Lee
and Turner's invention has always been regarded by film historians as a
practical failure but it has now been 'unlocked' through digital
technology, revealing the images produced by the process for the first
time in over a hundred years.
Turner developed his complex
three-colour process with support, first from Lee and then from the
American film entrepreneur, Charles Urban. Using a camera and projector
made by Brighton-based engineer Alfred Darling, Turner developed the
process sufficiently to take various test films of colourful subjects
such as a macaw, a goldfish in a bowl against a brightly striped
background and his children playing with sunflowers, before his death in
1903 aged just 29. Urban went on to develop the process further with
the pioneer film-maker George Albert Smith which resulted in the
commercially successful Kinemacolor system, patented in 1906 and first
exhibited to the public in 1909. Sadly, Turner's widow never received a
penny from her husband's invention.
On discovering the film,
Michael Harvey, Curator of Cinematography at the National Media Museum,
worked with film archive experts Brian Pritchard and David Cleveland to
reconstruct the moving footage in colour following the precise method
laid out in Lee and Turner's 1899 patent. They turned to experts at the
BFI National Archive who were able to undertake the delicate work of
transforming the film material into digital files, and so the team were
able to watch these vivid colour moving pictures for the first time,
over one hundred years since they had been made.
For more information visit www.nationalmediamuseum.org.uk
Via
Thursday 13 September 2012
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