Victoria Luise 1913 - experimental color movie

This is an experimantal color footage that was produced in 1913 during the wedding of emperor Wilhelm´s daughter. Three synchronous black-and-white recordings with monochromatic color filters were used somewhat similar to the later Technicolor system. These pictures were not artificially colorized.

The quality is far behind black/white recordings of the same event. The early orthocromatic material had a bad gamma curve. Therefore, colors are only visible in bright light and with little graduation. Also the color filters greatly reduced the incoming light, forcing them to record with full aperture and a long duration of exposure.

Regretably I dont have many technical details. You can find some information in the documentation "Majestät brauchen Sonne" by Peter Schamoni.

By the way, the streets were actually yellow during this event because a layer of sand was used for the safety of the horsemen.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Kinemacolor
• Technicolor
• Victorie
• Luise
• Kaiser
• Wilhelm
• Willhelm

[paullubliner]

Yes thank you, I am aware. I am attempting to isolate the a very few potential colours used on specific WW 1 Aircraft based on the chromatic response of Orthochromatic B&W films of the era. A few, too few Lumiere Autochromes survive on said subject only adding to the intrigue.

[ThePerfectRed]

That is an interesting topic! Particularly the Germans painted their aircraft in almost pop art color schemes. This is a vast field for research, with so many markings such as black and white tails of Jasta 2, the yellow noses of Jasta 10, the orange diamonds on the tails of Jasta 30, the pale blue fuselages of Jasta 57 etc.

Good luck at this!

[3investigators]

Oops - I just now realized that this clip was NOT filmed in color. It has been, in fact, computer colorized. If you look closely you will see that some parts of the image appear in color (i.e. the trees, soldiers uniforms) while others are in B&W (i.e. the carriage procession, the crowds in the background). Also, 3 color processes did not appear until Technicolor came out with it in 1932.

[ThePerfectRed]

Hi, this is not technicolor. They used three separate, linked B/W recordings (with monochrome color filters). The bad quality is due to the insufficient gamma curve of the early orthochromatic material back then. In the HQ version you can see light color shades in the crowd, but the high contrast kills most clear colors. People dressed dark back then which appears mostly black. Regretably they did not show much technical background in the documentation.

[3investigators]

I'm not suggesting this is Technicolor. What I mean to say it that is not a 3 color process as that was not around until Technicolor created it. If this film were indeed shot in color I'd say it was a two a color process similar to Kinemacolor.

[ThePerfectRed]

Regretably I don't have any more information about the material. This was definitely not a standardized process, only a one-time experiment. It was not intended for mass usage. The scenes were shown in a documentation (see below) and they focused more on the personality than on the technical details.

[tlatosmd]

@Smashinz2002 You should google for Kinemacolor. First commercially available motion picture color process prior to WWI, but very rare and expensive.

[tlatosmd]

This is genuine color! You can tell from the color fringing visible in some frames that this was an early experimental color setup with several cameras. Unfortunately, the telecine of it doesn't look too good, as there's an obvious hotspot visible! But thank you for slowing it down to what rather resembles the original recording framerate.

[Smashinz2002]

This is spectacular footage. I have seen quality autochromes before, but never a color motion picture sequence from the era. Brilliant! Thanks for posting this great piece of history.

[guimbadriver]

yeah, one year before of this film i was on the Titanic i filmed the wreck with my betacam camera,65 years after the tape loses

[aj46nc]

la pelicula tiene mucha calidad para ser de 1913....

[atqui]

This is Gaumont's Chronochrome, additive three-colour process used in 1912-1913. The wedding of Victoria Luise was on 24 May 1913.