Quality in Color Reproduction

Abstract

NOT SO MANY years ago, motion pictures in color and talking pictures were in equally bad repute with producers and public generally. They had been tried and found not have any appeal. In fact, they had the opposite effect. They interfered with the ability of the screen create an illusion. They interfered with the drama. In those days, Hugo Miinsterberg, a famous professor of psychology at Harvard, wrote a book entitled The Photoplay: A Psychological Study, in which he said that the art of the motion picture would progress best by avoiding all attempts imitate the stage. Therefore, he concluded, voices and sound effects were definitely undesirable. In presenting a human figure the new art was like sculpture in motion. The black-and-white image was comparable a marble statue, but a reproduction in color would be like a figure in a wax museum. We do not want, he said, to paint the cheeks of the Venus of Milo; neither do we want see the coloring of Mary Pickford or Anita Stewart.