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Scanned  from  the  collections  of 
The  Library  of  Congress 


Packard  Campus 
for  Audio  Visual  Conservation 
www.loc.gov/avconservation 

Motion  Picture  and  Television  Reading  Room 
www.loc.gov/rr/mopic 

Recorded  Sound  Reference  Center 
www.loc.gov/rr/record 


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THE  mOT/On  P/CTURE 


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January 

1943 


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Good  Shooting  for  1943 
id  Best  Wishes  from  du  Pont 


SUPERIOR  CINE  FILM 

BETTER  THINGS  FOR  BETTER  L  I  V I  N  G  .  .  .  T  H  R  O  U  G  H  CHEMISTRY 


2  January,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


THIS 


EYEMO  „  / 

ptfiHL  Marbor  / 


War  correspondents  and  other 
professional  cameramen  have  to  be  ready 
for  whatever  breaks — good  or  bad — and 
they  know  from  years  of  experience  that 
the  EYEMO  35mm.  Camera  never  fails — 
it  always  gets  the  picture. 

Choose  from  the  seven  Eyemo  models 
offered  the  one  which  best  suits  your 
requirements.  Sold  only  direct. 


DECEMBER  7,  1941 

Jap  Planes  Bomb  Pearl 
Harbor . .  .  Len  H.  Roos, 
A.S.C..F.R.P.S.,  Staff  War 
Correspondent  Pathe 
News,  films  the  action  in 
Honolulu  during  the 
raid,  with  his  EYEMO. 


BELL  &  HOWELL  COMPANY 

Chicago;  New  York;  Hollywood;  Washington, 
D.  C.;  London.  Established  1907. 


EYEMO  MODELS  L  AND  M  .  .  .  Three-lens  turret 
head;  "sound”  field  viewfinder  is  matched  to  six  lens 
focal  lengths  by  turning  a  drum.  "Sound”  aperture 
plate.  Model  L  has  speeds  of  4,  8,  12,  16,  24,  and  32 
f.p.s.;  Model  M  has  speeds  of  8,  12,  16,  24,  32,  and 
48  f.p.s. 


EYEMO  MODELS  N  AND  O  .  .  .  Three-arm  offset 
turret  permits  broader  choice  of  lenses.  Turret  lock 
is  particularly  appreciated  with  long,  heavy  lenses. 
Visual,  prismatic  focuser  with  magnifier.  Model  N 
has  speeds  of  4,  8,  12,  16,  24,  and  32  f.p.s.;  Model  O 
has  speeds  of  8,  12,  16,  24,  32,  and  48  f.p.s. 


EYEMO  MODELS  P  AND  Q  .  .  .  These  are  similar 
to  Models  N  and  O,  respectively,  except  that  P  and  Q 
are  equipped  for  alternate,  optional  use  with  electric 
motor  and  external  film  magazines.  External  film 
magazines  extend  maximum  scene  length  from  55  to 
400  feet.  Offset  finder  eyepiece  prevents  interference. 


“E” FOR  EXCELLENCE — A  10-minute  sound  mo¬ 
tion  picture  showing  how  the  Army-Navy  Award 
for  extraordinary  performance  is  won  and  presented. 
Available  on  nominal  service  charge. 

BUY  WAR  BONDS 

MOTION  PICTURE  CAMERAS  AND  PROJECTORS 


PRECISION- MADE  BY 

BELL  &  HOWELL 


r . - . — . s 

BELL  &  HOWELL  COMPANY  ■ 

1848  Larchmont  Ave.,  Chicago,  Ill.  I 

Please  send  complete  details  about:  I 

()  EYEMO  35mm.  Cameras;  ()  Available  Accessories  for  I 
Eyemo  Cameras.  | 

I 

Name .  I 


Name .  I 


American  Cinematographer  •  January,  1943 


3 


CONTENTS 

Technical  Progress  in  1942 .  6 

The  Cameraman’s  Part  in  Television  Production .  .By  Edward  Anhalt  8 

German  Propaganda  Movies  in  Two  Wars . 

. By  Staff  Sgt.  Alfred  W.  Rohde,  Jr.,  U.S.M.C.  10 

Cameramork  on  a  Convoy . By  Harry  Perry,  A.S.C.  12 

Keeping  Kodachrome  Color  Rendition  Under  Control . 

. By  Alan  Stensvold,  S.S.C.  13 

Aces  of  the  Camera — XXIV :  George  Barnes,  A.S.C . 

. By  Walter  Blanchard  14 

Through  the  Editor’s  Finder .  15 

A.S.C.  on  Parade .  16 

Photography  of  the  Month .  U 

Make  a  Prize-Winning  Film  from  Vacation  “Left-Overs” . 

. By  John  E.  Walter  18 

A  Camera  on  Skiis . By  W.  G.  Campbell  Bosco  19 

Editing  for  Balance . By  Wallace  Campbell  20 

Make  Your  Old  Films  New  by  Making  New  Titles . 

. By  Phil  Tannura,  A.S.C.  21 

Does  Your  Projector  Grow  Whiskers — ’l ...By  F.  W.  Pratt,  A.A.C.S.  22 


Among  the  Movie  Clubs .  23 

New  Photographic  Books .  24 

16mm.  Business  Films .  24 

Home  Movie  Previews .  25 


The  Front  Cover 

This  month’s  cover  shows  Ray  Renna- 
han,  A.S.C.,  (in  checkered  sweater  to  left 
of  camera)  Technicoloring  a  scene  for 
Paramount’s  “For  Whom  the  Bells  Toll” 
on  location  in  the  High  Sierras.  Note 
use  of  both  arc  and  incandescent  “booster” 
lights,  and  overhead  scrim.  Still  by  Bob 
Coburn. 


The  Staff 

• 

EDITOR 

William  Stull,  A.S.C. 


TECHNICAL  EDITOR 
Emery  Huse,  A.S.C. 

• 

WASHINGTON  STAFF  CORRESPONDENT 
Reed  N.  Haythome,  A.S.C. 

• 

MILITARY  ADVISOR 
Col.  Nathan  Levinson 

• 

STAFF  PHOTOGRAPHER 
Pat  Clark 

• 

ARTIST 

Alice  Van  Norman 

• 

CIRCULATION 
Marguerite  Duerr 

• 

ADVISORY  EDITORIAL  BOARD 
Fred  W.  Jackman,  A- S.  C. 

Victor  Milner,  A.  S.  C. 

James  Van  Trees,  A.  S.  C. 

Farciot  Edouart,  A.  S.  C. 

Fred  Gage,  A.  S.  C. 

Dr.  J.  S.  Watson,  A.  S.  C. 

Dr.  L.  A.  Jones,  A.  S.  C. 

Dr.  C.  E.  K.  Mees,  A.  S.  C. 

Dr.  W.  B.  Rayton,  A.  S.  C. 

Dr.  Herbert  Meyer,  A.  S.  C. 

Dr.  V.  B.  Sease,  A.S.C. 

• 

NEW  YORK  REPRESENTATIVE 
S.  R.  Cowan,  132  West  43rd  Street 
Chickering  4-3278  New  York 

• 

AUSTRALIAN  REPRESENTATIVE 
McGill  s,  179  Elizabeth  Street,  Melbourne, 
Australian  and  New  Zealand  Agents 

• 

Published  monthly  by  A.  S.  C.  Agency,  Inc. 
Editorial  and  business  offices : 

1782  North  Orange  Drive 
Hollywood  (Los  Angeles),  California 
Telephone:  GRanite  2135 
• 

Established  1920.  Advertising  rates  on  appli¬ 
cation.  Subscriptions:  United  States  and  Pan 
American  Union.  $2.50  per  year;  Canada,  $2.75 
per  year ;  Foreign.  $3.50.  Single  copies,  25c; 
back  numbers,  30c ;  foreign,  single  copies  35c, 
back  numbers  40c.  Copyright  1943  by  A.  S.  C. 
Agency,  Inc. 


Entered  as  second-class  matter  Nov.  18,  1937, 
at  the  postoffice  at  Los  Angeles,  California,  under 
the  act  of  March  3,  1879. 


4 


January,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


S>IE®!f“!l§§a©miL  SJ®.W 


The  friction  type  head  gives  super-smooth  pan  and 
tilt  action  with  360°  pan  and  80°  tilt  ranges.  A  gener¬ 
ous  sized  pin  and  trunnion  assures  long  and  depend¬ 
able  service.  "Spread-leg"  design  affords  utmost 
rigidity  and  quick,  positive  height  adjustments.  A 
"T"  level  (like  those  used  in  heavy  professional 
models)  is  built  into  this  14  lb.  superfine  tripod. 

The  top-plate  can  be  set  for  16mm.  E.K.  Cine 
Special,  with  or  without  motor;  35mm.  DeVry 
and  B  &  H  Eyemo  (with  motor),  and  with  or 
without  alignment  gauge.  Many  other  fea¬ 
tures  are  graphically  described  in  litera¬ 
ture  that  will  be  sent  upon  request. 


Tripod  Head  Unconditionally  Guaranteed 
5  Years.  Write  tor  Descriptive  Literature! 


"Professional  Jr."  tripods  are  used  by  leading  Newsreel  companies,  16mm 
and  35mm  motion  picture  producers,  the  U.  S.  Government, — Signal  Corps, 
Navy  Department,  and  Office  of  Strategic  Services — for  important  sound  and 
silent  work. 


FRANK  C.  ZUCKER 


G 


*nnKRfltquipni€nT(o 

i6oo  BRORDuuny  \  n€uj  aoRKCuy 


Above — Collapsible  and  ad¬ 
justable  telescoping  metal 
triangle.  Extends  from 
to  26,/2".  Has  wing  locking 
nuts  for  adjusting  leg  spread 
and  stud  holes  for  inserting 
points  of  tripod  feet.  Tri¬ 
angles  prevent  damage,  in¬ 
sure  cameramen  that  their 
5  equipment  remains  in  cor¬ 
rect  position  and  will  not  slip 
on  or  mar  arty  type  of  sur- 
»  face.  _ 

Left  —  35mm  Eyemo  with 
motor  and  400  ft.  magazines 
mounted  on  "Professional  Jr." 


American  Cinematographer  •  January,  1943 


5 


The  Cunningham  Com¬ 
bat  Camera  was  the 
major  development  in 
professional  motion 
picture  cameras  in 
1942. 


IN  common  with  almost  every  other 
part  of  our  daily  living  cinematog¬ 
raphy,  both  professional  and  ama¬ 
teur,  has  been  dominantly  influenced 
during  1942  by  the  fact  of  America’s 
participation  in  the  war.  In  some  re¬ 
spects  this  influence  has  been  a  limiting 
factor;  but  in  others  it  has  had  the  oppo¬ 
site  effect  of  accelerating  the  develop¬ 
ment  of  both  existing  and  new  methods 
and  equipment  beyond  anything  which 
could  have  been  expected  otherwise. 

Anyone  who  attempts  to  chronicle  the 
year’s  cinetechnical  progress  must  be 
struck  by  the  fact  that  his  list  will  con¬ 
tain  fewer  mentions  of  new  equipment 
and  materials  than  has  been  the  case  in 
many  a  year.  The  necessity  of  diverting 
metals,  engineering  ability,  manufactur- 
ing  capacity  and  even  film  itself  into 
channels  directly  connected  with  the 
War  Effort  has  seen  to  that. 

On  the  other  hand  these  same  short¬ 
ages — to  which  is  speedily  being  added 
a  shortage  of  trained  technical  man¬ 
power  in  the  studios — are  leading  to  the 
development  of  professional  methods  and 
accessories  which  should  prove  of  last¬ 
ing  value  to  the  industry  long  after  the 
war  is  won.  In  the  same  way  the  tech¬ 
nique  and  scope  of  16mm.  films  for 
educational  and  training  purposes  ai’e 
advancing  at  an  unparalleled  pace. 
Methods 

The  methods  of  professional  produc¬ 
tion  are  undergoing  an  almost  revolu¬ 
tionary  change.  Where  for  nearly  forty 
years  it  has  been  an  industry-wide  tradi¬ 
tion  that  “film  is  the  cheapest  thing  on 
the  lot,”  today  film  has  become  one  of 
the  rarest  and  most  valuable.  Due  to 


the  tremendous  use  of  motion  pictures 
by  the  Armed  Forces,  drastic  reductions 
in  the  amount  of  film  available  for 
civilian  use  have  had  to  be  made.  In 
consequence,  the  keynote  of  today’s  pro¬ 
duction  practice  has  necessarily  to  be 
the  conservation  of  every  possible  inch 
of  film. 

Every  studio  has  therefore  placed  defi¬ 
nite  limitations  on  the  number  of  “takes” 
which  can  be  made  of  any  normal  scene, 
and  much  more  painstaking  rehearsal  of 
both  dialog  and  action  have  become  uni¬ 
versal.  A  similar  restriction  on  the 
number  of  “takes”  which  can  be  rush- 
printed  is  also  generally  applied.  Both 
of  these  reforms,  incidentally,  have  long 
been  advocated  by  many  of  the  indus- 


The  constantly  increasing  use  of  16mm.  by  the  Armed 
Forces  was  one  of  the  most  significant  developments 
of  the  year  and  greatly  influenced  conditions  in 
both  professional  and  amateur  photography. 


TECHNICAL 


try’s  leading  technicians  and  creators, 
not  only  as  worthwhile  economies,  but  as 
steps  toward  better  production  quality. 
Present  experience  seems  to  be  bearing 
out  these  claims. 

Another  step  in  conserving  film  has 
been  an  even  more  drastic  reduction  in 
the  number  of  pre-production  tests  made. 
In  some  studios,  tests  on  motion  picture 
film  have  been  almost  entirely  eliminated 
and  replaced  by  tests  made  under  the 
lighting  control  of  a  director  of  photog¬ 
raphy,  but  employing  still  photographs 
as  the  visual  medium.  Due  to  the  short¬ 
age  of  16mm.  film — especially  Koda- 
chrome — the  use  of  16mm.  for  testing 
has  fallen  off  sharply. 

In  this  connection,  a  suggestion  made 
by  Lee  Garmes,  A.S.C.,  is  worthy  of 
note.  He  has  suggested  “pre-photo¬ 
graphing”  complete  productions  in 
16mm.,  preferably  with  single-system 
sound,  and  thereafter  using  the  com¬ 
pletely  edited  16mm.  version  as  a  vir¬ 
tual  blueprint  by  which  the  production 
itself  could  be  photographed  in  almost 
precisely  its  ultimate  release  footage, 
with  a  minimum  of  superfluous  scenes, 
overlaps,  etc. 

On  the  mechanical  side,  the  use  of 
automatic  scene-slaters  which  make  use 
of  the  footage  inevitably  consumed  in 
bringing  the  camera  up  to  speed  to  carry 
scene-identification  data  has  been  ex¬ 
tended  considerably.  Several  studios, 
sound  engineers,  and  others  have  also 
conducted  useful  studies  of  the  various 
systems  of  synchronizing  and  starting 
cameras  and  recorders,  also  in  the  inter¬ 
ests  of  conserving  film. 

Several  decidedly  less  practical  ex¬ 
pedients  for  conserving  film  were  also 
advanced,  but  like  the  “wide  film”  flurry 
of  a  decade  ago  progressed  little  farther 
than  the  conversational  stage,  and  for 
much  the  same  reason.  These  plans  all 
aimed  to  save  film-footage  by  reducing 
either  the  standard  picture-frequency  or 
the  depth  of  the  frame  aperture,  or 
both. 

A  few  enthusiasts  advocated  reducing 
the  standard  taking  and  projecting  speed 
from  the  present  90  feet  per  minute  to 
the  former  silent-picture  speed  of  60 
feet  per  minute.  Others  suggested  ac¬ 
companying  the  reduction  in  lineal  film 
speed  with  a  reduction  in  the  depth  of 
the  frame:  one  group  favoring  reducing 
the  height  of  the  frame  from  the  pres¬ 
ent  4-sprocket  standard  to  3,  and  an¬ 
other  group  urging  the  even  more  ex¬ 
treme  change  to  a  frame  only  two  per¬ 
forations  high. 

All  of  these  expedients  would  unques¬ 
tionably  have  reduced  the  industry’s 
consumption  of  film — especially  release- 
print  positive — very  materially,  but  all 
of  them  would  require  the  replacement 
of  gearing,  and  in  some  cases  intermit¬ 
tent  movements  and  optics  as  well,  in  all 
of  the  country’s  projectors,  which  would 
obviously  conserve  film  at  the  expense 


6  January,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


PROGRESS  IN  1942 


of  critical  metals  and  precision  manu¬ 
facturing  plant  capacity,  to  say  nothing 
of  industry-wide  confusion  while  the 
transition  was  being  effected. 

Another  significant  change  in  the  in¬ 
dustry’s  methods  was  effected  by  the 
governmental  limitation  on  the  use  of 
new  materials  in  set-construction.  Aside 
from  the  obvious  problems  in  the  con¬ 
struction  of  interior  sets  (which  will  be 
discussed  later),  this  limitation  created 
new  problems  in  the  filming  of  exteriors. 

Several  studios  met  this  challenge  by 
sending  complete  production  units  on  ex¬ 
tended  location  trips,  where  transporta¬ 
tion  conditions  permitted,  to  film  natural 
exteriors,  as  in  the  cast  of  Paramount’s 
“For  Whom  the  Bells  Toll,”  where  much 
of  the  exterior  action,  originally  in¬ 
tended  to  be  filmed  on  stage-built  ex¬ 
terior  sets,  was  photographed  under  diffi¬ 
cult  conditions  in  California’s  High 
Sierras.  Where  actual  towns  or  build¬ 
ings  could  be  used  in  lieu  of  sets,  several 
studios  did  so,  as  in  the  case  of  Uni¬ 
versal’s  “Shadow  of  a  Doubt,”  for  which 
director  Alfred  Hitchcock  and  cinema¬ 
tographer  Joseph  Valentine,  A.S.C., 
made  use  of  an  entire  Northern  Cali¬ 
fornia  town  in  place  of  studio-built  ex¬ 
terior  sets. 

In  other,  less  spectacular  instances 
studios  arranged  to  send  their  units  to 
standing  sets  in  other  studios  for  such 
scenes.  In  one  current  production  the 
exteriors  are  being  filmed  on  standing 
exterior  sets  in  no  less  than  five  other 
studios. 

With  the  coming  of  wartime  coastal 
dim-out  regulations,  the  filming  of  night 
exteriors  has  become  another  added 
problem.  In  some  instances,  this  is  be¬ 
ing  solved  by  photographing  these  scenes 
by  daylight  with  appropriate  filters,  in 
some  instances  on  Infra-Red  film,  and 
in  others  on  standard  panchromatic 
negative  with  the  popular  23A-56  com¬ 
bination  filter.  In  other  instances,  where 
possible,  such  scenes  are  being  photo¬ 
graphed  with  artificial  lighting,  under 
canvas.  This  problem  is  by  no  means  to 
be  regarded  as  completely  solved,  how¬ 
ever. 

What  may  in  the  long  run  prove  the 
year’s  outstanding  development  in  tech¬ 
nical  methods,  however,  is  the  amazing 
advance  made  in  the  professional  use  of 
16mm.  film — especially  Kodachrome — for 
subsequent  enlargement  to  35mm.  In 
addition  to  a  number  of  excellent  short- 
subjects  made  in  this  manner  and  re¬ 
leased  in  35mm.  Technicolor,  two  out¬ 
standing  featurettes — the  Navy’s  “The 
Battle  of  Midway,”  and  Walt  Dis¬ 
ney’s  “Saludo  Amigos!”  (live-action  se¬ 
quences) — have  been  made  originally  in 
16mm.  and  enlarged,  and  at  least  one 
feature,  Loew-Lewyn’s  “Moon  and  Six- 
pense,”  has  employed  an  enlargement 
from  a  16mm.  Kodachrome  original  to 
provide  a  color  sequence.  Successful 
tests  have  also  been  made  using  enlarge¬ 


ments  from  16mm.  originals  for  process 
background  plates. 

Film — Professional 

With  all  of  the  nation’s  raw  film  pro¬ 
ducers  straining  their  capacities  to  the 
utmost  to  meet  an  unprecedented  de¬ 
mand  for  film,  obviously  no  new  cine- 
film  products  could  be  introduced  during 
the  year.  However,  recent  reports  from 
the  Agfa  Ansco  organization  indicate 
that  this  company,  through  one  of  its 
subsidiaries,  has  perfected  the  cello¬ 
phane-like  “Ozophane”  film-base  ma¬ 
terial  with  which  they  have  been  ex¬ 
perimenting  for  some  time.  Commercial 
introduction  of  this  product  naturally 
awaits  the  termination  of  the  war, 
though  it  is  understood  that  Ozophane 
film  is  in  manufacture,  with  the  total 
output  being  absorbed  by  the  military 
for  unrevealed  special  purposes. 

Film — Amateur 

For  the  same  reason,  no  new  film 
products  in  16mm.  or  8mm.  have  been  in- 
ti’oduced.  Due  to  the  widespread  use  of 
16mm.  for  military  training  films  and 
for  reduction  prints  of  professional  fea¬ 
tures  for  entertainment  of  troops,  vir¬ 
tually  no  16mm.  positive  film  is  avail¬ 
able  for  civilian  use.  Substandard  re¬ 
versal  film  products  (at  this  writing)  re¬ 
main  available  for  civilian  use,  however, 
though  in  considerably  restricted  quan¬ 
tities.  In  general,  manufacturers  and 
dealers  are  voluntarily  rationing  sub¬ 
standard  film,  selling  it  only  in  reduced 
quantities  and,  in  the  case  of  regular 
commercial  users,  on  a  quota  basis  based 
on  the  customer’s  previous  regular  pur¬ 
chases. 

A  new  and  important  use  of  16mm. 
film  is  in  the  “V  .  .  .  —  Mail”  service. 
This  is  an  extension  of  the  “Airgraph” 
system  pioneered  abroad  by  Eastman’s 
British  affiliate,  Kodak,  Ltd.,  to  facili¬ 
tate  transportation  of  letters  between 
soldiers  overseas  and  their  families  at 
home.  The  letters  are  written  on  spe¬ 
cial  blank  forms,  which  are  taken  to  a 
central  depot  and  photographed  on 
16mm.  film.  In  this  form  they  occupy 
only  a  fraction  of  the  space  occupied  by 


The  portable,  self-contained  and  almost  wholly  auto¬ 
matic  Houston  developing  machine,  developed  for 
field  service  with  the  Army,  was  the  1942  highlight 
in  laboratory  advancements. 


The  rapidly  expanding  use  of  motion  pictures,  espe¬ 
cially  in  16mm.  for  military  and  industrial  train- 
nig  is  bringing  enormous  advances  in  visual  educa¬ 
tion  technique. 

a  normal  letter:  85,000  letters,  which 
would  normally  weigh  a  ton,  will  weigh 
but  20  pounds  when  microfilmed,  and  a 
single  100-foot  roll  of  16mm.  film  will 
record  over  1700  letters.  In  this  form 
the  letters  can  be  flown  to  their  desti¬ 
nation,  where  they  are  photographically 
enlarged  to  readable  size. 

Color 

Paradoxically,  despite  the  restrictions 
on  the  availability  of  film,  the  use  of 
color — notably,  of  course,  Technicolor — 
in  35mm.  nroduction  has  not  in  the  least 
lessened.  If  anything,  it  has  increased, 
with  a  constantly  increasing  proportion 
of  the  industry’s  major  features  being 
enhanced  by  the  use  of  color.  It  may 
therefore  be  very  definitely  concluded 
that  color,  properly  photographed,  has 
proven  itself  at  the  box-office,  for  other¬ 
wise  it  would  certainly  not  be  so  widely 
employed  under  present  conditions. 

The  Technicolor  process  in  its  three- 
strip  form  continues  to  enjoy  its  virtual 
monopoly  of  feature  production.  Some 
potential  competitors  exist,  however; 
three-color  Cinecolor  seems  to  have 
reached  the  commercial  production  stage, 
though  there  remains  the  drawback  of 
the  lack  of  adequate  three-film  cameras 
other  than  the  Technicolor  ones. 

Some  use  has  been  made  of  Techni¬ 
color’s  much-rumored  single-film  or 
Monopack  process  which  seems  essen¬ 
tially  to  consist  of  a  35mm.  Kodachrome- 
type  reversal  original  which  is  subse¬ 
quently  copied  to  make  the  necessary 
three-color  separation  negatives  for 
regulation  Technicolor  imbibition  release¬ 
printing.  This  process  has  been  used  for 
special  scenes  in  a  number  of  produc¬ 
tions — particularly  in  instances  where 
the  bulk  of  the  usual  three-film  camera 
was  physically  impractical,  or  where 
camera-speeds  higher  than  the  rather 
limited  speeds  possible  with  three-film 
cameras  were  necessary — and  at  least 
one  feature  film,  Disney’s  picturization 
of  de  Seversky’s  “Victory  Through  Air 
Power,”  has  been  completed  with  Mono¬ 
pack  used  for  all  the  live-action  scenes. 

The  successful  adaptation  of  the  Mono¬ 
pack  principle  to  a  negative-positive  sys¬ 
tem  and  the  production  of  natural-color 
stills  with  prints  on  an  opaque  base  has 
been  achieved  in  Eastman’s  Kodacolor 
(Continued  on  Page  36) 


American  Cinematographer  •  January,  1943 


7 


The  Cameraman's  Part  In 
TELEVISION  PRODUCTION 

By  EDWARD  ANHALT 

Chief  Cameraman,  CBS  Television  Studios,  New  York 


ON  May  12th  of  this  year,  the 
Federal  Communications  Commis¬ 
sion  amended  its  television  regu¬ 
lations  to  “permit  licensees  of  commer¬ 
cial  television  stations  to  broadcast  but 
four  hours  of  program  service  per  week 
instead  of  the  fifteen  hours  weekly,  re¬ 
quired  heretofore.”  In  its  explanation  of 
the  new  rules  the  Commission  stated 
that  “The  step  was  taken  to  prevent 
recession  of  this  new  art  to  a  purely 
experimental  or  laboratory  stage  and  to 
keep  it  alive,  ready  to  flourish  as  a 
public  service  after  the  war  emergency.” 
The  rules,  it  continued,  “will  permit 
licensees  to  conserve  the  life  of  their 
equipment,  particularly  tubes,  and  will 
permit  television  stations  to  operate  un¬ 
der  conditions  of  greatly  reduced  per¬ 
sonnel.” 

Since  that  date  the  channeling  of  tele¬ 
vision’s  technicians  and  equipment  into 
war  work  has  accelerated.  Telecasters 
have  had  to  reduce  correspondingly  the 
production  value  of  their  live  programs 
and  resort  more  and  more  to  theatrical 
films  or  war-effort  programs  canned  on 
film.  Public  interest  in  television,  con¬ 
sequently,  has  dropped  to  a  new  low. 


Paradoxically,  however,  the  deader  the 
art  looks  to  the  public,  the  more  lively 
it  grows  behind  the  locked  doors  of  the 
laboratory  and  the  conference  room. 

For  some  time  past  almost  all  tele¬ 
vision  laboratories  and  personnel  have 
been  engaged  in  applying  the  electronic 
principles  of  television  to  war  work 
of  the  most  strategic  and  secretive  na¬ 
ture.  It  is  no  military  secret,  how¬ 
ever,  to  state  that  just  as  radio  grew 
through  World  War  I,  startling  tech¬ 
nical  advances  have  been  made  in  tele¬ 
vision  since  the  War  emergency  began. 
Out  of  them  will  come  the  technical 
base  of  the  post-war  industry:  1)  Ade¬ 
quate  screen  size,  2)  Network  televi¬ 
sion,  3)  Satisfactory  rendition  of  pic¬ 
ture  detail,  4)  Full-color  television. 

Further,  careful  evaluation  of  the 
over-all  national  experiments  in  tele¬ 
vision  production,  plus  our  own  prac¬ 
tical  experience  at  CBS,  have  led  us 
to  the  conclusion  that  we  now  know 
how  to  put  our  own  television  pro¬ 
gramme  sei-vice  on  a  practical  economic 
basis  just  as  soon  as  the  United  Na¬ 
tions’  victory  releases  these  technical 
advances  to  us. 


Telecasting  a  demonstration  of  Army  Training  Film 
production.  The  uppermost  lighting  units  are  3  kw. 
mercury  vapors.  Next,  the  main  bank  of  fluorescent! 
rated  at  7  kw.  but  actually  the  equivalent  of  21  kw. 
due  to  greater  sensitivity  of  the  "ike"  to  color  tem¬ 
peratures  approaching  daylight.  Overhead  incandes- 
cents  are  1000-Watt  units  totaling  5  kw.  Spotlights 
are  5  kw.  Total  wattage  on  the  set  is  24  kw.  Lens 
apertures,  f:4.5.  Iconoscope  sensitivity  equivalent  to 
Weston  50. 


With  reference  to  the  status  of  tele¬ 
vision,  Standard  &  Poor’s  warns,  in  its 
current  survey  of  the  motion  picture  in¬ 
dustry,  that  the  industry’s  post-war  out¬ 
look  is  “generally  favorable,  though 
competition  from  other  forms  of  amuse¬ 
ment  now  restricted  will  probably  hold 
earning  power  below  recent  high  levels 
for  some  time  .  .  .  over  the  longer  term 
the  industry  faces  the  threat  of  com¬ 
mercial  television.” 

For  all  these  reasons  it  seemed  to 
me  that  an  account  of  television  produc¬ 
tion  might  be  timely  even  though  all 
our  minds  and  many  of  our  bodies  are 
currently  occupied  in  the  ressing  mat¬ 
ter  of  winning  the  war.  xhe  following 
paper  is,  therefore,  submitted  with  the 
reminder  that  it  is  necessarily  a  high¬ 
ly  personal  impression  of  a  controver¬ 
sial  subject  about  which  there  is  no 
critical  literature  and  little  recorded 
history. 

All  television  set-ups,  outside  of  those 
encountered  in  mobile  or  non-studio 
pick-ups,  are  basically  similar,  however 
they  may  differ  in  details  of  construc¬ 
tion.  There  is  a  stage  area  around 
which  are  mobile  and  fixed  light-sources 
in  varying  combinations.  Over  the  stage 
area  are  microphones  on  booms  and 
cables.  In  front  of  the  stage  area  are 
from  one  to  three  television  cameras 
on  dollies,  perambulators,  or  rolling 
tripods.  These  are  connected  through 
cables  to  a  control  room.  The  control 
room  has  monitor  tubes,  or  screens, 
which  show  the  director  the  pictures 
picked  up  by  each  of  the  cameras  plus 
conventional  audio  monitors  and  control 
panels.  Cuts,  fades,  or  dissolves  may  be 
made  between  cameras  so  that  at  the 
flick  of  a  switch  the  picture  pick-up  of 
any  one  camera  can  be  transmitted  over 
the  air  in  preference  to  that  of  any 
other  camera. 

The  director,  other  production  peo¬ 
ple,  and  engineers  are  in  touch  with  the 
cameramen  and  studio  technicians  over 
headphones.  Cameramen  talk  back  to 
the  control  room  with  hand  signals 
since  there  can  be  little  talking  over 
phones  while  a  show  is  on  the  air.  The 
basic  problem  of  effective  pick-up  is  to 
manoeuver  cameras  around  cables,  lights, 
sets  and  booms  so  as  to  simultaneously 
miss  none  of  the  action,  take  effective 
shots  and  permit  optically  pleasant  cuts 
between  cameras. 

As  in  radio,  the  control  over  the  show 
exercised  by  producers  or  directors  can 
be  measured  almost  exactly  by  the  ex¬ 
tent  of  the  rehearsal  and  planning  time 
available.  But,  regardless  of  the  amount 
of  preparation,  television’s  primary 
quality  of  instantaneous  transmission 
rules  that  much  of  the  responsibility  for 


8  January,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


Televising  a  demonstration  of  the  New  York  Aircraft 
Warning  Service  (before  Pearl  Harbor).  Program 
included  mock  air  raid  with  film  inserts  for  exteriors. 


the  success  or  failure  of  the  pick-up 
rests  with  the  cameraman.  This  does 
not  mean  that  skillful  camerawork  can 
pull  a  bad  program  very  far  out  of  the 
mud.  As  in  the  film  industry  and  radio, 
bad  material  can  only  result  in  a  poor 
show  no  matter  what  the  technical  work¬ 
ers  can  do  to  help  it.  What  it  does 
mean,  however,  is  that  good  material 
obviously  can  only  be  carried  effectively 
to  the  television  audience  if  the  cam¬ 
eraman  gets  it  there.  He  cannot  save 
it  if  it  is  bad,  but  he  can  ruin  it  if  it  is 
good.  And  since  the  picture  is  trans¬ 
mitted  over  the  air  when  he  takes  it, 
he  must  be  right  the  first  time.  There 
are  no  retakes. 

At  CBS  and,  so  far  as  I  know,  at 
other  studios  as  well,  life  for  the  cam¬ 
eraman  was  harder  than  it  will  be  when 
the  industry  is  fully  developed.  The 
pressure  of  progressive  experiment  plus 
the  fifteen  weekly  hours  of  programmes 
required  by  the  FCC  allowed  for  so 
little  rehearsal  and  planning  time  that 
most  of  the  action  that  occurred  on  the 
stage  was  actually  unrehearsed  and  a 
great  deal  of  it  spontaneous  and  un¬ 
predictable.  The  director’s  control  over 
the  action  was,  therefore,  not  abso¬ 
lute  as  it  is  in  pictures.  His  control 
over  the  cameras  was  limited  by  the 
instructions  he  could  communicate  suc- 
cintly  to  the  cameramen  who,  by  virtue 
of  the  unpredictability  and  speed  of  the 
action,  had  really  to  be  prepared  to 
carry  out  these  instructions  before  they 
were  given  if  the  pick-up  was  to  be 
successful. 

We  at  CBS,  particularly  those  like 
myself  who  functioned  both  as  camera¬ 
men  and  directors,  recognized  the  heavy 
responsibility  of  the  cameramen  and 
tried  to  confine  instructions  to  them 
to  advance  warnings  of  actions  to  come 
or  cues  for  camera  treatments  previous¬ 
ly  agreed  upon. 

Note  that  this  lack  of  rehearsal  and 
technical  planning  did  not  mean  that 
our  programmes  were  unprepared.  The 
skeletons  of  all  of  them  were  laid  out 
in  advance.  It  does  mean  that  we  were 
forced  to  develop  personnel  and  tech¬ 
niques  competent  to  carry  out  the  gen¬ 
eral  line  of  a  programme  with  the  mini¬ 
mum  attention  to  the  details  of  its 
execution  before  air  time.  The  opera¬ 
tion  and  coordination  of  cameras,  lights, 
mikes,  and  properties  was  rarely  re¬ 
hearsed.  The  technical  execution  of  the 
show  was  left  to  the  mental  agility  of 
the  director  and  the  familiarity  of  the 
technicians  and  cameramen  with  the  de¬ 
mands  of  the  medium. 

Naturally,  we  have  never  assumed 
that  dramatic  shows  or  tightly  written 
factual  material  could  be  presented  in 
that  way.  We  do  know,  however,  from 
our  off-the-air  experiments  in  more  for¬ 
mal  television  programmes,  that  train¬ 
ing  in  the  off-the-cuff  production  meth¬ 
ods  of  our  informal  shows  will  allow 


us  to  cut  considerably  the  rehearsal 
time  of  formal  material.  It  may  seem 
a  wild  statement  to  those  accustomed 
to  stage  and  motion  picture  rehearsals 
but  we  think  it  will  be  entirely  pos¬ 
sible  to  air  a  one-hour  dramatic  show, 
complete  with  film  inserts  and  rear- 
projection,  with  only  three  hours  of  tech¬ 
nical  rehearsal  in  the  studio. 

As  part  of  the  experiments  in  this 
direction  at  CBS,  I  produced  a  rather 
elaborate  forty-five  minute  report — a 
television  “documentary”  about  the 
Training  Film  Unit  of  the  U.  S.  Army 
Signal  Corps.  We  did  not  have  time 
for  technical  rehearsal— lights,  cameras, 
booms,  etc.,  were  not  used  during  the 
two-hour,  off-stage  run-through.  We 
transmitted  still  pictures,  slides,  two 
training  films,  a  re-enacted  sequence  of 
methods  of  training  in  World  War  I, 
a  scenario  story  conference,  a  sequence 
covering  animation  methods,  and  the 
actual  shooting  of  a  film  sequence  with 
film  cameras.  Personnel  on  the  show 
were  twenty-two  officers  and  men. 

The  element  of  short  rehearsal  time 
— that  is,  short  when  compared  with 
rehearsals  in  film  or  theatre — is  com¬ 
mon  to  both  radio  and  television.  In 
radio,  it  has  produced  two  distinguish¬ 
ing  conditions  which  will  probably  carry 
over  to  television.  These  are  known 
as  the  “repetitive  beat”  or  “programme 
cycle,”  and  the  plot  “pattern.”  These 
phrases,  recurring  in  the  various  cur¬ 
rent  sociological  surveys  of  radio,  mean 
simply  that  a)  most  radio  shows  are 
aired  regularly  at  the  same  time  every 
day  or  every  week,  and  b)  the  same 
continuity  skeleton  for  variety  or  audi¬ 
ence  participation  programmes  and  the 
same  plot  situations  and  character  de¬ 
lineations  for  strip  shows  are  main¬ 
tained  week  in  and  week  out.  This 
“repetitive  beat”  exists  because  radio’s 
advertisers  must  have  a  continuing  audi¬ 


ence,  and  the  plot  “pattern”  exists  be¬ 
cause  it  saves  large  sums  of  money 
in  the  labor  time  involved  in  produc¬ 
tion  and  rehearsal. 

During  the  past  year,  when  television 
ran  on  a  fifteen-hour-per-week  program 
schedule,  we,  at  CBS,  experimented  with 
the  radio  “pattern”  of  a  daily  or  weekly 
cycle.  Each  Wednesday  we  did  a  show 
based  on  square  dancing,  and  each 
Thursday  night  a  quiz.  Every  after¬ 
noon  an  illustrated  children’s  fairy-tale, 
and  so  forth. 

After  the  first  few  weeks  we  were 
able  to  create  a  television  equivalent  of 
the  radio  “pattern.”  We  could  do,  there¬ 
fore,  with  less  and  less  rehearsal  time 
for  all  of  our  “pattern”  shows.  Natural¬ 
ly,  we  changed  the  material,  questions 
and  personalities  of,  say,  our  quiz  pro¬ 
gram,  each  week;  but  the  sequence  of 
specific  types  of  questions  remained  the 
same— hence  the  basic  skeleton  of  cam¬ 
era,  lights,  and  sound  coverage  re¬ 
mained  the  same. 

Similarly,  our  vaudeville  or  variety 
show  used  different  acts  but  they  re¬ 
ceived  the  same  sort  of  production  treat¬ 
ment  and  consequently  they  could  be  di¬ 
vided  into  five  or  six  categories  for 
camera  treatment  (i.e.,  routine  treat¬ 
ments  for  ballroom  dancers,  monolog- 
ists,  acrobats,  singers,  and  so  forth.) 

In  short,  we  escaped  from  the  neces¬ 
sity  of  long  rehearsals  by  following 
almost  exactly  the  same  routine  as  to 
continuity,  setting,  space  relationships 
and  lighting,  week  in  and  week  out. 
The  radio  equivalent  of  our  “pattern” 
show  is  recognized  as  good  programme 
practice  and  so  long  as  the  actual  ma¬ 
terial — plots,  gags,  songs,  documenta¬ 
tions,  quiz  questions — are  changed,  the 
effect  is  not  harmful.  The  Allen  and 
Benny  radio  shows  have  the  same  basic 
skeleton  week  after  week  and  the  radio 
(Continued  on  Page  30) 


American  Cinematographer  •  January,  1943 


9 


German  Propaganda  Movies  In  Two  Wars 


By  STAFF  SGT.  ALFRED  W.  ROHDE,  Jr.,  U.S.M.C. 


WE  hear  a  great  deal  about  Ger¬ 
man  propaganda  movies,  but 
they  are  by  no  means  an  inven¬ 
tion  of  the  present  generation  of  Nazi 
Germans.  They  had  their  beginnings 
under  the  Imperial  German  Government 
of  World  War  I,  and  the  Nazi  propa¬ 
gandists  of  today  have  merely  stream¬ 
lined  and  vastly  expanded  a  tool  left 
to  their  hands  by  their  predecessors  who 
lost  the  First  War  Against  Democracy. 
Perhaps  we  can  take  it  as  a  good  omen 
that  in  both  instances  of  the  use  of 
films  as  a  weapon  by  the  self-styled 
“supermen”  of  the  Reich  their  celluloid 
weapon  has  backfired  upon  its  users! 

Following  the  axiom  that  a  soldier  is 
better  armed  if  he  knows  how  the 
enemy  uses  his  weapons,  the  writer,  as 
a  cinematographer  in  the  United  States 
Marine  Corps,  has  tried  to  learn  as 
much  as  he  could  about  Germany’s  mak¬ 
ing  and  use  of  propaganda  films.  It 
is  a  story  which  probably  will  not  be 
completely  pieced  together  until  after 
the  war,  when  we  have  access  to  secret 
data  and  films  in  a  captive  Berlin;  but 
even  the  little  information  now  avail¬ 
able  should  be  on  interest  to  all  of  us 
who  are  making  and  using  motion  pic¬ 
tures  in  the  Free  Countries  of  the 
Democratic  world. 

At  the  outbreak  of  World  War  I,  the 
Imperial  Film  Office  of  the  German  Gov¬ 
ernment  started  the  making  of  the  first 
propaganda  films,  to  bring  the  actuality 
of  war  home  to  the  German  people. 
Their  aim  was  to  send  the  German 


moviegoers  from  the  theatres  in  a  mood 
of  glowing  patriotic  enthusiasm  and 
(especially  later)  to  inspire  them  with 
the  determination  to  “stick  to  it”  to 
the  end  and  achieve  victory  at  any 
cost. 

“Direction”  in  those  early  propaganda 
films  seems  to  have  been  a  bit  naive, 
to  say  the  least.  The  British  were 
usually  the  villains  (remember  the  fa¬ 
mous  “Hymn  of  Hate” — ?)  and  the 
makers  of  these  films  would  round  up 
a  cast  of  laborers,  farmers  and  village 
youths,  dress  them  in  the  uniforms  of 
the  British  and  German  armies,  and 
stage  their  war  scenes  in  the  best  Hol¬ 
lywood  fashion.  By  this  means,  and 
often  with  the  aid  of  ingenious  mechan¬ 
ical  devices,  they  could  film  any  de¬ 
sired  type  of  battle  victory  over  the 
hated  English. 

One  could  stroll  along  a  quiet  coun¬ 
try  road  and  come  upon  a  horde  of 
yelling  men  whose  spiked  helmets  and 
wicked-looking  bayonets  glistened  in 
the  summer  sun  as  they  charged  a 
trench  filled  with  khaki-clad  “Britishers” 
who  cowered  and  surrendered  appropri¬ 
ately.  On  the  screen  one  would  shudder 
involuntarily  at  close  shots  of  a  glint¬ 
ing  bayonet  sinking  two  or  three  inches 
deep  into  a  khaki-clad  body,  with  an 
accompanying  gout  of  blood  jetting  out¬ 
ward.  But  in  reality  these  points  on 
the  “Englander’s”  body  were  protected 
by  felt  pads,  and  the  bayonets  were 
very  special  ones,  attached  to  the  bar¬ 
rel  of  the  rifle  with  a  spring  which 


would  permit  the  bayonet  to  retract 
several  inches  on  striking  a  solid  object. 

During  the  later  part  of  the  war 
there  were  cameramen  attached  to  some 
of  the  German  military  and  naval  units 
in  the  field  for  the  express  purpose  of 
making  films  for  propaganda  and  for 
historical  record.  One  of  the  most  cele¬ 
brated  of  these  films  was  a  picture  made 
by  a  cameraman  who  cruised  with  a 
raiding  U-boat  and  filmed  the  sinking 
of  many  Allied  ships — some  by  torpedo, 
and  some  by  gunfire.  This  particular 
reel  may  have  glorified  the  Kaiser’s 
submarine  service  at  home,  but  when 
a  print  eventually  got  into  Allied  hands, 
its  release  in  England,  France  and  in 
this  country  in  1918  and  1919  had  an 
effect  precisely  opposite  to  what  its 
makers  had  planned. 

During  the  years  between  the  wars, 
as  the  German  film  industry  under  the 
“Second  Reich” — the  Republic — built  it¬ 
self  up  to  a  paramount  position  in 
Europe,  more  than  a  few  theatrical  films 
were  made  of  themes  which  in  one  way 
or  another  helped  to  keep  alive  the 
German  militaristic  spirit  which  the  Al¬ 
lies  mistakenly  thought  they  had  crushed 
at  Versailles.  Some  of  these — like  “Ar¬ 
mored  Cruiser  Emden” — re-enacted  he¬ 
roic  actions  of  the  war.  Others  glori¬ 
fied  individuals  of  that  and  earlier  wars 
around  whom  the  Prussian  tradition  had 
been  built  and  grown.  And  as  a  matter 
of  course,  wherever  in  any  picture  an 
Englishman  or  an  American  could  be 
made  a  villain  or  a  low-comedy  char- 


10  January,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


RECIPE  FOR  PROPAGANDA,  NAZI  STYLE— show  the 
efficiency  and  invincibility  of  your  troops  and  equip¬ 
ment  (opposite  page)  and  the  ruin  they  make  of 
your  enemies'  forces,  like  this  wrecked  Polish  armored 
train.  Pictures  enlarged  from  official  German  war 
movies  of  the  Polish  blitz. 

acter,  it  was  done — to  sure  success  with 
the  German  audience. 

When  the  Nazis  came  into  power  with 
their  “Third  Reich,”  they  very  quickly 
grasped  the  reins  of  the  German  film 
industry,  for  they  had  a  keen  apprecia¬ 
tion  of  its  value  as  a  means  of  propa¬ 
ganda  both  at  home  and  abroad.  But 
their  technique  of  film  propaganda  was 
a  bit  different.  They  used  their  films 
as  a  deft  showcase  for  their  theory  of 
the  German  Super-race  and,  later,  to 
subtly  build  the  myth  of  German  in¬ 
vincibility. 

One  of  the  first  and  biggest  successes 
of  this  new  technique  was  in  the  han¬ 
dling  of  the  official  films  of  the  1936 
Olympic  Games,  which  were  held  in 
Berlin.  This  task  was  delegated  to 
Actress  Leni  Riefenstahl,  a  close  friend 
and  favorite  of  the  Fuehrer,  though 
since,  it  is  understood,  “liquidated.”  All 
the  resources  of  a  state-controlled  film 
industry  were  lavished  on  this  epic. 
Scores  of  cameramen  covered  every 
event  in  the  game,  often  with  special 
cameras  and  telephoto  lenses  of  un¬ 
heard-of  power  and  speed.  Over  2,000,- 
000  feet  of  film  were  exposed  by  the 
German  cameras  .  .  .  and  the  Govern¬ 
ment  conveniently  saw  to  it  that  no 
foreign  cameras  or  cameramen  were 
permitted  to  film  anything. 

Those  who  have  seen  the  film — I  be¬ 
lieve  there  are  a  few  in  Hollywood 
who  will  bear  me  out — report  that, 
viewed  strictly  as  a  film,  it  was  a  superb 
achievement.  But  it  was  also  a  subtle 
piece  of  propaganda,  for  in  both  the 
full-length  feature  version  and  the  twen¬ 
ty  separate  short-subjects  cut  from  this 
negative,  the  triumphs  of  Nazi  athletes 
were  subtly  featured.  Versions  of  these 
films  were  sent  to  each  of  the  countries 
which  had  sent  teams  to  the  Olympiad, 
in  each  case  with  narration  carefully 
recorded  in  the  language  of  that  coun¬ 
try.  Naturally  these  films  received 
widespread  showings  in  many  countries, 
though  not  in  this  country,  despite  the 
personal  efforts  of  Fraulein  Riefentrahl 
to  arrange  for  American  distribution. 

The  following  year  —  1937  —  Hitler 
tightened  his  hold  on  the  German  film 
industry,  forcing  out  most  of  the  pro¬ 
ducers,  technicians  and  artists  who  had 
made  it  the  foremost  in  Europe.  He 
appointed  a  film  coordinating  board— 
the  notorious  “Reichsfilmkammer”  — 
which  consisted  of  twelve  people:  six 
bankers,  five  actors  and  an  “official” 
Government  representative,  but  all  of 
them  directly  or  indirectly  representa¬ 
tives  of  the  Minister  of  Public  Enlight¬ 
enment  and  Propaganda,  Dr.  Paul  Joseph 
Goebbels.  As  Goebbels  stated,  “The  Ger¬ 
man  film  has  reached  the  point  where 
it  must  fulfill  its  duty  to  the  State. 
It  must  exercise  international  influence.” 

So  Dr.  Goebbels  converted  the  UFA 
Studio  at  Neubabelsberg — one  of  the 


largest  and  finest  in  the  world — into  an 
assembly-plant  for  making  celluloid 
propaganda  for  Nazism.  Directors,  tech¬ 
nicians  and  artists  were  put  to  work, 
three  shifts  a  day,  twenty-four  hours 
per  day,  grinding  out  films  that  glori¬ 
fied  the  Nazi  ideals  of  the  Super-race, 
of  devotion  to  the  State,  and  of  hatred 
for  the  rest  of  the  world.  Shooting  and 
production  schedules  were  cut  in  half; 
sets  were  made  to  do  double  duty.  UFA’s 
14  sound  stages,  21  cutting-rooms  and 
five  private  theatres  hummed  with  day- 
and-night  activity. 

Meantime,  too,  the  studio  personnel 
were  trained  in  Air-Raid  Precautions; 
emplacements  were  made  for  anti-air¬ 
craft  guns,  and  special  personnel  told 
off  and  trained  for  their  operation;  spe¬ 
cial  lamps,  far  too  powerful  for  use  with 
today’s  fast  films  but  ideal  for  anti¬ 
aircraft  searchlight  duty,  were  bought 
and  installed  in  the  studio’s  electrical 
department.  UFA  was  getting  ready 
for  war! 

When  the  war  came,  UFA  personnel 
were  considered  in  the  same  category 
as  the  personnel  of  any  other  essential 
factory  in  Germany.  They  were  con¬ 
scripted  and  assigned  to  the  studios,  just 
as  others  were  conscripted  and  assigned 
to  service  at  the  front.  For  a  while  it  was 
thought  that  the  German  theatres  might 
have  to  close  down  for  lack  of  trained 
technicians  to  operate  the  equipment, 
but  the  wily  Dr.  Goebbels  realized  that 
he  could  not  show  his  propaganda  films 
without  theatres.  So  more  than  12,000 
of  the  male  technicians  in  this  field  were 
replaced  by  women.  Training-schools 
were  instituted,  where  the  sisters,  wives 
and  sweethearts  of  the  conscripted  pro¬ 
jectionists  and  other  technicians  were 
trained  so  they  could  eventually  step 
into  the  places  left  vacant  by  the  men. 

These  UFA  films — ostensibly  enter¬ 


tainment  films,  for  the  most  part — soon 
became  the  backbone  of  Axis  film  propa¬ 
ganda.  Being  ostensibly  entertainment 
films  for  theatrical  release,  they  could 
be  exported  to  many  foreign  countries, 
especially  those  to  which,  as  the  war 
progressed,  it  became  difficult  or  impos¬ 
sible  to  ship  American  films.  Being 
Government-subsidized,  they  could  be 
distributed  at  cut  rates — even  given 
away,  if  that  was  necessary  to  get  them 
into  the  theatres. 

These  films  had  two  chief  purposes: 
to  create  confusion  and  disunity  in  coun¬ 
tries  which,  by  either  military  or  by  po¬ 
litical  conquest  might  in  time  be  brought 
under  Nazi  influence,  and  to  show  off  to 
all  countries  the  Nazi  dictatorship  on 
dress  parade.  Coming  in  the  guise  of 
entertainment,  these  films  could  catch 
audiences  unawares,  and  subtly  implant 
the  ideas  their  makers  sought  to  spread. 
Dr.  Goebbels  felt  that  it  was  not  neces¬ 
sary  to  get  the  foreign  public  to  agree 
consciously  that  his  ideas  were  good 
ones  as  long  as  the  ideas  themselves 
were  presented  with  realism  and  cine¬ 
matic  effectiveness.  The  idea,  sub¬ 
consciously  implanted  during  an  “off¬ 
guard”  moment,  was  almost  sure  to  take 
root  and  grow  of  itself.  This  is  film 
propaganda  in  its  most  potent  form. 

But  the  Germans’  most  spectacular 
film  propaganda,  both  at  home  and 
abroad,  was  the  Army  “war  newsreel” 
and  the  other,  longer  films  of  the  might 
of  Wehrmacht  and  Luftwaffe.  In  the 
early  part  of  the  war,  at  least,  these  war 
newsreels  proved  so  popular  for  home 
consumption  that  most  moviegoers  re¬ 
served  their  regular  seats  in  their  favor¬ 
ite  theatres  days  ahead  of  time.  Every 
week  more  than  a  thousand  prints  of 
these  reels  were  made,  cut  and  edited 
by  the  UFA  propaganda  experts,  with 
(Continued  on  Page  28) 


American  Cinematographer  •  January,  1943  11 


^FTER  spending  nearly  three  months 
A\  aboard  corvettes  and  destroyers 
with  transatlantic  convoys  while 
we  filmed  backgrounds  for  Universal’s 
“Corvettes  in  Action,”  my  dominant  im¬ 
pression  is  a  feeling  of  profound  x’espect 
for  the  hardy  sailoi’s  who  man  the  ships 
— wai’ships  and  cargo-cai-riers  alike — 
which  foi'm  and  guai'd  the  United  Na¬ 
tions’  fai'-flung  lines  of  supply.  Theirs 
is  the  hardest  kind  of  work,  often  under 
incredibly  difficult  conditions,  in  fair 
weather  and  foul — and  always  with  the 
ever-present  consciousness  that  at  any 
moment  a  torpedo  may  get  home  with  its 
quartei'-ton  explosive  charge  exploding 
against  your  ship  as  you’ve  seen  it 
happen  so  ofter  with  othei-s. 

I  don’t  think  any  of  us  in  the  picture 
troupe,  which  consisted  of  director  Dick 
Rosson,  operative  Len  Powers,  assistant 
cameraman  Bert  Eason  and  myself, 
are  ashamed  to  admit  that  we  drew 
a  sigh  of  relief  when  we  knew  our 
stint  was  over  and  we  could  head  back 
to  Hollywood.  Yet  we  had  only  a  few 
short  weeks  of  it:  those  convoy  sailors 
can  look  foiwai’d  to  shuttling  back  and 
forth  on  their  dangei’ous  duty  “for  dui’a- 
tion.”  And  they  take  in  their  stride,  trip 
after  trip!  You’ve  got  to  take  your  hat 
off  to  men  like  that.  They’ve  got  what  it 
takes ! 

From  the  photogi'aphic  viewpoint,  the 
experience  was  particulax-ly  interesting 
to  me  because  it  gave  me  an  idea  of  what 
some  of  the  cinematogi'aphers  in  the 
Navy  are  up  against  when  they  take 
their  cameras  to  sea.  And  I  hope  that 
pei’haps  some  of  the  things  I  leai'ned 
may  be  of  some  help  to  Naval  cinema¬ 
tographers  who  may  be  faced  with  simi¬ 
lar  assignments. 

I  think  the  first  thing  I  learned  (it 
came  as  something  of  a  surprise)  was 
that  warships’  decks  are  made  of  steel. 
Most  of  us  know,  in  a  hazy,  subconscious 
sort  of  way,  that  modern  ships  ai*e  made 
of  steel,  decks  included.  But  most  civilian 
ships,  like  the  crack  liners  I  had  so 


Camerawork  On  A  Convoy 

By  HARRY  PERRY.  A.S.C. 


often  crossed  on  in  peacetime,  keep  the 
steel  of  their  decks  discreetly  covered 
up  with  wooden  planking,  and  coming 
upon  the  bare  steel  of  a  wai’ship’s  decks 
brings  you  up  with  a  sudden  start. 

This  may  not  seem  like  an  important 
photogi’aphic  point,  but  it  is.  Setting  up 
your  camera  on  a  conventional  wood- 
sheathed  deck  is  a  cinch,  for  the  points 
of  the  tripod-legs  can  bite  solidly  into 
the  wood,  and  then,  if  you  run  a  screw- 
eye  into  the  planking,  you  can  quickly 
tie  down  your  camera  so  solidly  that  for 
all  pi-actical  purposes  the  ti’ipod  is  a 
part  of  the  ship  itself. 

But  on  a  steel  deck  you  can’t  do  this. 
The  steel-shod  tripod-legs  that  held  so 
fii’mly  on  the  wood  slip  and  slide  on  the 
steel  surface  even  worse  than  on  con- 
ci’ete.  And  you  haven’t  anything,  as  a 
rule,  to  tie  to  when  you  want  to  chain 
down  your  camera. 

So  if  you  are  using  a  tripod-mounted 
camera  of  any  kind,  rale  No.  1  is  to 
come  equipped  with  at  least  one  of  the 
wooden  triangles  used  for  setting  up 
tripods  on  hard  or  polished  floors.  Set  the 
tripod  l’igidly  on  that  and  chain  it  down. 

Then  lash  the  whole  assembly  of  ti*i- 
angle,  tripod  and  camera  in  place  as 
best  you  can.  You’ll  probably  have  to 
use  several  long  lines  to  do  this,  for 
whei’ever  you  set  up,  you’re  sure  to  be 
several  feet  away  from  the  nearest 
stanchion  or  other  object  to  which  you 
can  attach  your  tie-down  line.  Better 
equip  these  lines  with  tui’nbuckles,  too, 
so  you  can  make  things  i-eally  rigid.  This 
may  seem  like  a  lot  of  trouble  the  first 
time  you  do  it — but  wait  till  your  ship 
stai'ts  dancing  in  a  seaway.  You’ll  l’ealize 
then  just  how  important  it  is  to  have 
your  camera  tied  down  rigidly! 

This  applies  to  any  ship,  but  especially 
to  destroyers  and  corvettes.  Destroyers 
have  long  had  a  well-deserved  reputation 
for  pitching  and  rolling  wickedly  in  any 
sort  of  rough  weather,  but  at  least 
they’re  big  enough  so  they  tend  to  knife 
through  the  waves.  The  corvettes  are 
smaller;  they  bob  up  and  down  and  side¬ 
ways  with  every  wave.  And  the  waves 
don’t  have  to  be  very  big  to  make  a 
small  craft  like  a  corvette  gyi’ate  wildly. 
Waves  you  wouldn’t  notice  from  the  solid 
deck  of  a  50,000-ton  liner  like  the  “N01-- 
mandie”  are  enough  to  make  a  corvette 
bounce  around  like  a  seagoing  jitterbug. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  we  bi’ought  along 
a  gymbal  tripod  with  the  idea  that  it 
would  enable  us  to  get  steady  pictures  in 
spite  of  the  motion  of  the  ship.  But  no 
matter  how  we  rigged  it,  the  gymbal 
didn’t  have  enough  swing  or  react  quick 
enough  to  keep  our  shots  desirably 
steady. 


Rule  No.  2  for  this  kind  of  camera¬ 
work  would  be  to  remember  that  aboai'd 
a  convoy  in  the  danger  zone,  anything 
is  likely  to  happen  at  any  time — and 
the  cameraman  who  wants  to  get  it  on 
film  had  better  be  ready!  This  means 
keep  your  camei'a  where  you  can  get  it 
into  action  as  fast  as  you  can.  When  a 
submarine  “wolf  pack”  starts  loosing 
torpedoes,  and  your  destroyer  or  corvette 
spins  off  at  full  speed  to  take  appropriate 
action  with  depth-bombs,  there’s  no  time 
to  set  up  a  camera.  It’s  got  to  be  l’eady 
l’ight  then — or  never!  There  are  no  re¬ 
takes. 

Except  when  we  set  the  camei’a  in  an 
unusual  place  to  get  some  specific  action, 
as,  for  example,  when  we  set  up  between 
two  rows  of  depth  chai’ges  to  “cover” 
the  action  of  dropping  ash-cans  (we 
raised  some  interesting  oil  slicks,  by  the 
way,  hinting  that  one  or  two  U-boats 
had  gone  down  to  make  their  crews 
really  “good”  Nazis!)  we  generally  kept 
the  tripods  for  the  studio-type  cameras 
more  or  less  permanently  set  up  and 
ready  on  the  bridge  or  on  the  highest 
deck,  with  the  camera  all  assembled 
in  a  box  nearby,  so  that  we’d  have  the 
widest  possible  field  of  view. 

We  supplemented  this  with  a  loaded 
Eyemo  always  kept  on  the  bridge,  where 
we  could  get  it  into  action  in  a  matter  of 
seconds.  That,  by  the  way,  paid  dividends 
on  more  than  one  occasion. 

This  business  of  keeping  the  cameras 
always  ready  brings  up  the  problem  of 
keeping  your  equipment  adequately  dry. 
On  a  small,  low-lying  craft  like  a  de¬ 
stroyer  or  corvette,  there’s  nearly  always 
some  spray  flying,  and  in  even  a  moder¬ 
ate  sea,  evei'ything  on  the  ship  gets 
genuinely  wet.  When  we  had  our  studio 
cameras  mounted  in  exposed  positions, 
we  kept  them  as  well  covei'ed  as  we 
could  with  tai’paulins  and  slip-over  sacks 
(well  tied  at  the  mouth)  made  of  what 
was  supposed  to  be  waterpi’oof  canvas. 
This  pi’oved  to  be  entirely  inadequate. 
If  I  had  the  job  to  do  over  again  I’d 
provide  each  camera  with  a  covering 
“bai'ney”  made  of  oilskin,  which  is  really 
watei’proof,  and  fitted  with  a  zipper  and 
an  exti’a-tight  strap  to  di’aw  the  sack 
as  close  as  possible  ai’ound  the  tripod- 
head.  Even  so,  you’d  have  to  spend 
plenty  of  extra  time  at  the  end  of  each 
day  carefully  wiping  and  drping  out 
every  part  of  the  camera,  as  assistant 
Eason  did  with  us. 

Working  in  black-and-white,  it’s  a  good 
.’idea  to  take  along  a  genex’ous  supply  of 
at  least  two  different  types  of  film. 
During  the  day  on  the  North  Atlantic, 
when  the  weather  is  at  all  good, 
(Continued  on  Page  26) 


12  January,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


Keeping  Kodachrome  Color 
Rendition  Under  Control 

By  ALAN  STENSVOLD,  S.S.C. 

President,  Society  of  14mm.  Cinematographers 


IT  is  with  the  sincerest  deference  to 
all  members  of  the  A.S.C.  that  I 
write  this  article.  It  makes  me  feel 
like  I’m  trying  to  tell  my  Dad  how  to 
raise  children.  It  is  only  intended  for 
those  who  are  not  yet  “dads”  but  whose 
intentions  are  thus  and  wish  to  add  this 
information  to  their  collection. 

Color,  cinematographically  speaking, 
is  entirely  a  matter  of  taste.  Some  like 
blondes,  some  like  brunettes  and  red¬ 
heads;  others  like  warm  colors,  cold 
colors,  pastels,  neutrals  and  heavy  colors, 
and  of  course  there  are  those  who  must 
have  magenta.  I,  for  one,  like  the  warn 
neutral  tones.  An  astrologer  said  that’s 
because  I  was  born  in  May. 

To  get  down  to  business,  however,  I 
have  learned  that  a  little  knowledge  of 
astrology,  psychology,  entomology,  ac¬ 
counting,  arithmetic  and  a  good  sense  of 
humor  are  extremely  helpful  in  the 
course  of  the  daily  routine  of  a  color 
cinematographer,  especially  if  he  is 
shooting  Kodachrome  .  .  .  and  at  cur¬ 
rent  prices. 

Since  Kodachrome  is  one  of  the  cur¬ 
rent  subjects  of  serious  discussion  among 
cinematographers,  let’s  continue  on  the 
basis  of  this  material. 

First  of  all,  I  believe  I  can  say  with¬ 
out  fear  of  too  much  contradiction  that 
there  has  yet  to  be  screened  a  truly  per¬ 
fect  Kodachrome  picture.  The  reasons 
are  varied,  but  the  one  big  trouble  has 
been  RUSH,  coupled  with  a  good  deal  of 
indifference,  and  lack  of  budget. 

Technicolor  turns  out  some  truly  beau¬ 
tiful  pictures  .  .  .  but  they  take  their 
time  to  be  sure  they  are  right,  regardless 
of  cost.  They  have  a  good  reputation 
to  uphold  and  they  intend  to  keep  it 
that  way. 

Kodachrome’s  reputation  seems  to  lie 
in  the  laps  of  the  cameramen,  so  it’s 
about  time  that  something  is  done  to 
uphold  it,  too. 

Usually  a  cameraman  with  a  personal 
liking  for  cool  colors  is  assigned  to  a 
picture  whose  producer  is  an  addict  for 
something  else.  This  is  where  astrology 
comes  in.  Formula:  find  out  when  he 
was  born,  look  up  his  color-chart,  and 
proceed  accordingly. 

Of  course,  it’s  much  easier  to  use  lit¬ 
tle  or  no  psychology  by  walking  right  up 
to  the  man  and  asking  him  how  he  wants 
his  colors  .  .  .  hot  or  cold,  thick  or  thin. 
In  the  event  he  doesn’t  know  what  he 
wants,  use  some  “ingenue-ity”  (there’s 
always  some  around),  or  use  some  of 
the  good  common-sense  that  made  you  a 
cameraman.  Until  you  know  what 
colors  your  producer  likes  you’ll  never 
please  him,  and  he’s  the  one  who  counts 
most. 

Shooting  Kodachrome  isn’t  such  a 
bugaboo  as  some  think.  It  just  takes 
common-sense  and  good,  serious  thought 
to  make  it  work  as  the  manufacturer  in¬ 
tended  it  should.  It  cannot  be  mis¬ 
treated.  Those  who  think  that  it  is 
merely  necessary  to  set  a  lens  at  /:5.6  at 
24  frames  and  let  her  roll  for  exterior 
scenes  usually  find  out  that  as  camera¬ 
men  they  make  good  aspirin  salesmen. 
And  you  can’t  open  a  lens  wide,  throw 


in  some  light  and  roll  it,  and  get  good 
interiors  either. 

Just  because  most  Kodachrome  comes 
16mm.  wide  and  is  run  through  a  small 
camera  on  a  light  tripod  doesn’t  mean 
that  it  can  “see  into  the  shadows”  or 
“ignore  the  hot  spots”.  Nor  can  you  tell 
the  lab  to  put  it  through  at  12  minutes 
and  print  it  on  a  19  light.  And  you 
can’t  “blame  Eastman”  for  red  faces, 
black  shadows,  purple  water,  or  too 
heavy  a  blue  sky.  That,  my  friends,  is 
YOUR  fault.  Eastman  can  show  you 
“good”  stuff  run  through  the  develop¬ 
ing  machine  just  ahead  of  and  behind 
yours. 

If  you  are  working  for  a  producer 
who  wants  quality,  take  time  enough  to 
give  it  to  him.  (I  know,  I  know,  they’re 
always  in  a  hurry  and  on  a  short  bud¬ 
get;  but  just  remember  that  if  the  pic¬ 
ture  isn’t  good,  you’re  the  one  who  will 
be  a  lousy  cameraman  and  a  bum.) 
That’s  what  reflectors,  lights,  makeup, 
filters  and  experience  are  for.  That’s 
what  capable  electricians,  grips,  makeup 
men  and  cameramen  are  there  to  do. 

All  to  often  (and  I  know,  but  defi¬ 
nitely!)  there  is  a  tendency  on  the  part 
of  everyone  concerned  to  “short  cut” 
here  and  there  when  shooting  16mm. 
Kodachrome.  Maybe  it’s  because  they 
feel  reluctant  to  “spend”  money  and 
effort  on  this  “amateur-size”  film  .  .  . 
yet  a  professional  result  is  always  ex¬ 
pected  when  they  come  to  screen  the 
rushes.  And  a  definitely  professional 
result  can  be  had  .  .  .  but  only  through 
proper  effort,  care  and  expenditures. 

For  the  best  results  on  the  screen,  and 
that  means  the  final  print,  or  “dupe”  if 
you  prefer,  Kodachrome  must  be  fairly 
“flat-lighted,”  whether  shot  indoors  or 
outdoors.  Shadow  areas  must  be  lighted 
to  have  ample  exposure  for  the  desired 
final  effect,  and  light  areas  must  be 
toned  down  to  reproduce  correctly.  In 
printing  or  “duping”  Kodachrome,  the 
light  areas  get  lighter  and  the  dark 
areas  get  darker,  only  the  medium  keys 
stay  the  same. 

Since  nearly  every  professional  16mm. 
picture  shot  is  filmed  to  be  shown  to  an 
audience  it  is  necessary  to  “shoot  for 
duping”.  No  matter  how  good  an  orig¬ 
inal  may  look,  if  it  doesn’t  dupe  good  it’s 
a  bad  shot.  Ninety-nine  per  cent  of  the 
time  Kodachrome  is  shot  for  duping 
when  a  professional  cameraman  is  called 
in  to  shoot,  so  it  becomes  his  responsi¬ 
bility  to  know  how  to  “shoot  for  duping”. 

It  is  also  true  that  Kodachrome  has 
some  tricks  that  only  experience  can 
master.  Daylight  Kodachrome  was  made 


to  reproduce  color  quite  accurately  when 
shot  with  a  mixture  of  sunlight  and  sky¬ 
light  on  your  subject  from  two  hours  be¬ 
fore  noon  to  two  hours  after  noon.  And 
that  doesn’t  mean  daylight-saving  time 
or  war  time.  It  means  that  period  half¬ 
way  between  sunrise  and  sunset. 

Early  morning  hours  are  slightly  on 
the  blue  side  of  normal  and  can  be  bal¬ 
anced  to  the  normal  day  by  adding  a 
thin  “straw”  filter  to  subtract  the  blue. 
(Notice  the  arithmetic  is  now  creeping 
into  this  business.)  Then  comes  a  short 
period  when  the  light  is  a  little  ruddy 
and  a  thin  blue  filter  on  the  lenses  will 
subtract  the  ruddiness. 

From  10  a.m.  to  2  p.m.  ( sun  time) 
on  a  normal  day,  no  filter  is  necessary. 
However  this  can  also  be  a  little  untrue, 
depending  on  the  scene  you  are  attempt¬ 
ing  to  shoot.  For  example,  if  you  are 
shooting  in  the  shade  with  only  blue 
sky-light  for  illumination  you  will  have 
a  very  bluish  magenta  result  on  the  film. 
A  more  pleasing  result  will  come  from 
using  a  degree  of  orange  filtering  on  the 
lens  to  warm  up  the  scene. 

However  if  you  have  people  in  the 
scene  the  filter  will  affect  their  skin- 
tones.  A  silver  reflector  to  put  sunlight 
on  the  faces  and  skin  will  help  .  .  .  but 
sunlight  alone  is  quite  orange  in  itself, 
and  while  a  silver  reflector  cools  down 
the  sunlight  somewhat  it  hasn’t  quite 
reached  perfection  for  the  scene.  A  cute 
little  stunt  is  using  a  very  light  bluish 
scrim  between  the  reflector  and  the  sub¬ 
ject  that  is  being  lighted.  This  will  put 
the  desired  “tone”  on  the  skin. 

After  2  p.m.  the  light  turns  ruddy 
again  and  then  it  becomes  necessary  to 
start  adding  degrees  of  blue  filtering  to 
the  lenses  in  order  to  subtract  the  ruddi¬ 
ness  from  the  scene.  (Arithmetic 
again).  Only  your  eye  and  experience 
can  determine  the  density  of  the  filter 
to  use. 

Overcast  days  are  usually  a  bugaboo 
to  many,  but  if  blue  skies  are  not  a 
requisite  to  the  scene,  filters  and  arti¬ 
ficial  lighting  can  make  such  a  day  a 
normal  working  day.  And  if  you  please, 
a  good  blue  backing  can  give  you  the 
required  blue  sky  .  .  .  budget  permitting. 

Now  to  go  indoors.  Eastman  made 
Type  A  Kodachrome  for  interior  use 
with  regular  Photofloods  and  the  popu¬ 
lar  CP  Mazdas.  Normally  to  my  eye,  I 
see  a  magenta  overtone  to  scenes  shot  on 
this  film  with  such  light.  Many  pro¬ 
ducers  like  this  magenta  overtone,  but  I 
like  warmer  tones,  so  I  mix  standard 
indoor  studio  lighting  units  with  Photo- 
(Continued  on  Page  30) 


American  Cinematographer  •  January,  1943  13 


Aces  of  the  Camera 
XXIV: 

George  Barnes,  A.S.C. 

By  WALTER  BLANCHARD 


ACADEMY  Award  winner  George 
Barnes,  A.S.C.,  doesn’t  look  nearly 
•  old  enough  or  weatherbeaten 
enough  to  impress  the  average  observer 
as  being  one  of  the  industry’s  pioneers. 
Yet  he  is  starting  his  twenty-sixth  year 
as  a  cinematographer- — fully  twenty  of 
them  as  one  of  the  industry’s  top-rank¬ 
ing  artists — and  in  addition  to  the 
Academy’s  golden  statuette  for  surpass¬ 
ing  artistic  achievement,  he  has  played 
a  big  part  in  pioneering  some  of  cine¬ 
matography’s  most  important  technical 
developments. 

It  all  began  back  in  1917  when  Barnes 
— just  a  youngster  then — suddenly  de¬ 
cided  that  he  wanted  to  make  cine¬ 
matography  his  life’s  work.  So  he  ap¬ 


plied  for  a  job  in  the  camera  depart¬ 
ment  of  the  old  Thomas  H.  Ince  stu¬ 
dio.  What’s  more,  he  got  it,  and  was 
immediately  put  to  work  as  assistant 
cameraman  for  John  Stumar,  A.S.C. 

In  Stumar,  the  young  assistant  had 
an  excellent  and  painstaking  teacher, 
and  in  Barnes,  Stumar  seems  to  have 
had  a  more  than  ordinarily  apt  pupil. 
At  any  rate,  within  eight  months  of  the 
time  when  he  entered  the  industry  with 
no  previous  photographic  experience, 
young  George  Barnes  was  promoted  to 
the  position  of  First  Cinematographer. 

“During  the  five  or  six  years  after 
that,”  says  Barnes,  “I  carried  on  about 
the  way  any  young  cameraman  does 
when  he  is  first  put  ‘on  his  own.’  I  made 


plenty  of  pictures — none  of  them  par¬ 
ticularly  distinguished — good  ones  and 
bad  ones,  hard  ones  and  easy  ones.  As 
I  grew  more  sure  of  myself,  I  began 
to  experiment  here  and  there  as  I  went 
along.  I  suppose  I  duplicated  plenty  of 
experiments  other  chaps  had  already 
made,  and  ‘discovered’  plenty  of  things 
that  others  had  discovered  before  me; 
but  I  was  learning,  and  gaining  that 
back-log  of  experience  which  is  a  cine¬ 
matographer’s  greatest  asset. 

“The  picture  that  did  the  most  for  me 
during  those  early  years  was  King 
Vidor’s  production  of  ‘Peg  O’  My  Heart,’ 
starring  Laurette  Taylor.  Dramatically, 
it  was  good  enough  to  be  included  in 
many  of  the  lists  of  the  year’s  Ten 
Best  pictures.  Photographically  it  was 
(at  least  by  the  standards  of  1923) 
a  good  enough  achievement  so  that 
many  of  the  critics  went  out  of  their 
way  to  comment  favorably  on  the  pic¬ 
ture’s  photographic  effectiveness,  and  on 
the  appearance  of  the  star. 

“As  regards  this,  by  the  way,  I  can 
say  I  owe  a  good  deal  to  The  Amer¬ 
ican  Cinematographer  and  its  then 
Editor,  Foster  Goss.  Quite  a  few  of 
these  critics  who  commented  so  favor¬ 
ably  about  the  photography  of  ‘Peg  O’ 
My  Heart’  attributed  the  camerawork 
to  director  Vidor.  Of  course,  this  was 
not  of  his  seeking;  and  I  can’t  blame 
the  critics,  either,  for  most  of  them 
had  never  had  cameramen  and  their 
work  brought  to  their  attention  .  .  . 
and  that  was  in  the  days  when  the 
director  was  the  One  Great  Man  of 
production. 

“Into  this  situation  stepped  The 
American  Cinematographer.  Both  edi¬ 
torially  and  in  direct  personal  corres¬ 
pondence,  this  magazine  pointed  out 
to  the  reviewers  that  the  photographic 
aspects  of  a  picture  are  the  sole  re¬ 
sponsibility  of  the  cinematographer,  and 
that  the  cinematographer  in  this  par¬ 
ticular  case  was  a  chap  named  George 
S.  Barnes,  A.S.C.  I  believe  that  this 
was  the  first  time  that  cinematographers 
and  the  value  of  their  contribution  to  a 
production  had  been  brought  directly  to 
the  attention  of  the  Nation’s  major  crit¬ 
ics.  At  any  rate,  it  was  from  that 
time  on  that  we  began  to  see  our  major 
film  reviewers  paying  conscious  atten¬ 
tion  to  the  men  behind  the  camera.” 

From  that  time  on,  also,  Barnes  took 
an  acknowledged  place  among  the  in¬ 
dustry’s  foremost  camera-artists.  The 
pictures  which  were  entrusted  to  his 
photographic  care  became  steadily  big¬ 
ger  and  more  important  ones,  and  there 
came  to  be  a  definite  rivalry  among 
the  industry’s  top-ranking  stars  as  to 
who  should  have  the  advantage  of  “Pho¬ 
tography  by  George  Barnes,  A.S.C.”  For 
some  time  he  was  with  Marion  Davies 
— then  at  the  height  of  her  career — turn¬ 
ing  out  a  number  of  excellently-photo¬ 
graphed  pictures  including  “When 
Knighthood  Was  In  Flower,”  which 
stands  out  in  this  writer’s  memory  as 
one  of  the  most  beautiful  photographic 
(Continued  on  Page  26) 


14  January,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


THROUGH  the  EDITOR'S  FINDER 


WE  were  rather  proud  of  that 
page  in  last  month’s  issue  of 
The  American  Cinematographer 
which  presented  the  roster  of  A.S.C. 
members  in  the  Service.  But  things 
certainly  have  moved  fast  in  that  di¬ 
rection  these  last  four  weeks.  When  we 
first  planned  that  page,  there  were  an 
even  twenty-five  stars  on  the  A.S.C.’s 
Service  Flag.  When  we  went  to  press, 
we  found  it  necessary  to  reassemble  the 
page  to  make  room  for  three  additional 
stars — and  by  the  time  the  December  is¬ 
sue  was  off  the  press,  there  were  an 
even  thirty  A.S.C.  members  in  uniform. 
At  this  writing,  there  are  at  least  half- 
a-dozen  more  either  in  service  or  im¬ 
patiently  awaiting  their  official  orders 
.  .  .  and  there’s  no  telling  how  that 
list  may  have  grown  by  the  time  this 
appears  in  print! 

For  that  matter,  a  list  of  this  maga¬ 
zine’s  regular  contributors  (other  than 
members  of  the  A.S.C.)  who  have  gone 
into  Service  or  into  important  Defense 
jobs  within  the  past  year  would  be 
rather  imposing,  too.  Offhand,  we  can 
quickly  think  of  at  least  a  dozen  of 
our  “regulars”  who  are  finding  other 
uses  than  writing  for  their  talents  “for 
duration.” 

• 

IT  seems  to  us  that  cinematographers 
as  a  class  have  suffered  badly  from 
an  overdeveloped  sense  of  professional 
modesty.  Making  motion  pictures  pro¬ 
fessionally  is  of  course  a  matter  of 
teamwork,  but  when  you  analyze  it  dis¬ 
passionately,  you  cannot  escape  the  con¬ 
clusion  that  the  director  of  photography 
has  one  of  the  most  crucial  and  exacting 
jobs  in  the  whole  chain  of  production. 
Everything  literally  depends  upon  his 
ability  to  focus  through  the  little  glass 
bottleneck  of  the  camera’s  lens  the 
total  of  the  efforts  of  everyone  else 
connected  with  the  production — produc¬ 
ers,  directors,  writers,  players,  costum¬ 
ers,  set-designers,  and  all  the  rest — to 
the  end  that  their  joint  efforts  may  be 
captured  in  tangible  form  on  a  little 
strip  of  celluloid. 

And  the  director  of  photography  is 
unique  in  the  industry  in  that  he  must 
shoulder  his  responsibility  alone.  The 
producer,  to  some  extent,  at  least,  can 
share  his  problems  and  responsibilities 
with  his  executive  associates,  with  the 
director,  writers,  and  others.  The  di¬ 
rector  can  share  his  with  the  producer, 
writers,  players,  cutter,  and  even  with 
the  cinematographer.  And  so  on  all 
down  the  line. 

But  the  cinematographer  stands  or 
falls  alone.  True,  he  has  his  operative 
crew,  but  they  are  strictly  junior  subord¬ 
inates.  The  director  of  photography 
must  make  the  decisions,  and  shoulder 
the  burdens  alone.  He  is  the  only  man 
in  the  production  chain  who  has  the 


specialized  understanding  to  know  what 
he  is  doing,  and  whether  he  is  doing 
it  right  or  wrong.  He  must  cope  not 
only  with  the  rather  abstract  consider¬ 
ations  of  visual  art,  and  with  the  mani¬ 
fold  technicalities  of  a  highly-developed 
science,  but  often  with  such  strictly 
practical  considerations  as  whether  or 
not  a  certain  action  can  be  filmed,  and 
if  so,  if  it  is  worth  the  cost  in  time, 
money  and  manpower.  He  has  to  be  a 
bewildering  combination  of  artist,  drama¬ 
tist,  skilled  technician,  executive  and 
diplomat.  Often  he  must  display  several 
or  all  of  these  qualities  at  once. 

And  for  nearly  forty  years  the  indus¬ 
try’s  cinematographers  have  been  so 
successful  at  this  that  it  has  become 
almost  axiomatic  that  the  man  at  the 
camera  must  never  fail.  An  actor  can 
muff  a  scene  and  pass  it  off  with  a 
laugh.  The  director  can  miss  on  a 
scene  and  call  for  a  retake  without 
causing  comment.  The  writers,  the  pro¬ 
ducer,  and  all  the  rest  can  make  errors 
in  judgement  and  find  them  accepted 
as  inevitable.  But  let  a  cinematographer 
cause  a  retake  because  he  misjudged  a 
difficult  lighting  condition,  or  the  dra¬ 
matic  mood  of  the  action,  or  the  photo¬ 
graphic  requirements  of  a  star,  and 
you’d  think  he  had  committed  an  un¬ 
pardonable  crime. 

Perhaps  it  is  for  this  reason  that  most 
cinematographers  seem  to  pull  them¬ 
selves  tightly  into  a  shell  of  reticence, 
and  seldom,  if  ever,  even  attempt  to  let 
their  closest  fellow-workers — much  less 
the  public  at  large — realize  what  a  bur¬ 
den  they  are  carrying,  or  how  greatly 
they  are  contributing  to  the  artistic 
and  efficient  making  of  the  production. 

As  a  result,  many  even  of  the  men 
and  women  who  work  most  closely  with 
the  cinematographers  seem  to  have  little 
or  no  appreciation  of  what  the  men  of 
the  camera  are  doing.  An  excellent  il¬ 
lustration  of  this  might  be  gleaned  from 
the  recent  remarks  of  a  prominent  di¬ 
rector,  now  commissioned  as  an  officer 
of  the  U.  S.  Army,  at  a  meeting  called 
to  seek  qualified  cinematographers  for 
vitally  important  commissions  in  one 
of  the  most  important  branches  of  the 
Service.  This  gentleman  who  has  worked 
with  many  of  the  industry’s  foremost 
cinematographers  for  years,  made  it 
rather  clear  that  he  knew  so  little 
about  the  work  which  had  been  going 
on  day  in  and  day  out  on  his  own  sets 
that  he  rated  the  director  of  photog¬ 
raphy  as  only  a  specialist  in  glamoriz¬ 
ing  pretty  women  under  ideal  condi¬ 
tions,  with  little  or  no  ability  for  prac¬ 
tical  field  camerawork,  or  understand¬ 
ing  of  practical  production  considera¬ 
tions. 

It  makes  us  wonder  who  is  really  to 
blame:  the  director  who  displayed  so  lit¬ 
tle  knowledge  of  the  calibre  and  ac¬ 


tivities  of  his  long-time  fellow-workers, 
or  the  cinematographers  who  so  hid 
their  light  under  a  bushel  that  a  man 
who  had  worked  with  them  for  years 
could  labor  under  such  a  misapprehen¬ 
sion —  ? 

• 

THE  other  day  we  congratulated 
one  of  the  industry’s  leading  cine¬ 
matographers  or  what  we  considered  to 
be  an  excellently-photographed  produc¬ 
tion.  “Thanks,”  he  replied,  with  some 
embarrassment,  “but  it  really  wasn’t  my 
picture.  I  did  the  picture — but  then 
after  the  front  office  had  seen  a  rough 
cut,  they  changed  the  story  and  char¬ 
acterizations  around  and  put  the  pic¬ 
ture  back  in  work  for  retakes  and  added 
scenes.  I  was  busy  on  another  assign¬ 
ment,  so  two  other  men  handled  these 
retakes,  which  constituted  practically 
all  the  footage  you  saw  at  the  pre¬ 
view.  So  it  really  wasn’t  mine,  at  all.” 

A  few  days  later,  we  heard  a  similar 
story  from  a  man  in  another  studio,  but 
with  a  different  slant.  He  had  completed 
a  picture,  and  then  another  man  had 
been  called  in  “cold”  to  do  the  added 
scenes.  And  those  added  scenes  were 
precisely  the  ones  we  had  criticized 
adversely;  they  didn’t  match  up  with 
the  rest  of  the  picture  in  either  tech¬ 
nical  quality  or  artistic  concept. 

Yet  in  each  case,  but  one  man’s  name 
appeared  on  the  screen  as  director  of 
photography.  In  one  instance,  he  re¬ 
ceived  credit  for  good  work  he  did 
not  do.  In  the  other,  he  received  cen¬ 
sure  for  indifferent  work  for  which  he 
was  not  in  the  least  responsible. 

Of  course,  as  long  as  there  are  credits 
and  only  a  limited  amount  of  title- 
space  and  footage  in  which  to  present 
them,  there  will  always  be  some  in¬ 
equalities  in  crediting.  But  in  instances 
like  these — and  they’re  by  no  means 
unusual  or  isolated — it  seems  grossly 
unfair  to  all  concerned. 

Besides,  isn’t  it  possible  that  the  pic¬ 
ture  itself  might  benefit  if  one  man 
could  plan  its  photographic  treatment 
and  follow  it  through  from  start  to 
finish  ? 

• 

WARTIME  restrictions  are  tending 
to  limit  the  size  and  content  of 
nearly  all  magazines  today.  It  is  en¬ 
tirely  possible  that  further  restrictions 
will  eventually  call  for  further  trim¬ 
ming.  Therefore  we  would  greatly  ap¬ 
preciate  hearing  from  our  readers  what 
features  The  American  Cinematograph¬ 
er  they  like  best,  and  which  ones  they 
like  least,  and  could  most  easily  do 
without.  That  information  will  help  us 
in  our  effort  to  give  our  readers  the 
best  possible  magazine  every  month,  no 
matter  what  unexpected  problems  and 
restrictions  may  lie  ahead. 


American  Cinematographer  •  January,  1943  15 


A.S.C.  on  Parade 


There’s  lots  of  excitement  in  the 
household  of  Elmer  G.  Dyer,  A.S.C., 
these  days.  “Elmer  the  Great”  is  in  the 
process  of  being  commissioned  a  major 
in  the  U.  S.  Army  Air  Force — which  will 
make  him  the  Senior  Officer  on  the  A.S.C. 
military  list — and  daughter  Gloria  is 
getting  married  January  7th.  Mrs.  Dyer' 
reports  things  are  more  than  a  little 
hectic  around  the  La  Jolla  Avenue  ad¬ 
dress,  what  with  Elmer  marching  up  and 
down  one  side  of  the  hall  practicing 
his  military  manners,  and  Gloria  rehears¬ 
ing  the  Wedding  March  on  the  other — ! 
Here’s  good  wishes  to  both  the  bride-to- 
be  and  the  major-to-be. 

★ 

And  Clyde  De  Vinna,  A.S.C.,  is  off  for 
foreign  parts  as  Captain  De  Vinna  of  the 
U.  S.  Marine  Corps.  Considering  the 
traditional  rivalry  between  sailors  and 
marines,  wonder  what  Clyde,  who  in 
1912  was  a  sailor-radioman  on  the  flag¬ 
ship  of  the  U.  S.  Asiatic  Squadron, 
thinks  now  he’s  a  leatherneck — ?  Any¬ 
way,  with  Lieutenant  Henry  Freulich, 
A-S-C.,  U.S.M.C.,  and  Captain  De  Vinna, 
A.S.C.,  U.S.M.C.,  both  in  active  service, 
there’s  plenty  of  evidence  that  the 
Marine  Corps  knows  how  to  pick  men 
who  can  keep  the  photographic  situation 
well  in  hand! 

★ 

A  cheery  Christmas-card  from  Capt. 
Art  Lloyd,  A.S.C.,  of  the  Signal  Corps, 
informs  us  that  he’s  now  directing,  rather 
than  photographing,  training  films  for 
the  Army.  A  fine  step  in  the  right  di¬ 
rection,  we’d  say,  and  may  there  be  many 
more  of  our  uniformed  A.S.C.-ers  given 
similar  assignments.  Even  though  he’s 
not  officially  behind  the  camera  any  more, 
Capt.  Art  reports  he  “just  can’t  resist 
stealing  his  last  look  through  the  little 
peep-hole  before  shooting!” 

★ 

Ted  McCord,  A.S.C.,  looked  in  hurriedly 
the  other  day  to  tell  use  he’s  now  Cap¬ 
tain  McCord  of  the  Army  Air  Force. 
Unfortunately  Ye  Ed  was  out,  so  we 
couldn’t  “mug  him”  for  this  page,  but 
we’re  hoping  for  another  chance,  espec¬ 
ially  since  Ted,  in  uniform,  made  such 
an  impression  on  our  office  staff!  Ted 
marched  directly  off  to  war  from  the 
Warner  Bros’,  set  where  he  was  direct¬ 
ing  the  photography  of  “Action  in  the 
North  Atlantic.”  Tony  Gaudio,  A.S.C., 
took  over  for  him. 

★ 

On  another  type  of  what  our  British 
cousins  call  “National  Service”  is  John 
L.  Herrman,  A.S.C.,  F.R.P.S.,  F.R.,S.A., 
etc.,  who  has  just  been  promoted  from 
Second  Lieutenant  to  First  Lieutenant  in 
the  Civil  Air  Patrol  squadron  at  New 
Orleans.  In  the  process,  he  switches  as¬ 
signments  from  Squadron  Photographic 
Officer  to  Squadron  Public  Relations 
Officer. 


Another  quick  switch  in  camera  as¬ 
signments  occurred  on  the  set  of  Para¬ 
mount’s  Technicolored  “Dixie.”  Director 
of  Photography  Billy  Mellor,  A.S.C.,  was 
commissioned  as  First  Lieutenant  Mellor 
of  the  Army’s  Signal  Corps.  They  tell 
us  he  was  whisked  off  so  swiftly  to  an 
Eastern  station  that  he  was  500  miles  on 
his  way  before  the  camera  slowed  down 
after  his  last  “take!”  Meanwhile,  Karl 
Struss,  A.S.C.,  takes  over  to  finish  the 
picture. 

★ 

Another  quick  change  from  civvies  to 
uniform  was  made  by  Jack  Greenhalgh, 
A.S.C.  Only  minutes  after  he  finished 
directing  the  photography  of  that  big  in¬ 
dependent  opus,  “The  Hangman,”  he  was 
in  khaki  as  First  Lieutenant  Green¬ 
halgh  of  the  Army  Air  Force. 

★ 

Ben  Reynolds,  A.S.C.,  is  also  putting 
his  skill  to  work  for  Uncle  Sam.  As  you 
probably  didn’t  know  (we  didn’t)  Ben 
studied  electrical  engineering  in  his 
youthful  days  before  he  decided  to  de¬ 
vote  his  talents  to  cinematography. 
Today,  between  picture  assignments,  he’s 
putting  that  skill  to  work  in  charge  of 
some  of  the  trickiest  and  most  vital  elec¬ 
trical  mechanisms  at  a  California  ship¬ 
yard.  We  understand  there  are  only 
two  men  in  the  plant  capable  of  making 
that  particular  machine  say  “uncle.” 

★ 

Last  time  we  saw  Byron  Haskin, 
A.S.C.,  he  was  more  than  a  little  warm 
under  the  collar.  Up  to  his  ears  in  work 
directing  a  special-effects  second  unit 
on  “Action  in  the  North  Atlantic,”  that 
day,  en  route  to  the  studio  chauffeuring 
his  share-the-ride  group  in  his  big  Olds- 
mobile,  Bun  ran  out  of  gas — ! 

★ 

In  that  connection,  Ford-owner  Karl 
Freund,  A.S.C.,  has  the  laugh  on  a  lot 
of  his  fellow  cinematographers  who  are 
blessed  (?)  with  big,  snazzy  buggies 
which  can’t  deliver  a  fraction  of  the 
“average”  15  miles  per  gallon  the  gas¬ 
rationing  system  is  based  on. 

★ 

Did  you  ever  watch  Arthur  Miller, 
A-S-C.,  while  engrossed  in  a  telephone 
conversation?  He’s  an  unusually  adept 
“doodler.” 

★ 

And  did  you  ever  hear  about  the  time 
Victor  Milner,  A.S.C.,  was  doing  an  NBC 
broadcast  and  in  quoting  his  director’s 
remarks  while  watching  that  day’s 
rushes,  inadvertently  let  off  with  a  nice, 
juicy  cussword — ? 

★ 

Joe  Ruttenberg,  A.S.C.,  draws  the 
camera  assignment  to  MGM’s  “Madame 
Curie.” 

★ 

Out  at  Universal,  John  W.  Boyle,  A.S.C., 
is  assigned  to  direct  the  photography  of 
“Good  Morning,  Judge.” 


We  ought  to  caption  this  picture, 
snapped  recently  in  the  Paramount  com¬ 
missary,  “Beauty  and  Brains,”  or  some¬ 
thing  like  that.  The  left-to-right  iden¬ 
tification  (if  you  need  any)  shows  this 
chatty  luncheon-group  consists  of  Camera 
Chief  C.  Roy  Hunter,  Ingrid  Bergman, 
Karl  Struss,  A.S.C.  and  fashion-designer 
Edith  Head. 

★ 

With  transportation  what  it  is  these 
days,  Milton  Krasner,  A.S.C.,  is  a  lucky 
fellow.  He  got  back  from  the  Texas 
location  of  “We’ve  Never  Been  Licked” 
just  a  matter  of  hours  before  the  press 
preview  of  “Arabian  Nights,”  his  first 
— and  very  swell — venture  into  Techni¬ 
color. 

★ 

Fred  Jackman,  Jr.,  A.S.C.,  started 
another  opus  for  Pine-Thomas,  “Alaska 
Highway,”  the  day  after  Christmas,  go¬ 
ing  on  location  near  Reno  for  the  opening 
scenes. 

★ 

Lunching  at  Warners’  the  other  day,  it 
was  nice  to  see  Merritt  Gerstad,  A.S.C., 
drop  into  the  chair  opposite  us.  He’s 
working  out  there  on  some  of  the  dance 
numbers  for  “Thank  Your  Lucky  Stars,” 
while  Arthur  Edeson,  A.S.C.,  directs  the 
photography  of  the  story  sequences. 

★ 

Committees  handling  this  year’s 
Academy  Awards  for  Photography  in¬ 
clude  Ray  Wilkinson,  Chairman;  John 
Arnold,  A.S.C.;  Charles  Clarke,  A.S.C.; 
Bob  De  Grasse,  A.S.C.;  Arthur  Edeson, 
A.S.C.;  Fred  Gage,  A.S.C.;  Merritt 
Gerstad,  A.S.C.;  Ernest  Haller,  A.S.C.; 
C.  Roy  Hunter;  Milton  Krasner,  A.S.C.; 
E.  B.  McGreal;  Arthur  Miller,  A.S.C.; 
Ernest  Miller;  Victor  Milner,  A.S.C.;  L. 
Wm.  O’Connell,  A.S.C.;  Robert  Planck, 
A.S.C.;  Charles  Rosher,  A.S.C.;  Joe  Rut¬ 
tenberg.  A.S.C.;  Karl  Struss,  A.S.C.; 
Mack  Stengler,  A.S.C.;  Ted .  Tetzlaff, 
A.S.C.;  Leo  Tover,  A.S.C.;  Charles  Van 
Enger,  A.S.C.;  and  Joseph  Walker, 
A.S.C. 

★ 

Special-effects  “Oscars”  are  being 
handled  by  Farciot  Edouart,  A.S.C., 
Chairman;  Lionel  Banks;  McClure  Capps; 
Jack  Cosgrove;  John  Fulton,  A.S.C.; 
Arnold  Gillespie;  Byron  Haskin,  A.S.C.; 
Russell  Kimball;  Louis  Mesenkop;  Fred 
Sersen;  Hal  Shaw;  James  Stewart;  S. 
J.  Twining;  and  Vernon  Walker,  A.S.C. 


16  January,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


PHOTOGRAPHY  OF  THE  MONTH 


CASABLANCA 

Warner  Bros.’  Production. 

Director  of  Photography:  Arthur  Ede- 

son,  A.S.C. 

Special  Effects:  Willard  Van  Enger, 

A.S.C. 

We  don’t  know  whether  “Casablanca” 
will  receive  a  Los  Angeles  release  in 
time  to  be  eligible  for  this  year’s  Acad¬ 
emy  Awards,  but  it  deserves  to,  for 
Arthur  Edeson,  A.S.C.,  has  given  it  a 
photographic  mounting  of  genuinely 
Academy  Award  calibre.  He  has  made 
many  fine  pictures,  but  this  is  without 
doubt  the  finest  work  he  has  done  in 
many  years,  if  not,  indeed,  the  peak 
achievement  of  his  career. 

Edeson’s  attitude  on  being  assigned 
to  a  picture  is  to  hold  himself  in  check 
if  there  is  any  danger  that  overly- 
pictorial  photography  might  overshadow 
a  story  or  acting  which  are  on  the  weak 
side.  But  in  “Casablanca”  he  has  a 
picture  that  is  a  real  cameraman’s  de¬ 
light.  It  has  a  strongly  dramatic  and 
very  topical  story,  with  equally  strong 
acting  performances.  The  locale  is  ex¬ 
otic,  and  the  sets  that  serve  as  a  back¬ 
ground  for  the  melodramatic  action  are 
in  themselves  an  invitation  to  pictorial- 
ism.  There  is  nothing  to  inhibit  a  cine¬ 
matographer  of  Edeson’s  calibre  from 
“going  to  town”  photographically. 

He  does  precisely  that.  His  camera 
brings  “Casablanca”  to  the  screen  with 
a  lavishly  pictorial  touch  which  chal¬ 
lenges  description.  Every  scene  is  a 
pictorial  delight  of  the  type  which  mer¬ 
its  that  badly-overworked  adjective 
“rich”  as  regards  composition,  tonal 
values  and  lighting.  In  addition,  his 
visual  treatment  is  perfectly  keyed  to  the 
infinitely  varying  dramatic  moods  of  the 
action.  All  told,  it’s  the  sort  of  pho¬ 
tography  we’ve  seen  all  too  little  of 
during  the  past  year  or  so  during  which 
the  emphasis  generally  has  been  on 
harsh  realism  and  /:6 4  definition.  The 
last  picture  we  can  compare  it  to  was 
“Rebecca,”  which,  it  will  be  remem¬ 
bered,  didn’t  do  at  all  badly  for  its 
cinematographer  at  Oscar-time. 

The  special-effects  camerawork  con¬ 
tributed  by  Willard  Van  Enger,  A.S.C., 
is  on  a  par  with  Edeson’s  production 
camerawork.  The  montages,  credited  to 
Don  Siegel  and  James  Leicester  are 
also  uncommonly  good,  and  there’s  a 
great  deal  to  be  said  for  the  sets  by 
Carl  Jules  Weyl  and  for  Max  Steiner’s 
musical  score. 

But  we  won’t  try  to  describe  “Casa¬ 
blanca.”  You’d  better  see  it  for  your¬ 
self  and  give  yourself  the  pleasure  of 
enjoying  one  of  the  year’s  finest  photo¬ 
graphic  achievements. 

ARABIAN  NIGHTS 

Walter  Wanger  -  Universal  Production 

(Technicolor) 


Directors  of  Photography:  Milton  Kras- 

ner,  A.S.C.,  Capt.  William  B.  Shall. 

A.S.C.,  and  W.  Howard  Green,  A.S.C. 

This  is  Technicolored  fantasy  at  its 
finest,  and  seems  a  sure  contender  for 
Academy  honors  in  the  color  classifica¬ 
tion.  As  Milton  Krasner’s  first  venture 
into  Technicolor  camerawork,  it  marks 
an  important  forward  step  in  the  career 
of  this  rising  young  cinematographer. 

Too  much  film  fantasy  has  gone  wide 
of  the  mark  because  in  one  way  or  an¬ 
other  it  lacked  the  imagination  which 
is  an  essential  in  fantasy.  “Arabian 
Nights”  avoids  this  pitfall.  With  the 
possible  exception  of  some  of  the  com¬ 
edy  relief,  there  is  imagination  reflect¬ 
ed  in  every  frame.  This  is  especially 
true  of  the  technical  treatment,  in  which 
close  collaboration  between  the  three  di¬ 
rectors  of  photography  and  production 
designers  Jack  Otterson  and  Alexander 
Golitzen  makes  the  production  unusually 
noteworthy. 

A  significant  factor  in  this  is  the 
way  five  key  creators  have  worked  to¬ 
gether  to  wring  the  maximum  produc¬ 
tion  value  from  an  unbelievable  mini¬ 
mum  of  actual  physical  resources  and 
expenditure.  For  the  first  time  in  a 
production  of  this  type  the  people  re¬ 
sponsible  for  the  film’s  visual  mount¬ 
ing  have  taken  advantage  of  the  fact 
that  these  story-book  Arabians  were  in 
reality  not  city-dwellers  but  a  desert 
people.  The  majority  of  the  action, 
therefore,  is  played  not  against  a  back¬ 
ground  of  spectacular  Moslem  cities, 
but  against  the  picturesque — and  inex¬ 
pensive  — •  tents  of  the  desert-dweller, 
cleverly  enhanced  by  the  use  of  matte- 
shots  which  very  pictorially  fill  in  areas 
which  might  otherwise  have  necessi¬ 
tated  expensive  construction  or  loca¬ 
tion  trips.  Some  of  these  matte-shots 
are  excellent;  others  more  than  hint 
that  the  special-effects  staff  would  have 
benefited  by  opportunity  for  more  ex¬ 
tensive  tests  of  color  matching. 

The  actual  “production”  camerawork 
and  lightings  are  of  outstanding  pic¬ 
torial  quality.  Instead  of  being  con¬ 
scious  of  the  economical  physical  produc¬ 
tion  facilities,  you  are  instead  delight¬ 
ed  by  a  visual  impression  of  richness 
and,  as  Kipling  put  it,  “more-than- 
Oriental-splendour.”  Scene  after  scene 
is  a  pictorial  delight.  Indeed,  we  could 
name  plenty  of  more  highly-budgeted 
Technicolor  films  which  gave  far  less 
of  an  impression  of  lavishness. 

Krasner’s  Technicolor  portraiture  of 
his  players  is  another  outstanding  as¬ 
set.  Of  course  his  treatment  of  Maria 
Montez  easily  takes  first  place,  but  none 
of  the  rest  of  the  cast  are  by  any  means 
slighted.  Incidentally,  one  can  play  an 
interesting  little  game  with  himself  dur¬ 
ing  the  early  reels,  trying  to  identify 
the  various  familiar  male  players  be¬ 
hind  their  Arabian  whiskers — ! 


Yet  another  feature  of  “Arahian 
Nights”  is  Frank  Skinner’s  excellent 
musical  score  which,  unless  our  memory 
fails  us,  makes  eloquent  use  of  themes 
from  Rimsky  -  Korsakoff’s  “Schehera¬ 
zade.” 

PALM  BEACH  STORY 

Paramount  Production. 

Director  of  Photography:  Victor  Mil¬ 
ner,  A.S.C. 

Victor  Milner  is  at  his  best  in  pho¬ 
tographing  a  polished  comedy-drama 
like  this  one — and  in  this  one  he  has 
turned  out  one  of  the  most  polished 
jobs  of  decorative  high-key  photog¬ 
raphy  we’ve  seen  come  from  his  camera 
in  some  time.  It’s  more  than  a  little 
reminiscent  of  the  long  succession  of 
Lubitsch  bedroom  farce-comedies  that 
flowed  so  delightfully  from  the  Mil¬ 
ner  camera.  In  other  words,  Milner 
at  his  best. 

Milner  always  deals  excellently  with 
his  players.  Claudette  Colbert,  for  in¬ 
stance,  hasn’t  been  seen  to  better  ad¬ 
vantage  in  a  long  while.  Behind  the 
players,  his  strongly  decorative  set-light¬ 
ings  are  another  visual  pleasure.  The 
sets,  incidentally,  are  something  to  look 
at  with  a  bit  of  reminiscent  envy,  for 
“Palm  Beach  Story”  is  one  of  the  im¬ 
pressive  back-log  of  completed  produc¬ 
tions  Paramount  has  on  its  shelves,  and 
was  produced  sufficiently  long  ago  so 
that  it  was  in  work  well  before  today’s 
“ceiling”  restrictions  clamped  down  on 
the  building  of  lavish  sets. 

The  special-effects  work  is  good,  but 
in  some  respects  below  par  for  the 
standard  one  expects  of  Farciot  Edouart, 
A.S.C.,  and  his  efficient  staff. 

STAND  BY  FOR  ACTION 

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer  Production. 
Director  of  Photography:  Charles  Rosh- 
er,  A.S.C. 

Though  the  story  is  rather  too  heavily 
freighted  with  obvious  hokum,  Charles 
Rosher,  A.S.C.,  and  MGM’S  special-ef¬ 
fects  staff  have  made  “Stand  By  For 
Action”  a  picture  that’s  worth  seeing. 

Rosher’s  contribution  maintains  the 
easy  smoothness  customarily  associated 
with  his  name,  though  the  locale  and 
action  offer  him  little  enough  oppor¬ 
tunity  for  the  pictorial  type  of  camera¬ 
work  at  which  he  excels.  His  treatment 
of  the  players  is  characteristically  ex¬ 
cellent,  tending  toward  virile  portrait- 
lightings,  and  his  effect-lightings  in  the 
later  sequences  are  both  realistic  and 
dramatically  effective. 

The  real  highlight  of  the  picture  to 
this  reviewer,  however,  is  the  surpass¬ 
ing  excellence  of  the  miniature  scenes 
which  are  credited  to  Arnold  Gillespie 
and  Don  Jahraus,  the  latter  long  known 
as  perhaps  the  industry’s  foremost  spe¬ 
cialist  in  marine  sets  and  miniatures. 

(Continued  on  Page  25) 


American  Cinematographer  •  January,  1943  17 


WlaluL  CL  (pJu&L  -  0) inning  J’ilm. 

J’Aom.  (Jacaturtv  “ Lt&tfL-  OvsUi&C' 

By  JOHN  E.  WALTER 

Pas*  President,  Los  Angeles  8mm.  Club 


THERE  is  much  wailing  and  gnash¬ 
ing  of  teeth,  these  gasless  and 
rubberless  days,  on  the  part  of 
those  ardent  amateurs  who  shoot  vaca¬ 
tion  pictures.  No  longer  can  he  (or  she) 
load  up  the  car  with  camping  equipment, 
camera  and  film  and  come  back  two 
weeks  or  so  later,  broke  but  happy  by 
reason  of  many  reels  of  film  exposed  in 
numerous  National  Parks  while  putting 
3000  miles  on  the  speedometer.  While 
those  days  are  not  gone  forever,  they 
are  slightly  postponed,  to  say  the  least. 

Such  a  breathing-spell  can  be  used  to 
great  advantage  by  most  of  us.  For  in¬ 
stance,  who  does  not  have  some  reels  of 
film  which  have  never  been  edited  or 
titled,  or  which  need  more  cutting  to 
quicken  their  tempo  and  thereby  make 
them  into  a  real  picture?  How  many  of 
you  come  in  the  class  of  amateurs  who 
shoot  roll  after  roll  but  seldom  if  ever 
title  or  edit  them  ?  Do  a  little  more  than 
just  splice  your  returned  rolls  together 
on  a  larger  reel:  work  on  them  these 
nights  when  gas  is  low  and  build  your¬ 
self  a  personal  library  of  pictures  of 
which  you  can  be  proud. 

Dyed-in-the-wool  takers  of  vacation 
pictures,  without  doubt,  have  an  idea  in 
the  back  of  their  minds  that  they  could 
shoot  a  pip  of  a  scenario  picture  if  they 


just  had  a  little  time  to  do  it.  Well,  you 
have  the  time  to  figure  it  out  now! 

