Posted by Peter Ceresole on June 28, 2006 at 16:49:53 from 80.177.22.49 user PeterC.
In Reply to: Re: The Lake District when AR was there- before SA. posted by David Bamford on June 28, 2006 at 01:00:21:
If it was in colour then are you sure about the timing? This must be some of the earliest colour film available, surely.
Actually it's quite late. In 'People's Century', which was a huge series on the BBC, also transmitted by WGBH in the States, we had some superb colour moving film from around 1899, from Pathe. It was wonderful stuff; scenes at Deauville, holidaymakers on the beach, pleasure steamers coming and going. The colour makes the people look absolutely contemporary; suddenly, from the pretty pink and white hooped swimming costumes of the (rather beautiful) women and the jaunty kit of the men, they look exactly like people you know. There may even have been some colour film shot earlier, but I didn't see that.
Pathe have restored it wonderfully, getting it to the right speed to show on TV (from 16 frames/sec to 25 frames/sec, done properly by interpolation and mixing of frames to create the additional, intermediate frames) and with a very careful adjusting of the colours to make them real, not faded. Sheer magic- the originals were clearly much superior to the process Friese-Green used, although probably more expensive at the time.