Earl I. Sponable was Chief Engineer and Director of Research for Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation from 1926-1962. His extensive papers span over thirty years of film history and technological developments and document the ways in which the American film industry negotiated innovations. Furthermore, the materials allow us to take a closer look at the quest for ‘satisfactory color’ that preoccupied the film industry for decades.
At Fox, Sponable was keeping up to date with color film technology through his broad network of contacts within the industry and thanks to a series of people who made sure to collect information for him. There were different strategies in place to keep track of the competition and identify potentially satisfactory processes. However, the nature of ‘satisfactory color’ remains unclear. What were the criteria according to which color was evaluated? What needs and expectations was color in film supposed to address?
This case study of the Earl I. Sponable Papers held at Columbia University will reflect upon color film technology as a relational artefact in a large network of actors and needs and to address these questions. With a bottom-up approach to historical documents and historiography the talk will demonstrate how the critical analysis of archival materials challenges and completes current knowledge about the history of color film technology.
The time frame between the 1890s and the mid-1930s is a period marked by intense and rapidly changing technical and aesthetic developments in color film, wherein ‘miraculous’ scientific inventions are interrelated with artistic expressions. This formation is also mirrored in the almost simultaneous gradual rise of art and costume departments in general and production design in particular, in which color played a key role as well.
Based on David Bordwell’s historical poetics and Monika Wagner’s material iconography, this presentation will therefore concentrate on the processes of poetic film making, with particular emphasis on its conceptualization in pre-production and its material realization during production. Thus, in discussing several artistic practices and scientific strategies for designing color film, theories of aesthetic productivity will be interwoven with the development of manifold film materials during the time frame at hand. The iconography of the alchemist will thereby serve as a conceptual metaphor for the interrelated fields of the arts and science, as well as for the formative aspects of creation, material transformation, and color.
