A Look Back At Some Of The Earliest Color Films...

For a while it was thought that to get color on film back in the turn of the century, one had to have physically paint onto the film.  Film legends like Thomas Edison, Georges Meilies and Segundo de Chomon all did this to hypnotic effect:


It wouldn't be until much later that the technique of film colorization would be at all viable, but Kodak certainly was in the running by 1922 with their Kodachrome film:



Kinda creepy to think that most likely all these people are dead... even creepier to see them this way... looking like living antique porcelain dolls.

Anyway.

In 2012, the first film ever recorded in color was found. The process, invented by Edward Raymond Turner (ironic that nearly 90 years later, another Turner would be vilified for trying to colorize black and white classics) allowed him to actually record in color. The playback aspect was, unfortunately, never to be perfected in his lifetime. His projector never worked.

UNTIL NOW (of course)!

I'm not too clear on the tech aspect of this, but suffice it to say they used a computer, and yadda yadda yadda here we are:

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Winsor Mccay's Little Nemo (1911)

If you don't already know by now, I LOVE cartoons and films from the turn of the century. There is often an otherworldyquality about it, like we're peering at their world from a creepy grainy black and white teloscope.

Winsor Mccay. Comic strip pioneer. Creator of the Little Nemo series, an extremely popular strip for the time.

However, if you mention the name, "Little Nemo" to some dim bulb on the street today, they will tell you it's a movie about finding fish. Maybe you'll get lucky, and someone will remember the Capcom-produced NES game. Or even luckier if they remember the disjointed animated film.

However, the year in this case is 1911, and Little Nemo was at the height of it's popularity. And here comes none other than it's creator Mccay (no relation) to make one of the first animated films in history.

This film is not only cool for the above-stated facts, but also for how subtly CREEPY it all feels!

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Georges Melies - A Playlist In Progress

I have been a HUGE fan of Melies' work since I first read about it in elementary school.  However, it wasn't until the advent of the Internet, DVDs, and finally YouTube that I'd finally been able to track these down.

Here is an embedded playlist of a number of Melies' works.  I WILL eventually review and analyze some of these, but for now, here are some of his best works, including at least one that was considered lost for some time, the Conquest of the Pole.

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