British Colour Cinema: Practices and Theories - Softcover

Sarah Street; Simon Brown; Elizabeth Watkins

Softcover

ISBN 10: 184457413X ISBN 13: 9781844574131

Publisher: British Film Institute, 2013

Synopsis

Created as a companion volume to a major history of colour in British Cinema (also by Sarah Street), British Colour Cinema is a book based on a series of unique interviews conducted by Sarah Street and Elizabeth I Watkins with practitioners who worked in the UK with Technicolor and/or Eastmancolor during the 1930s-1950s.

About this title

About the Author

SIMON BROWN is Director of Studies for Film and Television at Kingston University. His work has been published in the journals Film History, Film Studies, Science Fiction Film and Television, Early Popular Visual Culture and Critical Studies in Television. He is co-editor of Color and the Moving Image: History, Theory, Aesthetics, Archive (2012) (with Sarah Street and Liz Watkins) and author of the Technical Appendix in Sarah Street's Colour Films in Britain: The Negotiation of Innovation 1900–55 (2012).

SARAH STREET is Professor of Film at the University of Bristol. She is the author of a number of books on British cinema, including Colour Films in Britain: The Negotiation of Innovation 1900–55 (2012), and is co-editor of Color and the Moving Image: History, Theory, Aesthetics, Archive (2012) (with Simon Brown and Liz Watkins), publications which, in addition to this volume, resulted from a research project funded by the AHRC. Sarah Street is co-editor of Screen and the Journal of British Cinema and Television.

LIZ WATKINS is a lecturer at the University of Leeds. She has been published in a number of film journals, including Parallax, Paragraph and the British Journal of Cinema and Television. She is co-editor of Color and the Moving Image: History, Theory, Aesthetics, Archive (2012) (with Simon Brown and Sarah Street).

From the Back Cover

British Colour Cinema: Practices and Theories is one of the outcomes of a major research project on colour and British cinema. This project was one of the last opportunities to gain an insight from surviving practitioners who worked with film colour in one of the most fascinating periods of its history. Created as a companion volume to a major history of colour in British Cinema (Colour Films in Britain: The Negotiation of Innovation 1900–55, by Sarah Street), British Colour Cinema is based on a series of interviews with practitioners who worked in the UK with Technicolor and/or Eastmancolor during the 1930s–50s.

The book charts a significant period of film history, when working with colour was both difficult and expensive, and frequently involved experimentation of the highest degree. Adjusting to new systems required ingenuity and resourcefulness. The practitioners featured in the book provide a rich resource of experience and reflection on these challenges. Simon Brown, Sarah Street and Liz Watkins talk to specialists renowned for their innovative work with film colour, who provide first-hand accounts of working with major directors, including Michael Powell and John Huston, and with celebrated art directors and special effects teams.

Many of the films discussed have acquired special interest in recent years with the advent of DVD and the restoration of many colour film classics. In recognition of this development, the book's final section also features interviews with those involved in film preservation and restoration, and asks ethical questions concerning how best to prepare new prints for today's audiences.

Edition details

• Publisher: British Film Institute
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 184457413X
• ISBN 13: 9781844574131
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 280
• Editor: Sarah Street, Simon Brown, Elizabeth Watkins