Without  going  anywhere,  and  with  the 
expenditure  of  only  a  little  new  film, 
you  can  turn  out  something  new  in  the 
line  of  vacation  pictures.  It  will  take 
some  ingenuity  and  thought,  but  the  re¬ 
sults  will  be  worth  it.  All  of  us  have 
a  collection  of  pot-shots,  40  ft.  on  one 
short  trip,  60  ft.  or  so  on  another,  but 
have  never  been  able  to  combine  them 
into  anything  except  just  scenery.  No 
plot  to  hold  them  together  ...  no  gags 
to  lend  a  little  humor  .  .  .  and  nothing 
to  explain  why  or  where  it  was  taken. 

Take  a  bunch  of  these  shots  and  put 
them  together  along  the  lines  of  the  fol¬ 
lowing  script  and  see  what  you  think  of 
the  results.  I  tried  it  on  some  of  my 
own  “left-overs” — and  it  did  well  enough 
to  win  first  prize  in  my  club’s  annual 
contest.  Yes,  it  surprised  me,  too! 

Main  Title: 

THOSE  WERE  THE  DAYS 

By  . 

Scene  1:  Husband  at  table,  wife  brings 
in  piece  of  pie  for  each  of  them  and 
sits  down. 

Scene  2:  Wife  pours  cup  of  coffee  for 
each,  emptying  pot  in  her  cup. 

Scene  3:  Husband  takes  heaping  spoon 
of  sugar  and  starts  to  put  it  in  his 


cup.  Wife  puts  out  hand  and  stops 
him.  He  pours  most  of  it  back  and 
reluctantly  puts  a  little  in  his  cup. 
(Close-up  of  sugar  bowl  and  spoon  is 
effective.) 

Scene  4:  Husband  and  wife  take  several 
bites  of  pie.  Wife  looks  at  him  and 
says: 

Title:  “Do  we  have  enough  gas  for  a 
trip  Sunday?” 

Scene  5 :  He  gets  gas  ration  book  from 
pocket,  looks  at  it  and  then  looks  at 
wife,  shaking  his  head  regretfully. 
Scene  6:  (Change  camera  position.) 

Husband  looks  at  wife  and  says: 
Title:  “Remember  our  trip  up  San 
Gabriel  Canyon  ...  ?” 

(a)  Title  fade  out  and  fade  in  on 
opening  scene  of  this  trip. 

(b)  Last  scene  fade  out  and  fade  in  on 
Scene  7 :  Husband  and  wife  still  at  table, 

pie  gone  and  drinking  last  of  coffee  in 
cups. 

Scene  8:  He  holds  out  cup  for  more 
coffee. 

Scene  9:  (Close-up)  Wife  shakes  her 
head  and  says: 

Title:  “Can’t  buy  any  more.” 

Scene  10:  Wife  shows  empty  Silex  pot. 
Scene  11:  Husband’  puts  cup  down  and 
both  get  up  with  dishes,  start  out 
of  picture. 

Scene  12:  Shot  of  husband  and  wife 
washing  and  wiping  dishes.  Wife  turns 
to  husband  and  says: 

Title:  “And  the  fun  we  had  at  Palm 
Springs  ...” 

(a)  Title  fade-out  and  fade  in  on 
opening  scene. 

(b)  Closing  scene  fade-out  and  fade 
in  on 

Scene  13:  Husband  and  wife  finishing 
dishes.  Wife  takes  off  and  hangs  up 
apron.  Husband  puts  dish-towel  on 
rack.  Both  walk  out  of  scene. 

Scene  14:  Husband  and  wife  walk  into 
living-room,  pick  up  evening  paper  and 
start  to  read  it. 

Scene  15:  He  lets  paper  drop  slowly 
into  lap,  looks  into  space  a  moment, 
turns  to  wife  and  says: 

Title  “And  the  fun  we  had  at  Big  Bear 
and  Cedar  Lake  ...” 

(a)  Title  fade-out  and  fade  in  on 
opening  scene. 

(b)  Last  scene  fade-out  and  fade  in  on 
Scene  16:  Husband  and  wife  still  sitting 

in  living-room,  holding  evening  papers 
and  looking  sad. 

Scene  17:  He  folds  up  paper  and  looks 
around  room  for  something  to  do.  Sees 
record  cabinet.  Gets  up. 

Scene  18:  Husband  walks  to  cabinet  and 
takes  out  record  album. 

Scene  19:  He  sits  down  again  and  takes 
a  number  of  records  out.  Starts  to 
get  up  with  records  in  hand. 

Scene  20:  Wife  stops  him,  so  he  sits 
down  again. 

Scene  21:  Wife  points  at  foot,  which 
she  lifts  from  floor,  and  says: 

Title:  “We’ve  still  got  leather.  Let’s  go 
for  a  walk!” 

Scene  22:  Husband  and  wife  get  up  and 
and  put  on  coats. 

Scene  23:  He  opens  front  door  and  both 
walk  out. 

(Continued  on  Page  30) 


18  January,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


Some  of  Dr.  Howard's  spectacular  skii  shots.  Notice 
(below)  shots  made  on  locations  which  were  inacces¬ 
sible  to  a  non-skiier. 

United  States  and  Eastern  Canada. 
Championship  skiing,  filmed  in  action  at 
every  major  tournament  over  the  coun¬ 
try,  including  the  National  Ski  Cham¬ 
pionship  at  Yosemite,  the  Western  Ski 
Championship  at  Sun  Valley,  the  Mid- 
Summer  Volcano  Race  at  Mount  Lassen 
and  the  Silver  Belt  Trophy  Race  at  the 
Sugar  Bowl,  give  the  picture  an  air  of 
skiing  authority.  In  these  events  the 
greatest  skii  performers  in  the  country 
and  in  the  world  are  captured  for  the 
screen  in  a  manner  completely  satis¬ 
factory. 

And  all  this  despite  the  fact  that 
shooting  conditions  were  not  always 
what  a  cameraman  might  ask  for.  Two 
of  the  events,  in  fact,  were  filmed  during 
blizzards  —  and  they  were  excellently 
done. 

But  where  Dr.  Howard  really  shines 
as  a  snow  cameraman  is  in  his  filming 
of  informal,  non-competitive  skiing. 
Here,  with  an  opportunity  to  pick  his 
locations  and  lighting,  he  turns  in  some 
of  the  best  skiing  sequences  in  color  this 
reviewer  has  seen.  While  the  non-ski¬ 
ing  cameraman  is  necessarily  rooted  to 
one  spot  in  the  deep  snow  country,  and 
(Continued  on  Page  29) 


A  CAMERA  ON  SKIIS 


By  W.  G.  CAMPBELL  BOSCO 


been  built  to  accommodate  these  en¬ 
thusiasts,  and  vast  areas  on  the  roof  of 
America,  hitherto  unknown  and  unap¬ 
preciated  by  the  public,  have  been 
opened  up. 

Dr.  Howard  with  his  motion  pictures 
can  take  his  full  share  of  credit  for  hav¬ 
ing  brought  about  this  widespread  ac¬ 
ceptance,  with  all  its  attendant  benefits, 
in  such  a  relatively  short  time.  His 
color  motion  pictures  do  more  to  quicken 
the  appetite  and  sell  the  idea  of  skiing 
to  the  potential  skiier  than  anything  else 
could  hope  to  do. 

Dr.  Howard  takes  his  camera  into  a 
winter  wonderland  in  which  the  non¬ 
skiing  cameraman,  for  obvious  reasons, 
must  remain  virtually  immobile.  This 
skiing  doctor  comes  back  with  snow 
scenes  of  enchanting  beauty  and  action 
pictures  of  skiing  events  that  are  fre¬ 
quently  breathtakingly  thrilling.  He  also 
has  scenes  showing  how  simple  it  is  for 
the  beginner  to  “catch  on,”  and  shots  of 
skiiers  relaxing,  in  their  own  peculiar 
way,  after  the  day’s  skiing  is  done. 

According  to  Dr.  Howard,  (and  his 
pictures  seem  to  prove  it),  all  good  ski¬ 
ers  relax  in  the  approved  manner  by 
drinking  beer  in  a  lodge  with  quaint 
Tyrolean  atmosphere  while  occasionally 
squaring  off  in  spirited  dances  like  the 
Schottische,  the  Polka  and  another  one 
that  would  be  unpronouncable  to  a  non¬ 
skier,  anyway.  These  dances  are  always 
accompanied  by  energetic,  jolly-looking 
musicians  who  look  as  though  they  must 
have  stepped  right  from  the  bas-relief 
of  a  Bavarian  beer  mug. 

Well,  after  seeing  it  you  just  want  to 
go  out,  join  the  nearest  ski-club  and 
get  right  in  on  the  whole  exhilirating, 
fascinating  business. 

Dr.  Howard  makes  one  of  his  snow 
epics  each  year.  “Focus  on  Skis”  is  the 
latest  and  includes  scenes  taken  at  al¬ 
most  every  major  winter  resort  in  the 


OCUS  ON  SKIS”  is  a  16  nun. 

Kodachrome  motion  picture  pro- 

A  duced  by  an  amateur  cinematog¬ 
rapher  and  ski  enthusist  which  is  note¬ 
worthy  in  several  respects.  It  was 
shown  recently,  among  other  places,  at 
the  Royce  Hall  Auditorium  on  the  cam¬ 
pus  of  U.C.L.A.,  under  the  auspices  of 
the  University  of  California  Extension 
Division,  where  it  was  extremely  well 
received  by  an  audience  of  five  or  six 
hundred  people  who  paid  to  get  in  to 
see  it.  For  an  amateur  picture  that  in 
itself  is  of  more  than  passing  interest. 
Furthermore,  in  Boston,  which,  we  un¬ 
derstand,  is  full  of  ski  enthusiasts,  the 
picture  grossed  $2,000  in  one  night  for 
the  benefit  of  the  Red  Cross. 

The  producer  of  the  picture  is  Dr. 
Frank  H.  Howard,  who,  when  he  is  not 
travelling  about  the  country  with  his 
pictures,  acting  as  president  of  the  Cali¬ 
fornia  Ski  Association,  coaching  cham¬ 
pionship-caliber  ski  teams  an<T  producing 
16mm.  pictures,  is  a  dentist  in  San 
Rafael,  California.  He  is  a  personable 
chap  with  an  infectious  enthusiasm  for 
his  hobbies.  The  manner  in  which  he 
gets  his  idea  over  and  achieves  his  pur¬ 
pose  through  the  medium  of  16  mm. 
Kodachrome  is,  we  believe,  the  thing 
that  is  of  most  interest  to  the  readers 
of  this  magazine. 

Dr.  Howard  is  frank  to  admit  that  he 
is  a  skiier  first  and  a  photographer  sec¬ 
ond.  As  a  skiier  he  is  one  of  that  small 
hand  of  men  who  have  been  largely  re¬ 
sponsible  for  the  tremendous  growth  in 
popularity  of  skiing  in  the  United  States. 
Ten  years  ago  skiing  was  a  “foreign” 
sport  unknown  and  untried  by  most 
Americans,  whose  only  conception  of  the 
sport  was  gained  from  newsreel  shots 
of  foolhardy  young  men  leaping  out  into 
space.  Today,  skiing  is  a  ranking  na¬ 
tional  sport  with  devotees  numbered  in 
the  hundreds  of  thousands.  Winter  re¬ 
sorts  and  picturesque  skiing  lodges  have 


American  Cinematographer  •  January,  1943 


19 


£jdjLiinq^  J<&  t  (BalanaL 

By  WALLACE  CAMPBELL 


DO  YOU  give  the  job  of  editing 
your  films  the  same  careful  con¬ 
sideration  that  you  give  all  the 
preceding  phases  of  your  picture-mak¬ 
ing?  Or  do  you  consider  editing  merely 
a  necessary  chore  that  must  be  per¬ 
formed  as  hurriedly  as  possible  in  order 
to  get  the  picture  on  the  screen? 

Unfortunately,  too  many  cineamateurs 
seem  to  work  on  the  theory  that  editing 
is  a  matter  of  cutting  out  the  bad 
frames  that  mark  each  camera  start, 
and  splicing  consecutive  scenes  together. 
Yet  the  proper  handling  of  a  picture  in 
the  cutting-room  is  as  important  to  its 
ultimate  success  as  the  proper  direction, 
scripting  or  camera-wark. 

The  professionals  have  proven  this 
often  enough.  All  things  being  equal, 
poor  treatment  of  a  film  at  the  hands 
of  a  film-editor  can  turn  what  by  other 
standards  might  be  a  good  picture  into 
something  very  mediocre.  On  the  other 
hand,  a  film-editor  with  a  good  sense 
of  continuity  and  tempo  can  take  what 
might  be  a  mediocre  picture  and  by  his 
deftness  turn  out  a  smooth,  interest- 
sustaining  vehicle. 

There  aren’t  many  people  who  can 
take  a  motion  picture  apart  and  criti¬ 
cize  as  a  separate  contribution  the 
editing  of  a  film  in  the  same  sense  that 
they  can  the  acting  or  the  camerawork, 
but  when  you  see  a  motion  picture  that 


unreels  smoothly,  that  puts  emphasis 
in  the  right  places  and  points  up  the 
highlight  of  the  story,  whatever  it  is, 
you  can  be  sure  that  it  is  a  good  edit¬ 
ing  job. 

The  same  sense  of  showmanship  that 
is  necessary  to  good  direction,  writing, 
scripting  or  camerawork  is  prerequisite 
for  an  equally  effective  cutting  job. 
And  one  of  the  first  rules  is  to  learn 
when  to  stop.  When  to  stop  showing  the 
picturesque  or  expensive  establishing 
‘production’  shot  and  cut  to  some  more 
intimate  business;  when  to  cut  away 
from  the  ‘intimate  business’  to  a  ‘re¬ 
action’  shot;  when  to  cut  the  take  on  a 
humorous  or  dramatic  expression  or 
action  to  get  the  full  benefit  of  show¬ 
manlike  punch  out  of  it. 

The  difference  between  an  effective  or 
an  ineffective  cut  can  in  many  instances 
be  only  a  few  frames.  Especially  if  you 
are  trying  to  build  tempo,  every  un¬ 
necessary  frame  after  a  given  bit  of 
business  or  expression  has  registered  is 
a  drug  on  a  market  and  helping  to  de¬ 
feat  your  purpose.  This  rule  of  knowing 
when  to  stop  seems  to  be  one  that  many 
cineamateurs  would  do  well  to  learn 
and  profit  by.  So  many  of  them  just 
don’t  want  to  throw  away  any  film.  They 
want  to  include  every  photographically 
perfect  frame  they  have  exposed.  But 
they  do  so  only  at  the  expense  of  jeop¬ 


ardizing  the  entertainment  value  of  the 
picture  as  a  whole. 

Don’t  be  afraid  to  shorten  a  scene. 
No  one  will  feel  as  sentimental  about 
it  as  the  fellow  who  shot  it,  anyway. 
Make  your  moving  pictures  move.  When 
you  have  made  your  point,  change  the 
subject,  or  at  least  the  angle  of  ap¬ 
proach. 

There  is  no  excuse  for  ‘drag’  in  a  mo¬ 
tion  picture.  As  a  medium  it  offers  the 
utmost  flexibility  and  the  greatest  play 
for  the  imagination.  Even  the  most 
beautiful  land  and  seascapes  in  color 
can  only  hope  to  sustain  interest  up  to 
a  point.  And  that  point  can  be  passed 
sooner  than  you  think.  Don’t  be  afraid 
to  cut  them  as  soon  as  they  have  had 
time  to  register  on  the  screen.  Remem¬ 
ber  that  the  inclusion  of  some  live,  ani¬ 
mate  object  or  objects  invariably  adds 
interest  as  well  as  proportion  and  per¬ 
spective. 

Another  thing  well  worth  remember¬ 
ing  when  you  are  bent  on  filming  purely 
scenic  movies  is  that  every  landscape  or 
vista  is  compounded  of  elements  that 
are  invariably  worthy  of  closer  shots. 
The  trees  that  formed  the  mass  in  the 
composition  of  the  landscape  will  offer  a 
lot  of  interest  for  closer  shots;  and  so 
will  the  shrubs,  wildflowers  or  grasses 
that  contribute  to  the  scene  as  a  whole 
individually  offer  opportunities  for  im¬ 
aginative  camerawork — and  give  the  edi¬ 
tor  something  to  work  with,  as  well.  The 
inclusion  of  such  shots  does  so  much  to 
add  to  the  interest-value  of  the  picture. 
Particularly  if  a  judicious  use  is  made 
of  subtitles  that  are  informative,  in  an 
informal  and  inoffensive  manner,  and  in 
the  mood  of  the  picture. 

Especially  in  these  days  of  gasoline 
rationing  the  cineamateur  will  often  re¬ 
alize,  when  he  sits  down  to  edit  his 
film,  that  the  pictures  he  made  on  loca¬ 
tion  could  stand  a  few  close-ups  as  in¬ 
serts.  Shots  of  himself,  perhaps,  or 
members  of  his  family.  But  the  fact 
that  it  is  impossible  or  inconvenient  to 
return  to  that  same  location  need  not 
prevent  him  getting  these  inserts.  If 
it’s  outdoor  stuff,  he  might  do  well  to 
remember  the  now  almost  immortal 
words  of  that  early  Hollywood  im¬ 
presario  who  said,  “A  tree  is  a  tree  and 
a  rock  is  a  rock.  Shoot  it  in  Griffith 
Park.”  With  a  little  imagination  he  can 
uncork  enough  new  shots  against  con¬ 
veniently  “close  to  home”  backgrounds 
to  add  new  zest  to  his  opus. 

When  filming  action  it  is  generally 
considered  good  policy  to  shoot  the  en¬ 
tire  action  in  order  to  achieve  smooth¬ 
ness  and  naturalness.  But  it  isn’t  neces¬ 
sary  to  include  the  entire  cycle  of  the 
action  in  the  finally  edited  reel  in  the 
same  form  as  you  filmed  it.  For  ex¬ 
ample,  if  you  go  from  a  long-shot  to  a 
closer  angle  on  action  where,  say,  some¬ 
one  is  shown  seating  himself  in  a  chair, 
you  can  cut  the  long-shot  just  as  he 
starts  to  fold  himself  down  into  the 
chair,  and  cut  in  the  closer  shot  just  as 
he’s  getting  settled,  and  you’ll  get  a 
much  smoother  flow  of  movement  on 
(Continued  on  Page  29) 


20  January,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


Make  Your  Old  Films  New 
By  Making  Better  Titles 

By  PHIL  TANNURA,  A.S.C. 


WARTIME  home  moviemaking 
seems  to  be  distinguished  by  an 
increasing  list  of  things  we 
can't  do.  We  can’t  get  gasoline  enough 
to  take  us  on  the  moviemaking  week¬ 
end  and  holiday  trips  of  the  past.  Even 
if  we  could,  we  couldn’t  do  much  shoot¬ 
ing  as  most  of  us  can  only  get  a  roll  or 
two  of  film  at  a  time,  anyway.  Decidedly, 
the  accent  seems  to  be  on  the  home  part 
of  home  movies,  and  on  shooting  that 
consumes  a  minimum  amount  of  film 
footage,  besides. 

There’s  one  type  of  moviemaking  that 
just  fits  this  description  .  .  .  and  it  has 
the  added  advantage  of  giving  you  what 
for  all  practical  purposes  amounts  to 
new  films  for  old  ones. 

It  is  title-making.  And  how  most  of 
our  films  need  it — even  if  they’ve  been 
laid  aside  years  ago  as  completely  edited 
and  titled! 

Get  some  of  your  old  pictures  out  and 
look  at  them  again.  Unless  you’re  the 
99th  moviemaker  out  of  every  hundred 
who  has  already  formed  the  habit  of 
lavishing  as  much  care  on  title-making 
as  on  making  the  picture  itself,  you’ll 
probably  find  plenty  of  spare-time  em¬ 
ployment  in  re-planning  and  re-shooting 
the  titles  you  once  thought  were  quite 
adequate. 

That  black-and-white  vacation  film  of 
several  years  ago,  for  example :  you 
made  the  titles  for  it  on  cheap  positive 
“title-film,”  didn’t  you,  maybe  using 
typewritten  title-cards?  Probably  you 
missed  here  and  there  on  exposure,  and 
the  development  wasn’t  very  uniform, 
anyway,  so  they’re  streaky  and  hard  to 
read.  Don’t  you  think  they  could  be  im¬ 
proved?  That  Kodachrome  picture  where 
you  used  titles  made  on  tinted-base  posi¬ 
tive:  wouldn’t  it  be  a  lot  better  if  you 
dressed  it  up  with  Kodachrome  titles, 
too?  And — be  honest,  now! — are  you 
really  satisfied  with  the  wording  of  those 
titles  you  made  two,  three,  or  five  years 
ago?  Now  that  you  aren’t  quite  so  close 
to  that  trip  and  what  happened  on  it, 
don’t  you  think  that  maybe  those  titles 
left  a  little  bit  too  much  to  the  imagina¬ 
tion — ?  Wouldn’t  a  fuller  explanation 
make  the  picture  more  enjoyable? 

If  the  answer  is  yes,  your  “what  to 
shoot”  problems  will  be  settled  for  the 
next  several  months,  at  least,  for  title¬ 
making  is  something  you  can  do  a  little 
at  a  time,  as  you  find  you  have  the  spare 
moments  to  do  it  in. 

The  starting-point,  to  most  people, 
would  be  to  be  sure  you’ve  got  a  satis¬ 
factory  titler.  But  personally,  I  think 
its  more  logical  to  work  the  other  way 
around:  what  sort  of  title-cards  are  you 
going  to  be  using?  The  answer  to  that 
will  have  more  to  do  with  what  type  of 
titler  you  ought  to  use,  than  anything 
else. 

Nature  has  equipped  some  of  us  with 
a  knack  for  doing  attractive  hand-letter¬ 
ing.  If  you’ve  got  it,  but  aren’t  sure, 
practice  and  training  will  bring  it  out. 

I  know  several  amateurs  who  found  all 
that  was  needed  to  give  their  title¬ 
lettering  talent  an  almost  professional 
polish  was  to  spend  a  few  evenings  in  a 


class  in  show-card  lettering  at  an  eve¬ 
ning  adult  high-school. 

On  the  other  hand,  there  are  some  of 
us  who  just  can’t  do  that  sort  of  thing. 
It’s  nothing  to  be  ashamed  of;  they  just 
aren’t  built  that  way.  For  them,  if  they 
can’t  find  some  artistically  -  inclined 
friend  capable  of  helping  out  by  letter¬ 
ing  title-cards,  I’d  suggest  that  printed 
titles  are  the  best  answer.  It  isn’t  too 
hard,  in  most  towns,  to  find  a  small 
printing  shop  where  they’ll  be  glad  to 
run  you  off  a  few  impressions  of  each 
title,  using  white  or  silver  ink  on  black 
or  dark-colored  paper.  It  shouldn’t  cost 
much,  either;  one  of  my  friends,  for 
example,  found  a  shop  like  that — one 
which  luckily  more  or  less  specialized 
in  printing  Christmas  cards — where  he 
had  some  thirty  or  forty  titles  printed 
for  a  Kodachrome  picture,  using  left¬ 
over  bits  of  colored  paper  and  colored 
ink,  at  a  cost  of  about  five  dollars. 

With  that  point  settled,  you  can  begin 
to  think  about  the  titler.  This  is  really 
governed  by  the  type  of  title-cards  you 
use.  If  you  use  hand-lettered  ones,  you’ll 
do  a  lot  better  to  use  pretty  good-sized 
title-cards.  I’d  suggest  at  least  6x8 
inches  in  size,  and  bigger  if  possible; 
professional  title-cards  often  measure 
18x24  or  larger.  The  larger  size,  you 
see,  gives  you  a  chance  to  make  your 
lettering  larger,  and  in  the  larger  let¬ 
ters,  minor  irregularities  in  your  letter¬ 
ing  craftsmanship  won’t  stand  out  so 
glaringly  as  they  will  on  smaller  letters. 

On  the  other  hand,  if  you  are  going  to 


use  printed  titles,  you  can  do  quite  well 
with  small  title-cards,  including  the 
“business-card”  size  used  in  most  of  the 
inexpensive  commercial  titlers.  I’ve 
seen  plenty  of  really  first-class  titles 
turned  out  this  way. 

But  the  equipment  you  use  to  make 
your  titles — so  long  as  it  is  good  and  ac¬ 
curately  aligned — doesn’t  matter  half  so 
much  as  the  care  and  ingenuity  you  put 
to  work  in  planning  and  photographing 
them. 

First  of  all,  be  sure  that  the  title  is 
legible;  keep  away  from  fancy  lettering, 
especially  styles  with  thin  lines  or  deco¬ 
rative  curleycues.  They  may  look  nice 
on  the  title-card,  but  they  won’t  show  up 
half  so  well  on  the  screen  (especially  in 
8mm.)  as  a  severely  simple  block  letter 
with  fairly  heavy  lines. 

Next,  be  sure  that  the  lettering  is 
properly  centered  in  your  frame.  The 
spaces  above  and  below  the  lettering 
should  be  pretty  nearly  equal  to  each 
other,  and  so  should  the  spacing  at  the 
two  sides.  Be  sure  and  allow  plenty  of 
margin  all  around,  especially  in  8mm., 
since  different  “eight”  projectors  cen¬ 
ter  the  film  differently,  and  unless  you 
allow  ample  margin  you  may  find  that 
titles  (usually  at  one  side)  cut  off  when 
you  run  your  film  on  somebody  else’s 
projector. 

Be  sure  your  camera  is  accurately 
aligned  in  the  titler  each  time,  too.  This 
is  especially  important  in  some  of  the 
cheaper  small  titlers,  which  don’t  make 
(Continued  on  Page  28) 


American  Cinematographer  •  January,  1943  21 


Does  Your  Projector 
Crow  Whiskers? 

By  F.  W.  PRATT,  A.A.C.S. 


SOONER  or  later  if  you  don’t  watch 
out  for  them,  whiskers  are  going 
to  give  you  a  headache.  They  are 
very  annoying  to  users  of  16mm.  equip¬ 
ment,  and  exasperating  to  the  8mm. 
user.  They  can  ruin  film  faster  by  their 
presence  than  almost  any  other  minor 
camera  or  projector  fault. 

Perhaps  I  will  make  myself  a  little 
clearer  if  I  explain  that  whiskers  are 
those  little  pieces  of  lint  or  dust  that 
lodge  in  the  aperture  plate  of  cameras 
and  project,  there  to  remain  unnoticed 


*  Reprinted  through  courtesy  of  “Movie  News,” 
the  official  organ  of  the  Australian  Amateur  Cine 
Society,  of  which  Mr.  Pratt  is  Hon.  Editor. 


until  they  have  done  their  beastly  damage. 

Whiskers  have  a  particular  fondness 
for  sticking  at  the  bottom  of  the  camera 
aperture  (the  top  of  the  picture  area, 
since  the  scene  is  inverted),  where  on 
the  finished  screened  picture  they  can 
dangle  down  and  look  something  like 
hanging  moss. 

Whiskers  are  most  serious  on  8mm. 
film  because  the  entire  picture  area  is 
so  small  that  one  good  hunk  of  dust  can 
cover  up  most  of  the  format.  When  this 
happens  one  is  apt  to  feel  especially  bad 
over  the  spoiled  film,  for  except  for  the 
dust  images  the  scene  may  be  perfect, 
and  when  projecting  it  you  have  the  feel¬ 


ing  that  it  should  be  easy  to  push  the 
dust  away  and  see  what  is  behind  it. 
But  of  course  nothing  can  be  done  to  re¬ 
move  the  dust  image  without  removing 
the  picture,  too. 

Whiskers  occur  most  often  in  the  pro¬ 
jector,  but  here  they  are  not  serious. 
While  they  may  mar  the  projection  of  a 
single  reel  they  may  be  easily  removed 
before  subsequent  projections. 

Whiskers  cause  untold  trouble  in  film 
laboratories,  particularly  in  the  printing 
operations,  where  a  speck  of  dust  or  lint 
lodged  in  the  aperture  of  a  printer  will 
ruin  the  whole  roll  of  film.  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  it  is  the  danger  of  dust  lodging 
on  the  film  and  aperture  plate  of  print¬ 
ers  which  makes  the  negative-positive 
system  so  difficult  for  16mm.  films  and 
practically  impossible  for  8mm.  With 
the  negative-positive  system  the  whisk¬ 
ers  appear  white  on  the  screen  and  are 
much  more  annoying  than  those  on  ordi¬ 
nary  reversal  film,  which  appear  black. 

Apparently  it  is  possible  to  build  up  a 
tolerance  for  a  moss-bordered  picture 
since  it  is  not  uncommon  to  be  shown 
a  great  series  of  home  movies  in  which 
both  the  camera  aperture  and  projector 
have  become  well  padded  with  lint.  Per¬ 
haps  some  persons  might  even  feel  that 
the  informal  deckled  edge  effect  may 
have  a  certain  charm.  However,  for 
those  of  us  who  prefer  clean,  sharp  bor¬ 
ders,  there  are  two  implements  which 
should  be  a  part  of  our  movie  kit  and 
if  used  will  keep  whisker  trouble  down 
to  a  minimum. 

The  first  is  a  camel’s-hair  brush  such 
as  those  used  for  water  colors.  The 
second  is  a  small  rubber  syringe  like 
those  commonly  used  by  ear  doctors. 
The  camel’s  hair  brush  is  particularly 
useful  in  cleaning  our  camera  apertures, 
and  so  one  should  be  kept  in  the  camera 
case  at  all  times  and  used  each  time 
a  new  roll  is  threaded  into  the  camera. 
The  syringe  will  also  work  well  to  blow 
the  dirt  out  of  the  aperture  if  it  has  not 
become  too  firmly  lodged,  but  since  the 
syringe  is  a  little  larger  than  the  brush 
it  is  not  so  easy  to  carry  around  in  the 
camera  case.  However,  it  is  the  best 
little  camera  tool  to  use  during  projec¬ 
tion  inasmuch  as  nine  times  out  of  ten 
it  is  possible  to  blow  out  a  speck  of 
dirt  while  the  projector  is  running  rather 
than  have  to  wait  until  the  reel  is  over. 

In  both  camera  and  projector  the 
whisker  problem  is  exaggerated  if  the 
film  guides  and  aperture  plates  are  al¬ 
lowed  to  become  soaked  with  oil.  So  in 
addition  to  dusting  out  the  aperture 
plates,  it  is  necessary  to  wipe  their  sur¬ 
faces  free  from  oil  and  also  to  remove 
any  accumulation  of  emulsion.  The 
handiest  tool  to  remove  emulsion  from 
the  film  gate  is  made  from  the  wooden 
handle  of  the  aperture  brush,  simply  by 
whittling  it  to  a  chisel-like  point.  The 
wooden  end  will  remove  emulsion  easily 
while  in  no  way  damaging  the  surface 
of  the  film  guides,  and  is  very  much 
safer  than  any  form  of  metal  tool,  how¬ 
ever  soft.  END. 


22  January,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


AMONG  THE  MOVIE  CLUBS 


Share  the  Films! 

With  gasoline  rationing,  film 
shortages  and  other  wartime  re¬ 
strictions  tending  increasingly  to 
limit  the  making  of  new  amateur 
films,  we’d  like  to  point  out  to 
Movie  Club  program  chairmen  that 
there  exists  a  vast  reservoir  of 
interesting  and  instructive  pro¬ 
gram  material  in  films  already 
made.  Sure,  you  and  your  group 
have  probably  seen  most  of  the 
films  available  from  your  own 
membership — but  how  about  those 
of  your  fellow  amateurs  elsewhere? 
Their  films  will  seem  new  to  your 
group,  and  your  films  will  be  new 
to  them.  In  addition,  we  can  all 
learn  from  studying  the  way  the 
other  fellow  tackles  his  picture 
subjects  and  assembles  them. 

So — why  not  a  “Share-the-film 
Club?” 

We  will  gladly  list  on  this  page 
the  title,  footage,  etc.,  of  films  that 
any  clubs  or  their  members  may 
have  available  for  exchange  with 
clubs  in  other  localities,  together 
with  the  names  and  addresses  of 
the  individuals  or  club  officers  from 
whom  these  films  may  be  obtained. 

In  addition,  we  invite  all  club 
program  chairmen  and  other  offi¬ 
cers  to  make  use  of  The  American 
Cinematographer’s  extensive  li¬ 
brary  of  prize-winning  films  from 
our  various  International  Amateur 
Movie  Contests.  These  films  in¬ 
clude  some  of  the  greatest  amateur 
movies  of  all  time — both  16mm. 
and  8mm. — and  are  available  to 
recognized  amateur  movie  clubs  at 
no  cost  other  than  transportation 
to  and  from  Hollywood.  We’ll 
gladly  send  a  list  of  these  films  to 
anyone  interested. 


L.  A.  8's  Share  the  Ride 

At  the  Annual  Installation  Banquet  of 
the  Los  Angeles  8mm.  Club,  incoming 
Vice-President  Irwin  Dietz  announced 
that  the  Club  was  organizing  a  Share- 
the-Ride  plan  by  which  members  living 
in  the  same  general  direction  from  a 
meeting-place  could  share  their  cars  go¬ 
ing  to  and  from  meetings.  With  the 
Club’s  membership  scattered  over  a 
twenty-mile  radius,  the  plan  is  expected 
to  prove  of  great  value  to  the  members 
and  to  the  Club’s  activities. 

Winners  of  the  Club’s  1942  Contest 
were  announced  by  Honorary  Member 
Bill  Stull  of  The  American  Cinema¬ 
tographer.  First  place  went  to  retiring 
President  John  E.  Walter,  with  second 
place,  and  the  Horton  Trophy  for  the 
year’s  best  vacation  movie,  went  to  for¬ 
mer  President  Bill  Wade.  Incoming 
President  Fred  Evans  captured  third 
place,  with  Bill  Millar,  Joe  Savel,  Louise 


Arbogast,  Gertrude  Millar  and  Irwin 
Dietz  following. 

LOUISE  ARBOGAST,  Secretary. 

Tri-City  Dines 

December  17th  saw  the  Third  Annual 
Dinner  Meeting  of  the  Tri-City  Cinema 
Club  of  Davenport,  (la.),  Rock  Island 
and  Moline  (Ill.)  Scheduled  for  the 
film  fare  of  the  evening  was  Ray 
Schmidt’s  “Western  Coast,”  300  feet 
8mm.  Kodachrome  supplemented  by  50 
Kodachrome  slides;  “The  Story  of  4-H 
Club  Work,”  by  Paul  Lane,  300  feet 
16mm.,  a  specialty  documentary  with  the 
recorded  voices  of  45  club  members ; 
“Saskatchewan,”  800  feet  16mm.  Koda¬ 
chrome  filmed  by  Carroll  Mitchener  of 
the  Minneapolis  Cine  Club,  and  awarded 
a  prize  by  the  National  Film  Board  of 
Canada  in  1941;  and  Eastman’s  “Caval¬ 
cade  of  Color.” 

WILLIS  F.  LATHROP, 

Secretary-Treasurer. 

Long  Beach  Elects 

Elected  to  head  the  Long  Beach 
Cinema  Club  during  1943  are  Claude 
Evans,  President;  Mildred  J.  Caldwell, 
First  Vice-President;  Pat  Rafferty,  Sec¬ 
ond  Vice-President;  Lorin  E.  Smith, 
Secretary,  and  A.  W.  Nash,  Treasurer. 
These  new  officers  will  be  installed  at  the 
Club’s  Annual  Banquet  early  in  Janu¬ 
ary,  at  which  time  the  winners  in  the 
Club’s  1942  Contest  will  also  be  an¬ 
nounced. 

PRUDENCE  BRAKLOW, 

Secretary. 

Exchange  Show  for  8-16's 

Scheduled  for  the  December  meeting 
of  the  8-16  Movie  Club  of  Philadelphia 
was  “All  These  We  Defend,”  a  docu¬ 
mentary  film  giving  a  pictorial  demon¬ 
stration  of  the  Bill  of  Rights  and  what 
it  means,  made  by  Arthur  Tucker  of  the 
Syracuse  Movie  Makers  Association. 

LEON  MERROW. 

"Doomsday"  for  Metro 

Program  for  the  December  meeting  of 
the  Metropolitan  Motion  Picture  Club  of 
New  York  featured  the  International 
Prize-winner,  “Doomsday,”  filmed  by 
Ruth  Stuart  of  Britain’s  Institute  of 
Amateur  Cinematographers,  and  loaned 
from  the  library  of  The  American 
Cinematographer,  in  whose  contest  the 
film  won  the  Grand  Prize.  Also  to  be 
shown  were  “Fair  Enough,”  by  John  J. 
Klaber;  “Linda,”  by  Richard  D.  Fuller; 
“Days  Afield,”  by  Frank  E.  Gunnell,  and 
a  discussion  on  Kodachrome  exposure, 
illustrated  by  Kodachrome  slides,  also 
by  Member  Gunnell. 

ROBERT  M.  COLES,  Secretary. 

San  Francisco  Sees  Solomons 

The  December  meeting  of  the  Cinema 
Club  of  San  Francisco  featured  a  show¬ 
ing  of  a  feature-length  Kodachrome  film 


of  “A  Trip  Through  the  Solomon  Is¬ 
lands,”  filmed  before  the  war  by  C.  E. 
Stahl,  of  San  Francisco. 

E.  L.  SARGENT,  President. 

Philadelphia  Tries  Music 

A  demonstration  of  the  value  of  using 
recordings  to  accompany  a  silent  movie 
was  the  scheduled  highlight  of  the  De¬ 
cember  meeting  of  the  Philadelphia 
Cinema  Club.  Equipment  was  also  sched¬ 
uled  to  be  available  for  a  demonstration 
of  making  transcriptions,  direct  record¬ 
ing  of  sound-effects,  voice,  and  music,  as 
well  as  “dubbing”  or  re-recording. 

On  the  screen  the  scheduled  program 
included  “Autumn  Symphony,”  by  W. 
W.  Chambers;  “Whozoo,”  by  A.  J. 
Hurth;  “Vacation  in  Bermuda,”  and 
“Autumn  in  the  Poconos,”  both  by  N.  L. 
MacMorris. 

The  “Film  Improvement  Committee,” 
which  proved  such  a  success  at  the  No¬ 
vember  meeting  when  these  six  experi¬ 
enced  cinefilming  members  analyzed  four 
pictures  shown  and  gave  suggestions  for 
their  improvement,  resulting  in  some  of 
the  best  discussions  ever  heard  on  the 
Club’s  floor,  was  continued  at  the  De¬ 
cember  meeting,  and  is  to  be  continued 
as  a  feature  of  future  meetings. 

In  addition,  films  to  be  considered  for 
the  Club’s  Annual  Contest,  which  will 
be  held  in  February,  were  to  be  shown 
at  this  meeting,  and  also  at  the  January 
meeting. 

ROBERT  R.  HENDERSON, 

Secretary. 

X-mas  Movies  for  Chicago 

Christmas  movies  were  the  subject  of 
discussion  at  the  December  16th  meeting 
of  the  Chicago  Cinema  Club.  Members 
Bianco,  Burrs  and  Erickson  showed 
their  previously  made  Christmas  stories 
on  film,  accompanied  by  appropriate 
music.  Following  the  screening,  these 
experts  led  a  general  discussion  of  the 
subject  of  Christmas  movies  and  how  to 
make  them.  Due  to  the  holidays,  the 
Club’s  usual  meetings,  scheduled  for  Dec. 
23rd  and  Dec.  30th  were  cancelled,  but 
after  New  Year’s  the  Club  is  due  to 
start  out  on  its  regular  four-meeting-a- 
month  schedule,  beginning  January  7th. 

BARBARA  HUBBARD. 

Uncut-Film  Contest  for  N.  Y. 
8's 

The  November  meeting  of  the  New 
York  8mm.  Club  had  an  unusually  in¬ 
teresting  contest  when  the  $10  prize  of¬ 
fered  by  Joseph  Hollywood  was  won  by 
Victor  Ancona,  an  absentee  member 
who  had  just  entered  the  U.  S.  Army. 
Ancona’s  film  was  untitled,  but  other¬ 
wise  was  determined  to  have  all  the  fea¬ 
tures  necessary  for  a  good  short.  The 
judging  committee,  enthusiastically  sec¬ 
onded  by  the  members  present,  also  gave 
hearty  praise  to  a  really  comic  and  time- 
(Continued  on  Page  25) 


American  Cinematographer  •  January,  1943  23 


New  Photographic  Books 


THE  THEORY  OF  THE  PHOTO¬ 
GRAPHIC  PROCESS 

By  C.  E.  Kenneth  Mees,  D.Sc.,  F.R.S., 

A.S.C.  The  Macmillan  Co.,  New  York, 

1942,  ($12.00). 

The  student  of  photography  will  great¬ 
ly  appreciate  the  new  book  by  Amer¬ 
ica’s  foremost  photochemist,  Dr.  C.  E.  K. 
Mees,  on  “The  Theory  of  the  Photo¬ 
graphic  Process.” 

The  immense  wealth  of  literature  on 
the  theoretical  aspect  of  photography 
is  scattered  in  periodicals  published 
throughout  the  world  and,  therefore,  not 
easily  accessible  to  everyone. 

It  is  true  that  the  “Abridged  Scien¬ 
tific  Publications,”  put  out  yearly  by 
the  Eastman  Kodak  Company,  the 
“Veroffentlichungen,”  by  Agfa,  which 
began  to  appear  in  1928,  and  the  “Pro¬ 
ceedings”  of  the  various  internation¬ 
al  Congresses  on  Photography,  have 
brought  to  the  attention  of  the  scientific 
public  the  accomplishments  of  the  sev¬ 
eral  great  Research  Laboratories.  But 
outside  of  three  monographs  by  the 
members  of  the  Technical  Staff  of  the 
Eastman  Kodak  Company,  namely:  “The¬ 
ory  of  Development,”  by  A.  H.  Neitz; 
the  “Physics  of  the  Developed  Pho¬ 
tographic  Image,”  by  F.  E.  Ross;  and 
“Gelatine  in  Photography,”  by  S.  E. 
Sheppard,  very  little  has  appeared  in 
coordinated  book  form  on  the  theory 
of  photographic  processes.  Dr.  Mees’ 
book,  therefore,  makes  its  appearance 
at  a  very  opportune  time. 

Although  this  book  is  probably  most 
valuable  to  the  student  of  photographic 
chemistry,  the  chapters  on  Development, 
Sensitometry  and  Theory  of  Tone  Re¬ 
production  will  be  very  useful  to  the 
laboratory  technician.  The  research 
worker  will  find  illuminating  the  chap¬ 
ter  on  the  Chemistry  of  Sensitizing 
and  Desensitizing  Dyes,  although  it  is 
regretable  that  the  Chemistry  of  Color 
Couplers  and  Color  Formers,  which  are 
the  basis  of  the  Kodacolor  and  the  New 
Agfa  Color  Processes,  have  been  very 
briefly  sketched. 

In  spite  of  its  size  (over  1000  pages 
of  text),  this  book  covers  the  wide 
field  in  a  rather  concise  arrangement. 
Nevertheless,  Dr.  Mees  has  succeeded 
in  giving  many  important  historical  ci¬ 
tations  and  a  very  extensive  bibliog¬ 
raphy  at  the  end  of  each  chapter. 

O.  O.  CECCARINI. 


EXPOSURE  METER  MANUAL 

General  Electric  Co.,  1942.  98  pages. 

($1.00) 

A  really  good,  practical  book  on  ex¬ 
posure  meters,  how  they  work  and  how 
they  should  be  used,  has  been  needed  for 
a  long  time.  General  Electric’s  new  “Ex¬ 
posure  Meter  Manual”  is  the  first  at¬ 
tempt  we’ve  seen  to  fill  that  need  from 
the  practical  man’s  viewpoint.  Coming 
at  this  time,  it  is  particularly  valuable, 
for  since  new  exposure-meters  will  prob¬ 


ably  not  be  available  to  most  civilians 
“for  duration,”  it  certainly  behooves  all 
of  us  to  learn  how  to  get  the  best  out  of 
whatever  type  of  meter  we  may  now 
possess. 

The  book  very  naturally  deals  pri¬ 
marily  with  the  use  of  General  Electric 
meters,  but  the  majority  of  the  basic 
principles  it  sets  forth  can  very  easily 
be  adapted  to  guide  you  with  almost  any 
other  type  of  meter  you  may  be  lucky 
enough  to  own.  The  writers  also  take 
pains  to  point  out  conditions  under  which 
a  straight  meter-reading  may  be  errone¬ 
ous,  and  how  the  meter  should  be  used 
to  correct  for  this.  There  is  a  wealth 
of  practical  data  as  to  the  use  of  the 
meter  indoors  and  out,  for  metered 
synchro-sunlight  flash  shots,  and  as  a 
means  of  measuring  negative  densities 
in  the  darkroom. 

The  basic  fundamentals  of  how  ex¬ 
posure  affects  the  picture  are  well  ex¬ 
plained,  as  is  the  interesting  question  of 
how  film  speeds  are  determined.  In  this, 
the  writers  have  been  much  kinder  than 
might  be  expected  to  the  various  com¬ 
peting  methods  of  film-speed  determina¬ 
tion,  setting  forth  the  principles  and  ad¬ 
vantages  of  each  quite  dispassionately. 
It  is  to  be  regretted  that  they  do  not 
provide  a  table  by  which  these  various 
rating  systems  may  be  easily  correlated. 
That  data  is  of  course  available  else¬ 
where,  but  it  should  be  here. 

Personally,  we  also  regret  that  more 
space  was  not  given  to  the  peculiar  prob¬ 
lems  of  exposure-metering  involved  in 
professional  and  amateur  cinematog¬ 
raphy,  especially  the  professional  use 
of  the  G-E  meter  as  an  incident-light 
meter  for  determining  key-light  values 
to  which  the  rest  of  the  lighting  may  be 
balanced  either  visually  or  by  meter. 
This  technique  is  one  which  should  be  of 
value  to  the  amateur  and  semi-profes¬ 
sional  as  well  as  to  the  studio  profes¬ 
sionals  who  evolved  it. — W.  S. 

THE  CAMERA  POCKET  PHOTO 
GUIDE 

Compiled  by  the  Editors  of  “The  Cam¬ 
era”  Magazine,  Baltimore,  1942.  (128 

pages,  $1.00) 

While  intended  primarily  for  the  still 
photographer,  with  only  incidental  con¬ 
sideration  of  movies,  this  little  book  is 
one  of  the  best  of  the  pocket  photo 
guides.  It  contains  a  surprising  wealth 
of  material,  much  of  which  can  be 
adapted  to  moviemaking  problems,  pre¬ 
sented  partly  in  the  form  of  tables,  and 
partly  in  the  form  of  concisely  boiled- 
down  text,  supplemented  by  illustrations 
wherever  necessary.  Among  the  useful 
features  are  a  very  clever,  illustrated 
section  devoted  to  basic  portrait  light¬ 
ings;  an  excellent  and  surprisingly  sim¬ 
ple  filter  chart  which  quickly  “gets  over” 
the  basic  action  of  any  type  of  filter  on 
any  given  colors;  useful  technical  data 
on  exposure-meters  and  their  use,  Photo¬ 
flood  and  Photoflash  (including  a  valu¬ 


able  table  showing  how  many  Photo¬ 
floods  of  any  given  size  can  be  used  with 
a  given  line  fusing);  Kodachrome  data 
and  exposure  guides,  and  specimen  re¬ 
leases  from  models  for  pictures  which 
may  be  used  for  commercial  purposes  or 
for  reproduction.  Another  clever  feature 
is  that  a  renewable  memo  pad  is  included 
in  the  back  cover  of  the  book. 

All  told,  while  it’s  intended  primarily 
for  still  photographers,  we  would  urge 
amateur  movie  enthusiasts  not  to  over¬ 
look  it. — W.  S. 


16mm  Business  films 


FREIGHT  YARD 

Documentary,  710  feet  16mm.  black-and- 

white,  sound. 

Presented  and  Produced  by  the  New  York 

Central  System. 

This  is  one  of  the  most  interesting 
16mm.  commercials  we’ve  screened  in 
some  time,  and  an  excellent  technical 
job.  It  deals  with  a  little-known  part  of 
railroading — the  operation  of  a  big 
freight  classification  yard — and  has  a 
really  worthwhile  instructional  value 
apart  from  its  purely  commercial  value. 

Made  under  the  supervision  of  Fred¬ 
erick  G.  Beach,  it  tells  its  story  com¬ 
pletely,  and  is  an  excellent  example  of 
movie-making  technique.  While  precise 
data  is  lacking,  we’re  inclined  to  consider 
that  much,  if  not  all  of  the  footage  is 
16mm.  negative.  Certainly,  it  shows  what 
16mm.  negative,  with  proper  laboratory 
handling,  can  do,  for  it  gave  first-class 
picture  quality  even  when  viewed  on  a 
large  screen.  The  sound — also  direct-16, 
we  believe- — is  also  excellent. 

We  have  a  few  criticisms  as  to  the 
film’s  construction,  however.  It  is  cer¬ 
tainly  to  be  regretted  that  conditions 
apparently  didn’t  make  it  possible  to 
keep  the  movement  of  the  freight  trains 
in  the  early  and  closing  sequences  more 
consistently  in  the  same  direction  across 
the  screen.  We’d  have  liked,  too,  to  have 
seen  closer  close-ups  of  some  of  the 
records  in  the  freight  office,  and  of  the 
action  of  the  tonnage  computer.  If  pos¬ 
sible,  too,  a  better  shot  of  two  cuts  of 
cars  coming  toward  the  camera  and  go¬ 
ing  to  different  sides  of  the  Y-switch 
would  have  increased  the  effectiveness  of 
that  sequence.  Even  if  traffic  didn’t  per¬ 
mit  this,  it  would  seem  that  a  little  re¬ 
arrangement  of  the  existing  cuts,  sepa¬ 
rated  perhaps  by  inserts  of  the  towerman 
throwing  his  lever,  and  the  switch-points 
changing,  would  achieve  this  result. 

The  musical  score  is  interesting,  but  it 
seems  to  us  the  picture  would  be  better 
if  the  music-volume  were  lowered  during 
the  narrated  portions  of  the  film. 

FOR  AMERICA  WE  SAVE 

Educational,  1000  feet  16mm.  black-and- 

white,  sound. 

Presented  by  Firestone  Tire  &  Rubber  Co. 
Produced  by  Jam-Handy. 

This  unusually  timely  picture  on  tire 
conservation  is  a  typically  smooth  Jam- 
Handy  job,  apparently  a  reduction  from 
35mm.  In  general  it  is  excellent,  both 
in  technique  and  treatment,  and  is,  inci- 


24  January,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


dentally,  above  average  as  reduction- 
prints  go. 

Our  chief  criticisms  are  that  in  some 
of  the  animations  used  to  show  the  ef¬ 
fects  of  mistreatment  on  a  tire,  the 
action  is  so  exaggerated  that  to  some 
audiences  it  may  produce  a  laugh  where 
it  should  evoke  a  thought,  and  that  the 
voices  of  the  actors  in  the  several  sync 
dialog  sequences  seem  a  bit  stiff  and 
wooden. 

But  these  minor  faults  to  the  contrary 
notwithstanding,  “For  America  We  Save” 
is  a  picture  which  should  be  given  the 
widest  possible  circulation  these  days, 
and  seen  by  everyone. 


Home  Movie  Previews 


THOSE  WERE  THE  DAYS 

Scenario-Vacation  film,  200  ft.,  8mm. 

Kodachrome. 

Filmed  by  John  E.  Walter. 

Here’s  a  little  picture  we  wish  could 
be  circulated  among  the  nation’s  movie 
clubs,  for  it  points  the  way  in  no  un¬ 
certain  terms  to  the  means  by  which 
amateurs  can  keep  their  cameras  turn¬ 
ing  in  spite  of  wartime  restrictions  on 
travel  and  shortages  of  film  and  equip¬ 
ment. 

As  will  be  seen  from  the  film’s  script, 
which  is  reproduced  on  Page  18  of  this 
issue,  the  picture  is  cleverly  made  up 
of  odds  and  ends  of  film  exposed  on 
week-end  and  holiday  vacation  trips  back 
in  the  “good  old  days”  when  one  could 
get  gasoline  to  go  somewhere,  and  film 
to  expose  once  he  got  there.  The  thread 
of  continuity  is  provided  by  perhaps 
forty  or  fifty  feet  of  tie-in  shots  in 
which  a  husband  and  wife  (played  by 
Mr.  and  Mrs.  Walter)  discuss  the  im¬ 
possibility  of  going  anywhere  that  week¬ 
end,  and  reminisc  over  past  trips. 

Photographically,  as  might  be  expect¬ 
ed,  the  picture  has  its  shortcomings,  as 
some  of  the  film  had  obviously  been 
gathering  at  least  figurative  dust  on  the 
family  shelves  for  several  years,  and  has 
faded  until  little  remains  except  what 
might  be  a  magenta-toned  black-and- 
white  image.  But  where  the  film  is 
newer,  Walter’s  photography  and  com¬ 
positions  are  excellent.  And  the  clever¬ 
ness  of  the  continuity  and  editing  make 
it  rise  far  above  its  shortcomings. 

MAN-MADE  JUNGLE 

Documentary,  200  ft.  8mm.  Kodachrome. 
Filmed  by  Fred  Evans. 

Taking  its  title  from  that  of  a  best¬ 
selling  book  by  the  directress  of  one 
of  America’s  largest  zoos,  this  clever 
little  picture  proceeds  to  take  the  filmer 
aand  his  family  through  the  zoo  in  per¬ 
haps  the  most  complete  fashion  we’ve 
ever  seen  in  an  amateur  film.  Cinefilmer 
Evans  informs  us  he  started  out  by 
asking  the  cooperation  of  the  zoo  au¬ 
thorities,  and  as  a  result  he  has  some 
of  the  most  interesting  close  shots  of 
the  zoo’s  birds  and  beasts  that  we’ve 
ever  seen  screened.  Not  only  does  he 
secure  unusually  intimate  shots  of  these 


creatures;  he  also  manages  to  get  un¬ 
conventional  angles  on  even  the  most 
hackneyed  subjects — the  sort  of  things 
you  wish  you’d  shot,  but  never  remem¬ 
bered  to  do  when  you  had  the  oppor¬ 
tunity. 

The  picture  is  carried  along  with  a 
pleasant  little  thread  of  story,  in  which 
the  family  is  seen  every  now  and  again 
trudging  through  the  zoo  or  reacting 
to  the  strange  animals  they  see.  It  is 
livened  up  with  well-made  titles,  too, 
which  are  spiced  with  a  dash  of  humor. 

Our  only  criticism  is  that  the  intro¬ 
ductory  scenes,  made  inside  the  fam¬ 
ily’s  home,  in  which  they  decide  to  take 
their  youngster  to  visit  this  “man-made 
jungle,”  are  badly  underexposed.  The 
maker  explains  that  the  reason  for  this 
is  that  he  made  them  on  out  -  dated 
Kodachrome.  Realizing  that  out-dated 
film  loses  speed,  he  allowed  an  addi¬ 
tional  half-stop  exposure.  This  is  not 
nearly  enough  in  this  case,  however, 
(two  stops  would  have  been  much  more 
like  it),  and  in  addition  the  color-balance 
is  decidedly  off.  It’s  accidental,  of  course, 
but  none  the  less  a  convincing  demon¬ 
stration  of  why  it’s  unwise  to  hoard 
film  these  days! 

Movie  Clubs 

(Continued  from  Page  23) 
ly  effort  by  Member  Koehler,  entitled, 
“Lemon  Aid,”  and  to  two  Kodachromes, 
“Board  of  Trade,”  by  Archibald  Mac¬ 
Gregor,  and  “The  Portrait,”  by  Mem¬ 
ber  Roeskin. 

The  Club  also  voted  to  buy  a  dual 
turntable  to  add  to  its  equipment,  and 
the  Committee  reported  on  the  progress 
of  the  Club  Film.  Other  films  shown 
included  “World’s  Fair,”  a  masterpiece 
of  technique  and  musical  scoring  by 
Mr.  MacGregor;  “Alaskan  Adventures,” 
by  Richard  Mallory,  and  “Summer  Beach 
Shots”  by  Member  Cascio. 

Highlighting  the  December  meeting 
was  a  showing  of  the  American  Cinema¬ 
tographer’s  International  Prize-winner, 
“Doomsday,”  filmed  by  Ruth  Stuart,  of 
England. 


Photography  of  the  Month 

(Continued  from  Page  17) 

They  easily  take  rank  as  the  best  ma¬ 
rine  miniatures  seen  in  many  years. 
Most  importantly,  they’re  so  complete¬ 
ly  convincing  that  they  don’t  give  the 
impression  of  being  miniatures;  indeed, 
at  the  preview  we  encountered  several 
picture-wise  trade-paper  representatives 
who  found  it  hard  to  believe  that  these 
scenes  were  not  specially-made  shots  of 
full-scale  warships,  but  miniatures. 

SALUDOS  AMIGOS 

Walt  Disney — RKO  Production  (Techni¬ 
color.) 

Live  action  sequences  enlarged  from 
16mm.  Kodachrome  originals. 

This  unique  four-reel  featurette  com¬ 
prises  four  animated  sequences  in  the 
best  Disney  manner,  welded  together  by 
live-action  scenes  enlarged  from  16mm. 
Kodachrome  originals  which  Walt  Dis¬ 


ney  and  his  associates  photographed 
during  Disney’s  recent  visit  to  South 
America. 

These  live-action  scenes  do  credit  to 
ex  -  newsreel  -  cinematographer  Disney, 
and  to  the  enormous  possibilities  latent 
in  the  enlargement  of  16mm.  Koda¬ 
chrome  to  35mm.  Technicolor.  They 
represent  the  first  use  of  this  enlarging 
process  in  a  major  feature,  and  as  such 
merit  careful  study  from  everyone  in¬ 
terested  in  either  professional  or  ama¬ 
teur  cinematography.  They  present  an 
excellent  cross-section  of  the  potentiali¬ 
ties  and  limitations  of  the  process,  for 
in  some  of  them  it  is  obvious  that  the 
16mm.  original  was  of  first-rate  profes¬ 
sional  quality,  while  in  others  the  or¬ 
iginal  was,  to  say  the  least,  of  no  more 
than  typical  amateur  Kodachrome  vaca¬ 
tion-film  quality.  These  differences 
show  up  plainly  on  the  screen,  and  clear¬ 
ly  indicate  the  professional  care  which 
must  be  applied  to  Kodachrome  intended 
for  nlargement. 

The  animated  sequences  are  pure  Dis¬ 
ney,  which  should  be  enough  recommen¬ 
dation  for  anyone.  Opinions  will  prob¬ 
ably  vary  as  to  which  of  the  four 
animated  sequences  is  best.  This  writer’s 
own  preference  is  for  “Aquarela  Do 
Brasil,”  which  is  to  his  mind  one  of  the 
loveliest  things  ever  put  on  the  screen. 
This  is  said  after  seeing  it  three  times. 
And  I  want  to  see  it  again! 

COMMANDOS  STRIKE  AT  DAWN 

Lester  Cowan-Columbia  Production. 
Director  of  Photography:  Lt.  William 

Mellor,  A.S.C. 

Cinematographer  Mellor  has  treated 
this,  his  last  complete  production  before 
going  on  active  service  with  the  U.  S. 
Army  Signal  Corps,  in  much  the  same 
dramatized-documentary  fashion  of  his 
previous  “Wake  Island.”  The  accent 
throughout  is  on  realism  and  simplicity. 
Where  necessary,  he  builds  to  consider¬ 
able  visual-dramatic  effectiveness,  but  he 
does  it  so  subtly  that  one  is  scarcely 
conscious  of  the  camerawork,  but  feels 
only  the  dominant  note  of  documentary 
realism. 

During  the  early  sequences,  strictly 
photodramatic  effectiveness  is  completely 
subordinated  to  the  documentary  sim¬ 
plicity  necessary  to  convey  the  placid 
simplicity  of  life  in  pre-invasion  Nor¬ 
way.  One  gets  the  impression  that  he 
is  looking  in  on  a  little  bit  of  real  life 
in  a  quiet  backwater  where  nothing  ever 
happens,  and  life  can  be  lived  placidly 
and  happily.  As  the  Nazi  invasion  and 
its  effects  are  portrayed,  there  is  a  defi¬ 
nite,  though  scarcely  noticeable  building- 
in  dramatic  camera-treatment,  yet  not 
enough  to  dispel  the  impression  of  docu¬ 
mentary  realism.  The  climaxing  se¬ 
quences  of  the  Commando  raid  are,  of 
course,  action-photography  raised  to  the 
highest  pitch,  and  incidentally  a  very 
spectacular  job  of  editing  on  the  part  of 
film-editor  Anne  Bauchens. 

Mellor’s  treatment  of  his  players  is 
particularly  outstanding.  The  reappear¬ 
ance  of  Lillian  Gish,  for  example,  after 
so  many  years  off  the  screen,  is  some- 


American  Cinematographer  •  January,  1943  25 


thing  to  cause  comment,  and  his  treat¬ 
ment  of  her  brings  her  back  with  no 
shattered  illusions  to  those  who  remem¬ 
ber  the  Lillian  Gish  of  two  decades  and 
more  ago.  In  his  treatment  of  the  male 
players,  he  gives  a  succession  of  virile 
portrait-lightings  which  deserve  the 
highest  praise. 

That  sort  of  praise,  however,  does  not 
accrue  to  the  print  which  we  saw  pre¬ 
viewed.  It  was  undoubtedly  a  first  print, 
and  not  a  fully  corrected  release-print, 
but  it  was  an  unusually  poor  one,  in 
some  sequences  making  Mellor’s  camera¬ 
work  seem  as  uneven  as  that  of  an  in¬ 
experienced  amateur.  We  sincerely  hope 
that  the  release-prints  are  better  bal¬ 
anced  than  the  one  we  saw,  to  do  jus¬ 
tice  to  a  very  fine  job  of  photography. 

YOU  WERE  NEVER  LOVELIER 

Columbia  Production. 

Director  of  Photography:  Ted  Tetzlaff, 

A.S.C. 

Ted  Tetzlaff,  A.S.C. ,  is  without  doubt 
one  of  the  foremost  glamor  specialists 
of  the  industry,  and  in  this  delightful 
film  (we’ve  seen  it  twice  and  enjoyed  it 
both  times!)  he  is  decidedly  at  his  best. 
Some  of  his  close-ups  of  Rita  Hayworth 
could  hardly  be  surpassed.  In  an  Army 
camp,  they’d  doubtless  make  the  audi¬ 
ence  whistle;  in  any  photographic  group 
they’d  elicit  “oh’s”  and  “ah’s”  over  their 
photographic  perfection. 

We  liked  his  treatment  of  Fred 
Astaire’s  dance-numbers,  too.  They  get 
pleasingly  away  from  the  conventional, 
run-of-the-mill  “dance  number”  light¬ 
ings,  especially  in  the  case  of  the  one 
done  on  the  porch  to  the  tune  of  “I’m 
Old-Fashioned.”  Its  the  first  low-key 
dance  sequence  we  can  remember  seeing. 
All  told,  “You  Were  Never  Lovelier”  is 
another  picture  we  don’t  want  to  try  to 
describe,  but  urge  you  to  see. 

LIFE  BEGINS  AT  EIGHT-THIRTY 

Twentieth  Century-Fox  Production. 
Director  of  Photography:  Edward  Cron- 

jager,  A^S.C. 

This  is  another  of  Eddie  Cronjager’s 
excellent  examples  of  smooth  cinema¬ 
tography.  It’s  not  up  to  “The  Pied 
Piper,”  for  neither  story  nor  locale  give 
such  opportunities  for  cinematographic 
effectiveness  and  mood  treatment,  but  it 
is  none  the  less  excellent. 

An  epigrammatically-minded  commen¬ 
tator  might  dismiss  it  by  saying  that  he’s 
dealt  excellently  with  Ida  Lupino  and 
with  Monte  Woolley’s  beard,  and  let  it 
go  at  that.  But  Cronjager  has  done  a 
good  deal  more  than  that:  in  a  picture 
which  would  have  been  dramatically 
harmed  by  obviously  pictorial  camera¬ 
work,  he  has  held  himself  in,  and  kept 
his  camera-treatment  perfectly  attuned 
to  the  action  and  locale.  Often  that  is 
a  great  deal  harder  to  do  than  to  turn 
out  a  spectacular  example  of  “pretty” 
camerawork. 

George  Barnes 

(Continued  from  Page  14) 

achievements  of  the  early  20’s. 

Soon  after  this  he  joined  the  United 
Artists’  organization,  where  he  photo¬ 


graphed  Rudolph  Valentino’s  two  last 
productions,  “The  Eagle”  and  “Son  of 
the  Sheik.”  It  was  on  the  latter  pro¬ 
duction  that  he  pioneered  in  the  use 
of  two  of  the  most  important  advance¬ 
ments  in  cinematographic  technique — 
panchromatic  film  and  incandescent 
lighting.  Now  that  these  two  develop¬ 
ments  have  become  accepted  as  such 
indispensable  commonplaces  that  it  is 
impossible  to  imagine  making  pictures 
without  them,  there  is  no  shortage  of 
claimants  for  the  honor  of  having  used 
them  first.  But  back  around  1926  it 
was  different:  it  took  real  courage  to 
stake  one’s  reputation  on  the  perform¬ 
ance  of  such  new  and  untried  materials 
and  equipment.  And  Barnes  was  among 
the  first — if  not,  indeed,  actually  the 
first — cinematographer  to  employ  them 
throughout  a  top-flight  major  production. 

Panchromatic  film  brought  with  it  all 
sorts  of  disturbing  changes.  There  was 
a  change  in  film-speed.  There  was  a 
definite  change  in  contrast.  And  there 
were  new  and  unpredictable  changes 
in  the  way  this  new  emulsion  would  ren¬ 
der  colors,  both  on  costumes  and  in 
make-up.  Unless  a  cinematographer  was 
very  sure  of  himself  and  his  knowledge, 
he  could  easily  wreck  his  reputation  by 
making  his  players  look  worse,  rather 
than  better,  because  of  using  the  new 
film. 

Incandescent  lighting  was  another 
problem.  General  Electric  had  devel¬ 
oped  high-powered  globes  suitable  for 
photographic  use — but  there  were  no 
lamps  in  which  to  use  them.  Barnes 
had  to  improvise  his  own,  using  a  sim¬ 
ple  parabolic  reflector  and,  in  some 
cases,  a  small  barrel  housing  to  elimin¬ 
ate  stray  light-rays.  In  addition,  while 
it  was  learned  that  the  more  red-sensi¬ 
tive  panchromatic  film  was  “faster”  to 
the  warmer  light  of  the  Mazda,  no  one 
knew  just  how  much  so,  or  in  what  pro¬ 
portion  to  balance  Mazdas  and  the  usual 
bluish  arc  and  mercury-vapor  lighting. 
And  there  were  no  exposure-meters  in 
those  days!  Barnes’  success  with  these 
new  materials  on  “Son  of  the  Sheik” 
is  high  tribute  to  his  technical  skill,  as 
well  as  to  his  technical  progressiveness. 

Thereafter,  for  some  eight  years, 
Barnes  spent  most  of  his  time  with  the 
Samuel  Goldwyn  organization,  photo¬ 
graphing  the  long  series  of  romantic 
dramas  co-starring  Ronald  Colman  and 
Vilma  Banky — pictures  which  were  con¬ 
sistently  distinguished  by  some  of  the 
finest  pictorial  camerawork  of  the  cli¬ 
maxing  days  of  the  silent  picture. 

Indeed,  pictorialism  has  always  been 
the  distinguishing  feature  of  Barnes’ 
camerawork  —  magnificent  pictorialism 
and  an  unexcelled  attunement  of  visual 
mood  to  dramatic  mood.  “Rebecca,” 
which  so  deservedly  gained  him  the 
Academy  Award  for  the  year’s  best 
black-and-white  photography  of  1940 
was  perhaps  the  most  spectacular  ex¬ 
ample  of  this,  with  its  remarkably  in¬ 
terlaced  changes  of  mood  and  key,  yet 
with  a  steadily  mounting  atmosphere  of 
menace  subtly  dominating  every  scene 


and  sequence.  But  almost  any  of  Barnes’ 
films  will  afford  a  worthwhile  study  in 
both  cinematic  mood  and  pictorialism. 

He  approaches  each  assignment  con¬ 
sciously  seeking  opportunities  to  make 
his  camerawork  and  lightings  enhance 
the  dramatic  mood  of  the  action. 

“My  first  step  on  being  assigned  to 
a  production,”  he  says,  “is  to  sit  down 
and  try  to  visualize  the  script  as  I  read 
it.  I  try  to  analyze  the  dramatic  values 
of  each  scene  and  sequence,  and  decide 
what  visual  treatment  will  suit  each 
best.  I  break  things  down  in  my  mind 
and  decide  which  sequences  will  call  for 
high-key  treatment,  which  will  benefit 
by  low-key  treatment,  and  where  and  in 
what  scenes  my  photographic  transitions 
between  the  two  should  come. 

“When  I  have  this  clear  in  my  mind,  I 
go  over  the  script  in  the  same  way 
with  the  director,  making  sure  that  we 
both  see  the  dramatic  values — visually, 
at  leasts— in  reasonable  agreement.  From 
that  point  on,  it’s  a  matter  of  coordinat¬ 
ing  the  physical  details  of  production — 
sets,  costumes,  and  so  on — with  this 
advance  visualization. 

“Of  course,  some  pictures  can  stand 
more  of  this  mood  treatment  than  oth¬ 
ers.  A  picture  like  ‘Rebecca’  is  a  delight 
to  do,  for  it  offers  such  great  oppor¬ 
tunities  for  mood  and  pictorialism.  In 
a  picture  like,  say,  ‘Wake  Island,’  to 
go  to  the  opposite  extreme,  the  photo¬ 
graphic  opportunities  aren’t  so  obvious. 
They’re  there,  but  they’re  different.  Pic¬ 
torialism — at  least  of  the  more  notice¬ 
able  kind— would  be  badly  out  of  place. 
But  the  need  for  keying  your  photog¬ 
raphy  to  the  dramatic  mood  of  the  ac¬ 
tion  is  still  there,  more  strongly  than 
ever.  Only  in  this  case  you  must  do 
it  very  deftly,  so  that  you  still  keep 
the  dominant  accent  on  realism.” 

Another  phase  of  George  Barnes’  ap¬ 
proach  to  his  work  is  one  he  doesn’t 
talk  much  about — the  thorough-going 
training  he  gives  the  members  of  his 
camera  crews.  But  if  you  were  to  go 
through  the  list  of  men  who  have  been 
operatives  or  assistants  with  him  in 
the  past,  and  then  gone  on  to  shoulder 
the  responsibilities  of  full-fledged  di¬ 
rectors  of  photography,  you’d  find  your¬ 
self  building  a  remarkable  list  of  out¬ 
standing  cinematographers.  Without 
doubt  the  most  spectacularly  outstand¬ 
ing  alumnus  of  Barnes’  training  is 
Gregg  Toland,  A.S.C.;  Harry  Wild, 
A.S.C,.  is  another,  and  so  is  Stanley 
Cortez,  A.S.C.  Decidedly,  Barnes  trains 
is  junior  fellow-workers,  and  trains 
them  well.  Maybe  he  remembers  the 
training  he  received  twenty-five  years 
ago  from  John  Stumar,  which  started 
him  out  on  the  path  to  the  cinematic 
heights!  END. 


Convoy 

(Continued  from  Page  12) 

you’ve  light  enough  to  make  a  slow, 
fine-grain  film  like  Background-X  fully 
satisfactory.  But  a  lot  of  the  crucial 


26  January,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


AGAIN 

f°r  1943 

RESOLVED 

that  for 

SAFETY 
SECURITY 
SATISFACTION 
and  SERVICE 

the  best 

Motion  Picture  Film 
for  every 

Professional  Production  Purpose 

EASTMAN 

Distributed  and  Serviced 
by 

J.  E.  BRULATOUR,  INC. 

FORT  LEE  CHICAGO  HOLLYWOOD 


action  is  likely  to  occur  in  the  early 
morning  or  late  evening,  when  the  light 
isn’t  so  good.  Then  you’ll  appreciate  a 
faster  emulsion  like  Plus-X  or  Super-X. 

You’ll  find  these  faster  films  useful, 
too,  for  making  interiors  below-decks. 
We  hadn’t  expected  to  shoot  interiors, 
but  when  we  got  there  we  unexpectedly 
found  it  necessary  to  make  a  few  shots 
in  the  engine  rooms  and  living  quarters. 
With  the  help  of  the  ship’s  electrician 
and  the  Canadian  Navy  stillman  who 
was  assigned  to  work  with  us,  we  man¬ 
aged  quite  well,  using  Photofloods 
screwed  into  regular  lighting  sockets 
for  illumination..  On  some  ships  which 
had  110-Volt  current,  we  could  power 
the  Photofloods  from  the  ship’s  genera¬ 
tors.  Wherever  this  current  was  avail¬ 
able,  we  also  used  it  to  power  the  camera- 
motors,  as  it  gave  a  steadier  current 
than  batteries. 

In  closing,  I’d  like  to  express  my  ap¬ 
preciation  to  the  officers  and  men  of  the 
Royal  Canadian  Navy,  who  cooperated 
so  well  with  us,  and  helped  make  our 
pictures  even  better  than  we  had  hoped. 
I  hope  that  when  the  picture  is  finished, 
they’ll  find  we’ve  done  as  well  by  them 
as  they  did  by  us.  END. 


Propaganda  Films 

(Continued  from  Page  I  I ) 

narration  translated  into  twenty  differ¬ 
ent  languages  for  international  distri¬ 
bution. 

The  making  of  these  reels  was  based 
on  one  of  Dr.  Goebbels’  pet  ideas — to 
assign  trained  cameramen  to  keep  pace 
with  the  military  units  in  the  field. 
These  cameramen  were  attached,  along 
with  other  propaganda  experts  in  radio 
and  newspaper  reporting,  to  the  high 
commands  of  front-line  units.  When 
Hitler’s  mighty  war  machine  rolled  into 
Czechoslovakia,  and  later  thundered 
across  Poland  late  in  1939,  over  40  of 
these  ardent  cameramen  lost  their  lives. 
In  this  campaign  nearly  all  of  the  cam¬ 
eramen  were  civilians,  and  due  to  the 
losses  they  suffered,  it  was  decided  to 
make  soldiers  of  them  thereafter.  They 
were  sent  to  field  training-schools  upon 
their  induction,  and  were  taught  the 
most  important  factors  of  modern  war¬ 
fare,  since  being  a  cameraman  was  usu¬ 
ally  a  secondary  duty  for  these  tech¬ 
nicians.  Most  of  them  were  promoted 
to  the  rank  of  non-commissioned  officers, 
and  a  few  of  them  received  commissions, 
depending  of  course  on  their  qualifica¬ 
tions. 

Their  films  were  not  only  used  as  a 
powerful  weapon  of  propaganda,  but  as 
a  means  of  training  young  officers  and 
enlisted  men  in  the  technique  of  blitz- 
kreig.  Taking  a  leaf  out  of  the  book 
of  the  World  War  I  film-makers,  these 
films  naturally  concentrated  on  German 
victories  and  enemy  blunders.  Being 
planned  primarily  for  propaganda,  the 
makers  of  these  films  saw  to  it  that  if 
neither  of  these  existed  in  actuality, 
they  would  be  staged  for  the  camera. 
Often  they  got  their  most  effective  pic¬ 
tures  long  after  the  actual  capture  of 


a  town  by  carefully  staging  the  action, 
and  always,  you  may  be  sure,  playing  up 
to  the  full  the  might,  courage  and  all- 
around  invincibility  of  the  Nazi  super¬ 
men  and  their  war  machine. 

The  story  of  how  one  of  these  films 
— the  feature-length  picture  of  the  blitz 
across  Poland — paid  off  its  makers  has 
become  familiar.  Shown  to  selected 
audiences  of  officials  of  neutral  Scan¬ 
dinavian  countries,  the  film  is  credited 
with  doing  much  to  “soften  up”  these 
queasy  Quislings  and  making  possible  an 
almost  bloodless  invasion.  Later  films, 
including  “Victory  in  the  West,”  the 
film  record  of  the  fall  of  France  and  the 
Low  Countries,  played  similar  parts  in 
the  Nazis’  domination  of  other  coun¬ 
tries  in  central  and  southeastern  Europe. 

But  these  excellent  pieces  of  propa¬ 
ganda  have  backfired  upon  their  makers. 
A  great  deal  of  this  footage,  en  route 
to  Latin  American  countries  to  begin  a 
similar  softening  and  pro-Nazifying 
process  in  our  own  hemisphere,  was  in¬ 
tercepted  by  the  British  Navy,  and  in 
due  course  became  available  to  film¬ 
makers  in  this  country  and  Canada.  The 
March  of  Time  used  some  of  it  most 
effectively  in  “The  Ramparts  We 
Watch”;  the  Canadian  National  Film 
Board  used  much  more  of  it  in  “This  Is 
Blitz’”  ...  in  each  case  with  narration 
and  audience-effect  wholly  unlike  that 
which  Dr.  Goebbels  intended — to  arouse 
the  people  of  the  United  Nations  to  an 
awareness  of  the  enemy  we  are  fighting, 
and  to  impress  upon  them  the  fact  that 
these  enemies  are  not  supermen,  but 
merely  well-equipped  gangsters  who  can 
be  beaten  if  we  “git  thar  fustest  with 
the  mostest.” 

Finally,  you  may  be  sure  that  prints 
from  these  negatives  serving  yet  an¬ 
other  vital  purpose,  one  which  will 
cause  Dr.  Goebbels  and  his  master  end¬ 
less  distress.  Used  in  the  training  of 
officers  and  men  of  the  United  Nations’ 
Armed  Forces,  they  are  giving  a  visual 
education  in  blitzkrieg  to  the  men  who 
are  already  proving  they  can  out-blitz 
the  blitz,  and  turn  it  back  to  defeat  its 
Nazi  inventors!  END. 

Better  Titles 

(Continued  from  Page  21) 

anything  like  adequate  provision  for 
holding  the  camera  rigidly  in  place. 
With  most  of  these  titlers  a  little  time 
spent  in  tinkering  up  an  adapter  that 
will  fit  your  camera  into  the  same  posi¬ 
tion  every  time  will  pay  big  dividends 
in  better  titles. 

By  all  means  shoot  your  titles  on  the 
same  type  of  film  the  rest  of  your  pic¬ 
ture  has  been  shot  on.  For  a  Koda- 
chrome  picture,  your  titles  should  of 
course  be  made  on  Kodachrome,  too. 
For  a  black-and-white  picture,  use  the 
same  make  and  type  of  black-and-white 
reversal  film  you  used  for  the  picture: 
if  you  shot  the  picture  on  Eastman  film, 
make  the  titles  on  Eastman  film;  if  you 
shot  it  on  Agfa,  make  your  titles  on 
Agfa.  If  you  don’t,  you’ll  find  differences 
in  contrast  and,  even  more  important, 


in  the  thickness  of  the  film,  which  will 
make  your  titles  stand  out  from  the  pic¬ 
ture  in  an  unpleasant  way.  If  the  title- 
film  is  thicker  or  thinner  than  the  pic¬ 
ture-film,  one  or  the  other  will  be  out  of 
focus. 

And,  by  the  way,  if  your  picture 
(black-and-white,  that  is)  is  several 
years  old,  I’d  strongly  advise  you  to 
humidify  it  before  trying  to  cut  in  titles 
just  made  on  fresh  film.  The  difference 
in  moisture  content  will  be  quite  enough 
to  throw  your  titles  out  of  focus. 

Using  reversal-film  of  course  means 
that  you  should  have  light  letters  on  a 
dark-toned  card.  Yes,  I  know  quite  a 
few  professional  films  during  the  last 
few  years  have  had  main  titles  which 
used  dark  letters  on  a  light  background: 
but  these  were  always  for  introductory 
titles — never  for  subtitles  cut  in  between 
picture  scenes — and  if  you’ll  notice  care¬ 
fully,  you’ll  see  that  even  so  the  light- 
toned  background  is  generally  a  light 
gray  rather  than  pure  white.  The  light 
lettering  on  a  dark  background  is  more 
legible,  and  gives  a  smoother  visual  con¬ 
tinuity  with  the  picture  than  dark  let¬ 
ters  on  a  light  background.  Besides,  I’ve 
never  seen  a  dark-on-light  amateur  title 
which  was  correctly  exposed,  anyway, 
and  when  these  titles  are  underexposed 
they’re  pretty  horrible  examples  of  what 
shouldn’t  be  done. 

The  best  way  to  calculate  exposure, 
by  the  way,  is  to  take  your  meter-read¬ 
ing  beforehand  using  a  sheet  of  neutral 
gray  paper  in  the  titler.  This  will  give 
a  reading  that  is  usually  the  most  satis¬ 
factory  balance  between  the  dark  tone 
of  the  background  and  the  light  tone  of 
the  lettering. 

Always  try  to  have  a  definite  contrast 
between  the  letters  and  their  back¬ 
ground.  If  you’re  working  in  black-and- 
white,  use  clear  white  or  silver  letters 
against  a  flat  black  background.  If 
you’re  working  in  Kodachrome,  be  sure 
you  have  a  definite  color-contrast  be¬ 
tween  background  and  letters.  Probably 
the  best  all-around  combination  to  use 
is  white  letters  on  a  deep  blue  back¬ 
ground,  though  if  your  picture  has  a 
color-scheme  that  will  stand  it,  and  your 
taste  runs  that  way,  I  won’t  argue  with 
you  if  you  use  a  red  background  rather 
than  a  blue  one.  Incidentally,  you’ll  get 
some  first-rate  ideas  for  color  combina¬ 
tions  if  you  study  the  main  titles  of 
Technicolor  pictures — especially  some  of 
Walt  Disney’s  pictures. 

For  most  titles,  other  than  main  titles, 
a  very  simple,  unobtrusive  background 
is  by  far  the  best.  For  black-and-white, 
a  plain,  flat  black  or  dark  gray;  for 
Kodachrome,  a  plain,  solid  color.  Pat¬ 
terns  or  decorations  are  generally  imi¬ 
tating  except  for  main  titles  and  key 
subtitles  which  introduce  a  new  se¬ 
quence.  After  all,  titles  shouldn’t  di’aw 
attention  to  themselves,  and  next  to 
inadequate  titles  and  badly  made  ones, 
probably  the  worst  amateur  title-fault 
is  using  titles  that  too  violently  call  at¬ 
tention  to  themselves. 

Finally,  remember  that  what  the  titles 
say  is  every  bit  as  important  as  how 
they  look.  There  should  be  enough  of 


28  January,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


them  to  give  a  clear  explanation  of 
everything  you’d  explain  verbally  if  you 
were  showing  the  picture,  untitled,  to 
a  friend.  And  the  wording  of  each  title 
should  be  ample  to  make  its  meaning 
clear.  I  know  some  of  the  textbooks  sug¬ 
gest  trying  to  polish  the  wording  of 
titles  for  brevity  as  though  you  were 
composing  a  telegram,  but  personally,  I 
don’t  agree.  Most  of  the  amateur  titles 
I’ve  seen  say  far  too  little.  In  a  picture 
of  Yosemite,  for  instance,  the  bare  state¬ 
ment  “Mirror  Lake”  in  a  title  leaves 
half  the  story  untold.  A  title  such  as 
“We  had  to  get  up  early  to  get  this  shot 
of  Mirror  Lake,  for  soon  after  dawn 
the  daytime  breeze  ripples  away  the  re¬ 
flections”  not  only  carries  your  picture 
along  better,  but  by  telling  something 
interesting  about  the  coming  scene, 
makes  it  more  interesting  to  the  audi¬ 
ence. 

Similarly,  most  pictures — especially 
travel  and  vacation  films — would  benefit 
by  an  introductory  title  between  the 
main  title  and  the  initial  scene,  unless, 
of  course,  you’ve  tied  your  picture  to¬ 
gether  with  staged  action  of  a  story  na¬ 
ture.  Most  amateur  travelogs  jump  into 
things  much  too  fast.  I  recall,  for  in¬ 
stance,  an  entry  in  a  recent  club  con¬ 
test  which  illustrated  this  excellently. 
The  picture  dealt  with  one  of  the  most 
picturesque  and  off-the-beaten-path  ham¬ 
lets  in  Mexico.  The  main  title — “Primi¬ 
tive  Patzcuaro”  —  hinted  at  this;  but 
then  the  picture  jumped  litereally  into 
the  main  street  of  the  village,  without 
a  word  of  explanation.  And  all  through 
the  picture  you  were  wondering  where 
Patzcuaro  was,  and  why  it  was  primi¬ 
tive.  Two  or  three  sentences  in  an  intro¬ 
ductory  title  immediately  after  the  main 
title — perhaps  supplemented  by  an  in¬ 
sert  of  a  map — would  have  cleared  the 
whole  thing  up,  and  made  the  picture 
much  more  enjoyable.  I  think  it  would 
have  lifted  it  to  a  higher  rating  in  the 
contest,  too! 

Yes,  there’s  plenty  in  the  way  of  film- 
ig  opportunities  if  you  try  re-titling 
some  of  yesteryear’s  films.  It  doesn’t 
take  any  gas,  and  you  won’t  consume 
much  film.  But  when  the  job  is  done, 
I’m  confident  you’ll  find  that  if  you’ve 
done  it  well,  those  films  of  yesteryear 
will  seem  new  to  you — and  to  your  audi¬ 
ences,  too.  END. 


Edit  for  Balance 

(Continued  from  Page  20) 

the  screen.  It  saves  footage,  too.  All 
sorts  of  actions  can  beneficially  be 
treated  this  way.  And  if  you  use  spoken 
titles,  the  same  thing  holds  good:  cut  in 
the  title  just  after  your  picture  shows 
the  character  starting  to  speak,  and 
when  you  cut  back  to  the  picture,  show 
the  person  just  finishing  speaking.  The 
audience,  while  reading  the  title,  will 
mentally  bridge  over  the  gap  in  pictured 
action,  and  will  accept  this  treatment 
as  being  much  more  natural  than  if  you 
had  showed  the  entire  action. 

You  are  getting  on  with  the  story,  the 
important  thing,  when  you  lop  off  any¬ 


thing  that  does  not  contribute.  To  es¬ 
tablish  the  fact  that  a  character  leaves 
one  room  for  another  it  is  not  necessary 
to  include  the  action  that  takes  him  to 
and  through  the  door  of  one  room  and 
then  pick  him  up  as  he  emerges  through 
the  door  in  the  next  room.  Once  it  has 
been  established  that  he  is  going  through 
that  door,  the  next  scene  can  cut  in 
when  he  is  well  in  the  room.  This  il¬ 
lustration  can  have  many  applications. 
And  while  this  cut  involves  only  an 
inch  or  two  of  film,  the  sum  total  of 
such  cuts  in  a  picture  can  mean  the 
difference  between  its  being  interest- 
sustaining  or  tedious. 

You  can  use  the  same  principle  to 
speed  things  up  and  save  footage  in 
many  other  ways,  too,  especially  if  you 
know  how  to  balance  shots  of  the  actual 
action  with  intercut  shots  of  some¬ 
body’s  apparent  reaction  to  it. 

Take  a  horse-race  movie,  for  example. 
Excitement  is  added  and  there’s  no  loss 
of  realism  if  you  build  your  sequence 
this  way:  begin  with  a  shot  from  the 
grandstand  of  the  horses  getting  away 
from  the  gate.  Then  cut  to  a  long-shot 
(preferably  from  more  or  less  of  a  re¬ 
verse  angle)  of  the  crowd  reacting  to 
the  always  thrilling  cry  “They’re  off!” 
Then  cut  to  your  long-shot  of  the  horses 
at  the  first  turn  as  they  jockey  for  posi¬ 
tion  on  the  rail.  Then  cut  to  a  fairly 
close  shot  of  only  one  or  two  people  in 
the  crowd,  as  each  reacts  to  the  way  the 
nag  his  money  is  on  is  being  handled. 
Next,  cut  in  that  follow-shot  you  made 
as  they  raced  along  the  back-stretch. 
Follow  this  with  more  reaction-shots 
among  the  crowd — preferably  from  in¬ 
creasingly  close  angles.  Next,  cut  back 
to  the  horses  as  they  round  the  final 
turn  into  the  home  stretch.  Follow  it 
by  a  shot — maybe  a  succession  of  quick, 
close  shots — of  spectators  as  they 
anxiously  urge  their  favorites  on.  Then 
cut  to  your  shots  of  the  actual  finish, 
after  which  you  can  end  your  seqence 
with  reaction  shots  of  the  spectators — 
the  lucky  ones  gesticulating  their  joy 
and  perhaps  heading  for  the  pay-off  win¬ 
dow,  and  the  unlucky  ones  tearing  up 
their  tickets  and  tossing  them  away. 

You  may  not  have  shown  all  the  race 
in  the  literal  sense — probably  your  reac¬ 
tion-shots  may  have  been  made  at  an¬ 
other  race,  anyway — but  in  the  more 
important  picture  sense,  you’ve  really 
shown  all  the  race,  for  you’ve  captured 
the  spirit  of  thrills  and  uncertainty 
which  make  any  race  dramatic.  And 
you  can  trust  the  imagination  of  the 
audience  to  fill  in  the  blank  spots  in 
the  actual  coverage  of  the  race  itself. 

In  a  word,  the  best  rule  to  follow 
in  editing  film  is — cut  it  in  when  it 
becomes  important  or  interesting  .  .  . 
and  when  it  has  made  its  point,  CUT 
IT!  END. 

Skiis 

(Continued  from  Page  19) 

as  a  consequence  is  able  to  record  only 
a  part  of  the  activities  of  the  swift  and 


far-travelling  skiiers,  Dr.  Howard  dons 
his  skiis,  abandons  his  poles  and  takes 
the  camera  a-skiing. 

Thus  equipped  he  is  able  to  follow  the 
skiers  in  their  fast-flying,  downhill  glid¬ 
ing  and  cross-country  runs,  and  bring  to 
the  screen  much  of  the  real  thrill  and 
exhilaration  enjoyed  by  the  “average” 
or  only  moderately  accomplished  skiier. 
All  this  amidst  scenes  of  majestic  gran¬ 
deur  seldom  glimpsed  except  by  the 
hardy  sportsmen  who  strap  “barrel- 
staves”  on  their  feet  and  skii  up  to  it. 

He  does  this,  mind  you,  while  holding 
the  camera  in  his  hands.  Somehow  he 
manages  to  keep  it  focused  and  steady 
while  sliding  down  hill,  at  a  sometimes 
dizzying  pace,  past  shrubs  and  trees  and 
other  things  that  quicken  the  pulse  of 
the  aesthetic  photographer  but  serve 
only  to  trap  and  trip  the  unwary  skier. 
This  in  itself  is  no  mean  accomplish¬ 
ment  and  these  sequences  alone  would 
make  the  film  well  worth  seeing.  Par¬ 
ticularly  since  the  efforts  of  the  indus¬ 
try’s  best  newsreel  cameramen,  with 
their  bulkier  equipment  and  invariable 
inability  to  skii,  have  fallen  far  short  of 
the  standard  set  by  this  self-proclaimed 
amateur. 

To  further  gain  the  interest  of  the 
potential  skiier,  and  as  helpful  instruc¬ 
tion  for  the  beginner,  Dr.  Howard  has 
included  some  better  than  average  slow- 
motion  shots.  The  performers  in  each 
instance  are  top-ranking  skiiers  and  they 
execute,  for  the  benefit  of  the  camera, 
the  various  turns  and  jumps  and  bends 
without  which  it  seems  no  skiier  would 
care  to  practice  his  hobby. 

Incidentally,  Dr.  Howard  told  us  that 
he  wears  out  four  camera-motors  every 
year  getting  these  slow-motion  sequen¬ 
ces.  He  also  told  us  that  his  sole  equip¬ 
ment  consists  of  “an  inexpensive  East¬ 
man  camera,”  probably  of  the  magazine 
type.  Anything  else,  he  said,  would  be 
too  cumbersome  to  manipulate  during 
the  moving  shots  taken  from  skiis.  Well, 
he  turns  in  an  excellent  show. 

Adding  a  topical  note,  Dr.  Howard 
mentioned  that  the  many  thousands 
(exact  number  a  military  secret,  but  a 
considerable  and  formidable  force)  of 
men  comprising  the  United  States 
Mountain  Troops  (Skii  Troops)  were  re¬ 
cruited  in  a  large  part  from  the  skii 
enthusiasts  who  had  learned  their  ski¬ 
ing  in  peacetime. 

For  the  sake  of  the  record  we  must 
report  that  Dr.  Howard  and  his  camera 
out  of  the  snow  do  not  turn  in  the  same 
satisfying  performance  that  they  do  in 
the  snow.  There  are  many  things  he 
could  learn,  some  of  them  fundamentals, 
from  amateurs  whose  pictures  have 
never  been  seen  by  anybody  outside  of 
family  and  friends.  The  opening  se¬ 
quences  of  his  present  film  could  be  cut 
extensively,  or  even  done  away  with 
entirely,  and  there  are  some  bad  cuts 
here  and  there.  As  a  whole,  his  pictures 
are  of  such  interest  that  it  might  pay 
the  good  doctor  to  equip  himself  with 
something  more  than  his  “inexpensive 
Eastman”  for  those  shots,  which  form 


American  Cinematographer  •  January,  1943  29 


the  bulk  of  the  picture,  who  do  not  re¬ 
quire  him  to  shoot  from  slithering  skis. 
He  would  improve  the  texture  of  a  lot 
of  shots,  too,  I  think,  if  he  would  use  a 
coated  lens  and  a  more  adequate  lens- 
shade. 

But  these  things  are  beside  the  point. 
The  point  is,  that  despite  these  short¬ 
comings,  most  of  which  are  unimportant, 
the  picture  is  a  great  success  and  fulfills 
its  mission  admirably.  In  sum  and  sub¬ 
stance  it  represents  a  strong  argument 
for  any  picture  sincerely  made  by  some¬ 
one  with  a  complete  knowledge  of  and 
enthusiasm  for  the  subject-matter.  It 
is  an  endorsement  of  Dr.  Howard’s  initi¬ 
ative,  an  entertaining  and  interesting 
cinematic  treatment  of  a  national  pas¬ 
time.  In  addition  it  is  further  proof  of 
the  growing  use  to  which  the  16mm. 
medium  is  being  put  and  it  presents  a 
challenge  to  other  cine-amateurs  with  an 
idea  and  a  puropse  to  put  their  ideas 
across  and  help  achieve  that  purpose 
through  a  most  convincing  medium.  END. 

"Left-Overs" 

(Continued  from  Page  18) 

Scene  24:  Front  door  closes,  showing  on 

back  of  it 
Title:  THE  END. 

Fade-out. 

There  are  endless  variations  of  this 
script  and  the  actions  of  the  people 
who  join  in  it  with  you.  Get  busy  on 
a  new-old  film  of  this  type;  the  fine  re¬ 
sults  you  get  will  surprise  you  as  they 
surprised  me.  END. 


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DURABLE  FIBRE  TRIPOD  COVER 

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driven  camera  rigid  support  and  exceptionally 
smooth  pan  and  tilt  movement.  Ideal  for  16-35 
mm.  spring  or  motor  cameras  to  accommodate 
Eyemo,  Cine  Special  or  others  at  no  extra  cost. 


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Kodachrome 

(Continued  from  Page  13) 

floods  and  more  filters  on  the  camera 
lenses  to  attain  the  color-balance  I 
desire. 

Standard  studio  lights  plus  a  light 
blue  filter  on  the  camera  lenses  with 
Type  A  Kodachrome  will  deliver  exactly 
the  same  magenta-toned  result  as 
Photofloods  and  CP’s  with  no  filter  on 
the  same  film. 

However,  many  producers  prefer  the 
results  obtained  by  using  “hard”  lights 
(arcs)  with  regular  daylight  Koda¬ 
chrome.  I,  too,  like  the  results  from 
this  practice.  The  colors  seem  to  have 
more  density  (color  saturation).  If 
Mazda  lights  are  used  with  the  arc 
lighting,  MacBeth  blue  filters  must  be 
used  over  the  lamp  lenses  (not  the  cam¬ 
era  lenses.) 

Even  with  the  MacBeth  blue  filters  on 
the  Mazda  units  they  seem  to  emit  an 
excess  of  red  which  must  be  subtracted 
from  the  scene  by  use  of  a  green-blue 
filter  on  the  camera  lens.  The  density 
of  such  a  filter  can  only  be  determined 
by  the  number  of  such  Mazda  units  in 
use  and  the  color  of  the  subjects  they 
are  lighting. 

One  of  the  big  factors  in  favor  of 
using  daylight  Kodachrome  indoors  lies 
in  the  fact  that  the  colors  on  a  human 
being  (clothing  and  skin  tones)  match 
more  accurately  when  shot  outdoors  with 
daylight  and  indoors  with  arcs. 

Another  factor  in  favor  of  using  day¬ 
light  Kodachr-ome  indoors  occurs  when 
it  is  necessary  to  mix  daylight  with 
artificial  light  ...  in  factories,  offices, 
homes  and  the  many  other  places  where 
Kodachrome  is  required  to  bring  perfect 
results.  Usually  it  is  impossible  to  have 
arc  lights  on  such  occasions,  principally 
due  to  cost. 

Thus  it  becomes  necessary  to  use 
Mazda  with  MacBeth  blue  filters.  One 
very  important  precaution  must  be 
taken  into  consideration  when  setting  up 
in  the  typical  location.  Remember,  Maz- 
das  covered  with  BacBeth  blue  filters 
still  emit  some  red,  and  the  longer  the 
electric  feed  lines  are  from  source  to 
each  unit  causes  a  voltage  drop  to  each 
lamp  which  makes  them  emit  still  more 
red  which  must  be  subtracted  by  use 
of  a  green-blue  filter  of  proper  density 
on  the  camera  lens. 

Another  headache  that  nearly  always 
occurs  on  set-ups  in  factories  and  office 
buildings  is  the  fluctuations  in  line  vol¬ 
tages  caused  by  the  starting  and  stop¬ 
ping  of  elevators  or  other  heavy  elec¬ 
trical  equipment.  What  with  industry 
under  wartime  production  pressure  it 
becomes  impossible  for  the  assistant  di¬ 
rector  to  have  a  plant’s  production 
stopped  long  enough  for  a  well-balanced 
“take”.  There’s  no  cure  for  this  little 
aspirin  salesman.  You’ve  got  to  take  it, 
even  if  you  don’t  like  it. 

Of  course,  the  easiest  way  out  of  all 
this  trouble  of  mixing  lights  is  waiting 
until  after  dark  and  using  Type  A  with 
Photofloods  and  other  Mazda  units.  The 
only  minor  fault  will  be  that  the  colors 
will  not  match  as  accurately  with  ex¬ 


terior  scenes  of  the  same  persons  .  .  . 
if  people  are  being  used  outdoors  and 
in.  Your  story  will  determine  how  best 
to  shoot. 

In  summation  .  .  .  shooting  Koda¬ 
chrome  requires  just  a  little  knowledge: 
astrology  and  psychology  should  start 
you  off  right  with  your  producer  .  .  . 
Arithmetic  to  know  what  filters  to  add 
to  camera  lens  or  light  unit  in  order  to 
subtract  unwanted  colors,  will  keep  you 
right  on  the  screen  .  .  .  Entomology 
(my  dictionary’s  definition  proves  it  is 
helpful  handling  camera  bugs)  .  .  .  Ac¬ 
counting  to  know  how  to  charge  and 
collect  for  your  ability  .  .  .  and  above  all 
that  sense  of  humor  when  clouds  start 
rolling  across  the  sun  in  middle  of 
takes,  elevators  or  motors  start  up  to 
dim  your  lights  just  as  the  camera 
starts  .  .  .  crew  chatter  about  gin-rummy 
or  football  or  blondes,  just  while  you 
are  figuring  out  what  density  of  blue 
filter  must  be  added  to  subtract  some 
undesirable  rust. 

Above  all,  to  do  a  good  job  with  Koda¬ 
chrome  take  a  little  additional  time,  de¬ 
mand  the  accessories  you  know  you’ll 
need:  lights,  reflectors,  diffusion,  scrims, 
filters  and  most  of  all,  a  good  crew. 
Your  producer  may  yell  about  the  costs 
but  he’ll  yell  louder  and  longer  if  the 
results  are  bad. 

And  before  I  forget,  my  sincerest 
apologies  to  those  Kodachrome  camera¬ 
men  who  have  been  telling  their  bosses 
that  “Kodachrome  can  only  be  shot  be¬ 
tween  10  a.m.  and  2  p.m.  for  best 
results.”  END. 


Television 

(Continued  from  Page  9) 

audience,  far  from  being  bored  by  it, 
has  come  to  anticipate  its  fun  sequence 
by  sequence,  as  Rochester’s  telephone 
call  and  The  Mighty  Allen  Art  Players 
are  announced. 

The  difference  between  the  radio  pat¬ 
tern  show  and  the  television  pattern 
show  has  been  simply  this:  that  in 
radio  the  material  within  the  continuity 
skeleton  is  carefully  rehearsed,  while 
in  television  it  has  been  barely  rehearsed 
at  all.  At  CBS  our  factual  shows  such 
as  Red  Cross  instruction  or  art  appre¬ 
ciation,  although  thoroughly  prepared 
and  documented,  were  completely  ad- 
libbed;  our  entertainment  shows  were 
combinations  of  material  from  other  me¬ 
diums — mostly  vaudeville  and  night 
clubs — which  were  placed  on  our  stage 
with  little  alteration  and  less  rehearsal. 

Under  these  conditions,  where  the  suc¬ 
cess  of  the  weekly  pattern  depends  on 
the  televisor’s  ability  to  pick  up  ad- 
libbed  or  unfamiliar  material  with  lit¬ 
tle  or  no  rehearsal,  the  cameraman’s 
contribution  is  of  obvious  strategic  im¬ 
portance. 

It  is  highly  probable  that,  as  in  the 
early  days  of  radio  when  the  industry 
was  still  fumbling  for  the  most  profit¬ 
able  form  of  operation,  the  first  post¬ 
war  telecasters  will  continue  to  explore 
this  technique  of  patterned  informality. 
When  they  have  milked  it  dry  of  both 


30  January,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


THOROUGHLY  TESTED  FILM  PROCESSING 
MACHINES  BY  HOUSTON 


THE  16  MM  REVERSAL 
FILM  PROCESSING 
MACHINE 

The  Houston  16  MM  Reversal  Film 
Processing  Machine  is  fully  automa¬ 
tic.  The  rate  of  processing  is  at  fifteen 
feet  per  minute,  with  an  output  of  900 
feet  per  hour. 

Thermostats  automatically  control 
the  solution  temperatures  and  the  dry¬ 
ing  rate  in  the  drying  cabinet. 

There  is  a  variable  speed  control  to 
compensate  for  exhaustion  of  the  solu¬ 
tions. 

This  machine  is  portable  and  was 
designed  solely  for  processing  16  MM 
direct  reversal  film. 

Operators  will  be  trained  for  pur¬ 
chasers  without  cost  by  the  Houston 
Company.  For  information  on  training 
and  detailed  information  on  the  Hous¬ 
ton  Developing  Machines,  write  to  the 
H.  W.  Houston  Company. 


Already  in  use  by  the  fighting  forces  of  the  United  States,  these  latest  and  most 
modern  film  processing  machines,  for  on-the-spot  motion  picture  developing,  can  be 
supplied  through  application  of  high  preference  ratings. 

Both  machines  are  crated  and  shipped  completely  assembled.  Power  is  adjusted  to 
the  needs  of  the  area  to  which  it  goes. 

THE  35  MM  NEGATIVE  AND  POSITIVE  MACHINES 

Based  on  a  normal  negative  developing  time  of  6  minutes,  the  Houston  35  MM  nega¬ 
tive  machine  will  deliver  within  the  range  of  15  to  30  feet  a  minute,  the  positive 
from  30  to  60  feet  a  minute. 

The  machines  are  completely  self-contained,  requiring  no  additional  equipment. 
Provisions  are  made  to  electrically  heat  and  filter  the  air  for  the  dry  box  compart¬ 
ment,  automatically  controlled  at  any  temperature  between  75  degrees  and  100 
degrees  fahrenheit.  Temperature  control  is  also  provided  for  the  developing  solution, 
stop  and  hypo,  through  a  self-contained  refrigeration  unit  which  is  fully  automatic. 
Replenishment  of  the  development  solution  is  by  automatic  gravity  feed.  The  film 
is  taken  off  on  standard  1000  foot  reels.  The  loading  flange  is  provided  with  a  follow 
reel  which  operates  a  buzzer,  indicating  when  the  end  of  the  roll  is  near  and  the 
loading  section  allows  stoppage  of  the  film  feed  for  splicing. 


H.W.  HOUSTON  5t  COMPANY 

(  A  DIVISION  OF  GENERAL  SERVICE  CORPORATION) 

6625  ROMAINE  STREET 

HOLLYWOOD,  CALIFORNIA 


American  Cinematographer  •  January,  1943  31 


the  technical  experience  it  can  provide 
and  its  appeal  to  the  audience,  they 
will  undoubtedly  proceed  to  the  more 
elaborate  programmes  requiring  memor¬ 
izing  of  lines  and  longer  rehearsals. 

Until  that  change  takes  place,  a  con¬ 
siderable  amount  of  the  responsibility 


TELEFILM 

[l N  C  Q  R  P  a  R A  T  E  d"" ] 

direct  16  MM 

SOUND 

USED  BY: 

►  Douglas  Aircraft 

►  General  Elec.  (Welding  Series) 

►  Boeing  Aircraft 

►  North  American  Aviation 

►  U.  S.  Dept,  of  Interior 

►  U.  S.  Dept,  of  Agriculture 

►  Santa  Fe  Railroad 

►  Washington  State  Apple 

Commission 

►  Standard  Oil  of  Calif. 

►  Salvation  Army 

and  Many  Others 
A  BETTER  JOB  FASTER- 

MORE  ECONOMICAL! 

TELEFILM 

INCORPORATED 
603?  Hollywood  Blvd.,  HOLLYWOOD.  CALIF. 
Ghadstone  5748 


for  the  success  of  the  show  will  con¬ 
tinue  to  rest  on  the  ability  of  the  cam¬ 
eramen  to  shoot  it  correctly  without 
ever  having  seen  it  before.  When  the 
ad-libbed,  informal  material  within  the 
program  patterns  is  replaced  by  skill¬ 
fully  produced  and  rehearsed  material, 
the  cameramen’s  status  may  be  lessened. 

No  one,  at  this  date,  can  accurately 
predict  the  percentage  of  that  replace¬ 
ment.  I  think,  however,  we  can  safely 
assume  that  since,  by  definition,  the 
main  characteristic  of  the  medium  is  its 
ability  to  transmit  sound  and  picture 
instantaneously,  a  considerable  amount 
of  television  air  time  will  always  be 
taken  up  with  material  to  which  this 
property  of  the  medium  can  bring  a 
unique  service — namely  mobile  and  stu¬ 
dio  sports,  spot  news  and  special  events. 
These  are  by  their  very  nature  unre¬ 
hearsed  or  barely  rehearsed  programs. 
They  will  demand  the  same  sort  of 
camera  creativeness  that  played  the 
major  part  in  the  informal  studio  pro¬ 
grammes.  If  we  realize  that  the  quality 
of  unpredictability,  common  to  sports 
and  news  events,  occurs  as  well  in 
other  sorts  of  programs,  quizzes,  ama¬ 
teur  hours,  public  discussions  and  de¬ 
bates,  some  educational,  and  all  audi¬ 
ence-participation  programmes,  then  we 
can  only  conclude  that  in  the  future 
most  of  the  time  the  cameraman  will 
have  to  function  very  much  as  he  does 
now. 

But  what  of  the  rest  of  the  tele¬ 
vision  schedule?  That  is  again  a  guess 


NO  "DIM-OUT"  IN  NEW  YORK- 
IF  YOU 
C.  ROSS 

For  Lighting  Equipment 

As  sole  distributors  East  of  the  Mississippi  we  carry  the  full  and 
complete  line  of  latest-type  Inkie  and  H.I.-Arc  equipment 
manufactured  by 

MOLE-RICHARDSON,  Inc. 

Hollywood  -  California 

Your  requirements  for  interior  or  exterior  locations  taken  care 
of  to  the  last  minute  detail  anywhere 

☆ 

MOTOR  GENERATOR  TRUCKS 
RENTALS  SALES  SERVICE 

☆ 

CHARLES  ROSS,  Inc. 

333  West  52nd  St.,  New  York,  N.  Y.  Phones:  Circle  6-5470-1 


— only  a  guess — which  I  should  like  to 
make.  I  feel  that  just  as  the  audience 
will  love  the  spontaneity,  the  informal¬ 
ity  of  its  sports,  news,  and  special 
events  programmes,  so  it  will  reject  the 
deleterious  effect  of  the  over-cheap  pro¬ 
duction  methods  associated  with  infor¬ 
mality  when  it  appears  in  dramatic,  va¬ 
riety,  or  tightly  written  factual  shows. 
Indeed,  the  mere  fact  that  a  show  is 
not  canned  on  film  but  is  known  to  be 
happening  while  the  audience  sees  it, 
makes  informality  a  virtue.  But  actually, 
the  more  informal  a  show  seems,  the 
more  painstaking  its  production,  the 
longer  its  preparation,  and  the  more 
expensive  its  talent.  As  Henry  Ward 
Beecher  once  put  it,  the  best  extem¬ 
poraneous  speeches  are  the  ones  which 
have  been  the  most  carefully  prepared. 

