Film stock is an analog medium that is used for recording motion pictures or animation. It is recorded on by a movie camera, developed, edited, and projected onto a screen using a movie projector. It is a strip or sheet of transparent plastic film base coated on one side with a gelatin emulsion containing microscopically small light-sensitive silver halide crystals. The sizes and other characteristics of the crystals determine the sensitivity, contrast and resolution of the film. The emulsion will gradually darken if left exposed to light, but the process is too slow and incomplete to be of any practical use. Instead, a very short exposure to the image formed by a camera lens is used to produce only a very slight chemical change, proportional to the amount of light absorbed by each crystal. This creates an invisible latent image in the emulsion, which can be chemically developed into a visible photograph. In addition to visible light, all films are sensitive to X-rays and high-energy particles. Most are at least slightly sensitive to invisible ultraviolet (UV) light. Some special-purpose films are sensitive into the infrared (IR) region of the spectrum.
35 mm film is a film gauge used in filmmaking, and the film standard. In motion pictures that record on film, 35 mm is the most commonly used gauge. The name of the gauge is not a direct measurement, and refers to the nominal width of the 35 mm format photographic film, which consists of strips 1.377 ± 0.001 inches (34.976 ± 0.025 mm) wide. The standard image exposure length on 35 mm for movies is four perforations per frame along both edges, which results in 16 frames per foot of film.
Cinecolor was an early subtractive color-model two-color motion picture process that was based upon the Prizma system of the 1910s and 1920s and the Multicolor system of the late 1920s and the 1930s. It was developed by William T. Crispinel and Alan M. Gundelfinger, and its various formats were in use from 1932 to 1955.
A polarized 3D system uses polarization glasses to create the illusion of three-dimensional images by restricting the light that reaches each eye.
The Toll of the Sea is a 1922 American silent drama film directed by Chester M. Franklin, produced by the Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation, released by Metro Pictures, and featuring Anna May Wong in her first leading role. The film was written by Frances Marion and directed by Chester M. Franklin, with the lead roles played by Wong and Kenneth Harlan. The plot was a variation of the Madama Butterfly story, set in China instead of Japan.
Marion Fairfax was an American screenwriter, playwright, actress, and producer.
Color motion picture film refers both to unexposed color photographic film in a format suitable for use in a motion picture camera, and to finished motion picture film, ready for use in a projector, which bears images in color.
Grace Darmond was a Canadian-American actress.
Natalie M. Kalmus was the executive head of the Technicolor art department and credited as the director or "color consultant" of all Technicolor films produced from 1934 to 1949.
Niles Eugene Welch was an American performer on Broadway, and a leading man in a number of silent and early talking motion pictures from the early 1910s through the 1930s.
The Prizma Color system was a color motion picture process, invented in 1913 by William Van Doren Kelley and Charles Raleigh. Initially, it was a two-color additive color system, similar to its predecessor, Kinemacolor. However, Kelley eventually transformed Prizma into a bi-pack color system that itself became the predecessor for future color processes such as Multicolor and Cinecolor.
Spite Marriage is a 1929 American silent comedy film co-directed by Buster Keaton and Edward Sedgwick and starring Keaton and Dorothy Sebastian. It is the second film Keaton made for MGM and his last silent film, although he had wanted it to be a "talkie" or full sound film. While the production has no recorded dialogue, it does feature an accompanying synchronized score and recorded laughter, applause, and other sound effects. Keaton later wrote gags for some up-and-coming MGM stars like Red Skelton, and recycled many gags from Spite Marriage, some shot-for-shot, for Skelton's 1943 film I Dood It.
Her Country's Call is a 1917 American silent drama film directed by Lloyd Ingraham and starring Mary Miles Minter, along with George Periolat and Allan Forrest. The film is the final instalment in a series a films written by Abraham Lincoln impersonator Benjamin Chapin, who also appeared in the film as Lincoln. It was one of many films of the time that catered to the vogue for patriotic pictures after America joined World War I, with ample shots of soldiers and the American flag. As with many of Minter's features, it is thought to be a lost film.
The Secret of the Storm Country was a 1917 American silent drama film directed by Charles Miller and starring Norma Talmadge. The film is described as not a direct sequel but a "continuation" of the 1914 film Tess of the Storm Country, starring Mary Pickford. The film is now considered lost.
Technicolor is a family of color motion picture processes. The first version, Process 1, was introduced in 1916, and improved versions followed over several decades.
The Savage is a 1917 American silent drama film starring Colleen Moore and Monroe Salisbury that is set in Canada and was directed by Rupert Julian. The film is presumed to be lost.
Below the Surface is a surviving 1920 American silent drama film directed by Irvin Willat and starring Hobart Bosworth. Thomas H. Ince produced the picture with distribution through Paramount Pictures.
The history of film technology traces the development of techniques for the recording, construction and presentation of motion pictures. When the film medium came about in the 19th century, there already was a centuries old tradition of screening moving images through shadow play and the magic lantern that were very popular with audiences in many parts of the world. Especially the magic lantern influenced much of the projection technology, exhibition practices and cultural implementation of film. Between 1825 and 1840, the relevant technologies of stroboscopic animation, photography and stereoscopy were introduced. For much of the rest of the century, many engineers and inventors tried to combine all these new technologies and the much older technique of projection to create a complete illusion or a complete documentation of reality. Colour photography was usually included in these ambitions and the introduction of the phonograph in 1877 seemed to promise the addition of synchronized sound recordings. Between 1887 and 1894, the first successful short cinematographic presentations were established. The biggest popular breakthrough of the technology came in 1895 with the first projected movies that lasted longer than 10 seconds. During the first years after this breakthrough, most motion pictures lasted about 50 seconds, lacked synchronized sound and natural colour, and were mainly exhibited as novelty attractions. In the first decades of the 20th century, movies grew much longer and the medium quickly developed into one of the most important tools of communication and entertainment. The breakthrough of synchronized sound occurred at the end of the 1920s and that of full color motion picture film in the 1930s. By the start of the 21st century, physical film stock was being replaced with digital film technologies at both ends of the production chain by digital image sensors and projectors.
One of Many is a 1917 American film written and directed by Christy Cabanne, starring Frances Nelson with Niles Welch, Mary Mersch, Caroline Harris and Harold Entwistle.
Wray Bartlett Physioc was an American film director, producer and artist. His film The Gulf Between (1917) was the first Technicolor film ever produced.
