Background
Claude, born Claude Harrison Greene was the son of William Friese-Greene, a pioneer in early cinematography.
Claude, born Claude Harrison Greene was the son of William Friese-Greene, a pioneer in early cinematography.
He was the grandfather of musician and music producer Tim Friese-Greene. Claude"s father 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 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.
After William"s death in 1921, Claude Friese-Greene continued to develop the system during the 1920s and renamed the process Friese-Greene Natural Colour. Claude was cinematographer on more than 60 films from 1923 to 1943.
In 2006, the British Broadcasting Corporation ran a series of programmes called The Lost World of Friese-Greene.
The series, presented by Dan Cruickshank included The Open Road Claude Friese-Greene"s film of his 1920s road trip from Land"s End to John o" Groats. The Open Road was filmed using the Biocolour process, and the British Film Institute had to use computer enhancement of the original print of the film to remove the flickering problem. Dance of the Moods (1924) featuring modern dancer Margaret Morris Moonbeam Magic (1924) Quest of Colour (1924) The Open Road (1924-1926) restored by the British Film Institute 2005.