I  do  not  think  it  is  stating  a  fact 
with  which  the  telecasters  themselves 
will  quarrel  if  I  say  that  to  date  much 
of  the  nation’s  television  fare  has  not 
been  consistently  up  to  the  entertainment 
standards  set  by  the  American  public. 
This  has  been  very  understandable  be¬ 
cause  the  telecasters  have  been  forced 
to  spend  most  of  their  relatively  small 
budgets  in  expanding  their  knowledge 
of  the  technical,  social  and  economic 
aspects  of  the  new  medium.  They  are 
aware  that  the  faults  in  their  studio 
programmes  have  been  due  to  inexpen¬ 
sive  talent,  unskillful  production  or  a 
virtual  absence  of  production. 

At  CBS  we  believe  that  experimental 
operations  have  taught  us  the  “feel”  of 
the  medium  plus  considerable  knowledge 
of  its  cost  and  future  economic  struc¬ 
ture.  We  know  that  both  talent  and 
production  value  are  purchasable  at  a 
price  and  our  current  studio  shows — 
both  the  informal,  productionless  ones 
and  the  production  “pattern”  shows — 
have  given  us  a  yardstick  indication  of 
what  these  costs  may  be. 

Now,  for  the  non-mobile,  non-special 
event  operations,  this  evolution  from 
the  informal,  unrehearsed,  unproduced 
type  of  television  program  to  the  for¬ 
mal,  rehearsed,  skillfully  produced  type 
of  program  may  make  a  considerable 
change  in  the  cameraman’s  status. 

No  longer  will  unfamiliar  material  be 
thrown  at  him,  challenging  his  intelli¬ 
gence  and  ingenuity  to  produce  a  satis¬ 
factory  pick-up.  No  longer  will  every 
television  show  be  a  race  between  the 
unpredictable  action  on  the  stage  and 
the  divining  powers  of  the  cameraman. 
On  the  contrary,  if  there  are  produc¬ 
tion  and  rehearsals,  there  will  be  cam¬ 
era  treatments  planned  in  advance  and 
the  equivalent  of  a  film’s  shooting 
script. 

This  means  that  for  the  studio  type 
of  programme  the  cameraman’s  major 
task  while  on  the  air  will  be  the  me¬ 
chanical  one  of  remembering  a  shooting 
treatment  set  in  rehearsal,  and  operat¬ 
ing  his  camera  skillfully.  Nominally, 
he  will  be  the  operative  cameraman  as 
opposed  to  his  present  approximation  of 
some  of  the  duties  of  the  Director  of 
Cinematography  in  films. 

Note  that  I  use  the  qualifying  phrase 


32  January,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


QUALITY 
ON  LOCATION 


LIGHTING  on  location — indoors  and  out — is 
subject  to  less  control  than  in  the  studio.  But 
under  the  most  trying  conditions,  cameramen 
and  directors  confidently  depend  on  Eastman 
Negative  Films,  with  their  demonstrated  abil¬ 
ity —  each  in  its  own  field — to  invest  each 
scene  with  the  highest  photographic  quality. 
Eastman  Kodak  Company,  Rochester,  N.  Y. 

J.  E.  BRULATOUR,  INC.,  Distributors 

Fort  Lee  Chicago  Hollywood 


PLUS-X  SUPER-XX 

for  general  studio  use  when  little  light  is  uvailnble 

BACKGROTND-X 

for  buehgrounds  nnd  general  exterior  work 

EASTMAN  NEGATIVE  FILMS 

American  Cinematographer  •  January,  1943  33 


“on  the  air.”  The  introduction  of  produc¬ 
tion  value  will  undoubtedly  disturb  the 
present  ratio  of  rehearsal  to  air  time  to 
a  tremendous  extent.  The  time  allotted 
for  rehearsal  and  planning  will  many 
times  exceed  actual  air  time. 

If  the  television  cameraman  is  to  be¬ 
come  an  operator  only,  he  will  have  little 
part  in  these  non-air  operations.  If  he  is 
to  maintain  his  present  superior  position 
in  the  industry,  he  will  have  to  partici¬ 
pate  in,  if  not  actually  direct  the  plan¬ 
ning  of  camera-angles  and  movements 
as  well  as  lighting. 

Unfortunately,  I  do  not  think  it  is  in 
the  cards  for  him  to  perform  either  of 
these  tasks  and  consistently  operate  the 
camera.  Peculiarities  of  the  Television 
production  process  stand  in  the  way. 

It  is  difficult  to  describe  the  specifics 
of  this  process  in  general  terms.  For  this 
reason  I  have  chosen  as  an  example  of 
the  cameraman’s  function  an  actual  se¬ 
quence  from  a  very  advanced  show  al¬ 
ready  transmitted — the  Ballet  “Billy  The 
Kid”  starring  Eugene  Loring  and  the 


A  LONG-TERM 
INVESTMENT 


B&H  Taylor-Hobson-Cooke 
Cine  Lenses  will  serve  you  for 
many  years,  because  they  antici¬ 
pate  future  improvements  in  film 
emulsions  and  exceed  current 
technical  demands.  Write  for 
literature.  BUY  WAR  BONDS 


BELL  &  HOWELL  COMPANY 

Exclusive  world  distributors 


1848  Larchmont  Avenue,  Chicago 
New  York:  30  Rockefeller  Plaza 
Hollywood:  716  N.  La  Brea  Ave. 
Washington,  D.  C.:  1221  G  St.,  N.W. 
London:  13-14  Great  Castle  St. 


Ballet  Theatre  Group.  I  think  it  will 
show  the  cameraman’s  job  more  graph¬ 
ically  than  a  generalized  description. 

Although  the  rehearsal  and  planning 
time  spent  on  “Billy”  was  relatively 
short,  the  camera,  lighting  and  sound 
treatment  were  definitely  planned  in 
advance.  The  result  was  a  much  greater 
coherency  of  production  treatment  than 
we  had  hitherto  been  able  to  give  a 
subject.  To  a  limited  extent,  therefore, 
“Billy”  was  probably  a  good  deal  more 
like  the  television  shows  of  1948  than 
of  1942. 

Camera  No.  1  (6"  tele  lens,  equal  to 
40mm.  lens  with  35mm.  camera)  takes 
the  horse-thief,  stage  right,  struggling 
with  a  group  of  the  sheriff’s  men  in  a 
medium-shot. 

A  cut  is  made  to  a  pick-up  from  Cam¬ 
era  No.  2  (12"  tele  lens,  equal  to  3"  lens 
with  35mm.  camera)  Billy  and  his  mother, 
stage  left,  walk  into  frame  camera  right. 
They  are  strongly  spotted  and  did  they 
not  fill  the  frame  in  a  close  two-shot, 
their  shadows  would  be  observed  on  the 
faces  of  the  other  dancers  standing  be¬ 
hind  them. 

Cut  back  to  Camera  No.  1  as  the  horse- 
thief  gains  his  freedom  from  his  captors 
and  pulls  an  imaginary  gun.  Meanwhile 
a  grip  has  pulled  his  5KW  floor  spot  to 
camera  left  and  widened  the  beam  so  as 
to  remove  the  shadows  from  the  dancers 
behind  Billy  in  readiness  for  the  next 
cut. 

As  the  struggle  continues,  Camera  No. 
1  trucks  back  to  a  long-shot  including 
the  entire  stage.  Camera  No.  2  pulls  back 
simultaneously,  off  the  air,  to  avoid  get¬ 
ting  into  the  angle  of  the  No.  1  shot. 
It  stops  at  a  full-length  two-shot  of 
Billy  and  his  mother.  Still  in  the  long- 
shot,  the  horse-thief  shoots  wildly  about 
him  and  a  bullet  strikes  Billy’s  mother. 
As  she  falls,  the  cut  is  made  to  the 
waiting  camera  No.  2  which  zooms  into 
a  medium-shot  of  Billy  lowering  the  body 
to  the  ground,  and  then  in  further  to  a 
close-up  of  the  mother’s  face  and  limp 
arm. 

As  Billy’s  feet  move  out  of  frame, 
camera  left,  walking  slowly  and  omin¬ 
ously,  the  cut  is  made  back  to  No.  1  on 
the  frightened  crowd,  and  Billy  enters, 
camera  right,  in  a  medium-shot. 

Meanwhile,  off  the  air,  No.  2  wheels 
into  a  close-up  position  on  the  horse- 


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thief’s  back  and  as  Billy  stabs  him  the 
movement  is  seen  in  close-up. 

Cut  back  to  Camera  No.  1  on  a  waist 
two-shot,  and  truck  back  raising  the 
crane  arm  to  admit  dancers  in  the  fore¬ 
ground  who  crowd  Billy.  And  so  forth. 

“Billy  The  Kid”  ran  thirty  minutes  and 
spilled  over  the  40'x44'  television  stage 
in  many  different  choreographic  group¬ 
ings  with  twenty  dancers.  I  do  not  think 
I  am  exaggerating  when  I  say  that  the 
ballet  came  over  nearly  as  effectively  as 
it  would  have  had  it  been  shot,  re-shot, 
and  edited  on  motion  picture  film. 

Yet,  only  the  director  had  seen  the 
ballet  before,  and  the  cameramen  and 
other  technicians  who  did  the  show  had 
only  a  sixty-minute  rehearsal  period  with 
one  dress  rehearsal  in  which  to  feel  the 
music,  get  to  know  the  choreography  and 
design  the  camera  treatment.  And  ninety 
minutes  of  rehearsal  to  thirty  minutes 
of  air  time  is  a  long  rehearsal  period  in 
terms  of  current  television  practice. 

The  television  cameraman’s  job  is  now 
obvious.  He  must  pan,  tilt,  truck  and 
compose  in  keeping  with  the  demands  of 
the  subject.  He  must  do  this  with  one 
eye  on  his  finder,  the  other  on  the  next 
move,  and  a  kind  of  third  eye  on  what 
the  other  cameras  are  doing  so  that  he 
does  not  get  a  shot  which  will  produce 
a  bad  optical  shock  when  the  cut  is  made 
to  or  from  him.  He  must  balance  the 
demands  of  the  individual  shot  with  the 
all-over  pace  of  camera  treatment  de¬ 
manded  by  the  mood  of  the  show.  He 
must  keep  the  moving  subject-area  of  the 
scene  in  focus  or  split  focus  between 
significant  areas  continuously  and  un- 
noticeably.  He  must  do  so  by  constantly 
adjusting  a  crank  or  wheel  with  one 
hand,  panning  or  tilting  with  the  other 
hand.  Somehow  he  must  simultaneously 
push  a  self-propelled  dolly  or  signal  an 
assistant  to  push  it  for  him. 

He  must  do  this  in  the  face  of  a  depth 
of  focus  about  exactly  similar  to  that 
obtained  with  a  Speed  Graphic  carrying 
either  a  6-inch  or  a  12-inch  lens,  oper¬ 
ating  at  apertures  from  2.7  to  4.5.  He  is 
often  cursed  with  an  upside-down,  in- 


GREATEST  NEED 
IN  HISTORY  ! 


AMERICAN  RED  CROSS 


34  January,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


verse-image  viewing  screen  or  finder,  and 
inaccurate  parallex  correcting  devices  for 
which  the  shouted  corrections  of  the  con- 
trol-room  director  are  little  antidote. 

If  the  show  has  been  rehearsed  he 
must  remember  and  follow  the  camera 
treatment  agreed  upon  exactly.  If  it  has 
not  been  rehearsed,  he  must,  willy-nilly, 
shoot  it  “off  the  cuff” — and  do  a  good 
job.  He  must  do  all  of  these  things  with¬ 
out  error  because  when  his  camera  has 
been  placed  on  the  air  by  the  director, 
there  are  no  retakes — the  audience  sees 
the  picture  as  he  shoots  it  when  he 
shoots  it. 

No  matter  what  kind  of  a  show  it  is, 
mobile  or  studio,  rehearsed  or  unre¬ 
hearsed,  the  basic  fact  is  that  the  cam¬ 
eraman  controls  an  instrument  of  selec¬ 
tion  and  interpretation  which  is  the  sole 
means  of  carrying  the  show  to  the  audi¬ 
ence. 

In  the  television  shows  that  are  un¬ 
predictable,  the  responsibility  for  that 
selection  and  interpretation  rests  largely 
with  him.  For  predictable,  planned  and 
rehearsed  shows,  there  will  naturally  be 
far  more  time  to  correct  errors  and  plan 
shooting  treatments.  Nevertheless,  the 
skillful  execution  of  those  treatments 
will  still  depend  largely  on  the  camera¬ 
man. 

It  is  this  fundamental  fact  which  dif¬ 
ferentiates  a  television  cameraman  from 
a  motion  picture  camera  operator.  In 
film  the  director  can  screen  rushes  and 
re-shoot  and  edit  accordingly.  In  tele¬ 
vision  the  director  cannot.  For  predict¬ 
able  actions  he  usually  counts  on  the 
ability  of  the  cameraman  to  give  him  for 
the  air  show  the  shots  set  in  rehearsal. 
For  unpredictable  shows  he  must  rely 
almost  entirely  on  the  cameraman’s  cre¬ 
ative  ability.  This  is  the  basic  reason 
why  the  television  cameraman,  regard¬ 
less  of  the  part  he  may  or  may  not  play 
in  the  nominal  direction  of  the  show,  has 
so  much  greater  responsibility  than  that 
of  a  film  camera  operator. 

These  are  the  operating  functions  of 
the  television  cameraman.  They  are,  as  I 
have  indicated,  under  the  present  infor¬ 
mal,  unrehearsed  pattern  technique  com¬ 
pletely  vital  to  the  art.  The  ability  to 
fulfill  them  skillfully  should  place  the 
individual  cameraman  in  the  top  ranks 
of  those  who  will  be  employed  in  the 
post-war  television  industry.  But  as  the 
industry  changes  to  more  rigid  and  elab¬ 
orate  production  methods,  the  recogni¬ 
tion  of  the  value  of  this  degree  of  spon¬ 


taneous  camera  ingenuity  and  initiative 
will  decrease. 

The  cameraman,  for  at  least  half  of  all 
programmes,  will  then  have  to  function 
as  a  subsidiary  to  the  director,  or,  as  the 
cameramen  did  in  the  prophetic  “Billy,” 
collaborate  with  the  director  in  the  ad¬ 
vance  shooting  scheme  of  the  show.  It  is 
probably,  as  I  have  indicated,  that  re¬ 
gardless  of  the  trend  toward  elaborate, 
formal  production  in  the  studio,  the 
cameraman  will  still  find  opportunity  for 
creative  activity  in  the  mobile  sports  and 
special  events  telecasts  which  I  think 
will  make  up  about  half  or  more  of  the 
television  schedule. 

Nevertheless,  it  will  be  in  the  economic 
interest  of  the  telecasters  to  regard 
studio  operations  as  the  hallmark  of  the 
cameraman’s  value.  I  do  not  think  he 
will  be  credited  with  any  other  value 
unless  he  follows  in  the  steps  of  the 
motion  picture  cinematographers  in  con¬ 
sciously  and  willfully  emphasizing  his 
importance  to  the  art. 

So  far  as  I  can  see  that  importance  is 
the  job  of  visualizing  the  material  placed 
before  the  cameras — that  is  not  only  the 
operating  of  the  cameras,  but  that  of 
lighting  technician,  shooting  script  cre¬ 
ator,  and  the  cutter. 

As  can  be  seen  from  the  description 
of  “Billy  The  Kid”  production,  it  is  dif¬ 
ficult  to  imagine  such  a  cameraman  oper¬ 
ating  the  camera  as  well  as  simulta¬ 
neously  designing  the  way  it  is  to  be 
used.  For  this  reason,  I  think  the  post¬ 
war  television  studio  will  have  television 
camera  operators  plus  men  similar  in 
capacity  to  directors  of  cinematography 
who  will  do  or  collaborate  on  lighting, 
shooting  treatments,  and  cutting.  What 
amount  of  credit  and  remuneration  the 
operators  will  gain  for  themselves  will 
depend  entirely  on  their  own  abilities  to 
convince  the  telecasters  of  their  impor¬ 
tance.  As  to  the  position  of  the  chief 
cameraman,  or  director  of  visualization, 
or  whatever  he  may  be  called,  assuming 
I  am  correct,  it  is  impossible  to  predict 
whether  he  will  function  in  that  way 
alone,  whether  he  will  combine  these 
functions  with  those  of  a  programme 
director,  or  whether,  should  he  combine 
them,  he  will  more  likely  be  a  radio  or 
film  director  who  will  have  picked  up  the 
necessary  technical  knowledge. 

However,  a  more  detailed  description 
of  the  television  production  methods  may 
allow  the  reader  to  make  his  own  pre¬ 
diction.  (To  Be  Continued) 


A uncon 

SOUND 

CAMERA 


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weigh  only  thirty-seven  pounds. 

★  Kodachrome  or  black  and  white  pictures 
with  Auricon  sound  track  will  reproduce 
on  any  sound-film  projector. 

★  Can  be  operated  in  the  field  from  an 
Auricon  Portable  Power  Supply. 

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(but  without  lens)  and  Amplifier  complete 
with  microphone,  instructions,  and  cases 

$880.00 


AURICON  16  mm  RECORDER 

★  Variable-area  sound  on  film,  for  double 
system  recording  with  a  synchronous  motor 
driven  16  mm.  camera.  Amplifier  has  back¬ 
ground-noise  reduction  and  mixers  for  com¬ 
bining  speech  and  music.  With  dynamic 
microphone,  instructions  and  cases  for  Re¬ 
corder,  Amplifier,  Accessories  ....  $695.00 

★  Auricon  16mm.  sound-on-film  recorders 
and  cameras  are  serving  the  Nation  s 
War  effort  with  Military  and  Govern¬ 
ment  Film  Units,  and  with  civilian  or¬ 
ganizations  producing  essential  morale 
and  industrial  training  films.  If  your 
work  in  such  fields  makes  you  eligible 
to  purchase  new  equipment,  we  invite 
you  to  let  our  engineers  show  you  how 
Auricon  portability  and  professional  per¬ 
formance  will  simplify  your  recording 
problems. 

AURICON  CbioMo*., 

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5515  SUNSET  BLVD.,  HOLLYWOOD,  CALIF. 


MANUFACTURERS  OF  SOUND-ON-FILM 
RECORDING  EQUIPMENT  SINCE  1931 


ANIMATED  CARTOON  EQUIPMENT 

ACME  35MM  3  COLOR  CAMERAS 


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PROJECTORS 


I6-35MM  OPTICAL 
PRINTERS 


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ACME  TOOL  &  MFG.  CO. 

2815  W.  OLIVE  AVENUE  BURBANK,  CALIFORNIA 


American  Cinematographer  •  January,  1943 


35 


* 

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VT/hAAaqsL  ia 

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PHOTO  LENSES 


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TO  THE  RETAILER 

Because  of  their  accuracy  Goerz  lenses 
are  front  line  photo-optical  equipment  in 
many  fields  of  activity  of  our  Nation  at 
War. 

The  utmost  is  being  done  to  meet  the  de¬ 
mands  of  the  Government  for  these  photo¬ 
graphic  precision  tools. 

From  time  to  time  there  may  be  avail¬ 
able  some  of  these  fine  anastigmats  for 
civilian  use  and  so  we  invite  you  to  write 
us  about  your  requirements. 


There  is  a  Goerz  Lens 
for  every  purpose 

To  help  in  the  selection  of  the  proper 
lens  our  long  experience  is  at  your  service 
— For  detailed  information  and  prevailing 
prices  see  your  dealer  or 

Address  Dept.  AC-1 


C.P.GOERZ  AMERICAN  OPTICAL  CO. 


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Office  and  Factory 
317  East  34th  Street,  New  York 


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War  Savings  Bonds 
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Axis  Censors  away 
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Progress 

(Continued  from  Page  7) 

process.  This  is  at  present  strictly  an 
amateur  process  for  use  in  rollfilm  cam¬ 
eras,  and  while  available  commercially, 
is  necessarily  being  exploited  on  a  de¬ 
cidedly  limited  scale  “for  duration,”  the 
present  operations  consisting  of  scarcely 
more  than  pilot-plant  operation  in  com¬ 
parison  to  the  obvious  potentialities  of 
the  process. 

Reports  of  the  perfection  of  Agfa 
Ansco’s  long-rumored  Agfacolor  process 
have  also  been  officially  confirmed,  and 
the  film  is  understood  to  be  in  produc¬ 
tion,  though  it  is  not  stated  whether  the 
process  now  in  use  is  a  reversal  or  a 
complementary-  color  negative  -  positive 
system.  Both  are  known  to  have  been 
under  experiment.  This  product  also  is 
understood  to  be  restricted  exclusively 
to  military  use  “for  duration.” 

The  use  of  natural-color  photography 
and  cinematography,  both  35mm.  and 
16mm.,  for  military  purposes  is  known 
to  be  enormously  on  the  increase.  In 
16mm.  form,  it  naturally  offers  remark¬ 
able  advantages  in  convenience  and 
portability  of  equipment  for  combat  cine¬ 
matography,  as  evidenced  by  Comman¬ 
der  Ford’s  film  of  the  Battle  of  Midway. 
It  is  also  understood  to  be  proving  in¬ 
valuable  for  aerial  reconnaissance,  as  it 
is  stated  to  be  in  many  cases  the  most 
infallible  method  of  penetrating  camou¬ 
flage. 

The  use  of  35mm.  enlargements  from 
16mm.  Kodachrome  originals  has  al¬ 
ready  been  mentioned.  In  the  long  run  it 
must  be  regarded  as  probably  the  year’s 
outstanding  development  in  color  of  an 
immediately  practical  nature. 

35mm.  Professional  Cameras 

Without  doubt  the  outstanding  de¬ 
velopment  in  the  35mm.  camera  field  was 
the  development  of  a  radically  new  cam¬ 
era,  designed  primarily  for  military 
combat  use,  by  camera-engineer  Harry 
Cunningham  of  RKO.  The  camera  is 
built  in  gunstock  form  for  hand-held 
operation  in  the  field  or  in  the  air,  yet  it 
embodies  an  excellent  pilot-pin  move¬ 
ment  of  studio  type,  designed  and  built 
to  thoroughly  professional  standards  of 
precision.  Interchangeable  magazines, 
each  of  which  contains  its  own  move¬ 
ment,  facilitates  quick  reloading  under 
the  most  difficult  conditions,  and  the 


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Everything  Photographic  Professional  and  Amateur 


operating  controls  are  grouped  to  per¬ 
mit  operation  even  in  high-altitude  fly¬ 
ing  gloves  or  under  similar  unfavorable 
conditions.  The  use  of  magnesium  and 
similar  lightweight  metals  reduce  the 
weight  of  the  camera  to  the  almost  in¬ 
credible  figure  of  13  pounds.  It  appears 
to  be  ideal  for  military  use  today,  and 
should  revolutionize  newsreel  and  ex¬ 
peditionary  camerawork  after  the  war. 

Another  interesting  professional  corn- 
era,  apparently  as  yet  largely  in  the  ex¬ 
perimental  stage,  is  the  “Electroplane” 
camera  based  on  the  designs  of  the  late 
Dr.  L.  M.  Dieterich,  A.S.C.,  and  P.  Stan¬ 
ley  Smith.  This  camera — or  rather  a 
special  mechanico-optical  system  fitted 
to  a  standard  Mitchell  camera — is  stated 
to  produce  a  uniformly  sharp  image  of 
everything  from  four  feet  to  infinity  by 
means  of  a  lens  developed  from  Dr. 
Dieterich’s  original  “Detrar”  design.  In 
this,  one  element  of  a  special  four-ele¬ 
ment  lens  oscillates  constantly  during 
the  exposure  of  each  frame  of  film,  mov¬ 
ing  the  plane  of  sharp  focus  repeatedly 
from  four  feet  to  infinity  and  back  with¬ 
out  changing  the  image-size.  The  oscilla¬ 
tion  is  produced  by  an  electrical  mechan¬ 
ism,  somewhat  similar  to  the  voice  coil 
of  a  loudspeaker,  and  synchronized  to 
the  movement  of  the  camera. 

16mm.  and  8mm.  Cameras 

But  one  new  substandard  camera  ap¬ 
peared  during  1942.  This  is  the  Bemdt 
“Auricon”  single-system  16mm.  sound 
camera,  which  was  actually  designed  be¬ 
fore  America’s  entry  into  the  war,  and 
subsequently  modified  to  minimize  the 
use  of  critical  materials,  castings,  etc. 
In  its  present  form  the  Auricon  camera 
is  housed  in  a  wooden  box  within  which 
is  a  sturdy  metal  plate  which  serves  as 
a  framework  to  carry  the  mechanism. 
The  film-carrying  movement  is  essential¬ 
ly  similar  to  that  of  the  same  firm’s 
Auricon  recorder,  with  of  course  the 
addition  of  an  excellent  intermittent  pic¬ 
ture  movement.  An  ingenious  dual  drive 
is  employed,  with  an  unusually  small 
synchronous  motor  used  to  drive  the 
camera  itself  while  a  larger,  non- 
synchronous  motor  governed  by  the  cam¬ 
era-motor  powers  the  take-up.  The  re¬ 
cording  galvanometer  and  amplifier  are 
identical  with  those  used  in  the  Auricon 
recorder.  The  entire  unit  has  been 
planned  for  simplicity,  portability  and — 
probably  the  first  16mm.  sound-camera 
so  planned — for  sale  at  a  price  within 
the  reach  of  at  least  the  more  prosper¬ 
ous  advanced  amateur.  As  such,  it  seems 
certainly  the  forerunner  of  many  others 
which  we  may  expect  to  see  after  the 
war. 

Lighting 

Inevitably,  there  were  no  particular 
advances  in  lighting  or  lighting  equip¬ 
ment  to  be  chronicled.  With  the  in¬ 
crease  in  pictures  with  a  war  back¬ 
ground,  most  of  which  call  for  an  in¬ 
creasingly  realistic  photographic  treat¬ 
ment,  there  has  been  somewhat  of  an 
increase  in  the  trend  toward  greater  use 
of  arc  lighting  in  monochrome  cinema¬ 
tography. 

As  regards  incandescent  lighting,  the 


36  January,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


recent  reduction  in  the  number  of  in¬ 
candescent  lamp  types  available,  necessi¬ 
tated  by  the  war,  appears  to  have  had 
little  or  no  effect  on  studio  lighting 
units  other  than  Photoflood  and  Photo¬ 
flash  globes,  which  have  been  placed  on 
a  priority  basis. 

Lenses 

Very  considerable  advances  in  optical 
design  and  materials  appear  to  have 
been  made  during  the  year  by  American 
lens-makers,  but  these  have  naturally 
been  channelled  to  the  production  of 
military  optical  instruments.  They  give 
enormous  promise  of  great  advances  in 
photographic  optics  after  the  war,  how¬ 
ever. 

Of  an  essentially  mechanico-optical 
nature,  the  “I-R”  system  introduced  by 
Dr.  Alfred  N.  Goldsmith  as  a  means  of 
securing  increased  focal  range  is  tech¬ 
nically  interesting,  if  not  particularly 
practical  for  studio  cinematography  in 
its  present  development.  Briefly,  this 
system  supplements  or  replaces  the  con¬ 
ventional  camera  shutter  with  one  carry¬ 
ing  supplementary  lenses  which  correct 
the  focus  of  the  lens  to  different  focal 
points  within  the  field.  This  differential 
focuser  or  “diffo”  is  synchronized  with 
the  lighting  in  such  a  way  that  during 
the  exposure  of  each  frame  the  “diffo” 
successively  corrects  the  focus  of  the 
lens  to  the  several  key  planes  in  the 
field,  at  which  time  that  particular  plane 
is  illuminated  by  a  synchronized  flash  of 
light  from  any  desired  number  of 
sources,  while  the  lighting  on  the  other 
planes  of  the  field  remains  off  until  the 
“diffo”  successively  focuses  the  camera 
upon  each  of  them  and  their  synchro¬ 
nized  illumination  flashes  momentarily 
on  to  make  the  exposure.  The  system 
appears  to  work  on  a  laboi'atory  scale, 
but  is  obviously  too  unwieldy  to  be  prac¬ 
tical  for  studio  cinematography. 

Special-Process  Cinematography 

In  consequence  of  the  wartime  restric¬ 
tions  on  set-building,  transportation,  and 
the  like,  it  is  inevitable  that  all  types 
of  special-effects  cinematography  are 


coming  to  play  an  even  more  important 
part  in  production  than  they  have  here¬ 
tofore.  Miniatures  are  obviously  neces¬ 
sary  for  staging  many  types  of  battle 
and  bombing  scenes,  not  to  mention 
scenes  of  aircraft  flying,  landing  and 
taking  off  (the  latter  since  private  flying 
and  aerial  photography  are  naturally 
forbidden  in  the  West  Coast  area  which 
is  technically  a  Combat  Zone.) 

Background  projection  or  “transpar¬ 
ency”  process  work  has  similarly  had  to 
meet  increasing  demands,  not  only  in 
the  quantity  of  scenes  needed,  but  also 
in  physical  scope.  In  at  least  one  in¬ 
stance  the  recently  perfected  triple-head 
process  projectors  proved  inadequate, 
and  two  of  these  super-powered  units 
had  to  be  used,  with  two  screens  placed 
side  by  side,  giving  a  total  background 
screen  width  of  approximately  50  feet, 
for  the  Technicolored  “The  Forest 
Rangers.” 

For  the  same  production,  Gordon  Jen¬ 
nings,  A.S.C.,  developed  a  very  impor¬ 
tant  accessory  in  a  large  mobile  boom 
or  crane  with  which  to  manipulate 
miniature  airplanes.  This  boom  makes 
it  possible  to  film  action  with  miniature 
aircraft  carrying  out  manoeuvres  which 
would  have  been  impossible  with  conven¬ 
tional  means  of  control. 

Another  important  development  in 
special-effects  cinematography  was  a 
series  of  experiments  made  by  Vernon 
L.  Walker,  A.S.C.,  and  Carroll  Dunning 
with  the  use  of  35mm.  enlargements 
from  16mm.  Kodachrome  originals  for 
process  background  plates.  While  this 
method  has  not  as  yet  been  used  on  ac¬ 
tual  production,  the  tests  indicate  that 
it  should  be  satisfactory,  at  least  for 
scenes  with  a  moving-camera  back¬ 
ground,  in  black-and-white,  and  prob¬ 
ably  in  color  as  well.  This  should  prove 
extremely  advantageous  in  securing 
backgrounds  where  the  bulk  and  weight 
of  conventional  35mm.  camera  equip¬ 
ment  would  be  excessive.  In  addition, 
the  greater  focal  depth  obtainable  in 
enlargements  from  16mm.  originals 
should  be  of  value  in  many  other  types 
of  background  shots  if  the  question  of 
registration  can  be  adequately  answered. 

Accessories — Professional 

A  very  practical  accessory  was  de¬ 
veloped  by  the  Warner  Brothers’  Cam¬ 
era  Department  in  their  automatic  scene- 
slater  for  use  with  Mitchell  BNC  cam¬ 
eras.  This  slater  is  built  directly  into 
the  camera,  rather  than  fitted  external¬ 
ly.  It  is  placed  on  the  right  side  of  the 
camera  housing,  so  that  if  the  camera 
is  held  in  focusing  position  after  start¬ 
ing  the  motor,  and  only  racked  over  into 
photographing  position  after  reaching 
operating  speed,  the  slating  is  automa¬ 
tically  done  while  the  camera  is  speed¬ 
ing  up. 

Another  practical  accessory  developed 
by  the  same  studio  was  a  camera  cart 
which  serves  as  a  mobile  locker  in  which 
two  complete  cine-camera  outfits  and  a 
still-camera  outfit,  with  all  necessary  ac¬ 
cessories,  can  be  wheeled  directly  to  the 
set. 

A.  J.  Kooken,  of  the  same  studio’s  Art 


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The  value  of  this  information  in  plan- 


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the  picture.  always  ready. 

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995  MERCHANDISE  MART 
CHICAGO 


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American  Cinematographer  •  January,  1943  37 


ning  sets  and  scheduling  location  shoot¬ 
ing  is  obvious. 

Just  before  wartime  restrictions 
clamped  down  on  such  developments  “for 
duration,”  the  Republic  Studio  com¬ 
pleted  a  special  camera-car  which  repre¬ 
sents  important  improvements  over  any¬ 
thing  of  this  nature  previously  avail¬ 
able,  as  regards  both  steadiness  of  rid¬ 
ing  qualities,  acceleration,  and  operating 
convenience. 

The  Camera  Equipment  Co.,  of  New 
York,  developed  an  excellent  and  much- 
needed  shift-over  device  for  use  with  the 
Bell  &  Howell  Eyemo  camera  and  its 
prismatic  focuser,  so  often  used  in  mili¬ 
tary,  newsreel  and  documentary  cam¬ 
erawork. 

Accessories — Amateur 

Very  few,  if  any,  new  accessories  for 
substandard  cameras  were  developed. 
Two  manufacturers  in  Minneapolis, 
however,  developed  special  gunstock 
mounts  for  use  with  various  types  of 
16mm.  and  8mm.  cameras.  Intended 
originally  for  use  by  sportsmen,  these 
mounts  should  prove  of  considerable 
value  in  military  combat  camerawork, 
especially  in  view  of  the  extensive  use 
being  made  of  16mm.  cameras  for  this 
purpose. 

Set  Design 

Set  design  was  basically  influenced 
by  the  governmental  order  prohibiting 
the  use  of  more  than  $5,000  worth  of 
new  materials  in  constructing  the  sets 
for  any  one  production.  The  larger 
studios — especially  those  which  had  for 
some  years  been  turning  out  the  so- 
called  “B”  or  low-budget  films,  had  ex¬ 
tensive  resources  in  the  form  of  stock 
or  standing  sets,  and  had  for  years  made 
a  practice  of  remodelling  such  sets  for 
use  in  their  lesser  productions.  The 
studios  which  had  had  a  smaller  output, 
or  which  had  concentrated  on  “A”  pic¬ 
tures,  of  course  could  not  do  this.  In 
consequence  a  considerable  inter-studio 
exchange  of  sets,  especially  specialized 
ones,  grew  up. 

Some  studios  which  had  previously  al¬ 
ways  used  hard-walled  sets  made  in¬ 
creasing  use  of  fabric-walled  flats  as  a 
means  of  holding  down  set  costs.  Others 
experimented  with  the  construction  of 
so-called  “standardized”  sets,  which 
could  be  left  standing  and,  with  very 
little  remodelling,  serve  repeatedly  in 
picture  after  picture. 

Laboratories 

In  the  laboratory  field,  a  sensational 
development  was  the  design,  by  the  H. 
W.  Houston  Co.,  of  a  series  of  almost 
completely  automatic  developing  ma¬ 
chines  for  field  service  with  the  Army 
and  Navy.  These  machines  are  avail¬ 
able  in  types  for  both  35mm.  and  16mm. 
film,  and  for  reversal  processing  as  well 
as  the  conventional  negative  and  posi¬ 
tive  types.  They  are  designed  for  ut¬ 
most  simplicity  and  portability;  some  of 
them  are  scarcely  larger  than  an  ordi¬ 
nary  office  desk  and  are,  with  the  ex¬ 
ception  of  their  power  and  water  sup¬ 
plies,  completely  self-contained,  even  to 


solution  temperature  control  accessories 
and  air-conditioning.  What  such  ma¬ 
chines  will  mean  to  the  commercial  oper¬ 
ator  and  to  expeditionary  cinematog¬ 
raphy  after  the  war  can  easily  be  im¬ 
agined. 

Sound — 35mm. 

Very  little  can  be  chronicled  under 
this  heading,  though  there  were  a  num¬ 
ber  of  technically  interesting  “under¬ 
cover”  developments. 

Sound — 16mm. 

Probably  the  outstanding  fact  relat¬ 
ing  to  substandard  sound  is  the  fact  that 
during  the  past  year  an  increasing  num¬ 
ber  of  America’s  more  advanced  cine- 
amateurs  have  turned  to  16mm.  sound, 
not  only  on  synchronized  disc,  but 
sound-on-film.  Coupled  with  the  appear¬ 
ance  of  moderately  priced  sound-film 
cameras  like  the  Auricon  and  the  volume 
production  of  16mm.  sound  projectors 
for  the  military  services,  which  will  nat¬ 
urally  lead  to  lower  prices,  this  points 
to  a  definite  trend  toward  the  use  of 
sound-on-film  by  post-war  amateurs. 

In  the  professional  16mm.  sound  field, 
an  important  development  was  the  in¬ 
troduction  by  J.  A.  Maurer,  Inc.,  of 
their  “Certified  Sound”  system.  This  is 
a  further  refinement  of  this  firm’s  uni¬ 
versally  approved  16mm.  professional 
recording  equipment,  redesigned  on  a 
coordinated  unit  basis,  considerably  sim¬ 
plified  and  with  the  addition  of  a  vol¬ 
ume-compressor  circuit,  so  that  opera¬ 
tion  is  so  simplified  as  to  almost  assure 
satisfactory  results  even  in  the  hands 
of  comparatively  unskilled  operators. 

Projection 

The  outstanding  development  in  this 
field  is  without  doubt  the  enormous  use 
of  16mm.  sound-on-film  by  the  military 
for  both  training  and  entertainment  pur¬ 
poses.  While  little,  if  any  16mm.  sound 
projection  equipment  is  available  for 
civilian  use,  it  is  being  turned  out  at  a 
vastly  expanded  rate  for  military  use. 
Several  manufacturers,  including  Bell  & 
Howell,  De  Vry,  and  others,  have  an¬ 
nounced  “Victory”  models  making  a 
minimum  use  of  critical  materials.  These 
“ersatz”  designs  and  constantly  increas¬ 
ing  volume  are  clearly  pointing  the  way 
to  improved  and  cheaper  products  after 
the  war. 

Still  Photography 

All  civilian  still  photography  has  suf¬ 
fered  from  shortages  of  materials  due 
to  the  war.  Without  doubt  the  outstand¬ 
ing  development  in  this  field  has  been 
the  introduction  of  the  Kodacolor  process. 

Visual  Education 

Educational  motion  pictures  and  their 
use  have  been  advancing  by  incredible 
leaps  and  bounds,  due  to  the  increasing 
use  of  instructional  films  for  both  mili¬ 
tary  and  industrial  training.  With  all 
of  Hollywood’s  studios  turning  out  mili¬ 
tary  training  films  and  civilian  morale 
films,  and  with  Walt  Disney  throwing 
almost  the  full  force  of  his  unique  or¬ 
ganization  into  the  production  of  special¬ 


ized  training  and  propaganda  films,  it  is 
certain  that  this  year  and  those  to  fol¬ 
low  are  seeing  advances  in  the  educa¬ 
tional  film  and  the  technique  of  its  em¬ 
ployment  which  not  even  the  most  opti¬ 
mistic  visual  education  enthusiasts  could 
have  foreseen.  It  has  been  stated  that 
the  Army’s  use  of  training  films  alone 
is  advancing  visual  education  twenty- 
five  years  at  a  single  step:  when  the  sum 
total  of  the  nation’s  diversified  uses  of 
factual  films  is  considered,  this  state¬ 
ment  seems  conservative  indeed.  END. 


CLASSIFIED 

ADVERTISING 


FOR  SALE 


IMPROVED  DUPLEX  35MM  PRINTER,  with  two 
Bell-Howell  Cams  and  Shuttles.  Perfect  Regis¬ 
tration  for  Color  or  Black  and  White,  also 
process  plates.  Bell-Howell  Standard  Silenced 
Camera ;  Educational  Blimp  and  Dolly ;  Sound 
and  Silent  Moviolas.  Equipment  slightly  used  at 
a  big  saving.  Hollywood  Camera  Exchange, 
1600  Cahuenga  Blvd.,  Hollywood. 


DEVRY  SINGLE  SYSTEM  SOUND  RECORDING 
CAMERA,  COMPLETE  WITH  3  LENSES ; 
VIEW  FINDER;  AMPLIFIER;  NOISE  RE¬ 
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35MM  SOUND  AND  PICTURE  PRINTER, 
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Like  New,  $595.00  S.O.S.  CINEMA  SUPPLY 
CORPORATION,  NEW  YORK. 


WE  BUY,  SELL  AND  RENT  PROFESSIONAL 
AND  16mm  EQUIPMENT,  NEW  AND  USED. 
We  ARE  DISTRIBUTORS  FOR  ALL  LEAD¬ 
ING  MANUFACTURERS.  RUBY  CAMERA 
EXCHANGE,  729  Seventh  Ave.,  New  York  City. 
Established  since  1910. 


NEW  FEARLESS  interlock  camera  motor  for  N.C. 
Camera ;  W.E.  interlock  camera  motor  (door 
type  I  ;  Western  Electric  interlock  motor  for 
Standard  Mitchell  Camera  (door  type)  . 
CAMERA  EQUIPMENT  COMPANY 
1600  BROADW'AY,  NEW  YORK  CITY 
CABLE:  CINEQUIP 


FOR  SALE  :  One  model  500-D  BM  Recorder  com¬ 
plete  with  Monitor  Speaker,  purchased  in  1941, 
$3200.00.  One  Model  Y  Pre3to  Professional  Re¬ 
corder  $450.00.  F.  S.  Yenowine,  660  Hulman 
Street,  Terre  Haute,  Indiana. 


WANTED 


WE  PAY  CASH  FOR  EVERYTHING  PHOTO¬ 
GRAPHIC.  Write  us  today.  Hollywood  Camera 
Exchange.  1600  Cahuenga  Blvd.,  Hollywood. 


WANTED  TO  BUY  FOR  CASH 
CAMERAS  AND  ACCESSORIES 

MITCHELL,  B  &  H,  EYEMO,  DEBRIE,  AKELEY 
ALSO  LABORATORY  AND  CUTTING  ROOM 
EQUIPMENT 


CAMERA  EQUIPMENT  COMPANY 
1600  BROADWAY,  NEW  YORK  CITY 
CABLE:  CINEQUIP 


BELL  &  HOWELL  STANDARD.  MITCHELL 
CAMERAS,  LENSES,  MOTORS,  ACCESSORIES. 


CAMERA  MART,  INC.,  70  W.  45TH  ST.  N.Y.C. 


38  January,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


AIRPLANES  MADE  to  FLY  FASTER  and  at  greater  heights  present  new  problems  to  lens  de¬ 
signers.  Kodak’s  new  glass,  with  a  much  higher  refractive  index  (light-bending  ability)  than 
previously  available  in  optical  glass  of  the  same  dispersion,  is  now  being  applied  to  aerial 
lenses  and  is  partly  responsible  for  the  effectiveness  of  our  aerial  photography.  The  new 
lens  has  twice  the  speed  of  the  fastest  lens  previously  used  by  our  Army  Air  Force. 


Position  of  pencil’s  image  shows 
that  Kodak’s  new  glass  (below)  has 
greater  light-bending  power  than 
old-type  optical  glass  (above).  Both 
have  the  same  dispersion. 


B  aerial  lenses,  made  with  new  rare-element  glass 
—  first  basic  discoveiy  in  55  years’ 


Sand  has  always  been  a  basic  ingre¬ 
dient  of  optical  glass.  Now,  for  the 
first  time,  Kodak  is  making  optical 
glass  of  "rare  elements” — tantalum, 
tungsten,  and  lanthanum.  No  sand 
— to  the  optical  scientist,  it’s  "almost 
as  revolutionary  as  discovering  how 
to  make  steel  without  iron. 

There  would  be  no  point  in  it,  of 
course,  without  the  result  which  is 
obtained:  A  lens  which  gives  greater 
speed  without  loss  of  definition  and 
covering  power. 

The  U.  S.  flyer  equipped  with  an 
aerial  lens  made  by  Kodak,  incor¬ 
porating  the  new  glass,  can  carry  out 
his  mission  from  a  safer  height — 
and,  as  a  consequence,  with  a  much 


better  chance  of  bringing  back  his 
pictures. 

Faster,  Farther,  Clearer 

Before  this,  the  fastest  lens  used  by 
U.  S.  Army  flyers  was  fj 3.5.  Now  our 
night  flyers  are  being  supplied,  as  rap¬ 
idly  as  possible,  with  an  //2.5  lens. 
This  is  twice  as  fast,  and  gets  pictures 
of  better  quality — with  the  same  size 
flash  bomb — at  a  greater  height. 

The  greater  light-bending  ability  of 
the  new  glass  means  that  the  lens  can 
have  less  curvature — and  this  also 
means  much  better  definition  at  the 
edges  of  the  picture. 

Serving  human  progress 


Prior  to  Kodak’s  new  glass,  in  1941, 
the  last  basic  discovery  leading  to 
radical  improvement  in  optical  glass 
was  in  1886. 

After  the  original  work  on  the  new 
glass,  done  by  Kodak  scientists  in 
collaboration  with  Dr.  G.  W.  Morey, 
of  the  U.  S.  Geophysical  Laboratory, 
four  additional  years  were  spent  in 
perfecting  its  manufacture — and  com¬ 
puting  the  new  formulas  necessary 
for  the  grinding  of  lenses. 

Fortunately  the  work  was  done  in 
time,  and  the  new  optical  elements 
are  now  in  many  cameras  in  the  serv¬ 
ice  of  democracy  .  .  .  Eastman  Kodak 
Company,  Rochester,  N.  Y. 

through  Photography 


American  Cinematographf.r  •  January,  1943  39 


— every  inch  a  Bell  &  Howell  Projector 
in  quality  and  performance  in  spite 


Show  These  Newest  Films  for  factory! 


of  restricted  use  of  critical  materials 

The  new  Filmosound  "V”  Projector  is  in  every  way  typical  of 
the  quality  and  precision  you  naturally  associate  with  all  Bell  & 
Howell  products.  It  is  sturdy . . .  precision  built . . .  easy  to  oper¬ 
ate  .  .  .  every  feature  essential  to  superb  projection  and  film 
protection  .  .  .  and  incorporates  these  features  in  spite  of  the 


This  war  is  every  American’s  fight. 
And  the  harder  everyone  fights  on 
every  front — the  sooner  the  hour  of 
Victory.  You  and  your  projector  are 
in  a  position  to  render  invaluable 
service,  because  with  your  projector 
and  the  B&H  Filmosound  Library 
you  can  help  bring  the  real  meaning 
of  the  w  ar  right  home  to  hundreds 
of  your  fellow  men. 


Briefly  described  below  are  a  few 
of  the  latest  Filmosound  Library  re¬ 
leases  that  will  enable  you  to  do  this 
important  job.  There  are  thousands 
of  other  films  available  to  you 
through  the  Filmosound  Library — 
purchase  or  rental — covering  every 
need  and  every  subject.  See  your 
dealer  for  timely  suggestions  on 
how  you  can  use  your  projector  to 
hasten  Victory. 


Bell  &  Howell  Company,  Chicago;  New  York;  Hollywood;  Washington,  D.C.;  London.  Est.1907 


MADE  WITH  MOVABLE 
CELLULOID  LETTED# 


Make  "Letter  Perfect"  Titles  with  FILMO  TITLE  BOARD 

Filmo  Title  Boards  are  neatly  framed  black  fabric-covered 
backgrounds  closely  grooved  to  permit  easy  placing  of  the 
letters.  The  letters  come  in  a  special  com¬ 
partment  box,  making  the  entire  outfit 
complete  and  professional. 

Price — without  letters . $8.25 

Standard  set  of  letters .  8.00 


I  BELL  &  HOWELL  COMPANY 
I  1848  Larchmont  Avenue 
I  Chicago,  111. 

Without  obligation,  please  send  me,  free: 

J  (  )  Catalog  of  British  Civilian  Defense  Films; 
BONDS  |  (  )  List  of  Available  Accessories; 

(  )  Detailed  information  on  new  Filmosound 
Model  V; 

(  )  Details  on  new  films  from  Filmosound 
Library  listed  below. 

■ m 

. 

Name 

:  •  Address . 

Clty . State . AC 


fact  that  critical  materials  are  restricted  in  its  manufacture. 

While  the  new  Filmosound  "V”  Model  is  available  only  to 
our  armed  forces,  it  is  indicative  of  the  better  "things  to  come" 
from  Bell  &  Howell  craftsmen  when  peace  is  restored. 


AIR  FORCE  and  NAVY 
FILMS— for  preflight 
and  preinduction 
high  school  train¬ 
ing.  . 


NORTH  AFRICA— two 
new  sound  films  by 
Count  Byron  de 
Prorok.  Select  films 
on  every  war  the¬ 
ater. 


GOOFER  TROUBLE  — 
a  typical  British 
Civilian  Defense 
film.  More  than 
200  British  films 
available. 

★ 

OUR  TOWN— Thorn¬ 
ton  Wilder’s  Pu¬ 
litzer  Prize  play — 
a  “Ten  Best”  selec¬ 
tion;  cut  for  school 
use.  * 

CIVILIAN  DEFENSE— 
many  films  to  meet 
vitally  important 
problems  of  mass 
education. 

*‘E”F0R  EXCELLENCE 
— shows  how  the 
Army-Navy  Award 
for  extraordinary 
performance  iswon 
and  presented ; 
one-reel;  sound. 
Service  charge  50c. 


/7eeedd0tte<f 


That  Every  Home  Movie  Enthusiast  Should  Own 


CHARACTER  TITLER — for  producing  titles  of  any 
style,  including  fingers  writing,  animated  titles,  maps, 
graphs,  diagrams;  also  cartoon  movies,  miniature  sets, 
small  subjects  (flowers,  insects,  etc.)  and  still  pictures. 
The  outfit  includes  an  adjustable  title  card  holder  and 
reflector  clamped  to  each  spacer  rod.  Models  for  use 
with  16mm.  and  8mm.  Filmo  Cameras. 


For  these — and  other  available  Filmo  Accessories,  see 
your  motion  picture  camera  dealer.  In  many  cases, 
accessories  are  still  available  from  his  stocks,  even 
though  they  may  be  out  of  production  for  the  duration. 


FILMO  CARRYING  CASES 


There  is  a  Filmo  carrying  case  especially  built 
for  the  model  Filmo  you  own — and  built  to 
Filmo  quality  standards.  Whether  you  want  a 
sheath  case  that  provides  space  for  the  camera 
only  ...  or  a  compartment  case  that  provides 
extra  space  for  film, 
lenses,  etc.,  you’ll  do 
better  by  choosing  a 
genuine  Filmo  case  that  fills  the  bill  perfectly.  See 
your  camera  dealer.  Prices  range  upward  from  $3.20. 


^  THE  mor/on  PICTURE 


February 

1943 


COPIBIGHT  DEPOSIT. 


FEB  -ft  1943 


CALLING  CARD... 

AhAT’S  NO  CALLING  CARD!”  you  say?  You’re  right.  It’s  only  raw 
stock.  But  it’s  also  a  “calling  card”  for  the  du  Pont  technicians  who  offer  you  their 
skilled  services.  These  men  know  their  du  Pont  Film  and  how  it  will  act  .  .  .  from  the 
camera  exposure  to  the  projector .  .  .  from  raw  stock  storage  to  print  shipment.  They’re 
always  on  hand  to  help  you  get  the  fullest  performance  from  your  du  Pont  Film.  In 
your  studio,  on  your  location,  in  your  laboratory  .  .  .  Du  Pout  men  follow  through  ! 


Ric.  u. s.  pat. or' 

"SUPERIOR” 
CINE  FILM 

Better  Things  for  Better  Living 
.  .  .  Through  Chemistry 


SUPERIOR  1  (Type  104).  Fine  grain  makes  this  film  ideally 
suited  for  taking  background  negatives  and  for  general 
outdoor  use.  It  has  a  moderate  speed  and  requires  normal 
development. 

SUPERIOR  2  (Type  126).  A  balanced  film  that  combines 
high  speed,  fine  grain,  a  long  scale  gradation  and  a  well- 
corrected  panchromatic  color  response.  An  all  ’round 
film  for  general  studio  use. 

SUPERIOR  3  (Type  127).  The  film  to  use  for  cinematog¬ 
raphy  under  adverse  lighting  conditions.  In  spite  of  the 
fact  it  is  approximately  twice  as  fast  as  Superior  2,  it 
retains  remarkably  fine  grain  size. 

E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  &  Co.  (Inc.) 

Photo  Products  Department 

WILMINGTON,  DELAWARE  —  SMITH  &  ALLER,  LTD.,  HOLLYWOOD,  CALIF. 


42  February,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


EYEMO  Gets  the  Picture 


Deane  Dickason 
filming  with  his 
Eyemo  Camera  near 
Surabaya,  Java,  just 
before  the  outbreak 
of  war  in  the  Pacific 


WHEN  your  camera  is  an  Eyemo,  it’s 
always  ready  to  go  into  instant  action 
on  any  type  of  assignment  .  .  .  anywhere. 

Because  of  the  versatility  and  dependability 
of  Eyemo  Cameras,  mechanically  and  as  to 
picture  quality,  they’re  first  choice  with  most 
cameramen  on  news  fronts  the  world  over. 

Resolve  now  to  get  an  Eyemo  for  yourself 
when  the  war  is  over  and  Eyemos  are  again 


EYEMO  MODELS  L  AND  M 

These  models  have  the  compact  type  of 
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era’s  "sound”  aperture  plate.  Operating 
speeds:  Model  L — 4  to  32  frames  per 
second;  Model  M — 8  to  48. 


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New  York;  Hollywood;  Washington,  D.  C.; 
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r, 


BELL  &  HOWELL  COMPANY 
1848  Larchmont  Ave.,  Chicago,  Ill. 

Please  send  complete  details  about:  (  )  Eyemo  35mm.  Cameras; 
(  )  Accessories  for  Eyemos. 


1 

I 


Name . . 
Address. 


BELL  &  HOWELL 


American  Cinematographer  •  February,  1943  43 


VOL.  24  FEBRUARY.  1943  NO.  2 


CONTENTS 

Will  There  Be  Cameraman-Directors  in  Television  Production  .  .  .  ? 

. By  Edward  Anhalt  46 

Kodachroming  the  “P-38”  in  Action . By  Elmer  G.  Dyer,  A.S.C.  48 

Why  I  Want  to  Make  Movies . By  Leonard  J.  Shafitz  50 

From  a  Nazi  Prison-Camp  to  a  Signal  Corps  Camera . 

. By  Charles  Sweeny  51 

Aces  of  the  Camera — XXV :  Phil  Tannura,  A.S.C . 

. By  Walter  Blanchard  52 


Through  the  Editor’s  Finder .  53 

A.S.C.  on  Parade .  54 


The  Staff 

• 

EDITOR 

William  Stull,  A.S.C. 

• 

TECHNICAL  EDITOR 
Emery  Huse,  A.S.C. 

• 

WASHINGTON  STAFF  CORRESPONDENT 
Reed  N.  Haythorne,  A.S.C. 

• 

MILITARY  ADVISOR 
Col.  Nathan  Levinson 

• 

STAFF  PHOTOGRAPHER 
Pat  Clark 

• 

ARTIST 

Alice  Van  Norman 

• 

CIRCULATION 
Marguerite  Duerr 


Photography  of  the  Month .  55 

I  Made  a  16mm.  Sound-Camera . By  Raymond  L.  Maker  56 

Free-Wheeling . By  Stanley  and  Mary  jane  Bean  57 

Forty-eight  Years  of  Home  Movies . By  William  Stull,  A.S.C.  58 

Pointers  on  Using  Telephoto  Lenses . By  Jack  Smith,  A.S.C.  61 

Amateur  Movies  and  the  War  Effort . By  W.  G.  Campbell  Bosco  62 

Here’s  How  .  63 

Among  the  Movie  Clubs .  64 


The  Front  Cover 

This  month’s  cover  shows  Lt.  Leo  Tover, 
A.S.C.,  filming  the  “Old  Glory”  number  from 
Paramount’s  “Star-Spangled  Rhythm.”  If 
you  look  closely,  you’ll  find  the  camera  about 
an  inch  below  George  Washington’s  jaw, 
shooting  a  close-up  of  Bing  Crosby.  Notice 
microphone  used  to  check  “sync”  of  Crosby’s 
singing  with  playback  of  pre-recorded  sound¬ 
track  from  playback  loudspeaker  at  left. 


ADVISORY  EDITORIAL  BOARD 
Fred  W.  Jackman,  A- S.  C. 

Victor  Milner,  A.  S.  C. 

James  Van  Trees,  A.  S.  C. 

Farciot  Edouart,  A.  S.  C. 

Fred  Gage,  A.  S.  C. 

Dr.  J.  S.  Watson,  A.  S.  C. 

Dr.  L.  A.  Jones.  A.  S.  C. 

Dr.  C.  E.  K.  Mees.  A.  S.  C. 

Dr.  W.  B.  Rayton,  A.  S.  C. 

Dr.  Herbert  Meyer,  A.  S.  C. 

Dr.  V.  B.  Sease,  A.  S.  C. 

• 

NEW  YORK  REPRESENTATIVE 
S.  R.  Cowan,  132  West  43rd  Street 
Chickering  4-3278  New  York 

• 

AUSTRALIAN  REPRESENTATIVE 
McGill's,  179  Elizabeth  Street,  Melbourne, 
Australian  and  New  Zealand  Agents 

• 

Published  monthly  by  A.  S.  C.  Agency,  Inc. 
Editorial  and  business  offices : 

1782  North  Orange  Drive 
Hollywood  (Los  Angeles),  California 
Telephone:  GRanite  2135 


Established  1920.  Advertising  rates  on  appli¬ 
cation.  Subscriptions:  United  States  and  Pan 
American  Union,  $2.50  per  year;  Canada,  $2.75 
per  year;  Foreign.  $3.50.  Single  copies,  25c: 
back  numbers,  30c ;  foreign,  single  copies  35c. 
back  numbers  40c.  Copyright  1943  by  A.  S.  C. 
Agency,  Inc. 


Entered  as  second-class  matter  Nov.  18.  1937, 
at  the  postoffice  at  Los  Angeles,  California,  under 
the  act  of  March  3,  1879. 


44  February,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


i*®a 


The  B  &  H  Eyemo  camera  shown 
here  mounted  on  the  “Professional 
Jr.”  Tripod  and  Shiftover  has  been 
especially  adapted  for  aerial  use 
by  the  Office  of  Strategic  Services, 
Field  Photographic  Branch,  Wash., 
D.  C. 


Unsurpassed  in  Quality ,  Versatility  and  Rigidity 

+  The  friction  type  head  gives  super-smooth  pan  and  tilt  action,— 
360°  pan  and  80°  tilt.  A  generous  sized  pin  and  trunnion  assures  long, 
dependable  service.  •'Spread-leg1'  design  affords  utmost  rigidity  and 
quick,  positive  height  adjustments.  A  "T"  level  is  built  into  this  14  lb. 
superfine  tripod.  The  top-plate  can  be  set  for  16mm.  E.K.  Cine  Special, 
with  or  without  motor;  35mm.  DeVry  and  B  &  H  Eyemo  (with  motor), 
and  with  or  without  alignment  gauge. 

Tripod  Head  Untonditionally  Guaranteed  5  Years 


"Professional  Jr."  Tripods  and  Cameraquip  Shiftover  Alignment  Gauges  are  used 
by  the  U.  S.  Navy,  U.S.  Army  Air  Bases,  Signal  Corps,  the  Office  of  Strategic 
Services  and  other  Gov't  Agencies — also  by  many  leading  Newsreel  companies 
and  16mm  and  35mm  motion  picture  producers — for  important  work. 


I 

I 

t 

t 


SHIFTOVER  ALIGNMENT  GAUGE 

■jf  This  Shiftover  device  is  the  finest,  lightest  and 
most  efficient  available  for  the  Eyemo  Spider  Turret 
prismatic  focusing  type  camera. 

The  male  of  the  Shiftover  attaches  to  the  cam¬ 
era  bate  permanently  and  permits  using  the  regular 
camera  holding  handle  if  desired.  The  male  dovetail 
mates  with  the  female  dovetail  base  and  permits  the 
camera  to  slide  from  focusing  to  photographing 
positions  for  parallax  adjustment.  The  camera  can 
be  locked  in  desired  position  by  a  positive  locking- 
device. 

^  The  Shiftover  has  a  "stop-bracket"  which  pre- 
^  vents  the  camera  from  sliding  off  the  dove- 
%  tail  base  —  and  is  provided  with  dowel  pins  1 
which  position  it  to  top-plates  of  tri-  j 
*  pods  having  yg  or  '/s-20  camera  ^ 

\  fastening  screw.  + 


I 

I 


Will  There  Be 

CAMERAMAN -DIRECTORS  IN 
TELEVISION  PRODUCTION? 

By  EDWARD  ANHALT 

Chief  Cameraman,  CBS  Television  Studios,  New  York 


AS  we  have  described  them,  the  four 
basic  types  of  television  shows 
L  may  be  described  as  follows: 

1.  The  Mobile  Transmission.  Exclud¬ 
ing  the  temporary  installation  of  pick-up 
equipment  in  a  remote  location  for  the 
transmission  of  a  formal  presentation  of 
some  kind — say  a  pick-up  of  a  vaudeville 
show  from  Radio  City  Music  Hall  or 
a  patriotic  pageant  from  the  Rose  Bowl 
— mobile  shows  will  be  mostly  pick-ups 
of  unrehearsed  events,  usually  in  the 
nature  of  “spot”  news.  The  telecasters 
involved  may  have  some  prior  know¬ 
ledge  of  the  routine  of  a  news  event, 
such  as  a  special  message  to  Congress 
by  President  Roosevelt  or  a  special  event 
such  as  a  report  to  the  nation  on  plane 
construction  in  the  form  of  an  actual 
visit  to  a  plane  factory,  but  they  could 
hardly  rehearse  them  or  write  a  shooting 
script  for  the  cameras.  In  the  case  of 
news  events  such  as  the  Normandie  fire 
or  sports  coverage  of  football  games  and 
other  athletics,  the  action  is,  of  course, 
completely  unpredictable. 

The  function  of  directorial  personnel 
in  each  of  these  cases  might  be  analyzed 
as  follows: 

Congress:  Largely  the  placement  of 
equipment  in  consideration  of  the  pre¬ 
vious  knowledge  of  routine.  Successful 
pick-up  of  the  event,  human-interest  side¬ 
lights  and  the  unexpected  would  depend 
largely  on  the  cameramen  as  it  does  in 
the  informal  studio  technique  or  in  mo¬ 
tion  picture  newsreel  coverage. 

Plane  Factory:  Directorial  activity 
would  involve  the  creation  of  an  effective 
continuity  of  subject  treatment  carefully 
outlined  in  consideration  of  the  spatial 
and  human  factors  and  technical  limita¬ 
tions  present  in  the  factory.  In  a  fully 
developed  television  industry  it  is  prob¬ 
able  that  the  construction  of  the  contin¬ 
uity  would  be  a  specialist’s  job  and  the 
director  would  function  almost  entirely 
as  visualizer. 

The  difference  between  the  director  and 
the  cameraman  in  this  case  would  lie  in 
the  fact  that  the  director  must  try  to 
create  a  previously  visualized  shot  by 
moving  objects  and  personnel  around 
and  creating  situations,  whereas  the  cam¬ 
eraman  can  only  seize  material  that  is 
ready-made  for  him  and  can  have  very 
little  control  over  the  action  in  front  of 
the  camera.  Essentially,  this  difference 
defines  the  first  special  quality  which  the 
television  directors  of  mobile  programmes 


must  have,  which  is  not  necessarily  pres¬ 
ent  in  the  cameraman  or  chief  camera¬ 
man.  He  must  try  to  control  the  action 
before  the  camera  by  actually  selecting 
in  the  creative,  non-technical  sense,  the 
elements  of  the  show. 

Television’s  quality  of  instantaneous 
transmission  demands  a  speedy,  almost 
infallible  sense  of  the  dramatic  element 
in  its  directors.  The  quickness  in  cap¬ 
turing  the  moment,  in  giving  it  the 
proper  degree  of  emphasis,  the  ability 
to  catch  a  fleeting,  almost  abstract  over¬ 
tone  through  the  calm  manipulation  of 
mundanities  like  props,  electronic  video 
controls  and  spotlights  —  this  ability 
needed  by  the  director — is  not  necessar¬ 
ily  the  property  of  the  cameraman.  True, 
good  cameramen  in  all  branches  of  vis¬ 
ualization  soon  become  bored  with  the 
mere  control  of  material  made  available 
to  them  and  begin  to  want  to  control  or 
direct  it  themselves.  But  in  the  television 
art — as  in  all  photographic  visualizations 
— the  technique  of  visualization  is  a  proc¬ 
ess  secondary  to  the  technique  of  placing 
the  right  combination  of  objects  before 
the  cameras — that  is,  the  directorial 
technique. 

It  is  inevitably  more  difficult  for  the 
television  cameraman  with  no  directorial 
ability  to  acquire  such  ability  than  it 
is  for  the  director  to  learn  enough  of 
the  cameraman’s  business  to  function 
efficiently.  It  is  possible  that  in  the  types 
of  television  shows  where  the  action  is 
largely  predictable  and  rehearsable,  there 
may  be  two  kinds  of  directors — a  director 
of  the  material  in  front  of  the  cameras 
and  a  director  of  the  cameras  themselves 
— but  in  mobile  operations  things  happen 
too  quickly  for  dual  control.  There  will 
have  to  be  one  director  for  cameras  and, 
insofar  as  direction  can  be  applied  to  it, 
the  same  director  for  action.  That  is  a 
categorical  statement  but  five  minutes 
of  watching  a  mobile  television  crew  in 
action  will,  I  think,  convince  the  reader. 

Spot  News  Coverage:  Events  of  this 
type  are  so  unpredictable  that  quickness 
of  perception  and  the  mechanical  apti¬ 
tude  to  adjust  the  camera  to  such  percep¬ 
tions  rapidly  are  the  most  important 
factors  in  the  pick-up.  In  this  type  of 
coverage,  theoretically,  since  so  little 
control  of  action  is  possible,  it  would  be 
better  that  the  director  be  more  camera¬ 
man  than  director  but,  in  practice,  I  do 
not  think  the  cameraman  will  get  any 
more  consideration  on  that  score. 


I  think  we  can  conclude  then  that,  at 
least  for  news,  special  events,  and 
sports  operations  (remember  an  antici¬ 
pated  fifty  per  cent  of  all  television 
transmission)  that;  a)  the  chief  camera¬ 
man  and  director  will  be  combined  in 
one  person,  the  director;  and  b)  it  will 
be  easier  for  a  director  who  is  an  un¬ 
trained  cameraman  to  master  the  cam¬ 
eraman’s  art  than  for  a  cameraman  who 
is  an  untrained  director  to  master  the 
director’s  art. 

Thus,  for  the  fifty  per  cent  of  all  oper¬ 
ations,  since  the  direction  will  be  a  one- 
man  job,  the  cameraman  will  have  little 
choice  to  be  other  than  an  operative 
unless  he  can  qualify  as  a  full  director. 
In  the  fifty  per  cent  of  operations  where 
action  is  rehearsed  or  predictable,  I 
think  there  may  be  two,  or  even  three, 
persons  in  control. 

2.  Studio  Operations: 

Other  than  the  special  events  shows 
which  may  occur  in  the  studio,  studio 
shows  can  be  divided  into  the  pattern 
and  the  non-pattern  type.  Quiz,  Discus¬ 
sion,  Educational  and  Audience-partici¬ 
pation  shows  will,  I  think,  be  pattern 
shows.  That  is,  as  I  have  indicated,  an 
economic  necessity  for  the  television  in¬ 
dustry,  just  as  it  is  for  radio. 

The  more  patterned,  the  more  repeti¬ 
tious  the  routine,  the  more  money  can 
be  spent  from  week  to  week  on  the  really 
important  thing — novelty  of  material.  If 
that  material  is  good  enough,  the  spine 
to  which  it  is  attached — Portland  Allen’s 
weekly  entrance,  “Hello,  Mister  Aaalen”; 
Rochester’s  weekly  phone  call  to  Benny; 
the  interminable  repetition  of  the  plot 
pattern  of  all  strip  shows — is  actually 
a  familiar,  pleasant  cue  for  the  enjoy¬ 
ment  of  that  material.  The  pattern  tech¬ 
nique  saves  money  and  actually  increases 
audience-appeal. 

The  motion  picture  variant  of  this  is 
the  use  of  actors,  picture  after  picture, 
in  the  same  general  plot  situations,  like 
the  “Hardy  Family”  and  other  “series” 
films.  It  works  because  the  audience  feels 
generally  that  the  mere  appearance  of 
the  familiar  situation  is  a  guarantee  of 
good  entertainment  about  to  follow.  The 
only  difference  between  radio  and  motion 
pictures  is  that  in  radio  the  pattern 
recurs  every  week  and  in  films  it  appears 
only  thrice  or  so  yearly,  as  the  actor’s 
new  picture  is  released.  That  is  why 
many  people  have  the  illusion  that  the 
motion  picture  industry  operates  on  a 
higher  level  than  radio.  But  back  to 
television ! 

Both  the  pattern  show  and  the  smaller 
percentage  of  non-pattern  shows  require 
production,  preparation,  rehearsal.  The 
pattern  shows  will  be  the  morning  and 
afternoon  strip  programs,  variety  shows, 
documentaries  and  entertainment  of  all 
kinds.  Non-pattern  shows  will  be  the 
evening  dramatic  shows  that  are  not 
serials. 

The  action,  continuity,  dialogue  of  all 
these  shows  is  completely  predictable 
and  controllable — they  can  be  directed 
just  as  the  film  or  play  can  be  directed. 
Beyond  that,  and  most  significant,  given 
a  basic  familiarity  with  the  technical 


46 


February,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


limitations  and  possibilities  of  the  me¬ 
dium,  they  can  be  directed  outside  the 
television  studio,  without  cameras  and 
lights  on  a  rehearsal  stage. 

At  the  British  Broadcasting  Com¬ 
pany’s  studio  at  Alexandra  Palace,  the 
British  telecasters  were  particularly  suc¬ 
cessful  in  this  respect.  Studio  space,  tele¬ 
vision  pick-up  facilities,  and  technical 
labor,  here  as  at  the  BBC,  are  the  major 
production  expenses.  Obviously  if  re¬ 
hearsals,  other  than  dress  rehearsals, 
can  be  carried  on  without  the  use  of 
these  facilities,  production  costs  will  be 
considerably  less. 

At  CBS,  we  were  anxious  to  integrate 
the  economics  of  the  British  experiments 
into  our  own  production  set-up.  Gilbert 
Seldes,  the  guiding  spirit  of  the  CBS 
experiment,  produced  an  entire  series  of 
living  art  shows  with  the  Metropolitan 
Museum  in  this  manner.  Later,  I  tried 
it  myself  in  producing  the  Signal  Corps 
Training  Film  Unit  show  previously  de¬ 
scribed.  This,  as  I  have  indicated,  was  a 
special-event  show  treated  as  a  docu¬ 
mentary  with  all  the  actions  made  as 
predictable  as  possible  and  the  produc¬ 
tion  made  as  effective  as  possible  in  a 
two-hour  rehearsal  period.  I  directed  the 
rehearsal  from  the  studio  floor  without 
the  use  of  lighting,  cameras,  electronic 
controls  and  other  television  devices. 

During  the  entire  time  the  rehearsal 
was  conducted  exactly  as  it  would  have 
been  in  a  bare  rehearsal  hall  with  no 
technical  facilities  whatsoever.  Facili¬ 
ties  were  then  hit  and  a  written  outline 
of  the  entire  action  given  to  the  camera¬ 
men  and  other  technicians.  At  dress  re¬ 
hearsal,  the  chief  electrician,  sound 
man,  video  control  operator  and  director 
reported  that  there  were  only  three 
minor  bits  of  action  outside  the  tech¬ 
nical  limitations  of  the  studio. 

As  a  result  of  this  and  subsequent  ex¬ 
periments,  I  have  come  to  the  conclusion 
that  for  predictable  material  the  direc¬ 
tion  of  action  and  the  direction  of  the 
television  pick-up  instruments,  cameras, 
lights,  sound  and  electronic  controls  can 
be  the  work  of  two  men.  I  do  not  know 
whether  it  actually  will  be,  but  I  am 
inclined  to  think  so  on  the  basis  of  the 
general  fact  that  specialization  and  divi¬ 
sion  of  labor  increase  as  an  industry 
grows  and  becomes  more  complex. 

There  is  a  subsidiary  reason  in  that  a 
control  room  director  is  simply  too  busy 
controlling  the  television  mechanism  to 
ever  get  the  all-over  effect  of  his  show 
as  the  audience  sees  and  hears  it.  A 
director  wants  to  see  his  show  in  this 
way  and  unless  it  were  recorded  on  film 
he  would  have  no  way  of  doing  so  other 
than  watching  it.  That  is  why  I  watched 
the  Signal  Corps  show  in  an  audition 
room,  making  changes  by  phoning  in¬ 
structions  to  the  control  room  while  the 
show  was  being  transmitted. 

In  this  case,  both  the  control  room,  or 
technical  director,  and  myself  were  thor¬ 
oughly  familiar  with  the  advantages  and 
limitations  of  our  level  of  operations  at 
that  date.  The  significance  of  the  expe¬ 
riment  lies,  therefore,  not  in  the  fact 
that  I  was  familiar  enough  with  the 


medium’s  technicalities  to  prepare  a  show 
without  physical  recourse  to  them,  but 
largely  in  the  fact  that  the  technical 
director,  working  individually,  developed 
a  shooting  and  lighting  treatment  almost 
exactly  similar  to  the  one  I  had  visual¬ 
ized  when  planning  the  action. 

This  may  seem  strange  to  the  film 
technician  who  may  pick  one  of  six  or 
seven  ways  of  shooting  a  scene.  It  is  not 
peculiar  in  a  television  studio  working 
under  infinitely  greater  limitations  of 
time  and  money,  under  technical  condi¬ 
tions  which  forbid  any  great  reliance  on 
technique  to  make  transmitted  material 
tolerable. 

Generally,  our  television  experience 
has  indicated  that  people  wise  to  the 
ways  of  the  medium  will  pick  the  same 
way  of  shooting  the  same  prepared  mate¬ 
rial.  Naturally,  had  I  not  approved  of 
the  camera  and  lighting  treatment,  I 
could  have  changed  them  in  the  dress 
rehearsal.  As  it  was,  after  agreeing  on 
the  method  of  execution,  I  left,  confident 
that  I  would  see  the  direction  we  had 
agreed  upon  executed  just  as  I  would 
have  done  them  myself. 

The  reader  may  take  his  choice  in 
predicting  which  method  of  direction 
may  prevail.  Under  the  one-man  system, 
the  director  must  combine  the  functions 
usually  associated  with  the  Director  of 
Cinematography  in  film  with  those  of  a 
dramatic  director.  He  must  be  familiar 
with  electronic  and  audio  controls  as 
well  as  cameras  and  lights  to  an  extent 
which  will  allow  him  to  make  the  final 
judgments  on  their  use.  Further,  until 
he  is  thoroughly  experienced,  he  must 
have  the  strong  nervous  disposition  that 
allows  a  person  to  direct  shows  on  the 
air — that  is,  simultaneously  control  stu¬ 
dio  and  electronic  lighting  and  camera 
movements,  dii’ect  prop  and  personnel 
action  and  check  audio  control. 

Personally,  I  feel  that  the  inevitable 
development  of  division  of  labor  in  the 
new  industry  will  favor  the  two-man 
system  for  at  least  the  fifty  per  cent  of 
television  operations  involving  predict¬ 
able  action.  Further,  the  maintenance 
of  an  economically  feasible  television 
programme  service  will  involve  a  pat¬ 
tern  and  routine  which,  in  the  interests 
of  efficiency,  will  probably  favor  this 
sort  of  cooperative  specialization. 

In  conclusion,  if  the  cameraman  wishes 
to  proceed  beyond  the  operative  stage, 
he  may  (if  my  analysis  is  correct)  play 
a  more  important  role  as  the  visualizer 
and  executor  of  programmes  of  the  pre¬ 
dictable  type.  If  he  wishes  to  play  an 
important  role  in  television  of  the  mobile, 
unpredictable  type,  he  must  necessarily 
graduate  to  the  status  of  director,  since 
the  rapidity  of  action  in  unpredictable 
television  necessitates  one  man  to  be  in 
absolute  control.  If  I  am  incorrect  in  my 
prediction  of  the  two-man  system  for 
predictable  television,  then  he  will  also 
have  to  assume  the  status  of  director 
for  that. 

In  any  case,  regardless  of  the  real  im¬ 
portance  of  the  job  of  the  operative  cam¬ 
eraman  as  outlined  in  the  beginning  of 
this  paper,  I  do  not  believe  it  will  achieve 


Top,  televising  a  40-minute  "jam  session."  The  camera¬ 
man  never  knew  who  was  going  to  play,  where,  or 
what.  A  maximum  test  of  the  ability  of  the  television 
camera-operator.  Middle:  "On  the  air"  with  a  Red 
Cross  instructional  program  for  Civil  Defense  workers. 
Bottom:  Jack  Dempsey  referees  an  inter-Service  fight, 
specially  staged  in  the  CBS  studio. 

any  superior  economic  status.  Moreover, 
I  think  that  the  more  the  industry  grows 
and  the  greater  the  development  of  spe¬ 
cialization,  the  more  the  job  of  the  oper¬ 
ative  will  turn  out  to  be  a  dead  end.  It 
is  for  this  reason  that  the  CBS  camera¬ 
men  have  used  every  opportunity  to 
direct  and  produce  in  the  experimental 
television  set-up. 

The  old-fashioned  college  bull-session 
pales  before  the  sort  of  discussion  that 
radio  and  film  people  can  have  on  the 
probable  relationship  of  their  respective 
arts.  These  statements  are  typical: 

“Most  television  programs  will  be 
canned  on  film.  That  is  the  only  way 
to  make  them  smooth.” 

“Television  networks  will  be  yoked 
together  by  wire  (coaxial  cable)” 

“Television  networks  will  be  linked 
together  by  automatic  booster  trans¬ 
mitters.” 

“The  television  audience  will  pay  for 
programmes  as  subscribers — as  the  BBC 
audience  pays  for  its  radio  programmes.” 

“There  will  be  no  sponsors.” 

“Sponsors  will  pay  five  or  six  times 
as  much  for  television  as  for  radio.” 

“Television  will  not  injure  the  film 
industry  because  there  is  nothing  like 
(Continued  on  Page  78) 


American  Cinematographer  •  February,  1943 


47 


Jijodcudhjwminx ^  JthsL  ‘(p-38"  in^  fiduML 

By  ELMER  G.  DYER,  A.S.C. 


AFTER  an  aerial  movie-making  ca¬ 
reer  of  more  than  twenty  years, 
*•  during  which  I’d  flown  in  every¬ 
thing  from  creaky  old  “Jennies”  to  the 
latest  dive-bombers,  and  exposed  all  the 
various  types  of  film  from  the  color¬ 
blind  Ortho  of  1920  to  today’s  Super- 
Panchromatic  and  Infra-Red,  not  to  men¬ 
tion  Multicolor,  three-film  Technicolor 
and  Monopack,  I  thought  I  had  done 
just  about  everything  possible  in  pro¬ 
fessional  aerial  camerawork. 

Then,  just  a  few  weeks  ago,  I  got  a 
call  to  handle  the  aerial  camerawork  on 
a  training-film  being  made  by  Shirley 
Burden  of  Tradefilms,  Inc.,  for  Lock¬ 
heed,  to  show  Army  Air  Force  pilots 
how  to  fly  the  P-38  “Lightning.”  That 
was  a  new  experience  for  me:  not  only 
was  it  my  introduction  to  the  sort  of 
work  the  so-called  commercial  or  indus¬ 
trial  motion  picture  companies  do,  but 
it  was  my  first  experience  with  the  pro¬ 
fessional  use  of  16mm.  Kodachrome. 
There  followed  a  succession  of  surprises 
and  problems  which  made  it  one  of  the 
most  interesting  assignments  I’ve  ever 
had. 

The  first  surprise  came  when  I  found 
out  who  were  to  be  my  associates  on  the 
picture.  I’d  always  thought  that  16mm. 
industrial  movies  were  made  on  pretty 
much  of  a  shoestring  basis — -just  some 
guy  nobody  ever  heard  of,  and  who  would 
probably  be  overpaid  if  he  got  ten  dol¬ 
lars  a  week,  going  off  with  an  amateur 
camera  and  snapshooting  whatever  he 
could  in  an  amateur  fashion. 

But  not  on  this  picture!  The  Director 


of  Photography  in  charge  of  the  “pro¬ 
duction”  camerawork  on  the  ground  was 
Robert  C.  Bruce,  A.S.C.,  with  Alan 
Stensvold,  S.S.C.,  his  associate  as  Koda¬ 
chrome  specialist,  and  backed  up  by  a 
full  professional  crew.  I  had  charge  of 
the  aerial  camerawork,  and  with  me  was 
my  regular  assistant,  Ray  Flinsky. 

When  I  mentioned  my  surprise  at 
seeing  a  studio-trained  crew  like  this 
lavished  on  a  16mm.  training  film,  Pro¬ 
ducer  Burden  replied,  “The  phrase, 
‘training  films  in  16mm.  Kodachrome’ 
makes  things  sound  simple  and  easy, 
but  the  truth  is  that  training  films 
these  days  present  new  and  unusual 
problems  that  require  practical  solu¬ 
tions.  Furthermore,  there’s  usually  very 
little  time  in  which  to  reach  those  solu¬ 
tions.  That’s  where  fully  trained,  pro¬ 
fessional  crews,  with  plenty  of  assis¬ 
tants,  juicers,  grips,  and  so  on,  pay 
dividends. 

“It’s  pretty  obvious  that  a  great  many 
people  can  handle  a  16mm.  movie  or  a 
still  camera  and  get  adequate  results 
when  conditions  are  normal.  But  in 
making  technical  films  like  this,  the 
going  is  usually  tough.  There  are  no 
made-to-order  conditions.  There  are  no 
sets.  There  is  only  an  emphasized  time 
element,  coupled  with  a  demand  for  per¬ 
fection  on  the  screen.  To  aircraft  fac¬ 
tories  and  the  Army  Air  Force  the  ques¬ 
tion  ‘When  do  you  want  it?’  inevitably 
has  a  two-word  answer — ‘Right  now!’ 
And  when  the  chips  are  down  and  the 
going  is  tough  is  the  time  that  100  per 
cent  professional  crews  who  really  know 


their  business  come  sailing  through, 
where  the  fair-weather  filmer  would 
prove  an  expensive  flop.” 

I  began  to  realize  something  of  the 
truth  of  this  as  I  watched  Bruce  and 
Stensvold  at  work  on  their  part  of  the 
picture.  Some  of  their  work  was  quite 
simple — about  2  per  cent  of  it,  I’d  say. 
The  rest  of  the  time — well,  here’s  one 
of  the  simpler  shots  they  had  to  make: 
visualize,  if  you  can,  a  P-38’s  cockpit, 
which  isn’t  any  too  big  anyhow,  and  is 
covered  with  a  neatly  streamlined  en¬ 
closure  besides. 

Into  that  cockpit  place  one  medium¬ 
sized  pilot. 

Now  try  to  place  the  camera  so  that 
you  can  see  the  pilot,  the  control-stick, 
and  the  instrument  panel.  Then  start 
setting  up  your  lights. 

Now  begin  making  allowances  for  the 
knobs  of  the  twin  throttles  in  bright 
red,  the  sides  of  the  cockpit  in  regulation 
grayish-green,  and  an  instrument-panel 
half  covered  by  a  hood,  with  the  panel 
itself  completely  black — and  just  about 
the  blackest,  least  reflective  black  you 
ever  saw.  Add  to  this  panel  the  compo¬ 
nent  instruments  with  their  figures  in 
white,  warning  markers  in  red  and 
green,  and  each  individual  instrument- 
dial  covered  with  glass. 

Now  get  your  lights  all  set — perhaps 
so  that  with  changing  lighting  you  can 
suggest  the  interplay  of  sunlight  and 
shadow  as  the  plane  turns,  loops  or 
rolls.  Oh  yes,  remember  to  have  your 
pilot’s  hands  made  up  so  they  won’t 
“wash  out”  completely. 


48  February,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


Above:  Elmer  Dyer,  A.S.C.,  and  Assistant  Ray  Flinsky  at  work  in  the  air.  Note  Akeley  matched-lens  finder 
fitted  to  14mm.  Cine-Special.  Right:  Producer  Shirley  Burden  (on  ladder)  tears  his  hair  as  Directors  of 
Photography  Robert  Bruce,  A.S.C.  and  Alan  Stensvold,,  S.S.C.,  tussle  with  a  technical  problem.  To  right,  top: 
Dyer  and  Flinsky  at  work  in  the  "Lodestar."  Middle:  a  discussion  of  exposure  at  10,000  feet.  Bottom:  Pro¬ 
ducer  Burden  gives  last-minute  instructions  to  Pilot  Milo  Burcham. 


Ready  to  roll — ? 

Say — wait  a  minute!  You’ll  have  to 
start  up  the  engines  and  rev  up  the 
propellors  so  that  the  engine  instru¬ 
ments  will  register  properly.  Naturally 
this  makes  quite  a  bit  of  vibration,  and 
a  gale  of  wind  from  the  two  propellers. 
Now  just  where  were  those  lights  you 
placed  ?  And  the  camera  ? 

O.K.  Let’s  say  everything  is  still  set. 
All  that  has  to  be  done  now  is  to  shoot 
the  scene  and  move  on  to  fulfill  the  re¬ 
quired  schedule  of  thirty-eight  such  set¬ 
ups  per  day.  And  remember — this  was 
one  of  the  easier  ones.  .  .  .  !  Do  you  see 
now  why  my  hat  is  olf  to  Bob  Bruce  and 
A1  Stensvold  and  their  crew? 

My  own  part  of  the  job  was  easier. 
The  first  problem,  after  being  duly 
“mugged,”  fingerprinted,  and  issued  a 
regular  Lockheed  identification  badge, 
was  to  get  acquainted  with  Kodachrome 
film  and  the  16mm.  equipment  I  was 
to  use.  Of  course  I’ve  shot  a  lot  of 
16mm.  and  Kodachrome  for  myself,  but 
there’s  a  world  of  difference  between 
shooting  Kodachrome  for  pleasure  and 
shooting  it — especially  in  the  air — for 
professional  use. 

The  basic  problem  was  exposure.  Of 
course  in  shooting  Kodachrome  it’s  axi¬ 
omatic  that  your  exposure  has  got  to  be 
correct;  but  “correct  exposure”  when 
you’re  shooting  for  duping  (as  is  al¬ 
ways  the  case  professionally)  is  very 
different  from  “correct  exposure”  when 
you’re  shooting  just  to  get  a  good  ori¬ 
ginal  for  home  projection.  Shooting  for 
an  original,  giving  the  equivalent  of  a 
Weston  8  film  speed  means  “correct” 
exposure. 

But  when  you  shoot  for  duping,  you’ll 
get  the  best  results  if  your  original  is 
on  the  soft  side,  both  as  to  color  and 
contrast.  So  you’ll  want  to  give  it  what 
would  amount  to  a  slight  overexposure 
if  you’re  used  to  shooting  only  for  an 
original.  The  easiest  way  to  do  this  is 
to  use  the  equivalent  of  Weston  5  in¬ 


stead  of  Weston  8  in  your  exposure¬ 
metering. 

Then  there’s  the  matter  of  “following 
focus”  on  your  exposure  as  the  plane 
you’re  shooting  goes  through  its  com¬ 
bat  manoeuvers.  Getting  the  correct  ex¬ 
posure  on  the  plane  itself  is  easy 
enough;  but  when  you  pan  down  to  fol¬ 
low  it,  and  get  the  darker  ground  in 
your  shot,  you’ll  run  into  underexposure. 
Panning  up  as  the  P-38  zooms  upward 
gives  you  plenty  of  sky  for  a  background 
— and  every  inch  of  it  overexposed. 

With  a  35mm.  outfit,  this  business  of 
“following  focus”  on  exposure  isn’t  too 
much  of  a  trick  if  you’ve  a  practiced 
assistant.  But  in  16mm.  it’s  a  good  deal 
more  of  a  problem,  due  to  the  way  the 
lens-mounts  are  made.  I’d  say  it  was 
impossible  if  you  were  working  alone; 
but  with  a  really  good  assistant  like 
Ray  Flinsky,  it  can  be  done  satisfacto¬ 
rily — if  the  producer  gives  you  a  little 
time  for  tests  and  practice,  as  Burden 
did. 

Equipment  was  quite  a  problem,  too. 
On  the  ground,  Bruce  and  Stensvold 
generally  used  the  Bell  &  Howell  pro¬ 
fessional  16mm.  camera  which  was  de¬ 
scribed  in  The  American  Cinematog¬ 
rapher  about  two  years  ago.  For  our 
air  shots  it  was  decided  to  use  a  Cine- 
Special,  due  to  the  advantages  of  its 
compactness  and  quickly  interchangeable 
magazines. 

The  Special  is  a  honey  of  a  camera 
all  right,  but  to  the  35mm. -trained  pro¬ 
fessional  it  has  several  disadvantages. 
The  first  of  these  is  an  inadequate  finder. 
Personally,  I’m  used  to  either  a  Mitchell- 
type  finder  or  the  matched-lens  ar¬ 
rangement  of  the  Akeley  for  aerial  work, 
and  the  Special’s  regular  finder,  while 
all  right  for  ground  work,  simply  didn’t 
suit  me  for  the  tricky  problem  of  fol¬ 
lowing  one  of  the  world’s  fastest  pursuit 
planes  going  through  the  manoeuvers  of 
aerial  combat. 

Finally  we  managed  to  adapt  an  Ake- 
(Continued  on  Page  77) 


American  Cinematographer  •  February,  1943  49 


Why  I  Want  To 
Make  Movies 

By  LEONARD  J.  SHAFITZ 


DURING  these  times  there  are 
probably  thousands  of  young  art¬ 
ists,  craftsmen  and  technicians 
throughout  the  country — and  for  that 
matter  the  entire  world — who  have  de¬ 
layed  their  plans  and  put  off  their 
course  of  study  until  the  conclusion  of 
the  war.  And  it  is  right,  for  only  in  a 
free  world  can  individual  creative  efforts 
flourish  and  have  the  right  to  grow. 
As  Sergei  Eisenstein  has  said  in  his 
book,  “The  Film  Sense,”  “War  usually 
implies  the  subordination  of  all  work 
in  the  field  of  art,  especially  art  theory, 
and  all  research  work  outside  the  limits 
of  war  needs.  Fully  revealed  and  fully 
sounded,  the  definitive  rise  of  an  art  of 
the  cinema  and  a  cinematographic  meth¬ 
od  begins  with  the  conclusion  of  the 
nightmare  through  which  man  now 
passes.” 

So  it  is  with  the  many  young  pho¬ 
tographers  who  are  now  in  the  service 
of  the  country  or  who,  like  myself,  are 
about  to  enter  it,  and  who  in  the  future 
hope  to  embrace  this  medium  which  has 
become  the  popular  art-form. 

I  don’t  think  that  in  either  our  pre¬ 
war  dreams  or  our  present  ambitions 
for  finding  ourselves  places  in  the  indus¬ 
try  after  the  war,  many  of  us  have  been 


We’ve  often  discussed  with  college  students 
interested  in  cinematography  and,  more  recently, 
with  young  men  trained  as  combat  cinematog¬ 
raphers  for  the  Armed  Forces,  the  reasons 
behind  their  interest  and  aspirations  in  profes¬ 
sional  cinematography.  The  author  of  this  article, 
a  recent  graduate  of  a  midwest  college,  now 
waiting  a  call  to  Officers’  Training  for  the  Air 
Force .  Photo  Section  has,  we  believe,  summarized 
the  viewpoint  of  these  young  men  more  clearly 
than  we  have  yet  heard  it  expressed.  As  such, 
both  the  article  and  the  ideas  it  expresses  merit 
careful  consideration  from  everyone  within  the 
professional  industry. — THE  EDITOR. 


particularly  attracted  either  by  the  so- 
called  glamor  of  the  cinema,  or  by  the 
comparatively  high  earnings  the  indus¬ 
try  olfers  those  who  are  successful.  The 
simple  fact  is  that  we  like  cinematogra¬ 
phy  enough  to  make  it  our  life  work. 
And  some  of  us,  at  least,  have  sufficient 
faith  in  motion  picture’s  power  to  influ¬ 
ence  the  lives  and  thinking  of  people  to 
want  to  do  our  bit  to  help  make  it  a 
more  powerful  influence  for  good  in  the 
world. 

The  full  maturity  which  the  motion 
picture  has  reached  within  the  last  ten 
years  has  made  it  one  of  the  greatest 
dramatic  and  informative  mediums  that 
have  come  out  of  our  technological  de¬ 
velopment.  Aside  from  the  field  of  en¬ 
tertainment,  the  motion  picture  has 
proved  to  be  not  only  an  instrument  of 
international  concept,  but  one  that  will 
prove  to  be  of  immense  value  in  the 
post-war  world  to  tie  the  nations  to¬ 
gether  instead  of  making  boundary  lines 
that  breed  suspicion  and  distrust. 

The  craftsmen  and  technicians  who 
are  working  for  the  conclusion  of  the 
present  world-wide  nightmare  will  then 
start  anew  the  task  of  absorbing  the 
concept  of  this  medium  so  that  it  will 
prove  to  be  man’s  unifying  effort  in  the 
world-to-be.  They  have  faith  not  only 
in  the  technical  heights  of  the  film  but 
in  man’s  ability  to  use  this  potent  force 
for  the  general  benefit  of  all  who  come 
under  its  influence. 

Ever  since  I  took  my  first  picture  with 
an  old  4x5  still  camera  not  so  many 
years  ago,  I  seemed  to  sense  the  possi¬ 
bilities  that  were  inherent  in  the  photo¬ 
graphic  realm.  But  anyone  who  has  pro¬ 
duced  a  good  still  picture  with  a  mes¬ 
sage  must  realize  how  much  more  im¬ 
portant  the  motion  picture  is,  and  how 
much  more  moving  and  dynamic  is  the 
story  that  can  virtually  live  for  us. 

Unique  as  this  triumph  is  for  the 
engineering  and  scientific  principles  in¬ 
volved,  it  should  be  and  is  more — it  is 
what  all  good  scientific  endeavor  must 
be,  the  realization  that  technique  is  the 
servant  of  the  artist  and  that  only  by 
his  full  understanding  and  talent  can  a 
technical  invention  reach  its  fullest 
heights,  especially  in  the  field  of  a  uni¬ 
versal  appeal  like  the  motion  picture. 

I’ve  wanted  to  make  movies,  probably 
ever  since  I  was  just  getting  started  in 


high  school.  Then,  perhaps,  it  was  the 
fascinating  technique  that  interested  me, 
but  now,  in  addition  to  a  highly  technical 
and  skilled  technique,  the  realization  is 
there  that  I  can  contribute  in  some  hum¬ 
ble  way  to  a  living,  moving  and  forceful 
medium  that  is  now  more  necessary  for 
the  good  will  of  all  men  than  at  any 
other  time  in  the  history  of  the  world. 

As  in  all  art-forms,  there  are  always 
many  subdivisions  of  the  one  all-over 
conception.  The  same  is  true  for  the 
film,  where  the  documentary  episode, 
the  cartoon,  the  commercial  reel,  the 
newsreel,  and  of  course,  the  entertain¬ 
ment  film  are  established  forms. 

All  have  their  own  particular  prob¬ 
lems  and  techniques  which  have  been 
worked  out  by  the  cinematographers 
who  have  specialized  in  these  particular 
film  branches.  They  are  all  artists  of 
their  own  particular  interest.  The  film 
can  boast  about  these  specialists  who 
have  concentrated  upon  outstanding  cre¬ 
ative  effort — no  matter  if  it  be  the 
Disney  cartoon  or  the  fact-finding  evi¬ 
dence  of  an  Ivens  documentary. 

The  dramatic  film  represents  a  unique 
conception  in  the  realm  of  screen  art. 
Without  the  full  cooperation,  under¬ 
standing,  and  ability  of  every  worker  in¬ 
volved,  be  it  cinematographer,  director, 
or  producer  there  is  no  truly  great  film. 
But  when  this  happens,  and  the  screen 
unfolds  a  story  that  has  had  the  under¬ 
standing  touch  of  the  director,  the  ability 
of  the  set  designer,  the  dramatic  impetus 
of  the  writer  and  the  experience  and  skill 
of  the  cinematographer — then  the  screen 
will  rock  with  the  dramatic  impact. 

That  is  why  I  want  to  make  movies. 
To  be  around  the  camera  through  which 
all  these  human  efforts  must  pass,  and 
through  which  lies  a  valuable  and  almost 
endless  art-form  which  the  future  will 
develop  and  expand  into  the  post-war 
world’s  universal  “good  will  ambassa¬ 
dor.” 

That  is  why,  once  I’ve  done  my  share 
for  Victory  with  one  of  the  Army’s 
photographic  units  I — and  I  suppose 
many  others  like  me — will  be  beating  a 
path  to  Hollywood,  there  to  knock  at 
the  gates  of  the  cinema  until  we  find  the 
place  where  we’ll  be  most  useful  making 
movies  for  the  uncharted  new  world  of 
the  future!  END. 


50  February,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


From 
To  A 


TWO  and  a  half  years  ago  I  was 
a  prisoner  in  a  Nazi  prison  camp 
in  France.  Today  I’m  in  Holly¬ 
wood,  waiting  a  call  to  active  service 
as  a  cameraman  in  the  Signal  Corps  of 
the  U.  S.  Army.  And  I  hope  I  draw 
an  assignment  to  active  combat  camera¬ 
work  in  the  field,  for  I’ve  a  score  to 
settle  with  those  Nazis  for  some  of  the 
things  I  experienced  myself,  and  for 
many  more  I  saw  them  do  before  and 
after  the  fall  of  France. 

My  story  really  begins  several  years 
before  the  war.  I  am  an  American,  but 
I  was  born  and  brought  up  in  Paris. 
My  father  had  flown  with  the  Lafayette 
Escadrille  in  World  War  I,  and  remained 
in  France  after  the  war. 

My  first  active  contact  with  profession¬ 
al  cinematography  came  about  a  dozen 
years  ago,  when  through  some  friends 
I  got  a  job  in  the  camera  department 
of  the  French  Paramount  studio  at  Join- 
ville.  In  time,  as  I  learned  more  about 
the  work,  I  found  myself  placed  in 
charge  of  the  department — which  wasn’t 
as  much  of  a  job  as  it  sounds  like  on 
this  side  of  the  Atlantic,  for  even  the 
biggest  French  studios  are  smaller  than 
the  smallest  of  Hollywood’s  “independ¬ 
ent”  studios. 

In  time,  as  Paramount’s  French  pro¬ 
duction  slackened,  the  Paris  office  of 
Paramount  News  began  to  press  me  into 
service  now  and  then  as  a  newsreel 
cameraman,  “covering”  news  events 
when  their  regular  crews  were  busy 
elsewhere. 

Finally,  Paramount’s  French  studio 
activities  stopped  altogether.  So  did  my 
job.  At  that  time,  French  production 
everywhere  had  reached  a  very  low  ebb, 
and  as  I  like  to  eat,  I  decided  I’d  better 
seek  elsewhere  for  a  job.  I  knew  they 
were  making  pictures  in  Berlin,  (this 
was  before  Hitler’s  rise)  and  finally 


decided  to  go  there  and  see  what  sort 
of  a  job  I  could  find. 

I  found  it — but  not  in  studio  pro¬ 
duction.  As  soon  as  the  UFA  officials 
learned  I’d  been  shooting  in  Paris  for 
Paramount  News,  they  handed  me  an 
Eyemo  and  said,  “OK,  you’re  hired.  We 
need  newsreel  cameramen  for  the  ‘UFA 
Wochenschau’ — so  go  out  and  get  busy.” 

I  did.  Of  course,  as  the  newest  and 
greenest  cameraman  on  the  newsreel,  I 
usually  drew  the  least  important,  routine 
assignments — the  sort  of  thing  that  had 
to  be  “covered,”  but  could  be  handled 
by  almost  anyone.  But  even  on  routine 
assignments  like  that,  luck  has  a  way 
of  creeping  in  and  helping  a  fellow 
sometimes. 

It  did  with  me.  One  day  I  was  as¬ 
signed  to  cover  an  attempt  at  the 
World’s  auto  speed  record  which  was  to 
be  made  by  one  of  Germany’s  leading 
race-drivers.  It  was  partly  a  bona-fide 
sporting  event,  and  partly  a  gesture  to 
publicize  Germany’s  recently-completed 
super-highway,  the  “Autobahn.”  And  I 
happened  to  be  the  only  cameraman 
available  for  the  job. 

It  started  out  in  very  routine  fash¬ 
ion.  The  driver  made  several  runs  over 
the  course,  each  time  just  missing  the 
300  mph.  record  he  was  aiming  at.  I 
covered  these  runs  in  routine  fashion, 
and  was  ready  to  pack  up  and  go  when 
he  said  to  me,  “Stick  around  a  bit. 
Maybe  I’ll  try  one  more  run.” 

Well,  I  had  my  story,  but  there  was 
one  angle  I  thought  I’d  like  to  have  to 
complete  it.  A  few  miles  along  the 
super-highway  was  an  intersection  where 
a  secondary  road  crossed  the  “Autobahn” 
on  an  overpass  bridge.  I  thought  a  shot 
from  this  overpass,  as  the  racer  came 
streaking  down  the  long,  straight  high¬ 
way  directly  toward  the  camera,  would 
add  a  novel  angle  the  editors  would 


Above:  Trains,  road  traffic  and  especially  ambulances 
are  favorite  targets  of  Nazi  aviators.  Below:  One 
Heinkel  that  won't  strafe  and  more  ambulances. 


appreciate.  I  didn’t  realize — then — just 
how  much  they’d  appreciate  it! 

Soon  after  I  got  my  camera  well  set 
up  on  the  bridge,  I  heard  the  whine 
of  the  racer  coming  toward  me.  As 
the  car  came  in  sight,  I  pressed  the 
button  and  started  the  camera. 

Right  there,  luck  stepped  into  my 
picture  in  a  big  way.  It  was  good  luck 
for  me,  but  bad  luck  for  the  driver. 
Just  as  the  car  got  nicely  into  the  pic¬ 
ture,  a  tire  blew  out.  At  three  hundred 
miles  an  hour  a  blow-out  is  more  than 
a  mere  minor  accident:  for  the  next 
few  seconds  the  air  was  full  of  pieces 
of  the  car  scattering  themselves  over 
several  hundred  meters  of  landscape. 
When  it  was  all  over,  there  was  very 
little  left  of  either  the  car  or  its  un¬ 
fortunate  driver.  And  I  had  the  whole 
thing  on  film — ! 

It  was  luck,  pure  and  simple,  but  the 
newsreel  editors  didn’t  think  so.  They 
said  a  lot  of  very  nice  things  about 
my  skill  and  news-sense  .  .  .  and  I  be¬ 
came  one  of  the  bigger  shots  of  the 
newsreel  staff  from  then  on. 

I  stayed  with  this  job  all  through 
the  years  while  the  Nazi  government 
was  building  its  power.  I  was  one  of 
the  official  cameramen  assigned  to  film 
the  entry  of  Hitler  and  his  Nazi  troops 
into  Austria.  In  this  assignment,  I 
even  had  the  dubious  pleasure  of  meet¬ 
ing  and  photographing  the  Nazi  Fuehrer. 

Contrary  to  the  prevailing  impres¬ 
sion,  he  is — or  was  at  that  time — a  very 
pleasant  person  to  meet.  He  can  be 
friendly  and  agreeable,  and  my  impres¬ 
sion  of  him  was  that  he  was  a  man  of 
more  than  ordinary  force  and  brilliance. 
Frankly,  I  think  it’s  a  very  unfortunate 
coincidence  for  us  that  his  appearance 
(Continued  on  Page  68) 


A  Nazi  Prison  Camp 
Signal  Corps  Camera 

By  CHARLES  SWEENY 


American  Cinematographer  •  February,  1943  51 


Aces  of  the  Camera 
XXV: 

Phil  Tannura,  A.S.C. 

By  WALTER  BLANCHARD 


PHIL  TANNURA,  A.S.C.,  literally 
grew  up  with  the  motion  picture 
industry.  Though  only  in  his  mid¬ 
dle  forties,  he  can  look  back  upon  a 
career  of  thirty-five  years  in  the  indus¬ 
try,  during  which  he  has  had  a  broader 
and  more  varied  experience  with  virtu¬ 
ally  every  phase  of  production  that  has 


fallen  to  the  lot  of  almost  any  other 
member  of  the  camera  profession. 

“Little  Phil’s”  movie  career  began 
with  the  old  Thomas  Edison  Studio  back 
in  1908 — but  not  as  a  cameraman.  True, 
they  were  hiring  cameramen  young  in 
those  days  .  .  .  but  not  undersized 
eleven-year-olds  in  short  pants.  “Little 


Phil”  began  his  career  on  the  other 
side  of  the  cameras,  as  a  child  actor. 

In  those  days,  a  “feature  production” 
was  usually  a  split-reel,  about  500  feet 
in  length.  Young  Tannura  starred  in 
scores  of  these  films,  and  he  still  remem¬ 
bers  vividly  the  excitement  that  rippled 
through  the  industry  when  some  ambi¬ 
tious  producer  decided  to  make  pictures 
a  whole  thousand  feet  long! 

But  after  four  or  five  years  of  ju¬ 
venile  stardom,  the  “awkward  age”  over¬ 
took  Phil,  as  it  has  many  another  adoles¬ 
cent  luminary  since.  He  retired  from  the 
screen  to  devote  himself  to  the  moi'e 
serious  business  of  growing  up  and  go¬ 
ing  to  high  school. 

A  readjustment  like  that  isn’t  easy, 
thought,  and  before  long  young  Tan¬ 
nura  found  himself  itching  to  get  back 
to  work.  He  stuck  it  out  for  two  or 
three  years,  but  finally  it  was  too  much 
for  him,  and  back  he  went  into  harness. 
But  only  briefly  to  acting:  young  as  he 
was,  he  decided  that  a  career  in  the 
technical  end  of  the  industry  would  be 
not  only  much  more  interesting  to  him, 
but  more  lasting. 

So  he  asked  for  a  job  anywhere  in  the 
photographic  department  of  the  Edison 
Company. 

He  found  it  as  an  assistant  in  the 
still  photographic  darkroom.  There  he 
learned  to  mix  chemicals,  to  develop 
negatives,  and  to  make  prints.  And 
finally  he  was  sent  out  to  work  as  one 
of  the  industry’s  earliest  still  photog¬ 
raphers. 

“But  that,”  he’ll  tell  you,  “didn’t  mean 
what  it  does  today,  when  there  is  a  still 
man  attached  to  each  production  unit. 
In  those  days,  there  was  just  one  still 
man — for  the  whole  studio!  If  there 
were  only  one  or  two  companies  work¬ 
ing,  the  still  man  was  in  luck.  But  if 
there  were  four,  or  five  or  six  companies 
working,  he  still  had  to  shoot  the  stills 
for  all  of  them. 

“In  those  early  days,  however,  that 
wasn’t  as  impossible  a  task  as  it  sounds 
today.  Making  silent  pictui-es,  as  many 
as  half-a-dozen  companies  would  use 
the  same  stage  simultaneously.  Here 
there  might  be  a  troupe  making  a  ‘soci¬ 
ety  drama’;  next  to  it — perhaps  only 
five  or  ten  feet  away — would  be  one 
making  a  ‘Western’;  and  a  few  feet 
farther  on  might  be  one  making  a  slap¬ 
stick  comedy,  while  a  ‘cops-and-robbers 
melodrama  might  be  shooting  (very  lit¬ 
erally!)  over  in  another  corner.  The 
still  man  simply  circulated  from  one 
troupe  to  the  other,  shooting  his  stills 
impartially  as  he  saw  fit  and  the  op¬ 
portunity  presented  itself.” 

Still  work  was  an  improvement  on 
acting,  he  decided,  but  it  still  wasn’t 
quite  what  he  wanted.  As  he  watched 
the  studio’s  cinematographers  (camera¬ 
men,  they  were  called  then)  he  decided 
that  there,  at  last,  was  the  sort  of  work 
he  wanted  to  do.  So  he  went  to  the 
studio’s  technical  heads  and  asked  for  a 
job  that  would  lead  more  directly  to 
cine  camerawork. 

That,  in  those  days,  meant  serving  an 

(Continued  on  Page  74) 


52 


February,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


THROUGH  the  EDITOR'S  FINDER 


THE  recent  announcement  that  this 
year  the  Academy  Award  for  the 
year’s  best  achievement  in  special-effects 
technique  will  be  recognized  with  a  Class 
I  Award — the  familiar  “Oscar”  statu¬ 
ette — instead  of  the  Class  II  plaque 
hitherto  awarded  is  a  step  in  the  right 
direction.  For  many  years  special-effects 
technicians  have  been  playing  an  in¬ 
creasingly  vital  role  in  production,  and 
it  is  about  time  they  received  full  rec¬ 
ognition. 

