Color added a sense of spectacle to films — that's why so many of the musicals and Biblical epics from the 1930s to the 1950s are brightly colored. Black and white, which remained less expensive, was often used for more serious films or those that weren't thought to benefit from the spectacle.
The first color negative films and corresponding print films were modified versions of these films. They were introduced around 1940 but only came into wide use for commercial motion picture production in the early 1950s.
The first movies were black and white because it is a lot more difficult to produce colour film than it is to invent a black and white one. The way film works is that the film contains tiny grains of photosensitive crystals.
American film and television studios terminated production of black-and-white output in 1966 and, during the following two years, the rest of the world followed suit.
Why were movies still in black-and-white in the 60s?
In some cases it was simply a matter of cost. Sometimes the funding just wasn't there and B/W has always been cheaper. But in most cases, it was an artistic choice. It was the era of the filmmaker auteur, wherein the film director was trying to make an artistic statement.
Did you know that A Visit to the Seaside (1908) was the first commercially produced film in natural color? This eight-minute British short film used the Kinemacolor process to capture Brighton Southern England seafront shots.
Contrary to popular belief, The Wizard of Oz was not the first color film, not even close. It is an easy misconception to believe — the use of color is so sensational in the film.
All the Oz sequences were filmed in three-strip Technicolor. The opening and closing credits, and the Kansas sequences, were filmed in black and white and colored in a sepia-tone process. Sepia-tone film was also used in the scene where Aunt Em appears in the Wicked Witch's crystal ball.
Why did it take so long for movies to be in color?
One of the main issues was the cost of colour production – filmmakers found it too expensive and not worth spending the money if audiences were still fond of monochromes and black-and-white cinematography. Of the top grossing films for each year from 1940 to 1949, 5.5 were in black and white and 4.5 in Technicolor 4.
The military took 35-millimeter Kodachrome into battle, creating images that, when well-stored, are as brilliant today as they were in the 1940s. When feasible, some military photographers used large 4″x5″ Kodachrome sheet film to record remarkable color images.
On 15 April 1935, the first Kodachrome film went on sale for use in 16mm cine cameras. 35mm Kodachrome film was available on the American market in 1936, and the first supplies reached the UK in 1937.
The art of motion pictures grew into full maturity in the "silent era" (1894 in film – 1929 in film). The height of the silent era (from the early 1910s in film to the late 1920s) was a particularly fruitful period, full of artistic innovation.
Post-war America suddenly had an abundance of prosperity, plus product to buy and sell, and color was an integral component of this package. It's Technicolor, to be sure — artificial and hopeful, and as a filter it reveals the limitations and aspirations of its time.
The first national color broadcast (the 1954 Tournament of Roses Parade) occurred on January 1, 1954, but over the next dozen years most network broadcasts, and nearly all local programming, continued to be in black-and-white.
At the 1939 World's Fair, RCA laboratories–now a part of SRI International–introduced the all-electronic television system. The invention of the television created an industry that forever changed the world. By 1953, RCA devised the first complete electronic color TV system.
In 1937 the release of Disney's first full length-animated film, “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” in Technicolor, goes on to become the most successful sound film of all time.
On October 6, 1927, Warner Bros. released The Jazz Singer, the first feature-length film to incorporate synchronized sound for sequences of dialogue. Though these sequences were limited and brief, hearing the voices of the film's stars was a revelation for audiences. The following year, Warner Bros.
The first motion picture film is believed to be Louis Le Prince's Roundhay Garden Scene. This film was recorded in Leeds in England in 1888. It is approximately 2 seconds long and shows some of Louis Le Prince's family members walking around a garden.
Why did Wizard of Oz go from black and white to color?
The whole movie was shot in color. The beginning part that looked black and white was actually shot with sepia tones. The beginning was shot in sepia tones and the rest was shot in oversaturated color because it was meant to show how she was going into another world. To distinguish real life from fantasy.
On Boxing Day 1906 The Story of the Kelly Gang opened at the Athenaeum Theatre in Melbourne. It was the first multi-reel, feature-length film ever produced in the world.
The Wizard of Oz made utilising Technicolor's 3-strip color process. The 3-strip color process 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.
They never really stopped. Though most general-released black and white movies stopped during the 1950s, there have always been the occasional “at the director's discretion” B/W movies ever since. Schindler's List was black and white back in 1993, and it took Best Picture Oscar. As did The Artist, in 2011.
Just a few years after the first filmmakers emerged in the mid-1890s, Mellies created “Le Manoir du Diable,” sometimes known in English as “The Haunted Castle” or “ The House of the Devil,” in 1896, and it is widely believed to be the first horror movie.
A man by the name of Charles Frances Jenkins is documented as creating the first “film” with a motion picture camera, a view of people dancing in 1894.
