Consolidated Film Industries

Last updated
Consolidated Film Industries
Type Privately held company
Industry Film
Founded1924
Defunct2008
Headquarters California, United States

Consolidated Film Industries was a film laboratory and film processing company and was one of the leading film laboratories in the Los Angeles area for many decades. CFI processed negatives and made prints for motion pictures and television. The company and its employees received many Academy Awards for scientific or technical achievements.

Contents

CFI was incorporated in New York in March 1924 by Herbert Yates. It was reincorporated in Delaware in 1927 by the merger of several earlier companies, including Republic Laboratories, which Yates bought in 1918, and the Allied Film Laboratories Association, which he formed in 1919.

The prospectus stated that Consolidated Film Industries, Inc. of Delaware was being incorporated to succeed a Company of a similar name formed in March 1924 under the laws of New York, for developing of motion picture negatives, printing the necessary positives and delivering the positives as instructed by the motion picture producers or distributors, thus rendering an essential service to the motion picture industry. The Company was said to operate six plants, known in the motion picture business as "laboratories", in New York, New Jersey, and California. One of these acquired properties was the Biograph Studios film laboratory facilities in the Bronx, New York. [1]

Consolidated Film Industries, Inc., was the largest concern of its kind and was at one time the largest purchaser of motion picture film in the world. The business was said to have been built upon the sound foundation of quality and service at a price, in most instances, below the motion picture producer's own laboratory cost. It was claimed that this low price was made possible through the Company's efficient and large-scale operations.

Motion picture and television films that used the company's color processing typically referred to the company only by its initials, the credit usually reading "Color by CFI". For a time in the late 1980s, CFI was jokingly said to stand for "Can't Find It" or 'C.F.I. Care'.

Gladys Baker, the mother of Marilyn Monroe, worked for Consolidated as a negative film cutter; Monroe's biological father is believed to have been fellow Consolidated employee Charles Stanley Gifford. [2]

According to a news item on the front page of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle , on October 24, 1929, the laboratories of Consolidated Film Industries in Hollywood were destroyed by an explosion and fire. One man was killed, and motion picture films worth millions of dollars were lost. [3]

Consolidated Film Industries acquired Prizmacolor in 1928 and was acquired by Technicolor, Inc. in 2000. Over time Technicolor operated both the Universal City lab and CFI's lab in Hollywood, but as demand decreased, the decision was made to shut down CFI. Technicolor ceased operations in Universal City as a film laboratory in 2008.

The original CFI building at 959 Seward Street in Hollywood had been the company's home for more than 60 years. After the structure was demolished, the lot lay vacant for many years before a low-rise office complex was constructed in 2014. [4]

Scientific or Technical Academy Awards

See also

Related Research Articles

<i>The Hollywood Revue</i> 1929 film

The Hollywood Revue of 1929, or simply The Hollywood Revue, is a 1929 American pre-Code musical comedy film released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It was the studio's second feature-length musical, and one of their earliest sound films. Produced by Harry Rapf and Irving Thalberg and directed by Charles Reisner, it features nearly all of MGM's stars in a two-hour revue that includes three segments in Technicolor. The masters of ceremonies are Conrad Nagel and Jack Benny.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">35 mm movie film</span> Motion picture film gauge, the standard

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Universal Pictures</span> American film studio

Universal Pictures is an American film production and distribution company owned by Comcast through the NBCUniversal Film and Entertainment division of NBCUniversal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Biograph Studios</span> Former film studio and laboratory complex in the United States

Biograph Studios was an early film studio and laboratory complex, built in 1912 by the Biograph Company at 807 East 175th Street, in The Bronx, New York City, New York.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cinecolor</span>

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Petro Vlahos</span> American cinema pioneer (1916–2013)

Petro Vlahos was an American engineer and inventor, considered to be one of the pioneering scientific and technical innovators of the motion picture and television industries. He is remembered in particular for creating the Ultimatte process, which refined the colour process known as chroma keying. In recognition of his contributions, he was awarded multiple Oscars, as well as an Emmy Award.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Herbert Kalmus</span> American scientist and engineer

Herbert Thomas Kalmus was an American scientist and engineer who played a significant role in developing color motion picture film. Kalmus was the co-founder and president of the Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation.

