The First Colour Moving Pictures at the National Media Museum

Find out about the First Colour Moving Pictures on display at the National Media Museum.

for more information visit www.nationalmediamuseum.org.uk

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.

• Category

  Film & Animation

[zandos27]

I always find it very moving and sad when I see very old film footage of children and knowing there long gone all the hope joy of there childhood all gone yet for a brief time we in 2012 can look through porthole of time and witness early Edwardian life, it all more poignant because it in colour this very early film which has a very intense colour gives it dream like quality almost like witnessing a separate reality.

[Mediagix]

I don't see the point in the 35mm copy, why not go digital straight away. A good DI & Compositor should be able to fix the colour misalignments as well.

[zonie9872]

Absolutely unbelievable. Amazing

[Christopher Jannette]

Nasa uses the same tech for the Mars Rovers amazingly enough!!

[Christopher Jannette]

If it makes you feel any better, they should consider themselves lucky, they were the first to be documented in living color.

[zandos27]

the passage of time always make me sad even the old comedy's have this effect it makes me very existential and I ponder the grater meaning of life but also makes me realise how special and precious life is but very brief; it Also makes my love more intense for the people in my life knowing that I am just on a short journey with them , i sometime look in the eyes of the people in the very old films I Can almost see a sadness or a soulless look in there eyes and sometime a unnaturalness

[VampyreCake]

I think the same thing about everyone in old films, pictures, etc. What were they like? How did they live? Did they have a good life, or not? It's just too much to think that everyone there is dead and gone.

[spikeofdark1]

A lot of work for a film, at least it isn't like that these days.

[Peter Wexler]

Wow! How smart. 3 b/w photos through color filters to produce a color image.

[logicforfirstgraders]

It's because the 35mm is an image of the actual image rather than information of what the image is in an accepted code. It makes the copy into a standard format that is still useable without substantial knowledge of computing (if you're starting from scratch). All you need is a light and a screen. It's like an lp being an actual physical imprint of the noise, if you just have the needle following the grove you can hear the sound when you put your ear near to it.

[Nichole Araiza]

 Amazing!