In 1899, British photographer and inventor Edward Raymond Turner
patented the first color moving picture process, but it was so
complicated that it was never replicated. Following Turner's blueprints
and instructions for the process, researchers at the National Media Museum
digitally copied three frames of film taken from two rolls that were
discovered in 2009. The three frames were reconstructed in Photoshop
with red, green, and blue filters, similar to how they would have been
using Turner's original equipment through the use of colored gels.
As explained in the National
Media Museum's video, each frame of the original film had to be
re-photographed three times with each colored filter (RGB) and compiled
into the final product, which took about three years, thanks to federal
and private funding. The footage was then unveiled to the media for the
first time in 110 years — possibly for the first time ever.
Boy and Bicycle is the first film made by Ridley Scott. The black and white short was made on 16mm film while Scott was a photographystudent at the Royal College of Art in London in 1962. It was made initially on a budget of £65 using a Bolex 16mm cine-camera, and completed with the help of a grant provided by the BFI's Experimental Film Fund.
UK 1962 Dir Ridley Scott
Produced by Ridley Scott
Production company: the BFI Experimental Film Fund
Starring Tony Scott
c. 27 mins. Black and white
The film follows a boy as he plays truant from school and visits various locations around the seaside town on his bicycle. We hear his thoughts in a stream of consciousness voice-over partly inspired by James Joyce's 1922 novel Ulysses.
Although a very early work - Scott would not direct his first feature for another 15 years - the film is significant in that it features a number of visual elements that would be become motifs of Scott's work. The film features the cooling towers of the Imperial Chemical Industries works at Billingham, foreshadowing images in Alien, Blade Runner and Black Rain. The central element of the Boy and the Bicycle is re-used in Scott's advert for Hovis of the early 1970s. The film features Scott's younger brother Tony as the boy.
Scott secured finance from the British Film Institute to complete the editing and sound in 1965 including a track by John Barry called "Onward Christian Spacemen" which originally appeared as the "b" side of the theme to the television seriesThe Human Jungle . Scott wanted to use the existing recording by Barry, but the composer was so impressed by the young film maker he agreed to produce a new recording for the film at limited cost.
This film has been released digitally as an extra on the DVD for Scott's first feature The Duellists.
"Courtesy of the British Film Institute (BFI) under the terms of the Creative Archive Licence at http://www.bfi.org.uk/creative".
