Cost of colour filming.

[Rennie]

I asked this question a few years back, and as I recollect received no answers.

I am sure we have all said to ourselves when seeing black and white films of the 30's-60's, 'why wasn't it made in colour'. I have read many times that the difference in cost was so great, that the idea wasn't even contemplated.

Can anyone give me the price comparison?
What items made it so much more expensive?
In what period did the cost of colour filming become less prohibitive?

[Steve Crook]

Originally Posted by Rennie I asked this question a few years back, and as I recollect received no answers. I am sure we have all said to ourselves when seeing black and white films of the 30's-60's, 'why wasn't it made in colour'. I have read many times that the difference in cost was so great, that the idea wasn't even contemplated. Can anyone give me the price comparison? What items made it so much more expensive? In what period did the cost of colour filming become less prohibitive?

I'm not so sure that it was always cost that was the major consideration. In the early days, colour film and the cameras weren't easily available.

Powell & Pressburger wanted to make A Matter of Life and Death in 1945 but all the Technicolor cameras in the world (and there weren't many of them) were in use making training films for the US Army. So they made I Know Where I'm Going! (in B&W) while they waited for the cameras to become available.

The early colour cameras were also very big and unwieldy. A B&W camera was much more maneuverable. The Technicolor cameras also made a lot of noise, even with the big soundproofing "blimp" fitted which made them even more unmaneuverable. The noise they made meant that the whole soundtrack had to be dubbed in post-production.

Steve

[Moor Larkin]

Speaking from a position of gross technical ignorance.... Wouldn't the move to colour also have been resisted by those skilled in the shady art of grey? Colour can be so revealing. Most Danger Man episodes had plainly shaky backdrops but they never looked so 'artificial' as they did in the last two episodes, which were the only ones made in colour.......

It might not just have been the film process that would have added to the costs but also all the scenic, make-up and costume demands....

[Cheeky Bob]

You also need to bear in mind that Technicolor used up three times as much film, quite apart from the extra costs involved with processing.

[Rennie]

Originally Posted by Moor Larkin It might not just have been the film process that would have added to the costs but also all the scenic, make-up and costume demands....

Surely there would be little or no difference to costumes, or the sets? I don't know, but I would bet that even in the the lavish Gainsborough black and white costume drama films of the day, the costumes and sets were colour co-ordinated to look as good as if the film it were being made in colour. Are you saying that costumes and sets were actually all in various hues of grey. I think not!!!!

[Moor Larkin]

Originally Posted by Rennie Are you saying that costumes and sets were actually all in various hues of grey. I think not!!!!

Possibly not, but I have read that colours were not necessarily as they should be, but as the technicians of the day knew they needed to be in order to 'look right'. By a similar token, didn't the colour processes distort colour anyhow? Even today the colours I see in my photographs on old 35mm film are often not the colours I remember seeing when I took the picture..... And even my printer never prints the digital colours like they are on my TV screen.....

Technicians would have had to learn all this - what filters to use etc....

Doesn't colour intrinsically reveal much more than B&W? Hence a make-up effect might look false to the naked eye but on camera, in grey, everything seems fine? And that old movie stand-by: Blood... how much harder to get that right - whereas in B&W it's easy-peasy

[ChristineCB]

In my photo shoots, the good b&w ones were done with very different color-schemes than were used for color-shoots. The photogs & crew said they learned the color-scheme differences on film shoots, too.

(Often, though, I could tell a 'cheapo' shoot when the photogs & crew would merely swap cameras for b&w shoots on the same sets they'd completed color shoots. And predictably, those b&w photos were noticeably awful in comparison.)

[Mr Dean]

Originally Posted by Rennie I am sure we have all said to ourselves when seeing black and white films of the 30's-60's, 'why wasn't it made in colour'. I have read many times that the difference in cost was so great, that the idea wasn't even contemplated. Can anyone give me the price comparison? What items made it so much more expensive? In what period did the cost of colour filming become less prohibitive?

I agree with all the suggestions so far and would add that it might also depend on whether filmstock and other aspects of the technology (e.g. Steve's point about P&P and colour) were easily available in the domestic market. Importing materials is always problematic, as is licensing etc. and there is an incentive for domestic producers to attempt to copy the technology. As a general rule, technological innovation since the 1930s has nearly always begun in Hollywood with the UK relatively close behind, partly because of direct Hollywood involvement in UK studios. Other major film industries, such as France, Japan, India etc. often tended to lag behind by a few years during the 1930s-70s, until the local industry caught up.

