April, 19th, 2012

MADEIRA | PORTUGAL | FNC

http://www.oskar-gaspar.com

Technicolor had developed a camera system, while Dr. Gaspar had none. He contacted Oskar Fischinger, who had come to be known as “the wizard of Friedrich Street” (the center of Berlin’s film industry) for his cleverness in producing special effects by inventing new techniques and new machinery to make the impossible visible. Fischinger engineered camera mechanisms for Gaspar, which synchronized the camera shutter with a wheel containing three color-filter segments that would rotate to make the three successive cyan/yellow/magenta exposures.

This meant, however, that the camera would be shooting 72 frames-per-second instead of the normal 24 frames-per-second, and each cluster of three frames would have to contain the same stable shape information. If an object were moving too fast, its difference in displacement in three successive frames would cause fringes of red, green or blue around the edges of the object. Relatively slow or still movements, however, could be filmed in “real time”.

Unfortunately, Gasparcolor never managed to crack the market in Hollywood. The Technicolor imbibition process was reigning supreme after such dynamic successes as Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz – and other MGM musicals with fantastic dance numbers. Even one potential major client for Gasparcolor Hollywood, another Hungarian refugee, George Pal, was bound by his Paramount contract to use the Technicolor process for his many Puppe toons.

 Gaspar finally sold his patents to enrich Technicolor, 3M and other rival processes. Oskar Fischinger, however, completed two films, Allegret to and Radio Dynamics (1943), as a swan song for Gasparcolor – proving once again that this system could yield extremely subtle and extremely brilliant color imagery.

Yet, a creative team in Lisbon, Portugal is still believing and reviving the concept for the last 15 years.