LaserPacific Media Corporation was a television and motion picture post-production facility operating in Hollywood, Burbank, Calif., New York, and in Vancouver, Canada. Laser-Pacific was formerly a publicly traded corporation, prior to being a subsidiary of Eastman Kodak (2003-2010), prior to being owned by HIG Capital (2010-2011), and bought by Technicolor SA in 2011.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Color motion picture film</span> Photographic film type

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.

Eastmancolor is a trade name used by Eastman Kodak for a number of related film and processing technologies associated with color motion picture production and referring to George Eastman, founder of Kodak.

Trucolor was a color motion picture process used and owned by the Consolidated Film Industries division of Republic Pictures. It was introduced as a replacement for Consolidated's own Magnacolor process.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Deluxe Media</span> American entertainment provisions company

Deluxe Media Inc., also known simply as Deluxe and formerly Deluxe Entertainment Services Group, Inc., is an American multinational multimedia and entertainment service provisions company owned by Platinum Equity, founded in 1915 by Hungarian-born American film producer William Fox and headquartered in Burbank, California.

In bipack color photography for motion pictures, two strips of black-and-white 35 mm film, running through the camera emulsion to emulsion, are used to record two regions of the color spectrum, for the purpose of ultimately printing the images, in complementary colors, superimposed on one strip of film. The result is a multicolored projection print that reproduces a useful but limited range of color by the subtractive color method. Bipack processes became commercially practical in the early 1910s when Kodak introduced duplitized film print stock, which facilitated making two-color prints.

The Centaur Film Company was an American motion picture production company founded in 1907 in Bayonne, New Jersey, by William and David Horsley. It was the first independent motion picture production company in the United States. In 1909 the company added a West Coast production unit, the Nestor Film Company, which established the first permanent film studio in Hollywood, California, in 1911. The company was absorbed by the Universal Film Manufacturing Company in 1912.

DeLuxe Color or Deluxe color or Color by DeLuxe is Deluxe Laboratories' brand of color process for motion pictures. DeLuxe Color is Eastmancolor-based, with certain adaptations for improved compositing for printing and for mass-production of prints. Eastmancolor, first introduced in 1950, was one of the first widely-successful "single strip color" processes, and eventually displaced three-strip Technicolor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Technicolor</span> Color motion picture process

Technicolor is a series of color motion picture processes, the first version dating back to 1916, and followed by improved versions over several decades.

Technicolor Special was a common term used for Hollywood studio produced color short films of the 1930s and 1940s that did not belong to a specified series.

Alan Eliot Freedman was a pioneer and long-time executive in the motion picture film processing industry. He founded DeLuxe Laboratories after serving as president of its predecessor, Fox Film Laboratories. His career lasted over 50 years.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edward Cronjager</span> American cinematographer

Edward Cronjager was an American cinematographer whose career spanned from the silent era through the 1950s. He came from a family of cinematographers, with his father, uncle, and brother all working in the film industry behind the camera. His work covered over 100 films and included projects on the small screen towards the end of his career. He filmed in black and white and color mediums, and his work received nominations for seven Academy Awards over three decades, although he never won the statue.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cinema Research Corporation</span> American special effects company

Cinema Research Corporation (CRC) was an American special effects company in Hollywood, California, and one of the first to produce effects, trailers, opticals, and titles under one roof. The company was the special effects industry leader for decades, until Industrial Light and Magic surpassed them in the late 1980s. In 1990, CRC began to concentrate its efforts on titles and opticals, and became the industry leader in those categories, by providing the titles and opticals for over 400 productions in the decade before the CEO's passing in 2000.

References

  1. Tuska, Jon (1999). The Vanishing Legion: A History of Mascot Pictures, 1927–1935. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company. p. 42. ISBN   0-7864-0749-2.
  2. "Marilyn Monroe's Early Life" by Susan Doll HowStuffWorks.com Accessed 24 October 2009
  3. "Hollywood Fire Destroys Films Worth Millions" Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 89th year, No. 295, www.theguardian.com Accessed 13 April 2017
  4. Vincent, Roger (2020-12-30). "Hollywood office campus sold to movie producer and partner real estate developer". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2020-12-31.
  5. "29th annual Academy Awards 1956".
  6. "33rd annual Academy Awards 1960".
  7. "37th annual Academy Awards 1964".
  8. "37th annual Academy Awards 1964".
  9. "37th annual Academy Awards 1964".
  10. "41st annual Academy Awards 1968".
  11. "41st annual Academy Awards 1968".
  12. "44th annual Academy Awards 1971".