Film Language Tag: sepia tone

Black-and-white photography that uses shades of brown instead of shades of gray. Traditionally shot as black-and-white and then reprocessed as sepia. Now more commonly shot on color film or video using a sepia effect filter or created in post-production using digital image manipulation. Sepia was originally derived from cuttlefish ink and used for pen and ink drawing. Later, photographs were tinted brown by treating the metallic silver in the image with sulfides to create a brownish silver sulfide image. The result was called sepia since the color resembled the browns of sepia ink drawings. Contemporary motion pictures may be tinted brown to give them a period or old time feeling. Perhaps the best known examples of sepia tone in film are the Kansasbased bookends that open and close The Wizard of Oz (1939). In later versions these scenes were presented in black-and-white (particularly on television), but they were restored to their original sepia tones for the film's 1989 50th anniversary re-release. Kroon, R. W. A/V a to z: An encyclopedic dictionary of media, entertainment and other Audiovisual terms. McFarland, 2014.