Six-Perf Test Film
20th Century-Fox developed CinemaScope 55 (film width 55.625mm) as a high resolution roadshow format with the capability to compete with Todd-AO in image and sound quality. The camera negative used the entire area between perforations and a frame height of eight perfs. The 55mm prints were designed to be optically reduced to six perforations, allowing for a six track magnetic stereophonic sound system, plus the inclusion of Perspecta encoding on the surround channel.
Neither of the two feature films shot in the process, (Carousel and The King and I), was release printed in the 55mm format, rather they were optically reduced to 35mm CinemaScope and some major theatres ran a six channel soundtrack from an interlocked dubber. The frames shown here are from a print made of test footage shot during the development of the system. A bit of digital cleanup has been done and a deanimorphosed version is shown at the bottom of the page, with a bit of adjustment to bolster the faded Eastman Color dyes.
Unsqueezed 2x CinemaScope 55 image from test film. Digital color rebalancing shows that there's possibly a bit more color left in this little piece of film than is to be expected from DeLuxe Laboratories during this period. One must assume that special pains were taken by the lab to keep management happy. As for the condition of the original camera negative????
We don't make any claims that the colors shown in this quasi-restoration are anywhere near what they were originally, and this is about as accurate as we can get. This test shot was made in 1955 on the Fox lot during the filming of Good Morning Miss Dove.
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