This  year  especially,  when  special- 
effects  camerawork,  either  in  the  fonn 
of  miniatures,  matte  shots,  or  process 
background  scenes,  is  literally  making 
possible  the  production  of  pictures  which 
could  not  otherwise  be  filmed  in  the  face 
of  arbitrary  ceilings  on  set  construc¬ 
tion,  transportation  difficulties,  and  the 
many  other  restrictions  of  movie-making 
in  wartime,  the  industry  should  bestow 
its  highest  awards  upon  the  men  who 
have  most  greatly  achieved  in  this  spe¬ 
cialized  field. 

But  while  this  present  move  is  a  wel¬ 
come  step  in  the  right  direction,  it  does 
not  in  our  opinion  go  far  enough,  for, 
as  in  the  past,  this  year’s  special-effects 
award  is  to  be  made  jointly  for  special- 
effects  in  picture  and  in  sound.  To  our 
mind,  these  two  should  be  divorced,  and 
two  separate  awards  made. 

Too  often — especially  under  today’s 
circumstances — a  really  noteworthy 
achievement  in  picture  special-effects 
may  be  coupled  with  a  recording  job 
which  involved  nothing  particularly  out 
of  the  ordinary.  By  the  same  token, 
really  brilliant  achievements  in  the 
special-effects  use  of  sound  may  be,  and 
probably  have  been  yoked  to  photo¬ 
graphic  work  which  represented  little, 
if  anything,  beyond  routine,  run-of-the- 
mill  production  camerawork.  Under  such 
conditions  the  award  may  very  well  go 
to  an  achievement  which  in  picture  or 
sound  or  both  represents  really  less 
than  the  year’s  best  achievement  in  one 
or  the  other  of  these  fields.  The  Acad¬ 
emy  Awards  are — or  should  be — too  big 
for  any  compromise,  “face-saving”  hand¬ 
outs  given  for  anything  less  than  clear- 
cut  superior  achievement. 

In  addition,  it  has  never  seemed  fair 
to  us  that  the  sound  men  should  partici¬ 
pate  in  the  nominating  and  voting  upon 
an  award  which  is  so  essentially  cine¬ 
matographic  as  that  for  special-effects 
photography.  Neither  is  it  fair  to  the 
sound  engineers  that  cinematographers 
or  art  directors,  most  of  whom  are  cer¬ 
tainly  not  trained  recording  engineers 
or  anything  like  it,  should  be  perhaps 
a  dominant  factor  in  singling  out  the 
best  achievement  in  the  special-effects 
use  of  sound. 

We’re  glad,  we  admit,  that  special- 
effects  has  been  raised  to  full  “Oscar” 
status — but  why  not  split  it  into  two 
“Oscars,”  and  give  both  sound  and  pic¬ 
ture  their  full  due — ? 


A  FEW  days  ago  one  of  the  indus¬ 
try’s  most  distinguished  cinema¬ 
tographers — a  recent  Academy  Award 
winner  and  the  recipient  of  innumerable 
other  honors  for  his  achievements  in 
photographing  many  of  the  finest  films 
made  during  the  last  twenty  years — 
dropped  into  the  office  for  a  chat.  After 
a  polite  dalliance  with  such  prelimina¬ 
ries  as  the  weather,  the  latest  war  news, 
and  similar  topics,  the  conversation  nat¬ 
urally  turned  to  cinematography,  and  to 
this  magazine’s  reviews  in  particular. 

“I  like  your  reviews,”  he  said,  “but 
I  wish  you  would  more  frequently  re¬ 
view  ‘B’  pictures.  That  may  sound 
strange  to  you,  coming  from  a  man  who 
seldom  does  anything  but  really  big  ‘A’ 
productions.  But  honestly,  I  think  the 
men  who  do  a  good  job  on  the  industry’s 
little  pictures  usually  deserve  more 
credit  than  the  ‘big  shots’  who  concen¬ 
trate  on  more  pretentious  big  pictures. 

“On  an  ‘A’  production,  the  man  at 
the  camera  has  the  best  of  everything 
laid  out  for  him,  virtually  on  a  silver 
platter.  He  works  with  the  studio’s  best 
players  and  finest  directors,  not  to  men¬ 
tion  the  best  of  stories.  He  has  the  fin¬ 
est  possible  sets,  and  often  the  collabora¬ 
tion  of  a  skilled  production  designer. 
He  has  all  the  physical  facilities  he 
needs,  and  an  abundance  of  time.  If  he 
finds  it  necessary  to  rehearse  half  a 
day  on  some  intricate  camera-movement, 
or  to  delay  two  or  three  hours  while  a 
certain  type  of  lamp  is  obtained  and 
rigged — what  does  it  matter  in  a  sched¬ 
ule  of  two,  three  or  more  months,  so 
long  as  the  result  on  the  screen  is  per¬ 
fect? 

“But  the  man  on  the  ‘B’  picture  works 
with  left-overs.  His  sets  are  remodeled 
from  standing  sets  left  over  from  many 
another  film.  His  players  are  usually  in¬ 
expert  youngsters  on  the  way  up,  or 
oldsters  on  the  way  down.  The  stories — 
well,  the  less  said  about  them,  the  bet¬ 
ter.  His  director  may  be  a  rank  new¬ 
comer  whom  he  must  coach  in  picture¬ 
making,  and  often  ‘carry.’  He  is  be¬ 
grudged  every  minute  that  isn’t  spent 
on  actual  shooting,  for  his  picture  may 
have  a  schedule  ranging  from  seven  days 
to  perhaps  as  much  as  three  or  four 
weeks,  and  a  budget  that  wouldn’t  sup¬ 
port  a  week’s  work  on  the  more  leisurely 
‘A.’ 

“Anything  the  ‘B’  picture  man  puts 
on  the  screen,  he  must  do  absolutely  by 
himself,  and  in  the  face  of  tremendous 
obstacles  .  .  .  often  downright  opposi¬ 
tion.  If  he  does  a  good  job  under 
such  circumstances,  it’s  more  of  an 
achievement  than  many  an  Academy 
Award  job  on  a  big-budget  ‘A.’  Hon¬ 
estly,  I’ve  often  thought  that  if  I  were 
lucky  enough  to  win  another  ‘Oscar,’  I’d 
like  to  step  down  from  the  platform 
with  it  and  hand  it  to  some  one  of  the 
men  who  do  good  work  on  the  industry’s 


‘B’s,’  with  never  a  look-in  at  the  credit 
they  really  deserve!” 

We’re  rather  proud  that  this  opinion 
so  closely  coincides  with  our  own.  Un¬ 
fortunately,  we  can’t  see  or  review 
nearly  all  of  the  industry’s  production. 
Both  the  space  available  for  reviews, 
and  the  time  we  have  available  for  at¬ 
tending  previews  are  too  limited  to  per¬ 
mit  that.  But  for  more  than  a  dozen 
years  it  has  been  a  guiding  principle 
in  writing  our  reviews  that  as  between 
a  man  who  has  done  an  excellent  job 
on  an  ‘A’  production  and  one  who  has 
done  an  adequate  one  on  a  ‘B’  picture, 
the  man  on  the  program  film  is  likeliest 
to  deserve  more  credit,  because  of  the 
merit  of  the  achievement  he  has  turned 
out  virtually  single-handed,  with  the 
cards  stacked  against  him. 

• 

IT  ISN’T  OFTEN  that  we  concern 
ourselves  with  anything  other  than 
the  technique  of  films,  much  less  suggest 
that  a  film  of  fifteen  or  sixteen  years 
ago  be  revived  for  general  showing. 
But  today,  with  all  the  talk  about  the 
way  motion  pictures  can  reveal  a  na¬ 
tional  viewpoint,  and  the  pro-and-con 
discussion  about  the  good  or  bad  char¬ 
acteristics  of  the  German  people,  and 
what  they  might  do  if  the  present  Nazi 
Government  were  removed,  we  can’t  help 
wishing  that  someone  would  exhume  that 
famous  UFA  silent  film  of  1926,  “The 
Last  Laught.”  We’ve  seen  it  many 
times,  and  each  time  we’ve  been  increas¬ 
ingly  impressed  by  the  lesson  it  taught 
of  the  average  German’s  adoration  of  a 
uniform. 

The  story  is  simple  enough — just  the 
story  of  an  old  man  and  his  uniform  as 
a  hotel  doorman  .  .  .  how  his  loss  of  the 
right  to  wear  that  uniform  changed  him 
ovei'night  from  an  honored  citizen  of 
his  neighborhood  into  a  pariah,  and 
stripped  from  him  even  the  incentive 
to  live.  In  the  American  version,  a  syn¬ 
thetic  ‘happy  ending’  was  provided;  but 
in  the  original  German  production  the 
old  man  committed  suicide  because  he 
could  no  longer  wear  his  gaudy  uniform. 
An  American  would  feel  uncomfortable 
in  clothes  that  set  him  so  apart  from 
his  fellows;  the  German  felt  lost  with¬ 
out  them. 

The  makers  of  this  film  certainly  had 
no  intention  of  pointing  out  this  strange 
quirk  of  their  national  psychology,  but 
it  is  there,  and  powerfully  presented. 
We  wish  that  every  American — and  es¬ 
pecially  those  who  will  make  the  peace 
to  come — could  see  this  film  and  absorb 
its  lesson.  And  we  hope,  too,  that  in 
that  future  time  when  American  films 
play  their  destined  part  in  re-educating 
the  Axis  peoples  to  civilized  ways,  we 
may  produce  films  which  will  with  equal 
power  preach  the  virtues  and  viewpoints 
of  the  Democratic  way  of  life. 


American  Cinematographer  •  February,  1943  53 


A.S.C.  on  Parade 


We  lead  off  with  a  great  big  salute  to 
Captain  Clyde  De  Vinna,  A.S.C.,  U.S.- 
M.C.R.,  shown  above  smiling  as  one  of 
20th-Fox’s  glamorizing  still-men  snapped 
him  just  before  he  took  off  for  parts  un¬ 
known  for  his  leatherneck  indoctrination 
and  then  active  service  as  skipper  of  a 
Marine  Corps  photo  unit. 

• 

Another  salute  to  Leo  Tover,  A.S.C., 
now  officially  First  Lieutenant  Tover  of 
the  Army  Signal  Corps’  big  production 
center  in  Long  Island. 

• 

And  did  you  know  that  Associate 
Member  Wilson  Leahy,  A.S.C.,  is  now 
Lieutenant  Leahy  of  the  Navy’s  Film 
Processing  Unit,  Photo  Science  Labora¬ 
tory?  He  sent  a  cheery  note  from  his 
Eastern  Station  where  he  has  an  impor¬ 
tant  job  seeing  to  the  processing  of  the 
Navy’s  training  and  combat  films. 

• 

Lieutenant  Henry  Freulich,  A.S.C., 
U.S.M.C.R.,  in  town  for  a  few  days  re¬ 
cently,  tells  us  he’s  happier  as  a  leather¬ 
neck  than  he’s  ever  been  in  his  life. 
Henry  expects  to  be  in  Hollywood  again 
soon,  and  promises  to  drop  in  to  the 
A.S.C.  and  let  us  “mug”  him  for  next 
month’s  “A.S.C.  On  Parade.” 

• 

Thanks  to  Johnnie  Mescall,  A.S.C., 
for  his  note  praising  one  of  the  Edi¬ 
torials  in  last  month’s  “Through  the 
Editor’s  Finder.” 

• 

Charles  Marshall,  A.S.C.,  off  to  the 
big  Navy  Air  Base  at  Pensacola  with 
the  assignment  to  photograph  an  aerial 
training  film  for  the  Navy. 

• 

The  yearly  parade  of  “Best  Film 
Achievements”  is  on  again!  “Film 
Daily”  led  off  with  its  poll  of  the  na¬ 
tion’s  film  critics,  who  selected  the  fol¬ 
lowing  as  the  five  best  photographic 
achievements  of  1942:  “How  Green  Was 
My  Valley,”  photographed  by  Arthur 
Miller,  A.S.C.;  “The  Magnificent  Amber- 
sons,”  photographed  by  Stanley  Cortez, 
A.S.C.;  “Reap  the  Wild  Wind,”  photo¬ 


graphed  by  Victor  Milner,  A.S.C.,  and 
Capt.  William  V.  Skall,  A.S.C.;  and 
“Wake  Island,”  photographed  by  Theo¬ 
dor  Sparkuhl,  A.S.C.;  Lt.  William  C. 
Mellor,  A.|S.C.,  Harry  Hallenberger, 
A.S.C.,  Elmer  G.  Dyer,  A.S.C.,  W.  Wal¬ 
lace  Kelley,  A.S.C.,  Gordon  Jennings, 
A.S.C.,  and  Farciot  Edouart,  AS.C. 

• 

And  from  England  comes  the  word 
that  the  Third  Dimensional  Society  of 
England  has  pronounced  “Eagle  Squad¬ 
ron”  and  “The  Magnificent  Ambersons,” 
both  photographed  by  Stanley  Cortez, 
A.S.C.,  the  biggest  achievements  in 
three  -  dimensional  photography  during 
1942. 

• 

And  Rudy  Mate,  A.S.C.,  goes  to  Co¬ 
lumbia  to  photograph  “Sahara.”  On  this 
one  we  gather  Rudy’s  skill  at  glamor¬ 
izing  the  femmes  won’t  be  called  into 
play  .  .  .  the  picture  has  a  cast  of  seven 
men,  and  the  “love-interest”  is  repre¬ 
sented  by  a  30-ton  tank.  However,  Co¬ 
lumbia’s  glamor  gals  will  get  plenty  of 
opportunity  to  look  lovely  for  Rudy’s 
camera,  as  that  studio  has  taken  over 
his  contract,  which  has  a  year  or  more 
to  run,  from  Sir  Alexander  Korda. 


Captain  John  Alton,  A.S.C.,  sends  this 
picture  himself  with  his  present  Com¬ 
mander,  Major  General  O.  W.  Griswold, 
on  whose  staff  he  is  now  serving  as 
liaison  officer  between  the  Commanding 
General’s  office  and  the  Signal  Photo¬ 
graphic  Laboratories,  and  his  former 
Commander,  Lt.-Col.  Edward  J.  Hardy, 
under  whose  command  Alton  received 
his  basic  military  training.  John  reports 
that  he  is  attending  General  Griswold’s 
staff  school,  and  was  recently  called 
upon  to  lecture  to  one  of  these  classes 
on  “Motion  Pictures — the  New  Weapon.” 
He’s  enthusiastic  about  the  way  the 
Hollywood  men  in  his  outfit  have  taken 
to  soldiering.  “You  should  see  some 
of  our  former  executives,  editors,  direct¬ 
ors  of  photography,  sound  engineers, 
and  so  on,  command  a  battalion,”  he 
says,  “and  march  on  a  hike  with  full 
pack,  tin  hats,  gas-masks,  etc.  It  would 
make  West  Pointers  envious!” 


Reunion  in  the  Pacific — Pathe  News 
War  Correspondent  Len.  H.  Roos, 
F.R.P.S.,  (left)  and  Lieutenant  Philip 
M.  Chancellor,  A.S.C.,  F.R.G.S.,  A.R.P.S., 
U.S.N.R.,  meet  “somewhere  in  the  Pa¬ 
cific  Area.”  They  hadn’t  seen  each  other 
for  over  eight  years. 

• 

While  we’re  on  Naval  matters,  Lt. 
Gregg  Toland,  A.S.C.,  U.S.N.R.,  recently 
took  time  off  from  the  picture  he’s 
producing,  writing,  directing  and  pho¬ 
tographing  for  the  Navy  to  have  his 
tonsils  yanked.  Gregg  must  be  a  smart 
producer,  for  he  scheduled  the  carving 
for  a  Saturday,  so  he  could  be  back  on 
deck  the  following  Monday,  without 
having  to  “shoot  around”  himself! 

• 

James  Wong  Howe,  A.S.C.,  draws  the 
prize  plum  of  directing  the  photography 
of  Samuel  Goldwyn’s  forthcoming  big 
special  about  Russia,  “North  Star,”  with 
a  cast  any  producer  might  envy. 

• 

Harry  Perry,  A.,S.C.,  gets  a  nice  break 
at  Universal.  After  spending  three 
months  shooting  backgrounds  and  at¬ 
mospheric  scenes  with  Atlantic  convoys 
for  “Corvettes  In  Action,”  he  has  been 
selected  to  direct  the  photography  of 
the  production  scenes  in  the  studio. 
Good  work,  Harry! 

• 

Hal  Mohr,  A.S.C.,  just  signed  a  new 
term  contract  at  Universal.  His  first 
assignment  is  to  direct  the  photography 
of  “Phantom  of  the  Opera,”  in  Techni¬ 
color. 

• 

Charles  Schoenbaum,  A.S.C.,  phones  in 
to  tell  us  he’s  just  finished  a  four- 
months’  assignment  Technicoloring 
MGM’s  biggie,  “Salute  to  the  Marines.” 
He  handled  this  big  Technicolor  assign¬ 
ment  solo  and,  so  we  hear,  has  done 
a  swell  job.  We’ll  be  waiting  for  the 
preview,  Charlie! 

• 

Henry  Sharp,  A.,S.C.,  says  that  while 
the  typical  “Hollywood  wolf”  used  to 
prefer  a  girl  who’d  meet  him  half  way, 
now  that  gas  rationing  has  gone  into 
effect  he  knows  one  who  insists  on  a 
girl  who’ll  meet  him  half  wray — and 
has  a  “C”  card  to  do  it  with! 

• 

Nick  Musuraca,  A.S.C.,  is  doubling  in 
brass  at  RKO,  directing  the  photog¬ 
raphy  of  “Fallen  Sparrow,”  and  also 
serving  as  Italian  language  consultant. 


54 


February,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


PHOTOGRAPHY  OF  THE  MONTH 


CHINA  GIRL 

20th  Century-Fox  Production. 

Dirtector  of  Photography:  Lee  Garmes, 

A.S.C. 

One  expects  interesting  camerawork 
from  Lee  Garmes,  A.S.C.,  and  in  this 
pleasant  little  melodrama  he  delivers  it. 
“China  Girl”  is  by  no  means  Garmes’ 
best  work,  but  his  contribution  is  unques¬ 
tionably  the  most  distinguished  part  of 
the  production.  His  mood  and  effect- 
lightings,  together  with  his  characteris¬ 
tically  pictorial  compositions,  lift  the 
picture  decidedly  above  what  it  would  be 
otherwise. 

To  this  writer’s  opinion,  Garmes  was 
probably  at  his  best  in  the  extremely 
effective  opening  sequence.  This  is 
dramatic  cinematography  at  its  best, 
and  gets  the  picture  off  to  an  unusually 
good  start.  But  throughout  the  picture, 
Garmes’  camera  does  a  great  deal  more 
than  either  actors,  direction  or  script  to 
establish  and  maintain  a  dramatic  mood 
and  that  elusive  something  known  as 
“production  value.” 

The  art  direction  of  Richard  Day  and 
Wiard  B.  Ihnen  is  particularly  inter¬ 
esting,  and  gives  Garmes  excellently  pic¬ 
torial  material  with  which  to  work.  It 
furnishes,  too,  an  excellent  indication  of 
the  inter-studio  cooperation  engendered 
by  the  wartime  limitation  on  new  set  con¬ 
struction,  for  unless  we  miss  our  guess 
very  badly  one  of  the  key  sets — the  big 
hotel  lobby — was  one  built  originally  by 
MGM  for  “They  Met  In  Bombay,”  ap¬ 
parently  borrowed  by  20th-Fox  and  very 
skillfully  disguised. 

Henry  Hathaway’s  direction  was  below 
par,  and  seemed  particularly  amateurish 
in  the  unusual  number  of  very  bad  cuts 
which  furnished  a  constantly  jarring  note 
which  ran  through  the  entire  picture. 

STAR  SPANGLED  RHYTHM 

Paramount  Production. 

Directors  of  Photography:  Lt.  Leo 

Tover,  A.S.C.,  and  Theodor  Sparkuhl, 

A.S.C. 

A  big  musical  like  this  one,  which  is 
primarily  a  revue  to  showcase  virtually 
all  of  Paramount’s  stars,  isn’t  the  sort 
of  picture  which  offers  its  photographers 
the  most  outstanding  of  opportunities, 
but  Tover  and  Sparkuhl  have  given  the 
picture  an  unusually  effective  photo- 
ghaphic  mounting.  They’ve  done  an  un¬ 
usually  smooth  job  of  it,  too;  it’s  al¬ 
most  impossible  to  tell  where  Tover’s 
contribution  leaves  off  and  Sparkuhl’s 
begins.  The  picture  covers  an  unusual 
range  of  photographic  and  dramatic 
moods,  too,  ranging  from  extreme  high- 
key  “filmusical”  and  lightings  to  some 
very  fine,  extreme  low-key  effect-lighted 
sequences. 

To  our  mind,  the  pictorial  highlights 
were  the  “Black  Magic”  ballet  number 
(which  was,  incidentally,  photographed 
by  John  Seitz,  A.S.C.,  though  not  cred¬ 
ited),  Rochester’s  zoot-suited  “Smart 


as  a  Tack”  number,  and  the  concluding 
“Old  Glory”  number.  The  latter,  inci¬ 
dentally,  provides  the  final  fade-out  in 
most  effective  fashion  by  lap-dissolving 
from  black-and-white  to  color.  It  is  un¬ 
fortunate,  though,  that  the  black-and- 
white  portion  of  this  final  shot  was  not, 
or  perhaps  could  not  have  been  printed 
five  or  six  lights  darker,  to  match  better 
with  the  rest  of  the  sequence. 

The  special-effects  staffs  of  Gordon 
Jennings,  A.S.C.  (Special  Effects)  and 
Farciot  Edouart,  A.S.C.  (Transparency 
Projection)  certainly  deserve  high  credit 
for  their  contributions  to  the  picture, 
though  they  were  not  officially  credited. 
Jennings’  work  in  the  “Black  Magic” 
number  was  particularly  fine,  and  in 
the  jeep  number — “I’m  Doing  It  For 
Defense” — both  he  and  optical  printer 
expert  Paul  Lerpae,  A.S.C.,  have  contrib¬ 
uted  outstandingly  and  with  hilarious  ef¬ 
fect.  Old-timers  will  recognize  in  this 
sequence  Fred  Jackman’s  famous  old 
trick  of  submarining  a  car  through  a 
lake — and  it’s  still  good  for  as  big  a 
laugh  for  Paramount  today  as  it  was  for 
Mack  Sennett  twenty-five  years  ago. 

MOON  AND  SIXPENCE 

United  Artists’  Release. 

Director  of  Photography:  John  F.  Seitz, 

A.S.C. 

“Moon  and  Sixpence”  is  one  of  the 
more  interesting  releases  of  the  season, 
both  dramatically  and  photographically. 
Director  of  Photography  Seitz  has  a  pic¬ 
ture  that  is  replete  with  pictorially  inter¬ 
esting  atmosphere,  and  aided  by  the  al¬ 
ways  deft  production  designing  of  Gor¬ 
don  Wiles,  he  takes  full  advantage  of 
every  bit  of  mood  and  atmosphere. 

The  picture  is  interesting,  too,  in  that 
it  makes  effective  use  of  a  three-color 
Cinecolor  enlargement  from  a  16mm. 
Kodachrome  original  to  provide  a  brief 
sequence  in  color.  The  central  character 
is  a  painter,  and  all  through  the  picture 
Director  A1  Lewin  very  cleverly  avoids 
showing  any  of  his  paintings:  even  when 
he  or  his  friends  exhibit  them  to  other 
characters,  all  that  the  audience  sees  is 
the  back  of  the  canvas.  The  paintings 
themselves  are  never  shown  until  just 
before  the  climax  of  the  picture — and 
then  they  are  shown  in  color,  adding  im¬ 
measurably  to  the  dramatic  effectiveness 
of  the  treatment. 

From  the  photographic  viewpoint,  this 
color  sequence  is  very  interesting.  It 
would  be  an  exaggeration  to  say  that  it 
is  fully  as  good  as  a  direct-35mm.  color 
sequence,  but  considering  its  16mm. 
origin,  the  results  on  the  screen  are  sur¬ 
prisingly  good.  In  the  first  few  scenes, 
it  struck  this  observer  that  cinematog¬ 
rapher  Seitz  was  lighting  with  a  little 
too  much  contrast  for  the  Kodachrome- 
Cinecolor  combination,  as  contrast  is  in¬ 
creased  and  shadow-detail  distorted  in 
the  enlarging  process.  But  when  the 
scenes  were  lit  rather  flatly,  the  results 


proved  excellent:  the  definition  was  sat¬ 
isfactory,  and  the  color  rendion  good, 
though  it  seemed  the  color-saturation 
was  rather  higher  than  we’re  accus¬ 
tomed  to  in  Technicolor.  However,  in  this 
instance  the  bright  coloring  probably 
served  well  to  heighten  the  dramatic  re¬ 
sult  desired.  The  directorial  technique 
employed  in  getting  into  and  out  of  the 
brief  color  sequence  was  also  interesting. 

SEVEN  DAYS'  LEAVE 

RKO  Production. 

Director  of  Photography:  Robert  De 

Grasse,  A.S.C. 

Bob  De  Grasse  brings  this  entertaining 
little  musical  to  the  screen  with  the  sure 
smoothness  we’ve  come  to  associate  with 
his  name.  It’s  not  what  you’d  call  “a 
cameraman’s  picture,”  but  he  does  a 
good  deal  more  with  the  material  at 
hand  than  might  ordinarily  be  expected. 
Where  there’s  any  excuse  for  pictorial- 
ism,  he  provides  it;  where  there  aren’t 
pictorial  opportunities,  he  uses  camera 
and  lighting  so  deftly  that  the  audience 
is  seldom  conscious  of  photography.  And 
throughout,  his  treatment  of  the  players 
is  such  as  to  present  them  at  their  very 
best. 

I  MARRIED  A  WITCH 

United  Artists’  Release. 

Director  of  Photography:  Ted  Tetzlaff, 

A.S.C. 

Special  Effects:  Gordon  Jennings, 

A.S.C. 

This  is  an  unusual  picture  in  every 
way,  and  one  which  gives  its  cinematog¬ 
rapher  and  special-effects  technicians 
plenty  of  opportunity  for  spectacular 
achievement.  A  very  great  deal  of  the 
picture  is  of  a  nature  which  calls  for 
strikingly  dramatic  mood  lightings.  Tetz¬ 
laff  handles  these  superbly,  and  makes 
them  thoroughly  enjoyable  to  the  photo¬ 
graphically-minded. 

His  effect-lightings  and  compositions 
make  “I  Married  a  Witch”  a  picture  one 
could  enjoy  seeing  several  times.  His 
treatment  of  the  players  is,  as  always, 
excellent;  we  haven’t  seen  Veronica 
Lake  so  well  presented  in  some  time,  and 
what  his  camera  has  done  for  Frederic 
March  deserves  high  praise,  indeed. 

Like  the  “Topper”  pictures,  with  which 
it  must  inevitably  be  compared,  “I  Mar¬ 
ried  a  Witch”  depends  for  much  of  its 
humor  and  effectiveness  on  the  contribu¬ 
tions  of  the  special-effects  staff.  In  this, 
Gordon  Jennings,  A.S.C.,  and  his  asso¬ 
ciates  have  distinguished  themselves. 
Their  work,  like  Tetzlaff’s  production 
camerawork,  is  spectacularly  effective. 

The  direction  of  Rene  Clair  deserves 
careful  study,  too,  especially  in  the 
smooth  way  his  scenes  flow  together 
visually. 

It  is  in  a  way  unfortunate  that  “I 
Married  a  Witch”  is  one  of  the  group  of 
films  made  last  year  by  Paramount,  but 
(Continued  on  Page  66) 


American  Cinematographer  •  February,  1943  55 


9  TYladsL  (2  16  mm.  SaimeL- Qomsihrc 

By  RAYMOND  L.  MAKER 


EVERY  amateur  dreams  of  the  time 
when  he  can  make  his  movies  “in 
sound”  like  the  professional  films 
he  sees  in  theatres.  And  with  most  of  the 
commercially  marketed  sound-film  cam¬ 
eras  and  projectors  priced  well  above 
the  average  amateur’s  reach,  even  in 
pre-priority  days,  most  of  us  have  looked 
to  sound-on-disc  as  the  simplest  and  most 
economical  solution  to  the  problem  of 
sound.  I  did. 

But  after  completing  a  successful  fea¬ 
ture-length  amateur  sound  movie  using 
sound-on-disc,  I  changed  my  mind.  In 
“sounding”  some  of  the  sequences,  I 
found  myself  using  as  many  as  seven 
turntables  to  handle  the  various  discs 
carrying  the  dialog,  music,  sound-effects, 
and  so  on.  And  even  when  these  various 
records  were  dubbed  together  onto  a 
single  disc,  synchronization  was  always 
something  of  a  problem — especially  if 
the  film  broke,  or  had  to  be  re-spliced. 

So  I  decided  that  it  would  be  much 
easier — and  a  good  deal  better  all  around 
— if  I  switched  to  the  method  used  by 
the  professionals — sound-on-film.  Even  if 
it  necessarily  meant  making  my  own 
16mm.  sound-film  camera. 

Little  did  I  realize  what  I  was  letting 
myself  in  for! 

My  first  step,  of  course,  was  trying  to 
find  out  how  to  make  a  sound-on-film 
recorder.  After  a  futile  search  of  the 
larger  libraries,  I  came  to  the  conclu¬ 


sion  that  the  published  material  avail¬ 
able  simply  wasn’t  suitable  for  16mm. 
use.  Although  the  material  found  was 
excellent,  most  of  it  dealt  with  35mm., 
or  in  extremely  broad  generalities  con¬ 
cerning  16mm.  It  just  wasn’t  sufficiently 
detailed  to  help  the  fellow  who  wanted 
to  make  his  own  16mm.  sound-film  cam¬ 
era.  So  I  had  to  work  things  out  for 
myself  as  I  went  along. 

For  the  type  of  pictui'e  I  make,  and  for 
the  type  of  sound  conversion  I  had  in 
mind,  I  decided  that  the  old,  dependable 
Eastman  Model  A  was  the  most  suitable 
camera. 

The  first  problems  were  to  provide  the 
proper  separation — 24  frames — between 
the  sound  and  picture  apertures,  and  to 
provide  a  smooth,  continuous  movement 
of  the  film  past  the  sound-recording  aper¬ 
ture.  I  decided  that  the  most  practical 
way  to  do  this  would  be  to  run  the  film 
through  a  separate  sound-head  mounted 
below  the  camera  itself. 

Accordingly  a  light-proof  box  was 
built,  6  inches  deep,  514  inches  wide  and 
12  inches  long,  with  a  removable  plate  on 
the  left-hand  side  for  loading.  A  slit  was 
cut  in  the  base  of  the  camera-box  to 
correspond  with  a  similar  slit  in  the 
top  of  the  sound-recording  box.  The  two 
units  were  then  attached  together. 

A  set  of  rollers  and  a  flywheel  con¬ 
structed  along  lines  similar  to  those 
used  in  the  Amprosound  projector  were 


Ray  Maker  and  his  home-built  16mm.  sound  camera. 
The  light-valve  sound-recording  unit  is  in  the  housing 
below  the  camera-head,  which  will  be  recognized  as 
a  modernized  Model  A  Cine-Kodak. 

placed  in  the  sound  box  in  such  a  posi¬ 
tion  as  to  give  the  correct  spacing  be¬ 
tween  the  picture  -  aperture  and  the 
sound-recording  slit.  Directly  behind  the 
flywheel  was  inserted  a  light  shield  to 
prevent  any  stray  light  from  hitting  the 
film. 

The  recording  unit  was  built  as  fol¬ 
lows.  Upon  a  base  a  center-bracket  was 
placed  to  hold  the  light-valve.  This  valve 
was  made  from  two  pieces  of  block  steel 
lapped  together  with  a  horizontal  slit 
.001  of  an  inch  deep  and  .260  of  an  inch 
wide. 

Directly  opposite,  another  bracket  was 
installed  to  hold  the  vibrating  unit,  which 
was  made  from  a  rebuilt  RCA  phono¬ 
graph  pick-up.  In  place  of  a  needle,  a 
blade  .001  of  an  inch  thick,  l/16th  inch 
wide  and  14  -inch  long  was  fitted,  and 
honed  to  a  razor  edge  on  the  side  which 
strikes  the  beam  of  light. 

The  top  block  of  the  light-valve  was 
set  back  .002  of  an  inch.  The  blade  was 
then  adjusted  in  front  of  the  slit  and 
directly  over  the  bottom  block.  Both 
blocks  were  given  a  razor  edge  and 
blackened  so  that  no  unwanted  light 
would  reflect  at  broken  angles. 

To  form  the  image  of  this  slit  on  the 
(Continued  on  Page  73) 


56 


February,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


FREE  WHEELING  - 

The  Story  of  a  Bicycle -Movie  Vacation 

By  STANLEY  and  MARYJANE  BEAN 


E  had  a  car  once. 

We  drove  often  into  New 
Hampshire,  over  and  through 
the  White  Mountains.  It  was  one  of  our 
favorite  movie-making  and  hiking  spots. 

The  above  sentences  are  very  much 
in  the  past  tense ! 

Last  summer  we  had  a  few  days  vaca¬ 
tion  available,  three  bicycles  and  the 
desire  to  go  into  the  mountains  once 
more. 

The  above  desire  was  intense! 

So  we  loaded  the  wheels  and  the  cam¬ 
era  for  what  turned  out  to  be  one  of  the 
best  vacation  trips  ever. 

To  know  us  better,  here’s  Stan,  Jr., 
seven  last  August.  He  was  pace-setter, 
riding  his  own  bike  with  a  bag  of  tools 
and  spare  parts  and  recording  the  speed 
and  miles  with  a  cyclometer. 

Douglas,  the  younger  chap,  3  years  old 
the  day  after  Christmas,  rode  on  an 
air-cushioned  seat  behind  Daddy  (Big 
Stan).  This  seat  was  attached  to  the 
rear-carrier  holder  by  a  metal  piece  held 
by  two  thumb-screws  fastened  to  two 
bolts  set  through  the  bottom  of  the  seat 
itself.  It  was  as  firm  as  the  bike  itself 
but  easily  removed  without  a  wrench. 

Sitting  on  the  cushion,  Douglas  had  a 
comfortable  back,  arm-rests,  and  straps 
slung  under  Big  Stan’s  seat  which  served 


as  stirrups  for  his  feet.  When  traveling 
he  has  a  safety  strap  around  his  waist. 
It  is  not  possible  for  Douglas  to  fall  out 
or  off.  The  only  chance  of  getting  a  bump 
would  be  if  Big  Stan  took  a  spill  which, 
luckily,  he  didn’t. 

Maryjane  toted  the  real  load:  movie 
camera,  film,  clothing  changes,  bathing 
suits,  maps  and  actual  necessities 
(weight  under  35  pounds).  Our  bikes 
were  two-speed,  carried  lights,  mirrors 
(worth  their  weight  in  gold!),  and  bells. 

On  the  road  we  followed  in  this  order. 
Big  Stan  first  place;  Stan  Jr.  following, 
and  Maryjane  last  to  keep  her  eye  on 
the  situation.  In  this  order  Stan  Jr’s 
pace  is  observed  and  ours  regulated 
accojdingly.  He  seemed  to  ride  in  better 
order  when  any  amount  of  two-way 
traffic  was  encountered.  All  of  us  walked 
the  upgrades  and  through  cities  with 
congested  traffic. 

The  morning  our  trip  began,  we  left 
our  home  in  Amesbury,  Mass.,  early  on 
our  bikes  for  a  ten-mile  jaunt  to  Exeter, 
N.  H.  to  catch  the  Mountain  Train 
which  we  boarded  with  our  bikes  for  a 
lift  to  North  Conway,  N.  H.,  the  Eastern 
Gateway  to  the  mountains.  There  we 
took  to  the  highway  and  began  the  film 
record  of  our  vacation  in  16mm.  Koda- 
chrome. 


Left:  the  bicycling  Beans  ready  to  take  off,  Big  Stan 
and  little  Douglas  in  the  lead,  Stan,  Jr.,  as  pace¬ 
setter  in  the  middle,  and  Maryjane  bringing  up  the 
rear  with  the  luggage  and  the  precious  movie  cam¬ 
era.  Right:  frame  enlargements  from  the  Beans' 
16mm.  picture,  showing  how  it  was  done. 

We  rode  as  we  wished,  over  delightful 
birch-bordered  byways,  across  mountain 
streams,  through  rustic  covered  bridges, 
seeking  out  the  natural  wonders  and 
beauties  of  that  region.  Stops  were  fre¬ 
quent,  as  blueberries  were  ripe  and 
plentiful! 

Another  day  another  train  carried  us 
at  a  snail’s  pace  through  the  Crawford 
Notch  along  the  spectacularly  engineered 
railroad-bed  of  the  Maine  Central,  cut 
out  of  the  granite  sides  of  the  Willey 
Range  nearly  1,000  feet  above  the  motor 
road. 

At  Twin  Mountain  station  we  unloaded 
our  vehicles  with  the  help  of  the  train¬ 
men,  as  no  one  was  on  duty  at  the  sta¬ 
tion.  Our  journey  began  away  f rom  the 
rails  through  this  delightfully  healthy 
(Continued  on  Page  72) 


American  Cinematographer  •  February,  1943  57 


MOST  amateurs  probably  feel  that 
home  movies  and  substandard 
film  are  relatively  new  inventions, 
dating  from  Eastman’s  introduction  of 
16mm.  in  1923,  and  of  8mm.  in  1932.  But 
the  first  substandard  camera  made  its 
bow  forty-eight  years  ago,  in  1895!  Then, 
for  nearly  twenty-eight  years,  inventors 
here  and  in  Europe  struggled  to  perfect 
some  means  of  bringing  home  movies  to 
the  masses  in  a  safe  and  simplified 
form.  Along  the  way,  they  introduced 
such  professional  refinements  as  the  first 
pressure-plate  and  the  first  pilot-pin 
registration. 

But  until  1923  all  of  them  failed  of 
widespread  commercial  success  for  three 
very  good  reasons:  the  excessive  cost  of 
the  negative-positive  system;  the  exces¬ 
sive  danger  of  using  inflammable,  nitrate- 
base  film  in  the  home;  and  the  excessive 
complication  of  hand-cranked  cameras. 
Once  these  three  drawbacks  had  been 
removed  by  the  introduction  of  reversal 
film  coated  on  noninflammable  acetate- 
base  “safety  stock,”  and  the  development 
of  simple,  spring-driven  cameras,  the 
brakes  were  off  and  home  movies  became 
a  world-wide  institution. 

The  first  substandard  camera — which 
appears  also  to  have  been  the  first  de¬ 
signed  for  home  movie  use — was  the 
“Kinetic”  camera  introduced  by  Bert 
Acres  of  London  in  1895.  Edison  was  al¬ 
ready  using  the  35mm.  film  made  for  him 
by  Eastman,  and  Acres  got  his  narrower, 
and  therefore  less  expensive,  film  by  the 


Figure  2:  The  first  home  movie  camera — the 
I7|/2mm.  "Kinetic"  of  1895. 


Forty-Eight  Years  of  Home  Movies 


By  WILLIAM 


simple  trick  of  slitting  standard  35mm. 
negative  film  lengthwise.  This  gave  him 
a  film  1714  mm.  wide,  perforated  only  on 
one  edge,  as  shown  in  Figure  1,  with 
a  picture  half  the  size  of  a  standard 
35mm.  frame. 

His  camera  is  shown  in  Figure  2.  The 
unexposed  film  seems  to  have  been  car¬ 
ried  in  a  small,  closed  magazine  (C)  at¬ 
tached  to  the  hinged  top  door  of  the 
camera  (A).  From  there  it  fed  forward 
and  down  through  a  long  film-channel 
(D)  past  the  taking  lens  (0)  and  past 
a  sprocket  (J)  to  the  take-up  magazine 
(G). 

There  were  neither  claws  nor  sprock¬ 
ets  to  give  the  film  its  intermittent  move¬ 
ment.  This  was  done,  instead,  by  a  beat¬ 
er  (H)  which  at  each  revolution  jerked 
the  film  down  through  the  aperture 
enough  to  move  it  down  one  frame. 

As  may  be  imagined,  this  movement 
was  rather  rough  on  the  film,  and  it 
was  rather  noisy,  besides.  But  it  had  the 
advantages  of  being  simple  and  of  get¬ 
ting  around  some  of  the  patents  which 
stifled  early-day  development  in  cine- 
machinery.  According  to  contemporary 
reports,  this  movement  worked  well 
enough  to  give  “extremely  steady  pic¬ 
tures.”  It  probably  did,  for  it  was  used 
in  quite  a  number  of  the  early  profes¬ 
sional  cameras,  including  the  Gaumont 
and  others. 


Figure  3:  The  "Kinetic"  camera  in  use  as  a 
projector. 

The  camera  served  as  its  own  pro¬ 
jector.  You  simply  turned  it  around  as 
shown  in  Figure  3,  and  attached  a  lamp- 
house  in  which  was  a  gas  light.  Then 
the  auxiliary  projection  lens  (U),  about 
which  you’ve  probably  been  wondering, 
became  a  projection  lens.  The  top  of  the 
camera-box  hinged  up  and  back  to  sim¬ 
plify  the  feed,  and  a  neat  little  porthole 
at  the  opposite  side  of  the  box  slid  open 
so  the  projected  image  could  continue  on 
to  the  screen.  The  motive  power,  whether 
used  as  a  camera  or  a  projector,  was 
provided  by  a  hand-operated  crank. 

Most  early-day  cameras,  by  the  way, 
were  made  like  this,  so  that  one  mechan¬ 
ism  could  serve  as  a  camera,  a  projec¬ 
tor,  and  often  as  a  printer  as  well.  This 
was  true  even  of  much  professional  ap¬ 
paratus,  for  it  kept  the  cost  down  and 
permitted  a  single  unit  to  do  everything. 

People  who  have  seen  the  center-per¬ 
forated  9.5mm.  film  so  popular  in 


STULL,  A.S.C. 


Europe  usually  comment  on  the  novelty 
of  the  idea  of  putting  a  single  perfora¬ 
tion  in  the  center  of  the  film,  between 
each  pair  of  frames,  and  ask  if  it  isn’t 
something  new.  Novel  it  may  be,  but  new 
it  certainly  isn’t,  for  a  center-perforated 
liy2mm.  film  (shown  in  Figure  4)  was 
brought  out  by  Wrench  &  Son  in  London 
soon  after  the  introduction  of  Acres’ 
“Kinetic.” 


Figure  5:  The  "Biokam"  camera  projecting  its 
center-perforated  W/itntn.  film. 


This  film  was  to  be  used  with  the 
firm’s  home  movie  camera,  which  was 
known  as  the  “Biokam,”  which  is  shown 
in  Figure  5.  Like  the  “Kinetic,”  it  was 
designed  to  photograph,  print  and 
project.  Used  as  a  camera,  it  was  re¬ 
markably  compact  for  its  day,  measuring 
9 14x5 14x3 14  inches,  and  selling  for  ap¬ 
proximately  $33.  It  was  equipped  with 
a  German-made  Rapid  Rectilinear  lens 
wdiich  worked  at  /:  7.7. 

Used  as  a  projector,  the  taking  lens 
was  removed  and  replaced  with  another 
Rapid  Rectilinear  working  at  the  re¬ 
markable  aperture  of  /:2.5,  and  the 
camera  was  attached  to  an  enormous 
gas,  acetylene  or  oil  lamp-house  identical 
with  those  used  in  still  enlargers.  A 
bracket  at  the  top  held  the  unspooled 
roll  of  film  to  be  projected,  and  the 
projected  film  ran  out  of  the  bottom  of 
the  box  onto  the  floor,  or  maybe  into  a 
wastebasket.  In  this,  the  “Biokam” 
projector  followed  the  design  of  the 
professional  projectors  of  the  period, 
none  of  which  had  take-ups. 

A  very  similar  camera  was  made  by 
Hughes,  also  of  London.  It,  too,  used  a 
center-perforated  17y2mm.  film,  but 
with  a  square  perforation  instead  of  a 
slot-shaped  one.  This  was  to  permit 
better  registration.  Used  as  a  projector, 
it  was  one  of  the  first  to  be  fitted 
with  a  take-up  magazine. 

The  1900  Reulos,  Goudeau  &  Co.,  of 
Paris,  put  on  the  market  an  amateur 
movie  outfit  known  as  the  “Mirograph.” 
This  used  film  21mm.  wide  which,  in¬ 
stead  of  having  perforations,  had 
notches  cut  in  its  edges  as  shown  in 
Figure  6.  The  camera  cost  $50,  and  the 


58  February,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


of 


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Fig.  I 


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Fig.  15 


Forty-eight  years 


home  movie  film,  including  split-35  H'/imm.;  center-perforated  l^Amm.;  21mm.;  22mm.  (Edison);  22mm.  Pathescope;  and,  today's  14mm. 

and  8mm.,  all  shown  approximately  actual  size. 


gas-lit  projection  lamphouse  $16  extra. 
With  this  illumination,  the  “Mirograph” 
would  project  a  picture  at  least  three 
feet  wide,  and  with  a  more  expensive 
arc  lamp  it  would  even  give  a  12-foot 
picture. 

About  the  same  time  the  big  French 
professional  firm,  Gaumont,  entered 
the  amateur  field  with  its  “Pocket- 
Chrono,”  which  used  a  center-perforat¬ 
ed  film  15mm.  wide  and,  of  course,  the 
Gaumont-Demeny  beater  movement. 

About  this  time,  in  the  early  years 
of  the  century,  Edison  introduced  a  sys¬ 
tem  of  home  movies,  though  he  seems  to 
have  concentrated  on  a  projector  which 
would  run  special  prints  of  profession¬ 
ally-made  films  rather  than  upon  a  real 
camera-projector  home  movie  system. 
The  projector  was  built  along  the  gen¬ 
eral  lines  of  the  standard  projectors 
of  the  period,  but  it  was  made  to  use 
a  special  film,  22mm.  wide,  with  three 
rows  of  pictures  and  a  row  of  perfora¬ 
tion  between  each  row,  as  shown  in 
Figure  7. 

After  cranking  the  film  through  the 
projector  to  show  the  first  row  of 
frames,  the  projection  aperture  was 
moved  over  to  the  next  row,  and  the 
film  was  run  through  again,  this  time 
in  the  opposite  direction.  Finally,  the 
aperture  was  moved  over  again,  and  the 
film  run  through  a  third  time — forward, 
this  time — to  show  the  third  row  of  pic¬ 
tures. 


Figure  8:  The  Wfamm.  Ernemann  "Kino"  of  1903. 

In  Germany,  Ernemann,  of  Dresden — 
already  one  of  the  big  names  in  the 
still-camera  field — made  a  strong  fight 
to  popularize  home  movies.  In  1903  they 
introduced  their  first  home  movie  cam¬ 
era,  the  “Kino,”  shown  in  Figure  8.  This 
was  a  very  compact  little  camera  con¬ 
sisting  of  a  box  measuring  2. 4x5. 6x3. 2 
inches,  and  two  detachable  metal  maga¬ 
zines  which  held  33  feet  of  center- 


perforated  1714mm.  film.  The  film  was 
moved  by  a  claw-type  intermittent,  and 
held  in  register  during  the  exposure  by 
a  pilot-pin.  The  camera  was  of  course 
hand-cranked,  with  both  the  standard 
eight-pictures-per-turn  shaft  and  one- 
frame-per-turn  “trick”  shaft  customary 
on  professional  cameras.  The  take-up 
was  driven  by  a  wire  belt. 

The  following  year  an  improved  model 
of  the  “Kino”  was  introduced.  In  this 
model  the  two  single  magazines  were 
replaced  by  one  double  magazine,  and 
the  take-up  was  driven — independently 
of  the  hand-cranked  operation  of  the 
camera — by  a  spring-powered  clockwork 
mechanism.  The  claw  intermittent  was 
replaced  by  an  intermittent  sprocket 
driven  through  a  Maltese  or  Geneva 
cross  and  cam  like  those  used  in  35mm. 
projectors.  Constant  focus  was  ensured 
by  a  pressure-plate  which  appears  to 
have  been  the  first  one  used  in  any 
movie  camera.  This  model  could  be  used 
interchangeably  as  a  camera,  printer 
or  projector.  In  the  latter  use,  it  was 
placed  on  a  special  stand  fitted  with  a 
fixed  lamphouse. 

In  1912  the  French  firm,  Pathe  Freres, 
introduced  their  first  substandard  outfit 
— a  projector  known  as  the  “Pathe 
K-O-K,”  apparently  in  reference  to 
their  famous  rooster  (or  cock)  trade¬ 
mark.  It  was  built  to  take  a  very  special 
film,  28mm.  wide  with  the  professional 
standard  of  four  perforations  per  frame 
on  one  side,  and  two  perforations  per 
frame  on  the  other,  as  shown  in  Figure  9. 

In  creating  this  special  film-size  the 
Pathe  people  seem  to  have  been  moti¬ 
vated  less  by  a  desire  for  economy  than 
by  a  desire  to  keep  the  dangerous  35mm. 
nitrate  film  out  of  the  homes;  the  28mm. 
Pathe  was  one  of  the  first,  if  not  actu¬ 
ally  the  first  commercial  users  of  non- 
inflammable  acetate-base  “safety”  film. 
The  special  perforation,  which  was  of 
course  patented,  was  a  neat  little  safe¬ 
guard  to  prevent  Pathe  films  from  being 
used  on  any  but  Pathe  projectors.  The 
firm  built  up  quite  an  extensive  library 
of  these  films — reductions  from  Pathe 
productions,  both  French  -  made  and 
American-made — for  use  with  these  pro¬ 
jectors. 

The  “K-O-K”  projector  itself  was  a 
self-contained  unit.  As  electricity  was 
not  available  in  many  parts  of  Europe 
in  1912,  current  for  the  projection  lamp 
was  generated  by  a  small  dynamo  belted 


to  the  crank  which  drove  the  projector. 
A  clever  friction  drive  mechanism  pre¬ 
vented  the  current  generated  this  way 
from  exceeding  that  which  was  safe  for 
the  lamp,  no  matter  how  fast  the  pro¬ 
jector  was  cranked. 

A  year  later,  this  system  was  intro¬ 
duced  in  America  under  the  name 
“Pathescope.”  Here,  the  projector  was 
made  for  use  on  the  regular  electric 
light  circuits,  and  a  camera  for  tak¬ 
ing  home  movies  on  28mm.  negative  film 
was  also  marketed. 

The  28mm.  standard  became  quite 
popular  in  American  home  movie  and 
educational  circles,  and  several  Amer¬ 
ican-made  28mm.  cameras  and  projectors 
were  developed.  These,  of  course,  used 
28nnm.  film  with  the  regular  four-per¬ 
forations  -  per  -  frame  arrangement  on 
both  edges.  In  1918  the  Society  of  Mo¬ 
tion  Picture  Engineers  officially  recog¬ 
nized  this  “Safety  Standard.” 

These  “Safety  Standard”  28mm.  pi-ints 
could  of  course  be  run  on  any  Pathe¬ 
scope  projector,  while  the  “Pathescope 
Standard”  prints  could  be  run  only  on 
Pathescope  projectors.  Both  systems  used 
acetate  film,  but  employed  negative-posi¬ 
tive,  so  that  the  only  real  advantage 
gained  was  safety,  and  there  was  very 
little,  if  any,  reduction  in  expense. 

In  1912  there  appeared  another  inter¬ 
esting  little  home  movie  outfit  known  as 
the  “Duoscope.”  It  took  center-perforat¬ 
ed  1714  mm.  negative  film  with  two  per¬ 
forations,  side  by  side,  instead  of  one, 
between  the  frames,  as  shown  in  Figure 
10.  The  movement  consisted  of  a  dou¬ 
ble  arm  which  moved  the  film  onto  and 
off  from  two  fixed  pilot-pins.  The  cam¬ 
era  could  be  used  as  a  projector,  in  which 
case  the  light  was  supplied  by  a  pocket 
flashlight  battery!  In  addition,  the  nega¬ 
tives  could  be  enlarged  onto  a  succes¬ 
sion  of  small  paper  prints  which  were 
bound  into  little  pocket-sized  books  in 
which  the  pictures  could  be  viewed — 
in  motion — by  rapidly  flipping  the  leaves 
through  the  hand. 

Soon  after  this  Charles  Urban,  a  well- 
known  professional  producer  and  design¬ 
er  of  the  time,  brought  out  a  short-lived 
but  interesting  system  known  as  the 
“Spirograph.”  In  this  the  film  was  made 
in  the  shape  of  a  disc,  with  the  frames 
arranged  spirally,  like  the  grooves  in  a 
phonograph  record.  Although  both  cam¬ 
eras  and  projectors  seem  to  have  been 
made  for  this  system  it  was  a  failure 


American  Cinematographer  •  February,  1943  59 


because  it  prevented  any  possibility  of 
editing  the  films,  or  even  cutting  out  bad 
frames,  while  of  course  only  a  very  lim¬ 
ited  amount  of  action  could  be  recorded 
on  each  disc. 


Figure  II:  The  IT'/jmm.  "Movette"  of  1917. 


From  Rochester  in  1917  came  a  cam¬ 
era  which  can  be  called  a  genuine  an¬ 
cestor  of  today’s  home  movie  cameras. 
It  was  the  “Movette”  (Figure  11)  which 
used  17 1/2  mm.  film  with  two  perforations 
per  frame  on  each  edge,  almost  exactly 
like  the  silent  16mm.  film  of  today.  The 
film — it  was  negative,  of  course — came 
in  a  daylight-loading  magazine  of  50- 
foot  capacity,  in  which  I  believe  it  was 
also  returned  to  a  central  laboratory  for 
development  and  printing. 

The  camera  was  unusual  in  that  the 
magazine  was  placed  at  right  angles  to 
the  axis  of  the  lens,  as  may  be  seen  from 
the  illustration.  The  camera  was  of 
course  hand  cranked,  and  a  separate 
mechanism  —  also  hand-cranked  —  was 
used  for  projection. 

The  following  year  another  American- 
made  camera  for  this  17%mm.  film  was 
introduced  by  the  Wilart  Instrument  Co., 
of  New  Rochelle,  N.  Y.,  who  were  al¬ 
ready  favorably  known  as  the  makers 
of  a  professional  camera  patterned  after 
the  French  Pathe  Studio  Camera.  The 
Wilart  17%mm.  outfit  was  known  as 
the  “Actocranh.”  and  was  of  virtually 
professional  design,  metal-bodied,  with 
a  Bausch  &  Lomb  Tessar  lens.  The  film 
was  carried  in  double  outside  magazines 
which  were  virtually  a  miniature  of 
those  used  on  professional  Bell  &  Howell 
or  Mitchell  cameras,  but  only  of  about 
100-ft.  capacity,  and  slanted  rakishly  on 
the  upper  rear  corner  of  the  metal  cam¬ 
era-box. 


Figure  12:  The  35mm.  Wilart  amateur  camera,  an  en¬ 
larged  version  of  the  rt/imm.  "Actograph”  of  1918. 

The  same  design  was  later  enlarged 
to  a  35mm.  outfit  of  200-ft.  capacity 


and  known  as  the  “Wilart  News  Cam¬ 
era,  (Figure  12.)  In  this  form  it  was  an 
excellent  camera  for  the  35mm.  beginner, 
as  this  writer  can  testify,  having  started 
his  movie-making  career  with  one.  Still 
later,  a  much  simplified  35mm.  version 
of  the  design  was  marketed  by  the  New 
York  Institute  of  Photography  for  its 
students,  under  the  name  “Institute 
Standard.” 


In  1920  an  Austrian  firm  introduced 
another  1714mm.  camera  known  as  the 
“Clou’  ”  (Figure  13).  Th;"  used  film  much 
like  that  used  by  the  “Movette”  except 
that  the  perforations  were  round  in¬ 
stead  of  rectangular.  It  had  a  semicircu¬ 
lar  magazine  in  the  rear  and  employed 
a  single  sprocket  for  both  feeding  and 
taking  up  the  film.  The  intermittent 
movement  was  driven  through  a  heart- 
shaped  eccentric  cam,  and  would  operate 
equally  well  either  forward  or  back¬ 
ward. 

The  last  two  attempts  at  35mm.  ama¬ 
teur  cameras  came  respectively  from 
France  and  Germany.  About  1920  De- 
Brie,  the  big  French  professional  cam¬ 
era-builder,  introduced  the  “Sept,”  the 
first  spring-driven,  hand-held  movie 
camera.  It  held  slightly  over  15  feet  of 
35mm.  film  in  daylight-loading  maga¬ 
zines  essentially  similar  to  those  used 
today  by  the  Leica  and  Contax  35mm. 
miniature  still  cameras.  This  footage 
could  be  exposed  either  as  15  seconds  of 
movies,  or  as  250  individual  stills.  It 
could  be  used  as  a  camera,  a  printer 
or  a  projector,  and  may  be  considered 
the  forerunner  of  both  today’s  35mm. 
hand  cameras  like  the  Eyemo  and  the 
35mm.  miniatures  like  the  Leica  and 
Contax. 

In  Germany  the  firm  of  lea,  A.  G. — 
now  a  part  of  the  Zeiss-Ikon  combine — 
brought  out  the  “Movex,”  a  hand- 
cranked  35mm.  home-movie  camera 
which  used  35mm.  film  in  33-foot  maga¬ 
zines.  It  was  the  direct  ancestor  of  the 
later  Zeiss-Ikon  “Kinamo  S-10,”  several 
of  which  were  sold  in  this  country,  and 
the  more  recent  “Movikon,”  also  occa¬ 
sionally  seen  here  before  the  war.  When 
the  writer  visited  Germany  in  1925,  he 


saw  35mm.  Agfa  reversal  film  spooled 
for  use  in  these  “Movex”  cameras,  though 
as  this  was  after  Eastman’s  introduc¬ 
tion  of  16mm.  reversal  film,  it  is  likely 
that  this  35mm.  reversal  was  introduced 
in  an  attempt  to  compete  with  the  then 
growing  popularity  of  16mm. 

Then  in  1923,  American  ingenuity 
paved  the  way  to  the  first  genuinely  suc¬ 
cessful  system  of  home  moviemaking. 
Eastman  introduced  the  16mm.  standard 
(Figure  14)  and  the  reversal  film  idea, 
coupled  with  a  company-operated  proc¬ 
essing  service  which  assured  every  user 
of  the  film  of  uniformly  perfect  proc¬ 
essing. 

This  move  drastically  slashed  the  costs 
of  amateur  moviemaking.  When  this 
writer  started  out  as  a  35mm.  amateur, 
more  than  twenty  years  ago,  the  bare 
costs  of  negative  film,  developing,  and 
printing  totalled  about  ten  cents  a  foot. 
Eastman’s  first  16mm.  reversal  film  sold 
for  six  cents  a  foot,  including  processing 
and  return  postage  from  the  Rochester 
processing  plant.  And  in  16mm.  one  foot 
of  film  gave  the  equivalent  in  screen 
time  of  2%  feet  of  35mm.,  so  that  16mm., 
judged  on  a  basis  of  screen  time,  cost  its 
user  about  a  quarter  of  what  an  equiva¬ 
lent  amount  of  35mm.  would.  A  15-min¬ 
ute,  400-foot  reel  of  16mm.  cost  the  ama¬ 
teur  $24;  a  1,000-foot  reel  of  35mm., 
giving  the  same  screen  time,  would  cost 
him  over  $100.  No  wonder  16mm.  got 
off  to  a  good  start! 

It  is  rather  hard  to  determine  which 
of  the  three  firms — Eastman,  Bell  & 
Howell,  and  Victor — which  between  them 
pioneered  16mm.,  actually  put  the  first 
16mm.  camera  on  the  market.  Certainly 
the  three  worked  fairly  closely  together, 
for  without  Eastman’s  film,  the  other 
manufacturers’  cameras  would  be  of  little 
use,  while  without  a  variety  of  cameras 
in  varying  price  ranges  to  use  it,  the 
film,  too,  would  be  of  little  commercial 
value. 

The  sturdy  old  hand-cranked  “Model 
A”  Cine-Kodak  is  generally  regarded  as 
the  grandaddy  of  all  16mm.  cameras, 
though  the  Victor  people  tell  us  that 
their  first  16 — an  adaptation  of  an 
earlier,  hand-cranked  17 ^mm.  model — 
antedated  the  Cine-Kodak  by  a  few 
months.  And  the  Bell  &  Howell  “Filmo” 
was  incontrovertibly  the  first  to  intro¬ 
duce  the  simplicity  of  spring-motor  op¬ 
eration  in  place  of  hand-cranking  which, 
though  it  seems  simple,  is  none  the  less 
something  which  requires  practice  to  do 
well,  not  to  mention  the  firm  foundation 
of  a  tripod. 

All  of  these  cameras  made  history  in 
another  way,  too:  they  were  one-purpose 
devices.  For  almost  the  first  time  in  the 
twenty-eight-year  birth  throes  of  home 
movies,  cameras  were  designed  strictly 
to  photograph  pictures,  and  entirely 
separate  units  were  provided  to  project 
the  films. 

And  so,  after  twenty-eight  years,  home 
movies  arrived.  They  arrived  not  so 
much  because  big  and  powerful  com¬ 
panies  stood  behind  the  development 
(that  had  happened  before,  and  failed) 
(Continued  on  Page  73) 


60  February,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


POINTERS  ON  USING 
TELEPHOTO  LENSES 

By  JACK  SMITH,  A. S.C. 


IF  you  want  my  very  best  advice  on 
the  subject  of  using  telephoto  lenses, 
it  can  be  summed  up  in  the  three 
words  “don’t  use  ’em.’’  At  least,  not  if 
you  can  possibly  manage  to  get  out  of  it 
and  make  your  shot  with  a  more  normal, 
shorter-focus  lens.  A  scene  made  with  a 
telephoto  can  never  be  as  satisfactory 
photographically  as  one  made  with  a  nor¬ 
mal  lens. 

In  the  first  place,  it’s  characteristic 
of  telephotos  that  scenes  made  with  them 
are  hatter  than  those  made  with  shorter- 
focus  objectives.  The  photographic  con¬ 
trast  is  a  good  deal  flatter,  and  so  is 
the  visual  perspective. 

For  instance,  if  you  make  a  full-screen 
shot  of  a  man  with,  say,  a  tree,  a  fence 
or  a  building  perhaps  a  hundred  feet 
behind  him,  and  a  hill  maybe  a  quarter 
of  a  mile  in  the  background,  a  shot  made 
with  a  normal  lens  will  give  you  a  pret¬ 
ty  good  idea  of  the  spatial  separation 
between  the  three.  A  telephoto  shot  tak¬ 
ing  in  precisely  the  same  field  will  com¬ 
press  these  planes — or  flatten  them — so 
that  man,  tree  and  hill  will  seem  much 
closer  together,  and  perhaps  hardly 
separated  at  all. 

Moreover,  there  are  special  problems 
in  mounting,  focusing  and  aligning  tele¬ 
photo  lenses  which  you  never  encounter 
with  ordinary  objectives.  And  atmos¬ 
pheric  conditions  you’d  hardly  notice 
when  shooting  with  a  normal  lens  can 
give  you  all  sorts  of  headaches  when 
you  start  working  with  a  telephoto. 

But  of  course  there  are  times  when 
you’ve  simply  got  to  use  a  telephoto  if 
you  want  to  get  the  picture.  We  don’t 
often  run  into  them  in  studio  camera¬ 
work  or  in  ordinary  home  moviemak¬ 
ing;  but  in  field  camerawork,  making- 
newsreels,  documentaries,  films  of  wild¬ 
life,  and  so  on,  we  do.  And  of  course 
in  today’s  military  combat  camerawork 
the  difference  between  using  a  telephoto 
and  a  short-focus  lens  may  often  be 


very  literally  a  life-and-death  matter. 

So  if  you’re  going  to  use  a  telephoto, 
begin  by  being  sure  it’s  a  good  one.  With 
ordinary  lenses,  as  most  of  us  have 
found  out,  there  are  some  types  which 
have  the  characteristic  of  giving  crisp, 
sharply-defined  images,  and  other  types 
which,  no  matter  what  you  do  with  them, 
will  never  give  you  anything  but  a  com¬ 
paratively  soft  picture. 

It’s  the  same  with  telephotos.  Only,  if 
anything,  rather  more  so.  And  in  tele¬ 
photo  work,  you  need  every  bit  of  sharp¬ 
ness  your  lens  can  give  you.  So  begin 
by  getting  a  lens  that  has  the  sharpest, 
wiriest  characteristics  you  can  get.  After 
all,  if  a  lens  is  too  sharp,  you  can  al¬ 
ways  soften  the  image  down;  but  if  the 
definition  isn’t  there  to  start  with,  noth¬ 
ing  you  or  anybody  else  can  do  can  put 
it  into  your  picture. 

My  personal  preference,  if  it  matters, 
happens  to  be  for  Zeiss  telephotos,  while 
a  good  many  of  my  friends  swear  by 
Cookes.  For  16mm.  use  I’ve  never  heard 
any  complaints  about  either  Cooke  or 
the  Kodak  Anastigmat  telephotos. 

Incidentally,  in  these  days  when  it 
isn’t  any  too  easy  to  get  hold  of  lenses 
— good  or  bad — here’s  a  little  fact  that 
may  be  helpful.  A  true  telephoto  lens, 
you  know,  is  one  specially  designed  so 
that  it  gives  the  equivalent  angle  of  a 
long  focal  length  lens  without  requir¬ 
ing  the  full  separation  from  the  focal 
plane  that  its  equivalent  focal  length 
would  ordinarily  demand.  A  twelve-inch 
telephoto,  for  instance,  may  require  a 
separation  from  the  film  of  only  six  or 
seven  inches  instead  of  the  full  twelve. 

However,  if  you  don’t  mind  having  a 
bulkier  lens-mounting,  you  can  mount 
any  ordinary  long-focus  lens  for  use  as 
a  cine  telephoto.  A  lens  like  that  will 
almost  certainly  be  designed  to  cover  a 
picture  larger  than  the  movie  frame 
you’re  using  it  on.  Using  it  on  a  much 
smaller  picture-area,  you’ll  be  using  only 


Left:.  12-inch  Dalimeyer  Telephoto  mounted  on  a  Cine- 
Special.  Center:  40-inch  "Dallon"  telephoto  mounted 
on  a  35mm.  Vinten  camera.  Right:  20-inch  Cooke 
telephoto^  mounted  on  a  magazine-type  "Filmo." 
Note  auxiliary  reflex  focuser  included  in  lens-mount, 
and  use  of  surveyor's  transit  as  finder. 

the  center  of  the  image — the  part  where 
the  definition  and  optical  correction  are 
the  best.  In  this  way  you  can  often 
make  a  lens  which  in  itself  isn’t  so  hot 
give  quite  satisfactory  results. 

This  is  true  when  you  take  a  lens 
originally  intended  for  use  on  a  35mm. 
camera  and  remount  it  for  use  on  16mm. 
The  editor  of  this  magazine,  for  exam¬ 
ple,  tells  me  he  has  a  lens — a  3-inch, 
/ :  1-9  Dalimeyer — which,  when  he  used 
it  on  his  35mm.  camera  was  so  lacking 
in  sharpness  that  he  pretty  well  aban¬ 
doned  it  in  favor  of  a  much  slower — 
but  sharper — Goerz.  But  since  he  has 
had  the  /:  1.9  lens  remounted  for  use  on 
his  16mm.  Filmo,  it  has  suddenly  turned 
into  an  excellently  sharp  lens.  The  rea¬ 
son  is,  of  course,  that  on  16mm.  he  is 
using  the  lens  on  a  picture-area  only  one 
quarter  as  large  as  that  of  a  35mm. 
frame,  and  by  using  only  the  center  of 
the  image,  he  is  using  just  the  very 
best  part  of  the  lens’  image.  The  same 
thing  is  true  when  you  take  a  much 
longer-focus  lens  off  a  Graflex  or  other 
still  camera  and  use  it  on  a  cine-camera. 

Mounting  a  telephoto  is  a  vitally  im¬ 
portant  factor  in  getting  good  results. 
If  you’ve  tried  any  telephoto  work  at 
all — even  with  the  less  powerful  tele¬ 
lenses — you  know  that  the  first  essential 
of  good  telephoto  camerawork  is  to  pro¬ 
vide  the  rigid  foundation  of  a  good,  solid 
tripod.  For  practical  purposes,  you 
might  consider  the  action  of  a  telephoto 
lens  as  being  like  that  of  a  lever  with 
its  fulcrum  at  the  center  of  the  lens. 
The  image  is  balanced  at  the  tip  of  the 
short  end  of  the  lever,  and  the  scene  it¬ 
self  is  balanced  precariously  at  the  end 
of  an  infinitely  long  lever-arm.  Obvi¬ 
ously,  even  the  tiniest  bit  of  motion  at 
the  end  of  the  short  arm  will  make  the 
scene  at  the  end  of  the  long  arm  jump 
tremendously.  In  consequence,  the  re¬ 
sulting  picture  will  jump  all  over  the 
screen.  In  the  same  way,  any  unsteadi¬ 
ness  between  the  lens  and  the  camera 
will  be  magnified  enormously. 

For  the  lower-powered  telephotos — up 
to,  I  should  say,  about  a  six-inch  focal 
length — the  ordinary  screw  or  bayonet 
type  mounts  used  on  good  16mm.  or 
35mm.  cameras  will  usually  be  adequate. 
But  beyond  this,  telephoto  lenses  need 
(Continued  on  Page  66) 


American  Cinematographer  •  February,  1943  61 


Amateur  Movies  and  the 
War  Effort 

By  W.  C.  CAMPBELL  BOSCO 


SPEAKING  on  the  occasion  of  last 
year’s  Academy  Awards  Banquet, 
to  an  audience  of  film  notables  still 
trying  to  adjust  the  pattern  of  their 
thought  to  the  reality  of  War,  John 
Grierson,  Film  Commissioner  for  the 
Dominion  of  Canada,  said,  “There  is  a 
duty  which  falls  on  all  in  this  industry 
alike.  It  is  humble,  it  is  deeply  ordi¬ 
nary.  It  carries  no  honors  with  it.  The¬ 
atres  will  not  applaud  it:  like  private 
soldiering  it  will  go  completely  un¬ 
noticed. 

“But  it  is  none  the  less  vital.  It 
is  the  simple  duty  of  helping  the  coun¬ 
try  with  its  every-day  chores  of  war 
publicity  and  instruction. 

“We  can  use  the  film  to  help  the 
fighting  services  in  their  daily  instruc¬ 
tion.  We  can  help  the  thousand-and- 
one  Civilian  Defense  Services  to  a  bet¬ 
ter  understanding  of  their  sometimes 
quite  local  duties.  We  can  aid  indus¬ 
trial  morale  and  speed  the  organization 
of  new  skills  in  the  service  of  our 
country. 

“We  have  the  difficult  duty — the  most 
difficult  of  all  from  a  mental  point  of 
view — of  shaping  from  our  war  observa¬ 
tion  on  every  front,  both  military  and 
civilian,  the  strategic  pattern  of  highly 
complex  events.  Of  helping  the  people 
to  a  broad  and  simple  understanding 
of  what  is  happening — of  where  they 
fit  in — of  what  in  duty  is  expected  of 
them. 

“Nothing  is  so  certain  as  that  men 
cannot  give  their  best  if  they  are  be¬ 
wildered,  and  particularly  so  in  a  democ¬ 
racy;  and  the  greatest,  perhaps,  of  all 
our  film  responsibilities  is  to  give  people, 
in  simple  dramatic  patterns  of  thought 
and  feeling  a  sense  of  the  true  issues 
which  lie  behind  the  maze  of  events  in 
this  difficult  moment  of  human  history. 

“There  is  a  contribution  which  every 
kind  of  film  and  every  kind  of  techni¬ 
cian  can  make  to  help  everyone,  on  mili¬ 
tary  and  civilian  front  alike,  to  do  his 
job  just  a  little  bit  better  and  feel,  how¬ 
ever  obscure  he  may  be,  a  fighting  force 
in  the  national  effort.  This  sober  and 
humble  and  unselfish  duty  of  helping 
the  people,  wherever  they  may  be  or¬ 
ganized,  to  effective  citizenship  and  good 
soldiering,  will  be  the  best  evidence  that 
we  have,  in  all  reality,  aligned  our  art 
with  the  public  purpose  and  have  dedi¬ 
cated  it,  in  all  realism,  to  the  pressing 
needs  of  our  United  cause.” 

A  year  has  passed  since  these  words 
were  spoken.  A  year  has  seen  the  entire 


National  effort  reoriented  to  meet  the 
demands  of  Total  War. 

During  this  period  the  people  of  the 
motion  picture  have  met  their  wartime 
obligations  enthusiastically,  and  have 
produced  countless  evidences  of  the 
power  of  the  motion  picture  as  a  weapon 
of  modem  war.  And  by  the  phase  “the 
people  of  the  motion  picture”  we  cannot 
by  any  means  restrict  our  meaning  only 
to  the  professionals  of  Hollywood.  Their 
contribution  has  been  enormous:  but  it 
is  by  no  means  all.  The  makers  of 
16mm.  educational  and  industrial  films 
have  also  played  an  active,  if  unpub¬ 
licized,  part  in  this  effort. 

And  so  have  America’s  amateurs. 
Some  Clubs  and  individuals  have  done 
yeoman  service  in  making— often  at  their 
own  personal  expense — films  on  Civil 
Defense  subjects  for  their  own  com¬ 
munities.  Some  of  them,  like  the  Long 
Beach  Cinema  Club’s  “Fire  From  the 
Skies,”  are  in  every  way  “professional 
enough”  to  merit  national  release. 

Many  other  individuals  and  groups 
have  found  their  way  of  service  in  pro¬ 
jecting  16mm.  films  for  Army  posts  and 
Civil  Defense  meetings.  The  Syracuse 
Movie  Makers’  Association,  for  instance, 
has  taken  over  the  task  of  providing  mo¬ 
tion  picture  entertainment  for  the  troops 
at  a  big  Air  Force  base  nearby.  The 
Long  Beach  Cinema  Club  has  been  doing 
its  collective  bit  by  going  out  to  the 
remote  posts,  gun  and  searchlight  em¬ 
placements,  etc.,  guarding  the  nearby 
coast  and  defense  plants,  and  putting  on 
shows  for  these  men  whose  duty  pre¬ 
vents  them  from  leaving  their  stations 
long  enough  to  enjoy  the  normal  recre¬ 
ational  facilities  open  to  the  men  in  the 
large  Army  Camps.  And  you  can  bet 
your  bottom  dollar  that  these  soldiers 
and  sailors  are  a  most  enthusiastic  audi¬ 
ence,  regardless  of  whether  the  films 
shown  are  silent  or  sound,  professional 
or  amateur! 

Amateurs  who  voluntarily  engage  in 
tasks  like  this  are  patriotic  enough  to 
be  willing  to  do  it  on  their  own  time, 
with  their  own  gasoline  and  tires,  and 
using  their  own  equipment.  But  sooner 
or  later  they  come  up  against  the  prob¬ 
lem  of  getting  fresh  program  material. 
They’ve  shown  all  the  worthwhile  ama¬ 
teur  films  that  are  available  to  them, 
and  all  the  professionally-made  16mm. 
films  they  can  afford  to  buy.  But  the 
soldiers  are  still  there,  or  the  civilian 
defense  meetings  still  carrying  on — 
and  somehow,  they  must  get  film  for 


them.  New  pictures  that  these  audi¬ 
ences  haven’t  already  seen. 

Fortunately,  several  Government 
agencies,  in  collaboration  with  civilian 
film-library  organizations,  are  launching 
programs  which  will  help  solve  this 
problem. 

The  Office  of  War  Information,  for 
example,  is  making  available  16mm.  re¬ 
duction  prints  (in  sound)  of  its  con¬ 
stantly  increasing  library  of  films  made 
to  inspire,  instruct  and  keep  the  people 
abreast  of  the  War  Effort  in  all  its  many 
phases.  These  films  are  being  made 
available  for  a  service  fee  of  only  fifty 
cents  for  the  first  subject  on  the  pro¬ 
gram,  and  twenty-five  cents  for  each 
additional  subject. 

These  productions  present  visual  evi¬ 
dence  of  what’s  going  on  in  this  country 
of  ours  in  this  time  of  Total  War.  They 
show  the  increasing  might  of  America’s 
wartime  production  as  the  “arsenal  of 
democracy.”  They  show  what  the  civilian 
can  do — and  also,  in  some  cases,  what  he 
should  not  do. 

They’re  professionally  made  in  every 
respect.  The  photography  is  by  such  men 
as  Carl  Pryer,  A.S.C.,  Lt.  Floyd  Crosby, 
A.S.C.  (probably  America’s  outstanding 
photographer  of  documentaries),  and  by 
various  outstanding  studio  cinematog¬ 
raphers.  The  musical  scoring  is  admir¬ 
able,  and  the  commentaries  written  by 
such  notables  as  Carl  Sandburg,  Eleanor 
Roosevelt,  and  others,  and  read  by  such 
professionals  as  Frederic  March,  Spen¬ 
cer  Tracy,  Katharine  Hepburn  and  Lt. 
James  Stewart. 

The  series  available  at  present  include 
“Aluminum”;  “Bomber”;  “Building  a 
Bomber”;  “Building  a  Tank”;  “Democ¬ 
racy  in  Action”;  “Lake  Carrier”;  “Men 
and  the  Sea”;  “Power  for  Defense”; 
“Ring  of  Steel”;  “Safeguarding  Mili¬ 
tary  Information,”  and  many  others. 
Also— in  color — is  that  epic  of  Walt 
Disney’s,  “The  New  Spirit,”  in  which 
Donald  Duck  makes  it  almost  a  pleasure 
to  pay  one’s  income  tax.  Five  releases 
per  month  are  planned  for  the  future. 

In  much  the  same  way,  the  Coordina¬ 
tor  of  Inter-American  Affairs  has  re¬ 
leased  a  series  of  pictures  dealing  with 
the  life  of  our  Latin-American  neighbors 
below  the  Rio  Grande.  From  one  to  four 
reels  in  length,  most  of  these  subjects 
are  in  color,  and  all  are  available  on  the 
same  terms  as  those  released  by  the 
O.W.I. 

“Our  Neighbors  Down  the  Road”  con¬ 
cerns  itself  with  the  events  and  scenes 
of  a  motor  trip  through  South  America 
along  the  new  Pan-American  highway. 
“Bounteous  Earth”  records  the  festivi¬ 
ties  of  Candlemas  day  in  the  ancient 
city  of  Cholulu,  Mexico.  Then  there  are 
“Patagonian  Playground”;  “Sunday  in 
the  Valley  of  Mexico”;  “A  Line  from 
Yucatan”;  “Guatemala  Sketch  -  book”; 
and  “Americans  All,”  a  two-reel  picture 
showing  intimate  glimpses  into  the  lives 
of  those  other  Americans,  our  neighbors, 
who  live  in  that  vast  and  beautiful  sec¬ 
tion  of  the  earth  which  stretches  from 
(Continued  on  Page  68) 


62  February,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


HERE'S 


For  many  years  an  important  fea¬ 
ture  of  The  American  Cinema¬ 
tographer’s  service  to  its  readers 
has  been  the  answering  of  technical 
questions  about  professional  and  am¬ 
ateur  movie-making.  The  majority  of 
these  queries  require  replies  too  de¬ 
tailed  to  be  answered  by  publication; 
but  from  time  to  time,  as  space  per¬ 
mits,  we  publish  the  answers  to  some 
of  the  more  interesting,  or  the  more 
frequently  asked,  of  these  questions 
in  this  department.  We  invite  all  of 
our  readers  to  make  use  of  this 
service. 


LIP-SYNCHRONIZING 

Q:  Recently  I  heard  of  an  amateur  who 
used  a  flexible  cable  between  projector 
and  recorder  to  lip-synchronize  home 
movies.  How  is  the  camera  connected 
with  the  recorder?  — C.  H.  B.,  Chi¬ 
cago,  Ill. 

A:  According  to  John  Leffler,  Min¬ 
neapolis  movie  maker,  who  devised  the 
set-up,  the  only  cameras  which  may  be 
adapted  successfully  for  simultaneous 
photographing  and  recording  by  this 
method  are  the  Eastman  8mm.  Models 
20,  25  and  60.  Leffler  mounts  a  motor 
on  the  camera,  with  necessary  gears 
and  a  flexible  cable,  which  may  be  at¬ 
tached  to  most  any  recorder.  To  at¬ 
tach  the  motor,  however,  a  slight  alter¬ 
ation  in  the  camera  is  necessary.  Of 
course,  the  motor  is  readily  detachable 
again. 

FRAME  ENLARGING 

Q:  I  am  an  8mm.  fan,  and  some  of 
my  16mm.  friends  tell  me  that  they 
have  had  good  success  in  enlarging  their 
frames  as  “stills”  for  contact  printing. 
Is  an  8mm.  movie  frame  enlarger  avail¬ 
able? — B.  T.,  New  York  City. 

A:  During  1941  the  Craig  Movie  Sup¬ 
ply  Co.  introduced  a  modification  of 
their  well-known  “Projecto-Editor”  film- 
viewer  which  permitted  making  enlarge¬ 
ments  from  8mm.  frames.  However, 
due  to  the  war  only  a  limited  number 
of  these  “Enlargo-Editors”  were  manu¬ 
factured,  and  while  some  may  yet  be 
available,  they  are  not  easy  to  obtain. 
It  is  possible,  though,  to  make  8mm. 
frame  enlargements  with  Eastman’s 
16mm.  enlarger  by  masking  off  the  part 
of  the  aperture  not  filled  by  the  8mm. 
film  with  opaque  Scotch  tape.  Enlarged 
negatives  can  also  be  made  by  project¬ 
ing  the  desired  frame  on  a  piece  of  cut 
film  in  a  darkroom  or  in  a  pyramidal 
hood  attached  to  the  projector,  and  de¬ 
veloping  the  copy  negative  in  the  usual 
manner.  Exposure  must  be  short,  and 
focusing  may  be  done  on  a  white  card 
of  similar  size  before  substituting  the 
sensitized  film.  Our  experience  has  been 
that  the  best  results  come  from  en¬ 
largements  of  fairly  close  shots,  prefer¬ 
ably  Kodachrome,  and  using  a  film  like 
Verichrome  or  Plenachrome  for  the  en¬ 
larged  negative. 


HOW 

FADES  AND  DOUBLE-EXPOSURES 

Q:  I  wish  to  get  a  camera  that  will 
permit  me  to  lap-dissolve,  fade,  and 
double-expose.  What  do  you  suggest? 
C.  R.,  St.  Mary’s,  Pa. 

A:  Only  the  more  expensive  cine  out¬ 
fits  permit  professional  touches  such  as 
dissolves,  fades  and  multiple  exposures. 
There  are  some  firms,  however,  which 
have  specialized  in  rebuilding  cheaper 
cameras  to  permit  these  effects.  Even 
without  these  gadgets,  lap-dissolves  and 
double-exposures  are  easy  if  you  use  a 
double-run  8mm.  camera.  All  that  is 
necessary  is  to  mark  the  starting-point 
of  the  first  run  accurately  on  the  film 
and  make  an  accurate  record  of  the 
footage  run  off  between  that  point  and 
the  point  you  start  your  dissolve  or 
double-exposure.  After  making  the  first 
“take”  of  your  dissolve  or  double,  run 
the  rest  of  the  roll  through  the  camera 
twice  with  the  lens  capped.  This  brings 
you  back  to  the  starting-point,  after 
which  (still  with  the  lens  capped)  you 
can  run  off  the  necessary  footage  to 
bring  you  to  the  starting-point  of  the 
second  “take”  of  the  dissolve  or  double. 
After  making  that,  finish  the  roll  in  the 
usual  manner. 

8MM.  OR  I6MM.? 

Q:  Although  I’ve  had  the  movie  bug 
for  some  time.  I’m  planning  at  last  to 
buy  a  cine  outfit.  Shall  I  get  8mm.  or 
16mm.? — E.  S.,  Billings,  Mont. 

A.  The  type  of  camera  you  get  will 
depend  on  the  amount  you  want  to  spend 
and  the  use  to  which  it  will  be  put. 
If  you  plan  to  shoot  only  for  a  per¬ 
sonal  record  for  home  screening,  the 
8mm.  will  do  the  job,  but  the  16mm.  will 
probably  give  you  sharper  pictures,  thus 
permitting  you  to  project  them  on  larger- 
sized  screens,  and  if  you  have  the  ability, 
to  make  some  commercial  use  of  your 
films.  On  the  other  hand,  8mm.  is  cheap¬ 
er  to  buy,  and  you  can  get  nearly  three 
times  as  much  screen  time  in  8mm.  for 
the  same  money  spent  buying  film.  And 
as  the  Armed  Forces  are  making  con¬ 
stantly  increasing  use  of  16mm.  for 
combat  and  other  camerawork,  it  is 
probable  that  8mm.  equipment  will  be 
somewhat  more  readily  obtainable  “for 
duration.” 

DEVELOPING  MOVIES 

Q:  How  can  I  develop  my  own  mov¬ 
ies? — J.  L.,  Newcastle,  Pa. 

A:  Since  Kodachrome  can  only  be 
processed  by  the  manufacturer,  we  as¬ 
sume  you  mean  black-and-white  movies. 
Sixteen  millimeter  negative  film,  and 
the  positive  film  often  used  for  titling 
in  either  16mm.  or  8mm.  are  developed 
like  a  still-camera  negative,  but  rever¬ 
sal-film  must  be  developed,  “flashed”  to 
reverse  the  image,  and  redeveloped.  As 
many  amateurs  have  proven,  this  can 
be  done  at  home,  though  until  you’ve 
gained  the  requisite  skill,  the  results 
are  likely  to  be  inferior  to  those  ob¬ 
tained  by  sending  your  film  to  a  regu¬ 


lar  Eastman  or  Agfa  processing  station. 
Full  instructions,  including  list  of  dark¬ 
room  essentials,  may  be  obtained  from 
the  film  manufacturers  or  in  such  stand¬ 
ard  reference  works  as  Morgan  and 
Lester’s  “Photo-Lab  Index,”  etc.  With 
the  exception  of  the  fact  that  drums  or 
racks  must  be  used  in  processing  mo¬ 
tion  picture  film,  the  methods  and  form¬ 
ulae  recommended  for  Agfa’s  35mm. 
Reversible  Superpan,  for  Dufaycolor,  and 
for  the  old  Lumiere  Autochrome  and 
Agfacolor  color  plates  will  work  satis¬ 
factorily  for  reversing  16mm.  film. 

AIR  MOVIES 

Q:  What  speed  would  you  suggest  for 
taking  movies  at  low  altitudes  from  an 
airplane? — F.  H.,  Duluth,  Minn. 

A:  At  altitudes  of  several  thousand 
feet,  normal  16-frames-per-second  speed 
will  suffice,  but  when  you  drop  below 
1,000  feet,  32  frames  will  smooth  out 
rough  air  and  slow  up  the  fast-moving 
terrain.  Ducks  Unlimited  observers,  on 
their  annual  aerial  survey  of  the  Ca¬ 
nadian  North,  report  that  they  get  their 
best  results  filming  waterfowl  at  64 
frames  while  flying  at  100  to  400  feet 
off  duck-infested  lakes.  Of  course,  much 
depends  on  the  speed  of  the  plane  and 
the  angle  at  which  you  shoot. 

FILMING  PARADES 

Q:  I  have  a  passion  for  shooting  color 
movies  of  parades.  How  should  I  vary 
my  shots  to  prevent  sameness  through¬ 
out? — M.  D.,  Los  Angeles,  Calif. 

A:  Look  for  unusual  angles.  Try 
worm’s  eye  and  bird’s  eye  views.  Avoid 
head-on  movies.  Newsreel  cameramen 
find  that  a  fairly  lofty  camera  position 
over  the  heads  of  the  crowds  and  with 
the  marchers  coming  diagonally  into  the 
camera  gives  a  desirable  effect.  In  film¬ 
ing  a  recent  Ice  Carnival,  the  St.  Paul 
Amateur  Movie  Makers  Club  placed  a 
high-walled  empty  furniture  truck  be¬ 
side  the  line  of  march  where  lighting 
and  shooting  angle  would  enable  mem¬ 
bers  to  photograph  to  best  advantage 
without  the  usual  crowd-jostling.  Since 
you  can’t  do  that  these  days,  try  set¬ 
ting  up  on  the  protruding  marquee  of 
a  theatre,  hotel  or  the  like  so  you  can 
get  above  the  crowd  and  fairly  close  to 
the  edge  of  the  sidewalk. 

BIG  SCREENS 

Q:  I  have  heard  that  some  amateurs 
have  successfully  projected  8mm.  movies 
to  fill  an  8x10  foot  screen.  Is  this  entire¬ 
ly  satisfactory? — M.  H.  O.,  Starkville, 
Miss. 

A.  Two  Minneapolis  amateur  movie 
clubs  have  already  put  on  8mm.  shows 
in  a  theater-size  auditorium,  filling  an 
8x10  foot  screen.  Special  equipment  was 
used,  however.  An  Eastman  8mm.  Mod¬ 
el  70A  projector  was  fitted  with  a  750- 
watt  lamp,  with  voltage  boosted  by 
transformers  to  125  volts.  A  specially- 
shimmed  Bell  &  Howell  1%-inch  pro¬ 
jection  lens  was  used  to  give  maximum 
brilliancy  for  the  long  throw.  It  is  not 
advisable  to  use  high-wattage  lamps  in 
some  projectors,  for  damage  to  film  or 
motor  might  result. 


American  Cinematographer  •  February,  1943  63 


AMONG  THE  MOVIE  CLUBS 


LONG  BEACH  INSTALLS.  Left:  members  of  the  Long  Beach  Cinema  Club  turned  out  over  a  hundred  strong 

for  the  Club's  annual  Installation  Banquet  January  6th.  Right:  the  Editor  of  THE  AMERICAN  CINEMA¬ 
TOGRAPHER  hands  the  gavel  to  incoming  President  Claude  Evans.  Left  to  right,  Treasurer  A.  W.  Nash; 

President  Claude  Evans;  Editor  Stull;  First  Vice  President  Mrs.  Mildred  Caldwell;  Secretary  Lorin  Smith, 

and  Second  Vice  President  Pat  Rafferty.  Photos  by  Clifford  Lothrop. 


"Nation  Builders"  For  8-16's 

Highlight  of  the  January  meeting  of 
the  8-16  Movie  Club  of  Philadelphia  was 
a  showing  of  James  A.  Sherlock’s  great 
film  “Nation  Builders,”  from  the  library 
of  The  American  Cinematographer. 
Other  highlights  of  the  meeting  included 
a  demonstration  of  the  Club’s  new  point 
system  of  rating  films,  and  a  demonstra¬ 
tion  of  how  a  film  can  gain  or  lose  points 
according  to  the  choice  of  a  good  or  bad 
musical  background.  The  meeting  was 
planned  and  organized  by  Phil  Oetzel 
and  George  Burnwood. 

FRANK  HEININGER. 

San  Francisco  Elects 

The  January  meeting  of  the  Cinema 
Club  of  San  Francisco  was  the  first 
to  be  held  under  the  guidance  of  the 
Club’s  1943  officers,  elected  at  the  Club’s 
December  meeting.  They  include  Rudy 
Arfsten,  President;  L.  M.  Perrin,  Vice- 
President;  Adaline  Meinert,  Secretary; 
Jesse  W.  Richardson,  Treasurer;  and 
C.  D.  Hudson,  D.  L.  Redfield  and  F.  C. 
Younberg  as  Directors. 

The  scheduled  program  included  “Wed¬ 
ding  at  Stanford  Chapel,”  an  excellent 
16mm.  film  by  K.  A.  Meserole  of  the 
Peninsula  Home  Movie  Club;  “Ice  Fol¬ 
lies,”  filmed  by  Len  Fogassy,  the  promi¬ 
nent  skating  instructor,  and  planned 
especially  to  show  ice  skating  technique; 
and  “Careless  Heiress,”  a  comedy  by 
Member  Eric  Unmack. 

ADALINE  MEINERT,  Secretary. 

Preview  For  Tri-City 

Feature  of  the  January  meeting  of  the 
Tri-City  Cinema  Club  of  Davenport,  la., 
and  Rock  Island  and  Moline,  Ill.,  was 
a  “sneak  preview”  advance  showing  of 
scenes  made  by  John  Hoffman  at  the 
December  Annual  Banquet.  Also  sched¬ 
uled  was  a  talk  by  Dr.  James  Dunn, 
“What  My  Movie  Camera  Has  Done  For 
Me,”  and  the  projection  of  members’  films 
including  “Animals  and  North  Woods,” 
400  ft.  16mm.  Kodachrome  by  Jacob  Ac- 
cola.  It  was  announced  that  all  films 
shown  before  the  Club’s  June  meeting 
will  be  automatic  entries  in  the  Annual 
Contest,  while  later  entries  may  be  made 
by  turning  the  film  over  to  the  Contest 
Committee. 

WILLIS  F.  LATHROP, 
Secretary-Treasurer. 

Color  In  Philadelphia 

In  keeping  with  his  reputation  as  a 
producer  of  fine  Kodachrome  pictures, 
Robert  Crowther  brought  to  the  screen 
of  the  Philadelphia  Cinema  Club’s  Janu¬ 
ary  meeting  his  latest  film,  “Grand 
Manan.”  To  the  casual  observer,  the  film 
seemed  to  lack  the  brilliant  color  of  his 
previous  pictures,  but  it  gave  a  true  ren¬ 
dition  of  the  foggy  atmosphere  of  Grand 
Manan  and  its  sister  islands  in  the  Bay 
of  Fundy.  A  complete  story  of  the  her¬ 


ring  industry  was  captured  by  the  ener¬ 
getic  cinematographer  who  sailed  out 
into  the  bay  at  4  a.m.,  and  got  his  cam¬ 
era  going  just  as  the  fog  lifted.  The 
succeeding  sequences  showed  the  fisher¬ 
men  laying  their  nets  and  bringing  in  a 
record  catch,  unloading  it  at  the  wharf, 
and  the  final  smoking. 

Mr.  Robbins,  representative  of  a  local 
Bell  &  Howell  dealer,  gave  helpful  sug¬ 
gestions  for  indoor  lighting.  Two  de¬ 
lightful  films  were  contributed  by  Neil 
MacMorris:  “Autumn,”  a  beautiful  pic¬ 
ture  taken  in  the  Poconos,  and  a  repeat 
showing  of  his  colorful  film,  “Bermuda.” 
“Boy  Scout  Camporee”  pictured  an  en¬ 
campment  of  Boy  Scouts  in  Fairmount 
Park.  This  was  Adolph  Pemsel’s  first  ef¬ 
fort  in  movie-making  and  shows  promise 
of  good  pictures  to  come. 

FRANCIS  M.  HIRST. 

New  Officers  In  Indianapolis 

The  Indianapolis  Amateur  Movie  Club 
held  its  annual  election  at  the  meeting 
of  December  16th,  and  the  results  were 
as  follows:  G.  A.  Del  Valle,  President; 
A.  J.  Thomas,  Vice-President;  C.  Wat- 
zel,  Secretary;  A.  F.  Kaufmann,  Treas¬ 
urer,  and  E.  M.  Culbertson,  Correspond¬ 
ing  Secretary.  The  installation  of  the 
new  officers  took  place  at  the  banquet  on 
January  9th.  The  entire  dining-room 
was  scheduled  to  be  lighted  to  Super-X 
brilliancy  to  give  any  members  who 
wished  to  take  movies  of  the  affair  a 
chance  to  do  so.  The  Club  has  not  as 
yet  been  adversely  affected  by  gas  ra¬ 
tioning,  and  the  officers  and  members 
look  forward  to  the  best  year  yet  in  1943. 

ELMER  M.  CULBERTSON, 
Corresponding  Secretary. 

Metro  Parties  Winners 

The  January  meeting  of  New  York’s 
Metropolitan  Motion  Picture  Club  was 
planned  as  a  party  to  honor  Joseph  J. 
Harley  and  Charles  M.  De  Bevoise,  first- 
and  second-place  winners  in  the  Club’s 
recent  Annual  Contest,  and  to  enable  the 


Club’s  thirty  new  members  to  become 
better  acquainted  with  each  other  and 
the  old-timers.  Screen  fare  included 
Member  De  Bevoise’s  prize-winner, 
“Queens  Is  Ready,”  a  dynamic  picturi- 
zation  of  Air  Raid  Precautions  in  New 
York’s  largest  borough;  ‘How  to  Use 
Your  Camera,”  from  the  Harmon 
Foundation;  and  “Three  Episodes,”  with 
which  Wallace  W.  Ward  won  honors  in 
a  “Photoplay  Magazine”  contest  ’way 
back  in  1929. 

FRANK  E.  GUNNELL. 

Long  Beach  Installs 

The  January  meeting  of  the  Long 
Beach  (Cal.)  Cinema  Club  was  the 
group’s  Annual  Installation  Banquet.  In 
spite  of  a  very  bad  cold,  Honorary  Mem¬ 
ber  William  Stull,  A.S.C.,  Editor  of  The 
American  Cinematographer  conducted 
the  installation  ceremonies,  presenting 
the  Presidential  gavel  to  incoming  Presi¬ 
dent  Claude  Evans,  and  introducing 
\  ice  Presidents  Mildred  Caldwell  and 
Pat  Rafferty,  Secretary  Lorin  Smith  and 
Treasurer  A.  W.  Nash.  He  also  an¬ 
nounced  the  winner  of  the  Club’s  Annual 
Contest  and  presented  them  with  their 
Certificates  of  Award.  In  the  8mm.  di¬ 
vision,  first  prize  went  to  Lorin  Smith 
for  his  film  “Ceramics;”  second  place 
to  Mildred  Caldwell  for  “Behind  the 
Scenes,”  and  third  prize  to  Earl  Everley 
for  “A  Trip  to  Dreamland.”  In  the 
16mm.  division  Pat  Rafferty  won  first 
prize  for  “Rebound  Books  with  Brand- 
new  Looks,”  while  Clarence  Aldrich  cap¬ 
tured  both  second  and  third  places  with 
“Oddettes,”  and  “Fiesta,”  respectively. 

The  Club’s  January  20th  meeting  was 
opened  with  the  pledge  of  allegiance  to 
the  Flag  and  the  singing  of  the  National 
Anthem,  accompanied  by  a  sound  picture 
with  words  and  music.  Mrs.  Caldwell  re¬ 
ported  on  the  success  of  the  showing  of 
films  to  men  in  the  service,  and  Presi¬ 
dent  Evans,  who  is  also  Chief  of  the 
Fire  Prevention  Bureau,  showed  a  film, 
“Guardians  of  the  Home,”  which  pictured 
Long  Beach  in  its  infancy,  and  fire  equip- 
(Continued  on  Page  66) 


64  February,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


Free  Films  For  Movie  Club  Programs 

In  response  to  numerous  requests  from  program  chairmen  and  other  officers  of  amateur  movie 
clubs,  we  list  below  the  films  from  the  library  of  THE  AMERICAN  CINEMATOGRAPHER  which 
are  available  for  showings  at  meetings  of  recognized  movie  clubs  in  the  United  States.  These  films 
are  duplicates  of  some  of  the  prize-winning  films  in  THE  AMERICAN  CINEMATOGRAPHER’S 
International  Amateur  Movie  Contests,  and  include  some  of  the  outstanding  amateur  films  of  all  time. 

Winners  of  the  Grand  Prize  are  designated  by  an  asterisk.  Except  where  specifically  designated  as 
color,  the  films  are  in  black-and-white,  from  black  and-white  originals. 

Musical  scores  from  phonograph  records  have  been  arranged  for  some  of  these  films,  and  when 
requested,  a  listing  of  these  records  will  be  sent  along  with  the  films  as  a  guide  for  clubs  using  this 
method  of  musical  scoring.  If  the  request  is  made  sufficiently  far  in  advance,  an  anlysis  of  the  films 
will  also  be  sent  as  a  guide  to  study  the  factors  which  made  each  film  outstanding. 

These  films  are  available  to  all  recognized  amateur  movie  clubs  within  the  continental  U.S.A.,  at 
no  charge  other  than  transportation  from  and  to  Hollywood  by  express  or  parcel  post.  The  request  for 
bookings  should  be  made  by  the  program  chairman,  president,  secretary  or  other  responsible  officer  of 
the  club.  Due  to  the  unavoidable  delays  in  wartime  transportation,  such  requests  should  reach  us  not 
less  than  three  weeks  before  the  meeting  at  which  the  film  is  to  be  shown,  and  it  is  advisable  to  give 
an  alternate  choice  in  case  one  or  all  of  the  films  requested  have  been  previously  booked  elsewhere  or 
delayed  in  transit  from  another  booking. 


*“Red  Cloud  Lives  Again” 
*“New  Horizon” 

“Cattle  Country” 


♦“Tarzan,  Jr.” 

“Prize  Winner” 
“Ritual  of  the  Dead” 
“Little  Sherlock” 
“Solar  Pelexus” 

“Nite  Life” 

“I’d  Be  Delighted” 

“The  White  North” 

“Chronicle” 


SCENARIO  FILMS 

(1  reel) 

(1  reel) 

(1  reel) 

(16mm.) 

(8  reels) 

(1  reel) 

(1  reel) 

(1  reel) 

(2  reels) 

(2  reels,  color) 

(1  reel) 

(1  reel) 

(1  reel) 


(8mm.) 

(“Covered  Wagon”  type  of  Western.) 

(Excellently-handled  heavy  drama  of  farm  life.) 

(Simple  love-story  in  Western  setting.) 

(Movie-within-a-movie  in  a  boy’s  camp.) 

(Well-handled  homespun  comedy.) 

(Horror  melodrama,  excellent  acting  and  makeup.) 

(Amusing  melodrama  in  a  movie-maker’s  home.) 

(H.  G.  Wellsian  fantasy-satire  on  a  mythical  planet, 
filmed  largely  in  miniature.) 

(Insomnia  and  a  nightmare,  trick  photography.) 

(Story  of  a  polite  seduction,  told  in  close-ups  of 
hands  and  feet  in  sophisticated  style.) 

(Snow-country  melodrama;  excellent  sets  and  act¬ 
ing;  indifferent  photography.) 

(Biography  of  a  boy  from  cradle  to  prison,  told  in 
close-up  of  hands  and  feet.) 


“Rice” 

“Beyond  Manila” 

*“To  the  Ships  of  Sydney” 

“Chicago,  Vacation  Centi'e  of  the  Nation” 


TRAVEL  FILMS  (16mm.) 


(3  reels) 

(3  reels,  color) 
(1  reel,  color) 


(Life-story  of  a  Korean  peasant.) 

(Little-known  parts  of  Philippine  Islands.) 

(Poetic  presentation  of  harbor  of  Sydney,  Australia 
in  form  of  a  ship-lover’s  will.) 


(1  reel,  color) 


*“Nation  Builders” 
♦“Doomsday” 

♦“In  the  Beginning” 
“Garden  Life” 


DOCUMENTARY  FILMS  (16mm.) 

(3  reels)  (One  of  the  greatest  amateur  films  made:  comprises 

entire  history  of  Australia.) 

(1  reel)  (Impressionistic  film  based  on  old  superstition 

connecting  solar  eclipse  with  end  of  world.) 

(2  reels)  (Reverent  account  of  creation,  with  titles  from 

Genesis.) 

(1  reel,  color)  (Unusual  film,  in  stop-motion,  showing  flowers 

actually  growing.) 


“Early  Summer” 
“Tender  Friendship” 
“Vanishing  Autumn” 
“Lullaby” 

“Mt.  Zao” 

“The  Brook” 

“Moods  of  Nature” 


“Happy  Day” 
“Another  Happy  Day” 
“Life” 


“Mischief” 

“Two  Kids  and  a  Pup” 
“Santa  Visits  Elaine” 


“Jello  Again” 
“200-inch  Telescope” 


PHOTOGRAPHY— EXTERIOR 


(1  reel,  16mm.) 
(1  reel,  8mm.) 
(1  reel,  8mm.) 
(1  reel,  16mm.) 
(1  reel,  16mm.) 
(1  reel,  16mm.) 

(1  reel,  16mm.) 


(These  four  pictures  are  all  made  by  the  same  man, 
Tatsuichi  Okamoto,  of  Japan.  They  all  have 
some  of  the  finest  photography  ever  done  by  an 
amateur,  and  show  Japanese  life  and  thought.) 

(Extremely  spectacular  film  of  skiing  in  Japan.) 

(Pleasant  scenic  of  Australian  countryside, 
titles  from  Tennyson’s  poem.) 

(The  first  film  made  by  the  English  documentary 
film  maker,  Paul  Burnford,  A.R.P.S.) 


(1 

(1 

(1 

(1 

(1 

(1 


HOME  MOVIES 

reel,  16mm.) 
reel,  16mm.) 
reel,  16mm.) 

reel,  16mm.) 

reel,  8mm.) 
reel,  16mm.,  color) 


(An  English  child’s  holiday  at  the  seaside.) 

(The  same  child’s  Christmas.) 

(“Barefoot  Boy”  reminiscences  of 

“Life — As  You  Remember  It.”) 

(Amusing  film  of  family  pets — a  cat,  a  Scottie, 
and  a  tame  sparrow. 

(Simple  story  of  two  children  and  their  pet.) 

(Very  clever  Christmas  film,  with  Santa  Claus’  visit 
highlighted  by  trick  photography.) 


MISCELLANEOUS 

( i/2  reei  16mm  color)  (Novelty,  animated-cartoon  made  with  Jello  boxes.) 

(1  reel,  ’l6mm.)  (Casting  of  the  200-inch  telescope  mirror,  filmed  by 

a  Corning  Engineer.) 


American  Cinematographer  •  February,  1943  65 


Movie  Clubs 

(Continued  from  Page  64) 

ment  drawn  by  horses.  The  film  was 
presented  with  narration  and  musical 
background.  A  16mm.  color-film  on  the 
launching  of  a  Harbor  Dept,  fire-boat 
was  also  shown.  “Sport  Spellbinders,”  a 
fast-moving  sound  picture  with  action 
shots  of  various  sports  was  shown  by 
Clarence  Aldrich,  and  Lorin  Smith’s 
“Yachting”  was  also  enjoyed. 

LA  NELLE  FOSHOLDT,  Publicity. 

Patriotic  Films  In  Chicago 

The  January  7th  meeting  of  the  Chi¬ 
cago  Cinema  Club  featured  two  patrio¬ 
tic  films  made  by  members.  “Keep  It 
Flying”  by  Member  Allen  proved  a  fine 
Kodachrome  subject  any  filmer  could 
make  from  his  miscellaneous  shots.  Mem¬ 
ber  I.  Vise’s  “Victory  Gardens,”  also  in 
Kodachrome,  showed  his  wife’s  strug¬ 
gling  but  victorious  work  at  her  Victory 
Garden. 

BARBARA  HUBBARD. 

Photography  of  the  Month 

(Continued  from  Page  55) 

purchased  for  release  by  United  Artists. 
The  print  we  saw  gave  us  the  impression 
that  the  camerawork  and  negative  pro¬ 
cessing  had,  as  might  be  expected,  been 
planned  to  coordinate  with  the  Para¬ 
mount  laboratory’s  printing  standards, 
and  that  this  coordination  had  been  some¬ 
what  upset  by  release-printing  in  another 
laboratory. 

THE  GLASS  KEY 

Paramount  Production. 

Director  of  Photography:  Theodor  Spar- 
kuhl,  A.S.C. 

“The  Glass  Key”  is  in  some  respects 
one  of  the  best  pieces  of  work  we’ve 
seen  come  from  the  camera  of  Theodor 
Sparkuhl,  A.S.C.,  in  some  time.  A  melo¬ 
drama,  he  has  photographed  it  in  the 
crisp,  modern  manner,  making  consid¬ 
erable  use  of  the  current  increased-depth 
technique.  While  in  some  sequences  it 
seemed  to  us  that  he  had  carried  his 
effect-lightings  a  bit  too  far,  they  are 
undeniably  effective  from  both  pictorial 
and  dramatic  viewpoints. 

His  treatment  of  the  male  players  is 
excellent;  the  story  gives  him  constant 
opportunity  for  presenting  them  in 
virile,  and  pictorially  striking  character- 
lightings.  His  treatment  of  Veronica 
Lake  is  rather  uneven:  in  some  sequences 
it  is  excellent,  while  in  others  it  could 
certainly  have  been  improved.  In  these 
latter  scenes  both  he  and  the  player 
were  certainly  not  helped  by  the  cos¬ 
tumer,  especially  as  regards  the  hat  Miss 
Lake  was  forced  to  wear. 

Telephotos 

(Continued  from  Page  61) 

some  additional  provision  for  rigidity  if 
first-class  results  are  expected. 

For  what  we  might  call  moderate- 
powered  telephotos — say  up  to  twelve 
or  fifteen  inches — probably  all  you’ll 
need  is  some  sort  of  an  auxiliary  brace 


like  the  one  shown  in  the  left-hand  illus¬ 
tration.  This  is  just  a  simple  angle 
bracket,  one  end  of  which  screws  rigidly 
to  the  lens  and  supports  most  of  its 
weight,  while  the  other  end  locks  into 
place  between  the  camera  and  the  tripod- 
head. 

For  more  powerful  telephotos,  and 
particularly  if  you  are  using  a  rather 
lightweight  camera  like  the  magazine- 
type  Bell  &  Howell  shown  fitted  with  a 
20-inch  lens  in  the  right-hand  picture, 
you’ll  do  well  to  mount  the  lens  firmly  on 
the  tripod,  and  then  virtually  hang  the 
camera  onto  the  lens. 

