American Cinematographer - November 1998 - 94

Soup du Jour
the 1974 release of The

the blue, red and green imagery
recorded on the original negative. If

Part II.

you

have

was

shot

hasn't been used in

Hollywood since
Godfather

With all of the recent advance¬
in film

technology, Techni¬
color's new focus on the dye-transfer
process is intended to improve the
revered old system. Some industry
experts have adopted a "wait-andsee" attitude toward the firm's goal,
but Technicolor's experts remain
optimistic. "What we point out to
our customers is that dye transfer
will give you blacker blacks than
standard color positive print film,
with more detail and higher color
saturation," explains Frank Ricotta.
"Additionally, one of the major
advantages of dye-transfer printing is
ments

that

we can

alter the

contrast

of the

an original negative that
normally, but want a bit

less contrast, you can now

more or

adjust those levels in the print by
utilizing dye-transfer printing."
One boon to Technicolor's

efforts is the

staggering progress
made by Kodak in emulsion technol¬
ogy. "Kodak has essentially made
four

new

"There

stocks for us," Ricotta says.
the three different black-

are

and-white matrix stocks for the red,
green

what

and blue separations, and then
we

call

a

receiver stock. In the

dye-transfer process, we start with
the original color negative and then,
on an optical printer, separate the
red, green and blue information onto

printing elements that we make.
From the original negative, we
manufacture printing elements

these first three stocks, which make

called

print and develop these matrices, in
addition to having a silver image,

matrices,

which

are

the

complimentary [Y-C-M] records of

up your
ces.

complimentary color matri¬

Then, by virtue of the way you

they have a relief image on them.
"Dye transfer is very much like
an offset
printing process that has a
drum with raised and lowered letter¬

ing on it," he continues. "In offset
printing, you flood that drum with
ink and then print that ink onto a
piece of paper. By doing four passes
with cyan, magenta, yellow and
black ink
you create a color image.
Dye-transfer printing isn't all that

-

-

different. When the matrices

come

off the developing machine, they also
have

a relief
image like a printing
plate. When these matrices are then
loaded on the dye-transfer machine,
the three separate records are, in
turn, saturated with the appropriate
dyes and then sequentially put into

contact

with

a

receiver

which the

dyes

with

another

film, onto

transferred. Of
course, the three dye images must be
transferred in perfect registration
one

are

to

avoid color

fringing in the print."

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American Cinematographer - November 1998

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