1927 color film of London

Claude Friese-Greene shot these scenes in color around London in 1927.

(thx, rob)

Update: This footage was taken from the British Film Institute’s YouTube channel and it turns out there’s tons of color footage Friese-Greene shot around Britain in the 1920s. Like farm laborers in Devon in 1924, a busking family in Scotland in 1926, the docks in Cardiff in 1926, and much more. (via @magnakai)

• Claude Friese-Greene
• early color photography
• London
• video

1920s footage of London, in color

If you liked the film of the 1905 streetcar ride down Market Street in San Francisco, you might enjoy this 1927 film of various sites around London, including several down-the-street shots. Oh, and it’s in color. In the 1920s.

This clip is from a larger film called The Open Road by Claude Friese-Greene. He shot the film with a process his father William had developed called Biocolour.

William began the development of an additive colour film process called Biocolour. This process produced the illusion of true colour by exposing each alternate frame of ordinary black-and-white film stock through a two different coloured filters. Each alternate frame of the monochrome print was then stained red or green. Although the projection of Biocolour prints did provide a tolerable illusion of true colour, it suffered from noticeable flickering and red-and-green fringing when the subject was in rapid motion. In an attempt to overcome the colour fringing problem, a faster-than-usual frame rate was used.

(via @jamesjm)

• Claude Friese-Greene
• London
• video