to the first person

@Vicvines 11 жыл бұрын

yea but with SSDs you can just keep transferring over and over again to new devices easily and quickly and if an SSD goes out it is easier to recover the data than from a HDD

@Linkage1992 11 жыл бұрын

And a whole lot more from 1900, 1901 and 1902.