When  you  come  to  the  really  high- 
powered  telephotos,  an  even  better 
mounting  is  one  on  the  order  of  the  one 
shown  in  the  middle  picture,  in  which  a 
Vinten  35mm.  camera  is  shown  fitted  to 
an  /: 8  Dallmeyer  “Dallon”  telephoto  of 
40-inch  focal  length.  In  this  a  long,  ex¬ 
tra-rigid  mount,  something  like  a  small 
lathe-bed,  is  fitted  to  the  tripod,  with  the 
lens  rigidly  supported  at  one  end  of  the 
mount  and  the  camera  at  the  other,  with 
a  light-tight  tube  in  between.  Person¬ 
ally,  by  the  way,  I  rather  prefer  a  small 
bellows  like  that  on  a  still-camera  in¬ 
stead  of  a  tube  for  an  extreme  telephoto 
mount  like  this. 

Focusing  and  aligning  telephoto  shots 
bring  up  some  more  interesting  little 
problems.  Working  with  the  ordinary 
one  and  two-inch  lenses  which  are  con¬ 
sidered  normal  for  16mm.  and  35mm. 
work,  at  the  distances  usually  encoun¬ 
tered  in  telephoto  work,  and  at  the  stops 
usually  used  for  exteriors,  we  can  be 
pretty  safe,  in  a  pinch,  in  setting  the 
lens  at  infinity,  or  better  yet,  at  its  hy- 
perfocal  distance  and  shooting,  with  rea¬ 
sonable  assurance  that  practically  every¬ 
thing  in  the  field  will  be  adequately 
sharp. 

But  as  the  focal  length  increases,  this 
depth  of  field  decreases,  and  decreases 
very  sharply.  If  you  set  a  25mm.  lens 
at  15  feet  and  stop  down  to  /: 8,  every¬ 
thing  from  4  feet  to  infinity  will  be  ac¬ 
ceptably  sharp.  With  a  50mm.  lens  set 
at  20  feet,  everything  from  9  x/>  feet  to 
infinity  will  be  adequately  focused  at 
/:  8.  But  with  a  6-inch  lens  at  the  same 
stop  and  focused  at  the  hyperfocal  dis¬ 
tance  (182  feet),  the  depth  of  focus  has 
dropped  off  until  your  zone  of  adequate¬ 
ly  sharp  focus  extends  only  from  90  feet 
to  infinity.  With  a  10-inch  lens  focused 
at  infinity  and  stopped  down  to  /: 8,  any¬ 
thing  nearer  than  520  feet  from  the 
camera  will  be  badly  out  of  focus. 

Thus  while  with  the  lower-powered 
telephoto  lenses  you  can  work  quite  well 
by  simply  using  the  calibrated  focus¬ 
ing  scale  on  the  lens-mount,  for  the 
higher-powered  telephotos  you’ll  need  a 
decidedly  more  accurate  means  of  focus¬ 
ing.  If  your  lens  is  calibrated  accurately 
in  the  higher  ranges,  you  can  some¬ 
times  solve  this  problem  with  an  op¬ 
tical  rangefinder  if  this,  too,  is  cali¬ 
brated  to  read  accurately  for  telephoto 
distances.  In  at  least  one  case  I’ve 
known  of  a  cinematographer  who  suc¬ 
cessfully  built  a  Leica  rangefinder  into 
the  finder  of  his  Eyemo  and  interlocked 


it  with  the  focusing  of  a  12-inch  tele¬ 
photo  by  means  of  gears  and  cams. 

But  your  safest  bet  is  to  follow  the 
professional  method  of  focusing  visually 
on  a  ground  glass  focusing  screen,  pre¬ 
ferably  through  a  magnifying  eyepiece. 
With  a  16mm.  camera  like  the  Cine- 
Special  or  the  magazine-type  cameras 
in  which  you  can  replace  the  magazine 
with  a  ground  glass  focusing  attach¬ 
ment,  this  is  easy.  For  other  cameras 
and  really  long-focus  lenses  a  good  idea 
is  to  use  a  reflex-type  focusing  device 
like  those  sold  for  use  with  35mm.  minia¬ 
ture  cameras  and  inserted  in  the  long 
tube  between  the  telephoto  lens  and  the 
camera,  like  the  one  in  the  right-hand 
picture. 

A  device  like  this  will  be  helpful  in 
framing  stationary  shots,  but  if  the  sub¬ 
ject  is  likely  to  be  moving,  you’ll  need 
an  accurate  finder  so  you  can  follow  the 
action.  I  wouldn’t  advise  trying  to  mask 
down  an  ordinary  finder  for  this  be¬ 
cause  while  you  may  be  able  to  mask  it 
quite  accurately,  you’ll  end  up  by  hav¬ 
ing  such  a  small  finder  image  that  it  is 
very  difficult  to  follow  accurately,  espe¬ 
cially  on  fast-moving  action.  Your  best 
bet  is  to  use  a  positive  type  finder  like 
those  on  the  Bell  &  Howell  cameras,  with 
the  finder  lenses  so  matched  to  the  tele¬ 
photo  lens  that  they  cover  the  same  field 
of  view  and  still  give  you  a  good,  big 
image.  Sometimes,  as  in  the  right-hand 
picture,  a  surveyor’s  transit  can  be 
adapted  for  this  purpose. 

An  absolute  essential  to  good  tele¬ 
photo  camerawork  is  a  really  good  lens- 
shade.  Nine  times  out  of  ten  the  one 
that  comes  already  fitted  to  the  lens 
isn’t  nearly  enough.  Any  lens-shade 
should  be  just  as  narrow  and  as  deep 
as  is  possible  consistent  with  keeping  it 
from  cutting  into  the  lens’  field. 

This  is  especially  necessary  in  the  case 
of  telephoto  lenses.  Most  of  them  have 
front  elements  which  are  much  larger 
than  the  front  glasses  of  much  faster 
ordinary  lenses.  These  big  glass  sur¬ 
faces — unless  fully  shaded — tend  to  pick 
up  and  reflect  stray  light-rays  from  out¬ 
side  the  picture-area  and  kick  them  back 
into  the  picture  in  the  form  of  scattered 
light  which  produces  an  effect  on  the 
picture  similar  to  fog.  That’s  one  rea¬ 
son  why  most  telephoto  scenes  are  so 
much  flatter  than  scenes  made  under 
identical  circumstances  with  ordinary 
lenses.  The  simple  addition  of  an  ade¬ 
quately  deep  lens-shade  will  go  an  amaz¬ 
ingly  long  way  toward  snapping  up  any 
telephoto  shots. 

Atmospheric  conditions  can  give  you 
a  lot  of  trouble  when  you  start  shoot¬ 
ing  with  a  telephoto  lens,  too.  Working 
in  black-and-white,  you  can  cut  through 
ordinary  aerial  haze  with  a  filter,  but 
you  can’t  filter  out  the  ripply  effect 
made  by  the  heat-waves  shimmering  up 
from  the  ground  on  hot  days. 

Probably,  back  in  the  days  when  we 
all  took  our  vacations  by  motor,  you 
may  have  noticed  how  on  hot  days  the 
distant  pavement  seemed  to  look  as  if 
it  were  covered  with  water.  This  isn’t 
just  an  optical  illusion:  it  is  caused  by 


66  February,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


RELAX! 

Just  as  millions  of  people 
can  relax 

under  the  magic  of  entertainment 
provided  by 

MOTION  PICTURES 

so  can  the  producer 
the  exhibitors 
and 

The  CINEMATOGRAPHER 

RELAX 

in  the  secure  knowledge  that 

ITS  THE  BEST 

in  photography 
in  recording 
in  prints 
when  the  film  is 

EASTMAN 

J.  E.  BRULATOUR,  INC. 

-  DISTRIBUTORS - 


the  heat  waves  reflecting  up  from  the 
hot  ground  and  actually  moving  the  air 
— in  the  literally  physical  sense — as 
they  reflect  upward.  You  can  sometimes 
see  the  same  thing  above  a  hot  stove. 

Of  course  it  photographs,  giving  a 
good  deal  the  same  effect  that  a  diffus¬ 
ing  screen  would.  Making  pictures  in 
Africa  some  years  ago  I  noticed  that 
this  was  particularly  troublesome  when 
we  had  to  make  telephoto  shots  with  the 
camera  comparatively  close  to  the 
ground.  If  the  camera  was  higher,  shoot¬ 
ing  from  a  hill  out  over  an  open  land¬ 
scape,  or  even  on  a  tree  or  parallel,  the 
heat-wave  ripples  gave  us  much  less 
trouble. 

As  I’ve  said,  you  can  cut  through  or¬ 
dinary  atmospheric  haze  with  filters.  In 
black-and-white,  I’d  recommend  the  Aero 
filters,  which  were  made  for  this  spe¬ 
cific  purpose.  You’ll  get  stronger  haze- 
penetration  with  heavier  filters  like  the 
Cl  and  the  various  red  ones,  and  added 
•contrast,  too,  but  at  the  price  of  over- 
correction  and  a  distorted  tonal  rendi¬ 
tion  of  color  values.  If  you  want  your 
telephoto  scenes  to  intercut  smoothly 
with  other,  normal  shots,  or  to  give  a 
strictly  normal  black-and-white  rendi¬ 
tion  of  colors,  keep  away  from  filters 
except,  at  most,  the  Aeros. 

In  Kodachrome,  the  rule-books  say  to 
use  the  so-called  “haze  filter”  for  pene¬ 
trating  haze  in  distant  landscape  shots. 
But  my  personal  preference  is  for  the 
Pola-screen,  which  cuts  through  ordinary 
aerial  haze  just  as  well,  if  not  better, 
since  much  of  this  haze  is  simply  scat¬ 
tered  or  polarized  light.  And  the  Pola- 
screen  doesn’t  change  the  color-rendition 
as  the  haze  filter  often  does. 

Finally,  remember  to  keep  your  ex¬ 
posure  correct,  and  your  lens  clean,  and 
you’ll  have  a  good  start  on  the  way  to 
mastery  of  telephoto  camerawork. — END. 

Films  For  War  Effort 

(Continued  from  Page  62) 
the  Rio  Grande  down  to  the  Straits  of 
Magellan. 

Showings  of  pictures  like  these, 
whether  to  Service  or  civilian  audiences, 
provides  entertainment  —  and  a  great 
deal  more  besides,  for  they  will  help 
foster  the  understanding  which  is  need¬ 
ed  to  cement  the  growing  friendship  of 
the  peoples  of  the  two  Americas,  who 
really  have  so  much  in  common,  in  spite 
of  the  differences  in  language  and  super¬ 
ficial  customs. 

To  facilitate  the  distribution  of  these 
pictures,  Bell  &  Howell’s  Filmosound 
Library  and  many  other  similar  organ¬ 
izations  throughout  the  country  are 
swinging  into  action  with  their  already 
well-established  systems  of  16mm.  film 
distribution.  In  addition,  most  of  these 
libraries  have  available  16mm.  prints  of 
outstanding  British,  Canadian  and  other 
War  Films  which  show  the  War  Effort 
on  both  the  fighting  and  the  home  fronts. 
And  16mm.  prints  of  the  latest  news¬ 
reels  from  all  the  war  fronts  throughout 
the  globe  are  constantly  being  rushed 


into  readiness  to  bring  to  the  16mm. 
audience  the  current  aspects  of  the  com¬ 
mon  struggle. 

Yes,  the  motion  picture,  so  far,  has 
more  than  lived  up  to  the  expectations 
of  those  who  hoped  the  most  for  it. 
And  the  amateur,  with  his  camera  and 
with  his  projector,  is  doing  his  part  in 
making  the  motion  picture’s  War  Effort 
a  truly  vital  part  of  this  world-wide 
war  for  freedom.  END. 


Prison  Camp 

(Continued  from  Page  51) 

should  be  so  suggestive  of  one  of  Amer¬ 
ica’s  favorite  movie  comedians;  it  leads 
us  too  much  to  underrate  him.  Un¬ 
balanced  he  may  be  in  the  psychiatrist’s 
sense  of  the  term,  and  undoubtedly 
funny-looking  from  the  American  view¬ 
point:  but  that  shouldn’t  keep  us  from 
realizing  that  he  is  a  very  dangerous  op¬ 
ponent,  who  will  demand  every  bit  of 
our  own  strength,  force  and  intelligence 
to  defeat. 

After  this,  I  was  one  of  the  official 
news-camera  crews  assigned  to  cover 
first  the  Czechoslovak  “incident,”  and 
later  the  opening  of  the  war  in  Poland. 
Though  we  were  photographing  military 
operations  in  the  field,  we  worked  as 
civilians;  it  was  only  later — after  the 
Polish  campaign- — that  the  Nazi  news 
cameramen  became  soldiers. 

Interestingly  enough,  for  our  work  in 
the  field  we  used  largely  American  cam¬ 
era  equipment — Eyemos  taken  over 
from  the  various  newsreels,  and  occa¬ 
sionally  a  DeVry.  Though  the  Ger¬ 
mans  had  developed  some  types  of  hand¬ 
held  movie  cameras  which,  on  paper  at 
least,  were  excellent,  they  seemed  to 
prefer  the  ruggedness  and  dependability 
of  the  American  cameras  for  their  field 
work. 

It  was  during  the  start  of  the  Polish 
campaign  that  the  Nazi  officials  dis¬ 
covered  I  was  an  American.  And  let  me 
assure  you  that  Americans — particularly 
cameramen — were  most  decidedly  not 
wanted  as  witnesses  to  what  the  Wehr- 
macht  was  doing.  I  was  summoned  to 
Berlin  immediately.  A  year  or  so  later 
I’ve  no  doubt  that  even  though  I  was 
an  American,  and  presumably  neutral, 
I  would  simply  have  disappeared  into 
a  concentration  camp.  As  it  was,  I  was 
given  the  choice  of  going  to  a  concen¬ 
tration  camp  or  getting  to  H—  out  of 
Germany  within  eight  hours. 

I  left — gladly  and  quickly.  It  gave 
me  an  excellent  opportunity  of  doing 
something  I’d  wanted  to  do — but  couldn’t 
— for  some  time. 

Travelling  the  usual  roundabout  route 
of  the  wartime  refugee,  I  finally  got 
back  to  Paris.  There  I  began  to  try 
to  find  some  way  of  doing  my  part  in 
the  war.  As  I’ve  said,  I  had  already 
seen  enough  in  Czechoslovakia  and  Po¬ 
land  to  make  me  want  to  even  things 
up  with  the  Nazis.  I  tried  to  enlist  in 
the  French  Army.  But  no,  I  was  an 
American,  and  that  might  cause  inter¬ 
national  complications.  Then  I  tried  the 
Foreign  Legion.  Being  an  American 


was  no  bar  there,  but  I  found  I  would 
have  to  enlist  for  something  like  ten 
years,  and  once  in,  there  was  no  guar¬ 
antee  I’d  be  sent  against  the  Germans; 
much  more  probably,  they  said,  I’d  be 
sent  off  to  North  Africa,  or  Syria,  or 
even  to  French  Indo-China  for  garrison 
duty.  Somehow,  keeping  the  Arabs  or 
the  Annamites  in  order  didn’t  appeal 
to  me.  .  .  . 

Finally  I  learned  that  a  Franco- Ameri¬ 
can  Ambulance  Corps  was  being  organ¬ 
ized.  Driving  an  ambulance  is  technical¬ 
ly  non-combatant  work,  and  as  such 
was  a  perfectly  proper  occupation  for 
a  citizen  of  then-neutral  America.  I’d 
be  up  at  the  front  where  the  Nazis  were, 
and,  well — after  all,  one  never  knows 
just  what  opportunities  Lady  Luck  may 
bring.  I  enlisted  as  an  ambulance-driver, 
and  went  off  to  the  front  at  the  wheel 
of  a  nice,  new  Dodge  ambulance. 

Those  first  several  months  of  the  war 
were  what  some  people  called  the  “Bore 
War,”  while  France  sat  in  fancied  se¬ 
curity  behind  her  Maginot  line,  and  the 
Germans  mopped  up  unfinished  business 
in  the  East.  But  there  were  skirmishes 
— little,  unimportant  actions  that  rated 
no  more  than  a  curt  line  or  two  in  the 
newspapers.  Just  minor  skirmishes.  But 
they  provided  work  for  the  ambulance 
drivers. 

And  don’t  think  because  an  ambulance- 
driver’s  job  is  technically  non-combatant 
that  it’s  easy — or  safe,  especially  when 
there  are  Nazis  on  the  other  side!  Our 
first  job  whenever  we  moved  into  a  new 
sector  was  to  learn  the  road  between 
the  front-line  dressing  stations  where 
we  picked  up  our  wounded,  and  the 
field  hospital  where  we  turned  them 
over  to  the  doctors.  We  had  to  know 
the  road  not  only  horizontally,  but  ver¬ 
tically:  even  though  the  war  was  at  that 
time  in  a  fairly  quiet  stage,  the  road 
would  be  under  shellfire  from  the  Ger¬ 
man  lines.  We  had  to  learn  just  where 
the  shell-holes  were,  and  keep  up  with 
each  day’s  new  crop. 

We  did  most  of  our  actual  work  at 
night.  The  darker  it  was,  the  better 
for  our  purposes.  We  would  load  up 
our  wounded,  head  the  ambulance  along 
the  road,  and  drive  like  Hell.  Without 
headlights.  If  we  showed  a  light,  the 
Nazis  were  almost  certain  to  shell  us. 
Even  if  their  sound-detectors  picked  up 
too  much  of  the  noise  of  our  motors, 
they’d  shell  us  on  general  principles. 

In  some  sectors,  the  roads  were  so 
close  to  the  front  lines  that  when  they 
heard  or  saw  us,  the  Nazis  would  turn 
their  searchlights  on  us.  In  that  glare 
of  light  the  big  red  crosses  on  the  am¬ 
bulances  stood  out  prominently,  and 
made  a  perfect  target.  In  a  case  like 
that,  all  you  could  do  would  be  to  shove 
the  accelerator  to  the  floor  and  make 
the  best  speed  you  could,  through,  as 
well  as  around  the  shell-holes,  praying 
fervently  that  you’d  manage  to  avoid 
getting  in  the  way  of  a  shell  or  piling 
up  in  an  unseen  shell-hole  .  .  .  and 
that  the  poor  devils  who  were  riding 
with  you  would  get  through  alive  in 
spite  of  the  rough  ride  you  had  to 


■68  February,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


NATIONAL  CARBON  COMPANY,  INC 

Unit  of  Union  Carbide  and  Carbon  Corporation 

DIO 


Carbon  Sales  Division,  Cleveland,  Ohio 

GENERAL  OFFICES 
30  East  42nd  Street,  New  York,  N.  Y. 

BRANCH  SALES  OFFICES 
New  York,  Pittsburgh,  Chicago,  St.  Louis,  Sen  Francisco 


FQPVICTORY 


American  Cinematographer  •  February,  1943 


69 


R4®  R\WQ®  Meter 


The  Three-Dimen¬ 
sional  Meter  that 
accurately  meas¬ 
ures  ALL  the  light 
falling  on  the 
subject. 

(Incident-light  reading) 


★  ★  ★ 


In  Military  and  Civilian  Service 

with 


U.  S.  ARMY 

Signal  Corps  Photographic  Center, 

Astoria,  L.  I. 

Signal  Corps  Laboratory,  Ft.  Monmouth,  N.  J. 
Army  Air  Force,  Wright  Field,  Ohio 
The  Engineer  Board,  Ft.  Belvoir,  Va. 

M-G-M  STUDIO 

John  Arnold,  A.S.C. 

Norbert  Brodine,  A.S.C. 

Maximilian  Fabian.  A.S.C. 

George  Folsey,  A.S.C. 

Karl  Freund.  A.S.C. 

Cedric  Gibbons 
Ray  June,  A.S.C. 

Charles  Lawton,  Jr.,  A.S.C. 

Walter  Lundin.  A.S.C. 

Harold  Marzorati,  A.S.C. 

Robert  Planck,  A.S.C. 

Jackson  J.  Rose.  A.S.C. 

Harold  Rosson,  A.S.C. 

Joseph  Ruttenberg,  A.S.C. 

Jack  Smith,  A.S.C. 

Leonard  Smith,  A.S.C. 

Harry  Stradling,  A.S.C. 

Paul  C.  Vogel,  A.S.C. 

Sidney  Wagner,  A.S.C. 

PARAMOUNT  STUDIO 

Standard  Equipment  (15  meters) 


U.  S.  NAVY 

Photographic  Science  Laboratory, 

Anacostia,  Va. 

★ 

Lt.  Philip  M.  Chancellor,  A.S.C..  U.S.N.R. 

Lt.  Floyd  Crosby,  A.S.C.,  U.S.A.A.F. 

Lt.  Jack  Greenhalgh.  A.S.C.,  U.S.A.A.F. 

COLUMBIA  STUDIO 

Joseph  Walker,  A.S.C. 

20th  CENTURY-FOX  STUDIO 

Alvin  Wyckoff,  A.S.C. 

★ 

John  Dored,  A.S.C.  (Paramount  News,  Brazil) 
Gus  Peterson,  A.S.C. 

James  B.  Shackleford.  A.S.C. 

Aetna  Life  Insurance  Co. 

Armour  Institute  of  Technology 
Chilefilm,  S.A..  Chile 
Consolidated  Film  Laboratory 
International  Variety  and  Theatre  Agency  of 
South  Africa 

Norwegian  Information  Bureau 
University  of  Wyoming 
F.  S.  Yenowine 
And  Many  Others 

★  * 


give  them. 

Later  on,  as  the  Germans  started  their 
blitz  against  France,  and  the  action  be¬ 
came  more  fluid,  we  drove  our  ambu¬ 
lances  day  and  night.  Daytimes,  the 
German  aviators  made  it  a  particularly 
difficult  job.  The  big,  red  crosses  on 
the  tops  of  our  trucks  must  have  made 
unusually  inviting  targets  to  the  Nazi 
pilots.  Any  time  there  was  a  stray  Jer¬ 
ry  in  the  air  you  could  expect  almost 
any  time  to  hear  the  unmistakable 
“brrp — brrrp — brrp”  of  a  BMW  engine, 
followed  by  the  rattle  of  his  machine- 
guns  as  he  strafed  you,  and  maybe 
bombed  you  as  well,  if  he  had  any 
bombs  to  spare. 

If  you  could,  you’d  stop  and  try  to 
get  your  wounded  passengers  and  your¬ 
self  out  and  under  the  truck,  where 
you  had  at  least  some  protection.  Some¬ 
times  you  could  do  it.  At  other  times 
— especially  if  your  passengers  were 
too  badly  wounded  to  get  out— you  just 
kept  on  going  as  best  you  could  .  .  . 
hoping.  I’ve  often  seen  ambulances 
come  limping  in,  riddled  with  machine- 
gun  slugs,  and  with  a  cargo  of  dead 
men.  Sometimes  you  just  found  the 
ambulance  standing  in  the  road,  or  lying 
in  the  ditch,  its  passengers  and  driver 
both  dead.  And  it  didn’t  seem  to  matter 
to  the  heroes  of  the  Luftwaffe  that  often 
enough  the  wounded  men  in  the  am¬ 
bulance  might  be  Nazis  as  well  as  Poilus 
or  Tommies.  ...  I  guess  any  unresist¬ 
ing  target  was  fair  game  to  the  super¬ 
men  from  beyond  the  Rhine. 

And  then  came  the  beginning  of  the 
end,  when  the  Nazis  broke  through  at 
Sedan.  For  us  there  began  what  seemed 
a  nightmare  that  would  never  end.  Re¬ 
treat — retreat — retreat — each  day  amid 
greater  confusion  and  a  dull,  gnawing 
spirit  of  hopelessness. 

Finally  I  found  my  unit  cut  off  from 
the  army  we  were  supposed  to  be  serv¬ 
ing,  and  headed  toward  Bordeaux.  I  was 
a  Sub-Lieutenant  then,  in  charge  of 
twenty-five  ambulances  and  their  crews. 
And  I  wanted  to  get  them  through  to 
Bordeaux  before  the  Germans  came. 

We  weren’t  far  from  our  goal  when 
we  found  ourselves  running  too  low 
on  gas  to  get  there.  We  stopped  to  take 
stock  of  our  situation;  between  the  lot 
of  us,  we  had  about  enough  gas  to  en¬ 
able  one  ambulance  to  press  on  ahead 
to  a  city  where  we  could  get  the  fuel 
we  needed  to  take  us  to  our  goal.  So 
we  drained  the  remaining  fuel  into  the 
tank  of  one  of  the  ambulances,  and  the 
rest  of  the  fellows  crowded  into  it  to 
press  on  while  I  stayed  behind  to  stand 
guard  over  the  other  trucks.  I  never 
saw  any  of  those  boys  again.  I  suppose 
they  ran  into  the  Germans,  who  were 
in  front  of  us  as  well  as  behind  and 
on  both  sides  of  us.  But  in  due  time 
I  saw  the  Germans,  and  found  myself  a 
prisoner. 

So  back  to  Paris  I  went,  as  a  prisoner 
of  the  Nazis.  Since  I  wore  the  uniform 
of  a  French  officer,  I  was  at  first  lodged 
in  the  comparative  luxury  of  one  of  the 
city’s  criminal  prisons.  That  wasn’t  too 
bad.  Most  of  us  military  prisoners  still 


★ 


PHOTO  RESEARCH  CORPORATION 


15024  Devonshire  St.,  San  Fernando,  California  •  Telephone  San  Fernando  3352 


70 


February,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


INSIDE  VIEW  OF  A  HEALTHY  SOLDIER  .  .  .This  X-ray  picture  in 
minute  detail  shows  Army  physicians  that  his  lungs  are  sound — 
free  from  tuberculous  infection.  It  was  made  on  Kodak  X-ray  Film 
in  "the  greatest  tuberculosis  hunt  of  all  time.” 


REJ ECTED  . . .  serious  tuberculous  infection.  Not  only  is  a  man  unfit 
to  fight  kept  out  of  the  Army — for  the  first  time,  perhaps,  he  learns 
of  his  condition,  and  begins  his  own  campaign  against  another 
enemy  which  can  be  conquered. 


0  0 


X-ray  Film  helps  guard  our  armed  forces 


against  Tuberculosis 


E, 


jven  war  has  its  bright  and  hopeful 
side — even  this  war  of  frightfulness.  It 
is  bringing  the  surest,  most  conclu¬ 
sive  test  for  tuberculosis  to  millions 
of  young  Americans.  As  a  matter  of 
standard  practice,  those  volunteering 
or  called  under  Selective  Service  are 
radiographed — pictures  of  their  lungs 
are  made  on  X-ray  film. 

This  alertness  and  determination  on 
the  part  of  Army  physicians  to  keep 
the  Army  free  from  tuberculosis  are 


also  performing  an  invaluable  service 
for  those  found  to  be  infected.  For 
tuberculosis,  with  timely  measures, 
can  be  cured.  But  frequently  it  does 
not  give  a  warning  of  its  presence, 
without  a  radiograph. 

Th.s  is  the  greatest  X-ray  job  since 
Kodak  introduced  flexible  X-ray  film, 
to  replace  cumbersome  plates,  in  1914. 


It  prophesies  the  not-too-distant 
time  when  X-ray  will  make  possible 
the  examination  of  all  our  people — as 
hundreds  of  thousands  of  industrial 
employees  have  been  examined,  as  a 
matter  of  routine,  for  years. 

A  good  deal  has  been  accomplished. 
X-ray  pictures  have  already  been  a 
major  factor  in  beating  tuberculosis 
down  from  first  place  to  seventh,  as  a 
hazard  of  life  .  .  .  Eastman  Kodak 
Company,  Rochester,  N.  Y. 


Serving  human  progress  through  Photography 


American  Cinematographer  •  February,  1943 


71 


had  some  of  the  money  we  had  had  with 
us  before  our  capture— but  we  weren’t 
allowed  to  buy  anything  with  it.  The 
French  criminals,  who  remained  in  the 
prison  with  us,  had  the  privilege  of 
buying  things  through  friends  on  the 
outside — but  no  money  to  do  it  with. 
The  obvious  solution  was  quickly 
reached;  the  French  jailbirds  bought  us 
what  we  wanted — with  our  money,  of 
course — and  saw  to  it  that  their  own 
wants  were  taken  care  of,  as  well.  They 
were  quite  honest  about  it,  too;  I  don’t 
think  they  charged  any  of  us  more  than 
three  or  four  times  the  actual  cost  of 
our  purchases.  After  all,  one  expects 
to  pay  more  under  such  conditions  for 
the  little  luxuries  of  life.  .  .  . 

But  this  comparative  idyll  was  soon 
spoiled.  The  Nazis  again  discovered  that 
I  was  an  American.  Obviously,  then, 
I  had  no  place  among  these  French 
prisoners.  So  I  was  transferred  to  a 
prison-camp  for  English  officers. 

The  less  said  about  this,  the  bet¬ 
ter.  The  Germans,  you  know,  have  no 
love  for  the  English,  and  in  this  prison 
they  made  use  of  every  opportunity  to 
prove  it.  The  winter  of  1940-41  was  one 
of  the  coldest  in  many  years.  Our  sleep¬ 
ing  quarters  were  well  ventilated;  our 
beds  consisted  of  bare  wooden  benches. 
Such  luxuries  as  blanxets,  pillows  and 
heating,  of  course,  were  much  too  good 
to  be  lavished  on  Englishmen  .  .  .  we 
slept  uncovered,  on  the  bare  benches, 
and  liked  it.  By  way  of  food,  our  cap- 
tors  would  bring  us  in  a  bowl  of  color¬ 
less,  lukewarm  liquid.  If  it  had  a  few' 


potato-peelings  floating  around  in  it, 
we  knew'  it  wras  supposed  to  be  soup. 
If  it  had  an  occasional — oh,  so  occa¬ 
sional! — shred  of  meat  of  questionable 
antecedents  in  it,  we  understood  it  was 
supposed  to  be  stew.  It  tasted  the  same 
either  way,  and  contained  just  as  little 
nourishment.  I  don’t  know  how  we 
would  have  survived  if  the  French  vil¬ 
lagers  hadn’t  occasionally  managed  to 
smuggle  us  a  few  crusts  now  and  then 
from  their  own  all  too  scanty  store.  .  .  . 

Eventually,  through  the  efforts  of  the 
American  Consulate  and  others,  I  found 
myself  back  in  Paris,  a  free  man.  There’s 
no  space  here  to  tell  of  my  battles  with 
Vichy-French  bureaucrats  who  obviously 
considered  that  while  I  might  have  been 
good  enough  to  bleed  and  die  for  France, 
I  most  certainly  wasn’t  good  enough 
to  obtain  a  ration  card  without  which  no 
one  in  France  could  eat  or  clothe  him¬ 
self.  But  finally  I  managed  to  make 
my  way  out  of  France,  and  back  to  Free 
America.  .  .  .  I’ll  never  forget  what  a 
sight  the  Statue  of  Liberty  was  as  the 
ship  steamed  up  the  harbor  towards 
New  York’s  skyline. 

Since  then,  I’ve  had  to  spend  a  good 
deal  of  my  time  building  myself  up. 
Before  that  prison  camp  episode,  I 
w'asn’t  such  a  bad  physical  specimen. 
Today,  you’d  probably  take  one  look 
at  me  and  mentally  classify  me  as 
the  perfect  “4-F.”  I’m  not  surprised 
that  the  Army  doctors  turned  me  down 
half-a-dozen  times  when  I  tried  to  en¬ 
list;  malnutrition  and  lack  of  vitamins 
do  that  to  you.  But  finally  I  managed 


to  make  the  grade  for  enlistment  in 
the  Enlisted  Reserve  of  the  Signal 
Corps. 

This  last  fall  I  passed  through  the 
training-school  the  A.S.C.  and  the  Acad¬ 
emy  have  been  conducting  for  Signal 
Corps  cinematographers.  My  past  ex¬ 
perience  had  given  me  a  good  deal  of 
practical  preparation  for  the  job,  but 
I  found  that  men  like  John  Arnold, 
A.S.C. ,  and  his  staff  could  teach  me  a 
great  deal  w'hich  will  make  me  a  much 
better  combat  cameraman  for  Uncle 
Sam  than  ever  I  was  for  UFA. 

And  now  I’m  waiting  my  call  to  ac¬ 
tive  duty  as  a  U.  S.  Army  cameraman. 
I  don’t  know  what  sort  of  a  job  it 
will  be,  or  where:  but  I  hope  it  will 
take  me  up  to  one  of  the  fronts  across 
which  I’ll  again  face  the  Nazis.  If  it 
does — well,  an  Army  cameraman  is  a 
soldier  first  and  a  cameraman  inci¬ 
dentally,  and  maybe  luck  will  be  wdth 
me  again  and  give  he  a  chance  to  do 
some  shooting  with  something  besides  a 
camera!  END. 


Free  Wheeling 

(Continued  from  Page  57) 

resort  country,  with  the  high  Presiden¬ 
tial  Range  climbing  into  the  sky. 

Here  we  seemed  quite  alone — ration¬ 
ing  of  tires  and  gas  had  made  its  inroads 
on  the  traffic,  and  summer  tourists  were 
very,  very  few.  Untouched  forests  and 
grand  mountain  views  greeted  us  on 
every  hand  as  the  miles  rolled  behind. 
Usually  at  11  a.m.  it  became  necessary 
to  stop  for  Douglas’s  nap.  If  we  neg¬ 
lected  to  do  so,  very  soon  he  w'ould  fall 
asleep  in  his  seat!  So  time  out  for  rest 
for  all,  or  to  wander  nearby  .  .  .  often 
to  make  movies. 

Off  again,  we  entered  the  Franconia 
Notch  Region  not  far  from  Bette  Davis’s 
Sugar  Hill  home,  wound  around  moun¬ 
tain-held  Echo  Lake  down  to  Indian 
Head  to  enjoy  the  comforts  of  cottages 
by  a  lake  and  stream. 

One  day  we  pedalled  only  11  miles, 
another  22.  Our  record  day  of  51  miles 
was  accomplished  in  a  little  less  than 
12  hours.  Another  adventure  came  while 
hiking  a  long  up-grade,  a  trucker  en¬ 
gaged  in  hauling  pulp  logs  asked  us  if 
we’d  like  a  lift. 

We  accepted.  So  onto  the  empty  truck 
we  piled,  bikes  and  all.  You  probably 
realize  how  well  mountain  folks  know 
their  own  country  so  I  need  not  men¬ 
tion  that  we  slipped  around  some  of  the 
corners,  rose  off  the  “deck”  often  when 
rough  spots  rolled  under  the  heavy  dual 
wheels,  and  arrived  at  a  junction  in 
less  than  a  half-hour,  having  15  miles  to 
our  credit !  We  managed  to  thank  our 
host  but  we  did  not  feel  fully  gathered 
together  for  some  time  after  his  truck 
had  rumbled  out  of  sight! 

Turning  off  onto  a  spruce  and  balsam 
lined  road  we  filmed  shots  of  ourselves 
pedalling  along.  After  a  bit  of  practice, 
it  is  not  so  difficult  to  take  a  scene  or 
two  from  your  bike,  one-handed,  of  the 
rest  of  the  party  as  you  catch  up  or  ride 


NO  "DIM-OUT’'  IN  NEW  Y0RK- 
IF  YOU 
C.  ROSS 

For  Lighting  Equipment 

As  sole  distributors  East  of  the  Mississippi  we  carry  the  full  and 
complete  line  of  latest-type  Inkie  and  H.I.-Arc  equipment 
manufactured  by 

MOLE-RICHARDSON,  Inc. 

Hollywood  -  California 

Your  requirements  for  interior  or  exterior  locations  taken  care 
of  to  the  last  minute  detail  anywhere 

☆ 

MOTOR  GENERATOR  TRUCKS 
RENTALS  SALES  SERVICE 

☆ 

CHARLES  ROSS,  Inc. 

333  West  52nd  St.,  New  York,  N.Y.  Phones:  Circle  6-5470-1 


72  February,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


along  with  them. 

Scenes  of  our  sojourn  on  Lake  Winne- 
pesaukee  and  Winnisquam  took  us  from 
wheels  to  boating,  bathing  and  fun  in 
the  sun. 

In  two  weeks  we  rode  210  miles  on  the 
bikes  and  400  miles  by  train  and  withal 
brought  back  a  film  record  which  will 
keep  alive  our  summer  of  1942  for  the 
duration,  and  long  years  after.  And  we 
discovered  something  we’re  sure  many 
other  cinefilming  cyclers  will  also  learn 
as  time  goes  on :  that  when  you  tour  the 
country  in  leisurely  bicycle  fashion,  you 
really  see  more  of  the  country  than  you 
do  when  you  whiz  through  by  motor  at 
the  usual  pre-war  touring  speeds.  You 
find  yourself  taking  better  advantage 
of  picturemaking  opportunities,  too,  for 
things  you’d  never  notice  (at  least  not 
enough  to  make  you  stop  the  car)  when 
driving  through  at  fifty  or  sixty  per 
become  much  more  evident  when  you 
approach  them  at  bicycling  speed — es¬ 
pecially  as  they  offer  an  inducement  to 
stop  pedalling  for  a  moment  while  you 
make  pictures!  END. 


Sound  Camera 

(Continued  from  Page  56) 

film,  a  four-to-one  reduction  lens  mounted 
in  a  microscope  adjustment  rack  was 
placed  between  the  slit  and  the  sound 
roller. 

The  recording  lamp  was  mounted  in  a 
lamphouse  fitted  with  suitable  condens¬ 
ing  lenses  and  placed  at  the  back  of  the 
recording  unit.  A  ruby  pilot-light  was 
mounted  at  the  left-hand  side  of  the 


OUR  MEN  NEED 

*  BOOKS  * 


ALL  YOU  CAN  SPARE 

That  book  you've  enjoyed  — 
pass  it  along  to  a  man  in  uni¬ 
form.  Leave  it  at  the  nearest 
collection  center  or  public 
library  for  the  1943  VICTORY 
BOOK  CAMPAIGN. 


box  to  indicate  whether  or  not  the  re¬ 
cording  light  is  working. 

To  insure  constant  speed,  a  sound- 
camera  must  of  course  be  motor-driven. 
Working  in  houses,  and  in  most  indus¬ 
trial  plants  and  offices,  the  regular  110- 
Volt  alternating  current  from  the  city 
power  lines  is  usually  available,  so  a 
standard  110-Volt  synchronous  motor  is 
generally  used. 

But  making  exteriors  “on  location,” 
this  110-Volt  A.C.  is  not  always  avail¬ 
able,  so  a  second  motor,  operated  by 
direct  current,  was  also  provided.  It  is 
interchangeable  with  the  A.C.  motor.  In 
order  to  get  constant  speed  from  this 
D.C.  motor,  a  speed-control  was  mounted 
on  one  end  of  the  shaft. 

On  location  where  110-Volt  power  is 
not  available,  the  D.C.  motor  is  quickly 
put  into  place,  and  then  two  12-Volt  bat¬ 
teries  supply  all  the  power  necessary  to 
operate  the  camera,  amplifier  and  exciter- 
light.  A  6-Volt  converter  supplies  the 
110- Volt  current  necessary  to  operate 
the  amplifier. 

As  will  be  seen  from  the  illustrations, 
a  belt-drive  transmission  is  used  to  con¬ 
vey  the  drive  from  the  motor  to  the 
camera.  The  motor  is  belted  to  a  pulley 
on  the  side  of  the  sound  housing.  From 
this,  a  second  belt  runs  upward  to  a  large 
pulley  equipped  with  a  flywheel  and  fas¬ 
tened  to  the  camera’s  hand-crank  shaft 
by  a  bracket  which  attaches  to  the  screw 
sockets  originally  provided  to  fit  the 
auxiliary  gearboxes,  motor-drive  unit, 
etc.,  to  the  Model  A.  From  this  point  a 
third  belt  extends  upward  to  drive  the 
take-up  on  the  external,  300-foot  maga¬ 
zines  fitted  to  the  top  of  the  camera. 

The  entire  outfit — camera  (including 
the  recording  assembly  beneath  it), 
motor,  and  all,  are  mounted  on  a  rigid 
steel  plate  base  which  is  in  turn  at¬ 
tached  to  the  tripod.  The  tripod  itself 
was  constructed  along  professional  lines, 
and  is  as  large  and  rigid  as  though  in¬ 
tended  for  a  35mm.  outfit.  In  order  to 
give  a  solid  support  to  the  weight  of  the 
camera  (60  lbs.)  and  to  insure  steady 
panning,  a  heavy  thrust  bearing  is  used 
in  the  tripod-head. 

It  must  be  admitted  that  this  outfit 
lacks  the  streamlined  professional  finish 
of  the  commercially  marketed  16mm. 
sound-camera  outfits.  With  its  various 
externally  mounted  gadgets  it  has  rather 
the  look  of  some  of  the  very  early,  more 
or  less  experimental  35mm.  single-system 
sound  cameras.  But  even  though  a  choosy 
industrial  designer  might  find  fault  with 
its  “home-made”  appearance,  it  works— 
and  very  successfully.  We  proved  that  in 
the  making  of  a  full  feature-length 
Western  picture  in  Kodachrome,  with 
lip-synchronized  dialog,  sound-effects  and 
musical  background.  After  all,  audiences 
don’t  judge  a  picture  by  the  appearance 
of  the  equipment  that  made  it,  but  by 
the  quality  of  the  picture  they  see  on 
the  screen,  and  the  sound  they  hear  from 
the  loudspeakers.  And  when,  as  in  this 
case,  you  can  add  to  successful  perfor¬ 
mance  the  pleasure  of  having  planned 
and  made  the  outfit  yourself— well,  what 
more  could  you  ask?  END. 


48  Years  of  Home  Movies 

(Continued  from  Page  60) 

but  because  at  last  they  had  the  three 
great  essentials  without  which  home 
movies  could  not  be  successful.  They  had 
the  safety  of  acetate-base  film.  They  had 
the  economy  of  narrow-gauge  film  and 
the  reversal  process.  And  they  had  the 
simplicity  of  almost  foolproof  design  and 
spring-powered  operation. 

At  the  same  time  in  France,  another 
home  movie  standard  which  also  incor¬ 
porated  these  essentials  was  bom.  This 
was  the  9.5mm.  “Pathex”  system  intro¬ 
duced  by  Pathe.  This  system  also  used 
reversal  film,  but  of  9%mm.  width,  and 
single-perforated,  with  the  single  perfor¬ 
ation  in  the  center  of  the  film  between 
the  frames,  much  like  that  of  the  earlier 
17 M>mm.  “Biokam”  (Figure  4). 

Due  to  the  still  narrower  width  of  the 
9.5mm.  film,  the  “Pathex”  system  was 
even  more  economical  than  16mm.,  yet 
because  of  the  center  perforation  prin¬ 
ciple,  the  9.5mm.  frame  was  only  very 
slightly  smaller  than  the  16mm.  frame. 

This  standard  was  introduced  in  this 
country  about  the  same  time  16mm.  was; 
but  because  the  American  Pathex  organi¬ 
zation  was  working  far  from  its  base  of 
supplies,  and  could  not  service  the 
cameras  well  with  either  repairs  or  film, 
it  never  became  popular  here. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  has  become  ex¬ 
tremely  popular  abroad,  not  alone  in 
Europe,  but  in  most  other  foreign  re¬ 
gions,  including  Asia,  Africa  and  Aus¬ 
tralia.  As  recently  as  two  years  ago,  a 
survey  made  in  England  showed  that 
there  were  more  9.5mm.  outfits  in  use 
there  than  the  combined  totals  of  16mm. 
and  8mm.  equipments.  It  may  surprise 
some  American  readers  to  know  that 
European  users  of  “nine-five”  have  for 


TELEFILM 

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►  North  American  Aviation 

►  U.  S.  Dept,  of  Interior 

►  U.  S.  Dept,  of  Agriculture 

►  Santa  Fe  Railroad 

►  Washington  State  Apple 

Commission 

►  Standard  Oil  of  Calif. 

►  Salvation  Army 

and  Many  Others 
A  BETTER  JOB  FASTER- 

MORE  ECONOMICAL! 

TELEFILM 

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GL adstone  5748 


American  Cinematographer  •  February,  1943  73 


several  years  had  color,  in  the  form  of 
9.5mm.  Dufaycolor,  and  even  sound-on- 
film  available  to  them. 

The  17V2mm.  standard  has  by  no 
means  died,  either.  You  will  remember 
that  when  the  Pathe  organization 
launched  their  “Pa  the  scope”  28mm. 
standard,  they  were  more  than  a  little 
influenced  by  a  policy  of  establishing  a 
standard  which  would  be  exclusively 
their  own  and  would  not  only  provide  an 
outlet  for  their  own  films,  but  would  also 
prevent  the  use  of  any  but  Pathe  films 
on  their  equipment.  So  as  they  saw  the 
dawning  possibilities  of  16mm.  for  edu¬ 
cational  use,  the  Pathe  executives 
dragged  the  old  split-35  standard  of 
1714mm.  from  its  grave,  and  established 
a  system  known  as  the  “Pathe  Rural.” 

This  is  strictly  a  matter  of  making 
projectors — so  far  as  we  know,  no 
1714mm.  cameras  have  been  marketed 
commercially  for  more  than  twenty  years 
— and  of  providing  both  educational  and 
entertainment  films  for  them  from  the 
Pathe  libraries.  So  successfully  has  this 


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for  today’s  monochrome  and 
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anticipates  the  possibility  of 
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system  been  promoted,  at  least  on  the 
home  grounds,  that  the  1714mm.  “Pathe 
Rural”  is  the  standard  of  the  French 
educational  system,  and  Pathe,  of  course, 
has  a  virtual  monopoly  on  supplying  both 
films  and  equipment.  Naturally,  during 
the  last  eight  or  ten  years,  1714  mm. 
sound-on-film  projectors  and  films  have 
been  available. 

And  since  the  birth  of  16mm.,  twenty 
years  ago,  another  amateur  standard — 
8mm. — has  been  perfected.  It  brought 
with  it  further  drastic  reductions  in  ex¬ 
pense  and  yet,  thanks  to  a  decade’s  prog¬ 
ress  in  camera,  projector  and  lens  design 
and  emulsion  chemistry,  surprisingly 
little  loss  in  photographic  quality. 

So  today — almost  exactly  twenty  years 
after  the  introduction  of  16mm.  as  the 
“ideal”  medium  for  home  movies,  we  find 
a  new  and  yet  smaller  film-standard  tak¬ 
ing  its  place  as  the  home  movie  stand¬ 
ard,  while  16mm.  goes  increasingly  pro¬ 
fessional.  And  why  not,  since  direct 
16mm.,  with  modern  emulsions  and  mod¬ 
ern  high-powered  incandescent  and  arc 
projectors,  can  compete  on  almost  even 
terms  with  35mm.  on  even  the  biggest 
theatre-size  screens,  and  if  necessary  be 
enlarged  to  35mm.  prints  for  theatrical 
or  commercial  use,  while  8mm.  reduces 
the  costs  of  home  moviemaking  to  less 
than  one-tenth  that  of  35mm.?  END. 


Phil  Tannura 

(Continued  from  Page  52) 

apprenticeship  in  the  studio’s  motion 
picture  film  laboratory,  learning  how  to 
mix  chemicals,  to  wind  and  unwind  film 
from  the  developing-racks  and  drying 
drums,  and  eventually  how  to  develop 
negative  and  to  make  prints. 

After  a  thorough  grounding  in  this, 
during  which,  in  a  brief  period  of  a  few 
months,  he  worked  his  way  through  all 
the  various  departments  of  the  lab,  he 
felt  he  was  at  last  ready  to  go  out  on 
the  set  and  begin  to  learn  how  to  shoot 
a  movie  camera.  And  he  began  to  pester 
his  chief  for  a  chance  to  do  so. 

“That,”  he  says,  “paid  dividends.  The 
third  or  fourth  time  I  hit  him  for  a 
camera  job,  my  chief  gave  me  a  reply 
I  didn’t  expect.  ‘You’re  a  persistent 
little  son-of-a-gun,  aren’t  you?’  he  said. 
‘I’m  going  to  fire  you  .  .  .  Come  back 


tomorrow  and  we’ll  see  if  we  can  make 
a  cameraman  out  of  you!’ 

“So  the  next  morning  I  reported  for 
work  as  an  assistant  cameraman.  I 
spent  about  six  months  at  that  job,  and 
then  right  in  the  middle  of  a  picture 
the  cameraman  I  was  assisting  fell  sick. 
In  the  ordinary  course  of  events,  some 
other  First  Cameraman  would  have 
taken  over  the  picture  and  finished  it. 
But  the  man  I’d  been  assisting  had  other 
ideas.  ‘Give  Little  Phil  a  chance,’  he 
said.  ‘He’ll  finish  the  picture  darn  near 
as  well  as  I’d  do.’ 

“So  there  I  was,  a  full-fledged  First 
Cameraman.  I  don’t  know  whether  or 
not  I  finished  the  picture  as  well  as  my 
former  chief  would  have  done,  but  at 
least  I  finished  it,  and  everyone  seemed 
pleased  enough  to  keep  me  on  as  a  First 
Cameraman. 

“At  that  time  the  Edison  Company 
had  quite  a  variety  of  irons  in  the  fire. 
One  of  them  was  making  educational 
movies  for  Thomas  Edison’s  close  friend, 
Henry  Ford.  And  as  I  was  the  newest 
and  youngest  cameraman  on  the  lot, 
making  these  pictures  fell  to  me,  in  be¬ 
tween  grinding  out  my  quota  of  the  Edi¬ 
son  Company’s  lesser  features.  Eventu¬ 
ally,  I  was  assigned  almost  exclusively 
to  making  the  Ford  Educationals. 

“In  that  job,  I  had  a  lot  of  interesting 
experiences.  I  travelled  all  over  the 
country,  wherever  material  for  these  ed¬ 
ucational  reels  was  to  be  found.  And 
I  had  the  unique  experience  of  being 
the  only  official  cameraman  assigned  to 
cover  the  mission  of  the  famous  Ford 
‘Peace  Ship’  which,  carrying  a  tremen¬ 
dous  cargo  of  high-minded  notables, 
went  to  Europe  in  1915  in  the  altruistic 
hope  of  ending  World  War  I  in  time 
to  ‘get  the  boys  out  of  the  trenches  by 
Christmas.’ 

“Of  course  that  mission  failed,  just  as 
a  similar  mission  to  end  this  war  be¬ 
fore  the  final  defeat  of  Nazism  and  all  it 
stands  for  would  fail  today.  But  I  had 
chalked  up  several  months  of  new  and 
valuable  experiences  which  were  a  lib¬ 
eral  education  to  me. 


GREATEST  NEED 
IN  HISTORY  5 


AMERICAN  RED  CROSS 


74  February,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


“And  when  I  got  back  to  the  studio, 
I  found  a  new  management  in  charge. 
The  new  managers  were  beginning  to 
realize  that  motion  pictures  were  an  art 
as  well  as  a  profitable  form  of  money¬ 
making  entertainment.  They  were  all 
for  new  ideas  in  everything. 

“That  suited  me  right  down  to  the 
ground.  Ever  since  I’d  found  myself  as 
a  First  Cameraman,  I  had  experimented 
constantly.  Under  the  previous,  more 
conservative  management,  that  had  got¬ 
ten  me  in  the  1915  version  of  the  dog¬ 
house  often  enough.  But  with  the  new 
management,  it  set  me  solidly  in  favor. 
Almost  before  I  knew  it,  I  found  myself 
the  ‘ace’  cameraman  of  the  studio,  get¬ 
ting  assigned  to  the  biggest  and  best 
pictures. 

“As  the  studio  chief  put  it,  ‘I  like  you. 
Phil,  because  you’re  always  trying  for 
something  new.  When  you  fail,  I’ll  ad¬ 
mit  it’s  sometimes  pretty  terrible — but 
when  your  experiment  clicks,  it’s  often 
brilliant.  And  you  seem  to  succeed 
oftener  than  you  fail.’ 

“Then  came  America’s  participation  in 
the  War.  I  tried  to  get  into  the  Marine 
Corps,  but  got  turned  down — officially 
because  I  was  a  few  inches  too  short  to 
make  what  they  considered  a  good  leath¬ 
erneck,  but  actually,  so  I  learned  later, 
because  some  of  the  studio  brass  hats 
pulled  some  political  strings  to  keep 
me  in  mufti.  Then  I  tried  the  Signal 
Corps,  and  was  accepted.  The  next  few 
years  were  devoted  largely  to  grinding 
a  camera  as  a  member  of  the  Siberian 
A.E.F. 

“When  I  got  home  after  the  armistice, 
I  ran  into  the  problem  I  hope  our  boys 
who  have  gone  into  the  Service  in  this 
war  won’t  encounter:  I  couldn’t  get  a 
job.  I’d  been  off  the  screen  for  nearly 
three  years,  and  everyone  had  forgotten 
me.  Still  in  uniform,  I  tramped  from  one 
studio  to  another,  and  everywhere  they 
gave  me  a  reception  that  indicated 
clearly  that  they  thought  I  was  just 
another  ex-soldier  crank-turner  who  had 
never  had  any  studio  experience. 

“The  first  job  I  got  was  as  cameraman 
for  an  exploring  expedition  the  Brazilian 
Government  sent  out  to  find  a  fabled 
‘lost  city’ — if  it  was  still  there.  I  was 
on  this  expedition  for  more  than  six 
months,  and  later  the  officials  told  me  I 
was  the  only  North  American  or  Euro¬ 
pean  ever  to  have  gone  so  far  into  the 
jungles.  We  penetrated  even  farther 


than  Teddy  Roosevelt  did  on  his  cele¬ 
brated  expedition  to  the  River  of  Doubt. 
Starting  from  Manaos  we  reached  the 
Matto  Grosso,  and  then  worked  East 
and  North  and  finally  back  to  Manaos. 

“When  I  got  back  to  New  York,  I 
found  I  was  still  a  forgotten  man  as 
far  as  the  studios  were  concerned. 
Finally  I  landed  a  job — as  Second  Cam¬ 
eraman  for  a  man  who  before  the  war 
had  been  my  assistant! 

“Once  I  got  that  foothold,  I  managed 
in  time  to  work  my  way  up  to  the  posi¬ 
tion  of  First  Cameraman  again.  And  in 
the  early  20’s,  as  I  saw  the  industry 
moving  out  to  the  West  Coast,  I,  too, 
decided  to  move  to  Hollywood. 

“There  it  was  another  battle  to  gain 
recognition.  I  did  independent  ‘quickies’ 
and  Westerns  for  producers  and  stars 
who  are  now  forgotten.  It  was  a  period 
of  working  heartbreakingly  long  hours 
with  indifferent  equipment,  and  for  pre¬ 
cious  little  money.  It  was  a  saying  in 
those  days  that  if  a  ‘quickie’  had  a 
seven-day  shooting  schedule  it  meant 
seven  days  and  seven  nights  of  shoot¬ 
ing;  and  that  gag  wasn’t  very  far  from 
being  the  literal  truth! 

“It  was  my  fondness  for  experiment¬ 
ing  that  finally  took  me  out  of  that  class 
of  work.  In  those  days  a  Western  usu¬ 
ally  meant  ultra-crisp  photography  with 
/ : 64  definition  and  a  soot-and-whitewash 
contrast  which  had  to  be  seen  to  be  be¬ 
lieved.  I  tried  the  experiment  of  shoot¬ 
ing  for  softer,  more  pictorial  quality. 
I  opened  up  my  lens,  even  on  exteriors. 
I  used  reflectors  more,  and  played 
around  with  filters. 

“And  one  day  Charles  Ray — one  of 
the  big  stars  of  the  day,  and  at  that 
time  producing  his  own  pictures — hap¬ 
pened  to  catch  one  of  my  obscure  little 
Westerns. 

“The  next  day  I  got  a  call  from  him. 
‘If  you  can  get  that  sort  of  quality  in 
Westerns,’  he  said,  ‘you’re  good  enough 
to  shoot  for  me.’  And  up  to  the  time 
he  retired  from  the  screen,  I  did.” 

From  there,  Tannura  went  to  the  FBO 
Studio,  the  forerunner  of  today’s  RKO. 
He  stayed  there  until  after  the  coming 
of  sound  in  1929-30. 

Then  producer  Robert  Kane  came  to 
him  with  a  proposition  to  go  to  Europe. 
At  that  time,  remember,  sound  had 
killed  the  world-wide  foreign  market. 
Previously,  all  that  had  been  necessary 
to  fit  a  picture  for  foreign  distribution 
had  been  to  replace  the  English  titles 


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MANUFACTURERS  OF  SOUND-ON-FILM 
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American  Cinematographer  •  February,  1943  75 


★ 


OmsJiicMv' 

PRECISION 

OPTICS 

since 

-1899- 

★ 

Because  of  their 

ACCURACY  THEY  ARE 
DEPENDED  UPON  BY 
OUR  ARMED  FORCES 
ON  LAND— ON  THE  SEA 
—IN  THE  AIR 

★ 

“GOERZ  AMERICAN” 
PHOTO-LENSES 

play  an  important  part  in 
the  tvar  program  and  our 
production  is  now  keyed 
to  fill  the  requirements 
of  our  Government.  W  itli- 
in  limitations  we  may  still 
he  able  to  supply  Goerz 
lenses  of  certain  types 
and  sizes  for  civilian  use. 
We  suggest  your  inquiries 
through  your  dealer  or 
direct. 

ADDRESS  DEPT.  AC-2 


C.P.  GOERZ  AMERICAN  OPTICAL  CO. 


American  Lens  Makers  Since  1899 
Office  and  Factory 

317  East  34th  Street,  New  York  _ 

□ .  □ 


with  titles  printed  in  the  language  of 
the  country  where  the  film  was  to  be 
shown.  That  way,  the  silent  screen 
could  effectively  “speak”  any  language — 
French,  Swedish,  Hungarian,  Turkish, 
Arabic,  Bengali,  or  what  have  you.  But 
when  the  actors  really  began  to  speak, 
and  the  words  came  out  in  English  from 
a  sound  track,  it  was  different. 

Kane  had  the  idea  of  going  to  Europe 
to  make  foreign-language  versions  of 
American  movies,  using  casts  of  foreign 
actors.  He  wanted  Tannura  to  go  with 
him  as  his  right-hand  man.  Later  “Little 
Phil”  learned  that  a  very  important 
contingent  factor  in  obtaining  the  finan¬ 
cing  for  the  deal  had  been  getting  Tan¬ 
nura  to  go  with  it! 

So,  in  1929,  Tannura  and  Kane  left 
Hollywood  for  Europe,  armed  with  a 
contract  to  make  foreign-language  ver¬ 
sions  of  Paramount’s  Hollywood-made 
films. 

In  this  job,  Phil  Tannura  found  him¬ 
self  serving  as  a  great  deal  more  than 
a  mere  cameraman.  First  of  all,  he  was 
Production  Manager  of  the  studio,  and 
saw  to  the  plant’s  physical  and  financial 
operation.  He  scoured  Europe  for  play¬ 
ers  who  could  be  cast  in  the  pai'ts 
played  in  the  Hollywood  versions  by 
Jeannette  MacDonald,  Buddy  Rogers, 
Kay  Francis,  Paul  Lukas,  and  the  rest 
of  Paramount’s  stellar  personalities. 

In  his  spare  time,  he  directed  and 
photographed  the  pictures.  Often  he 
would  make  as  many  as  14  different 
foreign-language  vei’sions  of  a  single 
picture. 

This  work  was  done  in  Paris.  At  first 
Kane  and  Tannura  worked  in  one  of  the 
many  French  rental  studios,  renting 
stage  space,  offices,  cutting-rooms,  and 
everything  else  needed  for  production. 
But  so  successful  was  their  work  that 
before  long  the  Paramount  foreign  exec¬ 
utives  decided  that  they  would  build 
their  own  studio.  And  Phil  had  the  task 
of  laying  out  and  building  Paramount’s 
French  studio  at  Joinville-sur-Seine,  and 
of  seeing  to  it  that  it  was  equipped  with 
the  best  of  modern  production  equip¬ 
ment.  Then  for  several  years  he  had 
charge  of  the  Joinville  studio’s  opera¬ 
tions,  which  were  on  a  constantly  in¬ 
creasing  scale. 

In  time,  the  physical  and  nervous 
strain  of  the  responsibilities  of  manag¬ 
ing  the  studio,  producing  the  pictures 
and  in  addition  directing  and  photo¬ 
graphing  most  of  them,  proved  too  much 


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for  Tannura.  He  asked  to  be  relieved 
of  the  load,  at  least  while  he  rested  up 
for  a  while. 

So,  by  way  of  vacation,  he  was  sent 
to  England  to  photograph  one  of  Para¬ 
mount’s  quota  of  English-made  features, 
while  somebody  else  shouldered  the  re¬ 
sponsibilities  of  producing  and  direct¬ 
ing  it. 

This  was  a  lucky  move  for  him,  for 
while  he  was  in  England  two  develop¬ 
ments  occurred  which  eventually  put  a 
quietus  to  Paramount’s  foreign-version 
production.  One  of  these  was  the  de¬ 
velopment  of  the  technique  of  “dubbing 
in”  voices,  by  which  other  actors  could 
record  the  dialog  in  appropriate  foreign 
languages  to  synchronize  with  the  lip- 
movements  of  the  English-speaking  Hol¬ 
lywood  players. 

This  in  time  was  developed  to  such 
perfection  that  even  when  you  saw  a 
“dubbed”  version  of  a  film  featuring 
players  you  knew  could  speak  nothing 
but  English,  the  illusion  and  synchron¬ 
ism  were  so  perfect  you  felt  almost  cer¬ 
tain  your  actor  had  suddenly  learned 
how  to  speak  flawless  French,  or  Hun¬ 
garian,  or  Arabic. 

The  second  was  the  fact  that  Para¬ 
mount,  having  over-expanded  at  home, 
was  forced  into  bankruptcy,  and  had  to 
suspend  its  foreign  production  opera¬ 
tions. 

So  until  shortly  before  the  outbreak 
of  World  War  II  Tannura  remained  in 
England,  as  one  of  Bi'itain’s  top  cine¬ 
matographers.  He  played  an  important 
part  in  the  planning  and  construction  of 
Alexander  Korda’s  big  studio  at  Den¬ 
ham,  and  of  several  of  the  other  modern 
British  studios,  as  well.  He  was  one 
of  a  group  of  American  cinematograph¬ 
ers  who  played  an  important  part  in  the 
re-birth  of  the  British  film  industry, 
and  especially  in  the  fight  to  bring  both 
technical  standards  and  salaries  for 
British  cinematographers  into  closer 
parity  with  those  in  Hollywood. 

In  this,  he  remembers,  one  of  the 
biggest  obstacles  was  provided  by  Ger¬ 
man  cinematographers.  Some  of  them 
were  refugees  from  the  Nazi  terror,  but 
others — well,  looking  back  on  it,  he  won¬ 
ders.  They  came  to  England  from  the 
studios  of  Berlin,  and  were  always  ready 
to  take  any  possible  job  away  from  an 
Englishman  or  American  at  half-price 
salaries  .  .  . 

Since  his  return  to  Hollywood  Tan¬ 
nura  has  been  almost  constantly  under 
contract  to  the  Columbia  Studio,  and 
assigned  to  direct  the  photography  of 
some  of  the  firm’s  most  important  fea¬ 
tures.  There’s  quite  a  bit  of  rivalry 
between  some  of  Columbia’s  top  femin¬ 
ine  stars  as  to  who  should  be  photo¬ 
graphed  by  Tannura. 

And  in  between  the  big  pictures,  he’s 
received  assignments  to  plenty  of  Colum¬ 
bia’s  short-schedule,  low-budget  program 
films.  And  while  some  cinematographers 
try  to  dodge  these  “B”  productions,  Tan¬ 
nura  rather  likes  them.  “They’re  hard 
work,”  he  says,  “but  they  give  you  a 
chance  to  experiment  in  wTays  you  can’t 
do  on  the  bigger  ‘A’  productions. 


76  February,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


“I  don’t  mean  by  this  that  I  take  these 
less  spectacular  assignments  as  an  op¬ 
portunity  to  go  hog-wild  on  photographic 
experiments.  That  wouldn’t  do  at  all, 
for  a  badly-photographed  program  pic¬ 
ture  stands  just  as  much  to  a  camera¬ 
man’s  discredit  as  a  badly-photographed 
‘A’  production. 

“But  on  the  big  productions,  you  know 
there’s  such  an  investment  involved  in 
production  costs,  stellar  reputations,  and 
the  like,  that  you  tend  to  be  cautious. 
On  ‘B’  pictures,  it’s  different.  There 
isn’t  nearly  so  much  at  stake,  so  once 
you’ve  gotten  an  idea  worked  out  in 
your  head  to  the  point  where  you  feel 
it’s  practical,  you  can  afford  to  try  it 
out  in  actual  production.  If  it  works 
out  as  expected,  you’ve  added  some¬ 
thing  valuable  to  your  professional  rep¬ 
ertoire;  if  it  doesn’t  quite  ring  the  bell, 
there’s  not  too  much  lost  as  long  as  the 
scene  is  still  commercially  usable. 

“To  my  mind,  the  so-called  ‘B’  pic¬ 
tures  and  short-subjects  ought  to  be  rec¬ 
ognized  as  the  industry’s  proving-grouna 
for  both  new  talent  and  new  ideas. 
Plenty  of  ‘A’  picture  acting  and  direc¬ 
torial  talent  have  already  come  up  from 
these  stepchildren  of  the  industry.  But 
all  of  us — producers,  writers,  directors, 
and  cinematographers — could  do  a  lot 
more  than  we  are  doing  to  make  the 
program  films  a  proving-ground  for 
new  ideas  as  well.  END. 


P-38 

(Continued  from  Page  49) 

ley  matched-lens  finder  to  the  Special. 
We  made  a  C-shape  adapter  to  fit  around 
the  rear  of  the  Special.  The  bottom  of 
the  C  screwed  onto  the  tripod  in  the 
usual  way,  and  the  Special  was,  in  turn, 
fitted  to  this  bracket. 

On  the  top  of  the  C  we  mounted  my 
Akeley  matched-lens  finder  with  its 
pivoted  eyepiece  and  magnifier.  The 
mount  was  arranged  so  that  the  lens 
of  the  finder  was  accurately  aligned 

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directly  above  the  camera  lens.  Since  we 
were  working  at  infinity  focus,  once  we 
got  the  two  units  aligned  for  infinity,  we 
didn’t  have  to  worry  about  finder  par¬ 
allax.  And  the  construction  of  the  brack¬ 
et  left  the  magazine  side  of  the  camera 
clear,  so  there  was  no  interference  with 
quick  changing  of  magazines. 

Matching  the  lenses  of  camera  and 
finder  for  this  type  of  infinity-focus  cam¬ 
erawork  was  fortunately  fairly  easy.  The 
horizontal  angle  of  the  50mm.  lens  which 
is  the  “normal”  lens  in  35mm.  work  is 
25  degrees;  the  angle  of  the  25mm.  lens 
which  is  the  correspondingly  “normal” 
lens  in  16mm.  work  is  21.2  degrees.  So 
for  our  purposes  a  50mm.  (2-inch)  lens 
in  the  finder  served  quite  satisfactorily 
when  shooting  with  the  25mm.  lens  on 
the  Cine-Special.  In  the  same  way,  when 
we  used  a  2-inch  lens  as  a  telephoto  on 
the  camera,  we  used  a  4-inch  lens  on 
the  finder.  This  gave  me,  so  far  as  the 
finder  was  concerned,  the  same  conven¬ 
ience  of  operation  I’d  been  accustomed 
to  in  my  35mm.  work. 

The  choice  of  a  tripod  was  another 
problem.  I  used  my  regular  Akeley  gyro 
head  mounted  on  a  high-hat  which  was 
in  turn  bolted  to  a  wooden  support  rig¬ 
idly  mounted  in  the  open  door  of  the 
camera  plane.  But — the  Akeley  head  was 
designed  to  work  with  a  much  bigger 
and  heavier  35mm.  outfit.  When  the  little 
Cine-Special  was  placed  on  it,  there  lit¬ 
erally  wasn’t  enough  weight  there  to  off¬ 
set  the  pull  of  the  counterbalancing 
springs  which  were  tensioned  to  hold  a 
35mm.  camera  in  perfect  equilibrium. 
You  had  to  watch  it  constantly  or  those 
overly-powerful  springs  would  jerk  the 
camera  downward.  And  in  starting  and 
stopping  on  pans  and  tilts,  the  over¬ 
powered  springing,  designed  to  compen¬ 
sate  for  the  weight  of  a  heavier  cam¬ 
era,  would  give  you  jerky  pans  if  you 
weren’t  everlastingly  careful. 

The  perfect  solution  would  have  been 
a  tripod  designed  for  professional  use 
with  a  lightweight  camera — but  there 
wasn’t  one  available.  A  lightweight  fric¬ 
tion  head  like  Frank  Zucker’s  “Profes¬ 
sional  Junior”  would  have  made  things 
a  lot  easier  for  us  .  .  .  and  I  kicked 
myself  enthusiastically  when  I  remem¬ 
bered  that  while  I  was  in  London  before 
the  war  I  had  seen — and  almost  bought 
— a  lightweight  gyro  tripod  specially 
made  by  Vinten  to  go  with  a  lightweight 
camera  like  the  35mm.  Newman-Sinclair 
I  brought  back  with  me.  Several  times, 
after  hops  where  we  had  to  follow  par¬ 
ticularly  difficult  action,  I  had  Flinsky 
deliver  a  couple  of  extra  kicks  on  my 
rear  for  having  been  so  foolish  as  to 
leave  that  tripod  in  London! 

But  once  these  problems  were  out  of 
the  way,  the  rest  of  the  job  was  a  pleas¬ 
ure,  for  Lockheed  and  the  Army  cer¬ 
tainly  gave  us  everything  we  could  pos¬ 
sibly  have  asked  for.  Our  camera  ship 
was  a  speedy  Lockheed  “Lodestar” 
transport — first  cousin  to  the  famous 
“Hudson”  bomber — and  our  subject,  of 
course,  was  the  P-38  “Lightning”  pur¬ 
suit,  flown  for  us  by  Lockheed’s  Chief 
Test  Pilot,  Milo  Burcham,  who  is  with¬ 


out  doubt  the  best  P-38  pilot  in  the 
world.  He  ought  to  be — he’s  test-flown 
practically  every  P-38  that  has  come  off 
Lockheed’s  busy  production  lines! 

The  Army  made  arrangements  so  we 
could  fly  our  scenes  anywhere  we  wanted 
to  along  the  coastal  airway  between  Los 
Angeles  and  San  Diego,  and  inland  into 
the  Mojave  desert,  and  at  any  time  we 
felt  the  weather  was  right  for  our  pur¬ 
poses. 

Producer  Burden  cooperated,  too,  by 
letting  us  wait  until  we  felt  the  weather 
conditions  were  just  right  to  give  us 
perfect  shots.  I’ve  seen  major-studio 
production  executives  with  schedules 
and  budgets  twenty  or  thirty  times  as 
generous  as  his  complain  bitterly  over 
that  waiting  for  weather.  But  not  Shir¬ 
ley  Burden!  He  wanted  things  right — 
and  he  knew  that  having  the  right 


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American  Cinematographer  •  February,  1943  77 


atmospheric  and  cloud  conditions  meant 
the  difference  between  getting  just  ordi¬ 
nary  aerial  scenes,  and  getting  perfect 
ones. 

His  patience  was  well  rewarded.  Right 
after  the  Christmas  holidays  we  had  a 
little  spell  of  rain,  followed  by  several 
days  of  absolutely  perfect  weather  for 
aerial  camerawork — clear,  blue  skies 
with  just  the  right  amount  of  pictorial- 
ly  puffy,  white  clouds,  so  that  we  could 
get  over  a  real  impression  of  the  “Light¬ 
ning’s”  speedy  flight.  We  flew  and  shot 
like  mad  while  the  weather  lasted,  and 
got  everything  in  the  bag.  I  don’t  think 
the  scenes  could  have  been  any  better 
if  we’d  had  Technicolor  and  a  million- 
dollar  budget. 

In  this  part  of  the  work,  I  can’t  say 
enough  about  Milo  Burcham.  I  always 
knew  he  was  a  fine  pilot — but  I  didn’t 
really  appreciate  just  how  good  he  was 
until  I  saw  him  put  that  P-38  through 
its  paces. 

In  all  that  we  were  helped  immeasur¬ 
ably  by  having  an  intercommunicating 
telephone  on  the  camera-ship,  so  that 
we  could  talk  freely  to  our  pilot,  and 
two-way  radio  so  that  we  could  talk 
with  Burcham  while  we  shot.  Of  course 
we  always  planned  every  evolution  out 
carefully  before  taking  off — usually  dia¬ 
gramming  out  each  shot,  and  making 
sure  that  everybody  concerned  knew 
just  where  the  camera-ship  and  the  P-38 
would  be  every  second,  and  just  what 
flight  path  each  would  follow. 

I  couldn’t  help  thinking  what  a  big 
improvement  it  was  over  the  way  we 
worked  in  the  early  days  of  air  movies, 
when  we  strapped  ourselves  into  open- 
cockpit  planes,  with  no  way  of  com¬ 
municating  with  either  our  pilot  or  the 
pilot  of  the  other  ship,  and  had  to  trust 
solely  to  pantomime,  planning,  and  big 
gobs  of  luck  to  get  our  shots  and  bring 
us  back  with  a  whole  skin! 

Yes,  there’s  a  lot  of  water  gone  under 
the  bridge  since  those  early  days  of 
“Hell’s  Angels”  and  “The  Great  Air  Mail 
Robbery.”  There’s  a  difference  in  our 
movie-making  materials  and  methods, 
and  in  the  planes  we  fly.  And  there’s  no 
less  of  a  difference  between  the  reasons 
for  making  these  various  pictures.  I 
was  proud  to  have  worked  on  Holly¬ 
wood’s  first  aerial  entertainment  movie, 
and  on  its  biggest  ones.  But  I’m  a  good 
deal  more  proud  of  this  little  16mm.  job 
which  has  the  much  bigger  purpose  of 
helping  train  the  thousands  of  pilots 
coming  from  our  Air  Force  training 
schools  how  to  fly  an  all-American  pur¬ 
suit  ship  which  has  already  outflown  and 
outfought  the  best  Germany  and  Japan 
have  to  offer!  END. 


Television 

(Continued  from  Page  47) 

collecting  thirty-five  cents  admission  in 
cash  at  the  box  office  and  American 
business  leaders  know  it.  Television 
will  not  have  this  direct  income  and, 
therefore,  will  not  challenge  the  su¬ 
perior  film  product.” 


“Television  will,  in  effect,  collect  its 
thirty-five  cents  in  cash  because  no  mat¬ 
ter  how  excessive  the  cost,  the  spon¬ 
sor  will  simply  tag  the  extra  cost  onto 
the  sale  price  of  his  product  to  the 
consumer.” 

“No  matter  how  good  television  gets, 
people  will  still  be  gregarious,  they  will 
still  like  to  ‘go  out’  to  the  movies.” 

“People  will  sit  at  home  and  drop  a 
quarter  in  a  meter  and  see  a  Metro, 
Fox,  Universal,  Paramount  or  Columbia 
picture  transmitted  from  a  central  point 
over  the  air  to  sixty  million  people  in 
a  week’s  time.” 

“Theatres  will  have  large-screen  tele¬ 
vision  and  pay  extra  to  see  special 
events  and  news.” 

And  so  forth,  and  so  on. 

My  views,  which  as  this  welter  of 
opinion  shows,  may  be  worth  very  lit¬ 
tle,  are  these:  Television  will  injure 
the  film  industry  just  as  radio  has  in¬ 
jured  it — by  keeping  people  at  home 
looking  at  television  programmes  with¬ 
out  any  apparent,  immediate  cost.  Tele¬ 
vision  day-time  dramatic  material  will 
be  on  a  low  production  level — like  small 
film  company  programme  features,  only 
serialized.  They  will  cut  deeply  into  the 
female  matinee  film  audience.  Television 
evening  programs,  other  than  dramatic 
shows,  will  not  be  much  more  of  a  draw 
than  similar  radio  programs  are  at  pres¬ 
ent — which  is  plenty,  even  though  it 
hasn’t  emptied  the  theatres. 

Evening  dramatic  shows  will  not  try 
to  imitate  film  technique  but  will  be 
billed  as  plays.  The  angle  will  be  “Tele¬ 
vision  brings  Broadway  to  your  living 
room.”  And  I  think  this  angle  may 
give  the  film  industry  a  run  for  its 
money. 

Anybody  who  has  seen  a  live  television 
play  in  a  private  home  can  testify  that 
the  effect  could  be  that  of  the  living 
quality  of  the  theatre  combined  with  the 
unique  intimacy  of  the  film.  A  well- 
acted,  well-produced,  two  or  three  set 
play,  aided  by  rear  projection  and  film 
inserts,  will  be  a  devastating  experience 
to  the  television  skeptic. 

As  for  the  television  treatment  of 
news,  it  will  be  entirely  possible  to  net¬ 
work  each  day’s  news-events  on  film, 
with  film  sequences  and  the  live  person¬ 
alities  connected  with  these  sequences 
cut  into  a  master-controlled  presentation, 
from  twenty  different  locations,  from 
coast  to  coast,  and  possibly  continent 
to  continent.  In  short,  it  will  replace 
the  present-day  newsreel. 

In  conclusion,  I  think  television  will 
compete  with  the  film  industry  to  a  con¬ 
siderable  extent.  Beyond  that,  and  more 
significant  to  the  readers  of  this  maga¬ 
zine,  I  think  the  film  industry  will  ad¬ 
just  itself  by  entering  the  television 
field — as  sections  of  it  have  already 
begun  to  do.  That  is  why  I  have  spent 
so  much  time  in  this  initial  article  on 
the  possible  functions  of  the  camera¬ 
man  in  the  new  art.  It  is,  I  believe,  an 
art  which,  potentially,  can  combine  the 
special  characteristics  of  radio,  the  the¬ 
atre,  and  the  motion  picture  into  an 
incredibly  effective  whole.  END. 


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EQUIPMENT 

CAMERA  EQUIPMENT  COMPANY 
1600  BROADWAY,  NEW  YORK  CITY 
CABLE:  CINEQUIP 


EYEMO,  SINGLE  LENS  OR  TURRET  MODELS, 
BELL  &  HOWELL  STANDARD,  MITCHELL 
CAMERAS,  LENSES,  MOTORS.  ACCESSORIES. 
CAMERA  MART,  INC.,  70  W.  45TH  ST.  N.Y.C. 


ONE  BM  MODEL  500-D  OR  601-D  RECORDER 
only.  Ray  Arn.  Normandy  Lane,  Dayton,  Ohio. 


SPOT  CASH  PAID  FOR  ALL  MAKES  8mm 
and  16mm  sound  and  silent  cameras  and  pro¬ 
jectors  ;  lenses,  exposure  meters ;  Agfa,  East¬ 
man,  and  imported  folding  and  miniatui-e  cam¬ 
eras.  NATIONAL  CAMERA  EXCHANGE,  11 
So.  Fifth  St.,  Minneapolis,  Minnesota. 


SPOT  CASH  WAITING!  16mm  Sound  projectors; 
ROLLEIFLEX  CAMERAS,  Cine  Special  (Cam¬ 
eras — Lenses).  MogulFs,  57  W.  48th,  New  York- 


78  February,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


In  a  great  movie  theatre,  an  audience  of  thousands 
—  carried  out  of  their  everyday  lives— look,  and  listen, 
to  the  drama  pouring  from  a  strip  of  photographic  film 
about  one  inch  wide.  Everything  is  on  this — not  only  the 
living,  moving  scenes  of  the  story,  but  on  the  tiny  "sound 
track ”  at  the  left,  the  sound:  whispered  words  of  love 
...  a  terrified  scream . . .  the  nerve-shattering  roar  of  a 
dive  bomber. . .  an  enchanting  voice  crooning  a  lullaby. 
Film  carries  it  all. 


Most  Hollywood 


movies  are  on 


fil 


um  ma 


FROM  the  time  when  Thomas  A. 

Edison  and  George  Eastman 
worked  together  on  the  early,  flicker¬ 
ing  movies,  the  improvement  of  mate¬ 
rials  for  professional  motion  pictures 
has  been  one  of  the  chief  fields  of 
Kodak  research.  Kodak  has  been  the 
pacemaker,  and  is  by  far  the  largest 
supplier  of  Hollywood. 

>  From  "the  flickers”  to  art 

Kodak’s  original  production  of 
transparent  roll  film,  the  key  to  motion 
pictures  .  .  .  specialized  negative  and 
positive  films  .  .  .  the  production  of 
high-speed  panchromatic  materials  . . . 
the  modern  color  phase,  now  rapidly 
expanding  . .  .  these  are  important 
scenes  in  the  advance  from  "the  flick¬ 
ers”  to  today’s  work  of  art,  in  which 
Kodak  has  played  a  leading  role.  And 


there  is  another  .  .  .  The  success  of 
"sound”  pictures  hinged  on  making 
the  spoken  words,  or  music,  or  "sound 
effects, ”a  basic  part  of  the  picture.That 
is  what  you  have  today,  because  . . . 

Sound,  too,  is  pictured 

With  special  fine-grain  emulsions, 
Kodak  "sensitizes”  film  for  sound 
recording.  In  effect,  sound  is  changed 
into  light,  and  this  light  is  recorded 
on  the  film,  simultaneously  with  the 
recording  of  the  scenes.  Lips  move — 
a  voice  speaks.  Yet  the  voice  is  also  a 
"picture” — an  effect  of  light  on  film. 
The  voice  changes  from  a  whisper  to 
an  angry  roar — each  tone  is  a  series  of 


"light”  pictures,  different  in  quality. 

As  you  sit  in  the  theatre,  the  process 
is  reversed  —  the  "light  pictures”  on 
the  sound  track  are  changed  back  into 
sound  . .  .The  "sound”  newsreels  are 
made  in  much  the  same  way. 

Movies  for  everybody 
For  children,  movies  are  education. 
For  normal  men  and  women  they  are 
the  grandest  form  of  entertainment, 
reaching  almost  everyone.  For  those 
distraught  by  worry  or  sorrow,  they 
are  wholesome  escape.  For  our  service 
men  on  ships  or  in  distant  camps,  they 
are  a  little  of  everything  that  is  needed 
to  give  a  man  a  "lift”.  .  .  Eastman 
Kodak  Company,  Rochester,  N.  Y. 


Serving  human  progress  through  Photography 


This  institutional  advertisement  is  one  of  a  series  covering  a  wide  variety  of  Kodak 
products  and  services.  It  appeared  in  December  popular  magazines  read  by  millions. 


American  Cinematographer  •  February,  1943 


79 


Forecas 
to  come 


EVEN  while  we,  the  entire  Bell  &  Howell  organization,  are  concen¬ 
trating  all  of  our  power  today  on  war  production — we  know  that 
some  day  the  war  clouds  will  lift,  and  are  planning  ahead  for  that  time. 

Excellent  evidence  of  these  plans  is  the  new  Filmosound  "V”  Pro¬ 
jector.  It  is  available  now  only  to  our  armed  forces — but  it  is  a  fore¬ 
cast  of  better  things  to  come  when  Victory  is  won  and  new  Bell  & 
Howell  products  will  be  available  to  all. 


There’s  a  Fighting  Job  for  Every  Projector , . . 

You  and  your  projector,  backed  by  the  Filmosound  Library,  can 
render  priceless  educational  and  training  assistance  to  hundreds  of 
people,  through  OCD  and  similar  group  showings.  The  Filmosound 
Library  offers  almost  unlimited  selection  of  timely  films,  on  a  pur¬ 
chase  or  rental  basis.  If  you  do  not  know  how  to  go  about  reaching 
the  people  who  need  to  see  and  are  eager  to  see  these  films,  contact 
your  B&H  dealer  and  he  will  co-operate  with  you. 


In  spite  of  the  fact  that  critical  materials  are  restricted  in  the  manu¬ 
facture  of  the  Filmosound  "V”  Projector,  it  is  a  fine-quality,  precision- 
built  Bell  &  Howell  projector  in  every  sense.  Incorporated  are  all 
features  essential  to  superb  sound  and  picture  projection  as  well  as 
film  protection.  It  is  sturdy,  compact,  and  easy  to  operate. 


New  Films  for  the  Civilian  Front 

The  U.  S.  Office  of  Education  recently  announced  15  new  Industrial 
Training  films,  largely  on  benchwork  skills,  and  has  140  more  in 
the  making.  From  Army  and  Navy  schools  come  the  first  37  teaching 
films,  now  released  for  civilian  Pre-Induction  and  Pre-Flight  Courses. 


Name 


PRECISION- 
MADE  BY 


Address 


Cltv 


State 


COLOR  FILTERS 

— all  B&H  Color 
Filters  are  still 
available  except 
Kodachrome 
Type  A.  These 
dyed  optical  glass 
filters  have  great 
stability  and  resistance  to  atmospheric 
conditions.  They  are  attached  to  Filmo 
cameras  by  screwing  them  into  the  lenses. 
See  your  B&H  dealer  for  selection. 


WANTED  TO  BUY-FfLMOSOUNDS 

FOR  UNCLE  SAM  Your  Filmosound  Projector  is  urgently 
needed  by  Uncle  Sam  for  use  in  military  training  programs.  If  you 
will  sell  yours,  wire  us  at  once  giving  model,  serial  number,  a7id your 
selling  price  including  shipping  charges  to  Chicago. 


Many  /^eeed<uyt^e<f  Still  AVAILABLE 

SEE  YOUR  DEALER 


"ROLLER^ 

BAXDAG-” 

9  —  si  xth  A.  President  Barclay  is  fea- 

single-reel  release  ■  cured  in  Prof.  J.  A.  Fur- 

in  Emergency  First  bay's  new  film,  "LIBERIA." 

Aid  Series,  a  Filmosound  Library 

completed. 

F  FOR  EXCELLENCE — how  the  Army-Navy  Award  for  extraordinary 
performance  is  won  and  presented;  one-reel  sound  film;  service  charge  50c. 


BUY  WAR  BONOS 


BELL  &  HOWELL  COMPANY 
1848  Larchmont  Ave. 

Chicago,  Ill. 

Without  obligation,  please  send  me  free: 

(  )  List  of  available  accessories. 

(  )  Send  me  the  “E”  for  EXCELLENCE  sound 

reel  for  use  on . (date) 

(  )  Details  on  new  Filmosound  Library  films 
listed  below. 


B&H  FOCUSING  ALIGNMENT 
GAUGE,  for  Filmo  Turret  8  — 
permits  use  of  Turret  8  Critical 
Focuser  to  the  full  extent  of  its  capabilities.  The 
gauge  is  mounted  on  your  tripod  and  the  Turret  8 
Camera  attached  to  sliding  block  on  the  gauge.  A  title 
card,  map,  or  any  subject  may  then  be  sharply  focused 
and  accurately  composed  within  the  film  frame  area 
and  photographed  with  complete  assurance. 


Bell  &  Howell  Company,  Chicago;  New  York;  Hollywood;  Wash¬ 
ington,  D.  C.;  London.  Established  1907, 


OWI  issues  at  least  four  new  films  each  month— and  OCD  defense 
training  films  are  now  getting  into  use.  The  Filmosound  Library 
augments  all  these  official  motion  pictures  with  educational  and 
recreational  films  .  .  .  with  training  films  on  First  Aid  .  .  .  and  new 
releases  on  the  new  theaters  of  war,  such  as  North  Africa,  Liberia, 
the  Caucasus,  etc.  Send  coupon  for  complete  list. 


20-year-old  airplane  ex- 
”  pert.  See  "WOMEN  IN 
DEFENSE”  and  other  OWI 
films. 


B&H  DIRECT 
VIEWER 

for  16mm.  film — 
ready  to  attach  to 
your  model  1 36 
splicer.  The 
viewer  is  an  in¬ 
valuable  aid  to 
editing  because  it 
makes  it  easy  to 
spot  the  frame 
you  wish  to  cut. 


THE  mor/on  P/CTURE 


COmiOHT  DEPOSIT 


March 

1943 


riAR  15  1943 


FlGHTING  CAMERAMEN  of  the  U.  S.  Armed  Forces  are  shooting  the  action  as  it 
happens.  They’re  filming  history  in  the  making  and  they’re  making  photo  history 
doing  it.  5  Dependable  film  is  a  must.  There’s  no  chance  for  a  retake  on  the  firing 
line.  Du  Pont  “Superior”  Films  for  cine  shots  are  helping  Uncle  Sam’s  front  line 
photographers  to  get  the  story  in  breath-taking  pictures.  5  This  film  has  fighting 
quality,  too.  It  defies  swift  changes  in  temperature.  It  retains  full  quality  from  ex¬ 
posure  to  development.  Fine  grain  .  .  .  latitude  .  .  .  contrast  .  .  .  speed  .  .  .  whatever 
the  requirement,  cameramen  can  depend  on  du  Pont  “Superior”  Films  even  under 
the  most  difficult  working  conditions. 


"SUPERIOR” 
CINE  FILM 

Better  Things  for  Better  Living 
.  .  .  Through  Chemistry 


82  March,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


SUPERIOR  1  ( Type  104 )  A  fine  grain  film  especially  suited 
for  taking  background  negatives  and  for  general  outdoor 
use.  Has  moderate  speed  .  . .  requires  normal  development. 

SUPERIOR  2  ( Type  126 )  Combines  high  speed,  fine  grain, 
long  scale  gradation  and  a  well-corrected  panchromatic 
response.  An  ideal  all  ’round  film  for  general  use. 

SUPERIOR  3  ( Type  127 )  Meets  exacting  requirements 
under  adverse  lighting  conditions.  Almost  twice  as  fast  as 
Superior  2,  yet  it  retains  remarkable  fine  grain. 

E.  I.  DU  PONT  DE  NEMOURS  &  CO.  (INC.) 

Photo  Products  Department 

WILMINGTON,  DELAWARE  — SMITH  &  ALLER,  LTD.,  HOLLYWOOD,  CALIF. 


EYEMO  MODELS  L  AND  M 

have  the  compact  type  of  three- 
lens  turret.  V iewfinder  is  matched 
to  6  lens  focal  lengths  by  turning 
a  drum;  shows  "sound”  field  to 
match  camera’s  "sound”  aperture 
plate.  Operating  speeds:  Model 
L — 4  to  32  frames  per  second; 
Model  M— 8  to  48. 


TH 


'Specfacu&ui 

EYEMO 


FOR  UNUSUAL 


SHOTS 


Since  their  introduction  seventeen  years  ago, 
Eyemos  have  been  known  as  the  cameras  that 
really  get  the  pictures — shots  that  are  difficult  or 
impossible  with  any  other  3  5mm.  camera.  Eyemos 
have  long  been  praised,  too,  for  their  unfailing 
performance  under  conditions  trying  to  both  man 
and  machine. 

Now,  all  seven  Eyemo  models  are  again  demon¬ 
strating  their  amazing  stamina  and  versatility  on 
the  battle  fronts  of  this  global  war.  The  need  of 
our  armed  forces  for  Eyemos  is  so  great  that,  for 
the  duration,  none  can  be  made  for  civilian  service. 

But  when  America’s  Victory  makes  them  avail¬ 
able  for  civilian  service  again,  one  of  the  seven 
models  will  suit  your  requirements — or  we  will 
modify  it  so  that  it  will  meet  your  exact  needs. 
You  will  never  have  to  accept  a  compromise  in 
an  Eyemo. 

Bell  &  Howell  Company,  Chicago;  New  York;  Hollywood; 

Washington,  D.  C.;  London.  Established  1907. 


EYEMO  MODELS  P  AND  Q 

most  complete  of  the  seven  stand¬ 
ard  models,  have  three-arm  offset 
turret,  prismatic  focuser  with 
magnifier,  and  provisions  for 
electric  motor  and  external  film 
magazines.  Speeds:  Model  P — 
4,  8,  12,  16,  24,  and  32  f.p.s.; 
Model  Q-8,  12,  16,  24,  32,  and 
48  f.p.s. 


WANTED  —  Eyemo  Cameras  for  Government  Use 

Special  arrangements  are  being  made  in  our  service 
department  to  recondition  for  Government  use  all 
of  the  Eyemo  Cameras  we  can  obtain.  You  may  have 
exactly  the  lenses  needed  for  important  military 
service.  If  you  will  sell — fill  out  the  information 
blank  in  this  advertisement. 


PRECISION-MADE  BY 

and  crfowe/l 


BUY 

WAR  BONDS 


EYEMOS  WANTED 


BELL  &  HOWELL  COMPANY 

1848  Larchmont  Avenue  Date . 

Chicago,  Illinois 
Gentlemen : 

I  own  an  EYEMO  Camera,  Model . .  Serial  No. 

It  has  been  modified  as  follows: . 


1  will  sell  this  camera  for  $ . 

portation  and  insurance  to  Chicago. 
The  camera  is: 


and  will  pay  trans- 


In  good  operating  condition 
Inoperative  or  damaged  (give  details): 


Price  above  includes  these  lenses: 


I  offer  the  following  additional  lenses  at  the  prices  shown 
below . . 


Name . Address . 

City  &  State . AC  3.4} 

Do  Not  Ship  Until  You  Receive  Instructions  from  Factory  ! 


American  Cinematographer  •  March,  1943  83 


CONTENTS 

Shooting  Action  Movies  in  the  African  Desert . 

. By  Capt.  Osmond  H.  Borradaile  86 

“Special  Effects”  and  Wartime  Production.  .By  Byron  Haskin,  A.S.C.  89 
Tempo  in  Industrial  Films . By  Frank  H.  Kirchner  90 

Direct-16mm.  vs.  35mm.  for  Training-  Film  Production . 

. By  William  A.  Palmer  91 

ES£2L;.  > 

Aces  of  the  Camera — XXVI :  Robert  De  Grasse,  A.S.C . 

. By  Walter  Blanchard  92 

Through  the  Editor’s  Finder .  93 


The  Staff 

• 

EDITOR 

William  Stull,  A.S.C. 

• 

TECHNICAL  EDITOR 
Emery  Huse.  A.S.C. 

• 

WASHINGTON  STAFF  CORRESPONDENT 
Reed  N.  Haythome,  A.S.C. 

• 

MILITARY  ADVISOR 
Col.  Nathan  Levinson 

• 

STAFF  PHOTOGRAPHER 
Pat  Clark 

• 

ARTIST 

Alice  Van  Norman 


A.S.C.  on  Parade .  94 

> 

Photography  of  the  Month .  95 

A  “Model  EE”  Grows  Up . By  Philip  A.  Jacobsen  96 

Professionalizing  the  Bolex . By  William  Stull,  A.S.C.  98 

The  Useful  Hyperfocal . By  Joseph  Walker,  A.S.C.  100 

Practical  Pointers  on  16mm.  Sound  Projection . 

. By  John  W.  Boyle,  A.S.C.  102 

Among  the  Movie  Clubs .  104 


CIRCULATION 
Marguerite  Duerr 

• 

ADVISORY  EDITORIAL  BOARD 
Fred  W.  Jackman,  A-  S.  C. 

Victor  Milner,  A.  S.  C. 

James  Van  Trees,  A.  S.  C. 

Farciot  Edouart,  A.  S.  C. 

Fred  Gage,  A.  S.  C. 

Dr.  J.  S.  Watson,  A.  S.  C. 

Dr.  L.  A.  Jones,  A.  S.  C. 

Dr.  C.  E.  K.  Mees.  A.  S.  C. 

Dr.  W.  B.  Rayton,  A.  S.  C. 

Dr.  Herbert  Meyer,  A.  S.  C. 

Dr.  V.  B.  Sease,  A.  S.  C. 

• 

NEW  YORK  REPRESENTATIVE 
S.  R.  Cowan,  132  West  43rd  Street 
Chickering  4-3278  New  York 


16mm.  Business  Movies 


106 


The  Front  Cover 

This  month’s  cover  shows  Nick  Musuraca, 
A.S.C.  (left)  and  director  Richard  Wallace 
discussing  the  angle  for  a  shot  to  intercut 
with  the  scene  they  have  just  filmed  for 
RKO’s  “The  Fallen  Sparrow.”  On  this 
page,  at  the  left,  we  see  them  making  that 
reverse-angle.  Note  characteristic  RKO- 
Cunningham  blimp  and  the  use  of  “Dinky 
Inkies”  and  baby  spots  on  floor  and  behind 
the  furniture.  Stills  by  Alex  Kahle. 


AUSTRALIAN  REPRESENTATIVE 
McGill's,  179  Elizabeth  Street,  Melbourne, 
Australian  and  New  Zealand  Agents 


Published  monthly  by  A.  S.  C.  Agency,  Inc. 

Editorial  and  business  offices : 

1782  North  Orange  Drive 
Hollywood  (Los  Angeles),  California 
Telephone:  GRanite  2135 
• 

Established  1920.  Advertising  rales  on  appli¬ 
cation.  Subscriptions:  United  States  and  Pan 
American  Union.  $2.50  per  year:  Canada,  $2.75 
per  year ;  Foreign.  $3.50.  Single  copies,  25c ; 
back  numbers,  30c :  foreign,  single  copies  35c, 
back  numbers  40c.  Copyright  1943  by  A.  S.  C. 
Agency,  Inc. 

• 

Entered  as  second-class  matter  Nov.  18,  1937. 
at  the  postoffice  at  Los  Angeles,  California,  under 
the  act  of  March  3,  1879. 


84  March,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


3  things  to  do  to  conserve  film 


WARTIME  is  no  time  to 
have  to  do  re-takes.  Film 
must  be  used  carefully. 

So  remember  these  three  sugges¬ 
tions:  (1)  Be  doubly  sure  of  your 
exposure  before  you  start  shooting. 
Extra  care  here  will  save  your  film 
and  your  money. 

(2)  Be  sure  you’re  using  the  right 
film  for  the  scene.  On  indoor  shots 
like  the  one  above,  or  for  any 
changing  light  condition,  use  an 
extra-fast  film.  You  can’t  buy  a 
faster  film  than  Agfa  Ansco  Triple 


S  Pan.  In  addition  to  its  great 
speed,  it  has  balanced  contrast  to 
provide  desirable  brilliance  out¬ 
doors,  yet  avoid  harsh  effects  under 
artificial  light.  It  has  plenty  of 
latitude  too. 

(3)  If  you  have  any  technical  pho¬ 
tographic  questions  that  we  can 
help  you  with  .  .  .  send  ’em  in. 
We’ve  established  an  information 
service  for  you  to  use  whenever  you 
choose,  and  free  of  charge.  Address 
your  letter  to  Agfa  Ansco  Informa¬ 
tion,  Binghamton,  New  York. 


Agfa  Ansco 

8  and  16  mm. 

TRIPLE  S  PAN 
Reversible  Film 


American  Cinematographer  •  March,  1943 


85 


SHOOTING  ACTION  MOVIES 
IN  THE  AFRICAN  DESERT 

By  CAPT.  OSMOND  H.  BOR RADAI IE 


THERE  is  little  that  I  can  add  to 
what  has  already  been  printed 
about  military  cinematography, 
but,  nevertheless,  here  are  a  few  of  the 
difficulties  I  experienced  in  trying  to  get 
a  photographic  war  record.  Although  I 
held  an  Army  commission,  I  was  very 
fortunate  to  have  seen  action  in  the  three 
branches  of  the  service,  all  of  which  of¬ 
fered  different  problems  for  the  cine¬ 
matographer.  Those  of  the  Army,  I  con¬ 
sider  the  most  numerous  and  varied.  If 
the  cinematographer  is  permanently  at¬ 
tached  to  one  unit  he  is  well  established 
and  his  problems  are  fewer,  for  he  has 
not  to  worry  about  such  matters  as  ra¬ 
tions,  transportation,  winning  the  good 
will  of  the  senior  officers  (without  which 
he  will  not  achieve  much  during  a  cam¬ 
paign),  but  his  scope  is  limited. 

When  a  roving  cinematographer  such 
as  I  was  visits  a  unit — usually  because  he 
has  been  tipped  off  that  interesting 
things  might  be  happening  there — he 
must,  first  of  all,  be  able  to  definitely 
prove  his  identity;  secondly — and  this  is 
not  always  an  easy  job— to  convince  the 
Commanding  Officer  of  the  value  of  prop¬ 
aganda  and  of  the  importance  of  getting 
a  historical  record ;  a  persuasive  line  that 
I  often  found  successful  was  that  the 
folks  back  home  may  have  a  chance  of 
seeing  his  men  in  action  on  their  local 
screen. 

*  The  author.  Captain  Osmond  H.  Borradaile. 
was  for  many  years  a  member  of  the  A.S.C.  when 
he  worked  in  the  Hollywood  studios  before  return¬ 
ing  to  England.  Since  the  outbreak  of  the  War, 
he  has  been  on  active  service  as  an  officer  in  the 
British  Army  Film  Unit.  Seriously  wounded  film* 
ing  a  convoy  en  route  to  Tobruk  while  under  siege 
in  the  fall  of  1941,  he  has  been  invalided  out  of 
service  and  is  now  with  the  Canadian  National 
Film  Board.  THE  EDITOR. 


This  procedure  is  always  easier  if  the 
visitor  can  assure  his  host  that  he  has 
an  understanding  of  military  behavior, 
and  will  not  unnecessarily  jeopardize  the 
lives  of  his  men.  Another  point  of  im¬ 
portance  is  that  the  visitor  is  self-suffi¬ 
cient  as  to  rations  and  transportation. 
To  give  an  idea  of  some  of  the  problems 
the  cameraman  has  to  be  prepared  to 
face,  I  shall  recall  a  typical  Western 
Desert  incident. 

Things  had  been  comparatively  quiet, 
when  suddenly  the  enemy  broke  through 
the  wire  with  two  hundred  tanks  and 
three  hundred  supporting  vehicles.  I  lost 
no  time  in  collecting  my  driver;  to¬ 
gether,  we  drew  thirty  gallons  of  petrol, 
a  week’s  rations,  twenty  gallons  of 
water  (which  was  plentiful  at  our  base) . 
We  packed  all  this,  together  with  our 
bedding  and  equipment,  into  our  open 
light  truck,  taking  care  to  secure  it  well 
and  endeavoring,  by  the  use  of  tarpaul¬ 
ins,  to  do  the  almost  impossible:  protect¬ 
ing  it  against  the  penetrating  desert 
dust. 

We  drove  to  a  famous  Armoured  Divi¬ 
sion  where  I  was  known  and  with  whose 
tanks  I  hoped  to  go  into  battle — but  they 
retired,  hoping  to  coax  the  enemy  into  a 
more  suitable  place  before  giving  him 
battle.  That  night  we  slept  under  the 
bright  stars,  feeling  confident  that  with 
the  coming  of  dawn  we  would  be  busy, 
for  surely  the  battle  would  be  joined 
that  day. 

Instead,  dawn  brought  us  signals  that 
Jerry  had  already  turned  back  to  his  own 
lines.  No,  he  would  not  fall  into  our 
trap!  This  was  bad  news  to  me,  so  I 
took  leave  of  the  C.  0.  and  with  warnings 
and  the  latest  information  as  to  the 


enemy’s  position,  we  set  out  on  a  compass 
course  into  the  desert. 

It  was  a  hot  windy  day  with  poor 
visibility  due  to  the  dust.  The  wind  was 
on  our  tail  which,  together  with  the  soft 
sand  frequently  caused  the  old  bus  to 
over-heat  and  boil.  At  first,  I  was  gen¬ 
erous  with  our  precious  water  for  I  was 
anxious  to  reach  the  escarpment  where 
I  hoped  to  leave  the  dust  and  possibly 
see  some  signs  of  Jerry.  But  we  soon 
found  that  radiator  much  too  greedy,  so 
after  filling  her  up  again,  we  tried  a  new 
system  of  driving  on  our  course  until 
she  began  to  boil,  then  swinging  the  car 
around  into  the  wind.  Slowly,  she  would 
cool  off  enough  to  allow  us  another  run 
of  perhaps  a  mile.  This  was  slow  going 
and  it  was  a  tired,  dusty  pair  of  soldiers 
who  finally  reached  the  escarpment  and 
found  a  trail  up  just  before  sunset. 

Here  we  found  tracks  leading  west; 
we  identified  them  as  British,  so  we  fol¬ 
lowed  them.  As  darkness  overtook  us, 
we  drove  into  a  wadi  and  were  chal¬ 
lenged  by  a  friendly  sentry.  After  I  had 
established  by  identity  to  the  satisfaction 
of  the  Intelligence  Officer,  I  was  paraded 
before  the  General — a  plucky  little  fellow 
who  a  few  weeks  later  was  captured  and 
succeeded  in  escaping,  leading  many  of 
his  men  back  through  the  enemy  lines. 

After  winning  the  General's  confidence 
and  assuring  him  that  I  had  my  own 
water  supply  and  would  not  therefore 
encroach  upon  his — which  was,  at  that 
time,  nearly  one  half  gallon  per  man  per 
day  for  all  uses:  washing,  cooking  and 
drinking — it  was  agreed  we  would  start 
off  at  dawn,  hoping  to  find  some  evidence 
of  the  invaders. 

A  few  miles  beyond  the  wadi  we  picked 
up  German  tank  tracks;  these  we  fol¬ 
lowed  until  climbing  out  of  a  little  de¬ 
pression  our  two  cars  stopped  short  for, 
coming  over  a  rise  and  bearing  down 
on  us  were  two  armoured  cars:  Friend 
or  foe — ?  We  grabbed  our  rifles.  On 
seeing  us,  they  separated,  took  up  posi¬ 
tion  of  advantage  and  stopped. 

We  scrutinized  each  other  through  our 
field  glasses;  satisfied  we  were  friendly 
they  closed  in  on  us.  I  grabbed  some 
pictures  of  them  as  they  came  alongside, 
as  they  had  a  couple  of  prisoners  aboard, 


86 


March,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


Italian  airmen  whom  they  had  just 
picked  up. 

These  armoured  car  boys  told  us  that 
our  bombers  had  caught  a  concentration 
of  Jerry  tanks  refuelling  at  a  point  ten 
miles  to  the  south  and  it  was  in  that 
direction  that  I  stood  the  best  chance  of 
meeting  up  with  some  Jerries.  As  the 
General  was  more  interested  in  spotting 
new  gun  positions,  we  parted  company. 

Yes,  the  bombers  had  had  a  bit  of 
sport,  for  there  lay  one  of  Jerry’s  latest 
tanks,  with  its  mutilated  crew  still 
smoldering  away,  giving  off  that  strange, 
unpleasant  smell  so  distinctive  of  human 
flesh.  Besides  the  tank,  there  were  two 
bumt-out  petrol  lorries,  two  ammo-car¬ 
riers  and  a  staff  car.  Too  bad  I  didn’t 
get  a  shot  of  that!  But  twice  we  had  to 
“lie  doggo”  as  enemy  planes  came  over, 
though  I  could  never  resist  a  shot  at 
them  with  my  rifle. 

While  we  were  trying  to  scrape  to¬ 
gether  the  remains  of  a  German  and 
bury  them,  another  armoured  car  drove 
up  and  told  us  that  all  the  Jerries  were 
now  back  behind  their  own  wire  except 
for  a  few  more  tanks  which  had  been 
knocked  out.  So,  feeling  a  bit  disap¬ 
pointed,  we  set  compass  course  and 
headed  for  our  wadi  where  the  General 
treated  me  to  a  drink  and  what  at  that 
time  seemed  a  damn  good  meal. 

The  foregone  will  give  you  some  idea 
of  days  spent  by  those  who  seek  to  get 
action  shots  on  the  desert,  but  fails  to 
give  all  the  problems  for — had  I  been 
able  to  catch  up  with  Jerry — the  next 
thing  would  have  been  to  get  into  a 
position  from  where  I  could  photograph 
them  without  being  spotted  and  knocked 
out.  The  shimmering  heat  waves,  which 
so  often  prevail,  make  the  use  of  long 
focal-length  lenses  impractical,  and  to 
make  the  job  more  difficult,  desert  war¬ 
fare  is  a  war  of  dispersal,  and  the  cam¬ 
ouflage  boys  are  far  too  good  at  their 
jobs. 

Learning  of  our  coming  November  of¬ 
fensive  and  believing  it  would  be  from 
the  low-flying  bombers  strafing  Rommel’s 
tanks  that  the  best  shots  could  be  se¬ 
cured,  I  managed  to  win  myself  a  home 
with  a  South  African  Squadron  who 
were  at  that  time  flying  Martin  Mary- 
lands — a  four-crew  medium  bomber. 

At  first,  the  C.  0.  would  only  allow 
me  to  go  on  test  flights  as  carrying  me 
meant  that  one  member  of  the  crew 
would  be  left  behind — a  very  unpleasant 
and  unfair  situation  for  the  kite  and 
other  crew  members  in  the  event  of  an 


attack  by  fighters  when  all  members  de¬ 
pend  on  each  other  to  do  their  job  and 
fight  their  way  home.  It  was  however 
agreed  that  I  should  be  allowed  to  take 
a  course  in  air-gunnery  and  if  my  score 
proved  satisfactory  I  would  be  allowed 
to  ride  as  No.  4  (rear  gunner),  with  the 
understanding  that  should  we  be  at¬ 
tacked  the  guns  immediately  took  pri¬ 
ority  over  the  camera.  This  latter  stipu¬ 
lation  I  planned  to  overcome  by  camera- 
mounts  and  remote  controls  so  that  both 
guns  and  cameras  could  be  worked  to¬ 
gether. 

