A great deal of time and money has been spent in solving the makeup problem, and literally thousands of feet of film have been exposed and printed on various make-up tests to discover the best make-up materials and technics for the color camera. A proper make-up requires highly skilled artistry in its application.
Other important items to the cameraman are his lights. Here, color photography again introduces an important factor of which the cameraman must be cognizant, and which must be watched very closely on certain types of work. That factor is color-temperature. Our present three-strip Technicolor cameras are balanced to an average daylight color-temperature. For true color rendition, especially in the pastel shades and neutral grays, this temperature should not vary on the set by more than about +/-250º.
There has been in the past some misconception regarding the status of incandescent lamps (designated in the studios as "inkies") with respect to Technicolor photography. Some people have understood that the Technicolor cameras are changed over by filters and prisms to accept an unfiltered incandescent-lamp color-temperature. Others indicated that they thought that the camera automatically corrected any unfiltered inky light that might be added to an arc-lighted set. These conceptions are wrong.
The filters, prisms, and film of our present three-strip Technicolor camera are all balanced to daylight and this balance is used both for exteriors and interiors. This simplifies the production problem a great deal. First of all, there is manufactured and used only one set of film emulsions. This means that manufacturing, ordering, shipping, storing, exposing, and developing are all standardized for one system, with all the obvious attendant advantages, not the least of which is a lower negative cost.
This single standard also simplifies set-lighting problems, both interior and exterior. All regular Technicolor lighting units have been balanced to this daylight color-temperature by actual and repeated tests with the Technicolor camera. Therefore, they may all be used interchangeably as far as color-temperature is concerned. The only other factors governing their use are the very direct functional ones such as size of unit, light output of unit, operational characteristics of the unit, the type of light that it gives (that is, whether a "hard" light or "soft" light), and the unit efficiencies with respect to light output vs. current input, and with respect to light output vs. the throw required of the unit for the particular job in hand.
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