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Recreating the Experience of Tinted and Toned Black and White Prints: An Alternative Method

The opportunity for the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia to participate in the 12th Pordenone Silent Film Festival (1993) created an exciting challenge, and gave the vital impetus, for us to reconstruct some of Australia's finest early cinema material and create new projection prints.

The highlight of our contribution to the festival was to be a new coloured print of the 8 reel feature The Sentimental Bloke (1919), recreating the tints and tones of the original version. Our only guide to these original colours was a surviving nitrate print of reel 5, and some 260 frames of tinted and toned nitrate, representing about 70 scene changes, which had been clipped from nitrate prints and saved many years earlier by an enthusiastic laboratory assistant, Anthony Buckley, who later became a prominent Australian producer, director and one of the Archive's supporters.

With such limited information to guide us, some license needed to be taken in determining the appropriate colours for scenes where no direct reference existed. With this decided, we created new intermediate materials from our preservation black and white negative, so that we could produce a high quality print.

We wanted to try to follow the 'traditional' method of tinting and toning as closely as possible, as we have our own black and white laboratory facilities. The first problem we needed to overcome was how to end up with a print which would not cause problems during projection because of splices where the different colour sections were joined. We decided to use polyester base print film, which gave very thin, extremely strong splices which did not show in the silent frame picture area.

A sepia tone was used in only two short sections of the original film that we knew of, and recreating this presented little problem apart from having to increase the contrast of the sections through multiple generations of printing because of the faded images. The next step, recreating the tints, did pose problems as concerns were raised by staff over the potential health hazard of the chemicals used in the original tinting dye formulae.

With little time left to meet the deadlines for providing the material for the festival, we approached the situation from a perspective of recreating the cinema experience, rather than reconstructing completely in the 'traditional' method.

We turned to water based coloured food dyes as a safe yet effective method of tinting the gelatine emulsion. Three base colours of yellow, red an blue dye were used to recreate all the colours evident from the nitrate. Colour testing of the dyes to match the hue and saturation of the original nitrate colours took only minutes to carry out. The dyes were mixed and placed in a small rack and tank set-up, through which the film would be passed before entering a drying cabinet. A small amount of photoflo was added to the solution to help prevent water marks.

The dye bath contained 55 litres of solution, and immersion time was 2 minutes with the film running at a speed of 14 ft/min through the bath. Dye concentrations used for The Sentimental Bloke were yellow (3%), lavender (red 0.6% + blue 1.2%) and green (yellow 2.5% + blue 0.6%). A replenishment rate of 300ml of dye concentrate per 1000 feet of film maintained the correct colour saturation. Accelerated again over a one month period of film samples coloured by this method indicated a negligible reduction in colour saturation. Using ultrasonic splicing techniques, the coloured sections were quickly and easily reassembled into the final release print form.

From our perspective of trying to recreate the cinema experience, we believe we achieved a credible result. As a bonus, we estimate that the cost of the food dyes for tinting was about 10% of the cost of the traditional chemical dyes. Feedback received by our representative at the Pordenone Festival appeared to show a varied response to this method, and we would be interested to hear from other archivists on their opinions of this technique.

by Chris Swinbanks

Please contact the author, c/o National Film and Sound Archives of Australia, GPO Box 2002, Canberra ACT 2601, Australia; Fax: (61-6) 247 4651.


Canberra: alternative pour obtenir les teintes et tonalités proches de l'original.

La contribution la plus intéressante du National Film and Sound Archive d'Australie (NFSA) au Journées du cinéma muet de Pordenone fut la présentation de The Sentimental Bloke (1919), reconstituée avec les teintes et tonalités de la version originale.
Dans ses laboratoires de Canberra, le NFSA reproduisit les séquences en tonalité sépia par la méthode traditionnelle. Par contre, le teintage de la nouvelle copie a partir des couleurs visibles sur l'originale fut obtenu par l'utilisation combinée de colorants alimentaires (jaune, rouge et bleu). Le résultat est étonnant et le prix de revient inférieur de presque 90% à celui de la méthode traditionnelle.
Informations: Chris Swinbanks, NFTA of Australia, GPO Box 2002 Canberra Act 2601, Australia.

Canberra: alternativas para la obtención de tinturas y tonalidades similares a las originales.

La contribución más interesante del National Film and Sound Archive de Australia (NFSA) a las Joornadas del cine mudo de Pordenone fué la exhibición de The Sentimental Bloke (1919), reconstituida con las tinturas y tonalidades similares a las de la versión original.
En sus laboratorios de Canberra, el NFSA reprodujo las secuencias en tonalidad sepia por el método tradicional. En cambio, las tinturas de la nueva copia a partir de los colores visibles en la original fueron obtenidas combinando colorantes alimentarios (amarillo, colorado y azul). El resultado es sorprendente y el costo hasta 90% menor que el método tradicional.
Informaciones: Chris Swinbanks, NFTA of Australia, GPO Box 2002 Canberra Act 2601, Australia.