Long  years  of  pointing  cameras  seemed 
to  aid  me  in  aiming  machine  guns,  for  I 
was  very  soon  accepted  as  an  air-gunner. 
The  first  few  raids  I  went  on  were  very 
interesting,  but  not  too  spectacular.  They 
were  high-level  shows  around  the  20,000 
foot  mark. 

We  would  be  called  before  dawn,  enjoy 
a  hot  breakfast  in  the  cool  air,  go  to  the 
briefing  tent,  be  given  all  the  details  of 
the  job  on  hand,  including  information 
from  Intelligence  gained  by  reconnais¬ 
sance  flights  and  other  means;  the  latest 
weather  reports  and  so  on.  We  then  piled 
ourselves  and  flying  kit  into  trucks  which 
drove  us  to  our  planes,  which  had  al¬ 
ready  been  revved  up  and  taxied  to  the 
take-off  point. 

At  the  last  minute,  we  pulled  on  our 
heavy  kit  and  climbed  into  our  kites,  me 
with  my  cameras  which,  in  an  endeavor 
to  protect  from  the  dust,  I  carefully 
wrapped  in  silk  which  I  had  salvaged 
from  an  Eyetie  parachute  which  had 
not  done  its  wearer  much  good.  We  then 
tested  our  oxygen  supply  and  our  inter¬ 
communication  system,  the  latter  a  most 
important  procedure  for  it  furnishes  the 
only  possible  means  of  contact  between 
the  foreward  members:  No.  1,  the  pilot, 
and  No.  2,  the  navigator  bomb-aimer, 
and  the  rear  members:  No.  3,  the  radio¬ 
operator,  and  No.  4,  the  gunner,  for  be¬ 
tween  the  foreward  and  aft  stations  is 
the  bomb-bay  with  its  unfriendly  load. 

To  me,  our  take-off  was  always  dra¬ 
matic.  As  No.  1  opened  the  throttle  and 
we  slowly  began  to  move,  the  ground 
crew  always  gave  us  a  cheery  smile  and 
wave.  As  we  collected  speed,  the  huge 
plume  of  cream-colored  dust  blotted 
them  from  view.  Tearing  along,  we 
would  see,  a  few  hundred  yards  beyond 
the  starboard  wing,  our  tents — our  des¬ 
ert  homes — with  the  boys  watching,  slide 
by  to  be  swallowed  up  by  that  ever¬ 
growing  and  pursuing  dust  monster.  Our 
(Continued  on  Page  117) 


Above,  left,  "General  Grant"  tanks  ride  to  the  front 
on  tank  carriers;  middle,  a  direct  hit  on  a  German 
tank;  right,  R.S.A.A.F.  "Boston"  bombers  take  off 
from  a  desert  airfield.  Below,  A  Douglas  "Boston" 
of  the  South  African  Air  Force  bombs  enemy  trans¬ 
port  and  (bottom)  strafes  a  Nazi  supply-train.  British 
Official  Photos. 


American  Cinematographer  •  March,  1943 


87 


SPECIAL-EFFECTS  IN  ACTION. 

Above,  top  row:  miniature  scenes  of  a  submarine  attack  on  a  convoy  from  "Action  in  the  North  Atlantic." 
Note  burning  ships  and  "Liberty"  freighter  attempting  to  escape.  Second  row:  left,  filming  a  sinking  in 
miniature;  right,  cameras  mounted  on  motorboat,  just  above  waterline,  for  low-angle  shots.  Third  row:  left, 
loading  the  miniature  ships  on  flat-cars  for  shipment  to  location.  Two  of  these  "miniature"  ships  fill  a  50-foot 
flat-car.  Right,  lowering  the  ships  into  the  ocean  from  the  pier  at  Santa  Barbara.  Note  size  of  ship  in 
comparison  to  men  riding  the  crane  beside  it.  Bottom:  left,  servicing  the  miniature  freighter  between  takes; 
note  size  of  ship  as  compared  to  speedboat  and  rowboat  alongside.  Right,  a  burning  cargo-carrier  goes  to 
the  bottom — in  miniature.  On  Opposite  Page:  bombers  and  torpedoplanes  attack  a  Japanese  convoy  in 
miniature  scenes  for  "Air  Force."  Note  torpedo  wake  (left)  and  airplane  laying  smoke-screen  (right).  The 
latter  required  the  rigging  of  over  600  feet  of  wire  to  support  the  miniature  plane. 


88  March,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


'  Special-Effects''  and  Wartime  Production 

By  BYRON  HASKIN,  A. S.C. 

Supervisor  of  Special-Effects, 

Warner  Bros.'  Studio 


A  FEW  weeks  ago  a  group  of  our 
highest-ranking  Naval  officers  as¬ 
sembled  in  a  Washington  projec¬ 
tion-room  for  a  private  preview  of  a 
Hollywood  film  dealing  with  Naval  mat¬ 
ters,  and  culminating  in  sequences  of 
spectacular  Naval  battle.  When  the 
screening  was  over,  this  audience  of 
Naval  experts  congratulated  the  studio 
representatives  enthusiastically.  “Gentle¬ 
men,”  the  highest-ranking  Admiral  pres¬ 
ent  is  reported  to  have  said,  “I  wouldn’t 
have  believed  our  forces  on  the  West 
Coast  had  time  to  afford  you  such  ex¬ 
tensive  and  thorough  cooperation,  or 
that  your  cameras  could  so  convincingly 
capture  the  atmosphere  of  Naval  ac¬ 
tions.” 

The  fact  is  that  with  the  exception  of 
a  few  sequences  of  action  and  back¬ 
ground-scenes  made  in  a  West  Coast 
Navy  Yard,  the  Navy  did  not  take 
time  out  from  its  vital  business  of  con¬ 
voying  cargoes  across  the  Pacific.  The 
scenes  which  so  won  the  Admiral’s  ad¬ 
miration  were  created  in  the  studio  by 
the  staff  of  that  organization’s  special- 
effects  department. 

This  little  incident  clearly  epitomizes 
one  of  the  most  important  services 
special-effects  cinematography  is  ren¬ 
dering  the  industry  today.  With  our 
country  at  war,  it  is  only  natural  that 
stories  hinging  to  a  greater  or  lesser 
extent  upon  military,  naval  and  aerial 
battles  should  form  a  considerable  pro¬ 
portion  of  almost  every  studio’s  produc¬ 
tion  schedule.  And  while  the  Army, 
the  Navy  and  the  Air  Force  gladly  co¬ 
operate  with  the  industry  to  the  fullest 
extent  possible,  under  wartime  condi¬ 
tions  they  cannot  cooperate  to  the  ex¬ 
tent  they  sometimes  did  in  times  of 


peace.  They  cannot  afford  to  have  two 
or  three  squadrons  of  fighting  or  bomb¬ 
ing  planes  tied  up  for  weeks  at  a 
time  for  picture-making  purposes;  and 
“loaning”  a  studio  a  battleship,  a  cruiser 
or  two,  or  a  flotilla  of  destroyers  is 
even  more  obviously  out  of  the  ques¬ 
tion.  The  answer  is  that  these  scenes 
must  now  be  staged  by  the  special- 
effects  department. 

Similarly,  climatic  scenes  in  which 
warplanes  are  crashed,  tanks  destroyed, 
or  warships  sunk — whether  ours  or  the 
enemy’s — must  obviously  be  done  in 
miniature. 

It  may  be  pointed  out  that  there  are 
in  existence  documentary  films  photo¬ 
graphed  by  military  or  naval  camera¬ 
men,  which  show  these  things  occurring 
in  actuality,  and  that  in  addition,  under 
certain  circumstances,  it  may  at  times 
be  possible  for  a  skeleton  studio  unit 
to  accompany  a  naval  convoy,  or  to 
work  with  land  or  air  troops  in  train¬ 
ing  areas,  to  obtain  background  and 
cut-in  scenes  of  documentary  actuality. 

But  this  argument  brings  up  a  fact 
which  is  often  overlooked  even  by  pic¬ 
ture-wise  studio  executives:  the  funda¬ 
mental  difference  between  scenes  of  ac¬ 
tual  battle,  and  battle  scenes  which  must 
fit  into  the  dramatic  and  visual  pattern 
of  an  entertainment  movie.  Not  only 
must  the  action  conform  rather  closely 
to  the  dramatic  requirements  of  a  pre¬ 
arranged  story;  it  must  also  conform 
to  the  visual  and  psychological  patterns 
of  the  entertainment  film. 

The  action  must,  in  a  word,  be  com¬ 
pressed  to  fit  the  screen.  Modern  bat¬ 
tles,  generally  speaking,  are  rather  long- 
range  affairs.  At  best,  the  camera  can 
only  focus  on  a  small  part  of  the  action 


as  a  whole.  A  modern  convoy,  for  ex¬ 
ample,  may  comprise  from  fifty  to  two, 
three  or  even  four  hundred  freighters, 
transports  and  escort  vessels;  no  less 
than  800  ships,  I  believe,  participated  in 
transporting  our  forces  for  the  recent 
invasion  of  North  Africa. 

It  is  much  easier  to  write  about  a 
200-ship  convoy  than  to  photograph  it. 
You  can  paint  word  pictures  of  a 
double  or  triple  row  of  ships  extending 
as  far  as  the  eye  can  see  in  both  direc¬ 
tions.  But  you  cannot  put  it  on  the 
screen;  when  the  ships  are  strung  out 
over  a  distance  of  five  or  ten  miles  or 
more,  no  possible  camera-position  or 
lens  will  enable  you  to  put  more  than 
two  or  three  ships — half-a-dozen  at  most 
— on  the  screen  at  once.  And  on  the 
screen,  the  images  of  the  ships  will  be 
small — too  small  to  convey  the  desired 
impression  of  actuality — and  generally 
hidden  by  atmospheric  haze,  as  well. 

Suppose  an  aerial  attack  is  made  on 
the  convoy.  You’ve  seen  the  real  thing 
in  the  newsreels:  it  gives  you  a  thrill 
because  you  know  it  is  the  real  thing 
— but  not,  as  a  rule,  because  of  any¬ 
thing  you  see  on  the  screen.  You  see 
the  black  puffs  of  the  anti-aircraft  shell- 
bursts.  Maybe  you  see  a  tiny  black  pin¬ 
point  weaving  among  them;  the  nar¬ 
rator  tells  you  it  is  an  attacking  tor- 
pedoplane.  You  see  another,  slightly 
larger  black  speck  in  the  distance,  sur¬ 
rounded  by  tiny  white  specks.  Only 
the  narrator’s  voice  tells  you  that  the 
black  speck  is  a  20,000-ton  aircraft- 
carrier  being  dive-bombed,  maybe  to 
death. 

To  conform  to  the  pattern  of  the 
dramatic  picture,  this  action  must  in- 
(Continued  on  Page  I  14) 


\merican  Cinematographer  •  March,  1948  89 


Tempo  In  Industrial  Films 

By  FRANK  H.  KIRCHNER 

Chief  Photographer,  Caterpillar  Tractor  Co. 


TEMPO  can  be  maintained  in  any 
industrial  film  only  if  the  pro¬ 
ducer  can  forget  the  “run  of  mine” 
scenes  where  “the  whistle  blows  and 
our  7,280  employees  leave  the  plant” — 
“our  shipping  rooms” — “our  testing  la¬ 
boratories.”  These  scenes  may  mean 
much  to  plant  heads  and  employees,  but 
become  boring  to  the  prospect — and  for 
whom  but  the  prospect  was  the  film 
planned  ? 

We  would  like  to  emphasize  here  that 
in  planning  “Caterpillar”  films  we  try 
always  to  keep  in  mind  not  what  we 
would  LIKE  to  show,  but  what  OTHERS 
would  like  to  see. 

Industrial  film  producers  can  well 
follow  the  methods  of  circus  entertain¬ 
ment.  Open  with  blare,  hold  ’em  with 
short,  interesting  sequences  and  close 
on  time.  Or  vaudeville’s  method  of 
“making  ’em  whistle  the  tune”  as  they 
leave  the  theatre.  Films,  like  preachers’ 
sermons,  can  be  ruined  by  failing  to 
say  “Amen”  at  the  right  time.  It’s 
better  to  have  an  audience  wish  for 
more  than  to  have  it  “serve  on  fatigue 
duty.” 

Titles  are  important.  There  are  three 
requisites  for  any  title.  First,  make  it 
easy  to  say  and  remember;  second,  allow 
the  title  some  spot  or  relation  in  the 
subject;  third,  let  the  title  background 
have  attractiveness  and/or  action — pref¬ 
erably  action,  for  as  the  picture  first 
comes  on  the  screen  it  must  imme¬ 
diately  get  attention  and  hold  it.  Fast 
readers  of  titles  will  be  held  by  the 
interest  in  the  background  action. 


The  title  “War  Against  Waste”- — our 
current  film  on  industrial  salvage— is 
easy  to  say  and  remember.  Even  if  re¬ 
membered  as  “War  On  Waste”  it  hasn’t 
departed  from  the  original  thought.  The 
title  is  casually  mentioned  once  during 
the  narration  and  stressed  at  the  finale 
in  the  narrator’s  concluding  words. 
These  words,  followed  promptly  by  mar¬ 
tial  closing  music,  emphasize  to  every 
loyal  person  in  the  audience  the  vital 
need  for  saving  and  salvaging  scrap. 

As  for  the  background  action  on  the 
presentation  and  main  titles,  one  might 
think  of  using  a  booming  cannon  to 
fire  the  words  “War  Against  Waste” 
off  the  screen.  Our  subject  is  a  war 
in  one  sense,  but  reclamation  is  a  war 
against  inanimate  things — a  war  against 
the  waste  of  metal,  tools,  dies,  rubber, 
wood  and  paper.  Thus  we  used  for  a 
background  a  pile  of  steel  scrap  upon 
which  a  huge  electromagnet  falls,  drag¬ 
ging  away  all  the  metal  that  holds  to 
the  charge.  Seeing  that  mass  of  home¬ 
ly;  jagged  pieces  of  precious  metal 
makes  one  REMEMBER  there’s  a 
SCRAP  going  on — suggests  that  the  pile 
may  contain  pieces  of  the  old  lawn- 
mower  the  spectator  donated  to  his 
scrap  drive — hints  that  now,  at  last, 
the  donor  will  really  see  what  becomes 
of  scrap  metal. 

Carrying  on  after  our  main  title  we 
“surprise”  the  audience  briefly  with  a 
few  scenic  shots  depicting  America, 
heretofore,  as  a  peaceful  land  of  plenty, 
with  laden  orchards,  fields  of  grain,  acres 
of  cornfields  and  herds  of  dairy  and  beef 


cattle.  This  leads  quickly  to  the  ar¬ 
rival  of  war  and  the  need  to  conserve 
the  nation’s  resources. 

We  then  take  the  audience  into  the 
great  “Caterpillar”  plant  to  show  how 
our  reclamation  department  does  its  part 
to  salvage,  reclaim  and  conserve  ma¬ 
terial  of  war.  It  is  here  that  the  film’s 
action  and  interest  gain  momentum — 
tempo  rises — action — speed — a  big  job 
to  do — doing  it. 

Inasmuch  as  “War  Against  Waste” 
is  a  MOTION  picture,  only  scenes  and 
machines  having  action  were  selected. 
Scenes  of  the  welder’s  sparks — grinders 
—  moving  gears  — -  spilling  oil  —  flying 
chips  from  revolving  cutters — they  all 
stress  the  act  of  doing  something  neces¬ 
sary  to  speed  the  day  of  victory. 

Even  though  our  plant  covers  more 
than  166  acres  of  ground  and  offers 
splendid  views  of  endless  rows  of  ma¬ 
chines  in  operation,  there  is  little  over¬ 
all  interest  in  such  scenes.  Therefore, 
the  settings  are  held  to  CLOSE-UPS. 
If  necessary  the  operator’s  hands  are 
included  to  show  comparative  size,  but 
the  main  objective  is  machine  action, 
photographed  close  enough  to  show  the 
curling  chips  from  the  machined  pieces 
actually  “falling  into  the  lap”  of  the 
audience. 

Effective  lighting  has  much  to  do 
with  bringing  out  the  interest  of  any 
industrial  operation.  Incidentally,  the 
lights  used  throughout  the  production 
were  the  simple  spot  floodlights,  except 
in  a  few  foundry  scenes  and  the  cupola 
charging  room  where  we  were  obliged 
to  use  our  10  Mole  Richardsons.  These 
small  floods,  fitted  with  clamp  handles 
and  built-in  reflectors,  were  fastened  to 
any  projecting  part  on  or  near  the 
operation,  making  it  possible  to  get 
effects  which  would  be  impossible  with 
larger  lamps  on  rolling  stands.  Too,  mov¬ 
ing  and  using  bulky  equipment  around  a 
factory  cut  deeply  into  valuable  man¬ 
hours  and  flat  plain  lighting  can  also 
drop  the  tempo  of  interest. 

Camera-angles  were  employed  with 
care.  Use  of  low  angles  wherever  pos¬ 
sible  helped  bring  the  operator’s  face 
into  the  frame  and  heightened  and 
strengthened  scenes  when  the  ceiling  or 
skylight  appeared  in  the  background. 
Odd  angle  scenes  usually  raise  the  ques¬ 
tion,  “How  did  you  do  that?”  Any  ques¬ 
tion  as  to  “how”  proves  that  attention 
has  been  paid,  and  interest  has  been 
held — and  attention  and  interest  are  the 
goal  in  planning  any  film. 

High  camera-angles  have  their  place 
depending  on  the  operation.  The  prin¬ 
cipal  thought  on  any  angle  is  to  see 
the  complete  operation  without  a  pan 
or  tilt.  Let  the  operation  do  the  mov¬ 
ing — but  hold  the  camera  STILL.  A  held 
position  can  be  framed  correctly  but  a 
panned  scene  is  “pot  luck.” 

Camera  dissolves  always  carry  a 
smoothness  of  action  and  go  far  toward 
eliminating  “dragged  out”  footage.  Short 
action  scenes  dissolved  together  grace¬ 
fully  and  quickly  cover  any  lapse  of 
time  or  distance.  Choppy  breaks  are 
eliminated  and  interest  is  held. 

(Continued  on  Page  114) 


90 


March,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


Di'rect>l6mm.  vs  35mm.  for 
Training  Film  Production 

By  WILLIAM  A.  PALMER 


/IS  has  been  the  case  with  business 
/-%  and  educational  films  in  the  last 
few  years  of  peacetime,  the  show¬ 
ing  of  training  films  is  almost  entirely 
on  16mm.  projection  equipment.  At 
least  as  far  as  training  films  for  war 
industry  is  concerned,  it  would  be  hard 
to  find  35mm.  projection  equipment  in 
use.  The  Army  and  Navy  in  some  of 
their  more  permanent  posts  are  still 
using  the  theatrical-size  film,  but  all 
have  16mm.  equipment  as  well.  All  the 
outlying  posts  and  bases  are  now  using 
the  16mm.  projection  equipment  for  their 
training  films  as  well  as  entertainment 
features. 

The  production  of  these  training  films 
by  the  Army  and  Navy,  and  by  private 
concerns  under  contract  to  government 
agencies,  is  now  almost  entirely  on  35mm. 
film.  To  many  who  have  seen  the  excel¬ 
lent  results  obtained  by  producers  of 
“direct-16mm.”  industrial  films,  it  may 
seem  strange  that  more  production  isn’t 
undertaken  in  the  medium  in  which  the 
release  is  made — direct  16mm.  Why 
shouldn’t  the  various  government  agen¬ 
cies  take  advantage  of  the  economies 
and  simplicity  of  direct-16mm.  produc¬ 
tion?  Or  are  there  any  economies  and 
simplicities  in  direct-16mm.  production? 

If  one  were  to  sit  down  and  make  a 
theoretical  comparison  of  the  two  meth¬ 
ods  of  training  film  production,  weighing 
the  costs,  problems,  and  quality  of  re¬ 
sults  of  one  method  against  that  of  the 
other,  the  conclusions,  I  believe,  would 
be  that  direct-16mm.  is  the  proper  me¬ 
dium.  But  this  is  no  time  for  theoreti¬ 
cal  considerations.  Like  the  military  de¬ 
mands  of  the  war  itself,  the  demand  for 
quantity  production  of  visual  aids  to  mili¬ 
tary,  naval,  and  war  industry  training 
came  suddenly,  leaving  no  time  for  figur¬ 
ing  an  over-all  procedure.  The  imme¬ 
diate  needs  after  December  7  were  for 
hundreds  of  films  in  the  shortest  possi¬ 
ble  time. 

When  the  war  broke  there  were  three 
main  groups  who  were  able  to  start  on  a 
large  scale  training  film  program:  the 
Army  Signal  Corps,  the  Hollywood  the¬ 
atrical  producers,  and  the  large  indus¬ 
trial  film  producers.  All  three  of  these 
groups  were  completely  geared  to  35mm. 
production  and  had  personnel  acclimated 
to  that  medium.  So  they  immediately 
went  ahead  with  full  speed,  producing 
tremendous  numbers  of  training  films 
with  excellent  technical  quality,  reason¬ 
able  cost,  considering  their  value  to  the 
war  preparations,  and  in  general  with 
the  subject  matter  well  handled. 

If  this  has  been  the  case,  one  might  be 


prompted  to  say,  why  bring  up  16mm. 
production?  Isn’t  everyone  concerned 
perfectly  satisfied  with  the  present  35mm. 
systems  ? 

The  answer  to  this  is  that  the  need  is 
for  many  more  training  films,  made 
much  faster  and  under  conditions  where 
the  lighter,  fast-operating  16mm.  equip¬ 
ment  really  shines.  There  is  also  the 
most  important  fact  that  16mm.  produc¬ 
tion  has  one  ace-up-the-sleeve  which  can 
make  all  35mm.  abilities  look  in  vain 
for  a  trump.  That  ace  is  Kodachrome. 

Well,  how  important  is  color  in  a 
training  film?  I  believe  color  is  all-im¬ 
portant  regardless  of  the  subject.  I  be¬ 
lieve  that  color  alone  can  add  enough, 
giving  a  clearer  visual  impression,  to 
make  it  more  important  even  than  the 
sound-track  which  is  now  considered  in¬ 
dispensable. 

Having  thus  stuck  my  neck  out,  I 
would  like  to  explain  more  completely 
what  I  consider  to  be  a  good  training 
film,  and  then  maybe  I  can  support  my 
unqualified  endorsement  of  color. 

I  believe  a  good  training  film  to  be 
primarily  a  visual  aid  to  teaching  some 
skill  or  operation.  I  don’t  think  any 
training  film  made  can  be  so  good  as  to 
render  unnecessary  other  more  conven¬ 
tional  methods  of  teaching,  although  I 
am  aware  of  the  experiments  which  have 
shown  that  educational  films  alone  can 
do  a  better  job  on  many  subjects  than 
can  a  teacher  without  visual  aids.  The 
great  value  in  the  training  motion  pic¬ 
ture  at  the  present  time  is  that  it  can 
make  up  for  the  inability  of  available 
teachers  to  cope  with  the  gigantic  mass 
needs  of  war  conditions. 

The  basic  criticism  that  I  have  had  to 
find  with  most  of  the  training  films  I 
have  reviewed  is  that  they  have  been 
designed  to  cover  too  much  or  do  too 
complete  a  teaching  job  by  themselves. 
Their  makers  have  considered  that  both 
the  visual  side  and  the  sound-track  had 
to  be  as  complete  as  possible.  I  agree 
that  the  picture  should  be  as  com¬ 
plete  as  possible,  but  it  has  seemed 
to  me  that  in  many  cases  the  sound¬ 
track  has  been  so  full  of  boiled-down 
information,  even  though  well  organ¬ 
ized  and  presented,  that  it  competes 
with,  rather  than  aids  the  visual  side. 
Since  the  visual  side  of  a  talking  pic¬ 
ture  is  the  most  vivid,  the  mind  is  apt 
to  discard  information  given  audibly, 
which  does  not  apply  directly  and  im¬ 
mediately  to  the  scene  being  shown. 
Time  and  again  I  have  seen  supplemen¬ 
tary  information  put  in  a  sound-track 
of  an  advertising  film  simply  fail  to 


Instructional  films  like  these  gain  added  value  from 
the  color-separation  by  which  Kodachrome  gives  an 
added  dimension  of  realism. 


register  with  the  audience;  and  I  think 
the  same  holds  true  with  a  training  film. 

It  is  this  that  convinces  me  that  a 
training  film  must  have  every  consider¬ 
ation  given  to  the  clearest  visual  pre¬ 
sentation  possible,  and  that  all  other 
factors — sound-track,  film  effects,  smooth 
technical  work,  and  even  cost  are  sec¬ 
ondary. 

Here  is  where  I  believe  the  case  for 
16mm.  production  can  be  sold.  In  16mm. 
Kodachrome  and  dupes  therefrom,  we 
have  a  color  process  rivalling  anything  in 
35mm.,  and  at  reasonable  costs  in  terms 
of  both  money  and  equipment.  The  only 
comparable  color  process,  Technicolor,  be¬ 
ing  prohibitive  in  cost  even  if  equipment 
were  available  in  sufficient  quantity. 

The  presentation  of  subjects  in  Koda¬ 
chrome  is  so  much  more  natural  than  in 
black-and-white  that  to  me  there  should 
be  no  hesitation  in  its  use.  By  the  use 
of  color,  many  things  can  be  shown  that 
would  be  very  difficult  in  black-and- 
white,  even  in  subjects  which  at  first 
would  be  considered  to  have  no  color 
possibilities. 

To  illustrate,  we  might  consider  a 
training  film  on  lathe  practice,  several 
of  which  have  been  already  produced  in 
35mm.  black-and-white.  In  order  to 
show  clearly  the  operations,  extreme 
close-ups  must  be  used,  and  because 
parts  of  the  lathe,  as  well  as  the  work 
being  turned  out,  are  metallic  and  more 
or  less  shiny,  it  is  very  difficult  to  avoid 
confusing  lights  and  shadows  with  the 
type  of  lighting  demanded  by  good 
black-and-white  photography. 

The  same  film  in  Kodachrome  would 
separate  the  grey  shiny  enameled  parts 
of  the  lathe  from  the  work  being  turned 
by  color  contrasts,  which  could  be  made 
extreme  by  using  yellow  brass  for  the 
(Continued  on  Page  I  12) 


American  Cinematographer  •  March,  1943 


91 


Aces  of  the  Camera 
XXVI: 

Robert  De  Grasse,  A.S.C. 

By  WALTER  BLANCHARD 


DIRECTOR  of  Photography  Robert 
De  Grasse,  A.S.C.,  was  practically 
born  into  the  picture  business — 
but  it  took  a  war  to  make  him  aware 
that  the  career  he  wanted  was  one  be¬ 
hind  a  motion  picture  camera!  Four  of 
his  father’s  brothers  were  stage  or  film 
folk.  One  of  them — his  uncle  Joseph  De 
Grasse — was  one  of  the  most  prominent 
and  best-liked  of  silent-picture  directors. 
Another — -Sam  De  Grasse — was  one  of 
the  foremost  screen  “heavies”  of  twenty- 
five  years  ago. 

But  young  Bob,  though  he  grew  up 
in  a  theatrical  atmosphere,  never  paid 


much  attention  to  the  movies.  He  was 
much  more  interested  in  basketball;  and 
America’s  entrance  into  World  War  I 
found  him  a  student  at  the  University 
of  Southern  California,  studying  occa¬ 
sionally,  playing  basketball  energetical¬ 
ly,  and  in  general  having  a  pleasant, 
carefree  life. 

The  war  changed  things  for  him, 
though.  As  soon  as  he  was  old  enough 
to  meet  the  age  requirements,  he  enlisted 
and  was  accepted  for  Officer’s  Training 
in  the  Field  Artillery  of  the  U.  S.  Army. 
But  the  Armistice  found  him  still  in 
training,  and  with  the  need  for  officers 


gone,  he  was  soon  granted  honorable 
discharge  and  returned  to  civil  life. 

After  his  Army  experience,  though,  he 
found  he  wanted  something  with  more 
serious  purpose  to  it  than  the  life  of 
a  conventional  collegian.  So  he  decided 
to  forget  college  and  go  to  work.  As 
a  starter,  he  hit  his  Uncle  Joe  for  a 
movie  job.  What  kind  did  he  want — ? 
That  was  easy:  he  had  decided  that  he 
wanted  to  get  into  camerawork,  and 
work  his  way  up  to  where  eventually, 
as  a  First  Cameraman,  he  could  be 
responsible  for  bringing  feature  films  to 
the  screen.  And  in  due  time  he  found 
himself  on  Universal’s  payroll  as  an 
assistant  cameraman. 

This  work  suited  him  perfectly.  There 
was  endless  variety  in  it,  coupled  with 
a  purposefulness  he  could  see  as  the 
picture  progressed  from  the  start  to 
the  finish  of  its  shooting. 

Besides,  the  comparatively  easy-going 
production  methods  of  twenty-five  years 
ago  gave  him  plenty  of  time  to  devote 
to  his  first  love — basketball.  He  played 
on  studio  and  semi-pro  teams  with  dis¬ 
tinction.  One  year  his  team  even  proved 
strong  enough  to  be  sent  to  the  Na¬ 
tional  Championship  Tournament,  in 
which  it  captured  third  place — the  first 
team  from  the  Pacific  Coast  to  place 
so  high  nationally. 

“I  guess  I  felt  pretty  good  about 
that,”  he  says,  “and  I  must  have  showed 
it.  At  any  rate,  my  folks  decided  it 
was  time  to  deflate  me  a  bit.  They  began 
dropping  hints  that  while  they  saw 
my  name  often  enough  in  the  sports 
pages  in  connection  with  basketball,  they 
hadn’t  noticed  anybody  writing  about 
my  skill  as  a  photographer. 

“As  those  hints  began  to  penetrate 
my  consciousness,  I  suddenly  made  the 
discovery  that  there  were  a  lot  of  things 
going  on  in  the  studio,  and  more  or  less 
directly  related  to  the  work  I  was  doing, 
but  about  which  I  didn’t  know  anything. 
I  decided  that  if  I  wanted  to  get  ahead 
in  the  business,  I’d  better  forget  bas¬ 
ketball  and  begin  learning  about  my 
own  work! 

“For  instance,  while  I  loaded  and 
unloaded  the  camera,  and  took  the  ex¬ 
posed  film  to  the  laboratory  every  night, 

I  realized  I  didn’t  know  a  thing  about 
what  happened  to  that  film  between  the 
time  it  reached  the  lab  and  the  time 
the  rushes  hit  the  screen  the  next  day. 
So  I  began  to  put  in  my  spare  time 
helping  the  laboratory  crews  who  de¬ 
veloped  and  printed  my  film.  I  learned 
not  only  what  they  did,  but  how  and 
why  they  developed  and  printed  the 
scenes  as  they  did. 

“Next,  I  realized  that  a  whole  suc¬ 
cession  of  interesting  things  must  be 
happening  in  the  cutting  rooms  where 
the  disconnected  scenes  we  shot  on  the 
set  were  assembled  into  a  smooth-run¬ 
ning  continuity.  So  I  made  it  a  point 
to  get  acquainted  with  the  cutters,  and 
put  in  as  much  of  my  spare  time  as  1 
could  helping  them.  I  learned  how  to 
cut  film — not  just  how  to  splice  it,  but 
how  to  build  the  scenes  and  angles  into 
(Continued  on  Page  I  10) 


92  March,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


THROUGH  the  EDITOR'S  FINDER 


DURING  the  past  month  a  little 
group  of  publicity-seeking  Sena¬ 
tors  have  been  sniping  at  the  men  from 
Hollywood  who  are  serving  as  officers 
of  the  U.  S.  Army  Signal  Corps.  From 
their  viewpoint,  this  is  probably  under¬ 
standable,  for  any  attack  on  Hollywood 
and  its  prominent  personalities  is  auto¬ 
matically  good  for  Page  1  publicity  for 
the  attacker.  But  from  any  standpoint 
of  logic  or  of  common  decency  it  is 
damnably  unfair — especially  when  they 
charge  that  men  who  have  been  proving 
their  ability  and  courage  under  fire  are 
not  worthy  of  the  uniforms  they  wear. 

Let’s  examine  the  facts.  Long  before 
Pearl  Harbor,  the  Army  knew  it  needed 
training  films  in  greater  quantity  and 
quicker  than  its  own  scanty  peacetime 
facilities  could  produce  them.  It  knew, 
too,  that  when  war  eventuated,  it  would 
also  need  motion  pictures  of  actual  com¬ 
bat,  made  both  for  strictly  military  ref¬ 
erence  purposes  and  as  documentary  re¬ 
ports  for  the  public  at  large. 

To  meet  these  needs,  the  Army  very 
logically  turned  to  America’s  motion  pic¬ 
ture  industry  and  its  people.  The  indus¬ 
try  responded  by  turning  out  hundreds  of 
Army  training  films — some  of  them  of 
more  than  feature  length — on  a  rock- 
bottom,  less-than-cost  basis.  No  charges 
were  made  for  studio  overhead  or  any  of 
a  score  of  other  similar  items  which 
would  be  figured  in  any  normal,  com¬ 
mercial  cost-accounting.  The  industry’s 
best  and  highest-salaried  executives, 
writers,  directors,  actors  and  other  creat¬ 
ors  vied  for  the  privilege  of  donating 
their  services  to  the  production  of  these 
films.  In  a  word,  the  motion  picture  in¬ 
dustry  is  the  only  industry  in  America 
which  from  the  start — nearly  two  years 
before  Pearl  Harbor — deliberately  ar¬ 
ranged  its  government  contracts  so  that 
it  would  not  and  could  not  make  a  penny 
of  profit  on  its  defnese  production! 

For  combat  films  and  tactical  or  train¬ 
ing  films  which  had  necessarily  to  be 
made  within  the  Army  organization, 
Hollywood  bled  itself  white  to  provide  its 
best  manpower.  Executives,  directors, 
writers  and  technicians  voluntarily  gave 
up  the  comforts  of  home  and  abundant 
salaries  to  step  into  uniform.  The  great 
majority  of  them,  by  reason  of  age  or 
dependencies,  did  not  really  have  to  go — 
but  they  went,  and  asked  for  assignment 
to  duty  in  combat  areas. 

The  Army  rewarded  most  of  them  with 
commissions,  it  is  true:  but  these  com¬ 
missions  are  not  so  much  a  reward  as  the 
only  possible  means  of  giving  these  men 
the  minimum  military  authority  neces¬ 
sary  to  enable  them  to  carry  out  their 
picture-making  assignments.  And  wheth¬ 
er  these  men  were  producers,  directors, 
writers  or  cinematographers,  the  author¬ 
ity  implied  by  their  military  commis¬ 
sions  is  in  no  case  commensurate  with 
the  authority  to  which  they  were  accus¬ 
tomed  in  their  civilian  positions. 

Let’s  take  the  case  of  the  individual 
most  prominently — and  most  unwar- 


rantedly — attacked:  Colonel  Darryl  F. 
Zanuck.  In  civil  life,  he  was  the  pro¬ 
duction  head  of  the  20th  Century-Fox 
Studio,  with  authority  and  responsibili¬ 
ties  which  can  best  be  likened  to  those  of 
a  Major  General  in  the  Army.  On  the 
basis  of  proven  performance,  rather  than 
politics  or  “pull,”  he  stood  unquestion¬ 
ably  at  the  head  of  his  profession. 

For  nearly  a  year  before  Pearl  Harbor, 
and  for  many  months  thereafter,  he  was 
the  guiding  and  coordinating  spirit  of  the 
industry’s  Army  training  film  production 
effort.  In  this  he  worked  tirelessly:  his 
days,  he  gave  to  his  exacting  studio 
job;  but  night  after  night,  during  the 
hours  when  most  men  are  at  home  with 
their  families  enjoying  well-earned  rest, 
he  remained  at  the  studio,  personally 
supervising  the  editing  of  Army  train¬ 
ing  films,  and  the  planning  of  new  ones. 

When  he  was  finally  called  to  active 
Army  service,  he  was  commissioned  as  a 
Lieutenant  Colonel.  He  did  not  have  to 
go.  He  was  well  past  the  selective 
service  age  limit.  He  was  the  father  of 
three  children.  And  he  had  served  with 
distinction  as  a  member  of  the  163rd 
Division  of  the  A.E.F.  in  France  during 
World  War  I. 

But  he  volunteered  and  went — giving 
up,  in  the  process,  a  brilliant  career  and 
a  salary  of  more  than  $5,000  per  week. 

Going  into  active  service,  he  did  not 
ask  for  an  easy  desk  job  in  Washington 
or  Hollywood.  He  requested  active  ser¬ 
vice.  And  in  the  few  short  months  since 
he  was  called  into  active  service,  he  has 
seen  dangerously  active  service  on  three 
fighting  fronts.  His  first  assignment 
took  him  to  Alaska  and  the  Aleutians, 
where  he  flew  over  Jap-held  Kiska  on 
reconnaissance  for  the  Signal  Corps.  His 
next  assignment  took  him  to  England, 
where  he  took  commando  training  and 
participated  in  at  least  one  hard-fought 
Commando  raid. 

His  latest  assignment  took  him  to 
North  Africa,  where  he  participated  in 
both  the  preparation  and  the  actual  land 
fighting  of  the  invasion,  filming  a  com¬ 
plete  motion  picture  record  of  this  major 
American  military  campaign.  Where  his 
next  assignment  may  be,  no  one  can  tell: 
but  anyone  who  knew  or  worked  with 
him  in  Hollywood  can  tell  you  that  if  he 
has  anything  to  say  about  it,  it  will  be 
wherever  there’s  the  hardest  and  most 
dangerous  work  to  be  done.  And  the 
pictures  he  brings  back,  like  his  African 
invasion  film  which  is  shortly  to  be  re¬ 
leased  (and  not  through  his  company, 
by  the  way!)  will,  we  are  sure,  vindi¬ 
cate  him  in  the  eyes  of  the  American 
public. 

We  haven’t  cited  Col.  Zanuck’s  record 
because  of  his  erstwhile  position  in  the 
industry,  but  because  he  has  been  the 
one  most  spectacularly  attacked  ,and 
because  we  believe  his  record  is  typical 
of  those  of  the  hundreds  of  trained  pic¬ 
ture-makers  Hollywood  has  given  to  the 
Army.  There  may  be  some  military 
misfits  and  pink-tea  officers  who  have 


given  Hollywood  as  their  home  address 
— that’s  always  likely  when  swift  and 
tremendous  military  expansion  is  taking 
place.  But  we  don’t  believe  Senator 
Truman  or  anyone  else  can  put  the  finger 
on  one  man  from  Hollywood’s  film  in¬ 
dustry  whose  peacetime  achievements 
indicated  he  had  anything  on  the  ball, 
who  isn’t  more  than  pulling  his  weight 
in  the  Service. 

For  to  us,  Hollywood’s  attitude  is  typi¬ 
fied  by  the  remarks  of  one  cameraman 
who  came  to  see  us  shortly  after  Pearl 
Harbor.  “Hell,”  he  said,  “I’m  not  wor¬ 
rying  about  a  commission.  I  was  an 
officer  in  the  last  war,  but  I’d  be  willing 
to  go  in  as  a  buck  private  in  this  one. 
I  don’t  want  an  easy,  desk  job:  what  I 
want  is  a  chance  to  take  my  coat  off  and 
work  hard  making  pictures.  Rank  or 
swank  don’t  interest  me — but  I  want 
a  chance  to  put  whatever  skill  I  have  to 
work  for  my  country!” 

o 

RANKING  high  among  the  industry’s 
unsung  heroes  are  the  contact-men 
of  the  various  raw  film  organizations. 
Ostensibly,  their  jobs  are  to  promote  the 
sale  of  their  firm’s  product  to  the  studios, 
to  run  down  technical  complaints  and  to 
keep  the  industry’s  cameramen  up  to 
the  minute  on  the  technical  performance 
of  their  film. 

But  unofficially,  their  service  to  the 
industry  and  to  the  camera  profession 
far  exceeds  this.  Without  exception  they 
act  as  professional  counsellors  and 
friends  to  the  men  of  the  camera.  They 
act  as  unpaid  publicists  and  business 
agents  for  cinematographers — especially 
for  those  who  may  be  out  of  a  job  or 
“between  pictures.”  Times  without  num¬ 
ber  they  have  gotten  jobs  for  cinematog¬ 
raphers — often  for  men  who  didn’t  even 
know  they  had  such  friends  plugging  for 
them  behind  the  scenes. 

Any  one  of  them  has  alone  done  more 
for  cameramen  than  all  the  agents  and 
“artist’s  representatives”  who  ever  at¬ 
tempted  to  get  jobs  for  cinematogra¬ 
phers.  Repeatedly  they’ll  go  to  execu¬ 
tives  and  camera  chiefs  and  tell  them 
frankly  they’re  making  a  grave  mis¬ 
take  in  letting  this  man  get  away  from 
them,  or  not  hiring  that  one.  And  these 
executives  accept  the  film  salesman’s 
word  because  they  know  he  has  no  axe 
to  grind.  He  gets  no  ten  per  cent  from 
the  man  he  “sells”  to  a  studio;  no  gift 
or  salary  cut-back — often  not  even  a 
word  of  thanks. 

It  seems  to  us  that  it’s  about  time 
these  men  received  some  tangible  ex¬ 
pression  of  the  camera  profession’s  ap¬ 
preciation  of  their  untiring  service  to 
the  interests  of  cameramen,  both  indi¬ 
vidually  and  collectively.  The  war  has 
honors  for  those  who  give  service 
“above  and  beyond  the  call  of  duty.” 
We  who  benefit  by  it  should  give  honor, 
too,  to  these  men  give  cinematographers 
that  same  sort  of  service  above  and  be¬ 
yond  the  strict  letter  of  their  jobs  as 
film-salesmen. 


American  Cinematographer  •  March,  1943  93 


A.S.C.  on  Parade 


Now  it’s  Major  Ted  Tetzlaff,  A.S.C.,  U. 
S.A.A.F.  Right  in  the  middle  of  putting 
RKO’s  “Free  For  All”  on  film,  the  Army 
Air  Force  pinned  a  pair  of  gold  maple- 
leaves  on  his  shoulders  and  put  him  into 
training  for  active  foreign  service.  Mean¬ 
while,  Frank  Redman,  A.S.C.,  took  over 
the  completion  of  Major  Ted’s  picture, 
and,  so  we  hear,  has  everyone  at  RKO 
doing  raves  over  the  swell  job  he’s  doing. 
★ 

From  the  “hot  corner”  of  the  South 
Pacific  comes  word  that  Lt.  Phil  Chan¬ 
cellor,  A.S.C.,  U.S.N.R.,  has  received  a 
well-earned  promotion  and  is  now  Lieu¬ 
tenant  Commander  Chancellor,  Photo¬ 
graphic  Officer  on  the  Staff  of  the  Com¬ 
mander  of  Aircraft  in  that  busy  area. 

★ 

And  Winton  Hoch,  A.S.C.,  is  now  in 
uniform  as  a  Senior  Lieutenant  in  the 
U.  S.  Navy. 

★ 

Among  uniformed  visitors  of  Feb¬ 
ruary  was  Capt.  Wilfrid  M.  Cline,  A.S.C., 
U. S.A.A.F.,  in  town  briefly  from  parts 
unknown,  en  route  to  more  of  the  same. 

★ 

Another  visitor  was  our  Washington 
representative,  Reed  N.  Haythorne, 
A.S.C.,  out  here  on  a  Government 
camera  assignment. 

★ 

Add  military  “hush-hush”  notes — Roy 
Hunt,  A.S.C.,  away  from  Hollywood  on  a 
special  mission  for  the  Army  which,  ac¬ 
cording  to  Army  announcement,  is  “out¬ 
side  the  continental  U.  S.  A.” 

★ 

And  Bert  Glennon,  A.S.C.,  draws  the 
prize  plum  of  Technicoloring  Irving  Ber¬ 
lin’s  “This  Is  The  Army”  for  Warner 
Bros.,  on  a  new  contract  that  will  keep 
him  there  for  some  time  to  come. 

★ 

Shed  a  tear  for  A«S.C.-Prexy.  Fred 
Jackman:  his  ration  board  let  him  get 


a  brand  new  Buick  and  gave  him  a  “C” 
card — and  then  Fred  got  laid  up  with  in¬ 
testinal  flu  and  couldn’t  use  either  of 
them! 

★ 

With  three  days  of  shooting  left  to 
finish  “Old  Acquaintance,”  Sol  Polito, 
A.S.C.,  had  the  bad  luck  to  tumble  off  a 
camera-parallel  and  break  his  ankle.  So 
Arthur  Edeson,  A.S.C.,  stepped  into  the 
breach  to  finish  the  picture.  Here’s  wish¬ 
ing  Sol  a  speedy  recovery! 

★ 

The  other  day  on  the  Warner  lot  we 
were  startled  by  a  lusty  hail  from  a 
block  away.  Turned  out’  twas  Capt.  Joe 
Valentine,  A.S.C.,  of  the  Army’s  Special 
Service  Corps,  blowing  off  steam  because 
we  had  reported  him  as  a  mere  1st  Lieut. 
Don’t  blame  us,  Joe — that’s  the  way  we 
got  it  from  the  studio  and  the  trade 
papers!  And  remember  your  promise  to 
send  us  up  a  picture  of  you  and  those 
two  nifty  shoulder-bars  to  convince  the 
other  readers  of  this  page! 

★ 

L.  Wm.  O’Connell,  A.S.C.— “Connie,” 
to  you  —  busy  at  Columbia  filming 
“Blondie  Buys  a  Horse.” 


It’s  1st  Lieutenant  Tom  Tutwiler, 
A.S.C.,  now.  He’s  another  good  man 
grabbed  by  the  Army  Air  Force.  Lot’s  o’ 
luck,  Tom.  We’ll  miss  you! 

★ 

Ernest  Haller,  A.S.C.,  gets  the  Director 
of  Photography  assignment  on  Warner’s' 
biggie,  “Saratoga  Trunk.” 

★ 

Congratulations  to  Ralph  Staub,  A.S.C. 
Just  recovered  from  a  serious  siege  of 
pneumonia,  he  started  his  11th  year  with 
Columbia,  turning  out  his  “Screen  Snap¬ 
shots.” 

★ 

John  Seitz,  A.S.C.,  bedded  by  “flu,”  so 
Theodor  Sparkuhl,  A.S.C.,  pinch-hit  for 
him  filming  Paramount’s  “Five  Graves 
to  Cairo.” 


As  we  go  to  press,  Elmer  G.  Dyer, 
A.S.C.,  was  just  about  to  be  sworn  in 
as  a  Major  in  the  Army  Air  Force. 
Those  wings,  he  tells  us,  indicate  he’s  the 
camera-toting  member  of  the  flying 
crew.  Pretty  nifty,  what?  No  wonder 
he’s  beaming. 

★ 

Out  at  Universal,  Paul  Ivano,  A.S.C., 
is  assigned  to  film  “You  Go  To  My 
Heart.” 

★ 

We  don’t  know  if  it’s  true,  but  one  of 
the  town’s  better  columnists  tells  this 
one  about  Lt.  Charles  W.  Herbert,  A.S.C. 
Last  year,  when  Herb  went  into  the 
Army  he  decided  to  sell  his  photographic 
equipment,  as  he  certainly  wouldn’t  be 
using  it  “for  duration.”  When  he  got 
his  assignment  to  active  camera-duty, 
the  Signal  Corps  issued  him — you 
guessed  it! — his  own  camera! 

★ 

Out  at  MGM,  Lester  White,  A,,S.C.,  and 
Hal  Rosson,  A.S.C.,  both  smiling  over 
new  contracts. 

★ 

And  at  20th-Fox,  Camera  Chief  Dan 
Clark  A.S.C.,  and  Eddie  Snyder,  A.S.C., 
have  been  anchored  for  another  year  via 
the  contract  route. 

★ 

George  Robinson.  A.S.C.,  is  head  of  the 
photography  department  of  Universal’s 
“School  for  Jive.” 

★ 

Russian  notes:  Out  at  MGM  Harry 
Stradling,  A.,S.C.,  gets  the  nod  to  put 
the  Ratoff-Pasternak  epic,  “Russia,”  on 
film,  while  for  Sam  Goldwyn,  Jimmie 
Howe,  A.S.C.,  is  assigned  to  another 
Russky  Kino,  “North  Star.”  After  that, 
we  hear,  Jimmie  is  due  to  report  back  to 
Warner’s  on  a  new  term  contract — unless 
an  important  Government  assignment 
“breaks”  first. 

★ 

Russell  Metty,  A.S.C.,  busy  at  RKO 
filming  “The  Sky’s  the  Limit,”  with  Fred 
Astaire  and  Joan  Leslie. 


94  March,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


PHOTOGRAPHY  OF  THE  MONTH 


THE  HUMAN  COMEDY 

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer  Production. 
Director  of  Photography:  Harry  Strad- 

ling,  A.S.C. 

This  picturization  of  William  Saroyan’s 
much-discussed  story  must  inevitably  go 
down  as  one  of  the  really  great  pictures 
of  all  time.  In  every  phase  it  has  the 
simplicity  and  moving  power  of  true 
greatness.  There  is  not  a  scene  nor  an 
action  which  does  not  ring  true,  to  bring 
to  the  screen  the  most  sincere  and  real¬ 
istic  presentation  of  the  real  America 
that  we  have  ever  seen. 

This  applies  just  as  much  to  Harry 
Stradling’s  photography  as  to  the  rest 
of  the  picture.  He  contributes  enor¬ 
mously  to  the  production:  his  camera- 
treatment  maintains  a  superb  balance 
between  documentary  realism  and  a 
subtly  “different”  treatment  in  lighting 
and  composition  which  enhance  the  dra¬ 
matic  values  of  the  story  without  ever 
for  a  moment  becoming  obviously  thea¬ 
trical.  Without  doubt,  it  is  his  greatest 
camera  achievement  so  far. 

We  could  fill  countless  pages  express¬ 
ing  our  enthusiasm  for  this  picture  and 
its  photography — but  it  would  all  add 
up  to  urging  every  reader,  and  espe¬ 
cially  those  in  foreign  countries,  to  see 
this  picture  for  themselves,  for  it  is  the 
finest  picturization  of  American  life  and 
ideals  ever  screened.  If  you  miss  it,  you 
will  regret  it,  for  “The  Human  Comedy” 
it  not  only  a  great  picture,  but  a  great 
emotional  experience. 

HANGMEN  ALSO  DIE! 

Arnold  Pressburger  Production;  United 

Artists’  Release. 

Director  of  Photography:  James  Wong 

Howe,  A.S.C. 

This  melodramatic  picturization  of  the 
Czech  “underground”  movement  is  un¬ 
usually  good  entertainment,  for  in  addi¬ 
tion  to  its  timely  anti-Nazi  theme,  it  is 
a  more  than  ordinarily  good  melodrama. 
Both  the  story  and  the  direction  of 
camera-wise  Fritz  Lang  have  afforded 
James  Wong  Howe,  A.S.C.,  unusually 
fine  opportunities  for  photographic  effec¬ 
tiveness.  His  treatment  is  throughout  a 
study  in  the  dramatic  use  of  composi¬ 
tion  and  effect-lightings.  In  only  one 
sequence  can  we  find  any  serious  criti¬ 
cism  with  his  treatment:  this  is  in  the 
sequence  in  the  cafe  where  Anna  Lee 
starts  the  cleverly-motivated  movement 
to  entrap  Gene  Lockhart.  In  the  scenes 
where  she  and  the  waiter  approach 
Lockhart,  the  composition  in  both  long 
and  medium-shots  is  seriously  weakened 
by  the  inclusion  at  the  right  of  the 
frame  of  the  face  of  an  extra  girl  which 
consistently  distracts  attention  from  the 
action  of  the  principals. 

For  the  rest,  “Hangmen  Also  Die!”  is 
well  worth  seeing  as  an  example  of  fine 
melodramatic  cinematograhy  and  for  its 
interesting  plot  construction  and  presen¬ 
tation. 


IN  WHICH  WE  SERVE 

United  Artists’  Release. 

Director  of  Photography:  Ronald  Neame, 

A.C.T. 

Noel  Coward’s  picturization  of  the 
career  of  a  British  destroyer  and  its 
crew  is  another  outstanding  example  of 
fine  craftsmanship.  Produced  in  England 
under  wartime  difficulties,  it  reflects 
endless  credit  upon  all  concerned.  The 
photography  by  Ronald  Neame,  one  of 
Britain’s  foremost  cinematographers,  is 
one  of  the  finest  pieces  of  camerawork 
ever  to  come  out  of  England.  It  shows 
clearly  how  capably,  and  in  what  fine 
spirit  our  fellow-cinematographers  of 
Britain’s  A.C.T.  are  carrying  on.  It  is 
unfortunate  that  space  limitations  for¬ 
bid  a  more  detailed  review  of  this  excep¬ 
tionally  fine  production,  but  we  can  sum 
it  up  by  saying  that  we  sincerely  con¬ 
gratulate  Cinematographer  Neame  and 
Producer-Director  Coward  on  making 
one  of  the  year’s  outstanding  films,  and 
one  which  we  urge  all  our  readers  to  see. 

THE  AMAZING  MRS.  HOLLIDAY 

Universal  Production. 

Director  of  Photgraphy:  Elwood  Bredell, 

A.S.C. 

When  the  difficulties  which  attended 
the  making  of  this  production  are  taken 
into  consideration — it  was  off  again  and 
on  again  four  or  five  times,  while  direc¬ 
tors  were  changed,  story  rewritten,  etc. 
—  it  must  be  concluded  that  “Woody” 
Bredell,  A.S.C.,  has  done  a  most  credit¬ 
able  job  of  camerawork.  It  is  not  easy 
to  turn  out  a  smoothly  consistent  piece 
of  cinematography  when  there  are  in¬ 
tervals  of  days  and  even  weeks  between 
spurts  of  shooting,  during  which  story 
concepts  and  treatment  are  basically 
changed  around.  But  Bredell  has  man¬ 
aged  it  with  really  surprising  success.  He 
gives  the  picture  the  required  opulent 
visual  mounting,  and  deals  very  well  by 
the  players,  including  the  now  completely 
grown-up  star.  Here  and  there  can  be 
seen  traces  of  his  difficulties — a  sequence 
here  which  might  have  been  better  pho¬ 
tographed  in  a  higher  key,  a  scene  or 
two  there  which  appears  to  have  been 
printed  down  to  the  detriment  of  flesh 
values — but  in  general  Bredell’s  skill 
and  adaptability  have  brought  him  most 
successfully  through  what  must  have 
been  a  very  trying  assignment. 

THE  IMMORTAL  SERGEANT 

20th  Century-Fox  Production. 

Director  of  Photography:  Arthur  Miller, 

A.S.C. 

When  they  handed  Arthur  Miller  the 
task  of  photographing  “The  Immortal 
Sergeant,”  they  handed  him  an  unusually 
difficult  assignment.  There  are  really  two 
stories,  which  require  diametrically  op¬ 
posite  camera-treatment,  but  which  are 
intercut  as  one — the  story  of  Henry 


Fonda’s  pre-war  life — is  told  in  flash¬ 
back  form.  On  the  one  hand,  these  pre¬ 
war  sequences  called  for  sparkling,  high- 
key  camerawork;  on  the  other,  the  basic 
story  of  a  British  patrol  lost  in  the 
Libyan  desert,  calls  for  day  exteriors  of 
ruggedly  documentary  quality  and  a  pre¬ 
ponderance  of  virile  night-effects.  The 
way  Miller  has  managed  to  blend  these 
two  conflicting  elements  into  a  coherent 
and  comparatively  smooth  production  is 
as  great  an  evidence  of  his  technical 
and  artistic  skill  as  anything  he  has  ever 
done,  not  excluding  his  Academy  Award 
achievement  of  last  year. 

THEY  GOT  ME  COVERED 

Samuel  Goldwyn  Production;  RKO 

Release. 

Director  of  Photography:  Rudy  Mate, 

A.S.C. 

Special  Photographic  Effects  by  Ray 

Binger,  A.S.C. 

The  mixture  of  typical  Bob  Hope  ad- 
libbed  comedy  with  a  melodramatic  story 
in  this  picture  gave  Director  of  Photog¬ 
raphy  Rudy  Mate,  A.S.C.,  a  really  diffi¬ 
cult  assignment,  but  he  has  delivered 
his  customarily  fine  performance  at  the 
camera.  He  keeps  his  players  looking  un¬ 
usually  well;  especially  Dorothy  Lamour, 
whose  appearance  in  this  picture  im¬ 
pressed  me  as  being  far  better  than  in 
any  black-and-white  production  in  which 
she  has  appeared  in  a  long  time.  Mate’s 
effect-lightings  are  well  worth  study, 
among  them  the  sequence  in  the  aban¬ 
doned  factory  which,  instead  of  a  studio 
set,  employed  as  a  background  a  bona- 
fide  abandoned  gas-works.  Art  Director 
Perry  Ferguson’s  contribution  is  another 
interesting  phase  of  the  picture,  espe¬ 
cially  the  way  he  and  Mate  have  given 
the  film  so  much  “production  value”  in 
spite  of  the  Current  restrictions  on  set- 
construction.  Ray  Binger’s  special-effects 
work  is  another  contribution  which  comes 
in  for  more  than  ordinary  praise. 

STRANGER  IN  TOWN 

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer  Production. 
Director  of  Photography:  Sid  Wagner, 

A.S.C. 

This  unpretentious  little  program  pro¬ 
duction  offers  more  charm  and  entertain¬ 
ment  than  many  an  “A”  production  we 
could  mention.  Sid  Wagner’s  camera¬ 
work  smoothly  complements  the  rest  of 
the  production.  His  interiors  are  excel¬ 
lently  handled,  and  his  exteriors  models 
of  fine  outdoor  camerawork,  while  he 
presents  his  players  to  unusually  good 
advantage.  This,  by  the  way,  is  par¬ 
ticularly  true  of  his  treatment  of  Frank 
Morgan  and  Porter  Hall,  the  latter  ap¬ 
pearing  to  better  photographic  advan¬ 
tage  than  we’ve  ever  seen  him.  All  told, 
this  picture  is  one  we  can  recommend 
both  as  photography  and  entertainment. 


American  Cinematographer  •  March,  1943  95 


A  "Model  EE"  Grows  Lip 


By  PHILIP  A.  JACOBSEN 

Technical  and  Research  Director, 

Campus  Studios,  University  of  Washington 


NECESSITY  is  a  good  stepmother 
to  Invention.  She  encourages 
honesty  and  does  not  bother  with 
superficial  refinements.  She  is  not  afraid 
of  hard  times  and  rough  going.  Neces¬ 
sity’s  adopted  son  seldom  picks  his 
haberdashery  from  Esquire  and  prac¬ 
tically  never  rides  in  luxury,  but  those 
who  know  him  best  say  that  his  home¬ 
made  get-up  belies  his  unusual  perform¬ 
ance  and  that  the  roads  he  travels  with 
his  “haywire  old  busses”  and  strange 
new  rigs  often  get  him  there  ahead  of 
schedule.  Hard-working  and  frugal 
Necessity  is  not  much  like  the  romantic, 
generous  and  easy  going  mother  who 
bore  most  of  today’s  crop  of  young 
movie-men  but  she  is  respectable  and 
determined,  and  she  has  no  intention 
whatsoever  of  abandoning  her  role  as 


stepmother  while  it  takes  an  AA-5  pri¬ 
ority  or  better  to  put  photoflood  light 
in  dark  places.  If  your  dreams  of  16mm. 
sync-motor  driven  cameras,  dual-system 
recorders,  Moviolas,  batteries  of  film 
phonographs  and  lockers  overflowing 
with  “Number  4’s”  and  Kodachrome  are 
suddenly  interrupted  by  this  strange 
woman  calling  you  to  breakfast  in  your 
war-stricken  kitchen,  you  had  better  be 
nice  and  call  her  “Mama”. 

I  started  calling  Old  Lady  Necessity 
“Mother”  in  1937  and  she  has  been  the 
recognized  head  of  my  family  ever  since. 
In  that  year  my  plans  called  for  sound- 
on-film  by  1938  at  the  very  latest.  In 
1938  I  postponed  the  “sound- where-it- 
belongs”  business  until  1939.  In  1939 
I  started  shooting  some  backgrounds  for 
the  great  sound-on-film  job  but  put  off 


the  lip-sync  stuff  until  1940.  In  1940  I 
rewrote  the  entire  script,  eliminating  all 
sync  sound,  photographed  everything 
“silent”  on  color  ribbon  but  saved  the 
post  film  recording  for  1941.  In  ’41  I  re¬ 
corded  the  sound  on  disk. 

In  1941,  Necessity,  working  overtime, 
figured  out  a  way  of  getting  our  East¬ 
man  Model  EE  into  long  pants.  The 
scheme  called  for  man-size  1,600-foot 
arms,  a  stilt  to  keep  the  new  reel-holders 
off  the  deck,  a  threading  light,  a  fancy 
go-stop  switch,.  a  new  speed  control,  and 
a  flashy  neon  speedometer. 

Our  studio  technician  mutinied  at  the 
thought  of  mutilating  a  perfectly  good 
projector  in  order  to  get  pai'ts  enough 
to  assemble  an  overgrown  orphan,  but 
we  lured  him  back  into  the  shop  by  rash¬ 
ly  declaring  that  the  hospital  bill  would 
be  less  than  thirty  dollars,  and  that 
since  no  manufacturer  lists  a  machine 
with  a  stroboscope  at  any  price,  if  he 
could  do  the  trick  he  might  get  his  name 
printed  in  The  American  Cinema¬ 
tographer.* 

Building  a  couple  of  arms  and  spin¬ 
dles  is  not  much  of  a  trick  for  a  man 
with  a  few  good  tools,  and  our  duped 
mutineer  would  have  turned  them  out  in 
a  few  hours  if  someone  hadn’t  stayed 
his  hand  in  mid-air  by  pointing  out  that 
the  reel  arms  on  an  “EE”  are  practical¬ 
ly  interchangeable  with  the  1,600-ft. 
arms  on  an  Eastman  FS-10. 

Closer  inspection  convinced  us  that  the 
longer  belts  on  the  1,600-foot  capacity 
FS-10  would  also  fit  the  rearmed  “EE” 
without  recourse  to  “jimmy”,  hack  saw 
or  torch.  (In  Fig.  1  the  FS-10  arms 
grafted  on  our  grown-up  “EE”  are  let¬ 
tered  “A”). 

On  top  of  this  good  fortune  came  the 
report  that  our  purchasing  agent  had 
actually  smiled  when  he  found  that  he 
was  not  expected  to  buy  a  complete  FS- 
10  to  get  each  set  of  arms  requisitioned, 
so  we  pressed  our  advantage  by  per¬ 
suading  him  to  buy  new  arms  and  belts 
for  all  the  “EE’s”  on  hand.  For  good 
measure  we  slipped  in  an  order  for  sev¬ 
eral  Eastman  Model  G  threading  lamp 
assemblies  and  start-stop-threading  light 
switches.  (In  our  photographs,  “L” 
designates  the  threading  lamp  unit). 

While  we  were  about  it  we  decided  to 
do  something  about  the  speed-control 
resistor  on  the  “EE”.  This  control  will 
completely  stop  the  projector  motor  and 
cooling  fan  in  its  “all  in”  position  with¬ 
out  switching  off  the  750-watt  light- 
and  heat-giver.  This  makes  things  hot 
as  hell  in  the  lamp  house  and  around 
the  picture  gate  and  makes  even  an 
operator  dumb  enough  to  stall  the  motor 
plenty  mad. 

We  found  that  a  fixed  resistor  of  the 
right  value  in  parallel  with  the  variable 
control  rheostat  would  prevent  the  mo¬ 
tor  from  ever  completely  laying  down 
on  the  job,  but  we  happened  to  have  a 
very  nice  Ward  Leonard  control  with 
higher  dissipation  rating  and  just  the 
right  resistance,  which  could  be  installed 
without  using  brute  force,  and  we 
couldn’t  resist  using  it.  With  this  change 

*  Andrew  B.  Jacobsen  (Now  on  RADAR  re¬ 
search  at  M.I.T.). 


96 


March,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


in  speed-control  resistance  the  “EE” 
couldn’t  be  forced  to  run  at  any  speed 
less  than  about  eight  frames  per  second. 

To  keep  the  1,600-foot  reels  from  drag¬ 
ging,  it  was  found  necessary  to  insert  an 
extension  bar  between  the  base  of  the 
“EE”  and  the  head  of  the  projector. 
(This  link  is  marked  “E”  in  the  photo¬ 
graphs).  The  backward  rake  of  the 
piece  is  just  enough  to  put  the  weight 
of  the  vital  parts  where  it  will  counter¬ 
balance  the  turning  moment  of  a  1,600- 
foot  reel  when  it  is  loaded  to  the  gills. 
The  fibre  gear  and  brass  pinion  “T” 
with  the  associated  handwheel  were  in¬ 
corporated  to  make  it  easy  to  find  the 
screen  with  the  picture.  The  two  rollers 
indicated  by  “P’s”  were  installed  after 
it  was  found  that  the  film  feed  and  take- 
up  from  the  bigger  reels  was  not  smooth 
without  a  guide-snubber  arrangement. 

The  final  bit  of  surgery  was  under¬ 
taken  in  the  interest  of  speed  control 
accurate  enough  to  give  semi-synchro¬ 
nous  operation  with  sound-on-disk.  An 
abdominal  was  performed  and  the  shaft 
mounting  the  upper  sprocket  wheel  was 
removed  and  replaced  with  one  long 
enough  to  stick  through  the  plate  cover¬ 
ing  the  projector’s  inner  vital  organs. 
(In  our  operating-table  photograph  the 
new  shaft  is  marked  “R”).  This  same 
view  shows  a  new  bearing,  “B,”  com¬ 
plete  with  oil-hole  and  well,  which  was 
installed  to  prevent  shaft  “R”  from 
wandering. 

Near  this  shaft,  on  a  piece  of  bakelite, 
two  terminal  lugs  were  mounted  to 
which  a  small  neon  lamp  was  directly 
soldered.  Connections  were  then  made 
from  the  neon  lamp  to  the  110-volt  cir¬ 
cuit  at  a  point  where  full  voltage  was 
applied  to  the  lamp  whenever  the  motor 
turned  over.  Next,  a  hole  large  enough 
to  allow  both  the  new  shaft  and  the  head 
of  the  neon  lamp  to  protude  was  carved 
in  the  soft  metal  cover-plate. 

Then  a  hollow  cylinder  with  one  end 
open  was  fashioned  from  thin  tubing 
and  sheet  brass  to  form  the  stroboscope 
wheel.  Forty  holes  were  drilled  in  the 
face  of  the  cylinder.  We  were  told  that 
this  is  just  the  right  number  to  indi¬ 


On  opposite  page,  the  Model  "E"  in  its  original 
condition,  and  as  rebuilt  to  take  1600-ft.  reels.  Above, 
the  details  of  the  conversion.  P  indicates  idling  rollers 
added  to  smooth  feed  and  take-up  with  extended 
reel-arms;  S  indicates  stroboscope  drum;  R,  the  ex¬ 
tended  shaft  which  revolves  the  "strobe,"  B,  its 
bearing,  and  N  the  neon  lamp  which  illuminates  the 
stroboscope. 

cate  when  the  Model  EE  is  pulling  film 
past  the  light  gate  at  24  frames  per  sec¬ 
ond.  Some  one  with  a  degree  in  mathe¬ 
matics  figured  the  new  shaft  would  turn 
three  revolutions  per  second  when  the 
machine  was  turning  up  sound  speed. 
Since  the  sprocket  mounted  on  this  shaft 
sported  eight  teeth  and  three  times  eight 
is  twenty-four,  the  figuring  seemed  about 
right. 

Forty  “strobo”  holes  per  revolution 
times  three  revolutions  per  second  was 
120  “strobo”  holes  per  second  to  us  after 
a  spell  of  thinking.  Some  one  with  a  de¬ 
gree  in  electrical  engineering  helped  us 
figure  that  a  neon  lamp  sitting  on  a 
sixty-cycle  source  will  flash  on  both 
peaks  of  each  cycle  which  is  the  same  as 
saying  that  it  will  get  bright  120  times 
each  second.  This  is  just  the  way  a 
neon  light  behind  a  120  hole  per  second 
stroboscope  should  blink  to  make  the 
“strobo’s”  spots  stay  put. 

As  I  said  we  drilled  forty  evenly- 
spaced  holes,  but  since  all  of  our  pictures 
are  taken  for  sound  speed  projection  we 
just  never  have  been  able  to  find  time 
to  put  in  an  additional  set  of  27  holes 
in  the  cylinder  to  indicate  16  1/5  frames 
per  second.  It  may  be  years  before  we 
can  get  our  drill  press  to  make  us  a  set 
of  26  2/3  holes  to  signal  exactly  16 
frames  per  second. 

The  outboard  end  of  the  new  shaft 
was  drilled  and  tapped  for  an  8-32  ma¬ 
chine  screw  which,  together  with  a  pin, 
was  made  to  hold  the  stroboscope  cylin¬ 
der  in  place.  (“S”  is  for  stroboscope  in 
the  illustrations).  This  finished  the  re¬ 
construction  and  the  masculated  projec¬ 
tor  was  christened,  “Model  EE  Series 
J”  by  cracking  a  bottle  of  Kodascope  oil 
over  the  oil  holes.  The  launching  was 
followed  by  a  trial  run  with  some  of  the 
crew  holding  their  breath  and  some  their 
noses. 


To  my  great  relief  the  reincarnated 
“EE”  treated  a  1,600-foot  roll  of  film  to 
as  smooth  a  ride  as  a  16mm.  picture  can 
ever  expect  to  get  on  any  machine  cost¬ 
ing  less  than  $1,200.  In  addition,  the 
stroboscope  proved  to  be  such  a  good 
indicator  of  “out  of  bounds  speed  opera¬ 
tion”  that  even  lip-sync-sound-on-disk 
could  be  handled  by  a  patient  and  atten¬ 
tive  operator.  Our  success  braced  us  for 
our  next  and  most  precarious  step. 

To  keep  the  adult  series  J  company  on 
trips,  we  built  a  transcription  player 
with  a  frieze  of  functional  white  spots 
running  around  the  rim  of  its  turntable 
and  a  neon  flasher  to  chase  these  spots 
forward  and  backward  when  the  platter 
turner  wasn’t  rolling  on  the  nose  at 
33  1/3  R.P.M.  Before  we  finished  every¬ 
thing  necessary  to  force  our  cine-disk 
production  on  the  audiences  our  public 
relations  director  was  trapping,  we  had 
almost  run  out  of  days  and  nights  tagged 
1941.  Finally,  amid  cat-calls  and  mud 
from  both  silent  and  sound-on-film  arm¬ 
chair  experts,  and  with  some  real  mis¬ 
giving  on  my  part,  we  pushed  the  show 
and  its  gear  out  the  alley  door  of  the 
studio  and  onto  the  road. 

Immediately  that  miserable  “going  to 
get  fired”  feeling  enveloped  us.  We 
waited  .  .  .  for  over  a  month,  we  waited. 
I  packed  my  bag  and  waited  .  .  .  waited 
fully  expecting  a  telegram  from  the  un¬ 
fortunate  operator  sent  out  with  our 
“big  mistake,”  telling  us  that  he  was 
closing  the  season  with  a  special  showing 
for  his  new  schoolmates  at  the  State 
Insane  Asylum. 

Instead,  to  my  utter  astonishment,  we 
finally  got  an  entirely  different  kind  of 
a  letter.  It  read:  “Hello  Gang.  Maybe 
they  won’t  padlock  the  studio.  Surprise!! 
Your  kaleidoscope  of  unintegrated  color, 
message  and  transcribed  sound,  ‘Univer¬ 
sity’  is  getting  by  in  the  best  of  yokel 
circles  with  nary  a  slur  on  your  neces¬ 
sity-mothered  sound-on-disk.  So  easy  to 
operate  that  I  fell  asleep  during  last 
night’s  show  and  didn’t  come  to  until  the 
finish  fade  when  some  one  turned  on  the 
house  lights  and  the  applause  started.” 
END. 


American  Cinematographer  •  March,  1943  97 


Above,  left,  the  "pro¬ 
fessionalized"  Bolex; 
middle,  camera  in  pho¬ 
tographing  position, 
and  (right)  in  focusing 
position.  Below,  the 
camera  in  shooting 
position  (above)  and 
focusing  position  (be¬ 
low). 


Professionalizing  The  Bolex 

By  WILLIAM  STULL,  A. S.C. 


THE  criticism  most  frequently 
levelled  against  most  16mm.  cam¬ 
eras  for  either  professional  or  ad¬ 
vanced  amateur  use  is  that  they  do  not 
provide  for  a  professionally  accurate 
method  of  ground  glass  focusing.  One 
or  two  more  or  less  custom-built  “16- 
pro”  designs,  it  is  true,  do  provide  this 
feature.  But  most  of  the  better-grade 
16mm.  cameras  of  the  types  used  by  the 
majority  of  16mm.  professionals  and  ad¬ 
vanced  amateurs  do  not.  They  may  pro¬ 
vide  ground  glass  focusing,  but  not  with 
the  lens  in  actual  photographing  posi¬ 
tion.  Usually,  the  image  is  too  small  for 
precise  work,  and  the  focusing  eyepiece 
unhandily  located,  as  well. 

But  William  A.  Palmer  of  San  Fran¬ 
cisco,  one  of  America’s  foremost  expo¬ 
nents  of  professional  16mm.,  has  recently 
remodelled  a  standard  Bolex  16mm. 
camera  to  conform  to  standard  35mm. 
professional  practice  in  this  respect. 
Like  a  35mm.  studio  camera,  his  profes¬ 
sionalized  Bolex  has  a  handle-operated 
“throw-over”  which  moves  the  camera- 
head  to  one  side  and  away  from  the  lens 
and  brings  into  place  behind  the  lens  a 
ground  glass  focusing  screen  with  a 
suitable  magnifying  system  which  en¬ 
ables  him  to  focus  on  an  enlarged  and 
laterally  correct  image  while  the  lens  is 
in  actual  photographing  position. 

In  making  this  conversion,  the  orig¬ 
inal  Bolex  was  left  virtually  unchanged. 
It  can  be  removed  from  the  device  and 
restored  to  its  original  condition  in  a  few 
minutes.  Moreover,  in  making  the  con¬ 
version  an  absolute  minimum  of  critical 
materials  were  used. 

The  foundation  of  Palmer’s  conver¬ 


sion  is  a  shift-over  mechanism  he  de¬ 
veloped  some  years  ago  to  eliminate 
parallax  in  the  Bolex’s  usual  visual 
focusing  arrangement.  This  consists  of 
a  base  on  which  the  camera  is  mounted, 
and  built  up  from  two  castings  connected 
by  a  spring  -  tensioned  cam  -  and  -  lever 
linkage.  Originally  this  was  used  to  drop 
the  camera  downward  and  to  the  left  so 
that  the  lens,  when  rotated  on  the  turret 
to  bring  it  in  front  of  the  Bolex’s  visual 
focuser  at  the  upper  right-hand  corner 
of  the  camera,  occupied  the  same  posi¬ 
tion  it  would  when  shooting.  For  photo¬ 
graphing,  the  shift-over  handle  was 
given  a  half  turn,  lifting  the  camera  up 
and  to  the  right  so  that  with  the  lens 
in  front  of  the  aperture,  it  would  occupy 
the  same  position  as  in  focusing,  elim¬ 
inating  parallax  worries. 

This  in  itself  was  an  improvement, 
but  it  was  by  no  means  fully  satisfac¬ 
tory,  as  the  position  of  the  camera’s 
focusing  eyepiece  was  inconvenient,  and 
the  magnification  inadequate. 

The  next  step  was  to  make  the  design 
fully  professional,  providing  a  means  for 
moving  the  camera  out  of  the  way  and 
swinging  a  focusing  system  into  place 
without  moving  the  lens  from  shooting 
position. 

The  construction  of  the  Bolex  did 
much  to  simplify  this.  The  Bolex  hap¬ 
pens  to  be  one  of  the  very  few  turret- 
equipped  cameras  in  which  the  turret  is 
not  inset  in  the  front-board  of  the 
camera.  Instead,  the  turret  is  virtually 
a  separate  unit,  mounted  in  front  of  the 
camera  housing. 

This  made  it  possible  to  remove  the 

(Continued  on  Page  108) 


98 


March,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


IT’S  UNANIMOUS/ 

PROFESSIONAL  JUDGES 

of 

PROFESSIONAL  PHOTOGRAPHY 

have  handed  down  their 
sweeping  decree  in  favor  of 

EASTMAN  NEGATIVES  — 


NOMINATED  for  the  Academy  Award 

for  outstanding  Photographic  Achievement  in  1942 

ALL  10  Photographed  with  Eastman  Negatives  — 


PICTURE 

King’s  Row 

Magnificent  Ambersons 

Moontide 

Mrs.  Miniver 

Pride  of  the  Yankees 

Pied  Piper 

Take  a  Letter  Darling 
Talk  of  the  Town 
Ten  Gentlemen  from  West 
This  Above  All 


CAMERAMAN 

James  Wong  Howe 
Stanley  Cortez 
Charles  G.  Clarke 
Joseph  Ruttenberg 
Rudy  Mate 
Eddie  Cronjager 
John  Mescall 
Ted  Tetzlaff 

Point  Leon  Sfiamroy 
Arthur  Miller 


STUDIO 

Warner  Brothers 
RKO  (Mercury) 

20th  Century  Fox 

Metro-Gold  wyn-Mayer 

Samuel  Goldwyn  Productions 

20th  Century  Fox 

Paramount 

Columbia 

20th  Century  Fox 

20th  Century  Fox 


Our  C 

to  these  honore 


on  cj  ra 


filiations  ancl  Sincere  Appreciation 
i  J  an  J  achnowfeJqed  Cinematoqrap 


hers 


FORT  LEE 


J.  E.  BRULATOUR,  INC. 

CHICAGO  HOLLYWOOD 


The  Useful 
Hyperfocal 

By  JOSEPH  WALKER,  A.S.C. 


HYPERFOCAL  DISTANCES 


Focal  Length  of  Lens. 

12  %mm. 

15mm. 

25mm. 

1  %-inch. 

2-inch. 

3-inch. 

Stop. 

Hyperfocal  Distance  in  Feet. 

/:  1.8 

n% 

16 

46% 

104 

185 

417 

2  5 

8 

11% 

33  y2 

75 

133 

300 

3.5 

5% 

8 

23  X 

53  X 

95% 

214 

4 

5 

7 

20  X 

46% 

83 

187 

4.5 

4  % 

6X 

18% 

41% 

74 

167 

5.6 

3X 

5 

14% 

33  X 

60 

134 

6.3 

3% 

4  X 

13  X 

29  X 

53 

119 

8 

2  x 

3  % 

10% 

23  X 

42 

94 

11 

l  H 

2Yi 

7% 

17 

30 

68 

16 

15 

1% 

5% 

11% 

21 

47 

CORRECT  focus  is  an  absolute  es¬ 
sential  to  good  photography.  In 
some  types  of  amateur  and  docu¬ 
mentary  filming,  minor  errors  in  expo¬ 
sure,  composition  and  lighting  may  at 
times  be  considered  forgivable.  But  un¬ 
less  a  scene  is  in  good  focus,  it’s  of  no 
use  to  either  the  professional  or  the 
amateur. 

The  professional  cinematographer,  of 
course,  has  a  double  check  on  his  focus. 
First,  he  is  able  to  study  the  actual 
image,  right-side-up  and  highly  magni¬ 
fied  on  a  ground  glass  focusing  screen. 
In  addition,  it  is  standard  practice  to 
measure  the  distance  from  camera  to 
subject  with  a  tape-measure  before  every 
shot,  and  set  the  lens  accordingly. 

But  the  substandard  cinematographer 
doesn’t  enjoy  these  advantages.  Only  a 
few  16mm.  or  8mm.  cameras  permit  any 
sort  of  ground  glass  focusing,  and  only 
a  very  few  of  these  give  the  ground  glass 
image  magnification  great  enough  and 
critical  enough  to  permit  absolutely  pre¬ 
cise  focusing.  Only  a  very  few  of  the 
more  careful-minded  amateurs  take  the 
trouble  to  work,  professional-wise,  run¬ 
ning  a  tape  before  each  scene.  And  while 
an  interconnected  rangefinder  would  be 
invaluable  in  substandard  camerawork, 
thus  far  only  one  amateur  camera  so 
equipped  has  appeared  on  the  market. 
So  focus  remains  headache  No.  1  of 
home  moviemaking. 

To  some  extent,  the  extreme  focal 
depth  of  the  short-focus  lenses  gener¬ 
ally  used  on  16mm.  and  8mm.  cameras 
can  cover  up  minor  errors  in  focusing. 
But  not  always — as  most  users  of  focus- 
ing-mount  substandard  cameras  can  tes¬ 
tify  from  sad  experience!  And  even  in 
8mm.,  a  scene  where  you’ve  guessed 
wrong  in  adjusting  the  lens  of  a  focusing- 
mount  camera  is  usually  a  good  deal 
worse  than  what  you’d  have  gotten  under 
the  same  circumstances  with  a  simpler, 
fixed-focus  lens. 

The  answer  is  that  the  manufacturer 
of  the  cheaper,  non-focusing  lens  has 
taken  advantage  of  a  very  useful  little 
optical  fact  and  mounted  the  lens  so  that 
it  is  permanently  focused  at  what  is 
called  its  hyperfocal  setting.  You  can 
make  this  same  optical  fact  work  even 
better  if  you  have  lenses  in  focusing 
mounts.  Especially  when  you’re  working 
under  pressure,  making  scenes  of  the 
“grab-it-quick”  type,  where  you  want  to 
minimize  fiddling  with  and  thinking  about 
basic  camera  mechanics,  you  can  often 
set  a  lens  at  its  hyperfocal  setting  and 
then  forget  focus,  confident  that  (at 


least  on  most  normal  shots)  everything 
important  in  your  picture  will  be  in  ade¬ 
quately  sharp  focus.  But  to  do  this 
you’ve  got  to  know  what  the  hyperfocal 
distance  is,  and  how  to  put  it  to  work. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  hyperfocal 
distance  is  a  double-action  affair.  First 
of  all,  it  is  the  distance  at  and  beyond 
which  all  objects  are  in  focus  when  sharp 
focus  is  secured  at  infinity.  But  also — 
and  perhaps  more  important — if  you 
focus  the  lens  at  the  hyperfocal  distance, 
everything  from  one  half  that  distance 
from  the  camera  to  infinity  will  be 
sharply  defined.  If,  for  instance,  the 
hyperfocal  distance  were  25  feet,  every- 
t!  ing  from  that  point  on  to  infinity 
would  be  adequately  sharp  with  the  lens 
at  infinity  focus,  while  if  the  lens  were 
placed  at  the  hyperfocal  setting  of  25 
feet,  everything  from  12%  feet  to  infinity 
would  be  adequately  sharp. 

The  hyperfocal  point  is  dependent  upon 
three  factors:  the  focal  length  of  the 
lens,  the  aperture  used  (expressed  as  an 
/-stop)  and  the  circle  of  confusion. 

The  term  “circle  of  confusion”  refers 
to  the  diameter  of  the  lens’  image  of  any 
given  point  in  the  subject.  Theoretically, 
if  lenses  could  be  made  perfect,  the 
;mage  of  a  point  would  also  be  a  point. 
But  in  practice,  not  even  the  finest  of 
lenses  can  bring  the  images  of  all  wave¬ 
lengths  or  colors  of  light  to  a  focus  so 
precisely  in  the  same  plane  that  the 
image  of  a  point  will  be  a  true  point. 
Instead,  some  wave-lengths  will  come  to 
a  focus  on  the  plane  of  the  film,  while 
others  will  be  focused  microscopically  be¬ 
hind  or  in  front  of  it,  in  either  case 
giving  an  image  on  the  film  slightly 
larger  than  the  actual  point.  The  practi¬ 
cal  result  is  that  the  image  of  the  point 
is  reproduced  as  a  circle,  rather  than  as 
a  point.  Maybe  it  is  microscopically 
small,  but  it  is  still  mathematically 
measurable  as  a  circle  instead  of  a  point. 

The  size  of  this  circle  of  confusion 
therefore  becomes  one  of  the  chief  gov¬ 
erning  factors  in  the  matter  of  image 
definition.  Speaking  generally,  the  finer 
a  lens  is,  the  smaller  the  diameter  of  its 


circle  of  confusion.  In  the  same  way, 
if  a  lens  is  to  be  used  for  work  that  is 
not  too  exacting,  you  can  base  your 
hyperfocal  and  depth  of  field  calculations 
on  a  circle  of  confusion  considerably 
larger  than  is  necessary  in  a  lens  to  be 
used  for  exacting  work  like  cinematog¬ 
raphy.  For  still-camera  work,  for  ex¬ 
ample,  and  even  in  some  calculations  for 
35mm.  cine  work,  a  circle  of  confusion 
.002  inch  in  diameter  may  be  quite  ac¬ 
ceptable:  but  for  really  professional 
35mm.  cinematography,  and  for  all 
16mm.  and  8mm.  cinematography  (in 
which  the  relative  enlargement  in  pro¬ 
jection  is  much  greater  than  in  35mm. 
practice)  the  permissible  circle  of  con¬ 
fusion  must  be  taken  as  .001  inch. 

The  accompanying  table  will  give  you 
the  hyperfocal  distances  for  the  most 
commonly  used  substandard  lenses  over 
the  general  range  of  stops.  But  it  is 
easy  enough  to  figure  out  the  hyperfocal 
point  for  any  lens  and  stop  for  yourself. 
The  formula  is: 

F2 

H  = - 

f  X  C 

In  other  words,  the  hyperfocal  dis¬ 
tance  (H)  equals  the  focal  length  of  the 
lens  (F)  multiplied  by  itself  and  divided 
by  the  product  of  multiplying  the  /-stop 
(f)  by  the  circle  of  confusion  (C).  You 
can  see  that  for  any  one  lens,  two  of 
these  factors — focal  length  (F)  and  cir¬ 
cle  of  confusion  (C) — remain  constant. 
The  other  two  may  vary,  and  therefore 
influence  each  other. 

Now  let’s  see  how  this  works  out  in 
practice.  Suppose  we  have  a  2-inch  lens 
and  use  it  at  /: 2.5.  Assuming  the  circle 
of  confusion  to  be  .001  inch,  and  substi¬ 
tuting  these  numerical  values  into  our 
formula,  we  have  “H”  equal  to  2x2 
divided  by  2.5  x  .001.  This  works  down 
to  4  divided  by  .0025,  and  gives  us  1600 
inches  or  133  feet.  If  the  lens  is  focused 
at  the  133-foot  point,  everything  from  a 
point  about  65  feet  from  the  lens  to  in¬ 
finity  will  be  sharp. 

Now,  let’s  stop  the  same  lens  down  to 
(Continued  on  Page  108) 


100  March,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


AN  OPEN  LETTER  TO  ARTHUR  EDESON,  A.S.C.  AND  MICHAEL  CURTIZ 


KARL  FREUND,  A.S.C. 

15024  DEVONSHIRE  STREET 
SAN  FERNANDO,  CALIFORNIA 


Dear  Arthur  and  Mike: 

A  few  hours  ago  I  came  out  of  the  theatre 
where  I  saw  your  picture  "Casablanca."  And 
I  am  writing  this  because  I  want  you  two  to 
know  how  I  feel  about  the  very  fine  job  you 
have  done  together.  Since  I  saw  the  magnifi¬ 
cent  work  Jimmie  Howe  did  in  "Transatlantic" 
twelve  years  ago,  I  have  not  seen  a  picture 
that  so  impressed  me  with  its  realization  of  what 
fine  camerawork  can  mean  to  a  production  as 
did  your  joint  achievement  in  "Casablanca.” 

Judged  by  the  yardstick  used  to  measure  the 
enduringly  great  pictures  of  all  time,  "Casa¬ 
blanca"  may  or  may  not  be  what  the  critics 
would  call  a  "great”  picture.  But  it  is  fine 
entertainment.  And  it  is  a  truly  great  example 
of  fine  film  craftsmanship  and  of  teamwork  be¬ 
tween  the  director  and  the  director  of  photog¬ 
raphy.  As  one  film  craftsman  to  another,  I 
want  to  offer  my  sincere  congratulations  to  you 
both  on  this  achievement. 

Genuine  cooperation  and  craftsmanship  are 
things  we  see  all  too  little  of  these  days  .  .  . 
particularly  the  sort  of  understanding  coopera¬ 
tion  between  director  and  cinematographer  which 
made  "Casablanca"  so  effective  visually.  Too 
often  the  director  seems  to  ignore  the  camera 
entirely,  except  as  a  machine  for  recording  his 
scenes  in  the  most  literal  way.  Or  else  he  may 
go  to  the  other  extreme  and  become  so  exag¬ 
geratedly  conscious  of  the  camera  that  he  over¬ 
loads  his  picture  with  "arty"  tricks  of  focus  and 
angles — copied,  perhaps,  from  something  he  saw 
in  somebody  else's  picture — which  play  no  real 
part  in  advancing  the  story  or  in  building  up 
dramatic  moods.  All  cameramen  know  that 
these  jugglers'  tricks  are  not  good  cinematog¬ 
raphy  .  .  .  but  if  his  directorial  partner  shows 
so  little  understanding  of  the  real  meaning  of 
his  medium  as  to  insist  on  filling  his  picture  with 
out-of-place  tricks,  what  can  the  poor  cinema¬ 
tographer  do  but  deliver  them — and  grow  dis¬ 
couraged  in  the  process? 

To  you,  Mike,  I  want  to  express  my  admira¬ 
tion  of  an  artist  who  knows  the  value  of  legiti¬ 
mately  fine  cinematography  and  who,  as  evi¬ 
denced  by  what  I  saw  on  the  screen  not  only 
in  this  picture  but  in  all  of  your  productions,  is 
always  willing  to  give  his  cinematographer  a 
free  hand  to  contribute  it  outstandingly  to  the 
benefit  of  the  production. 

To  you  Arthur,  I  want  to  express  my  admira¬ 
tion  for  having  risen  so  magnificently  to  the 
opportunities  Mike  and  "Casablanca"  gave  you, 


and  turning  in  the  crowning  achievement  of  a 
long  and  distinguished  career.  For  too  many 
years  you  have  been  assigned  to  productions 
which  did  not  give  you  any  opportunity  to  dem¬ 
onstrate  the  skill  your  fellow-cinematographers 
know  is  yours.  But  when  the  opportunity  came, 
your  mastery  of  all  the  resources  and  subtleties 
of  cinematography  enhanced  both  the  dramatic 
and  the  physical  values  of  the  production.  I  am 
sure  that  what  I  saw  on  the  screen  was  put 
there  much  more  by  your  skill  in  lighting  and 
composition  than  by  anything  that  existed  actu¬ 
ally  on  the  set.  Your  picture  unfortunately  is 
not  up  for  the  Academy  Award  this  year — but 
you  can  have  mine  any  time  you  want  it.  An 
achievement  like  yours  deserves  the  highest 
recognition  your  fellow  cameramen  can  bestow. 

I  know  you  two  were  backed  up  by  a  fine 
and  far-seeing  studio  organization,  from  producer 
Hal  Wallis  right  on  down  the  line.  But  if  there 
had  not  been  outstanding  ability,  understanding 
and  cooperation  on  the  set,  I  would  not  now  be 
writing  this  letter.  You  may  wonder  why  I  am 
doing  it,  anyway,  since  I  am  at  another  studio, 
under  a  contract  which  still  has  four  years  to  run. 

The  answer  is  simple:  I  feel  that  now,  per¬ 
haps  more  than  ever  before,  our  industry,  and 
the  world  at  large,  need  fine  pictures.  Above 
all,  we  need  the  sort  of  understanding,  sympa¬ 
thetic  team-work  between  director  and  cinema¬ 
tographer  of  which  your  picture  was  such  an 
outstanding  example.  In  the  old  days,  this  sym¬ 
pathetic  understanding  between  the  two  key  men 
of  production  used  to  be  general;  but  of  late 
something — perhaps  the  perpetual  rush  to  meet 
production  schedules — has  crowded  it  into  the 
background  of  our  daily  work. 

I  am  sure  I  speak  the  sentiments  of  all  the 
industry's  cameramen  when  I  say  that  we  of  the 
camera  profession  look  forward  to  the  day  when 
that  type  of  cooperation  and  craftsmanship  will 
again  be  the  rule  rather  than  the  exception.  But 
until  that  day  comes,  it  is  only  fair  that  those 
who  show  us,  as  you  and  Mike  have,  what  can 
be  achieved  when  cameraman  and  director  work 
together  as  an  understanding  and  brilliantly  co¬ 
operative  team,  should  be  given  recognition  of 
our  heartfelt  admiration  and  appreciation.  And 
in  addition,  I  want  to  extend  my  personal  thanks 
to  both  of  you  for  having  given  one  camermcm 
a  thoroughly  delightful  evening. 

Sincerely, 

KARL  FREUND,  A.S.C. 


(Advertisement) 


American  Cinematographer  •  March,  1943 


Practical  Pointers  On 
16mm.  Sound  Projection 

By  JOHN  W.  BOYLE,  A. S.C. 


THE  Editor  tells  me  that  quite  a 
number  of  amateurs  have  written 
to  The  American  Cinematogra¬ 
pher  lately,  asking  for  advice  on  how 
to  operate  the  16mm.  sound  projectors 
they  are  called  on  to  use  in  showing 
civil  defense  films  or  in  helping  put  on 
U.S.O.  shows  for  troops  in  their  com¬ 
munities.  They’re  thoroughly  accustomed 
to  operating  16mm.  silent  projectors,  but 
sound,  they  feel,  adds  a  new  element 
which  brings  up  unfamiliar  complica¬ 
tions. 

Really,  though,  there  are  fewer  of 
these  complications  than  you  might  at 
first  expect.  Modern  16mm.  sound  pro¬ 
jectors  have  been  designed  with  an  eye 
to  simplified  operation,  and  the  sound 
reproducing  part  of  the  projector  is  al¬ 
most  as  easily  operated  and  as  durable 
as  your  phonograph  or  radio.  The  de¬ 
tails  and  arrangement  of  the  various 
makes  and  models  may  differ  slightly: 
but  once  you  understand  the  basic  prin¬ 
ciples  of  sound-film  reproduction  you’ll 
find  it  easy  to  understand  and  operate 
any  type  of  projector. 

While  the  sound  and  the  picture  are 
printed  on  the  same  strip  of  film,  they 
are  not  placed  literally  together.  The 
picture  must  go  through  its  projection 
aperture  with  an  intermittent  movement. 
The  sound  must  go  through  its  repro¬ 
ducing  aperture  with  a  continuous  move¬ 
ment.  So  the  sound  which  synchronizes 
with  any  given  picture  frame  is  printed 
on  the  edge  of  the  film  25  frames  ahead 
of  the  picture.  That  is,  when  the  pic¬ 
ture  frame  is  in  the  aperture,  its  accom¬ 
panying  portion  of  sound-track  is  about 
TVz  inches  below  the  picture  aperture. 
The  sound  pick-up  is  located  at  a  posi¬ 
tion  such  that  when  properly  threaded 
through  the  various  sprockets  and  idlers 
which  give  the  film  the  properly  smooth 
motion  past  the  sound-head,  there  will 
almost  automatically  be  just  25  frames 
of  film  between  the  picture  and  sound 
apertures. 

The  picture  projecting  mechanism,  as 
a  rule,  will  turn  out  to  be  an  old  friend. 
This  component  of  the  projector  is 
usually  identical  with  the  same  manu¬ 
facturer’s  silent  projectors,  and  can  be 
threaded  and  operated  in  exactly  the 
same  way.  If,  as  in  one  or  two  recent 
designs  like  the  Eastman  sound  projec¬ 
tors,  the  entire  projector  is  a  new  de¬ 
sign  not  based  on  previous  silent  models, 
you  will  still  find  enough  family  re¬ 
semblance  so  that  the  picture  component 
is  easily  understood. 

Only  when  you  pass  the  lower  driving 
sprocket  do  you  find  sound  rearing  its 


/■ 

ugly  head.  From  this  sprocket 
the  film  makes  a  fairly  taut 
loop  around  the  drum  at 
which  the  sound  pick-up  is 
located.  From  there,  in  most 
designs,  it  passes  over  an¬ 
other  sprocket  and  through 
various  guiding  rollers  and  idlers  to  the 
take-up. 

Probably  the  most  important  single 
factor  in  good  sound  reproduction  is  to 
have  the  film  move  past  the  sound¬ 
scanning  aperture  at  a  really  smooth 
rate.  For  this  reason,  the  sound  pick¬ 
up  is  almost  always  located  at  a  drum. 
This  drum  is  not  driven  by  the  projec¬ 
tor  mechanism:  it  is  revolved  entirely 
by  the  friction  of  the  film  passing  over 
it.  In  turn,  the  drum  is  attached  to  a 
fairly  heavy  flywheel  or  some  other  form 
of  movement  -  smoothing  “damper,”  so 
that  once  started,  it  tends  to  keep  re¬ 
volving  at  a  smooth  and  uniform  rate, 
and  to  keep  the  film’s  motion  uniform, 
as  well. 

Therefore  the  tension  of  the  film 
around  the  sound  drum  must  be  just 
exactly  right.  If  it’s  too  tight,  it  is  likely 
not  only  to  tear  the  sprockets,  but  to 
transfer  to  the  film  at  the  pick-up 
point  a  flutter  or  irregularity  as  the 
teeth  of  the  driving  sprockets  catch  in 
engaging  and  disengaging  the  film 
sprocket-holes.  If  it’s  too  loose,  you  lose 
the  value  of  the  flywheel  action,  and  the 
film  may  bulge  forward  off  the  flywheel, 
and  out  of  the  focus  of  the  sound-scan¬ 
ning  beam.  The  result  in  either  case  is 
bad  sound  quality. 

The  different  manufacturers  have  de¬ 
vised  different  methods  of  getting  this 
tension  right.  Some  projectors  use  vari¬ 
ous  systems  of  spring-tensioned  idling- 
rollers.  Bell  &  Howell,  in  their  Filmo- 
sound  projectors,  use  an  ingeniously 
simple  mechanism  they  call  the  oscilla¬ 
tory  stabilizer.  It  consists  of  two  spring- 
tensioned  rollers,  one  bearing  on  the  film 
feeding  onto  the  drum,  the  other  on  the 
film  feeding  off  the  drum,  and  both 
mounted  at  opposite  ends  of  a  single 
arm  which  pivots  at  its  center.  •  When 
the  film  tightens  too  much  against  one 
roller,  this  pivoted  mount  automatically 
slacks  off  the  tension  on  the  other  roller, 
keeping  the  movement  of  the  film  sur¬ 
prisingly  uniform. 

In  general,  when  you  thread  the  film 
over  the  sound  drum  remember  not  to 
try  to  pull  it  too  tight;  just  be  sure 
it’s  in  good  contact  with  the  drum,  but 
not  binding. 

Anyway,  most  16mm.  sound  projectors 
have  pretty  full  instructions,  including 


Layout  of  a  typical  16mm.  sound  projector.  The  de¬ 
tail  arrangement  of  the  components  varies  in  different 
designs,  but  the  essential  parts  indicated  in  the 
illustration  can  be  found  in  all  makes. 

a  complete  threading  diagram,  either 
marked  on  the  projector  itself  or  promi¬ 
nently  printed  inside  the  projector’s 
carrying-case  or  blimp.  If  you  find 
you’ve  got  to  operate  an  unfamiliar  pro¬ 
jector  on  short  notice,  a  few  minutes 
spent  studying  this  chart  should  take  all 
the  mystery  out  of  its  operation. 

Hooking  up  the  wires  for  the  sound 
part  of  the  projector  has  also  been  sim¬ 
plified  and  made  as  nearly  foolproof  as 
possible.  With  some  projectors,  a  single 
lead  may  serve  to  feed  power  to  both 
the  picture  -  projection  mechanism  and 
the  amplifier;  but  in  most  designs  there 
are  separate  power  inputs  for  projector 
and  amplifier.  In  some  of  them — like 
the  Filmosound — a  single  power  cable 
divides  at  the  end  into  two  female  con¬ 
nections,  which  are  plugged  into  adja¬ 
cent  inputs.  As  a  rule,  it  doesn’t  matter 
which  plug  goes  into  which  power  input, 
so  long  as  both  receive  current  of  the 
proper  voltage  and  frequency. 

In  some  sound  projectors  the  amplifier 
is  built  as  a  separate  unit;  in  others, 
it  is  built  right  into  the  base  of  the 
projector,  or  into  its  blimp.  If  the  am¬ 
plifier  is  separate,  you  will  usually  need 
a  short  cable  to  connect  the  amplifier  to 
the  sound  pick-up.  Otherwise,  you  won’t, 
as  the  connection  will  be  built-in. 

Finally,  there  must  be  a  cable  con¬ 
necting  the  amplifier  with  the  loud¬ 
speaker  which  is  of  course  placed  “down 
front”  near  the  screen. 

These  various  outlets  and  inputs  are 
always  clearly  labeled.  And  just  in  case 
someone  might  get  careless  about  mak¬ 
ing  these  connections,  most  of  the  manu¬ 
facturers  have  arranged  their  wiring  so 
that  the  right  plug  can  only  be  put  into 
the  right  hole.  For  example,  the  line 
from  projector  to  amplifier  may  have  a 
four-  or  six-contact  plug  like  the  base 
of  a  radio  tube,  with  one  of  the  round 
contact  prongs  slightly  larger  than  the 
rest,  so  that  it  will  only  fit  into  its  cor¬ 
rect  hole,  automatically  aligning  the 
other  contacts  correctly.  The  line  from 
the  amplifier  to  the  speaker  may  have 
terminals  with  a  different  number  of 
contacts,  or  perhaps  a  rectangular  plug 
(Continued  on  Page  106) 


102  March,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


EIGHT 

OUT  OF  TEX 


OF  the  Ten  Best  Pictures,  selected  in  the 
Film  Daily’s  critics  poll  for  1942,  eight 
were  made  on  Eastman  Negative  Films. 
This  gratifying  result  provides  striking 
evidence  of  the  strong  preference  for 
these  high-quality  films.  Eastman  Kodak 
Company,  Rochester,  N.  Y. 

J.  E.  BRULATOUR,  INC.,  Distributors 

Fort  Lee  Chicago  Hollywood 


PLIJS-X  SUPER-XX 


for  general  studio  use  when  little  light  is  available 


BACKGROUXD-X 

for  backgrounds  and  general  exterior  work 

EASTMAN  NEGATIVE  FILMS 


American  Cinematographer  •  March,  1943  103 


AMONG  THE  MOVIE  CLUBS 


"New  Horizon"  for  Metro 

A  “bang  up”  program  of  outstanding 
film  fare,  a  discussion  on  continuity,  and 
four  examples  of  “editing  with  the  cam¬ 
era”  made  the  February  meeting  of  the 
Metropolitan  Motion  Picture  Club  of  New 
York  an  outstanding  one.  Film  fare 
started  off  with  “New  Horizon,”  Ran¬ 
dolph  Clardy’s  famous  8mm.  mono¬ 
chrome  which  won  the  Grand  Prize  in 
The  American  Cinematographer’s  In¬ 
ternational  Amateur  Movie  Contest  in 
1936.  This  was  followed  by  member 
Sidney  Moritz’  Kodachromed  “Stern¬ 
wheeler  Odyssey,”  as  a  prelude  to 
Moritz’  discussion  on  continuity.  Then 
followed  four  camera-edited  8mm.  films 
from  the  New  York  8mm.  Club’s  uncut- 
film  contest:  50  feet  each  from  8mm-ers 
Victor  Ancona,  K.  Koehler,  A.  McGregor 
and  E.  Roeskin.  The  final  feature  of  the 
excellent  programme  arranged  by  Joseph 
Hollywood  was  the  new,  Kodachromed 
version  of  “In  The  Beginning,”  by  Fred 
C.  Ells,  one  of  1942’s  best  amateur  films. 
Old-timers  will  remember  that  the  or¬ 
iginal,  black-and-white  version  of  this 
picturization  of  creation,  produced  some 
year  ago  when  Ells  was  living  in  Japan, 
won  him  international  recognition  as 
one  of  the  world’s  foremost  amateur 
filmers.  The  new  version  is  interesting 
evidence  of  how  much  expertly-handled 
Kodachrome  can  add  to  a  picture. 

FRANK  E.  GUNNELL. 

Los  Angeles  Clubs  Double  Up 

Due  to  gasoline  rationing  and  trans¬ 
portation  difficulties  in  a  sprawling  city 
like  Los  Angeles,  that  city’s  two  lead¬ 
ing  movie  clubs — the  Los  Angeles  Cin¬ 
ema  Club  and  the  Los  Angeles  8mm. 
Club — have  both  decided  to  hold  six 
meetings  a  year  instead  of  twelve,  meet¬ 
ing  in  alternate  months  and  each  invit¬ 
ing  the  other’s  membership  to  attend. 
The  February  meeting  of  the  Los  An¬ 
geles  Cinema  was  therefore  well  at¬ 
tended  by  8mm.  members.  The  screen 
fare  included  “War  Against  Waste,”  an 
outstanding  16mm.  sound-film  document¬ 
ary  on  industrial  conservation  produced 
by  the  Caterpillar  Tractor  Co.,  and 
shown  by  Editor  Wm.  Stull  of  The 
American  Cinematographer.  This  was 
followed  by  “The  Round-up,”  filmed  by 
Guy  Nelli;  “An  Office-girl’s  Reverie,” 
by  Jacques  Shandler;  “Yosemite,”  by 
Richard  Orlow;  “This  Wonderland  of 
Ours,”  by  C.  F.  Lenhart;  “Oregon-Co- 
lumbia  Road,”  by  past-president  William 
Hight;  “Sequoia  and  Arrowhead,”  by 
E  Pyle,  and  “Beyond  Yosemite,”  by  Paul 
Kassen. 

.  ALICE  CLAIRE  HOFFMAN, 
Secretary. 

Prize  Winners  for  8-16 

Highlights  of  the  February  meeting 
of  the  8-16  Movie  Club  of  Philadelphia 
were  two  prize-winning  scenario  films 
from  the  library  of  The  American 


Cinematographer.  These  were  “White 
North,”  and  “Prize  Winner,”  both  of 
which  had  captured  premiere  honors  in 
the  Scenario-film  division  of  that  maga¬ 
zine’s  International  Contests.  The  elab¬ 
orate  set-building  and  costuming  of  the 
first  film,  and  the  homespun  naturalness 
of  the  second  evoked  much  favorable 
comment. 

GEORGE  BURNWOOD. 


Title-Talk  for  Tri-City 

A  practical  demonstration  on  titles 
and  title-making  by  past-president  Dr. 
Albert  N.  Mueller  was  the  technical 
highlight  of  the  February  meeting  of 
the  Tri-City  Cinema  Club  of  Davenport, 
la.,  Rock  Island  and  Moline,  Ill.  On 
the  screen  we  saw  “Adventure  At  Six,” 
200  ft.  8mm.  Kodachrome,  by  Paul  Se¬ 
vers;  “Alaskan  Highway,”  400  ft.  16mm. 
Kodachrome,  shown  through  the  courtesy 
of  Elmer  Jansen,  and  “New  York — the 
Wonder  City,”  1200  feet  16mm.  Koda¬ 
chrome,  by  Dr.  Paul  A.  White.  With  the 


above,  approximately  14  films  by  mem¬ 
bers  have  been  shown  before  the  Club 
this  season.  All  of  them  are  automat¬ 
ically  entered  in  the  Annual  Contest, 
and  represent  the  largest  number  the 
Club  has  had  entered  in  any  Contest 
to  date. 

WILLIS  F.  LATHROP, 
Secy.-Treas. 


"Indian  Summer"  Southern 
Winner 

“Indian  Summer,”  a  two-reel  Koda¬ 
chrome  by  Carl  Anderson,  with  musical 
accompaniment,  was  the  winner  of  the 
Annual  Contest  of  the  Southern  Cinema 
Club,  of  South  Gate,  California. 

The  Club’s  officers  for  the  coming 
year  are  Bill  Fisher,  President;  Harold 
Robertson  and  Walter  Cummins,  Vice- 
Presidents;  Enid  Lindgren,  Secretary, 
and  C.  C.  Matheny,  Treasurer. 

RUTH  FISHER, 
Ex-Secretary. 


Washington  in  Minneapolis 

Washington  was  brought  to  Minneap¬ 
olis  for  the  February  meeting  of  the 
Minneapolis  Cine  Club.  The  vehicle 
was  the  camera  of  member  Russ  Dun¬ 
can,  just  returned  from  a  long  stay 
in  the  Capitol.  He  showed  two  films — 
“This  Is  America,”  and  “Fire  In  Wash¬ 
ington” — the  result,  so  he  says,  of  his 
long  evenings  and  Sundays  in  Wash¬ 
ington  where,  he  claims,  the  days  go 
twice  as  fast  as  anywhere  else,  and 
the  nights  and  week-ends  are  twice  as 
long  as  they  are  in  Minneapolis. 

ROME  A.  RIEBETH. 

