Technicolor is a color motion picture process invented in 1916 and improved over several decades. It was the second major process, after Britain’s Kinemacolor, and the most widely used color process in Hollywood from 1922 to 1952. Technicolor became known and celebrated for its saturated levels of color, and was used most commonly for filming musicals, costume pictures, and animated films.
Technicolor’s Canadian operations provide post-production services for film projects, television, sound and software in North America. Technicolor not only offers its services to local and foreign productions produced in Canada. In fact, the Canadian operations of the company provide audiovisual services to a wide range of international clients. Low operating costs, an educated workforce and government incentives offered competitiveness to have such a facility in Quebec.
Technicolor Creative Services is totally owned by Thompson, a French company that offers products and services to the media and entertainment market. Thompson is a vertically integrated media, one of its subsidiaries, Grass Valley Group, is a factory of production equipment and studio used by Technicolor.
Technicolor is separated into several divisions according to the type of services they offer. Like any other production activity, the cinema and television can transcend national boundaries. The structure of Technicolor shows the various components of the process of film production in Canada. Technicolor services are separated into four categories and are distributed in two locations in Quebec, seven in the rest of Canada, three in Mexico, eleven in the United States and seventeen outside North America.
Technicolor’s facility in Montreal offers a wide range of service distributions while Mirabel specialized in the production of film copies used by theatres or for post-production.
Increasingly, the films we see in movie theatres are in electronic form. The good old 35 mm film or 70 mm is constantly losing ground for the past couple of years. This time the axe fell on the Technicolor facility in Mirabel. They produced copies of films for movie theatres. The reproduction of films in film in North America will be made by Deluxe now and Technicolor will only by distributing.
Technicolor has been one of our clients for almost a decade now; our hearts goes out to the 178 employees who are unemployed today, all top notch specialists in their field. Good luck!