Technicolor wasn't a type of color film instead, it was a process in which a specially modified motion picture camera recorded the same scene through colored filters on three different strips of film. The Technicolor Corporation had been in the business of making color movies since 1917, but the high cost and complexity of the method as well as the poor state of the American economy, kept color movies from becoming the standard for decades. The yellow brick road, the ruby slippers, and Emerald City are so richly saturated with color on screen that it’s hard to imagine the film without it! Contrary to a common misconception, Oz was not the first film made in color, but it was one of the first to prove that color could add fantasy and draw audiences to theaters, despite its release during the Great Depression. People often say that the thing they remember most about The Wizard of Oz is its bright, vibrant color. While Curator Dwight Blocker Bowers has the enviable job of researching and writing about the actors, designers, and moviemakers who helped create the film, our primary interest in terms of Photographic History for this milestone of American cinema is the technology that brought it to life. The object of interest was the Technicolor DF-24 Beam Splitter Motion Picture Camera: in layman's terms, the camera that filmed The Wizard of Oz. I recently had the opportunity to talk about one of the objects in the Photographic History collection for a documentary film crew, and thought I'd share some of the research I did for the shoot. Other times, you know what you're looking for, but once you find it, you discover a much deeper and richer story than you thought you knew! Sometimes you'll be looking for a certain photograph and find something totally unexpected.
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Every day can be an adventure for the curators, specialists, interns, and volunteers who spend their days digging and researching in the museum's vaults.