'50's TV Superman Goes To Color: The story of why it happened...

Interesting blog on the '50's Superman series transistion from b&w to color. Neat blog to browse in any case.

Better Living Through Television: Superman Goes to Color
http://betterlivingtv.blogspot.com/2006/03/superman-goes-to-color.html

-Steve D.

 

Re: '50's Superman goes to color

What a great picture. I never knew about the "Lily." Thanks for sharing.

 

Re: '50's Superman goes to color

Side Note - you should all go check out Steve D.'s website on vintage colord TV's (in his signature). Cool stuff!

 

I was told that in the days before they had fancy calibration cards, an actual lily was often used for the cameras to identify white in each particular lighting situation. As time went on, more sophisticated cards and charts took the place of the lily...but the name stuck.

 

Once we determine the actual origin of the Technicolor "Lily" (info seems obscure on this), we can move on to "chinagirl" and LAD (Laboratory Aim Density).

 

For those of us going "Huh?", fill us in, kind sir, if you'd please....

 

Here is a FASCINATING read called Superman Comes to Television. It deals almost exclusively with how the first season finally got on the air, but also sheds light on how and why the color episodes wound up the way they did. A word of warning... This is a LONG article and there is no easy way to read it except online. YMMV, but I think it is well worth the time investment.

Cheers,

 

Oh, ok......I just called them test frames, but now I know that they have a "name". Thanks for the link!

 

It is indeed......I've only handled/collected/projected film for about 12 years (35MM, mostly), and it never ceases to amaze me the cool stuff that there is to learn and see. I've been getting into vintage animation lately. Like I said....sooooooooooo much to learn!

 

Wow! Great article on "The Adventures of Superman"! Thanks for posting the link.

 

Steve,

I work at a university and recently uncovered some incredible films from the 50's through the 70's in our archives. Do you know of any good film preservation outfits in the midwest (I'm in Indiana)? I'd like to get these color corrected, cleaned a bit and backed up to tape (HD and DV).

Among the stuff-- a speech by Britain's Harold Macmillan (kinescope), an episode of "20 Questions" that featured our president at the time, and some classic pro-shot admission films that really take you back in time.

Thanks for any advice you can provide. I spent 18 years in TV news but this is virgin territory for me and I wanna make sure I do it right.

Ken

 

I remember watching this as a kid in the late 70s early 80s.

I hope the original film has held up.

 

Shedding a little lite on the "lilly".

Here's an excerpt from an online interview with cinematographer William A. Fraker:

ICG: Did you ever shoot a Technicolor film?

FRAKER: Technicolor was phasing out, but I remember one of my first jobs on a movie set was as a 'lilly boy' on a Technicolor picture called My Sister Eileen. I'd run out there and put the lilly up and then run back.

ICG: What was the lily?

FRAKER: It was like a gray scale, only it had the color scale. It had 12 principal colors with a gray scale underneath. It was about 3x4 foot. You'd hold it right in front of the star and then you'd run off until someone called for the lily boy again.

-Steve D.

 

Here's a 2-minute video clip about the Chinagirl produced by the Sundance Channel. John Pytlak from Kodak (as referenced by our host in his "Origins of Chinagirl" link) is one of the experts in this clip.

CLICK HERE to watch





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AAHHHHH!!!--So you were an A/V geek in school?!!-Pocket-Protector and all that stuff???