As to when the adding up of numbers meant that, in the UK, colour became effectively cheaper (reached 'critical mass' or the 'tipping point'), I've always taken it to be some time between 1966 and 1970. Georgy Girl (1966) was one of the last major UK films shot in B+W. I suspect that lower budget UK films continued to use B+W as standard up to the early 1970s, but that in Hollywood only a very cheap film like Night of the Living Dead was still in B+W by 1968. I'm sure you will all find later examples, but I think 1966-70 is roughly correct. This is also the period when Technicolor has moved from a three strip process and colour is being introduced into television broadcasts, so ancillary sales become an issue. (I'd have to check the dates for the introduction of colour in US television, but US 'made for TV' movies were already in colour by 1964's The Killers.)

[ChristineCB]

It's been interesting to listen to George Romero and Tobe Hooper (1974's Texas Chainsaw Massacre) compare notes and experiences in their heady first-film days. Both suffered from low budgets and huge variables of unknown and unexpected costs, and each suffered delays to return to filming until more funds were available.

Hooper said he had a big advantage - he would pull out George Romero's quotes about losing so much money because Romero "couldn't afford color" and the TEX CHAINSAW backers coughed up color money.

Frankly, I think the original b&w Night Of The Living Dead is a standard that nothing else matches. (I don't consider that 1968 effort to be "hollywood", since it was shot in Pennsylvania using Romero's neighbors and his barber's money. Apparently, neither Jack Warner or Louis B would return George's first calls.)

[Cheeky Bob]

Originally Posted by ChristineCB Hooper said he had a big advantage - he would pull out George Romero's quotes about losing so much money because Romero "couldn't afford color" and the TEX CHAINSAW backers coughed up color money.

The other crucial point is that while Romero could just about have got away with black and white in 1968, Hooper certainly couldn't have done in 1974. I think The Honeymoon Killers was the last classic exploitation film to get away with being in black and white - after about 1970, the format pretty much became synonymous with arthouse fare.

On a similar note, Dirk Bogarde once said that not shooting the 1958 A Tale of Two Cities in colour (which, given the big budget, should have been possible) was a major mistake, as the film would have had a far longer shelf life if it had been.

[julian_craster]

How can we explain that some quite low budget colour films were made in the UK in the 1950s and early 1960s, including some Bs by cut price merchants THE DANZIGERS...?

[Moor Larkin]

Originally Posted by julian_craster How can we explain that some quite low budget colour films were made in the UK in the 1950s and early 1960s, including some Bs by cut price merchants THE DANZIGERS...?

Speculatively...... because the Danzigers were from Hollywood/America and understood how colour 'worked' ? That 1956 TV show "Sir Lancelot" is in colour isn't it? How come shows like Danger Man went back to B&W?

[Mr Dean]

Originally Posted by julian_craster How can we explain that some quite low budget colour films were made in the UK in the 1950s and early 1960s, including some Bs by cut price merchants THE DANZIGERS...?

The only Danzigers colour film pre-1955 that I've found so far is Babes in Baghdad (1952), a Spanish co-production in Anscocolor. Which are the others? (Anscocolor was used by MGM in this period -- I don't know anything about the Danzigers. Did they have any MGM links?)

The Danzigers appear to have been one of the UK-based production teams making films for American television before the Hollywood studios were prepared to release their film libraries. However, the various short films/compendium films listed on IMDB were in B + W as far as I can see.

[christoph404]

New innovations are always expensive to begin with until they become the mass produced norm and I think that is true of colour film versus black and white. Not only were movies cheaper to make in black and white but our parents also took most of their holiday snaps on black and white film because that is what most labs were geared up to process. As colour film and processing became more prevailent and neccessary for a films comercial viability black and white seemed to die out though there did seem to be a transition period in the late sixties where filmakers were making a choice to film in colour or black and white based on cost, no one takes black and white photos these days unless you are a pro photographer and filming in black and white I believe is now more expensive than filming in colour, the advent of digital has thrown up a similar issue because I think the question we will be asking soon is whether to shoot on film or digital and there are certainly cost isssues as well as creative ones there as well.

[julian_craster]

Some Danzigers colour productions:

SATTELITE IN THE SKY

THE SPIDER'S WEB

A TASTE OF MONEY

ESCORT FOR HIRE

RICHARD THE LIONHART TV SERIES



Other B FILMS IN COLOUR

A YANK IN ERMINE