Technicolor 16mm imbibition prints(1943–1974)

Looking to bring release prints of their films to overseas, home, and educational markets where small-gauge projectors were far more common, Technicolor first began production of 16mm prints in the late 1930s. The company initially released Kodachrome reduction prints of their films originally shot on 35mm, an endeavor sanctioned by Kodak through a non-exclusive license granted in 1938. Titles printed using this process included Victor Schertzinger’s The Mikado (1939), Warner Bros. “Merry Melodies” cartoon I Love to Singa (1936), and Joseph Losey’s industrial short Pete Roleum and His Cousins (1939). According to Technicolor testimony, however, “the monopack method of reduction printing has never been completely satisfactory for the manufacture of 16mm motion picture color prints in quantity,” and, beginning in 1943, the company used a converted printer to make their first 16mm imbibition prints (Technicolor, 1949).

Technicolor imbibition printing equipment had been built to accommodate 35mm sprocket advancement. To respond to the wartime demand for 16mm prints without completely overhauling their systems, Technicolor’s London laboratory repurposed their facility’s transfer machine to reperforate 35mm stock with 16mm perforations, after the reduced image had been transferred. Technicolor 16mm elements were initially printed “single-rank,” meaning with one column of 16mm frames printed down the center of a 35mm strip of film. Additionally, these early prints featured a blue-dye sound track, until persistent inconsistencies in density, with resulting lost sound definition, led to a transition to silver sound tracks in 1952. 

While Technicolor explored the possibility of “double-rank” printing (i.e. two columns of 16mm images printed on a 35mm strip of film; see 35/32 and 32/16 perforated film) as early as 1948, difficulty modifying their equipment, while maintaining adequate dye registration, led to the company reporting the abandonment of this method in 1951.   

The late 1940s, into the 1950s, were Technicolor’s most profitable and prolific years for 16mm print production, and the company reported printing more than 135,000,000 ft (41.15km) of 16mm film by 1953 (Anon, 1955). The company received large-scale projects from industrial clients during this period. For example, Wilding Picture Productions ordered the production of 1,480 prints of its commercial Ford in Your Future, for domestic distribution, in 1948. Major studios also relied on Technicolor 16mm production during this period, with Warner Bros. using the process to produce upwards of 5,205 prints of various features, shorts, and trailers for domestic and international release between the years 1948 and 1951. There was also demand for release prints for television broadcast. Some film collectors have reported increased sharpness in prints made after 1955, with unverified attribution assigned to slower transfer speed during the imbibition process, as well as increased competition for sharpness among the various widescreen formats that took off in the 1950s (Spilker, n.d.). 

In 1963, Technicolor manufactured specialized printers to enable a return to double-rank printing. Working with an improved emulsion on their blank stock, as well as a slower transfer speed, to maintain dye registration, the company introduced production of double-rank prints, while maintaining the manufacturing of single-rank prints. The double-rank method allowed for less waste of film, discarded in the slitting process, plus the ability to produce multiple prints at a time. 

By the 1970s, however, the exponentially more streamlined chromogenic printing process, particularly Eastman Color, had become the industry standard. While 35mm imbibition prints continued to be made in limited quantities until 1978, Technicolor’s specialized double-rank equipment in their Hollywood plant was dismantled in 1971 and the company ended production of single-rank 16mm prints in 1974.