Varied  Programs  in 
Long  Beach 

The  February  3rd  meeting  of  the 
Long  Beach  (Calif.)  Cinema  Club  had 
as  its  guest  Jack  Helstowski  of  the 
Whittier  Cinema  Club,  who  exhibited 
two  films,  “Trials  of  Life,”  and  a  chiller- 
diller,  “Back  From  the  Dead,”  both 
with  sound  made  by  a  Presto  synchro¬ 
nizer.  Other  films  shown  included  “White 
Water,”  by  C.  A.  Willis,  of  Merced, 
and  three  prize-winning  films  from 
The  American  Cinematographer’s  li¬ 
brary.  These  were  “Prize  Winner,”  by 
J.  Kinney  Moore;  “To  the  Ships  of  Sid¬ 
ney,”  by  James  A.  Sherlock,  of  Aus¬ 
tralia,  and  Randolph  Clardy’s  “Cattle 
Country.” 

The  Club’s  work-meeting  on  February 
17th  was  devoted  to  the  first  stages  of 
putting  together  members’  un-edited 
films.  Story  outlines  were  discussed  for 
Robert  Shoemaker’s  films  of  the  harbor, 
and  Claude  Evans’  pictures  of  Boulder 
Dam.  Clarence  Aldrich  gave  a  demon¬ 
stration  of  title-making,  and  Myrtle  Ad¬ 
ams  and  Mrs.  Everley  served  refresh¬ 
ments. 

LA  NELLE  FOSHOLT, 

Publicity. 


Philadelphia's  Contest 

The  Annual  Contest  of  the  Philadel¬ 
phia  Cinema  Club  was  held  at  its  Febru¬ 
ary  meeting.  Many  members  of  both 
the  Norristown  and  the  8-16  Cinema 
Clubs  were  guests  of  the  evening. 
Throughout  the  Club  year  each  film 
shown  by  a  member  is  given  a  rating 
by  vote  of  the  members  present,  and 
at  the  end  of  the  season  the  six-highest- 
scoring  films  are  shown  in  competition. 
Judged  were  former  contest  winners 
and  members  of  the  executive  commit¬ 
tee.  The  prize-winners  this  year  were: 
First  Prize,  “Grand  Manan,”  16mm.,  by 
Robert  Crowther;  Second  Prize,  “New 
York  Zoo,”  8mm.,  by  Dr.  R.  E.  Haentze; 
Third  Prize,  “Roaring  Through  the 
Rockies,”  16mm.,  by  President  George 
Pittman;  Fourth  Prize,  “Colonial  Wil¬ 
liamsburg,”  8mm.,  by  James  Maucher. 
Also  shown  was  the  runner-up,  “On  the 
Vineyard,”  by  Charles  James. 

‘  FRANCIS  M.  HIRST, 

Publications. 

V-Mail  for  San  Francisco 

Highlight  of  the  February  meeting  of 
the  Cinema  Club  of  San  Francisco  was 
a  demonstration-lecture  on  the  “V-Mail” 
system  by  Director  D.  L.  Redfield,  il¬ 
lustrated  by  a  short  film  prepared  by 
the  Eastman  Kodak  Co.  He  also  showed 
Eastman’s  new  “Cavalcade  of  Color.” 
Leon  Gagne  showed  his  1200-ft.  Koda¬ 
chrome  picture  “Lake  County,”  showing 
this  popular  resort  region  at  various 
seasons  of  the  year.  Matt  Draghicevich 
showed  a  selection  of  photographic 
slides,  and  Past  President  John  Smurr 
gave  a  talk  on  trick  photography,  which 
he  has  used  to  excellent  advantage  in 
several  of  his  fine  films,  some  of  which 
he  showed. 

R.  W.  ARFSTEN, 
President. 


104  March,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


American  Cinematographer  •  March,  1943 


105 


16  mm  Business  Films 


THE  WAR  AGAINST  WASTE 

Institutional  -  documentary;  800  feet 

16mm.  black-and-white. 

Produced  and  presented  by  The  Cater¬ 
pillar  Tractor  Co. 

Photography  by  Frank  H.  Kirchner. 
Reduction-print  and  RCA  35mm.  record¬ 
ing  by  Chicago  Film  Laboratory. 

This  picture  is  another  of  the  Cater¬ 
pillar  organization’s  characteristically 
excellent  institutional  films,  and  one 
which  should  be  seen  by  the  staffs  of  all 
of  America’s  war  industries.  There  is 
virtually  no  institutional  publicity  plug¬ 
ging  in  this  picture,  which  tells  of  the 
material  conservation  methods  practiced 
in  one  of  our  country’s  great  industrial 
establishments. 

Cinematographer  Kirchner’s  use  of 
lighting,  camera-angles,  some  moving- 
camera  shots  and  cleverly-planned  tran¬ 
sitions  makes  “War  Against  Waste”  an 
excellent  example  of  modern  industrial 
cinematography.  He  maintains  the  char¬ 
acteristic  rapid-fire  tempo  which  have 
distinguished  all  of  his  earlier  pictures, 
yet  at  the  same  time  brings  home  very 
graphically — and  usually  by  visual  means 
— the  care  taken  in  the  Caterpillar  plant 
to  assure  that  waste  of  metals,  packing- 
cartons,  and  even  waste  paper  be  cut  to 
the  absolute  minimum.  After  seeing  the 
film,  one  is  inclined  to  look  down  on  the 
Chicago  meat-packers  who  traditionally 
admit  that  in  packing  pork,  they  waste 
the  pig’s  squeal.  You  feel  sure  that 
the  Caterpillar  plant  engineers  would 
even  salvage  that! 

The  picture  could,  however,  very  well 
be  divided  into  two  shorter  productions, 
as  the  first  half  of  the  present  800-ft. 
film  deals  with  conservation  of  materials 
within  the  plant,  and  the  second  half 
forms  a  virtually  complete  picture  deal¬ 
ing  with  conservation  of  Caterpillar 
products  already  in  service,  through  sal¬ 
vaging  worn  or  damaged  parts  by  weld¬ 
ing  and  similar  repairs  which  only  a 
short  time  ago  would  have  called  for 
complete  replacements.  Both  parts  are 
interesting,  but  it  seems  to  us  that  as 
separate  pictures,  each  could  more  ac¬ 
tively  serve  its  specialized  audience. 

The  film  was  photographed  in  35mm., 
including  an  unusual  number  of  excel¬ 
lent  camera  dissolves  and  other  optical 
effects.  The  reduction  print  of  both  sound 
and  picture  by  the  Chicago  Film  Labora¬ 
tory  is  a  top  credit  to  this  organization. 


Sound  Projection 

(Continued  from  Page  102) 

using  four  or  six  rectangular  bars — one 
of  which  is  at  right  angles  to  the  others 
— instead  of  the  round  prongs.  In  other 
words,  as  long  as  you  don’t  try  to  force 
a  plug  into  an  input  that  won’t  receive 
it,  you’ve  very  little  chance  of  going 
wrong. 


Only  remember  that  both  the  projec¬ 
tor  and  the  amplifier  must  receive  cur¬ 
rent,  and  that  a  line  must  be  established 
from  the  projector’s  sound  pick-up  to 
the  amplifier,  and  from  there  to  the 
loudspeaker,  before  the  outfit  will  project 
sound ! 

Some  sound  projectors,  too,  have  am¬ 
plifiers  made  so  they  can  handle  twTo 
sound  projectors,  so  that  changeovers 
can  be  made  professionally,  without  a 
break.  In  that  event,  you’ll  see  the  two 
inputs  prominently  labeled  “Proj.  1,” 
and  “Proj.  2,”  and  a  switch  similarly 
marked  to  control  the  changeover.  Many 
of  these  amplifiers  also  have  a  couple  of 
additional  inputs — well  labeled — for  con¬ 
necting  a  microphone  or  a  disc  turntable. 

On  some  of  the  better  16mm.  sound 
projectors  there  is  likely  to  be  an  addi¬ 
tional  control  located  near  the  sound 
pick-up;  it  may  be  a  little  lever,  or  a 
sliding  knob  or  button.  It  is  sometimes 
labeled  “Fidelity.”  Its  purpose  is  to  alter 
the  focus  of  the  sound-scanning  optical 
system,  so  that  regardless  of  whether 
you  have  a  reduction  print  from  35mm., 
which  has  the  emulsion  facing  the  lens, 
or  a  dupe  from  a  direct-16mm.  original, 
in  which  the  emulsion  is  usually  away 
from  the  lens,  the  sound  pick-up  will 
always  be  sharply  focused,  and  the 
sound  quality  clear. 

The  sound  controls  of  most  16mm. 
sound-film  outfits  are  no  more  compli¬ 
cated  than  those  of  your  radio.  You’ll  find 
an  “off-and-on”  main  switch,  a  volume 
control,  and  a  tone  control.  Sometimes 
there  may  be  two  volume  controls — one 
for  sound-film  volume,  and  the  other 
for  microphone  or  phonograph  volume. 
These  are  clearly  labeled,  too.  And  some¬ 
times  you  may  find  two  tone  controls,  as 
in  a  fine  radio,  one  to  control  the  lowT 
frequencies,  and  the  other  the  highs. 

These  controls  are  used  just  as  you 
would  use  the  corresponding  controls  on 
your  radio  or  phonograph  at  home.  In 
some  projectors,  you’ll  find  the  tone  con¬ 
trol  marked  “low”  and  “high”;  in  others, 
the  high  end  will  be  marked  “voice,”  as 
that  is  the  setting  that  gives  the  best 
intelligibility,  while  the  low  end  will  be 
marked  “music,”  as  that  setting  gives 
the  stronger  bass  quality  most  folks  like 
in  recorded  music. 

It  is  important  to  realize  that  each 
individual  projector,  and  each  film,  will 
have  its  own  best  settings  for  tone  and 
volume.  You  can  play  the  same  reel  on 
two  different  projectors  —  even  of  the 
same  make — and  find  you’ll  require  dif¬ 
ferent  tone  and  volume  settings.  Differ¬ 
ent  reels,  naturally,  will  have  different 
recording  characteristics,  and  will  re¬ 
quire  different  projector  settings  to  get 
the  best  out  of  them.  There  is  no  fixed 
rule  for  making  these  settings:  go  by 
what  sounds  best  to  you — and  don’t  be 
afraid  to  change  tone  or  volume  during 
a  reel  if  you  think  you  can  make  the 
sound  quality  better. 

If  you  can,  it  is  always  a  good  idea 
to  have  some  sort  of  a  rehearsal  before 
putting  on  a  show,  so  that  you  can 
familiarize  yourself  with  the  character¬ 


istics  of  the  projector,  the  sound-quality 
of  the  film,  and  the  acoustical  quality 
of  the  auditorium.  In  this  connection, 
remember  that  if  you  rehearse  in  an 
empty  auditorium,  you  will  need  to  step 
up  the  volume  a  bit  for  the  actual  per¬ 
formance,  for  the  bodies  of  your  audi¬ 
ence  will  absorb  a  surprising  lot  of  the 
sound.  Speaking  generally,  try  to  keep 
your  volume  level  such  that  if  you  stand 
in  the  middle  of  the  auditorium  and 
listen,  it  will  be  right.  If  you  try  to 
guage  the  volume  by  what  you  hear  back 
by  the  projector — even  if  it  is  blimped 
— you  will  usually  get  it  too  loud  to  suit 
the  average  audience. 

Similarly,  it  is  handiest,  of  course,  to 
put  the  loudspeaker  (or  loudspeakers,  if 
you  have  one  of  the  more  powerful  out¬ 
fits)  on  the  floor  below  the  screen.  But 
you’ll  get  much  better  sound  quality, 
and  usually  better  volume,  if  you  put 
the  speakers  higher  up.  The  ideal  posi¬ 
tion  is  behind  and  slightly  above  the 
screen,  pointing  slightly  down  toward 
the  audience. 

The  actual  operating  controls  of  the 
projector,  as  a  projector,  are  usually 
separate  from  the  sound  controls,  though 
they  may  be  grouped  on  the  same  panel 
in  some  designs.  There  are  separate 
switches  for  turning  projector  and  sound 
on  and  off,  a  separate  switch  for  the 
projection-lamp,  and  in  some  machines, 
a  separate  control  for  running  the  pro¬ 
jector  at  silent  or  sound  speeds. 

When  you  stai't  a  show,  remember 
that  while  the  projector  and  the  pro¬ 
jection-lamp  start  instantaneously,  the 
amplifier — like  a  radio — usually  requires 
a  minute  or  so  for  the  tubes  to  warm 
up.  So  make  it  a  habit  to  turn  on  the 
amplifier  several  minutes  before  the 
show  is  due  to  start.  Some  16mm.  pro¬ 
jectors  have  a  little  telltale  pilot-light 
to  indicate  when  the  amplifier  is  on  and 
ready  to  operate;  others  don’t.  But  you 
can  nearly  always  tell  when  the  ampli¬ 
fier  is  ready  for  action  by  one  or  both 
of  two  signs.  In  many  projectors,  the 
exciter-light  at  the  sound  pick-up  doesn’t 
go  on  until  all  the  tubes  are  wanned  up 
and  operating.  And  always,  when  the 
amplifier  is  on  and  everything  is  func¬ 
tioning,  you’ll  hear  a  little  hiss  coming 
from  the  loudspeakers,  and  caused  by 
the  glow  from  the  exciter-lamp  affect¬ 
ing  the  photocell  of  the  sound  pick-up 
and  sending  a  little  “background  noise” 
through  the  reproducing  system. 

Anyone  who  has  ever  given  silent 
movie  shows  before  an  audience  knows 
that  it  is  a  “must”  to  have  a  spare  pro¬ 
jection  lamp  available  at  all  times,  in 
case  the  one  in  the  machine  burns  out 
— as  it  always  does  at  the  most  embar¬ 
rassing  moment.  (Have  you  noticed  they 
never  seem  to  burn  out  when  you’re 
running  your  own  film  just  for  your¬ 
self — ?)  Well,  in  sound  projection,  you 
should  add  to  this  a  spare  exciter-lamp 
bulb.  This  is  probably  the  shortest-lived 
part  of  the  average  sound  projector — 
and  without  it,  you  just  can’t  project 
sound.  The  photoelectric  cells  that  trans¬ 
late  the  sound  into  electrical  impulses 
for  the  amplifier  and  loudspeaker  are 


106  March,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


Tripod  Head  Unconditionally  Guaranteed 
5  Years.  Write  for  Descriptive  Literature 1 


Unsurpassed  i  n  if  u  a  lit  ij  , 

'  e  r  s  utility  and  tt  i  y  i  di  ty 


★  The  friction  type  head  gives  super-smooth  pan  and 
tilt  action  with  360°  pan  and  80°  tilt  ranges.  A  gener¬ 
ous  sized  pin  and  trunnion  assures  long  and  depend¬ 
able  service.  "Spread-leg"  design  affords  utmost 
rigidity  and  quick,  positive  height  adjustments.  A 
"T"  level  (like  those  used  in  heavy  professional 
models)  is  built  into  this  14  lb.  superfine  tripod. 

The  top-plate  can  be  set  for  16mm.  E.K.  Cine 
Special,  with  or  without  motor;  35mm.  DeVry 
and  B  &  H  Eyemo  (with  motor),  and  with  or 
without  alignment  gauge.  Many  other  fea¬ 
tures  are  graphically  described  in  litera¬ 
ture  that  will  be  sent  upon  request. 


"Professional  Jr."  tripods  are  used  by  leading  Newsreel  companies,  16mm 
and  35mm  motion  picture  producers,  the  U.  S.  Government, — Signal  Corps, 
Navy  Department,  and  Office  of  Strategic  Services — for  important  sound  and 
silent  work. 


FRANK  C. 

ZUCKER 

(Vflm€Rfl€c 

)UIPm€llT  ( 

5. 

^  1600  BROflDUJflU 

\  neujyoRKCiTU  ^ 

** 

Above — Collapsible  and  ad¬ 
justable  telescoping  metal 
triangle.  Extends  from  I6V2" 
to  26,/2".  Has  wing  locking 
nuts  for  adjusting  leg  spread 
and  stud  holes  for  inserting 
points  of  tripod  feet.  Tri¬ 
angles  prevent  damage,  in¬ 
sure  cameramen  that  their 
equipment  remains  in  cor¬ 
rect  position  and  will  not  slip 
on  or  mar  arty  type  of  sur¬ 
face.  _ 

Left  —  35mm  Eyemo  with 
motor  and  400  ft.  magazines 
mounted  on  "Professional  Jr." 


American  Cinematographer  •  March,  1943  107 


usually  long-lived,  but  if  you  can  carry 
a  spare  photocell,  you’d  better  do  it.  In 
the  same  way,  the  amplifier  tubes  will 
take  a  good  deal  more  use  and  abuse 
than  those  in  a  radio,  but  when  they 
go,  it  helps  to  have  a  spare.  END. 


Hyperfocal 

(Continued  from  Page  100) 

/:11.  This  will  give  us  2x2  divided  by 
11  x  .001,  which  evolves  to  4  divided  by 
.011  and  in  turn  works  out  to  a  hyper¬ 
focal  distance  of  363  inches  or  30  feet. 
At  this  setting,  everything  from  15  feet 
to  infinity  will  be  adequately  focused. 

For  contrast,  let’s  consider  a  very 
short-focus  lens,  like  the  1214  mm. 
lenses  used  on  8mm.  cameras.  Work¬ 
ing  it  wide  open  at  /:1.9,  the  formula 
would  figure  out  as  .5  x  .5  divided  by 
1.9  x  .001,  which  comes  down  to  .25 
divided  by  .0019,  and  gives  us  131  inches 
or  10.9  feet  as  the  hyperfocal  distance 
for  this  lens  at  this  wide-open  aperture. 
Using  the  same  figuring  for  the  same 
lens  stopped  down  to  /:11,  we  find  the 
hyperfocal  distance  in  this  case  has 
moved  up  to  1%  feet  from  the  camera. 
No  wonder  we  get  such  remarkable  re¬ 
sults  with  fixed-focus  eights! 

But  there  are  times  when  we  may 
want  to  obtain  adequate  focus  on  some 
secondary  object  or  person  nearer  the 
camera  than  either  the  principal  subject 
or  the  hyperfocal  point.  Or  we  may 
want  to  let  our  far  limit  of  good  focus 
fall  short  of  infinity,  to  eliminate  a  dis¬ 
turbing  background.  In  this  case  it  will 
be  useful  to  know  something  about  depth 
of  field,  and  how  to  make  it  work  for 
us.  Technically,  depth  of  field  means  the 
distance  between  the  nearest  and  farthest 
objects  in  acceptably  sharp  focus. 

If  you’re  mathematically  minded,  you 
can  determine  these  two  points  by  the 
following  formulas: 

D  XH 

Near  =  - 

H  +  D 

D  X  H 

Far  —  - 

H  -  D 

In  each  case,  D  represents  the  distance 
from  camera  to  object,  and  H  represents 
the  hyperfocal  distance  under  the  par¬ 
ticular  conditions  of  stop,  focal  length 
and  circle  of  confusion  applying  to  that 
particular  shot. 

To  illustrate  this,  suppose  we  use  the 
2-inch  lens  we’ve  been  talking  about,  at 
its  maximum  aperture  of  /: 2.5.  We’ve 
already  found  the  hyperfocal  distance  for 
it — 133  feet.  Assuming  our  object  is 
40  feet  from  the  camera,  we  get  this 
equation: 

40  X  133 

Near  :=  - 

133  +  40 

This  equals  5320  divided  by  173,  and 
gives  us  approximately  30  feet  as  our 
near  limit.  In  this  same  way  we  find  the 
far  limit  of  good  focus  by  applying  the 
second  formula,  which  works  out  as  4x133 
divided  by  133 — 40,  or  5320  divided  by 


93,  and  gives  us  57  feet  as  the  far  limit 
of  good  focus. 

Since  the  hyperfocal  distance  is  a 
basic  factor  in  these  calculations,  and  it, 
in  turn,  varies  according  to  the  focal 
length  of  the  lens  and  the  stop  being 
used,  a  little  work  with  pencil  and  paper 
will  show  you  just  how  and  why  the  depth 
of  field  increases  as  the  focal  length 
decreases  or  smaller  stops  are  used, 
and  why  with  longer-focus  lenses,  or 
larger  apertures,  the  depth  decreases. 

An  understanding  of  these  two  simple 
optical  factors — the  hyperfocal  distance 
and  depth  of  field — can  go  a  long  way  to¬ 
ward  simplifying  your  focusing  prob¬ 
lems.  As  I  said  at  the  start,  once  you 
know  how  to  put  the  hyperfocal  dis¬ 
tances  to  work  for  you,  you  will  know 
how,  and  to  just  what  extent  you  can 
make  any  cine  lens  serve  in  an  emer¬ 
gency  as  a  fixed-focus,  though  not  al¬ 
ways  universal-focus  lens. 

And  when  you  have  familiarized  your¬ 
self  with  the  depth  of  field  characteristics 
of  your  lens,  you’ll  find  you  can  make 
this  factor  work  for  you  in  two  ways,  as 
the  professional  does.  When  you  want 
“pan-focus”  or  extreme-depth  effects, 
you  can  get  them  by  using  a  short-focus 
lens,  well  stopped  down. 

And  when — as  in  making  close-ups  and 
the  like — you  want  to  focus  selectively,  so 
that  your  picture  will  concentrate  atten¬ 
tion  on  the  subject,  without  intrusion 
from  either  the  background  or  the  fore¬ 
ground,  you  can  do  that  by  using  longer- 
focus  lenses  and  larger  openings. 

Neither  a  hyperfocal  setting  nor  re¬ 
liance  on  depth  of  field  can  ever  alto¬ 
gether  take  the  place  of  precise  focusing 
on  the  subject.  But  they  can  come  in 
mighty  handy  in  emergencies! 

Naturally,  the  figures  that  can  be  de¬ 
rived  from  these  formulas  can  be  re¬ 
duced  to  the  form  of  handy  charts  or 
tables.  In  fact  they  have  been,  and  fre¬ 
quently,  in  such  reference  works  as  Jack- 
son  Rose’s  “American  Cinematographer’s 
Handbook.”  But  sometimes  you  may 
find  yourself  caught  in  the  field,  wanting 
in  the  worst  way  to  know  the  answer  to 
some  problem  in  this  line,  only  to  find 
that  your  chart  is  in  the  camera-case 
five  miles  back!  And  at  a  time  like  that, 
you’ll  be  well  ahead  of  the  game  if  you 
know  how  to  figure  out  the  answer  for 
yourself  instead  of  relying  on  a  hazy 
memory  of  figures  in  a  table  you  prob¬ 
ably  glanced  at  only  casually.  END. 


Professionalizing  the  Bolex 

(Continued  from  Page  98) 

turret,  and  to  remount  it  in  a  false 
front-board  as  shown  in  the  illustra¬ 
tions,  without  affecting  the  original  sepa¬ 
ration  between  lens  and  film-plane.  With 
this  construction,  the  camera-head  could 
be  moved  behind  the  lens  on  the  shift- 
over  very  much  in  the  manner  of  a 
35mm.  Mitchell. 

The  actual  focusing  system  was  pro¬ 
vided  by  one  of  the  excellent  visual 
focusing  systems  made  by  Bell  &  Howell 
for  use  in  their  magazine-type  “Filmos.” 
This  was  simply  mounted  on  the  left- 


hand  side  of  the  camera,  in  such  a  posi¬ 
tion  that  when  the  camera-head  was 
shifted  to  the  right  and  up  by  the  shift- 
over  mechanism,  the  ground  glass  of  the 
focusing  system  was  brought  into  place 
behind  the  lens,  and  precisely  in  the 
focal  plane.  This  provides  a  completely 
accurate  focusing  system  which  gives  a 
highly  magnified  image,  right  -  side  -  up 
and  laterally  correct. 

When  the  camera  is  shifted  back  into 
photographing  position,  the  regular 
Bolex  finder,  mounted  just  above  the 
focusing  magnifier,  is  aligned  with  a 
rectangular  opening  in  the  false  front- 
board.  Another  opening  gives  access  to 
the  front  starting-button  of  the  cam¬ 
era’s  spring  motor. 

The  new  base  and  front-board  into 
which  camera  and  shift-over  are  placed, 
and  in  which  the  turret  is  mounted,  pre¬ 
sented  a  perplexing  construction  prob¬ 
lem  under  today’s  wartime  conditions. 
Palmer’s  original  plans  called  for  a  cast¬ 
ing;  but  both  foundries  and  metal  have 
more  important  purposes  to  serve  these 
days. 

As  a  substitute,  he  finally  utilized 
Masonite  “presdwood”  composition - 
board.  This  is  non-strategic  (and  hence 
free  from  priorities),  easily  worked,  and 
surprisingly  strong.  When  painted  with 
black  crackle-enamel  and  baked  for  four 
hours  at  a  temperature  of  around  200 
degrees,  it  takes  a  crackle  finish  which 
makes  it  indistinguishable  from  metal. 
Using  the  camera  under  the  somewhat 
strenuous  conditions  of  professional 
16mm.  production  has  indicated  that 
this  Masonite  construction  is  very  nearly 
as  strong  as  metal,  and  considerably 
lighter. 

Palmer  has  also  used  the  same  mate¬ 
rial  for  the  construction  of  the  external, 
400-ft.  magazines  shown  in  the  illustra¬ 
tions.  As  will  be  seen,  these  magazines 
are  mounted  on  top  of  the  camera,  and 
a  curved  segment  is  cut  away  at  the 
bottom  to  permit  the  magazine  to  fit 
snugly  over  the  curving  top  of  the  Bolex 
camera-box.  Each  of  the  two  film-cham¬ 
bers  has  an  individual  cover,  held  in 
place  by  two  small  spring  clips,  and 
completely  removable.  This  construction, 
incidentally,  should  be  a  convenience  in 
the  darkroom,  or  when  loading  maga¬ 
zines  in  a  changing-bag  in  the  field, 
when  it  is  not  always  easy  to  fit  a  screw- 
type  cover-plate  into  its  thread. 

The  unexposed  film  is  fed  from  the 
regular  laboratory-packing  core,  which 
fits  onto  a  spindle.  The  exposed  film  can 
be  taken  onto  a  similar  core,  or  onto 
a  regular  400-ft.  projection  reel.  Palmer 
favors  the  latter,  as  it  runs  more  true, 
and  winds  easier.  Velvet  light-traps  are 
of  course  provided. 

The  only  metal  used  in  these  ingeni¬ 
ous  magazines  is  that  necessary  for  the 
spindles  and  take-up  belt  pulleys,  the 
clips  that  hold  the  magazine  covers  in 
place,  and  the  ingenious  hinge-and-catch 
device  that  attaches  the  magazine  to  the 
camera.  In  this  latter,  a  small  bar  or 
rod  is  attached  to  the  front  edge  of  the 
camera-housing,  and  a  simple  hook  on 


108  March,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


Top-notch  studio  cinematography  calls  for  complete  control  of 
lighting  under  all  conditions  .  .  .  even  outdoors. 

And  G-E  MAZDA  lamps  in  inkie  booster  units  do  a  swell  job  on 
providing  it,  according  to  Director  of  Photography  ARTHUR 
MILLER,  A.S.C.,  and  Gafifer  DON  CARSTENSEN,  as  they 
prepare  to  shoot  an  outdoor  scene. 

They  say:  "MAZDA  lamp  'boosters’  are  essential  in  exterior 
cinematography.  They  enable  us  to  control  the  shadow  lighting 
as  precisely  as  though  we  were  working  indoors  on  the  stage. 
And  light  from  MAZDA  lamps  is  easier  for  the  actors  to  look  into.” 


For  complete  control  of 
lighting... even  outdoors! 


■  With  ARTHUR  MILLER,  A.S.C.,  Director  of 
On  location  ^  CARSTENSEN,  Gaffer,  for  the 

Photography  an  „The  Moon  i#  Down” 


20th  Century-Fox  feature 


new 


IN  THE  STUDIO 
AND  OUTSIDE 

Lighting  with 
G-E  MAZDA  LAMPS 
is  flexible 
— compact 
—  clean 

—quick  starting 
— convenient 
—and  versatile 


G-E  MAZDA  LAMPS 


GENERAL 


ELECTRIC 


American  Cinematographer  •  March,  1943 


109 


the  magazine  is  engaged  with  it.  The 
magazine  is  then  dropped  down  onto  the 
camera,  and  locked  in  place  with  a  small 
lever  catch. 

It  is  also  noteworthy  that  this  entire 
conversion  was  effected  at  negligible 
cost,  from  non-strategic  materials,  and 
is  one  which  could  be  easily  emulated 
by  almost  any  16mm.  professional  or 
amateur,  or  even  8mm.  amateurs  who 
own  cameras  of  similar  design.  END. 


Bob  De  Grasse 

(Continued  from  Page  92) 

a  sequence,  and  the  sequences  into  a 
complete  picture. 

“Meantime,  I  kept  my  nose  to  the 
grindstone  on  the  set,  too,  and  did  my 
best  to  learn  everything  I  could  about 
the  how  and  wherefore  of  photography. 
I  must  have  learned  something,  too,  for 
it  wasn’t  very  long  after  that  that  I 
found  myself  promoted  to  the  rank  of 
Second  Cameraman. 

“By  this  I  don’t  mean  that  I  did  the 
work  of  the  Second  or  Operative  Cam¬ 
eraman  of  today.  In  those  days,  the 
Second  Cameraman  was  the  fellow  who 
operated  the  additional  camera  that 
stood  beside  the  First  Cameraman’s 
camera  to  record  a  second  negative  from 
which  the  prints  for  foreign  distribution 
were  made.  In  addition,  he  shot  inserts 
and  any  minor  scenes  such  as  we’d 
turn  over  to  a  second  unit  today.  Some¬ 
times  the  Second  was  called  “Associ¬ 
ate  Cinematographer;”  I  think  that’s 
really  a  more  accurate  term  for  what 
he  did. 

“At  any  rate,  I  served  my  appren¬ 
ticeship  in  this  post,  and  finally — it  was 
about  five  years  after  I’d  started  in  as 
an  assistant — I  found  myself  shooting 
my  first  picture  alone,  as  a  full  First 
Cameraman.  It  was  a  western  for  FBO 
(the  forerunner  of  today’s  RKO),  star¬ 
ring  Harry  Carey  and  entitled  ‘Miracle 
Baby.’ 

“Considering  that  title,  and  the  fact 
that  at  23  I  was  probably  the  youngest 
First  Cameraman  in  the  industry,  I  sup¬ 
pose  it  would  give  this  story  a  nice 
literary  touch  if  I  could  say  that  I 
clicked  from  the  start,  and  was  hailed 
all  around  as  the  ‘miracle  baby’  of 
camerawork. 

“Only  it  wouldn’t  be  true.  Quite  the 
reverse!  ‘Miracle  Baby’  was  a  decidedly 
unimportant  little  picture — just  the  sort 
of  thing  a  green  young  cameraman  could 
safely  cut  his  teeth  on,  for  as  long  as  he 
managed  to  get  a  recognizable  image  on 
the  film,  the  picture  would  make  money 
with  the  small-town  and  juvenile  audi¬ 
ences  that  demanded  a  ‘western’  every 
Saturday  night.  But  good  or  bad,  it 
would  never  come  to  the  attention  of 
the  really  important  people  of  Hollywood 
production. 

“However,  I  stayed  on  as  a  First 
Cameraman.  I  remained  with  Harry 
Carey  as  long  as  he  continued  to  star 
for  FBO,  which  was,  I  think,  about  two 
or  three  more  pictures.  Then  I  was 
simply  switched  to  photographing  other 
‘horse  operas’  with  other  cowboy  stars. 


“By  the  time  sound  began  to  come 
in  some  five  or  six  years  later,  and  FBO 
had  changed  to  RKO,  I  reached  the  con¬ 
clusion  that  I  was  making  no  progress 
fast.  I  was  a  full-fledged  First  Cine¬ 
matographer  all  right,  and  had  even 
gained  membership  in  the  A.S.C.:  but 
the  pictures  I  was  getting  were  stead¬ 
ily  less  and  less  important.  And  by 
the  time  they  put  me  to  photographing 
a  dog  star,  I  decided  I’d  better  do 
something  drastic  while  I  was  still  young 
enough  so  that  with  a  fresh  start  I 
could  work  my  way  somehow  into  pic¬ 
tures  that  would  in  the  long  run  give 
me  more  of  an  opportunity  for  advance¬ 
ment. 

“So  I  deliberately  quit  as  a  First 
Cameraman,  and  went  back  to  the  po¬ 
sition  of  Operative  or  Second  Camera¬ 
man. 

“And  right  there,  my  luck  began 
to  change.  Operative  Cameramen  weren’t 
quite  as  scarce  as  they  are  now,  but 
I  guess  they  weren’t  very  plentiful, 
either.  Anyhow,  I  found  myself  get¬ 
ting  assigned  to  operate  for  some  of 
the  best  cinematographers  in  the  indus¬ 
try,  and  on  some  of  RKO’s  biggest 
pictures.  I  worked  with  Eddie  Cron- 
jager,  A.S.C.,  on  ‘Cimarron,’  with  Roy 
Hunt,  A.S.C.,  on  ‘Dixiana,’  and  with 
other  top-flight  cinematographers  like 
Leo  Tover,  A.S.C.,  Karl  Struss,  A.S.C., 
Nick  Musuraca,  A.S.C.,  and  the  rest,  all 
on  real  ‘A’  productions.  I  was  get¬ 
ting  the  finest  sort  of  post-graduate 
course  in  really  fine  cinematography. 

“After  a  few  years  of  this — it  was 
in  1931  to  be  exact — I  had  an  oppor¬ 
tunity  to  go  to  England  as  a  First 
Cinematographer  for  Basil  Dean’s  Asso¬ 
ciated  Talking  Pictures.  I  spent  nine 
very  interesting  months  over  there,  and 
then  returned  to  Hollywood. 

“Back  home  at  RKO,  I  took  things  up 
where  I  had  left  off,  and  went  on  as  an 
Operative  Cameraman.  It  was  my  good 
fortune  to  be  teamed  pretty  consis¬ 
tently  with  the  late  Henry  Gerrard, 
A.S.C.,  who  was  one  of  the  studio’s  top- 
ranking  cinematographers,  and  one  of 
the  finest  artists  ever  to  use  a  camera. 

“During  those  years,  Henry  Gerrard 
was  particularly  associated  with  RKO’s 
biggest  star,  Katherine  Hepburn.  In¬ 
deed,  she  had  insisted  on  having  a  clause 
in  her  contract  which  specified  that  she 
was  not  to  be  photographed  by  any 
other  cinematographer. 

“After  his  tragic  death  in  1935,  both 
Miss  Hepburn  and  the  studio  felt  that 
as  I’d  been  his  fellow-worker  on  so 
many  pictures  with  her,  I  was  the  man 
best  fitted  to  carry  on  with  them  and 
give  her  the  type  of  photographic  treat¬ 
ment  she  had  found  so  satisfactory. 

“So  once  more  I  found  myself  a  full- 
fledged  Director  of  Photography — this 
time  on  top-flight  ‘A’  productions.  And 
thanks  to  the  photographic  polish  I  had 
gotten  during  those  years  as  an  Opera¬ 
tor  for  so  many  of  the  industry’s  finest 
artists,  I’ve  remained  as  an  ‘A’  picture 
cinematographer  ever  since.  I  did  many 
pictures  with  Miss  Hepburn  up  to  the 
time  she  left  RKO.  One  of  them  was 


‘Stage  Door,’  in  which  Ginger  Rogers 
got  her  first  chance  at  a  straight  dra¬ 
matic  part.  She  liked  my  work,  too,  and 
I  switched  over  to  photographing  her. 
We  did  quite  a  long  series  of  pictures 
together,  not  only  the  musicals  in  which 
she  co-starred  with  Fred  Astaire,  but 
others  in  which  she  starred  alone,  up  to 
and  including  ‘Kitty  Foyle,’  for  which 
she  won  the  Academy  Award  two  years 
ago. 

“Since  them,  I’ve  had  my  share  of 
RKO’s  best  pictures,  and  during  the  past 
year  I’ve  also  had  the  privilege  of  mak¬ 
ing  several  pictures  for  other  studios. 
That’s  an  experience  I  think  every  cine¬ 
matographer  ought  to  have.  Of  course 
it’s  pleasant  if  your  association  with  one 
studio  can  continue  unbroken  for  year 
after  year,  as  it  has  for  so  many  of  us; 
but  there’s  also  the  danger  that  you 
may  slide  too  easily  into  the  narrow 
little  routine  of  one  studio.  Getting 
cut  and  making  a  picture  on  some  other 
lot  can  be  a  stimulating  tonic.  After 
seeing  how  other  folks  in  other  studios 
think  and  work,  you’re  bound  to  come 
back  to  your  home  lot  with  a  fresh 
mental  viewpoint  which  can’t  help  show¬ 
ing  up  in  your  work. 

“My  last  assignment,  photographing 
Barbara  Stanwyck  in  ‘Lady  of  Bur¬ 
lesque,’  for  Hunt  Stromberg,  was  like 
that.  And  last  summer,  when  Universal 
borrowed  me  to  photograph  Marlene 
Dietrich  in  ‘Pittsburgh,’  I’ll  admit  there 
was  an  extra  thrill  in  recalling  that 
the  last  time  I’d  worked  at  that  studio, 
nearly  23  years  ago,  it  was  as  an  ob¬ 
scure  Assistant  Cameraman! 

“Looking  back  on  it  all,  I  believe 
one  of  the  most  important  things  I  can 
pass  on  from  my  own  experience  to 
younger  cinematographers  is  the  import¬ 
ance  of  taking  your  time  and  choosing  the 
bind  of  picture  upon  which  to  make  your 
debut  as  a  Director  of  Photography. 
If  you  grab  hastily  at  the  first  chance 
for  advancement  you  get,  it’s  likely  to 
be  on  ‘B’  pictures  or  westerns — and  once 
you  get  started  on  those,  you  can  look 
forward  to  a  fight  every  bit  as  long  and 
heartbreaking  as  the  one  you’ve  just 
finished  working  your  way  up,  for  cine¬ 
matographers  can  get  ‘typed’  just  as 
much  as  actors.  It’s  much  easier  to  get 
onto  these  program  films  than  to  get 
away  from  them  to  ‘A’  productions. 

“For  ‘B’  pictures  and  ‘horse  operas’ 
seldom  give  a  cinematographer  much 
chance  to  distinguish  himself.  They’re 
usually  made  on  the  shortest  of  sched¬ 
ules,  with  cheap  or  remodeled  sets,  and 
with  comparatively  unimportant  players. 
And  once  you  get  ‘typed’  as  a  ‘B’  pic¬ 
ture  man,  it’s  almost  impossible  to  make 
the  front-office  executives  believe  you 
can  handle  a  big  production  or  be  trust¬ 
ed  to  make  their  valuable  glamor-girls 
look  lovely. 

“But  if  you  wait  until  you  can  make 
your  start  on  at  least  a  moderately 
good  picture,  you’ll  have  a  chance  to 
show  what  you  can  do  right  at  the 
start.  Then  if  you  have  it  in  you, 
you  won’t  have  nearly  so  much  trouble 
getting  assigned  to  bigger  pictures  that 


110  March,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


THOROUGHLY  TESTED  FILM  PROCESSING 
MACHINES  BY  HOUSTON 


THE  HOUSTON  35  MM  SPECIAL 
PURPOSE  FILM  DEVELOPING 
MACHINE. 


THE  HOUSTON  16mm  NEGATIVE.  POSITIVE  AND  REVERSAL 
TYPE  FILM  DEVELOPING  MACHINE 


Special  purpose  means  that  this  ma¬ 
chine  was  designed  for  use  in  a  lim¬ 
ited  space.  Its  dimensions  are  78" 
high,  48"  long  by  42"  wide. 

Either  Negative  or  Positive  film  can 
be  developed  on  this  machine.  Suit¬ 
able  pumps  have  been  arranged  to 
facilitate  loading  and  unloading  of 
solutions  as  well  as  operate  proper  tur- 
bulation  to  either  developer. 

This  machine  is  white  light  operated, 
as  suitable  light  tight  magazines  are 
supplied.  It  is  equipped  with  variable 
speed  transmission  giving  a  range  of 
film  footage  of  500  feet  per  hour  to 
2000  feet  per  hour. 

The  Dryer  Compartment  is  equipped 
with  Infra-red  lamps  for  drying  the 
film.  Sections  can  be  cut  in  or  cut  out 
as  desired  to  suit  atmospheric  condi¬ 
tions. 

The  electrical  load  is  13  K-V-A  at 
220  volts. 


This  machine  was  designed  and  manufactured  to  serve  a  three  fold  purpose, 
that  is,  the  developing  of  Negative,  Positive  and  Reversal  film  in  one 
machine. 

Provisions  have  been  made  to  by-pass  the  film  from  positions  desired  for 
any  of  the  operations  in  a  novel  and  practical  way  so  that  final  results  will 
be  comparable  to  operations  on  a  machine  designed  for  a  single  purpose. 
The  machine  is  of  rigid  construction  and  is  a  portable  type,  being  set  on 
casters  and  can  be  readily  moved  to  any  desired  location.  It  is  white  light 
operated.  All  controls,  such  as  Electric,  Heating,  Exposure  Lamps,  Pumps 
for  turbulation  of  Developer,  Filtering  of  the  Water,  Chemicals  and  Water 
Drains  are  all  incorporated  in  this  machine. 

Electrical  load  is  12  K-V-A  at  220  volts.  Electrical  specifications  will  satisfy 
any  power  requirements.  Most  excellent  photographic  results  have  been 
obtained  from  this  machine. 


These  machines  are  completely  self  contained  requiring  no  additional  equip¬ 
ment  and  are  crated  and  shipped  completely  assembled. 

These  most  modern  Film  Developing  Machines  can  be  supplied  through  high 
priority  rating. 

For  detailed  information  write 


H.W.  HOUSTON  5c  COMPANY 

(  A  DIVISION  OF  GENERAL  SERVICE  CORPORATION) 

6625  ROMAINE  STREET 

HOLLYWOOD,  CALIFORNIA 


really  give  you  a  chance  to  distinguish 
yourself. 

“Of  course  it’s  hard  not  to  say  yes 
the  first  time  you  have  a  chance  to 
step  up  to  a  First  Camera  assignment. 
And  it  seems  terribly  long,  sometimes, 
waiting  for  opportunity  to  give  a  better 
knock  at  your  door.  But  it’s  a  much 
longer  and  harder  wait,  I  can  assure 
you,  trying  to  make  your  way  up  from 
the  dead-end  street  of  the  program 
films.  In  my  case,  it  took  close  to  twelve 
years,  and  I  had  to  swallow  my  pride 
and  step  down  to  operating  and  wait 
until  the  right  opportunity  came  along. 
I’d  have  been  years  ahead  if  I  had 
waited  for  the  right  opportunity  in  the 
first  place.” 

Probably  the  most  outstanding  single 
characteristic  of  De  Grasse’s  work  is 
the  fact  that  regardless  of  whether 
or  not  story,  settings  and  action  afford 
him  opportunities  for  strikingly  pic¬ 
torial  camerawork,  he  manages  always 
to  keep  the  players  appearing  uniformly 
at  their  best,  and  to  carry  through  even 
a  routine  assignment  with  an  effort¬ 
less  smoothness  which,  while  it  keeps 
the  camera  unobtrusively  subordinated 
to  story  values,  none  the  less  reveals 
to  the  trained  eye  the  touch  of  a  real 
master  of  the  camera. 

“When  I’m  assigned  to  a  picture,” 
Bob  will  tell  you  when  you  bring  up 
this  subject,  “I  haven’t  any  prearranged 
plan.  Each  picture  is  different:  some 
give  you  a  combination  of  story  values, 
setting,  and  cast  which  give  you  a  clear 
chance  to  go  to  town  photographically; 


on  others  you’ve  got  to  hold  yourself 
in  or  your  camerawork  will  dominate 
the  picture  to  its  detriment  as  enter¬ 
tainment.  But  whatever  the  conditions 
are,  there  are  always  the  players  to  be 
considered.  They’re  what  the  studio  is 
really  paying  you  to  photograph;  they’re 
what  the  public  is  really  paying  to  see. 
So  as  I  figure  it,  your  first  duty  is 
to  see  that  the  people  are  always  as 
favorably  photographed  as  possible. 

“How  you  do  it  is  an  individual  mat¬ 
ter.  Some  stars  are  virtually  camera- 
proof,  and  make  this  part  of  your  light¬ 
ing  and  camera  job  easy.  Others  de¬ 
mand  specialized — even  stylized — light¬ 
ing  and  angles.  When  a  player  like 
this  is  the  big  star  of  the  picture,  you’ve 
got  to  see  to  it  first  of  all  that  he 
(or  she)  gets  that  particular  style  of 
treatment  first  of  all,  even  if  you  have 
to  sacrifice  a  bit  here  and  there  with 
the  rest  of  the  cast  or  the  action  to  do 
it.  Then  you  have  the  problem  of 
working  in  the  rest  of  your  lighting 
around  this  essential  and  often  tricky 
set-up. 

“For  that  matter,  every  picture  is  a 
challenge  to  the  cinematographer.  Es¬ 
pecially  under  todays’  conditions,  with 
restrictions  on  this  and  shortages  on 
that — not  to  mention  rationed  and  many 
times  made-over  sets — it  seems  to  me 
that  almost  every  scene  and  set-up 
stands  there  and  gives  you  a  nasty  grin, 
as  if  to  say,  ‘You  can’t  do  it.’  Then 
you’ve  got  to  figure  out  some  way  to 
do  it — even  if  it  seems  impossible! 

“Sometimes  ycu  can  go  back  into  your 


own  past  experience  and  find  some  simi¬ 
lar  problem  you  met  and  licked  years 
ago,  and  use  a  similar  solution  on  the 
present  headache.  Sometimes  you  may 
have  to  go  ’way  back  and  remember 
what  some  veteran  First  Cinematograph¬ 
er  for  whom  you  operated  did  it.  And 
sometimes  you’ve  simply  got  to  come  up 
with  something  really  new  in  order  to 
get  that  shot  on  the  screen  as  you  and 
the  director  want  it  in  spite  of  every¬ 
thing.  Whichever  way  it  is,  you  can 
find  a  lot  of  enjoyment  trying  to  lick 
those  obstacles.  You  may  get  tired 
and  worn  out  in  this  business — but  with 
new  challenges  to  your  ingenuity  coming 
up  every  time  you  make  a  set-up,  you’ll 
certainly  not  get  bored!”  END. 


16mm.  Vs.  35mm. 

(Continued  from  Page  91) 

work.  In  other  words,  color  has  the  in¬ 
contestable  ability  to  portray  form  and 
texture  in  a  more  accurate  way  than  can 
monochrome,  partially  making  up  for 
the  two-dimensional  limitations  of  the 
motion  picture  medium. 

Of  course,  good  monochrome  photog¬ 
raphy  can  convey  third-dimensional  im¬ 
pressions,  but  they  are  not  necessarily  ac¬ 
curate  ones.  As  a  matte  rof  fact,  this 
very  ability  of  monochrome  photography 
to  present  things  not  quite  as  they  are, 
makes  it  the  powerful  entertainment 
medium  that  it  is.  It  can  glamourize  or 
detract  at  will,  depending  only  on  the 
skill  of  the  photographer. 

But  when  the  primary  requirement  is 
to  portray  things  as  they  really  are,  to 
show  the  person  being  instructed  by  a 
training  film  what  the  device  or  situa¬ 
tion  really  looks  like,  color  is  of  such 
value  that  I  would  rate  it  tops.  I  would 
prefer  a  silent  color  film  as  a  visual  aid 
to  a  black-and-white  sound  film,  even 
though  I  am  thoroughly  sold  on  the  tre¬ 
mendous  contribution  of  a  good  sound¬ 
track. 

Well,  if  the  point  is  conceded  that  color 
is  itself  enough  reason  for  considering 
16mm.  production,  are  there  any  other 
factors  which  make  production  in  the 
small  size  impractical  ? 

If  you  talk  to  someone  accustomed  to 
the  usual  35mm.  production,  and  who  has 
undertaken  direct-16mm.  production  in 
color,  you  are  likely  to  get  a  whole  roster 
of  complaints  about  the  problems  that 
color  introduces.  He  will  first  point  out 
that  the  equipment  available  is  inade¬ 
quate,  that  the  truly  professional  16mm. 
cameras  are  as  scarce  as  new  tires. 
He  will  mention  the  problems  arising 
from  the  short  latitude  of  Kodachrome 
film,  wh  ch  makes  necessary  extremely 
precise  exposure  determination.  He  will 
complain  of  threadbare  nerves  obtained 
while  waiting  for  the  film  to  be  pro¬ 
cessed,  since  Kodachrome  is  not  handled 
on  the  super-fast  schedule  of  overnight 
35mm.  service. 

Further,  he  will  complain  of  the  diffi¬ 
culties  in  matching  color  in  sequences 
when  changing  hours  or  days  make 
skies  and  backgrounds  look  quite  differ- 


NO  "DIM-OUT”  IN  NEW  YORK- 
IF  YOU 
C.  ROSS 

For  Lighting  Equipment 

As  sole  distributors  East  of  the  Mississippi  we  carry  the  full  and 
complete  line  of  latest-type  Inkie  and  H.I.-Arc  equipment 
manufactured  by 

MOLE-RICHARDSON,  Inc. 

Hollywood  -  California 

Your  requirements  for  interior  or  exterior  locations  taken  care 
of  to  the  last  minute  detail  anywhere 

☆ 

MOTOR  GENERATOR  TRUCKS 
RENTALS  SALES  SERVICE 

☆ 

CHARLES  ROSS,  Inc. 

333  West  52nd  St..  New  York.  N.Y.  Phones:  Circle  6-5470-1 


112  March,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


ent.  He  will  then  go  into  the  dearth  of 
editing  equipment  of  theatrical  produc¬ 
tion  caliber,  the  difficulty  of  making  film 
effects  except  in  the  camera,  the  non¬ 
existence  of  16mm.  sound-recording  facil¬ 
ities  for  re-recording  from  upwards  of 
six  sound-tracks,  or  the  problems  of 
first-quality  sound  reduction  prints.  He 
may  end  up  his  case  against  16mm.  color 
production  by  pointing  out  that,  if  you 
have  lived  through  these  problems,  your 
final  16mm.  color  prints  will  cost  about 
five  times  as  much  as  good  black-and- 
white  reductions  from  35mm.  negatives. 

This  dolorous  series  of  problems  which 
have  come  to  some  producers  trying  their 
first  16mm.  color  production  are  not  so 
much  an  indictment  of  the  16mm.  pro¬ 
duction  as  they  are  a  result  of  attempting 
to  apply  very  specialized  and  advanced 
techniques  to  a  new  medium  in  which  the 
tools  are  admittedly  somewhat  elemen¬ 
tary.  The  producers  have  tried  too  hard 
in  attempting  to  use  all  their  usual  slick 
techniques  before  really  being  prepared 
to  do  so. 

It  is  true  that  16mm.  camera  equip¬ 
ment  does  not  conform  to  35mm.  studio 
standards,  notably  as  regards  accurate 
parallax  correction  on  finders.  But  it  is 
largely  through  the  elimination  of  many 
studio  camera  features,  large  maga¬ 
zines,  electric  drives,  etc.,  that  the  16mm. 
cameras  get  their  ease  of  operation  under 
tough  conditions.  The  one  essential 
feature  for  precise  cinematography,  a 
parallax-free  focusing  device,  is  avail¬ 
able  on  several  makes  of  cameras,  and 
can  be  fitted  to  others  without  too  much 
difficulty. 

As  for  difficulty  with  latitude  on  Koda- 
chrome,  this  should  not  be  a  great  prob¬ 
lem  if  the  limits  of  the  emulsion  are  not 
exceeded.  It  demands  an  entirely  dif¬ 
ferent  type  of  lighting,  both  on  exter¬ 
iors  and  interiors — lighting  which  is 
much  flatter,  with  only  the  subtlest  sug¬ 
gestion  of  the  usual  modelling  and  back¬ 
light.  Any  attempt  to  use  the  conven¬ 
tional  monochrome  lighting  will  inevit¬ 
ably  result  in  exposure  troubles  because 
the  difference  in  brilliance  between  the 
highlights  and  shadows  of  good  black 
and  white  lighting  is  just  too  great  for 
the  Kodachrome  emulsion  to  span.  This 
does  not  mean  that  the  “professional” 
appearance  of  the  picture  is  lost  with  a 
flat  lighting  scheme,  for  the  modeling  in 
light  and  shade  is  replaced  by  color  con¬ 
trast,  giving  equal  opportunity  for  cine¬ 
matic  skill.  This  same  factor,  by  the 
way,  applies  almost  as  much  to  35mm. 
Technicolor  as  it  does  to  16mm.  Koda¬ 
chrome. 

The  slight  differences  in  lighting  con¬ 
ditions,  which  are  inevitable  with  out¬ 
door  shooting,  and  give  rise  to  uneven 
color  quality,  are  unquestionably  tough; 
but  they  can  be  licked.  A  good  training 
film  will  consist  very  largely  of  close- 
ups  where  minor  variations  in  color- 
quality  should  not  be  noticed,  especially 
if  compensating  filters  are  used.  Fur¬ 
thermore,  even  if  there  are  some  color 
variations,  they  still  do  not  destroy  the 
ability  of  color  to  give  a  more  accurate 
impression  of  the  real  thing. 


The  time  involved  in  processing  Koda¬ 
chrome  and  then  making  a  cutting  print 
to  review  as  “rushes,”  is  bad  when 
working  on  a  tight  schedule  when  re¬ 
takes  are  very  costly.  There  can  be  a 
good  deal  of  time  saved  by  checking  the 
original  Kodachrome  on  a  viewer  like 
the  Craig  which,  if  properly  handled, 
cannot  harm  the  film.  This  does  not  en¬ 
tirely  substitute  for  a  projection  of  a 
duplicate,  but  should  show  any  need  for 
retakes.  At  the  same  time  of  checking 
the  original,  certain  takes  which  are  ob¬ 
viously  unusable  can  be  removed,  making 
the  editing  job  easier  when  it  comes  to 
matching  back  to  the  original,  and  re¬ 
ducing  the  footage  to  be  work-printed 
for  cutting  purposes. 

Again  as  in  lighting  technique,  editing 
16mm.  Kodachrome  for  the  time  being 
must  be  handled  differently  from  usual 
35mm.  practice.  Although  it  is  possible 
now  to  obtain  16mm.  Kodachrome  with 
key  numbers,  there  are  few  duping  facil¬ 
ities  able  to  print  the  key  numbers  onto 
the  cutting  print.  It  is  therefore  desir¬ 
able  to  keep  a  very  careful  slate  record 
of  every  take,  and  to  retain  the  slate 
code-numbers  on  each  scene  whenever  it 
is  shortened.  The  usual  35mm.  Moviola 
equipment  has  been  converted  to  16mm. 
in  a  few  instances,  but  these  are  very 
few,  so  it  is  necessary  to  make  use  of 
intermittent  viewers  operated  between 
rewinds  on  the  cutting  bench. 

Film  effect  work  is  another  phase 
which  has  caused  many  to  discard  16mm. 
production  as  not  suitable  to  real  pro¬ 
fessional  techniques.  Dissolves,  mon¬ 
tages,  and  super-imposures  often  play  a 
major  role  in  making  a  training  film  tell 
its  story.  These  effects  are  all  being  done 
successfully  by  several  concerns  special¬ 
izing  in  16mm.  production,  and  should 
be  available  for  all  essential  training 
film  uses.  The  fact  that  special-effects 
are  not  quite  so  easy  to  obtain  might 
have  the  beneficial  effect  of  holding  them 
down  to  a  minimum  of  really  worthwhile 
contributions  instead  of  allowing  effects 
to  be  sprinkled  in  just  to  make  the  pic¬ 
ture  seem  more  polished.  The  less  frills 
in  a  training  film,  the  better  it  is,  and 
special-effects  should  not  be  used  as 
“window  dressing.” 

Along  the  same  lines  of  unessential 
fanciness  are  spectacular  sound-effects 
and  musical  theatrics  which  are  most 
out  of  place  in  a  training  film,  regardless 
of  their  value  in  an  advertising  or  enter¬ 
tainment  picture.  This,  then,  eliminates 
most  of  the  problems  of  sound-recording, 
for  direct-16mm.  sound  leaves  little  to  be 
desired  for  straight  recording  quality. 

To  sum  up  the  case  for  16mm.  produc¬ 
tion,  let  some  of  the  superior  abilities  of 
the  medium  be  emphasized.  The  camera 
equipment  is  certainly  more  convenient 
to  carry  and  use  under  the  difficult  shoot¬ 
ing  conditions  which  are  the  rule  with 
training  films.  When  necessary,  a  set¬ 
up  can  be  made  in  a  fraction  of  the 
time  of  typical  35mm.  practice,  impro¬ 
vised  parallels  sufficient  for  the  16mm. 
equipment  offering  little  construction 
problems. 

The  depth  of  focus  of  the  16mm. 


camera  lens  equipment,  even  at  wide 
apertures,  is  of  tremendous  advantage  in 
many  cases,  “pan  focus”  being  almost 
automatic  under  good  light  conditions. 

There  is  a  great  saving  in  raw  mate¬ 
rials  due  to  the  shorter  length  of  16mm. 
for  a  given  screen  time,  the  instantane¬ 
ous  starting  and  stopping  of  the  cam¬ 
eras,  and  the  ability  to  discard  bad  takes 
even  before  the  cutting  print  is  made. 

Eclipsing  all  other  advantages  of 
16mm.  production,  though,  is  that  it 
brings  practical,  first-rate  color  which 
enables  the  training  film  to  do  a  better 
job.  And  finally,  lest  anyone  bring  up 
the  contention  that  direct  16mm.  pro¬ 
duction  might  lose  an  important  film 
valuable  35mm.  outlets,  let  us  remember 
that  thanks  to  the  inherently  grainless 


CAMART  PROFESSIONAL 
TRIPOD,  complete  with 

DURABLE  FIBRE  TRIPOD  COVER 

Finely  constructed  tripod  gives  spring  or  motor 
driven  camera  rigid  support  and  exceptionally 
smooth  pan  and  tilt  movement.  Ideal  for  16-35 
mm.  spring  or  motor  cameras  to  accommodate 
Eyemo.  Cine  Special  or  others  at  no  extra  cost. 


THE  CAMERA  MART,  70  W.  45  ST.,  N.Y.C. 


TELEFILM 

(incorporated! 

Direct  16  MM 

SOUND 

USED  BY: 

►  Douglas  Aircraft 

►  General  Elec.  (Welding  Series) 

►  Boeing  Aircraft 

►  North  American  Aviation 

►  U.  S.  Dept,  of  Interior 

►  U.  S.  Dept,  of  Agriculture 

►  Santa  Fe  Railroad 

►  Washington  State  Apple 

Commission 

►  Standard  Oil  of  Calif. 

►  Salvation  Army 

and  Many  Others 
A  BETTER  JOB  FASTER- 

MORE  ECONOMICAL! 

TELEFILM 

INCORPORATED 
603?  Hollywood  Blvd.,  HOLLYWOOD,  CALIF. 

GL adstone  5748 


American  Cinematographer  •  March,  1943 


113 


structure  of  16mm.  Kodachrome,  16mm. 
is  already  being  “blown  up”  to  35mm., 
in  both  monochrome  and  Technicolor, 
for  theatrical  short-subjects  and  for 
combat  report-films  publicly  released  by 
the  Army  and  Navy.  Thus  properly- 
handled  direct  16mm.,  in  addition  to 
fulfilling  every  other  requirement  of 
training  film  production,  is  the  only 
medium  capable  of  giving  full-color  re¬ 
lease  prints  in  both  16mm.  and  35mm. 
without  imposing  the  handicap  of  pro¬ 
hibitive  cost.  END. 


Tempo 

(Continued  from  Paqe  90) 

Camera  dissolves  are  used  effectively 
in  all  sequences  of  “War  Against  Waste.” 
For  example,  in  one  of  the  sequences 
the  thought  “Where  does  all  the  waste 
paper  come  from”  is  portrayed  uniquely. 
We  started  with  a  caretaker  and  his 
pointed  rod  which  speared  pieces  of 
paper  out  of  the  flower  bed  in  front  of 
one  of  the  offices.  With  the  camera  on 
the  ground  one  can  see  only  the  care- 


B&H-THC  LENSES 

Exceeding  current  technical  de¬ 
mands  and  anticipating  future 
requirements,  these  cine  lenses 
are  truly  long-term  investments. 
Write  for  literature. 

BELL  &  HOWELL  COMPANY 

Exclusive  world  distributors 

1848  Larchmont  Avenue, Chicago 

New  York:  30  Rockefeller  Plaza 
Hollywood:  716  N.  La  Brea  Ave. 
Washington,  D.  C.:  1221  G.  St.,  N.  W. 
London:  13-14  Great  Castle  St. 


taker’s  feet  and  action  of  the  pointer. 
This  dissolves  into  a  waste  basket  near 
the  legs  of  a  lovely  office  stenographer. 
Pieces  of  waste  paper  were  dropped 
into  the  basket,  this  lapping  to  armsful 
of  waste  paper  in  the  blueprint  trim¬ 
ming  department,  a  deluge  of  waste 
paper  and  boxes  going  into  a  large  truck 
on  its  way  to  the  paper  baler,  and, 
finally  the  neatly  stacked  piles  of  baled 
paper.  Each  scene  is  on  the  screen 
only  long  enough  to  let  the  audience 
know  that  paper  gathered  throughout 
the  plant  soon  becomes  a  mountainous 
pile.  With  the  dissolves  the  scene  moves 
at  a  swift  and  even  tempo  and  the  full 
coverage  measured  but  50  feet  of  film. 

Dissolves  are  also  used  effectively  in 
showing  how  48-inch  grinding  wheels  are 
used  and  recut  several  times  until  the 
24-inch  hub  remains.  Without  dissolves 
this  action  would  be  choppy  and  tempo 
would  drag. 

Another  short,  effective  scene  shows 
how  a  large  piece  of  scrap  steel  plate 
was  salvaged  and  two  pieces  of  usable 
steel  obtained  from  the  odd-shaped  or¬ 
iginal  that  was  once  sent  to  the  foundry 
cupola.  With  the  camera  at  a  high 
angle,  looking  down  on  the  original 
piece,  the  sections  rapidly  dissolve.  The 
scenes  are  on  the  screen  but  one  sec¬ 
ond,  but  the  operation  is  readily  under¬ 
stood  and  again  the  tempo  is  main¬ 
tained. 

The  procedure  for  salvaging  wood 
from  boxes,  crates,  etc.,  of  incoming 
shipments  is  similarly  handled  through 
dissolves.  Quickly,  smoothly,  the  dis¬ 
solves  cover  the  many  places  where 
this  scrap  lumber  is  used  and  re-used 
throughout  the  plant  as  spacers  for  pil¬ 
ing  and  storing  material.  Each  use  is 
important,  but  more  than  six  feet  of  any 
one  scene  would  become  monotonous. 

It’s  true  a  cameraman  can  get  into 
difficulties  if  a  scene  “flops”  and  that 
he  must  then  start  the  dissolving  se¬ 
quences  all  over  again.  But  as  each 
scene  is  comparatively  short,  the  oper¬ 
ator  was  rehearsed  and  KNEW  that 
the  “cream  of  the  operation  must  be  on 
at  the  count  of  eight.”  It  is  also  true 
that  dupe  negatives  and  optical  print¬ 
ing  dissolves  or  wipes  would  solve  the 
cameraman’s  difficulties,  but  the  delay 
in  getting  the  finished  dupe,  the  ex¬ 
pense  of  added  retakes  and  optical  dis¬ 


solves  and  loss  of  quality  by  print¬ 
ing  from  a  dupe  negative,  we  believe, 
offset  the  bugbear  of  a  string  of  camera 
dissolving  scenes. 

Just  because  a  reel  holds  a  thousand 
feet  of  film  is  no  reason  why  it  must 
have  a  thousand  feet.  If  the  tempo  of 
a  film  can  be  better  held  with  less  foot¬ 
age,  act  accordingly.  Never  forget  that 
industrial  films  are  meant  for  an  audi¬ 
ence  of  potential  prospects  and  buyers 
of  ones’  products.  To  allow  “padding” 
through  inclusion  of  uninteresting  and 
draggy  footage  in  the  film  will  affect 
the  tempo  of  the  audience  as  well  as 
the  film.  END. 


Special-Effects 

(Continued  from  Page  89) 

evitably  be  compressed,  so  that  no  words 
are  necessary  to  tell  the  audience  that 
this  is  a  torpedoplane,  or  that  is  a 
carrier  being  dive-bombed. 

In  the  documentary  scene,  you  may 
see  a  downward-curving  trail  of  black 
smoke.  The  narrator  tells  you  it  is  a 
Jap  plane  which  has  been  shot  down. 
You  seldom,  if  ever,  see  the  actual  hit 
or  the  plane’s  ultimate  crash  on  the 
screen.  The  one  may  have  occurred 
two  or  three  miles  above  or  to  one 
side  of  the  camera;  the  other,  per¬ 
haps  just  as  far  off  in  another  direction. 
Both  of  them  far  beyond  actual  camera- 
range.  In  a  motion  picture  that  is  to 
be  accepted  for  entertainment  purposes, 
the  camera  must  show  the  entire  se¬ 
quence  of  action:  the  approach  of  the 
attacker — close-ups  that  identify  the 
plane’s  crew  as  enemies — men  of  our 
own  forces  serving  their  ack-acks — the 
actual  hit  on  the  enemy  plane — the  fall 
— and  finally  the  crash  into  the  sea.  For 
forty  years  audiences  have  been  condi¬ 
tioned  to  expect  at  least  reasonable 
completeness  of  visual  continuity  in  en¬ 
tertainment  pictures:  and  while  today 
they  may  accept  less  in  films  of  a  docu¬ 
mentary  nature,  they  would  certainly 
feel  something  missing  if  that  continuity 
were  missing  from  an  entertainment 
film. 

The  other  day,  I  saw  in  a  newsreel 


114 


March,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


a  sequence  which — as  a  newsreel — 
thrilled  me.  It  was  a  suicide  dive  by 
a  Japanese  bomber  into  one  of  our  air¬ 
craft-carriers.  It  showed  a  trail  of  black 
smoke — far  distant  and  small — heading 
waveringly  toward  the  camera.  Just  as 
one  could  begin  to  distinguish  a  speck 
which  might  be  a  plane,  the  scene 
abruptly  ended,  as  the  camera-crew  very 
prudently  dashed  for  armored  cover.  The 
next  shot  was  of  the  blazing  wreck  of 
the  plane,  which  had  crashed  against 
the  carrier’s  “island”  superstructure, 
close  by  the  position  of  the  cameramen 
when  making  the  first  shot,  so  the  nar¬ 
rator  said.  As  a  news  scene  of  gen¬ 
uine  action,  it  thrilled  me,  for  I  knew 
it  was  the  real  thing.  Cut  into  an  en¬ 
tertainment  film,  it  would  have  left  me 
— or  any  audience — cold,  because  it  left 
out  the  really  dramatic  parts  of  the 
action. 

Only  by  shooting  such  scenes  in  minia¬ 
ture  can  we  make  them  conform  to  the 
necessary  pattern  of  entertainment-film 
continuity.  We  can  compress  a  200- 
ship  convoy  into  the  limits  of  our  frame, 
showing  the  vessels  trailing  off  into 
the  distance  as  in  reality,  but  making 
them  big  enough,  and  showing  enough 
of  them  in  the  scene,  so  that  we  see 
and  feel  the  dramatic  impression  of  a 
real  convoy.  With  miniature  planes  and 
ships,  coupled  with  the  use  of  miniature 
and  full  -  scale  projected  -  background 
scenes,  we  can  portray  the  drama  of  an 
aerial  attack,  or  the  bomber’s  suicide 
dive,  in  a  way  that  brings  the  audience 
the  whole  story  in  correct — and  com¬ 
plete — sequence. 

I  am  quite  sure,  for  instance,  that 
the  Marines  who  actually  defended  Wake 
Island  never  saw  as  much  of  the  Jap 
fleet  which  shelled  them  as  Gordon  Jen- 
ning’s  miniatures  brought  to  the  screen 
in  the  recent  picture  of  that  name: 
but  the  miniature  sequence  in  the  en¬ 
tertainment  film  put  over  the  dramatic 
import  of  the  action  in  terms  the  movie¬ 
going  audience  could  understand. 

Two  of  our  own  recent  productions — 
“Air  Force”  and  “Action  in  the  North 
Atlantic” — have  involved  just  such  prob¬ 
lems  as  I  have  been  discussing.  In  “Air 
Force”  we  had,  among  other  things,  to 
portray  the  sinking  of  a  Japanese  bat¬ 
tleship  by  a  Flying  Fortress,  and  phases 
of  the  Battle  of  the  Coral  Sea  involving 
attacks  on  Japanese  carriers  and  war¬ 
ships  by  torpedo  planes,  dive-bombers  and 
Flying  Fortresses.  In  “Action  in  the 


North  Atlantic”  much  of  the  action 
takes  place  in  an  Atlantic  convoy,  and 
climaxes  in  an  attack  on  the  convoy 
by  a  Nazi  U-boat  “wolf-pack,”  in  which 
both  surface  ships  and  submarines  are 
sunk. 

It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  both 
pictures  depended  upon  special-effects 
camerawork  to  the  extent  that  they 
absolutely  could  not  have  been  produced 
without  it.  In  both  instances,  every 
trick  of  the  trade  had  to  be  called  into 
action  to  get  the  scenes  on  the  screen 
— miniatures,  process-projection  back¬ 
grounds,  matte-shots,  optical  superim¬ 
positions,  and  multiple  combinations  of 
all  four. 

In  these  pictures,  as  is  the  case  in 
every  studio  with  productions  of  a 
comparable  nature,  a  very  considerable 
proportion  of  the  films’  ultimate  release 
footage  was  handled  by  the  special- 
effects  personnel.  In  our  case,  this 
was  immeasurably  aided  by  the  organi¬ 
zational  set-up  of  the  Warner  Bros.’ 
Special-effects  Department,  which,  as 
laid  out  originally  by  Fred  Jackman, 
A.S.C.,  and  since  continued  and  expanded, 
is  virtually  a  studio  within  a  studio. 
Almost  every  department  of  the  studio 
has  its  counterpart  in  the  special-effects 
organization.  We  have  our  own  design¬ 
ers,  art-directors  and  set-building  fa¬ 
cilities;  our  own  camera  and  electrical 
equipment,  personnel,  and  stage  crews 
generally.  The  department  has  its  own 
film-laboratory  and  cutting  facilities,  its 
own  business  office,  and  even  writers. 

Most  important,  I  believe,  under  to¬ 
day’s  conditions,  is  the  unit  plan  of  or¬ 
ganization  under  which  the  department 
now  operates.  Instead  of  rigidly  cen¬ 
tralizing  the  entire  department’s  output 
under  a  single  head,  the  department,  un¬ 
der  my  general  supervision,  has  been 
organized  into  units,  each  of  which,  un¬ 
der  a  capable  special-effects  director 
like  Jack  Cosgrove,  who  handled  “Action 
in  the  North  Atlantic,”  Roy  Davidson, 
who  had  charge  of  “Air  Force,”  and 
Lawrence  Butler  is  capable  of  handling- 
all  the  varied  special-effects  work  on  a 
group  of  several  productions.  With  these 
units  are  teamed  the  best  specialists  in 
different  types  af  special-process  camera¬ 
work — men  like  Hans  Koenekamp,  A.S.C., 
Ed  DuPar,  A.S.C.,  Rex  Wimpy,  A.S.C., 
Willard  Van  Enger,  A.S.C.,  and  Warren 
Lynch,  A.S.C. 

In  my  own  position  as  Head  of  the 
department,  this  organizational  plan 


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American  Cinematographer  •  March,  1943 


115 


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since 

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Because  of  their 

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PHOTO-LENSES 

play  an  important  part  in 
the  tear  program  and  our 
production  is  now  keyed 
to  fill  the  requirements 
of  our  Government.  With¬ 
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he  able  to  supply  Goerz 
lenses  of  certain  types 
and  sizes  for  civilian  use. 
We  suggest  your  inquiries 
through  your  dealer  or 
direct. 


ADDRESS  DEPT.  AC-3 


leaves  me  free  to  serve  as  a  liaison 
between  the  department  and  the  studio’s 
executives  and  writers.  In  this  way,  per¬ 
haps  for  the  first  time  in  the  industry, 
the  special-effects  work  can  be  planned 
long  before  it  is  actually  needed — writ¬ 
ten  into  the  scripts  before  they  have 
jelled  into  final  form.  This  permits  ad¬ 
ditional  time  for  planning  and  stag¬ 
ing  difficult  special-effects  work,  and 
often  makes  it  possible  to  simplify  pro¬ 
duction  problems,  or  strengthen  dra¬ 
matic  values  by  integrating  special-ef¬ 
fects  contributions  with  the  script  at 
birth,  so  to  speak,  rather  than  as  an 
afterthought. 

It  makes  also  for  better  scheduling 
and  budgeting.  This  is  increasingly  im¬ 
portant  these  days,  for  as  the  shortage 
of  skilled  technical  and  craft  talent  in 
this  specialized  field  has  increased,  the 
costs  of  special-effects  work  have  sky¬ 
rocketed  to  a  point  which  would  have 
been  unbelievable  a  few  years  ago.  It 
is  by  no  means  uncommon  for  the 
special-effects  sequences  of  an  import¬ 
ant  major  feature  to  include  from  half 
to  two-thirds  of  a  picture’s  release  foot¬ 
age,  and  to  carry  a  budget — for  special- 
effects  alone — a  good  deal  higher  than 
the  entire  cost  of  many  a  complete  “A” 
production. 

While  these  unavoidably  rising  costs 
are  unfortunate,  they  are  none  the  less 
doing  special-effects  work  in  general  a 
good  turn.  Originally — and  especially 
since  the  introduction  of  the  projected- 
background  process — special-effects  work 
in  general  had  been  regarded  largely 
as  a  means  of  either  putting  the  im¬ 
possible  on  the  screen,  or  of  getting 
a  scene  which  would  be  prohibitively  ex¬ 
pensive  if  filmed  conventionally,  on  the 
screen  at  a  cost  of  only  a  few  hundred 
dollars.  Today  the  industry  is  being 
educated  to  realize  that  special-effects 
camerawork  can  be  an  increasingly  val¬ 
uable  asset  as  it  is  given  more  time 
and  money,  and  increased  scope. 

For  example,  in  our  recent  productions 
we  have  been  able  to  build  miniatures 
on  larger  and  yet  larger  scales,  which 
have  been  considered  impossibly  expen¬ 
sive  a  couple  of  years  ago.  We  have 
had  to:  the  scope  of  the  action  has  in 
many  instances  outgrown  the  confines  of 
studio  tanks.  For  many  of  the  “Air 
Force”  and  “Action  in  the  North  At¬ 
lantic”  miniatures  we  used  the  Pacific 
Ocean  off  Santa  Barbara  as  a  miniature 
location.  Our  miniature  battleships  were 


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so  big  that  two  of  them  completely 
filled  a  50-foot  railroad  flat-car  en  route 
to  the  location.  And  necessary  mechan¬ 
isms  for  manoeuvering  the  ships,  firing 
the  guns,  creating  explosions,  etc.,  could 
not  have  been  operated  in  smaller-scale 
vessels. 

Under  today’s  wartime  restrictions, 
we  are  finding  new  uses  for  special- 
effects  techniques,  too.  For  example, 
until  today’s  priorities  on  transporta¬ 
tion  virtually  eliminated  all  travel  which 
is  not  absolutely  essential,  and  the  coast¬ 
al  dim-out  regulations  eliminated  the 
making  of  night  exteriors,  whenever  we 
needed  a  background  scene  we  didn’t 
already  have  in  our  library,  we  consid¬ 
ered  it  a  matter  of  course  to  send  out 
a  skeleton  crew  to  photograph  those 
backgrounds  wherever  they  might  hap¬ 
pen  to  be.  Today,  we  make  the  back¬ 
grounds  in  the  studio,  on  matte  paint¬ 
ings,  backings,  miniatures,  or  a  com¬ 
bination  of  all  three.  And  we  are  find¬ 
ing  that  backgrounds  made  this  way 
are  even  more  suitable  for  our  purposes 
than  most  actual  exteriors. 

A  very  spectacular  example  of  this 
occurred  in  the  filming  of  “Mission  to 
Moscow.”  One  sequence  showed  Walter 
Houston,  as  Ambassador  Davies,  leaving 
Germany  for  Russia.  In  Germany,  the 
Nazi  officials  had  striven  wordily  to  im¬ 
press  upon  him  what  an  impoverished 
and  peaceful  country  Germany  was.  But 
as  his  train  pulled  out  of  Hamburg,  he 
looked  from  his  car  window  and  saw 
troops  swarming  on  the  station  plat¬ 
form,  mechanized  troops  on  the  roads, 
and  the  whole  countryside  an  arsenal 
of  warlike  preparations. 

Obviously,  it  was  impossible  to  send 
a  camera  crew  to  Hamburg  to  get 
these  shots — even  if  the  R.A.F.  has  left 
enough  of  the  Hamburg  Bahnhof  to 
photograph!  So  we  created  them  on 
the  stage,  in  miniature,  using  fore¬ 
ground  miniatures  with  miniature  back¬ 
grounds  and  forced-perspective  backings, 
each  of  which  was  arranged  to  move 
past  the  camera  at  ^  different  speed, 
so  that  the  completed  background  shot 
gave  the  same  differential  perspective 
of  movement  in  the  different  planes  that 
one  would  get  in  a  full-scale  shot  of 
the  real  thing.  In  some  instances  minia¬ 
ture  figures  provided  the  people  in  these 
backgrounds;  in  others,  full-scale  shots 
of  actual  people  were  added  by  multiple 
printing. 

This  technique  has  proven  so  suc¬ 
cessful  that  we  make  almost  all  of  our 
background  plates  this  way.  Indeed, 
once  the  war  and  its  restrictions  are 
over,  I  am  inclined  to  doubt  if  we 
will  go  back  to  the  old  method,  for  this 
gives  so  much  more  complete  control 
over  every  phase  of  the  background- 
plate — action,  composition,  lighting,  dra¬ 
matic  camera-treatment,  etc. — that  it  is 
really  preferable  from  every  viewpoint. 

Another  wartime  problem  we  have 
to  face  in  special-effects  work  no  less 
than  in  regular  production  work,  is  that 
of  the  restrictions  imposed  on  new  con¬ 
struction  in  sets,  props,  and  the  like. 
Careful  planning  of  special-effects  scenes 


116  March,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


can  go  a  long  way  to  minimize  this 
problem,  but  there  is  another  step  I 
feel  should  be  taken  for  the  benefit 
of  the  industry  as  a  whole. 

For  a  number  of  years  there  has 
been  a  certain  amount  of  informal  in¬ 
terchange  of  equipment  and,  to  some 
extent,  set-pieces  and  large  props  be¬ 
tween  the  special-effects  staffs  of  the 
different  studios.  On  “The  Forest  Ran¬ 
gers,”  for  instance,  Farciot  Edouart, 
A.S.C.,  at  Paramount,  rented  the  excel¬ 
lent  triple-head  background  projector 
built  by  Vernon  Walker,  A.S.C.,  at 
RKO,  for  sequences  for  which  two  of 
these  “triples”  were  needed.  In  the 
same  way,  we  have  borrowed  set  pieces 
and  equipment  from  other  studios,  or 
loaned  ours  to  them. 

But  it  seems  to  me  that  this  pro¬ 
cedure  could  be  carried  a  good  deal 
farther  than  it  has  been  at  yet.  Sev¬ 
eral  years  ago  the  major  studios  or¬ 
ganized  a  special-process  patents  pool, 
in  which  all  existing  patents  on  spe¬ 
cial-effects  processes  were  pooled,  and 
through  which  any  studio  could,  by  con¬ 
tributing  its  share  toward  the  develop¬ 
ment  costs,  make  use  of  any  new  in¬ 
ventions  in  this  field  developed  by  other 
studios. 

I  think  a  similar  arrangement  can 
be  and  should  be  made  with  regard 
to  a  pooling  of  special-effects  equip¬ 
ment,  set  pieces,  props,  and  the  like. 
A  comprehensive  index  of  these  items 
could  be  organized,  and  a  pooling  ar¬ 
rangement  worked  out,  with  adequate 
provision  for  ensuring  suitable  care 
and  maintenance  of  such  items  when 
used  by  another  studio.  A  year  or  so 
ago  if  you  taxed  your  budget  to  build 
some  specialized  prop  like  a  submarine 
interior  or  a  device  for  manipulating 
full-scale  or  miniature  planes  in  pro¬ 
jection  or  miniature  shots,  and  then 
found — too  late — that  some  other  studio 
had  already  constructed  a  similar  item 
which  you  might  just  as  well  have  used, 
it  was  only  an  irritation.  Today,  it 
is  a  waste  of  materials,  money  and  labor 


RUBY  CAMERA  EXCHANGE 

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which,  in  wartime,  borders  on  the  crim¬ 
inal.  Let  us  hope  that  through  some 
organization  like  the  A.S.C.  this  problem 
can  be  constructively  remedied  before 
long. 

As  to  the  future  of  special-effects 
technique  and  its  production  utility,  I 
believe  we  are  only  at  the  beginning 
of  a  chapter  of  tremendous  potentiality. 
When  the  war  is  won,  and  the  present 
abnormally  high  material  and  labor  costs 
of  this  specialized  work  drop  back  to 
more  normal  levels,  I  am  confident  that 
we  will  see  an  even  greater  use  made 
of  special-effects  processes  than  is  the 
case  even  under  today’s  conditions.  We 
have  gotten  over  this  idea  that  special- 
process  photography  is  only  a  means  of 
doing  things  cheaper;  we  are  learning 
every  day  that  it  is  a  means  of  put¬ 
ting  scenes  on  the  screen  better,  with 
stronger  pictorial  and  dramatic  values, 
and  with  a  more  certain  control  over 
every  element  of  the  scene.  And  as 
this  new  concept  takes  hold  and  grows, 
I  am  certain  that  we  will  see  the  vari¬ 
ous  special-effects  techniques  playing  an 
increasingly  great  part  in  our  constant 
aim  to  put  better  pictures  on  the  world’s 
screens.  END. 

African  Desert 

(Continue  dfrom  Page  87) 

old  kite  seemed  heavy,  and  heavy  she 
was,  for  our  tanks  were  full  and  we 
usually  carried  eight  250-pound  bombs. 
It  was  always  a  relief  to  me  to  feel  her 
lift  herself  clear  and  see  the  dust  ser¬ 
pent  die  in  its  tracks. 

We  generally  circled  the  field  a  couple 
of  times  gaining  height  and  getting  into 
formation  before  running  out  to  sea  or 
into  the  desert,  as  the  case  might  be, 
before  crossing  into  enemy  territory.  As 
we  climbed  up  into  the  freezing  level, 
my  position  was  not  a  comfortable  one 
for  the  rear  half  of  my  turret  was  open 
and  it  was  my  job  to  watch  for  possible 
enemy  fighters  coming  from  the  rear  or 
from  above.  As  we  had  no  heating  ap¬ 
pliance,  my  main  concern  was:  “Would 
the  cameras  freeze  up?” — a  thought  that 
made  me  feel  even  colder  than  the  icy 
oxygen  tube  I  held  between  my  teeth. 

I  was  always  glad  to  hear  No.  2  tell¬ 
ing  No.  1  over  the  inter-com  that  we 
had  reached  the  position  from  which  we 
would  turn  and  run  for  our  target.  It 
was  always  a  thrill  to  hear  No.  2  an¬ 
nounce  that  he  had  spotted  the  target 
and  to  hear  his  quiet  voice  directing  us 
into  position. 

I  would  then  start  operating  my  cam¬ 
era,  shooting  the  opening  of  the  bomb 
doors  and  the  bombs  tumbling  out.  As 
the  mount  for  following  the  bombs  to 
the  target  was  not  complete — and  besides 
we  were  too  high  to  make  it  a  good  shot 
— I  used  to  lean  out  over  the  side  and 
try  to  follow  them  down. 

After  the  flight,  I  always  wondered 
at  the  great  anxiety  I  felt  from  watch¬ 
ing  those  deadly  missiles  sailing  down  on 
their  mission  of  destruction,  and  at  the 
great  satisfaction  I  would  have  if  the 
target  seemed  to  be  well  plastered.  With 
our  bombs  gone,  the  flak  generally 


started;  these  black  puffs  appearing  in 
the  sky  beyond  our  tail  made  a  good 
shot. 

Our  mission  accomplished,  we  would 
turn  and  streak  for  the  wire.  Sometimes, 
we  would  see  the  dust  plumes  of  enemy 


tor  dUtirmU  tholt  —  THE  ORIGINAL 

Scheibe’s  Monotone  Filter 


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American  Cinematographer  •  March,  1943  117 


fighters  taking  off  from  their  fields. 
These  did  not  worry  us,  for  our  old 
kite  had  a  fair  turn  of  speed  and  we  had 
the  advantage  of  plenty  of  altitude;  our 
concern  was  for  the  fighters  which  might 
already  be  in  the  air. 

When  we  crossed  the  wire,  No.  B 
would  be  told  to  open  up  his  sending  set 
and  notify  our  base  that  the  target  had 
been  bombed  and  that  all  planes  were 
returning.  This  signal  sent,  No.  1  would 
ask  for  music,  and  we  would  fly  home 
with  music  in  our  ears,  usually  coming 
from  Radio  Rome.  For  us,  it  is  well  that 
Musso  did  not  equip  his  army  with 
violins  instead  of  guns,  for  with  the 
foi'mer  they  would  have  been  sure  of 
victory ! 

All  flights  were  not  as  easy  and  as 
pleasant  as  this,  as  a  few  notes  from  my 
diary  will  show: 

“7-10-41:  Took  off  7:30  A.M.;  flew  60 
miles  to  sea;  damn  cold.  8:40:  Reported 
to  No.  1  twelve  planes  flying  on  parallel 
course  between  us  and  shore.  They 
were  about  8,000  feet  below  us.  I 
checked  my  ’chute  and  cursed  myself  for 
having  forgotten  my  Mae  West. 

“As  we  turned  and  ran  for  target, 
they  also  cut  in  toward  shore.  I  lost 
sight  of  them.  Didn’t  like  their  move¬ 
ments.  Bombed  target  at  9:30  exactly, 
from  17,500  ft.  None  of  our  protect¬ 
ing  fighters  in  sight.  (It  was  arranged 
that  our  fighters  should  meet  us  over  the 
target  and  escort  us  back  over  the  wire). 

“About  9:30,  I  spotted  what  I  thought 
to  be  four  of  our  escort  fighters  over¬ 
head.  Reported  same  and  decided  to  get 
some  footage  of  them.  Got  camera  into 
position,  but  saw  the  ’planes  were  carry¬ 
ing  black  crosses. 

“Told  No.  1  fighters  were  Jerries; 
passed  camera  to  No.  3,  grabbed  guns 
and  fired  at  diving  Jerry  who  was  firing 
with  cannon  and  machine  guns.  He  lev¬ 
elled  off  below  our  tail.  Other  Jerries 
dived  on  squadron.  They  got  a  good 
reception  from  our  guns.  Squadron 
closed  to  very  tight  formation,  nearly 
wing  to  wing. 

“One  German  badly  hit;  he  dove  away. 
No.  3  plane  of  No.  3  flight  attacked  by 
two  Jerries;  port  motor  threw  out  oil 
and  black  smoke.  Saw  tracer  bullets 
splashing  on  Jerry.;  he  pulled  up  and 
turned  over  just  above  me;  could  clear¬ 
ly  see  pilot  clawing  at  cowling  before  he 
fell  off  into  spin.  Two  remaining  Ger¬ 
mans  break  off  fight. 

“Our  No.  3  ’plane  unable  to  hold  for¬ 
mation;  he  dropped  away.  No.  2  ’plane 
followed  him.  No.  3  ’plane  landed  at 
emergency  field,  badly  shot  up.  Two  rear 
crew  members  seriously  wounded,  gunner 
died  on  way  to  dressing  station.  All 
other  ’planes  of  squadron  landed  safely. 

“Army  reported  finding  one  German 
Me-109F  just  on  our  side  of  wii*e.  Very 
soi'e  because  cameramount  not  ready  for 
flight;  missed  marvelous  chance  for  sen¬ 
sational  footage.” 

Yes,  I  missed  a  chance  which  never 
presented  itself  to  me  again,  for  a  few 
days  later  I  received  a  signal  from  Cairo 
telling  me  to  report  back  to  Headquar¬ 
ters.  So  I  said  “so  long”  to  my  South 
African  friends,  a  grand  bunch  of  men, 


promising  to  return  as  soon  as  possible. 

As  I  was  leaving,  a  mount  which  car¬ 
ried  my  camera  between  the  guns  was 
completed;  it  gave  a  fine  angle  showing 
the  muzzles  of  the  guns  and  the  course 
of  the  tracer  bullets.  A  remote-control 
to  operate  the  camera  fastened  onto  the 
gun  handle  near  the  trigger.  The  main 
difficulty  was  to  get  away  from  vibra¬ 
tion  when  the  guns  opened  up.  Another 
mount  was  to  allow  the  camera  to  follow 
the  bombs  down  to  the  target;  it  was 
to  be  operated  by  No.  2,  the  bomb-aimer. 

At  H.Q.  I  was  told  they  wanted  me  to 
go  back  to  Tobruk  for  awhile,  but  prom¬ 
ised  to  try  to  get  me  back  in  time  for 
my  low-flying  strafing  shots.  Fearing 
they  might  fail,  I  was  not  altogether 
happy  with  this  assignment  although  To¬ 
bruk  was  always  a  thrilling  place  to  be 
in  during  the  siege — this  I  had  learnt 
during  a  few  weeks’  stay  in  the  early 
summer. 

We  left  port  before  dawn  on  a  very 
modern  beautiful  new  type  of  ship.  It 
was  a  beautiful  trip  until  3  P.  M.  when  a 
high-flying  Eyetie  plane  came  over  and 
let  go  six  bombs.  I  was  lucky  to  get 
three  of  these  bombs  hitting  the  water 
between  us  and  a  destroyer,  really  a  good 
shot,  and  as  they  caused  no  damage,  I 
was  very  pleased. 

Things  were  again  quiet  until  just 
after  sunset  when  I  think  we  we xe  at¬ 
tacked  by  evei’ything  the  Axis  possessed : 
torpedoes,  bombs  from  both  high-level 
and  dive-bombing  planes,  flare  after  flare. 
All  this  together  with  our  ack-ack  guns, 
which  were  many  and  varied,  really 
made  a  spectacular  display  and  provided 
me  with  enough  light  to  get  something 
l'eally  worthwhile. 


FOR  SALE 


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Bell-Howell  Caras  and  Shuttles.  Perfect  Regis¬ 
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process  plates.  Bell-Howell  Standard  Silenced 
Camera ;  Educational  Blimp  and  Dolly ;  Sound 
and  Silent  Moviolas.  Equipment  slightly  used  at 
a  big  saving.  Hollywood  Camera  Exchange, 
1600  Cahuenga  Blvd.,  Hollywood. 


WE  BUY,  SELL  AND  RENT  PROFESSIONAL 
AND  16mm  EQUIPMENT.  NEW  AND  USED. 
We  ARE  DISTRIBUTORS  FOR  ALL  LEAD¬ 
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Established  since  1910. 


NEW  FEARLESS  interlock  camera  motor  forN.C. 
Camera :  Western  Electric  interlock  motor  for 
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CAMERA  EQUIPMENT  COMPANY 
1600  BROADWAY,  NEW  YORK  CITY 
CABLE:  CINEQUIP 


BELL  AND  HOWELL  3-PHASE  CAMERA  MO¬ 
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$275.00  ;  2  ELEMENT  GLOWLAMPS,  $9.50; 
DEVRY  SINGLE  SYSTEM  CAMERA ;  3 

LENSES ;  VIEW  FINDER :  AMPLIFIER : 
NOISE  REDUCTION  ;  POWER  SUPPLY ;  3 
WESTERN  ELECTRIC  MICROPHONES ; 
FRICTION  TRIPOD;  5  MAGAZINES;  SUN¬ 
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BERNDT  AURICON  16MM  RECORDING  SYS¬ 
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I  believe  it  was  three  rolls  I  exposed; 
however,  it  does  not  matter:  the  results 
are  the  same:  no  record,  for  a  heavy 
bomb  hit  us  and  set  our  cargo  of  am¬ 
munition  ablaze.  ...  I  regained  con¬ 
sciousness  a  few  hours  later  in  a  destroy¬ 
er.  What  grieved  me  more  than  my 
wounds  was  to  learn  that  my  cameras 
and  negatives  had  gone  down  with  the 
ship. 

All  the  foregone  sounds  like  a  mission 
that  failed,  mostly  due  to  bad  luck. 
Well,  war  photography  is  largely  a  mat¬ 
ter  of  luck;  but  it  also  calls  for  the  right 
equipment  for  the  job,  advance  informa¬ 
tion,  and  the  full  co-operation  of  the 
senior  officers. 

The  photograher  with  the  Army  should 
be  as  mobile  as  possible;  his  equipment 
must  be  light;  therefore,  I  have  long- 
been  an  advocate  for  the  man  in  this 
service  to  be  supplied  with  16mm.  equip¬ 
ment. 

The  man  with  the  Air  Force  must 
have  his  various  camera-mounts  to  fit 
the  types  of  ’planes  from  which  he  is 
likely  to  operate,  and  should  also  be  a 
fully  trained  air-gunner.  Here  again, 
the  size  and  weight  of  the  16mm.  camera 
has  great  advantages  over  the  “Stand¬ 
ard”  35mm.  equipment. 

The  man  with  the  Navy  is  lucky,  for 
his  equipment  can  usually  be  Standard 
35mm.,  and  when  he  gets  action,  it  is 
generally  spectacular. 

The  war  cinematographer  must  be 
keen  on  his  job;  he  must  have  a  cool 
head,  an  appreciation  of  danger;  an 
understanding  of  maps  and  the  use  of  the 
compass  may  prove  to  be  of  great  value, 
and  good  deportment  has  never  been  a 
hindrance.  END. 


7-100  FT.  ROLLS  EYEMO  35mm  film  supreme 
and  plus  X;  date  expired  but  guaranteed; 
$25.00.  GEO.  B.  MYERS,  Frankfort,  Ky. 


WANTED 


DEVELOPMENT  ENGINEER  WANTED  with 
practical  experience  in  8  and  16mm.  cameras 
and  projectors.  Permanent  employment  with  large 
Chicago  manufacturer  now  engaged  in  100% 
war  work,  with  assured  post-war  production. 
Excellent  opportunity  and  substantial  salary  for 
right  man.  In  first  letter  give  age,  experience, 
education,  present  employment  and  other  quali¬ 
fications.  All  correspondence  held  in  strictest 
confidence.  Our  organization  knows  of  this  ad. 
Box  1002.  American  Cinematographer. 


GUARANTEED  HIGHEST  PRICES  PAID  FOR 
16MM.  CAMERAS— SOUND  PROJECTORS  35 
MM.  Eyemo  Cameras,  all  models  ;  Bell  &  How¬ 
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sories,  laD.  equipment.  WRITE  US  FIRST. 

THE  CAMERA  MART,  70  West  45th  St.,  N.Y.C. 


WANTED  TO  BUY  FOR  CASH 
CAMERAS  AND  ACCESSORIES 
MITCHELL,  B  &  H,  EYEMO,  DEBRIE,  AKELEY 
ALSO  LABORATORY  AND  CUTTING  ROOM 
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CAMERA  EQUIPMENT  COMPANY 
1600  BROADWAY,  NEW  YORK  CITY 
CABLE:  CINEQUIP 


WE  PAY  CASH  FOR  EVERYTHING  PHOTO¬ 
GRAPHIC.  Write  us  today.  Hollywood  Camera 
Exchange.  1600  Cahuenga  Blvd.,  Hollywood. 


CLASSIFIED  ADVERTISING 


118 


March,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


NOW  YOU  SEE  IT.  Before  the  camouflage  experts  went  to  work, 
this  factory— a  model,  for  test  purposes— was  photographed  from 
the  air  on  conventional  panchromatic  film.  The  bomber’s  eye 
would  see  what  you  see— a  perfect  set-up  for  destruction. 


E§°xMk  Infrared  Film 
spots  the  '  make  believe” 
of  enemy  camouflage 

Camouflage  is  the  highly  developed  art  of  pulling  the  wool  over  an 
enemy’s  eyes  ...  an  art  which  is  finding  old  methods  ineffectual,  in 
this  war. 

This  is  in  a  measure  due  to  Kodak’s  development  of  a  type  of  film 
whose  vision  goes  far  beyond  that  of  the  human  eye. 

Natural  grass  and  foliage  contain  chlorophyll — Nature’s  coloring 
matter.  Camouflage  materials  lack  this  living  substance.  Chlorophyll 
reflects  invisible  infrared  light  rays — and  Kodak  Infrared  Film  registers 
this  invisible  light,  making  the  natural  areas  look  light  in  the  picture — 
almost  white.  In  violent  contrast,  the  "dead”  camouflaged  areas  show 
up  dark — almost  black — in  the  picture. 

Moreover,  Infrared  Film  is  able  to  penetrate  through  the  haze  of  a 
"low-visibility”  day,  and  return  from  a  reconnaissance  flight  with  pic¬ 
tures  in  clear  detail.  Here  again  it  far  exceeds  the  power  of  the  human  eye. 


Working  with  our  Army  and  Navy  flyers  and  technicians,  Kodak  has 
carried  this  new  technique  of  camouflage  detection  to  high  efficiency — 
and  has,  for  our  own  use,  helped  develop  camouflage  which  defies  detec¬ 
tion  .  .  .  Eastman  Kodak  Company,  Rochester,  N.  Y. 


NOW  YOU  DON’T.  With  camouflage  materials — false  structures, 
netting,  cloth  streamers,  paint,  anti  artificial  trees— the  experts 
have  fooled  the  camera,  and  the  bombardier.  To  the  aerial 
camera  loaded  with  panchromatic  film,  even  the  marks  of  erosion 
on  the  slope  by  the  railroad  track  have  disappeared. 


BUT  HERE  IT  IS  AGAIN.  With  Kodak  Infrared  Film  in  the  aerial 
cameras,  pictures  like  this  are  brought  back  from  an  observa¬ 
tion  flight.  On  Infrared  pictures,  the  false,  “dead”  camouflage 
materials  look  almost  black.  The  natural  landscape  is  unnatu¬ 
rally  light.  A  t rained  camera  man,  with  one  look,  knows  where 
the  bombs  should  strike. 


Serving  human  progress  through  Photography 


American  Cinematographer  •  March,  1943  119 


low  that  Filmo  Cameras  and  Projectors  have  gone  to 
war  and  no  more  can  be  built  for  civilian  use  until  the  boys 
come  marching  home,  you  probably  feel  that  you  are  lucky  to 
have  purchased  your  Filmo  home  movie  equipment  while  you 
could  still  get  it.  But  we  think  you  are  to  be  congratulated  for 
your  good  judgment. 

You  bought  Bell  &  Howell  precision-made  home  movie 
equipment  because  you  wanted  the  finest  personal  movie  equip¬ 
ment  that  advanced  engineering  and  skill  could  produce.  And 
that  decision  was  good  judgment — not  luck. 

You  bought  a  Bell  &  Howell  Projector  because  you  realized 
that  not  any  one  or  two  features  of  design  or  construction  make 
this  projector  outstanding — but  a  combination  of  many  fine, 
well-balanced  features,  plus  years  of  experience  in  the  precision 
manufacture  of  fine  motion  picture  projectors. 

You  wanted  uniformly  brilliant,  flickerless  pictures.  You 
wanted  positive  gear  drive — not  chains  or  belts — but  precision 
gears  to  drive  everything  from  motor  to  shuttle. 

You  wanted  film  protection  that  protects  film  all  the  way — 
and  all  the  time. 

You  wanted  uninterrupted  programs  .  .  .  high  fidelity  of 
sound  whether  high  or  low  pitched. 

You  wanted  the  greater  illumination  provided  by  Filmo  for 
showing  color  movies  at  their  best,  and  the  critical  sharpness, 
fine  color  correction,  and  brilliancy  of  B&H  projection  lenses. 

You  wanted  the  Filmo  condenser  that  can  be  withdrawn 
instantly  by  its  external  handle  for  cleaning. 

You  wanted  the  Filmo  reflector,  too,  that  is  easily  removed 
without  tools  for  cleaning. 

You  wanted  an  easily  accessible  micrometer  reflector  adjust¬ 
ment. 

You  wanted  to  be  able  to  remove  the  lamp  by  grasping  its 
coolest  portion — the  base — and  only  Filmo  offered  that. 

You  wanted  all  of  these  features — and  many  others — found 
only  in  Filmo  Projectors.  So  you  bought  Filmo — and  that  was 
judgment — not  luck. 

The  same  is  true  of  your  Filmo  Motion  Picture  Camera.  And 
while  you  cannot  replace  your  Filmo  home  movie  equipment 
for  the  duration — with  reasonable  care  it  will  not  need  replace¬ 
ment.  For  Filmo  home  movie  equipment  is  built  in  the  pains¬ 
taking  way  that  assures  fine  performance  long  after  you  have 
forgotten  the  price  you  paid  for  it. 

MOTION  PICTURE  CAMERAS  AND  PROJECTORS 


Share  your  projector  with  your 
neighbors  and  help  your  country,  too! 

Give  a  movie  party  with  a  more  important  objective  than  merely 
entertaining  your  neighbors  ana  friends.  Use  the  magic  of 
your  projector  to  bring  them  a  closer,  clearer  picture  of  just 
what  a  titanic  struggle  this  global  war  is.  Let  them  see  the 
flaming  inferno  of  modern  battle.  That  will  help  them  to 
realize  more  fully  that  we  can  win  only  with  the  all-out 
effort  of  every  American  everywhere — here  at  home  as  well 
as  on  the  battle  fronts. 

See  your  B&H  dealer  for  films  from 
the  all-inclusive  Filmosound  Library 

The  Filmosound  Library  offers  you  a  practically  unlimited 
variety  of  subjects  from  which  to  select.  There  are  actually 
thousands  of  films  available  to  you  through  this  one  compre¬ 
hensive  source — all  on  a  purchase  or  rental  basis.  There  are 
films  that  meet  every  conceivable  type  of  interest,  and  that 
satisfy  every  audience  taste.  Films  with  sound  or  without,  and 
often  in  color.  Most  of  them  16mm.,  some  8mm.  War  films? 
Certainly — how  would  you  like  to  see  and  show  others,  too, 
"Yanks  Invade  Africa,”  "U.  S.  Carrier  Fights  for  Life,” 
"Russia  Strikes  Back”? 

Civilian  Defense  is  represented  by  pictures  like  "Air  Raid 
Warning,”  "Emergency  First  Aid,”  "Garden  for  Victory” 
and  many  more.  Mail  the  coupon  and  we  will  send  you  the 
Filmosound  Library  Catalog  which  gives  details  of  available 
subjects — plus  bulletins  on  releases  so  recent  that  they  have 
not  yet  been  included  in  the  catalog. 

Two  terrific  battle  actions  in  one  film — 

"U.  S.  Carrier  Fights  for  Life” 

Show  this  picture  to  your  friends— > 
and  neighbors  and  they’ll  know  that 
this  war  is  serious  business!  Here’s 
a  picture  that  will  put  the  audience 
right  in  the  thick  of  the  fight. 


''Russia  Strikes  Back” 

t—  Show  them  the  flaming  inferno  of 
Stalingrad.  Let  them  see  what  it 
means  to  defend  one’s  home  soil 
against  invading  Nazi  gangsters! 
Rent  or  sale — Filmosound  Library. 


Bell  &  Howell  Co.,  Chicago;  New  York;  Hollywood;  Washington,  D.  C.; 
London,  Established  19 07. 


BELL  &  HOWELL  COMPANY 
1848  Larchmont  Avenue,  Chicago 
Please  send  me  film  catalogs.  I  have  a 


riease  senu  me  mm  catalogs,  i  nave  a  .  .  .  .  mm. 

projector  (sound) . (silent) .  made  by 

. I  am  interested 

in  renting . buying  films  for  enter¬ 
tainment  . education . war . Civil¬ 
ian  Defense . 

Name . 

Address . 

Clty . State........  ac  3-43 


BUY 

WAR  BONDS 


L 


THE  mOT/OD  PICTURE 


APR  1  3  I9<t3 


they  get  the  story  on 

Du  Pont  Fl/m,  America’s  ace  camera¬ 
men  —  in  the  air  ...  on  land  . . .  above  and  be¬ 
low  the  sea  —  are  doing  a  swell  job.  They’re 
getting  pictures  for  posterity  .  .  .  pictures  of 
every  important  battle  step  in  this  greatest 
of  all  wars.  And  Du  Pont  Films  are  helping 
them  do  it  on  every  front. 

At  home,  cameramen  on  the  studio  lot  also 
have  a  wartime  job  to  do.  They’re  making 
pictures  for  pleasure  . . .  America’s  pleasure 
...  to  help  maintain  the  high  morale  so  vitally 
important  in  winning  the  war. 


And  while  the  need  for  footage  has  strained  all  production  facilities 
.  .  .  Du  Pont  Films  continue  doing  everything  cameramen  expect  of 
them.  Rigid  tests  control  every  manufacturing  operation.  Sharp-eyed 
experts  inspect  every  inch  of  film  before  it  is  shipped  .  .  .  just  as  in 
normal  times.  You  can  always  rely  upon  Du  Pont  Films  and  there’s 
a  type  for  every  requirement. 


SUPERIOR  1  (Type  104)  A  fine  grain  film  especially  suited  for  tak¬ 
ing  background  negatives  and  for  general  outdoor  use.  Has  moderate 
speed  . . .  requires  normal  development. 

SUPERIOR  2  (Type  126)  Combines  high  speed,  fine  grain,  long  scale 
gradation  and  a  well-corrected  panchromatic  response.  An  ideal  all 
’round  film  for  general  use. 

SUPERIOR  3  (Type  127)  Meets  exacting  requirements  under  ad¬ 
verse  lighting  conditions.  Almost  twice  as  fast  as  Superior  2,  yet  it 
retains  remarkable  fine  grain. 

t 

E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  &  Company,  (Inc.) 

Photo  Products  Department 

WILMINGTON,  DELAWARE  -  SMITH  &  ALLER,  LTD.,  HOLLYWOOD,  CALIFORNIA 


cgDPDHt> 

*te.u.s.  pat.  Off 

"SUPERIOR” 
CINE  FILM 

Better  Things  for  Better  Living.  . 
THROUGH  CHEMISTRY 


122  April,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


fcrS*"** , 


That’s  why  there 
are  no  Eyemos 
for  civilian  use 
for  the  duration 


rr;Xc.-’ 


Eyemos  have  always  been  famous  for  their  unfailing 
performance  under  conditions  that  put  both  men  and 
machines  to  the  supreme  test.  Good  going  or  tough— 
Eyemo  gets  the  picture.  That  is  why  our  armed  forces 


>  EYEMO  MODELS  L  AND  M 

have  the  compact  type  of  three- 
lens  turret.  Viewfinder  is  matched 
to  6  lens  focal  lengths  by  turning 
a  drum;  shows  "sound”  field  to 
match  camera’s  "sound”  aperture 
plate.  Operating  speeds:  Model 
L — 4  to  32  frames  per  second; 
Model  M — 8  to  48. 


need  every  Eyemo  we  have  or  can  build.  The  need  is  so 
acute,  in  fact,  that  all  Eyemos  must  go  to  the  armed 
services.  That’s  why  we  can’t  supply  civilian  demands 
for  this  famous  35mm.  camera. 

But  this  war  won’t  last  forever.  When  the  boys  come 
marching  home,  you’ll  again  be  able  to  get  any  one  of 
the  seven  Eyemo  models  that  best  suits  your  needs  .  . . 
and  then,  as  in  the  past,  if  your  particular  requirements 
call  for  a  special  Eyemo — we  will  modify  any  model 
to  suit  you.  You’ll  never  have  to  accept  a  compromise 
in  an  Eyemo  Camera. 

Bell  &  Howell  Company,  Chicago;  New  York;  Hollywood; 

Washington,  D.  C.;  London.  Established  1907. 


EYEMO  MODELS  P  AND  Q  + 

most  complete  of  the  seven  stand¬ 
ard  models,  have  three-arm  offset 
turret,  prismatic  focuser  with 
magnifier,  and  provisions  for 
electric  motor  and  external  film 
magazines.  Speeds:  Model  P— 
4,  8,  12,  16,  24,  and  32  f.p.s.; 
Model  Q— 8,  12,  16,  24,  32,  and 
48  f.p.s. 


BUY 

WAR  BONDS 


WILL  YOU  MAIL  THIS  TO  US  NOW?  ^ 

Special  arrangements  are  being  made  in  our  service 
department  to  recondition  for  Government  use  all 
of  the  Eyemo  Cameras  we  can  obtain.  You  may  have 
exactly  the  lenses  needed  for  important  military 
service.  If  you  will  sell — fill  out  the  information 
blank  in  this  advertisement. 


PRECISION-MADE  BY 


and 


EYEMOS  WANTED 


Date.  .  . 


BELL  &  HOWELL  COMPANY 
1848  Larchmont  Avenue 
Chicago,  Illinois 
Gentlemen: 

I  own  an  EYEMO  Camera,  Model . ,  Serial  No., 

It  has  been  modified  as  follows: . 


