Forgotten Silver Page #3

Forbade in his dual way

the boy ever to have anything to do with

this new-fangled filmmaking ever again.

Aged only 15, Colin McKenzie

ran away from home.

New Zealand was growing

into a prosperous dominion.

Even the poorest members of society

had some leisure time.

And most of them chose

to spend it at the pictures.

Opportunities were plentiful for

enthusiastic young men like Colin.

In 1905, Brooke joined him

to form the McKenzie Brothers

Picture Company.

Filming parades and weddings, the

brothers rapidly amassed a small fortune.

But Colin's dreams were more ambitious.

At 84 minutes, "The Warrior Season"

must now be acknowledged as the world's

first feature-length film.

But even more remarkably, it introduced

a revolutionary technical innovation.

By 1908, after three years of development,

Colin McKenzie had perfected a way to

record synchronized sound with pictures.

Conventional film history tells us

that Al Jolson sang in 1927

and in "Old Arizona" you could

here the sound of bacon frying.

Well, that's the late '20s. Here in 1908,

Colin McKenzie had figured out a way in

making this epic, battle-torn film

to have gun fire, to

have horses' hoof beats.

He recorded it all and it all came through.

And, most of all, he had dialogue.

He just forgot one thing:

All of his subjects talking were Chinese.

And while he figured out a way to record

It was his fatal flaw.

Audiences just walked out in droves.

They couldn't understand a word.

They were amused by the novelty

for a few minutes of hearing sound,

but then when they couldn't figure out what

anybody was saying, they just lost interest.

Disillusioned and financially crippled,

Colin abandoned his recording

experiments forever.

He turned his attention from

sound to pictures,

becoming obsessed with

the images themselves.

In late March 1911,

Colin succeeded in creating

an emulsion that reacted to

distinct wavelengths of light.

Producing an effect very like color.

There was only one problem:

The key ingredient was photinia aquefolium, a

berry found only in the islands of Tahiti.

The McKenzie brothers wasted

no time in packing their bags.

What Colin and Brooke achieved in Tahiti

was actually quite an extraordinary

feat of chemical engineering.

They take the berries, they boil them up,

they go through this complicated process

in a home-built laboratory

under the palm trees.

It takes him four and a half months

to produce 22 seconds of film.

Full of anticipation, Colin immediately

embarked on a test.

In this astonishing footage,

Colin trains his lens on a

colorful tropical scene.

But his carefully-composed

image is soon disrupted.

He attempts to reframe, without success.

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