I  will  sell  this  camera  for  $ . and  will  pay  trans¬ 

portation  and  insurance  to  Chicago. 

The  camera  is: 


In  good  operating  condition 
Inoperative  or  damaged  (give  details) : . 


Price  above  includes  these  lenses : 


I  offer  the  following  additional  lenses  at  the  prices  shown 
below . . 


Name . Address. 


City  &  State . AC  4-43 

Do  Not  Ship  Until  You  Receive  Instructions  from  Factory ! 


American  Cinematographer  •  April,  1943  123 


VOL.  24  APRIL,  1943  NO.  4 


CONTENTS 


The  Staff 


Illumination  Contrast  Control. ..  .By  Capt.  Don  Norwood,  U.  S.  A.  126 

Consistency  in  Cinematography . By  Daniel  B.  Clark,  A.S.C.  128 

RKO  Builds  Biggest  Boom  for  Shooting  Aerial  Miniatures . 

. By  William  Stull,  A.S.C.  130 

Ruttenberg  and  Shamroy  Win  Academy  Awards .  131 

Aces  of  the  Camera — XXVII:  Ray  June,  A.S.C . 

. By  Walter  Blanchard  132 


Through  the  Editor’s  Finder .  133 

A.S.C.  on  Parade .  134 

Photography  of  the  Month .  135 


Making  16mm.  “Horse  Operas”  in  New  Jersey . 

. By  Reginald  McMahon  137 

Accent  on  Pantomime . By  Stanley  0.  Bean  138 

There’s  a  Job  Overseas  for  Your  16mm.  Sound  Projector . 

. By  Carole  Landis  139 

Take  Care  of  Your  Camera  and  Projector — They’re  Priceless . 

. . . By  James  R.  Oswald  140 

Among  the  Movie  Clubs .  141 

Here’s  How  I  Did  It . By  Our  Readers  142 

Home  Movie  Previews .  144 


The  Front  Cover 

This  month’s  cover  shows  Harry  Perry,  A.S.C. 
(center,  with  dark  hat!  and  director  Dick  Rosson 
(right)  aboard  a  Canadian  corvette  "somewhere  in 
the  Atlantic"  filming  a  scene  for  Universal’s  "Cor¬ 
vettes  In  Action.”  The  cylindrical  objects  upon  which 
Perry  and  Rcsson  are  standing  so  nonchalantly  are 
depth  bombs.  Note  how  camera  is  chained  down,  and 
inclination  of  horizon  as  the  corvette  rocks.  The  still 
is  by  an  uncredited  official  cameraman  of  the  Royal 
Canadian  Navy. 


EDITOR 

William  Stull.  A.S.C. 

• 

TECHNICAL  EDITOR 
Emery  Huse,  A.S.C. 

• 

WASHINGTON  STAFF  CORRESPONDENT 
Reed  N.  Haythorne,  A.S.C. 

• 

MILITARY  ADVISOR 
Col.  Nathan  Levinson 

• 

STAFF  PHOTOGRAPHER 
Pat  Clark 

• 

ARTIST 

Alice  Van  Norman 

• 

CIRCULATION 
Marguerite  Duerr 


ADVISORY  EDITORIAL  BOARD 
Fred  W.  Jackman.  A.  S.  C. 

Victor  Milner,  A.  S.  C. 

James  Van  Trees,  A.  S.  C. 

Farciot  Edouart,  A.  S.  C. 

Fred  Gage,  A.  S.  C. 

Dr.  J.  S.  Watson,  A.  S.  C. 

Dr.  L.  A.  Jones,  A.  S.  C. 

Dr.  C.  E.  K.  Mees,  A.  S.  C. 

Dr.  W.  B.  Rayton,  A.  S.  C. 

Dr.  Herbert  Meyer,  A.  S.  C. 

Dr.  V.  B.  Sease.  A.  S.  C. 

• 

NEW  YORK  REPRESENTATIVE 
S.  R.  Cowan,  132  West  43rd  Street 
Chickering  4-3278  New  York 

• 

AUSTRALIAN  REPRESENTATIVE 
McGill's,  179  Elizabeth  Street,  Melbourne, 
Australian  and  New  Zealand  Agents 

• 

Published  monthly  by  A.  S.  C.  Agency,  Inc. 
Editorial  and  business  offices: 

1782  North  Orange  Drive 
Hollywood  (Los  Angeles),  California 
Telephone:  GRanite  2135 


Established  1920.  Advertising  rates  on  appli¬ 
cation.  Subscriptions:  United  States  and  Pan 
American  Union.  $2.50  per  year:  Canada,  $2.75 
per  year ;  Foreign.  $3.50.  Single  copies,  25c : 
back  numbers,  30c :  foreign,  single  copies  35c, 
back  numbers  40c.  Copyright  1943  by  A.  S.  C. 
Agency,  Inc. 


Entered  as  second-class  matter  Nov.  18.  1937. 
•  at  the  postoffice  at  Los  Angeles.  California,  under 
the  act  of  March  8.  1879. 


124  April,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


SHIFTOVER  ALIGNMENT  GAUGE 


Unsurpassed  in  Quality. 
Versatility  and  Itiyidity 


if  This  Shiftover  device  is  the  finest,  lightest  and 
most  efficient  available  for  the  Eyemo  Spider  Turret 
prismatic  focusing  type  camera. 

if  The  male  of  the  Shiftover  attaches  to  the  cam¬ 
era  base  permanently  and  permits  using  the  regular 
camera  holding  handle  if  desired.  The  male  dovetail 
mates  with  the  female  dovetail  base  and  permits  the 
camera  to  slide  from  focusing  to  photographing 
positions  for  parallax  adjustment.  The  camera  can 
be  locked  in  desired  position  by  a  positive  locking- 
device. 


^  if  The  Shiftover  has  a  "stop-bracket"  which  pre- 
t  vents  the  camera  from  sliding  off  the  dove-  f 

\  toil  base  —  and  is  provided  with  dowel  pins  t 

\  ,  / 

^  which  position  it  to  top-plates  of  tri-  f 

pods  having  3/g  or  '/s-20  camera 
N  fastening  screw.  + 


I 

I 


if  The  friction  type  head  gives  super-smooth  pan  and  tilt  action, — 
360°  pan  and  80°  tilt.  A  generous  sized  pin  and  trunnion  assures 
long,  dependable  service.  "Spread-leg"  design  affords  utmost 
rigidity  and  quick,  positive  height  adjustments.  A  "T"  level  is  built 
into  this  14  lb.  superfine  tripod.  The  top-plate  can  be  set  for  16mm. 
E.K.  Cine  Special,  with  or  without  motor;  35mm.  DeVry  and  B  &  H 
Eyemo  (with  motor),  and  with  or  without  alignment  gauge. 

Tripod  Head  Uneonditionallif  Guaranteed  5  Years 


"Professional  Jr."  Tripods  and  Camera  Equipment  Company  Shiftover  Alignment 
Gauges  are  used  by  the  U.  S.  Navy,  U  S  Army  Air  Bases,  Signal  Corps,  the 
Office  of  Strategic  Services  and  other  Government  Agencies — also  by  many 
leading  Newsreel  companies  and  16mm  and  35mm  motion  picture  producers — for 
important  work 


FRANK  C. 

ZUCKER 

(VflmERfltc 

MjipmenT  ( 

0. 

^  1600  BROHDUJfly 

\  newyoRKcuy  ^ 

^  . 

Illumination  Contrast  Control 

By  CAPT.  DON  NORWOOD,  U.S.A.,  (Ret'd) 


SUPPOSE  that  you  were  assigned  to 
a  picture  which  called  for  dramatic, 
high-contrast  lighting  throughout. 
Can  you  be  absolutely  sure  that  your 
first  scenes  made  will  match  up  with 
those  made  six  weeks  later? 

Suppose  that  you  are  shooting  a  star, 
and  discover  an  arrangement  of  lights 
and  shadows  on  her  face  that  gives  a 
superb  effect.  Would  you  like  to  be  able 
to  duplicate  the  effect,  with  assurance, 
six  weeks  later;  any  number  of  times? 

Suppose  that  you  are  going  to  shoot 
a  natural-color  picture.  Would  you  like 
to  be  able  to  proceed  with  assurance 
that  contrast  will  always  be  within  safe 
limits;  no  blocked-up  shadows;  no 


washed-out  highlights?  That  contrasts 
throughout  the  picture  will  match  per¬ 
fectly? 

All  of  the  above  are,  to  a  large  extent, 
functions  of  illumination  contrast. 

Illumination  contrast  is  easy  to  define. 
Let  us  imagine  a  subject  outdoors  fac¬ 
ing  south.  The  sun  is  in  the  west.  The 
west  side  of  the  subject’s  face  is  illumi¬ 
nated  by  sunlight.  The  east  side  is 
illuminated  by  sky-light.  The  ratio  of 
the  intensity  of  the  sunlight,  on  one  side, 
to  the  intensity  of  the  sky-light,  on  the 
other  side,  constitutes  the  illumination 
contrast. 

Heretofore  illumination  contrast  has 
been  somewhat  loosely  considered  as  low 


contrast,  high  contrast,  or  in  between. 
Such  a  method  leaves  much  to  be  de¬ 
sired  in  the  way  of  positive  informa¬ 
tion.  What  one  photographer  considers 
low  contrast  might  fit  another  photog¬ 
rapher’s  idea  of  medium  contrast,  and 
so  on.  Even  one  individual’s  ideas  on  the 
subject  might  be  subject  to  variations 
from  time  to  time. 

It  is  therefore  obvious  that  it  would 
be  quite  desirable  to  be  able  to  label 
these  various  illumination  contrasts  with 
numbers  which  would  definitely  place 
them.  Such  procedure  would  provide  a 
common  language  on  the  subject  which 
would  have  a  definite  meaning  to  all 
photographers. 


April,  1943  ®  American  Cinematographer 


126 


For  example,  see  Fig.  1-a  (first  pic¬ 
ture).  Here  the  sunlight  intensity  on  one 
side  is  16  times  the  intensity  of  the  sky¬ 
light  on  the  other  side.  This  gives  us  an 
illumination  contrast  ratio  of  16  to  1. 
Fig.  1-b  (second  picture),  shows  an  illu¬ 
mination  contrast  of  12  to  1;  and  so  on 
through  the  series. 

It  would  not  be  a  difficult  matter  for 
a  cinematographer  to  select  from  such  a 
series  an  illumination  contrast  ratio 
that  would  be  exactly  suitable  for  the 
next  picture  he  is  going  to  shoot. 

With  illumination  contrast  ratios  re¬ 
duced  to  easily-handled  numerical  values, 
the  next  step  is  to  provide  a  means  of 
measuring  the  actual  illumination  con¬ 
trasts  prevailing,  or  being  established, 
on  any  subject. 

This  has  been  accomplished  by  means 
of  an  auxiliary  attachment  for  the  Nor¬ 
wood  exposure-meter. 

It  will  be  2’ecalled  that  the  Norwood 
exposure-meter  has  a  three-dimensional 
light-collector,  which  in  effect  represents 
the  camera  side  of  the  subject,  and  eval¬ 
uates  the  sum  total  of  all  photographic¬ 
ally  effective  illumination  falling  on  the 
subject.  The  auxiliary  attachment  is  in 


Fig.  5:  Contrast  computer.  Contrast  ratio  is  indicated 
at  arrow  (right),  and  juxtaposed  figures  on  dial  in¬ 
dicate  correct  readings  on  highlight  (outer)  and 
shadow  (inner)  illumination  to  maintain  that  ratio  at 
any  desired  illumination  level. 


Left,  Fig.  2,  contrast-reading  hood  on  Norwood  meter. 
Center  and  right,  Figs  3  and  4,  showing  method  of 
taking  selective  readings  of  highlight  and  contrast 
illumination. 

the  form  of  a  hood  with  a  lune-shaped 
aperture.  (See  Fig.  2.)  This  hood,  in 
effect,  permits  selective  measurement  of 
any  sector  of  the  representative  surface 
of  the  light  collector.  The  reading  so 
obtained  indicates  the  relative  intensity 
of  illumination  falling  on  that  particular 
sector. 

Now  if  a  reading  is  taken  on  the  sun¬ 
lit  side  as  shown  in  Fig.  3,  the  meter 
needle  might,  for  example,  show  /: 5.6. 
Then  a  reading  would  be  taken  on  the 
skylit  side  as  shown  in  Fig.  4.  This 
reading  turns  out  to  be  / : 2.8.  The  ratio 
between  the  two  illumination-intensity 
readings  constitutes  the  illumination  con¬ 
trast. 

As  an  aid  in  reducing  the  meter  read¬ 
ings  to  a  simple  numerical  ratio,  the 
Norwood  computer  has  been  designed. 
(See  Fig.  5.)  To  carry  through  the  ex¬ 
ample  started  above,  the  higher  reading, 
/:  5.6,  has  been  located  on  the  upper 
outside  scale.  The  lower  reading,  / : 2.8, 
has  been  located  on  the  upper  inside 
scale,  and  set  adjacent  to  the  higher 
reading.  The  index,  at  the  right,  below, 
then  points  to  the  answer  on  its  lower 
scale,  which  in  this  case  happens  to  be 
4  to  1. 

Suppose  that  a  cinematographer  as¬ 
signed  to  a  new  picture  looks  over  the 
story  and  decides  that  a  contrast  ratio, 
for  example,  of  4  to  1  will  best  promote 
the  effect  of  the  story. 

On  any  given  scene  then  he  may  use 
the  device  as  an  aid  to  lighting,  as  fol¬ 
lows.  The  Norwood  computer  is  first  set 
to  4-1.  The  Norwood  meter  with  contrast 
hood  is  used  to  measure  the  brightest 
illumination.  Suppose  that  shows  up  as 
/:  4.  The  meter  head  is  then  turned  so 
that  a  reading  will  be  made  on  the  shal¬ 
low  side.  The  computer  shows  that  the 
shadow  must  be  filled  in  until  the  meter 
needle  shows  /:  2.  When  this  point  is 


reached  the  illumination  contrast  on  the 
subject  is  Jj-1. 

Thus  throughout  an  entire  picture  the 
illumination  contrast  may  be  always  kept 
under  positive  control.  The  cinematog- 
gapher  has  assurance  that  scenes  made 
the  last  day  of  shooting  will  perfectly 
match  those  made  on  the  first  day. 

When  making  contrast  readings  the 
hood  aperture  is  moved  a  180°  angle  on 
the  camera  side  of  the  subject.  This  is 
because  the  photographer  is  interested 
only  in  illumination  falling  on  the  cam¬ 
era  side  of  the  subject. 

However,  when  it  is  desired  to  make  a 
record  of  some  particularly  attractive 
lighting  set-up,  for  purpose  of  duplica¬ 
tion  at  a  later  date,  the  Norwood  meter 
with  contrast  hood  may  be  used  in  a  dif¬ 
ferent  manner.  For  this  purpose  it  is  de- 
(Continued  on  Page  158) 


CAMERA 

rr 

i 


American  Cinematographer  •  April,  1943  127 


(^DnMdJjinxjf  9sl  (^inmiainqAafihjL^ 


By  DANIEL  B.  CLARK,  A.S.C. 

Executive  Supervisor  of  Photography, 

20th  Century-Fox  Studio 


Consistency  is,  and  must  always 

be,  one  of  the  fundamental  goals 
of  professional  cinematography. 
By  this  I  do  not  in  any  way  mean  a 
standardization  of  artistic  treatment 
which  would  rigidly  standardize  the 
lightings  and  compositions  of  every  cine¬ 
matographer  on  every  picture  to  a  mo¬ 
notonous  sameness.  What  I  refer  to  is 
that  phototechnical  consistency  which  so 
completely  standardizes  the  factors  of  il¬ 
lumination,  exposure  and  film  process¬ 
ing  that  the  director  of  photography 
can  concentrate  all  of  his  attention  on 
the  artistic  aspects  of  his  work,  con¬ 
fident  that  the  mechanical  details  repre¬ 
sented  by  negative  densities  and  print¬ 
ing  values  will  take  care  of  themselves 
to  the  extent  that  the  first  scene  and 
the  last  one  (and  all  those  in  between) 
will  “match  up,”  regardless  of  whether 
ten  days  or  ten  months  of  shooting 
intervene  between  their  making, 

In  attaining  this  photomechanical  con¬ 
sistency,  three  very  closely  inter-related 
factors  are  chiefly  involved.  First,  the 
key  illumination  on  the  subject  being 
photographed  should  be  consistent.  Sec¬ 
ond,  the  exposure-values  reaching  the 
film  from  this  combination  of  illumina¬ 
tion  and  subject  must  also  be  consistent. 
Finally,  the  laboratory  processing  of  both 
the  negative  film  and  the  print  therefrom 
should  be  equally  consistent. 

And  consistency  in  any  one  of  these 
factors  is  virtually  useless — not  to  say 
impractical — unless  the  other  two  are 
also  consistent. 

Perhaps  the  first,  and  in  many  ways 
the  most  important  of  these  three  fac¬ 
tors  is  consistency  in  film -processing. 
Clearly,  it  does  not  matter  very  much 
that  exposure  and  illumination  be  held 
constant  if  the  development  given  the 
negative  is  not  consistent. 

In  the  pioneer  days  of  the  industry, 
this  consistency  was  not  only  unknown, 
but  virtually  impossible.  Too  little  was 
known  about  the  depletion  of  solutions, 
and  the  deterioration  of  chemicals.  In 
addition,  since  negative  development  was 


timed  largely  by  visual  means,  the  hu¬ 
man  element  was  introduced  to  produce 
another  extremely  unpredictable  vari¬ 
able. 

Today,  modern  advances  in  practical 
as  well  as  theoretical  photochemistry 
have  enabled  us  to  mix  our  solutions 
with  infinitely  greater  consistency,  and 
modern  replenishment  techniques  make 
it  possible  to  maintain  them  at  consistent 
performance  throughout  their  useful 
lives.  Modern  sensitometric  control  fur¬ 
nishes  a  constant,  accurate  check  on  per¬ 
formance  that  was  unknown  only  a  few 
years  ago. 

The  human  element  still  remains,  how¬ 
ever,  and  in  laboratories  where  the  so- 
called  “test  system”  prevails,  can  still 
defeat  every  effort,  whether  by  camera¬ 
man  or  laboratory  technician,  toward 
consistency.  Under  this  system  at  every 
important  change  of  scene,  set-up  or 
lighting,  a  test  is  made.  On  reaching 
the  laboratory,  these  tests  are  detached 
from  the  rest  of  the  film  and  developed 
first,  under  “normal”  conditions,  and 
used  as  a  guide  to  the  development  of 
the  actual  scenes.  If  in  the  opinion 
of  the  negative-timer,  the  test  of  a 
scene  seems  thin  and  underexposed,  the 
negative  of  the  scene  itself  is  given 
additional  development;  if  the  test  seems 
overly  dense,  the  actual  scene  is  short- 
developed. 

It  does  not  matter  whether  or  not  the 
cinematographer  may  have  been  work¬ 
ing  deliberately  for  low-  or  high-key 
effects:  the  negative  is  given  the  devel¬ 
opment  the  timer  believes  ought  to  be 
“right”  for  what  he  reads  from  the  test. 
As  he  is  not  a  mind-reader,  he  can 
scarcely  be  blamed  if  he  fails  to  ap¬ 
preciate  that  the  director  of  photography 
may  have  had  a  definite  reason  for  over- 
or  under-lighting  the  scene  to  gain  a 
given  effect  .  .  .  but  the  system  can 
be  blamed,  and  should  be. 

If  the  director  of  photography  were 
so  inexpert,  or  had  so  little  control  of 
his  medium  that  he  could  not  avoid 
scene-to-scene  fluctuations  in  his  lighting, 


Schematic  diagram  of  the  20th  Century-Fox  photo-electric  lens-calibrating  set-up 


The  author  receives  Academy  Award  plaque  for 
developing  the  photoelectric  lens-calibrating  system 
described  here. 


exposure  and  negative  densities,  it  must 
be  admitted  that  the  additional  check 
represented  by  this  test  system  might 
be  an  invaluable  life-saver.  But  today 
any  cinematographer  worthy  of  the  name 
is  certainly  sufficiently  master  of  his 
medium,  and  has  at  his  hand  such  effi¬ 
cient  controls  of  lighting  and  exposure, 
that  there  is  no  excuse  for  the  intru¬ 
sion  of  this  infinitely  variable  human 
element. 

Moreover,  the  effects  of  this  error  are 
cumulative.  Leaving  aside  the  experi¬ 
ences  every  cinematographer  has  had 
in  which  scenes  lit  and  exposed  for 
night  -  effects  or  effect  -  lightings  were 
misinterpreted  by  someone  in  the  labora¬ 
tory  and  force-developed  into  indifferent 
day-effects,  most  of  us  can  recall  times 
when  we  were  shooting  for  a  definite 
effect  and  the  laboratory’s  negative- 
timer  misinterpreted  it.  If,  on  the  one 
hand,  the  cinematographer  attempted  to 
handle  his  scene  according  to  the  labora¬ 
tory’s  recommendation,  it  would  mean 
wholly  abandoning  effects  he  felt  were 
artistically  and  dramatically  needful  to 
his  production.  On  the  other  hand,  if 
he  strove  to  obtain  the  effects  he  wanted 
in  spite  of  the  laboratory,  it  would 
mean  he  would  be  getting  farther  and 
farther  off  the  beam  every  day.  In  ei¬ 
ther  case,  his  attempts  to  obtain  photo- 
technical  consistency  would  degenerate 
into  a  mere  attempt  to  outguess  the 
laboratory,  usually  to  the  detriment  of 
overall  photographic  quality  and  con¬ 
sistency. 

The  answer  to  this  lies  in  giving  the 
cinematographer  a  definite  standard  of 
negative  processing  at  which  to  shoot, 
as  represented  by  the  time-and-tempera- 
ture  system  of  development.  This  leaves 
the  question  of  contrast,  negative  dens¬ 
ity  and  effects  completely  in  the  control 
of  the  cameraman.  If  he  misses,  it  is 
his  own  fault;  if  he  succeeds,  it  is  by 
his  own  merit.  In  any  event,  the  man  at 
the  camera  stands  or  falls  on  his  own 
ability,  and  one  of  the  basic  factors 
leading  to  phototechnical  consistency  has 
been  reduced  to  scientifically  standard 
practice. 


128  April,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


I  think  it  is  very  greatly  to  the  credit 
of  Laboratory  Superintendent  Mike 
Leshing  of  the  20th  Century-Fox  Labor¬ 
atory  that  he  has  standardized  on  this 
time-and-temperature  system.  Not  only 
is  he  one  of  the  very  few  laboratory 
chiefs  who  leaves  control  of  photography 
strictly  in  the  hands  of  the  cameraman, 
but  by  eliminating  tests  and  all  that 
go  with  them,  he  has  achieved  sav¬ 
ings  in  film,  time,  effort  and  manpower 
which  are  increasingly  important  these 
days. 

This  consistency  in  negative  process¬ 
ing  is  not  alone  enough  to  guarantee 
photographic  consistency,  however.  It 
would  in  itself  be  futile  if  it  could  not 
be  accompanied  by  consistency  in  illum¬ 
ination  on  the  set  and  consistency  in  ex¬ 
posure  on  the  film.  It  would  only  stabil¬ 
ize  one  out  of  three  potentially  variable 
factors. 

With  today’s  photoelectric  exposure- 
meters,  obtaining  consistency  in  illum¬ 
ination  has  become  a  relatively  simple 
matter.  It  probably  does  not  matter  too 
much  what  type  of  meter  is  used,  or 
by  what  method,  so  long  as  the  meters 
themselves  are  consistently  accurate,  and 
the  method  of  using  them  is  such  as  to 
give  consistent  results.  At  20th  Cen- 
tuey-Fox  we  pioneered  in  the  use  of 
meters  and  in  establishing  standards  of 
accuracy  for  the  meters,  and  standard 
methods  of  using  them,  and  we  naturally 
like  to  feel  that  our  method  is  best. 
At  any  rate,  it  has  proved  to  produce 
uniformly  excellent  results,  and  has  won 
the  approval  of  all  of  the  many  outstand¬ 
ing  cinematographers  on  the  studio’s 
camera  staff. 

By  means  of  exhaustive  comparative 
tests,  we  selected  what  appeared  to  us 
to  be  the  most  consistently  accurate  of 
the  various  types  of  photoelectric  ex¬ 
posure-meters  then  available. 

We  then  standardized  on  this  meter, 
and  supplied  studio-owned  meters  to  all 
of  our  cameramen.  These  meters  are  reg¬ 
ularly  checked  against  a  known  standard 
of  illumination  on  an  optical  bench,  and 
maintained  in  uniformly  accurate  work¬ 
ing  order. 

In  use,  the  meters  are  used  in  a 
simple,  standard  method  for  incident- 
light  readings  on  the  key-light.  This  key- 
light  illumination  is  adjusted  to  produce 
a  predetermined  standard  reading  for 
normal  and  effect-lightings.  With  the 
key-light  pegged  to  a  normal  standard, 
the  cinematographers  can  balance  the 
rest  of  their  lighting  as  they  see  fit, 
securely  confident  that  their  illumina¬ 
tion  is  balanced  to  a  standard  which, 
with  our  standard  time-and-temperature 
developing,  should  place  their  exposure 
and  negative  density  in  the  desirable 
middle  part  of  the  film’s  characteristic 
curve  and  of  the  printing  scale. 

This,  however,  is  still  not  enough  to 
guarantee  complete  consistency  under 
all  conditions.  All  professional  cine¬ 
matographers — and  most  advanced  ama¬ 
teurs — have  learned  from  sad  experi¬ 
ence  that  exposure  is  governed  not  only 
by  illumination  and  negative  develop¬ 
ment,  but  by  the  individual  light-trans¬ 


mitting  abilities  of  the  lenses  used  to 
make  the  picture.  While  in  theory  any 
given  stop  on  one  lens  is  supposed  to 
transmit  as  much  light  as  the  same 
stop  on  any  other  lens,  in  practice, 
this  is  not  so. 

This  is  because  the  mathematical 
formula  conventionally  used  in  calibrat¬ 
ing  the  diaphragm  openings  of  photo¬ 
graphic  lenses  does  not  take  into  con¬ 
sideration  the  type  of  glass  used  in  con¬ 
structing  the  lens,  the  number  of  ele¬ 
ments,  their  respective  transmission  fac¬ 
tors,  or  the  number  of  glass-air  sur¬ 
faces  in  the  lens  as  a  whole.  This 
formula  is  mathematically  expressed  as: 

F 

f  = - 

D 

In  this,  “f”  represents  the  numerical 
value  of  the  /-stop  in  question,  while 
“F”  represents  the  focal  length  of  the 
lens,  and  “D”  the  diameter  of  the  aper¬ 
ture  at  the  stop  indicated  by  “f”.  In 
other  words,  the  value  of  the  /-stop  is 
determined  by  dividing  the  focal  length 
by  the  diameter  of  the  aperture.  If,  for 
example,  the  focal  length  of  the  lens  is 
known  or  found  to  be  50mm.,  and  the  di¬ 
ameter  of  the  maximum  opening  is  found 
to  be  1  inch  (25mm.),  50  divided  by  25 
gives  2,  so  the  /-value  of  the  lens  at 
maximum  aperture  is  /: 2. 

If  we  want  to  calibrate  the  lens,  we 
use  the  same  formula.  Following  through 
with  the  same  formula,  if  we  want  to 
determine  the  diaphragm-opening  for  a 
stop-value  of  /: 8  with  the  same  50mm. 
lens,  we  know  that  while  “D”  is  un¬ 
known,  “f”  equals  8  and  “F”  equals  50, 
and  that  in  this  case  8  equals  50  di¬ 
vided  by  “D”.  Therefore  “D”  must  equal 
50  divided  by  8,  which  works  out  to 
6.25mm.  or  .2462  inches.  If  we  close  the 
diaphragm  down  until  its  aperture  is  of 
that  diameter,  we  can  mark  that  point 
as  representing  /: 8  according  to  the  tra¬ 
ditional  formula. 


The  author  testing  lens-transmission  during  his  initial 
experiments.  The  equipment  now  in  use  has  been 
made  more  compact,  and  a  simple  light-box  has 
replaced  the  "baby  keg"  as  a  light-source. 


Unfortunately,  however,  this  formula 
does  not  take  into  consideration  the 
actual  transmission  characteristics  of  a 
lens.  It  is  the  same  for  the  simplest 
single-element  lens  and  for  the  most 
complex  of  objectives  which  may  be 
made  of  two,  three,  four  or  more  dif¬ 
ferent  elements,  in  turn  composed  of 
cemented  or  uncemented  elements  of  sev¬ 
eral  different  types  of  glass.  Each  kind 
of  glass  has  its  own  transmission  char¬ 
acteristics,  and  there  is  moreover  a  defi¬ 
nite  loss  of  light  every  time  a  beam  of 
light  passes  from  air  into  glass,  or  from 
glass  to  air. 

It  is  no  wonder,  therefore,  that  all  of 
us  have  had  the  unpleasant  experience 
of  making  a  long-shot  with,  say,  a 
50mm.  lens,  and  then  moving  in  to 
make  a  close-up  with,  say,  a  3-  or  4-inch 
lens  of  different  design,  and  found  that 
although  our  key  illumination  and  our 
negative  development  were  held  at  ab¬ 
solutely  the  same  values,  the  scene  made 
with  one  lens,  though  at  the  same  indi¬ 
cated  stop  as  the  scene  made  with  the 
other,  might  be  as  much  as  a  stop  or 
even  more  over  or  under  the  other  in 
actual  exposure  and  density. 

Accordingly,  it  seemed  evident  to  us 
that  the  final  step  in  securing  consistent 
phototechnical  quality  must  be  to  make 
use  of  some  system  of  leiis-calibration 
which  would  be  based  completely  upon 
the  practical  light-transmitting  charac¬ 
teristics  of  each  individual  lens.  The 
use  of  some  form  of  photoelectic  meas¬ 
urement  of  actual  transmitted  light, 
through  the  lens  itself  and  from  a  known 
standard  light-source,  seemed  obvious. 

Discussion  of  the  idea  with  outstand¬ 
ing  lens-maufacturing  firms,  however, 
(Continued  on  Page  157) 


American  Cinematographer  •  April,  1943 


129 


Right:  Close  view  of  RKO's  new  camera-boom;  note 
pneumatic  winches,  generator  for  camera-driving 
current,  and  rigidly-braced  construction.  Below:  The 
boom  in  use;  at  bottom:  dropping  miniature  bombs. 


WITH  an  avalanche  of  war- 
themed  production  under  way, 
Hollywood’s  film  industry,  now 
more  than  ever  before,  needs  new  equip¬ 
ment  to  enable  the  special-effects  cine¬ 
matographers  to  accomplish  things  they 
have  never  previously  needed  to  do  on 
such  a  scale.  Yet  due  to  wartime  restric¬ 
tions,  the  building  of  new  equipment  has 
become  prohibitively  difficult.  In  many 
instances  the  question  of  building  the 
equipment  needed  to  make  a  special- 
effects  shot  possible  has  come  to  demand 
as  much  ingenuity  as  making  the  shot 
itself. 

An  excellent  illustration  of  this  is 
a  new  boom  developed  by  Vernon  L. 
Walker,  A.S.C.,  and  his  staff  in  the 
Special-Effects  Department  of  the  RKO 
Studio  for  filming  miniature  scenes  rep¬ 
resenting  aerial  bombings  and  the  like. 
With  productions  like  “Bombardier,” 
which  centers  around  the  training  and 
combat  action  of  Air  Force  bomb-aimers, 
in  production  or  scheduled,  such  a  de¬ 
vice  was  obviously  essential.  At  the 
same  time,  no  new  materials  with  which 
to  make  it  were  to  be  had. 


RKO  Builds  Biggest  Boom  for 
Shooting  Aerial  Minatures 

By  WILLIAM  STULL,  A.  S.  C. 


So  Walker  and  his  designing  engineer 
“Marty”  Martin  built  a  device  which 
easily  takes  rank  as  Hollywood’s  largest 
camera-boom.  And  they  did  it  without 
using  a  single  scrap  of  new  material! 

Something  of  the  design  and  construc¬ 
tion  of  the  big  boom  will  be  seen  from 
the  illustrations.  The  rectangular  steel 
truss  which  forms  the  chassis  was  re¬ 
claimed  from  the  underframe  upon 
which  marine  sets  were  constructed, 
mounted  on  a  massive  ball-joint  so  that 
they  could  be  rocked  to  simulate  the 
natural  rocking  of  a  ship. 

Beneath  this  truss,  suitable  brackets — 
also  of  reclaimed  metal — were  bolted  to 
carry  four  flanged  railway-type  wheels 
on  suitable  axles.  These  wheels  carry  the 
boom  along  a  length  of  railway  track 
some  350  feet  long.  The  rails  used  were 
reclaimed  from  tracks  laid  in  another 
outdoor  set,  and  were  welded  together 
to  assure  smooth  operation.  Due  to  the 
extreme  height  of  the  boom’s  superstruc¬ 
ture,  it  was  decided  to  widen  the  track 
to  the  full  width  of  the  steel  chassis. 
Thus,  with  a  gauge  of  15  feet  and  a  total 
length  of  350  feet,  Walker’s  RKO  Rail¬ 
way  may  be  said  to  rank  as  both  the 


broadest-gauge  and  the  shortest  railway 
in  the  world! 

Across  the  center  of  the  underframe 
is  bolted  a  heavy  steel  girder  upon 
which  the  boom  proper  is  mounted.  This 
superstructure  consists  of  two  boom 
arms,  constructed  of  wooden  poles  each 
90  feet  in  length,  and  two  somewhat 
shorter  poles  forming  the  central  sup¬ 
porting  arm.  All  three  of  these  upright 
members  are  strongly  braced  by  steel 
cables  which,  incidentally,  were  also  re¬ 
claimed  from  previous  uses. 

The  left-hand  boom  arm  (as  seen  in 
the  pictures)  carries  a  mount  for  camera 
and  crew.  The  right-hand  arm  serves  as  a 
counterbalance,  and  is  weighted  with 
lead  counterweights  to  offset  the  weight 
of  camera  and  crew.  When  necessary, 
these  two  arms  are  raised  or  lowered 
together,  so  that  each  counterbalances 
the  other. 

Ordinarily,  however,  the  camera  and 
its  accessories  are  hoisted  into  position 
without  lowering  the  boom,  while  the 
crew  scramble  into  their  places  along  a 
ladder  attached  to  the  boom  arm.  The 
boom  is  generally  counterweighted  to 
(Continued  on  Page  148) 


130  April,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


RUTTENBERC  AND  SHAMROY 
WIN  ACADEMY  AWARDS 


HISTORY  was  made  with  the 
presentation  of  the  Academy 
Awards  for  the  best  photographic 
achievements  of  1942.  Joseph  Rutten- 
berg,  A.S.C.,  became  the  first  cinema¬ 
tographer  ever  to  capture  two  Awards 
for  monochrome  cinematography.  Four 
years  ago  he  was  awarded  an  “Oscar” 
for  putting  “The  Great  Waltz”  on  the 
screen;  this  year  he  received  a  second 
golden  statuette  for  making  “Mrs.  Mini¬ 
ver”  the  best  black-and-white  photo¬ 
graphic  achievement  of  1942.  In  the  color 
class,  Leon  Shamroy,  A.S.C.,  with  “The 
Black  Swan,”  smashed  tradition  by  be¬ 
coming  the  first  of  the  so-called  “pro¬ 
duction”  cinematographers  to  win  an 
“Oscar”  solo,  without  the  collaboration 
of  a  Technicolor  specialist.  Tradition¬ 
breaking,  too,  was  the  fact  that  for  the 
first  time  one  studio  had  a  total  of  six 
productions  worthy  of  inclusion  among 
the  sixteen  nominated  for  the  two  cam¬ 
era  awards:  in  the  black-and-white  divi¬ 
sion,  four  of  the  ten  nominees,  and  in 
the  color  division,  two  out  of  six,  came 
from  the  cameras  of  the  20th  Century- 
Fox  Studio.  In  the  field  of  special- 
effects  cinematography,  Farciot  Edouart, 
A.S.C.,  and  Gordon  Jennings,  A.S.C.,  de¬ 
servedly  repeated  their  last  year’s  win 
with  their  surpassing  work  on  “Reap 
the  Wild  Wind.”  In  the  field  of  tech¬ 
nical  developments,  Daniel  B.  Clark, 
A.S.C.,  and  the  20th  Century-Fox  Cam¬ 
era  Dept,  won  a  Class  II  (plaque)  award 
for  the  development  of  a  radically  new 
system  of  lens-calibration  based  on  ac¬ 
tual  transmission  values. 

When  we  reviewed  Ruttenberg’s  work 
in  “Mrs.  Miniver,”  we  said  “From  start 
to  finish,  Ruttenberg’s  compositions  and 
lightings  command  interest.  They’re 
very  nearly  flawless,  and  have  an  un¬ 
usual  blend  of  pictorial  quality  and 


strength.  Such  a  treatment  is  singularly 
appropriate  for  a  story  like  ‘Mrs.  Mini¬ 
ver,’  for  it  visually  epitomizes  the  quali¬ 
ties  which  have  made  such  a  heroic  saga 
of  real-life  England  under  the  blitz  .  .  . 
Ruttenberg’s  camerawork  .  .  .  unques¬ 
tionably  plays  a  vital,  if  silent,  role  in 
making  ‘Mrs.  Miniver’  one  of  the  great 
pictures  of  the  year.” 

Ruttenberg  himself  says,  “In  a  year 
that  has  seen  so  many  superlatively 
fine  photographic  jobs  brought  to  the 
screen,  I  can  only  feel  humbly  thank¬ 
ful  for  the  surprising  honor  that  has 
been  given  to  me.  First,  I  want  to 
express  appreciation  to  my  fellow-mem¬ 
bers  of  the  A.S.C.  who  voted  my  picture 
the  year’s  best.  With  so  many  peren¬ 
nially  deserving  artists  among  this  year’s 
nominees,  and  with  such  fine  pictures, 
I  feel  almost  embarrassed  and  enor¬ 
mously  gratified,  that  my  fellow  cine¬ 
matographers  should  decide  I  was  wor¬ 
thy  to  be  the  first  man  ever  to  receive 
two  awards. 

“Secondly,  I  want  to  express  my  ap¬ 
preciation  to  all  those  who  helped  me 
to  do  what  I  did  on  the  picture.  There 
is  no  doubt  that  having  a  picture  which 
is  dramatically  great,  so  that  many  of 
one’s  fellow  professionals  want  to  see 
it  for  entertainment,  as  well  as  for 
its  photographic  values,  is  a  very  great 
help  to  getting  an  award.  The  pro¬ 
ducers,  the  writers,  the  directors  and 
the  players  made  ‘Mrs.  Miniver’  that 
kind  of  a  picture,  and  I  wouldn’t  de¬ 
serve  the  name  of  cameraman  if  I 
hadn’t  bent  my  every  effort  to  make  my 
work  measure  up  to  theirs.  In  the 
same  way,  I  owe  a  world  of  thanks  to 


At  top  of  page:  Joseph  Ruttenberg,  A.S.C.,  (left) 
and  Leon  Shamroy,  A.S.C.,  (right)  receive  Academy 
Award  Statuettes  for  the  year's  best  black-and-white 
and  color  cinematography,  respectively,  from  James 
Wong  Howe,  A.S.C. 


my  crew,  and  to  John  Nickolaus’  labor¬ 
atory  which  processed  the  film.  A  di¬ 
rector  of  photography  is  really  no  bet¬ 
ter  than  his  crew  and  the  lab  behind 
him,  and  I  want  to  give  a  very  sin¬ 
cere  ‘thank  you’  to  Operative  Cinema¬ 
tographer  Herb  Fischer,  and  to  Assist¬ 
ant  Cameraman  J.  King  Kauffman,  Jr., 
and  to  all  my  friends  and  fellow-work¬ 
ers  on  the  set  and  in  the  laboratory. 
I  didn’t  win  that  award  alone,  we  did 
it,  working  together  as  a  team,  and  1 
sincerely  wish  there  were  some  way  of 
sharing  the  honor  with  every  one  of 
the  many  on  the  stage  and  in  the  lab 
who  helped  put  me  out  in  front.” 

The  other  nominees  in  the  black-and- 
white  division  included  “Kings  Row” 
(Warner  Bros.),  photographed  by  James 
Wong  Howe,  A.S.C.;  “The  Magnificent 
Ambersons”  (Mercury  -  RKO),  photo¬ 
graphed  by  Stanley  Cortez,  A.S.C.; 
“Moontide,”  (20th  Century-Fox),  photo¬ 
graphed  by  Charles  G.  Clarke,  A.S.C.; 
“The  Pied  Piper,”  (20th  Century-Fox), 
photographed  by  Edward  Cronjager, 
A.S.C.;  “Ten  Gentlemen  From  West 
Point,”  (20  th  Century-Fox),  photo¬ 
graphed  by  Leon  Shamroy,  A.S.C.;  “This 
Above  All,”  (20th  Century-Fox),  photo¬ 
graphed  by  Arthur  Miller,  A.S.C.;  “Pride 
of  the  Yankees,”  (Goldwyn-RKO),  pho¬ 
tographed  by  Rudy  Mate,  A.S.C.;  “Talk 
of  the  Town,”  (Columbia),  photographed 
by  Major  Ted  Tetzlaff,  A.S.C.,  and 
“Take  a  Letter,  Darling,”  (Paramount), 
photographed  by  John  Mescall,  A.S.C. 

Color-award  winner  Leon  Shamroy, 
A.S.C.,  shares  with  Edward  Cronjager, 
A.S.C.,  the  honor  of  having  productions 
nominated  for  awards  in  both  the  black- 
and-white  and  color  divisions.  When  we 
reviewed  his  achievement  in  Technicol- 
oring  “The  Black  Swan,”  we  said,  “Leon 
Shamroy,  A.S.C.,  very  decidedly  goes 
to  town  in  this  richly-Technicolored  pi¬ 
rate  story.  Indeed,  after  seeing  ‘The 
Black  Swan,’  it’s  hard  to  think  of  a  pi¬ 
rate  story  in  monochrome.  Shamroy 
paints  his  picture  in  broad,  vivid  strokes, 
as  becomes  a  story  in  which  colorful 
settings  and  colorful  costumes  and  ac- 
(Continued  on  Page  153) 


American  Cinematographer  •  April,  1943 


131 


Aces  of  the  Camera 
XXVII: 

Ray  June,  A.S.C. 

By  WALTER  BLANCHARD 


WHEN  a  music-lover  hears  a  re¬ 
cording  by  Fritz  Kreisler,  he 
doesn’t  need  to  be  told  who  is 
playing:  an  indefinable  style,  and  a 
clear-cut  artistic  vigor  in  the  playing 
tell  him  that,  without  need  of  words.  In 
the  same  way,  those  who  know  and  love 
fine  cinematography  don’t  need  a  credit- 
title  to  tell  them  they’re  viewing  a  pic¬ 
ture  photographed  by  Ray  June,  A.S.C. 
For,  like  Kreisler,  Ray  June  has  an  in¬ 
definable  style  of  his  own — a  clear-cut, 
vigorous  artistry  which  makes  his  work 
unique. 

It  is  no  wonder,  then,  that  his  fellow- 
professionals  will  describe  him  to  you  as 
that  rare  thing,  a  cameraman’s  camera¬ 
man.  They  admire  the  perfection  of  his 
work — even  on  routinely  unimportant 


pictures.  And  they  admire  him  even  more 
for  himself,  for  he  is  the  finest  of  fellow- 
workers  and  friends. 

He’s  a  real  veteran  of  the  industry, 
too.  This  spring  he  is  starting  his 
twenty-eighth  year  as  a  First  Camera¬ 
man  .  .  .  which  would  probably  seem 
incredible  to  the  folks  who,  back  in  1914, 
urged  him  not  to  go  into  any  business 
so  unstable  as  the  movies. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  when  Ray  in¬ 
formed  his  parents  that  he  wanted  to 
make  cinematography  his  life  work,  he 
met  with  objections  on  other  grounds. 
People  back  in  1914  didn’t  rate  film 
folk  very  highly  in  any  way — especially 
as  regards  morals.  And  it  was  partic¬ 
ularly  that  way  in  a  small  town  like 
Ithaca,  New  York,  where  Ray  grew  up. 


There  was  a  studio  of  sorts  in  Ithaca 
in  those  days,  where  Pearl  White  made 
her  serials,  and  the  ways  of  the  film 
folk  seemed  strange,  and  more  than  a 
little  wild  to  many  of  the  residents. 
Ray’s  parents  put  their  foot  down  flatly 
on  any  thought  of  their  son’s  going  into 
such  a  business. 

But  Ray  diplomatically  suggested  that, 
as  he  would  begin  by  working  nights  in 
the  film-laboratory,  it  wasn’t  likely  he’d 
come  in  contact  with  any  influence  more 
contaminating  than  the  pyro  used  to 
develop  the  film.  He  must  have  put  his 
case  very  persuasively,  for  in  November, 
1914,  his  parents  grudgingly  let  him 
report  for  work  as  a  helper  in  the 
studio’s  lab. 

He  didn’t  keep  that  job  very  long, 
though.  If  the  Ithaca  folk  weren’t  par¬ 
ticularly  happy  about  having  the  film 
people  in  their  midst,  some  of  the  film 
folk,  accustomed  to  life  in  a  big  city 
like  New  York,  were  just  as  unhappy  at 
being  what  they  considered  stuck  out 
in  the  sticks.  The  laboratory  chief  was 
one  of  them.  He  was  a  temperamental 
Italian,  and  he  longed  for  the  bustle  and 
excitement  of  life  in  New  York. 

“One  day,”  Ray  says,  “he  just  didn’t 
come  to  work  .  .  .  and  there  was  the 
day’s  shooting  to  develop  and  print — 
and  only  me  to  do  it!  Luckily,  I’d  learned 
enough  so  I  knew  how  to  mix  the  chem¬ 
icals  right,  and  how  to  dunk  the  film- 
racks  into  the  developing  tank.  So  I 
became  the  studio’s  laboratory-man  on 
very  short  notice.  I  didn’t  spoil  anything, 
so  after  a  few  days  of  very  natural 
doubt,  the  producers  decided  I  might  as 
well  keep  on  running  the  lab. 

“It  wasn’t  very  many  weeks  after  that 
that  the  cameraman  of  the  company  also 
found  his  yearning  for  the  big  town  too 
strong  to  be  resisted.  When  one  morning 
he  didn’t  show  up,  my  bosses  asked  me 
if  I  thought  I  could  run  the  camera.  I’d 
spent  as  much  time  as  I  could  watching 
what  the  former  cameraman  did,  and 
how  he  did  it,  so  I  replied  I  thought  I 
could  do  it. 

“This  was  just  about  three  months 
after  I’d  first  set  foot  in  the  studio.  And 
there  I  was  a  full-fledged  First  Camera¬ 
man!  You  might  better  put  that,  ‘There 
I  was,  a  cameraman — period.’  There 
were  no  such  things  as  Assistants  in 
those  days — much  less  Operatives  or 
Still-men. 

“As  a  matter  of  fact,  I  was  the  whole 
photographic  staff  of  that  studio.  During 
the  daytimes  I  shot  the  pictures.  In  the 
evenings,  I  developed  my  negative.  Early 
the  following  morning,  I’d  print  it.  In 
between,  I’d  load  and  unload  the  maga¬ 
zines,  and  keep  the  camera  clean  and  in 
good  condition.  Outside  of  that,  my  time 
was  more  or  less  my  own. 

“Luckily  for  me,  camerawork  in  those 
days  was  a  good  deal  easier  than  it  is 
now.  Most  of  our  scenes  were  shot  out¬ 
doors.  When  we  made  interiors,  we  still 
used  daylight:  we  worked  on  an  open 
stage,  glass-covered  like  a  greenhouse, 
and  with  strips  of  muslin  overhead  to 
diffuse  the  light.  Most  of  the  time  our 
(Continued  on  Page  146) 


132 


April,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


THROUGH  the  EDITOR'S  FINDER 


SINCE  the  night  of  March  4th  when, 
at  the  Fifteenth  Annual  Academy 
Awards  Banquet,  the  Industry  suf¬ 
fered  its  supreme  humiliation,  we  have 
heard  a  great  deal  of  talk  to  the  effect 
that  this  would  probably  be  the  last 
Academy  Banquet.  In  all  sincerity,  it 
seems  to  us  that  unless  a  vast  and 
fundamental  change  is  made  in  the  han¬ 
dling  of  these  affairs,  this  year’s  ban¬ 
quet  certainly  should  be  the  last. 

In  making  this  observation,  we  do  not 
for  a  moment  overlook  the  difficulties 
which  annually  face  the  Academy  plan¬ 
ners.  We  realize  fully  that  with  in¬ 
creasingly  world-wide  publicity,  this 
“family  party”  at  which  the  people  of 
the  motion  picture  world  gather  to 
honor  their  own  has  grown  increasingly 
out  of  hand.  Certainly  for  the  last  ten 
years  no  one — least  of  all  the  industry’s 
technicians  and  the  representatives  of 
the  press  assigned  to  “cover”  the  event 
— have  attended  with  any  slight  expecta¬ 
tion  of  comfort.  We  have  grown  used 
to  being  shunted  off  to  crowded  tables 
in  the  more  remote  suburbs,  so  distant 
from  the  platform  that  we  scarcely  ex¬ 
pect  to  see  or  hear  anything  of  what  is 
going  on.  We  are  becoming  inured  to 
enduring  meaningless  speeches  by  polit¬ 
ical  prominents  who  know  nothing  about 
the  industry,  and  care  less.  We  can 
even  begin  to  understand  why  the  ac¬ 
tually  important  proceedings  of  the 
evening  are  often  side-tracked  so  that 
these  more  or  less  distinguished  orators 
may  go  on  the  air  to  help  finance  the 
proceedings — and  incidentally  to  bore 
countless  radio  listeners  who  tuned  in 
in  the  hope  of  hearing  the  actual  presen¬ 
tation  of  Awards  to  their  favorites. 

But  there  are  a  couple  of  things  we 
cannot  understand.  First,  why  can’t  the 
proceedings  be  confined  strictly  to  their 
announced  purpose — a  “family  party” 
of,  by  and  for  the  industry,  in  which 
the  industry  itself  gathers  to  honor  out¬ 
standing  achievement  by  its  own  people  ? 
Everyone  else — the  newspapers,  the  ra¬ 
dio,  and  the  national  government  itself 
—-recognizes  that  motion  picture  names 
and  personalities  are  the  most  news¬ 
worthy  drawing-cards  in  the  world  to¬ 
day.  They  call  upon  our  actors  to  put 
over  war-bond  drives  and  to  tell  women 
in  defense  plants  how  to  wear  their 
hair;  they  call  on  our  technicians  to 
teach  Army  cameramen  how  to  photo¬ 
graph  pictures  and  record  sound;  on 
our  art-directors  to  develop  new  and 
better  methods  of  camouflage.  Why, 
then,  do  we  need  outsiders  to  tell  the 
world  what  a  great  job  our  industry  is 
doing  for  the  war  effort,  or  how  sig¬ 
nificant  are  our  honors  for  cinematic 
achievement —  ? 

Second,  the  motion  picture  industry  is 
one  of  the  extremely  few  great  arts 
based  on  creatively-applied  science;  the 
Academy  itself  includes  “Sciences”  as 
well  as  “arts”  as  a  key  part  of  its 
name.  Why  is  it,  then,  that  the  repre¬ 


sentatives  of  the  creative  sciences — of 
which  the  cinematographers  are  an  im¬ 
portant  group,  though  by  no  means  the 
only  ones — given  a  poor  relation’s  brush- 
off  in  the  method  of  presenting  the 
Awards?  Why  is  it  that  the  representa¬ 
tives  of  so  many  other  groups — not  only 
the  actors,  but  also  the  writers,  di¬ 
rectors,  producers,  even  musicians — were 
given  a  chance  not  only  to  read  off 
the  list  of  nominations,  but  often  to 
expatiate  on  the  contributions  of  their 
respective  branches,  and  the  recipients 
of  the  Awards  to  make  speeches  of  ac¬ 
ceptance  (often  much  too  patently  pre¬ 
pared),  while  the  Awards  for  cinema¬ 
tography,  special-effects,  sound-record¬ 
ing,  and  the  like,  which  are  the  real 
foundation  of  the  industry,  were  rail¬ 
roaded  through  with  scarce  a  half-dozen 
words  spoken  in  both  presenting  and 
receiving  all  of  these  Awards  com¬ 
bined —  ? 

We  will  admit  that  the  industry’s 
technical  people  are  neither  as  glamor¬ 
ous  nor  as  widely  publicized  as  the 
players  they  bring  to  screen  and  loud¬ 
speaker,  Joe  Ruttenberg  certainly  doesn’t 
have  the  glamor  with  which  his  photo¬ 
graphic  skill  invested  “Mrs.  Miniver” 
Garson,  and  Nathan  Levinson  hardly 
cuts  as  swashbuckling  a  figure  as  does 
“Yankee  Doodle”  Cagney.  But  in  each 
case  the  patient,  behind-the-scenes  ef¬ 
forts  of  the  one  helped  bring  the  other 
his  or  her  “Oscar.” 

The  glamor-folk  in  front  of  the  cam¬ 
eras  admit,  as  Rosalind  Russell  did  so 
charmingly  two  years  ago,  that  they 
owe  their  popular  success  as  much  to 
the  patient  skill  of  the  unpublicized  men 
who  make  them  look  and  sound  as  they 
really  don’t,  as  they  do  to  their  own 
unaided  efforts.  And  somehow,  we’ve 
always  figured  that  any  organization 
which  claimed  to  be  devoted  to  the 
arts  and  sciences  of  the  motion  pic¬ 
ture  should  in  all  honesty  bend  every 
effort  to  publicize  this  fact,  at  least 
when  it  comes  to  giving  public  recog¬ 
nition  of  outstanding  technical  and  ar¬ 
tistic  achievements.  Certainly,  the  last 
year  has  proven  that  no  words  could 
be  too  flattering  (at  least  when  spoken 
“off  the  record”)  when  some  of  these 
people  found  it  necessary  to  wheedle 
the  industry’s  technical  people  to  do  a 
job  they’d  promised  to  do  but  couldn’t 
deliver  on  their  own  abilities! 

It  is  an  open  secret  that  today  there 
is  a  strongly  supported  move  on  foot 
for  the  industry’s  cinetechnical  people 
to  withdraw  from  next  year’s  Awards 
and — regardless  of  studio  or  organiza¬ 
tional  affiliation — to  create  and  present 
their  own  awards  for  the  year’s  best 
achievements  in  monochrome  and  color 
cinematography  and  special-effects.  That 
is  as  it  should  be.  And  we’ve  an  idea 
that  it  will  find  a  warm  response  among 
the  other  arts  and  crafts  of  the  in¬ 
dustry’s  technical  community,  and  among 
many  members  of  the  press,  as  well. 


With  thousands  of  laymen,  in  and  out 
of  the  industry,  growing  daily  more 
aware  of  the  vital  part  the  industry’s 
cameramen,  sound  engineers,  special- 
effects  experts  and  other  technicians  are 
playing  in  making  screen  entertainment 
possible,  it  is  time  that  the  industry’s 
technicians  stopped  being  the  poor  re¬ 
lations  at  the  industry’s  annual  back- 
slapping  feast,  and  stood  as  solidly  on 
their  own  feet  as  they  do  every  day 
on  the  set. 

• 

SOMETIMES  we  wonder  if  the  indus¬ 
try  isn’t  overlooking  a  very  big  bet 
in  its  special-effects  specialists.  We’ve 
known  of  productions  which  carried  a 
budget  of  more  than  a  half  million  dol¬ 
lars  for  special-effects  work  alone,  and 
of  which  from  half  to  three-quarters 
of  the  release  footage — including  im¬ 
portant  scenes  with  the  principals — was 
planned,  produced  and  directed  by  un¬ 
sung  special-process  cinematographers. 
Of  course  these  men  are  valuable  where 
they  are — but  mightn’t  they  prove  even 
more  valuable  if  placed  in  charge  of 
complete  productions,  instead  of  merely 
parts  of  them? 

• 

A  MONTH  or  so  ago  a  cameraman 
remarked  to  us,  “You  know,  they 
say  there’s  a  shortage  of  cameramen — 
tut  I’ll  be  darned  if  I  see  any  evidence 
of  it!  Everywhere  I  go  they  tell  me 
they  like  my  work,  but  there’s  nothing 
open  now — ‘come  back  next  week,  or 
maybe  in  two  or  three  weeks.’  Mean¬ 
while,  I’ve  a  wife  and  a  couple  of  kids 
to  support.  What  am  I  going  to  do?” 

A  few  weeks  later,  we  saw  him  again 
— in  the  uniform  of  an  Army  lieutenant. 
He’d  solved  his  problem.  Unde  Sam 
may  not  pay  his  shavetails  much,  but 
that  little,  coming  in  fifty-two  weeks 
a  year,  is  a  lot  better  than  the  much 
higher  wage  of  a  cameraman  coming 
in  perhaps  half-a-dozen  weeks  or  a 
month  or  so  out  of  the  year! 

As  the  industry  ordinarily  thinks  of 
such  things,  that  chap’s  enlistment  wasn’t 
exactly  a  crippling  loss  to  the  industry. 
He  wasn’t  a  spectacular  camera-ace — 
just  a  sincere,  efficient  young  man  who 
had  given  fifteen  or  twenty  years  of  his 
life  to  the  industry,  and  had  mastered 
his  trade  so  well  that  everyone  knew 
he  could  fit  into  any  studio  camera  or 
special-effects  department  and  carry  on 
without  losing  an  inch  of  film  or  a  mo¬ 
ment’s  time  on  even  the  most  difficult 
shots.  We’ve  got  several  score  like  him, 
all  the  way  down  the  line  from  di¬ 
rectors  of  photography  to  assistant  cam¬ 
eramen  and  film-loaders.  For  years 
they’ve  been  a  tacitly  recognized  con¬ 
venience — fellows  you  could  call  in  for 
a  day’s  work,  or  a  week,  or  a  whole 
production,  with  no  question  as  to  their 
dependability  .  .  .  and  no  thought  of 
offering  them  the  security  of  a  con¬ 
tract.  The  industry  could  afford  to  use 
(Continued  on  Page  156) 


American  Cinematographer  •  April,  1943  133 


A.S.C.  on  Parade 


Capt.  Joe  Valentine,  A.S.C.  of  the 
Army’s  Special  Service  Division  is  a  man 
of  his  word.  Last  month,  you’ll  remember, 
he  promised  to  send  us  a  picture  of  him¬ 
self  with  his  shiny  captain’s  bars — and 
here  it  is.  With  this  evidence,  we’re  only 
too  glad  to  apologize  for  inadvertently 
demoting  him  to  a  mere  shavetail! 

• 

Lt.  Harold,  “Winnie”  Wenstrom,  A.S.C., 
U.S.N.R.,  is  in  town  on  leave  after  two 
years’  service  with  the  Navy  “somewhere 
in  the  Pacific.”  We’re  going  to  have  to 
lure  him  in  front  of  a  camera  while  he’s 
here,  for  his  two  rows  of  campaign  and 
service  ribbons  are  impressive  to  see. 

• 

A  big  salute  to  our  leatherneck  cine¬ 
matographer,  Henry  Freulich,  A.S.C.  A 
few  months  ago  we  chronicled  his  enlist¬ 
ment  in  the  Marine  Corps  as  a  private 
slated  for  Officers’  Training.  More  re¬ 
cently,  we  reported  he  had  been  commis¬ 
sioned  as  a  Lieutenant.  And  now,  Henry 
is  very  deservingly  a  Captain  and,  so  we 
hear,  finding  the  Marine  Corps  one  swell 
outfit. 

• 

And  Stanley  Horsley,  A.S.C.  starts  his 
military  career  the  hard  way,  as  a  buck 
private  in  the  Army.  He  makes  the  42nd 
A.S.C.  member  in  uniform  to  date. 

• 

Lt-  Joe  August,  A.S.C.,  U.S.N.R.,  briefly 
in  town  en  route  from  one  military  secret 
to  another,  looking  younger  and  fitter 
than  we’ve  seen  him  in  years. 

And  Capt.  John  Alton,  A.S.C.,  of  the 
Army,  in  town  briefly.  Thanks  for  your 
cheery  phone-call,  John — and  here’s  hop¬ 
ing  for  a  chance  for  a  better  talk  next 
time. 

• 

And  Charlie  Lang,  A.S.C.,  assigned  to 
film  a  family-full  of  ghosts  in  “The 
Uninvited.” 


We’re  sorry  to  report  that  Ray  June, 
A.S.C.,  is  laid  up  for  a  serious  operation 
which  will  keep  him  in  the  Good  Samari¬ 
tan  hospital  for  the  next  several  weeks, 
and  away  from  the  cameras  for  some 
time  longer. 

• 

If  we’re  to  believe  recent  trade-paper 
reports,  that  old  maestro  “Tony”  Gaudio, 
A.S.C.,  has  asked  for  his  i-elease  from 
his  Warner  Bros,  contract  which  was  due 
to  expire  next  October.  We  certainly  hope 
this  doesn’t  mean  “Tony”  is  thinking  of 
retiring.  If  he  did,  he  would  be  univer¬ 
sally  missed  .  .  .  and  Hollywood  without 
Tony  Gaudio  wouldn’t  seem  quite  the 
same  to  any  of  us. 

• 

Lester  White,  A.S.C.,  Super-Chiefing 
East,  where  he’s  to  direct  the  photo¬ 
graphy  of  Red  Skelton’s  next,  “Whistling 
in  Brooklyn.” 

• 

Did  you  know  that  George  Barnes, 
A.S.C.,  was  an  accomplished  violinist? 
We  didn’t  either,  till  columnist  Hedda 
Hopper  reported  it .  .  .  We’d  like  to  thank 
La  Hopper,  by  the  way,  for  the  way  she 
gives  the  cinematographers  such  nice 
breaks  in  her  column. 

• 

Sid  Hickox,  A.S.C.,  loaded  with  plenty 
of  praise  for  his  work  on  “Edge  cf 
Darkness,”  off  to  Sun  Valley  a-location- 
ing  for  “To  The  Last  Man.”  And  he  tells 
us  the  thermometer  there  is  averaging 
20  below.  Brrr! 

• 

Charley  Clarke,  A.S.C.,  does  his  winter 
picture-making  on  T.C.F.’s  ice-stage, 
filming  Sonja  Henie’s  “Wintertime.”  But 
he’s  got  a  nice  new  contract  that  ought 
to  keep  him  warm — and  plenty  of  heart¬ 
warming  praise  for  his  last  few  pictures, 
too. 

• 

Karl  Struss,  A.S.C.,  dropped  by  at  last 
to  collect  those  stills  we  shot  in  our 
argument,  months  ago,  about  reflected- 
vs.  incident-light  metering.  ’Twas  his 
26th  wedding  anniversary,  too,  by  the 
way. 

• 

Versatile  fellow,  Harry  Hallenberger, 
A.S.C.  Doing  pick-up  shots  for  Para¬ 
mount  the  other  day,  he  spent  the  morn¬ 
ing  shooting  Technicolor,  and  the  after¬ 
noon  shooting  black-and-white. 

• 

Dan  B.  Clark,  A.S.C.  and  Stanley 
Cortez,  A.S.C.,  busy  as  a  pair  of  bird- 
dogs  co-chairmanning  a  committee  rep¬ 
resenting  the  cinematographers  of  Hol¬ 
lywood,  laying  plans  for  making  a  filmic 
record — perhaps  in  Technicolor — of  the 
big  pageant  being  staged  for  Mme. 
Chiang  Kai-Shek.  The  print  is  to  be  pre¬ 
sented  to  her  as  a  gift  from  Hollywood’s 
cameramen. 


Just  after  we  left  the  office  the  other 
evening  Lt.  Jack  Greenhalgh,  A.S.C., 
U.S.A.A.F.,  came  by  to  leave  this  pic¬ 
ture  and  tell  us  he  was  leaving  for  an 
unannounced  military  jaunt.  We  talked 
the  other  day  with  a  Ft.  Roach  sergeant 
who  seemed  to  indicate  that  the  Air 
Force  gang  like  Jack  as  an  officer  and 
fellow-worker. 

• 

Hal  Rosson,  A.S.C.,  off  to  Salt  Lake 
City  scouting  locations  for  MGM’s  forth¬ 
coming  “America.”  Does  that  mean  Hal 
is  at  last  going  to  get  a  chance  at  a 
Technicolor  picture - ? 

• 

Bet  John  Boyle,  A.S.C.,  was  the  only 
person  at  the  “Young  Mr.  Pitt”  preview 
to  identify  the  narrator’s  voice  as  that 
of  Carol  Reed.  Johnnie  photographed 
Reed’s  first  picture,  you  know. 

• 

Theodor  Sparkuhl,  A.S.C.,  gets  the 
sought-after  assignment  to  photograph 
Jimmie  Cagney’s  first  United  Artists’ 
production,  “McLeod’s  Folly.”  No  folly  to 
picking  Ted  for  that  assignment,  any¬ 
way! 

• 

Between  paragraphs  note — nice  to  see 
the  gentleman  from  Laguna,  Gordon 
Pollock,  A.S.C.,  up  from  his  beach  home 
for  a  visit. 

• 

Paul  Ivano,  A.S.C.,  has  reason  to 
smile:  with  “Flesh  and  Fantasy”  com¬ 
pleted,  he’s  signed  to  a  fine  new  Univer¬ 
sal  term  contract,  and  assigned  to  make 
a  big  special  starring  Jean  Gabin,  and 
directed  by  Julian  Duvivier. 

• 

Note  to  Mrs.  George  Meehan:  Your 
hubby  tells  us  you  always  look  through 
the  magazine  for  his  name,  and  hide  it 
if  you  can’t  find  it.  Hope  you  won’t  hide 
it  this  month. 

• 

John  Arnold,  A.S.C.,  looking  relaxed 
now  those  Signal  Corps  “camera  classes 
are  over,  getting  up  steam  to  instruct 
several  classes  of  Marine  Corps  camera-* 
men. 


134  April,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


PHOTOGRAPHY  OF  THE  MONTH 


FOREVER  AND  A  DAY 

RKO-Radio  Release. 

Directors  of  Photography:  Lee  Garmes, 
A.S.C.,  Robert  De  Grasse,  A.S.C.,  Rus¬ 
sell  Metty,  A.S.C.,  and  Nicholas  Musu- 
raca,  A.S.C. 

This  is  the  picture  which,  over  the  pe¬ 
riod  of  the  last  two  years,  a  volunteer 
group  including  all  but  two  or  three  of 
the  British  writers,  directors  and  actors 
resident  in  Hollywood  have  cooperatively 
produced  as  a  contribution  to  the  chari¬ 
ties  of  their  two  nations.  Surprisingly, 
it  emerges  not  as  the  patchwork  one 
might  expect,  but  as  a  surprisingly  well 
coordinated  piece  of  cinematic  entertain¬ 
ment. 

The  same  is  true  of  the  photography 
which  was  done  by  at  least  four  offiicially 
credited  directors  of  photography,  with 
their  work  necessarily  intermingled,  and 
spread  over  a  period  of  two  years’  shoot¬ 
ing.  So  expertly  have  they  done  their 
work  that  it  is  almost  impossible  to  tell 
where  one’s  contribution  leaves  off  and 
another’s  begins.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
if  you  try  to  pick  each  man’s  contribu¬ 
tion,  you’re  likely  to  guess  wrong,  as  this 
reviewer  did  after  the  preview  when  he 
started  to  compliment  one  man  on  a  se¬ 
quence  he  thought  he  had  surely  identi¬ 
fied — and  found  instead  that  it  was  done 
by  two  of  the  others! 

“Forever  And  A  Day”  is  decidedly  one 
of  the  most  expressively-photographed  of 
recent  films.  There  were  no  “commer¬ 
cial”  restrictions  to  inhibit  the  cinema¬ 
tographers  in  their  use  of  extreme  low- 
key  effect-lightings;  no  “star”  names  to 
be  photographically  protected  at  any 
cost.  The  result  is  a  production  in  which 
photographic  effect  is  at  all  times 
planned  to  serve  solely  as  a  vehicle  for 
dramatic  mood,  without  any  of  the  re¬ 
strictions  which  so  often  keep  cinemato¬ 
graphers  in  a  rut  of  routined  commercial 
safety. 

AIR  FORCE 

Warner  Bros.  Production. 

Director  of  Photography:  James  Wong 
Howe,  A.S.C. 

Aerial  Photography  by  Major  Elmer  G. 
Dyer,  A.S.C.,  and  Charles  A.  Marshall, 
A.S.C. 

Special-effects  by  Rex  Wimpy,  A.S.C., 
and  Hans  Koenekamp,  A.S.C. 

“Air  Force”  is  one  of  those  pictures  you 
shouldn’t  miss.  Dramatically,  it’s  one 
of  the  most  completely  realistic  air-war 
pictures  ever  screened;  photographically, 
it  is  sure  to  prove  one  of  the  outstand¬ 
ing  camera-achievements  of  1943. 

You  really  should  see  “Air  Force”  at 
least  twice.  The  first  time,  the  complete 
realism  of  story,  direction  and  acting 
will  probably  overshadow  your  interest 
in  the  photography.  Only  on  a  second 
viewing  will  you  realize  how  powerfully 
— and  how  self-effacingly  —  Jimmie 
Howe’s  camerawork  contributes  to  mak¬ 


ing  “Air  Force”  the  great  picture  it  is. 
At  first,  you’re  conscious  only  of  the 
realistic  mood  he  maintains  from  start 
to  finish;  but  later,  you  begin  to  realize 
how  deftly  his  camerawork,  compositions 
and  lightings  have  been  used  to  strength¬ 
en  the  dramatic  moods  of  the  action. 

If  there  are  such  things  as  Academy 
Awards  next  year,  “Air  Force”  will  un¬ 
questionably  be  one  of  the  strongest 
contenders  for  the  one  for  the  year’s 
best  special-effects  camerawork.  A  truly 
remarkable  proportion  of  the  produc¬ 
tion’s  release  footage  was  shot  under  the 
direct  supervision  of  Byron  Haskin, 
A.S.C.,  and  his  special-effects  staff.  Both 
Haskin,  the  two  special-effects  cinema¬ 
tographers  credited,  and  special-effects 
Unit  Director  Roy  Davidson  deserve 
endless  credit  for  this  work.  Most  spec¬ 
tacular,  of  course,  is  the  miniature 
work,  which  shows  the  bombing  of  a 
Japanese  fleet  (presumably  the  Coral 
Sea  battle),  and  some  aircraft  landings 
and  take-offs.  The  perfection  of  the 
background-projection  and  optical- 
printer  work  will  all  too  generally  pass 
unnoticed.  Yet  without  them — and  their 
excellent  coordination  with  the  “pro¬ 
duction”  sequences — “Air  Force”  could 
not  begin  to  tell  its  story. 

HELLO,  FRISCO,  HELLO 

20th  Century-Fox  Production  (Techni¬ 
color). 

Directors  of  Photography:  Charles  G. 

Clarke,  A.S.C.,  and  Allen  Davey,  A.S.C. 

With  “Hello,  Frisco,  Hello,”  Cinemato¬ 
grapher  Charles  G.  Clarke,  A.S.C.,  makes 
an  unusually  auspicious  debut  in  Techni¬ 
color.  The  picture  itself  is  one  of  the 
familiar  series  of  20th  Century-Fox 
Technicolored  musicals,  but  Clarke  and 
Davey  have  invested  it  with  a  more  than 
ordinarily  excellent  photographic  mount¬ 
ing.  This,  despite  considerable  handi¬ 
caps;  some  scenes,  like  the  opening  one, 
offer  extremely  difficult  problems  in  co¬ 
ordinating  intricate  moving-camera  shots 
with  changes  of  lighting,  music  and  ac¬ 
tion,  while  at  various  times  during  pro¬ 
duction  some,  or  all  of  the  principals 
were  in  poor  health. 

Clarke  and  Davey  have  surmounted  all 
these  obstacles  unusually  well.  They 
have  kept  the  principals — especially  Alice 
Faye  and  Lynn  Bari — looking  much  more 
than  ordinarily  well.  And  where  the 
opportunity  has  offered  (as  in  the  Lon¬ 
don  stage  sequence)  they  have  achieved 
strikingly  pictorial  effect. 

No  comment  on  this  picture  would  be 
complete,  either,  without  mention  of  the 
unusually  fine  color  art-direction  by 
James  Basevi  and  Boris  Leven,  which 
takes  place  as  one  of  the  very  best 
achievements  in  this  field  so  far. 

SHADOW  OF  A  DOUBT 

Universal  Production. 

Director  of  Photography:  Capt.  Joseph 

Valentine,  A.S.C. 


This  was  the  last  production  Joe  Valen¬ 
tine  photographed  before  entering  the 
Army,  and  it  is  a  very  fitting  swan  song 
for  him.  When  he  told  us  of  how  he 
made  the  major  part  of  this  production 
on  location  in  an  actual  Northern  Cali¬ 
fornia  town  instead  of  under  controlled 
studio  conditions  (See  American  Cine¬ 
matographer,  October,  1942),  some  of 
us  very  understandably  wondered  if  he 
could,  under  such  unconvention  condi¬ 
tions,  do  as  well  as  he  said  his  rushes 
proved.  The  completed  picture  prov’des 
a  convincingly  affirmative  answer,  for  it 
is  one  of  his  very  best  achievements,  and 
carries  a  note  of  realism  which  is  re¬ 
freshingly  new. 

Valentine’s  handling  of  both  the  loca¬ 
tions  and  the  people  is  excellent.  In 
the  latter  part  of  the  picture,  it  seemed 
to  us  that  he  did  not  present  Teresa 
Wright  as  favorably  as  he  did  in  the 
opening  sequences;  this,  however,  may 
well  have  been  more  largely  the  fault  of 
Miss  Wright  herself  and  of  Director 
Hitchcock,  in  their  concept  of  how  she 
should  portray  the  “shadow  of  doubt,” 
which  necessitated  expressions  and  an¬ 
gles  which  do  not  show  this  player  at 
her  best.  Some  of  the  scenes  of  Joseph 
Cotten,  too,  seemed  too  obvious’y  to  be 
striving  for  effect,  and  carried  a  touch  of 
the  Orson  Welles  influence  we’ve  never 
before  seen  in  Valentine’s  work.  We 
can’t  help  wondering,  too,  if  the  obvious 
“planting”  of  Cotten  as  the  murderer 
in  the  opening  of  the  picture  didn’t 
weaken  Hitchcock’s  usually  suspenseful 
treatment  of  the  rest  of  the  story. 
We’ve  an  idea  it  did. 

THE  DESFERADOES 

Columbia  Production  (Technicolor) 
Directors  of  Photography:  George  Mee¬ 
han,  A.S.C.,  and  Allen  M.  Davey,  A.S.C. 

This  lavishly-Technicolored  “western” 
is  certainly  worth  seeing  from  the  pho¬ 
tographic  view  joint.  The  exterior  se¬ 
quences — filmed,  we  believe,  in  Utah — 
are  spectacularly  pictorial,  and  certainly 
show  the  experienced  hand  of  George 
Meehan,  who  is  one  of  our  favorite  Aim¬ 
ers  of  outdoor  scenes. 

The  opening  sequence,  played  entirely 
in  night  effects,  gets  the  picture  off  to 
an  interesting  start.  Some  of  the  effect- 
lighted  interiors,  however, — especially 
those  in  the  stable — seemed  to  us  to  have 
been  lit  a  bit  too  sketchily.  They  showed 
a  commend?ble  imagination  in  lighting, 
but  the  extreme  contrast  between  the 
fully-lit  highlights  and  the  completely 
empty  shadows  seemed  unnecessary,  and 
would  have  benefited  greatly  by  more 
conservative  control  of  illumination  con¬ 
trast. 

Meehan  and  Davey  have  dealt  unus¬ 
ually  well  with  their  players,  with  the 
exception  of  Evelyn  Keyes,  who  was 
placed  at  an  unfair  disadvantage  by  an 
(Continued  on  Page  146) 


American  Cinematographer  •  April,  1943  135 


J  36 


April,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


Wlakirn ^ 


16mm. 


“di&iASL  OpeJiaAi'  in.  View.  QeAMif 

By  REGINALD  McMAHON 


Dissatisfied  with  Hollywood’s 
version  of  what  constitutes  a 
thriller,  a  group  of  Passaic,  N.  J., 
youths  have  organized  their  own  movie 
company,  Adventure  Pictures.  Produc¬ 
tion  up  to  present  has  always  been  hard 
ridin’  westerns  or  jungle  mysteries. 

The  group  was  organized  in  1936  by 
twenty-year  old  Louis  McMahon.  Since 
he  was  a  youngster,  Lou  has  been  going 
to  the  movies  to  see  westerns  and 
serials.  He  has  studied  them  thoroughly 
and  with  this  background,  he  gathered 
his  friends  together  to  produce  his  own 
photoplays.  But  rather  than  imitate 
Hollywood’s  accepted  formula,  Adventure 
Pictures  is  striving  to  produce  westerns 
in  a  manner  far  different  from  the 
usual  grade  “B”  hoss  opera.  They  feel 
that  this  popular  type  movie  story  of¬ 
fers  opportunity  for  more  characteriza¬ 
tion  and  intrigue  than  has  been  realized. 

So  far  they  have  succeeded  in  the 
successful  elimination  of  heroines  (which 
they  consider  a  great  step  forward.)  Di¬ 
rector  McMahon,  as  well  as  the  rest  of 
the  group,  believe  enough  westerns  have 
been  ruined  by  inexperienced,  overly 
made-up  actresses.  Another  point  they 
object  to  is  the  elaborate  costumes  worn 
by  the  hero.  “You  can’t  create  the  at¬ 
mosphere  of  the  West  by  white  hats, 
silk  shirts,  and  crooning  cowboys,”  is 
the  young  director’s  comment. 

Adventure  Pictures  travels  to  loca¬ 


tions  via  the  local  bus  line.  For  west¬ 
ern  locations,  the  group  uses  the  Pater¬ 
son  Mountains  in  New  Jersey  where  the 
boulders  have  a  striking  resemblance 
to  the  west;  in  fact,  most  of  the  pro¬ 
fessional  industry’s  early  westerns  were 
made  on  this  location,  before  the  in¬ 
dustry  moved  to  Hollywood.  Their 
bandits’  stronghold  is  an  abandoned 
rock  quarry,  complete  with  towering  cliffs 
and  crumpling  old  shacks. 

Every  movie  that  Adventure  Picture 
puts  out  must  have  its  quota  of  hair- 
raising  thrills.  For  this,  the  group’s 
own  stunt  man  is  called  in.  A  future 
production,  this  time  a  modern  chapter- 
play,  will  feature  him  in  a  role  similar 
to  Richard  Talmadge  of  the  silent  days. 
They  plan  to  have  fifteen  chapters,  each 
one  a  hundred  feet  in  length.  Prac¬ 
tically  the  entire  group  has  joined  the 
local  Y.M.C.A.  to  practice  the  stunts 
they  intend  using. 


Above:  making  a  scene  from  "Pals  of  the  Plains"  in 
fhe  back-yard  that  was  revamped  into  a  Western 
town.  On  opposite  page,  top,  left  to  right:  a  dummy 
goes  to  its  doom  from  a  New  Jersey  cliff;  middle: 
rearing  horses  are  essential  to  "Westerns";  right: 
Adventure  Pictures'  stunt-man  does  his  stuff..  Middle, 
left:  Scenic  beauties  in  a  favorite  location;  center: 
director-producer  Louis  McMahon  gives  last-minute 
instructions  to  the  cast  while  cameraman  John  Maluda 
lines  up  his  shot;  right:  Louis  McMahon,  who  founded 
Adventure  Pictures.  Bottom:  the  troupe  goes  on  loca¬ 
tion  by  bus — positively  not  chartered!  Right:  a  minia¬ 
ture  shot  from  "Mars,"  science-fiction  epic  now  in 
production.  Photos  by  Reginald  McMahon. 


After  five  years  of  movie  making, 
three  one-reel  pictures,  “The  Texan,” 
“Jungle  Jim”  and  “Pals  of  the  Plains” 
have  been  completed.  These  are  simple 
films  produced  mostly  for  experience. 
Now  the  company  is  hard  at  work  put¬ 
ting  the  finishing  touches  on  “The  Black 
Rider,”  a  more  pretentious  production, 
requiring  four  summers  to  complete  at 
a  cost  of  over  $200.  Of  the  three  thous¬ 
and  feet  of  film  shot  on  this  three-reel 
picture,  only  twelve  hundred  will  be 
used. 

During  the  filming  of  “The  Black 
Rider,”  ingenuity  had  to  be  exercised  to 
the  fullest  extent  to  keep  expenses  at 
a  minimum  and  yet  follow  the  elaborate¬ 
ly-written  scenario.  Although  amateurs 
usually  attempt  something  beyond  their 
means,  “The  Black  Rider”  has  so  far 
worked  out  fairly  close  to  the  original 
conception. 

The  amazing  acrobatics  of  Douglas 
Fairbanks,  Sr.,  whose  films  are  currently 
being  revived  at  the  Museum  of  Mod¬ 
ern  Art  in  New  York  City,  inspired 
the  boys  to  inject  as  many  stunts  into 
the  film  as  they  themselves  could  do 
physically  or  by  camera  trickery. 

One  of  the  thrilling  stunts  at  the 
climax  of  “The  Black  Rider”  called  for 
the  hero  to  cut  off  the  escaping  outlaw 
by  climbing  up  a  fifty-foot  rope  hand¬ 
over-hand.  But  the  hero,  instead  of 
(Continued  on  Page  155) 


American  Cinematographer  •  April,  1943 


137 


dxxsmL  Ovl  fianlomirnsL 

By  STANLEY  0.  BEAN 


and  a  cast  of  people  who  as  regards 
age,  size  and  gender  meet  the  bare  out¬ 
ward  requirements  of  the  parts  they 
are  to  play.  Those  who  are  to  portray 
the  characters  should  be  chosen  for 
their  ability  to  express  emotions  with 
their  eyes,  face,  hands  and  physical 
movements.  And  they  should  be  so  di¬ 
rected  as  to  give  those  abilities  the  full¬ 
est  play. 

In  this,  the  best  of  both  professional 
and  amateur  photoplays  can  serve  <vs 
living  textbooks.  But  note — I  said  the 
best  of  them!  The  heyday  of  the  silent 
screen  was  too  often  filled  with  features 
relying  upon  the  printed  title  and  upon 
popular  names,  rather  than  upon  a  por¬ 
trayal  of  believeable  people  in  plausible, 
human-life  dramas.  Too  many  talkies 
have  been  produced  from  poor  stories 
and  cast  with  players  dependent  upon 
voice  and  noisy  backgrounds  to  impress 
the  audience,  rather  than  upon  visual- 
minded  acting  for  the  camera. 

The  amateur  photoplay  can’t  afford 
to  fall  into  these  pitfalls.  Being  ama¬ 
teur,  it  has  to  be  more  than  just  merely 
good  in  order  to  hold  the  interest  of  its 
audience  sufficiently  to  be  pronounced 
“good”  by  the  average,  non-moviemak¬ 
ing  spectator.  Perhaps  the  most  im¬ 
portant  single  factor  in  making  an  ama¬ 
teur  photoplay  dramatically  effective  is 
careful  attention  to  visual  pantomime 
in  both  acting  and  dmection. 

Luckily,  Hollywood’s  really  fine  cin¬ 
ema  achievements — both  silent  and 
sound — offer  us  excellent  examples  of 
this  to  study  and  follow.  We  can  bene¬ 
fit  our  own  films  enormously  by  analyz¬ 
ing  the  methods  used  by  these  top-notch 
directors,  writers  and  cinematographers 


for  putting  over  dramatic  points  visu¬ 
ally.  The  players,  too,  who  hold  our 
attention  by  their  convincing  panto¬ 
mimic  performances  should  awaken  in 
us  a  desire  to  lift  our  own  films  above 
the  commonplace  by  making  them  really 
live. 

Among  recent  big  films  whose  players 
excellently  demonstrated  pantomimic 
values  I  can  mention  Alfred  Hitchcock’s 
suspenseful,  “Suspicion,”  calling  upon 
its  principal  players,  Cary  Grant  and 
especially  Joan  Fontaine,  to  demon¬ 
strate  inner  thoughts  and  fears  so  con¬ 
vincingly  as  to  arouse  the  emotions  of 
the  fan  to  despise  or  sympathize.  The 
motor  trip  along  the  winding  road  above 
the  sea  gave  much  footage  of  film  to 
unspoken,  appealing  drama,  played  only 
by  the  eyes  and  facial  expressions. 

Again  in  “The  Invaders,”  the  scene 
in  which  the  Elder  of  the  sect  which 
worked  in  communal  harmony,  speaking 
to  his  people  and  to  the  escaped  Nazis 
was  essentially  visual.  Here  much  of 
the  story  was  unfolded  to  us  as  the 
camera  sought  out  the  many  faces — 
each  profound  in  its  revelation  of  defi¬ 
ance,  hate,  love,  fear,  hope,  and  under¬ 
standing. 

A  lesson  in  building  up  to  an  intense 
outburst  of  smoldering  inward  emotions 
began  with  excellent  unspoken  dialog 
on  the  part  of  the  Aunt  in  “The  Mag¬ 
nificent  Ambersons.” 

Sensitive,  deep  and  tender  emotions, 
so  difficult  to  play  with  conviction,  were 
ably  demonstrated  by  Bette  Davis  and 
Paul  Henreid  in  the  unforgettable, 
“Now,  Voyager.” 

Important  critics  of  the  legitimate 
(Continued  on  Page  152) 


Some  of  the  all-time  great  amateur  films  like 
Randolph  Clardy's  8mm.  "New  Horizon"  (frame  en¬ 
largements  below)  and  Richard  Lyford's  Ritual  of 
the  Dead"  (right)  should  be  studied  as  examples  of 
forceful  visual  story-telling. 


WHETHER  or  not  we  amateurs 
have  film  “for  duration”  is  no 
reason  why  our  interest  in  this 
creative  hobby  need  be  rationed.  When 
we  have  film,  we  should  strive  to  make 
every  foot  count,  not  merely  from  the 
phototechnical  standpoint  of  correct  ex¬ 
posure,  correct  focus,  and  pictorial  com¬ 
position,  but  from  the  standpoint  of 
telling  a  story  visually  by  means  of  a 
correct  photodramatic  balance  of  long- 
shots,  medium-shots  and  close-ups  which 
will  center  the  attention  of  the  audience 
on  what  our  picture  is  trying  to  tell 
them,  with  a  minimum  of  mental  inter¬ 
ruption  from  the  mechanical  means  by 
which  we  are  doing  so. 

When  we  haven’t  film,  we  ought  at 
least  to  spend  some  of  our  leisure  time 
studying  and  planning  how  to  achieve 
that  technical  and  story-telling  smooth¬ 
ness.  Those  of  us  especially  who  enjoy 
creating  photoplays,  whether  on  silent 
or  on  talkie  film,  can  make  particularly 
good  use  of  spare  moments  spent  plan¬ 
ning  the  best  way  to  present  future 
stories. 

It  isn’t  enough  to  have  merely  a  story 


138 


April,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


There’s  A  Job  Overseas 

For  Your  16mm. 

Sound  Projector 


By  CAROLE  LANDIS 


THE  American  boys  who  are  fight¬ 
ing  for  you  in  Africa,  in  Alaska, 
on  Guadalcanal  and  New  Guinea 
— and  in  thousands  of  God-forgotten  lit¬ 
tle  Hell-holes  all  over  the  world  that 
are  only  pin-pricks  on  the  map  to  most 
of  us — need  your  16mm.  sound-film  pro¬ 
jector.  They’ve  got  a  job  for  it  to  do 
that’s  as  important  as  any  gun  or  tank. 
More  important,  for  it’s  a  job  for  them 
— something  that  will  make  it  easier 
for  them  to  endure  all  the  hardships 
and  privations  they  face  on  those  far¬ 
away  fronts. 

I  can  tell  you  that  from  first-hand 
experience,  for  I’ve  just  gotten  back 
from  nearly  five  months  spent  enter¬ 
taining  the  boys  in  England  and  North 
Africa.  Speaking  in  the  physical  sense, 
the  boys  over  there — even  at  the  firing 
front — don’t  go  physically  hungry.  May¬ 
be  the  cooking  isn’t  like  mother’s,  and 
the  service  interrupted  by  Jap  or  Nazi 
bullets,  but  there’s  food  to  eat,  and 
enough  of  it. 

But  our  boys  in  those  foreign  posts 
are  starving  for  entertainment  .  .  .  en¬ 
tertainment  to  take  their  minds  away 
from  killing,  and  fi'om  the  interminable 
waiting  for  something  to  do  which  is 
even  worse.  Entertainment  to  put  them, 
for  a  blessed  moment,  at  least,  in  touch 
with  home  and  the  little,  routine  things 
of  life  at  home. 

You  and  I,  as  we  sit  comfortably 
here  at  home,  surrounded  by  scenes  and 
people  all  too  familiar  to  us,  don’t  real¬ 
ize  that.  If  we  give  it  a  thought,  we 
probably  figure  those  boys  in  the  Afri¬ 
can  force  are  lucky  to  be  doing  their 
soldiering  amid  all  those  strange  and 
exotic  scenes  and  peoples.  We  conjure 
up  mental  pictures  of  all  the  “Arabian 
Nights”  movie-sets  we’ve  ever  seen,  and 
picture  our  boys  meeting  veiled  harem 
beauties  as  exotic  as  Hedy  LaMai'r,  or 
Sheikhs  like  Rudolph  Valentino  .  .  .  new 
places,  new  faces,  new  experiences  at 
every  turn.  Maybe  we  grow  a  little 
envious. 

But  when  you  really  get  out  there,  as 
I  did,  you  find  it’s  something  disillusion- 
ingly  different.  Dirt — heat — dust — smells 
— your  “Arabian  Nights”  romance  crum¬ 
bles  into  a  squalid — and  mighty  uncom¬ 
fortable — reality.  And  above  all,  there’s 
the  maddening  monotony  that  can  drive 
men  mad.  There’s  fighting — yes,  for 
some  of  them,  but  that  only  a  part  of 
the  time.  For  thousands  of  them  there’s 


only  the  day-in-day-out  job  of  driving 
a  truck,  or  repairing  tanks  or  planes. 
In  between,  when  you’re  not  on  duty, 
there’s  nothing — literally  nothing — to  do. 
No  books,  no  magazines,  no  radio,  and 
nobody  but  the  sweaty  soldiers  you’ve 
seen  too  damned  much  of  anyway  to 
talk  to.  Even  if  you  should  have  one 
of  the  “soft”  billets  (Heaven  save  the 
mark!)  in  one  of  the  base  camps  or 
cities,  there’s  still  nothing  to  do  in 
your  off-duty  hours.  The  natives  don’t 
speak  your  lingo — and  even  if  they  did, 
there  are  orders  (for  your  protection) 
against  mixing  with  them  or  going  into 
their  cafes  or  show-houses  .  .  .  too 
much  danger  of  breaking  Moslem  taboos 
you  never  knew  about,  and  insulting 
people  who  we  want  to  be  our  friends, 
and  who  want  to  be,  too,  but  who  have 
their  own  peculiar  customs,  that  can 
be  outraged  as  easily  as  ours  would  be 
if  some  foreigner  roller-skated  into 
church  smoking  a  pipe. 

The  answer  to  this  is  movies — Amer¬ 
ican  movies,  the  same  pictures  Joe  Sol¬ 
dier  might  see  if  he  was  back  home 
in  Keokuk.  The  touch  of  home  that 
Ty  Power  or  Alice  Faye  or  Mickey 
Rooney  or  the  Aldrich  Family  bring. 
That  .  .  .  and  something  that  takes  your 
mind  off  real-life  surroundings  and  hard¬ 
ships  that  are  nearly  driving  you  wild. 

Hollywood’s  studios — bless  ’em  for  it 
— are  making  available  to  the  Army  and 
Navy  prints  of  all  their  latest  pictures 
— often  weeks  before  they’re  released 
to  the  cash  audiences  here  at  home. 
Since  shipping-space  is  such  a  problem, 
the  prints  for  overseas  use  are  in  16mm. 


Carole  Landis  packs  her  own  16mm.  sound  projector 
for  service  at  the  front.  (NOTE:  This  is  not  a  pub¬ 
licity  gag — Miss  Landis'  projector  is  really  being 
shipped  to  entertain  the  men  overseas.  Ed.) 


You  can  slip  a  couple  of  1600-foot 
16mm.  reels  into  a  cargo-bomber’s  load 
where  there  wouldn’t  be  room  for  the 
eight  bigger,  heavier  1000-foot  reels  and 
their  heavy, .  steel  shipping-case  needed 
for  the  same  picture  in  35mm.  And 
once  you  get  there,  today’s  16mm.  sound 
projectors  will  do  just  as  good  a  job 
of  showing  the  film,  with  much  less 
complication  and  trouble.  I  think  it  was 
General  Vandegrift  of  the  Marines  who 
reported  that  as  soon  as  a  beachhead 
had  been  secured  on  one  of  the  Jap- 
infested  islands  in  the  Pacific,  one  of 
the  first  things  to  come  ashore  would 
be  a  16mm.  sound-projector  and  films 
— df  any  were  available. 

And  how  those  boys  revel  in  film 
entertainment!  It  doesn’t  matter  if 
they’ve  seen  the  pictui’e  four  hundred 
times  before — it’s  still  someth^pg  to  take 
their  minds  off  hardships  and  trouble. 
It’s  still  a  sight  of  normal  American 
girls,  doing  normal  American  things. 
In  Africa,  we  four  girls  never  got  over 
our  amazement  at  the  way  the  boys 
responded  whenever  we  appeared — even 
if  it  was  only  riding  in  a  jeep  from  one 
camp  to  another.  Every  soldier  within 
eyeshot  would  drop  whatever  he  was 
doing  and  stare  at  us,  open-mouthed 
(and  entirely  reverent)  with  amazement. 
Sometimes  you’d  hear  some  of  them 

(Continued  on  Page  152) 


American  Cinematographer  •  April,  1943 


139 


Take  Care  Of  Your  Camera  And 
Projector  —  They're  Priceless! 

By  JAMES  R.  OSWALD 


WITH  wartime  restrictions  mak¬ 
ing  film  and  other  photographic 
supplies  more  and  more  difficult 
to  obtain,  it  might  be  well  to  stop  and 
think  about  how  we  are  going  to  con¬ 
serve  our  present  equipment  so  that 
it  will  give  maximum  service  and  en¬ 
joyment. 

To  begin  with,  a  good  camera  and 
projector  are  truly  precision  instru¬ 
ments,  like  a  fine  watch.  We  should 
treat  them  as  such  and  be  proud  of 
them,  just  as  a  good  carpenter  or  ma¬ 
chinist  takes  pride  in  his  finest  tools. 
Every  camera  and  projector  is  accom¬ 
panied  by  an  instruction  manual,  fre¬ 
quently  overlooked,  but  nevertheless 
there  for  a  very  definite  purpose.  The 
service  life  and  enjoyment  of  the  in¬ 
strument  is  directly  dependent  upon 
how  closely  these  instructions  are  fol¬ 
lowed.  Although  every  make  and  model 
is  slightly  different,  the  basic  rules 
for  their  care  and  maintenance  are  the 
same  and  hence  can  be  briefly  outlined 
here. 

Taking  the  camera  first,  probably  the 
most  important  items  to  remember  are 
utmost  cleanliness  and  careful  handling. 
The  camera  very  likely  has  been  sub¬ 
jected  to  much  more  abuse  than  the 
projector  in  that  it  has  been  “knocked 
around”  here  and  there  in  your  travels, 
been  showered  with  sand  at  the  beach 


party,  or  perhaps  locked  in  the  glove 
compartment  of  the  car  when  the  tem¬ 
perature  was  110  in  the  shade.  Any 
dust  or  dirt  on  the  lens,  and  particu¬ 
larly  the  aperture  gate,'  can  easily  spoil 
an  entire  film  by  causing  an  unsightly 
fuzz  fringe  around  the  picture,  about 
which  nothing  can  be  done  later.  It 
should  be  mentioned  here  that  a  very 
soft  or  lintless  cloth  must  always  be 
used  to  clean  the  lens  and  gate.  As 
for  oiling,  most  home-movie  cameras 
are  permanently  oiled  at  the  factory 
and  thus  require  no  attention  in  this 
respect  whatsoever.  However,  if  yours 
is  the  exception,  remember  to  keep  the 
oil  away  from  parts  that  the  film 
touches  and  always  wipe  the  excess  off 
so  that  dust  will  not  accumulate.  Con¬ 
sult  your  manual  if  in  doubt. 

What  applies  to  the  camera  also  ap¬ 
plies  to  the  projector,  so  far  as  clean¬ 
liness  is  concerned.  Both  are  construct¬ 
ed  basically  the  same,  each  having  many 
of  the  identical  or  very  similar  parts 
of  the  other.  Though  the  projector  may 
not  be  handled  nearly  as  much  as  the 
camera,  much  more  actual  running  serv¬ 
ice  is  demanded  of  it.  A  film  is  run 
through  a  camera  once,  whereas  the  same 
film  is  run  through  the  projector  over 
and  over  again,  to  say  nothing  of  the 
many  professionally-made  reels  we  may 
rent  or  purchase  to  add  a  little  variety 


to  our  own  program.  It  is  very  obvious, 
therefore,  that  we  must  really  show  a  lit¬ 
tle  consideration  toward  projector  main¬ 
tenance  if  we  expect  to  continue  to  be 
entertained  by  our  films. 

As  with  all  mechanical  apparatus 
where  there  are  revolving  shafts  and 
swiftly-moving  parts,  periodical  lubri¬ 
cation  is  essential  to  smooth,  qu:et  op¬ 
eration,  and  minimum  wear  and  tear. 
The  frequency  with  which  this  oiling 
should  take  place  depends,  of  course,  on 
the  amount  of  use  to  which  the  projector 
is  put.  Once  a  month  should  be  suf¬ 
ficient,  provided  the  machine  is  not  used 
excessively.  A  small  oil-can  shou’d  be 
used  and  the  oil  applied  sparingly,  be¬ 
ing  careful  to  wipe  all  the  excess  off 
the  projector  when  finished.  Lubricate 
the  upper  and  lower  reel-spindles,  the 
sprocket-shafts  and  any  other  place 
where  oil  cups  are  provided  or  where 
there  are  moving  parts.  Use  a  high 
quality  light  oil,  for  good  oil  is  a  cheap 
investment  in  this  case. 

Lamp  adjustment  varies  widely  in 
different  makes  and  models,  hence  noth¬ 
ing  very  specific  can  be  said  on  this 
point.  Proper  adjustment  is  very  im¬ 
portant,  however,  for  maximum  bril¬ 
liance,  and  should  not  be  overlooked. 
For  best  results,  the  reflected  images 
of  the  lamp  filament  should  be  thrown 
between  the  direct  images.  By  holding 
a  piece  of  white  paper  in  front  of  the 
lens-mount  with  the  lens  removed,  the 
lamp  filaments  are  projected  on  the 
paper.  If  the  projector  has  a  “still” 
clutch,  this  should  first  be  thrown  to 
stop  the  shutter  from  interfering.  The 
paper  is  then  moved  back  and  forth 
until  the  filaments  are  clearly  focused. 
Since  the  reflected  images  have  to  travel 
back  to  the  reflector  and  then  forward 
(Continued  on  Page  150) 


140  April,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


AMONG  THE  MOVIE  CLUBS 


INDIANAPOLIS  LISTENS  TO  S.  O.  F. — Members  of  the  Indianapolis  Amateur  Movie  Club  at  the  group’s 
March  meeting,  devoted  almost  entirely  to  amateur-made  16mm.  sound-on-film.  Left  to  right:  Lyons  B.  Ford, 
Dr.  Arthur  Richter,  Dr.  William  E.  Gabe,  L.  Dradfield,  President  (and  Projectionist),  G.  A.  delValle,  Oscar 
Peters,  Roger  Sneden,  Corresponding  Secretary  Elmer  Culbertson,  Vice-President  Al  Thomas,  Willard  Rey¬ 
nolds,  Jim  Makin,  Wilbur  Worl,  Treasurer  Al  Kaufmann  and  (in  foreground)  Secretary  Clarence  Wetzel. 


Philadelphia  Elects 

March  means  election  of  officers  at  the 
Philadelphia  Cinema  Club.  The  newly 
elected  officers  for  the  ensuing  year  are 
— President,  George  A.  Pittman;  Vice- 
President,  Arthur  J.  Hurth;  Secretary, 
James  R.  Maucher;  Treasurer,  Herbert 
L.  Tindall,  Jr. 

To  further  enlighten  the  members  in 
the  art  of  movie-making  we  are  showing 
a  series  of  educational  films  from  the 
library  of  the  Harmon  Foundation.  This 
series  will  run  into  the  fall  meetings 
and  it  is  proposed  that  each  film  be  aug¬ 
mented  by  a  lecture  to  be  given  by  one 
of  our  own  members.  Mr.  A.  L.  0.  Rasch 
initiated  the  series  with  an  enlightening 
talk  on  editing. 

A  new  feature,  namely  the  door-prize, 
was  introduced  by  George  Pittman,  the 
two  winning  members  each  receiving 
$1.50  in  War  Stamps.  Members  were 
asked  to  donate  10c  each  which  will 
provide  for  War  Stamps  to  be  drawn  at 
the  next  meeting. 

On  the  screen  we  were  entertained 
with  three  professional  sound  films — 
Eastman  Kodak  Company’s  “Cavalcade 
of  Color”;  a  film  of  North  Carolina, 
showing  the  Shenandoah  National  Park, 
the  East  Coast  and  the  Great  Smokies; 
and  a  film  of  Virginia,  featuring  the 
Luray  Caverns  and  other  beauty  spots 
of  this  state. 

FRANCIS  M.  HIRST, 

Publications  Chairman. 

Prize  8's  For  Westwood 

At  the  March  meeting  of  the  West- 
wood  Movie  Club  of  San  Francisco, 
three  prize-winning  8mm.  films  from  the 
library  of  The  American  Cinematogra¬ 
pher  were  screened.  These  were  “Cattle 
Country”  and  “New  Horizon,”  by  Ran¬ 
dolph  Clardy,  and  “Red  Cloud  Lives 
Again,”  by  Dr.  F.  R.  Loscher.  In  pre¬ 
senting  these  films  the  program  chair¬ 
man  read  excerpts  from  a  letter  from 


the  Editor  of  The  American  Cinema¬ 
tographer,  analyzing  each  of  these  films. 
This  commentary  was  appreciated  by 
everyone  present,  as  it  made  the  pic¬ 
tures  much  more  interesting  and  instruc¬ 
tive  than  if  they  had  been  presented 
“cold.”  As  an  experiment,  the  showing 
of  these  films  proved  quite  a  success, 
attracting  many  visitors  as  result  of 
publicity  in  the  San  Francisco  press. 
There  were  many  comments  to  the  effect 
that  this  was  one  of  the  best  evenings 
of  entertainment  and  education  the  Club 
had  had  in  many  months.  We  all  con¬ 
gratulate  The  American  Cinematog¬ 
rapher  on  this  fine  service  rendered  to 
movie  clubs.  The  showing  of  outside 
amateur  films  is  a  definite  stimulant  to 
the  making  of  better  movies  by  our  own 
members.  The  things  we  noted  most  in 
these  pictures  were  the  unusually  fine 
camera-angles,  the  composition,  and  the 
lighting,  in  all  three  films.  In  addition 
the  acting  in  “New  Horizon”  was  excep¬ 
tional  for  amateur  work. 

GEORGE  LOEHRSEN, 
Program  Chairman. 

Sound  In  Indianapolis 

The  March  meeting  of  the  Indianapolis 
Amateur  Movie  Club  was  originally 
planned  as  an  all-sound  meeting,  to  show 
wrhat  other  amateurs  were  doing  with 
16mm.  sound-on-films.  However,  the 
plans  were  changed  slightly  when  our 
Lyrical  Medico,  Lt.-Comm.  Dr.  Joe  So- 
vine,  now  on  duty  at  a  West  Coast  Navy 
Hospital,  sent  in  a  reel  of  350  feet  of 
beautiful  8mm.  Kodachrome,  appropri¬ 
ately  entitled  “Pacific  Suite,”  which  was 
greatly  enjoyed  by  all  the  members. 

The  sound-film  portion  of  the  program 
included  the  Long  Beach  Cinema  Club’s 
celebrated  “Fire  From  The  Skies,” 
screened  through  the  cooperation  of  The 


American  Cinematographer  and  Vice 
President  Mildred  J.  Caldwell  of  the 
LBCC.  This  film  was  unanimously  ac¬ 
claimed  the  best  picture  of  its  type  ever 
screened  by  the  Club,  and  one  of  the 
best  amateur  films  ever  seen.  After  see¬ 
ing  it,  we  decided  to  take  a  few  more 
pains  with  our  own  forthcoming  1943 
Club  Production!  Also  screened  was  a 
film  loaned  by  Kenneth  Hezzelwood  and 
Joe  Lucius  of  the  St.  Paul  Amateur 
Movie  Makers’  Club.  The  subject  was 
St.  Paul’s  annual  Winter  Carnival,  and 
the  sound  was  post-recorded  on  the 
original  film  with  Hezzlewood’s  “Auri- 
con,”  after  the  picture  was  shot,  but 
before  the  film  was  processed.  There  was 
no  small  amount  of  praise  from  the 
audience  for  both  of  these  filmers  for 
having  done  so  difficult  a  job  so  well. 

ELMER  M.  CULBERTSON, 
Corresponding  Secretary. 

Sound  and  Prize-winners 
for  8-16 

Furthering  its  educational  program, 
the  8-16  Movie  Club  of  Philadelphia 
highlighted  its  March  meeting  with  a 
lecture  by  George  Beggs,  sound  research 
engineer,  who  spoke  on  the  principles  of 
recording  and  amplification.  The  ensuing 
discussion  which  Mr.  Beggs  conducted 
proved  particularly  valuable  in  solving 
the  problems  of  the  members  who  had 
dvanced  beyond  the  early  stages  of  home 
record  cutting  and  amplification. 

Upon  completion  of  the  educational 
phase  of  its  meeting,  the  organization 
followed  with  its  regular  entertainment 
schedule  with  a  showing  of  “Nite  Life” 
and  “Mt.  Zao,”  secured  from  the  film 
library  of  The  American  Cinemato¬ 
grapher.  The  latter,  especially,  was  pro¬ 
nounced  a  beautiful  film. 

WALTER  J.  MASTERS. 


American  Cinematographer  •  April,  1943  141 


HERE'S  HOW  /  DID  IT 

By  OUR  READERS 


READERS  of  The  American  Cine¬ 
matographer  constantly  write  us 
for  answers  to  their  movie-making 
problems;  the  most  interesting  of  their 
questions  are  published  from  time  to  time 
in  our  “Here’s  How”  department.  But 
sometimes  they  turn  the  tables  on  us, 
and  send  in  hints  on  how  they  overcame 
various  movie-making  difficulties  for 
themselves.  Here’s  a  group  of  these  help¬ 
ful  hints  we  feel  will  be  of  aid  to  other 
filming  readers. 

Speeding  Up  Kodachrome 

Ice  revues  like  the  “Ice  Follies,”  “Ice- 
capades,”  etc.,  are  favorite  movie  sub¬ 
jects,  and  so  colorful  that  Kodachrome 
is  “a  natural” — except  for  one  thing :  the 
comparatively  slow  speed  of  the  Koda¬ 
chrome  emulsion,  which  usually  forces 
ordinary  folk  with  / : 2.5  and  /: 2.7  lenses 
to  shoot  at  8-frame  camera  speed,  which 
naturally  makes  the  action  move  at  twice 
normal  speed. 

I’ve  found  the  answer  to  this  problem 
by  hypersensitizing  my  film — after  ex¬ 
posure,  but  before  processing — with  mer¬ 
cury  vapor.  Depending  on  the  time  al¬ 
lowed  for  the  hypersensitizing  process, 
you  can  increase  the  speed  of  your  film 
from  75  to  150%  by  this  method.  That 
means  from  a  half-a-stop  to  a  stop,  or 
even  a  stop-and-a-half.  At  the  maxi¬ 
mum  it  turns  your  /:  2.5  lens  into  almost 
the  equivalent  of  an  /:1.6  objective,  and 
does  this  without  harming  the  color- 
rendition,  definition  or  graininess  of  the 
picture. 

It’s  easy  to  do.  I  shoot  8mm.,  and  I 
found  myself  a  glass  jar  (originally  a 
peanut-butter  can)  the  mouth  of  which 
was  just  the  right  size  to  hold  an  8mm. 
camera  spool  edgewise,  without  letting 
it  drop  through,  and  a  vacuum-seal 
coffee-can  big  enough  to  hold  the  glass 
jar  with  a  25-foot  spool  of  film  in  its 
mouth. 

In  the  bottom  of  the  glass  jar  I  put  a 
small  amount  of  mercury.  Above  it, 
standing  on  edge  in  the  mouth  of  the 
jar,  I  put  my  film,  on  its  25-foot  camera 
spool,  and  with  the  little  paper  band 
around  it  to  keep  the  film  from  unroll¬ 
ing.  Then  I  put  the  whole  thing  into  the 
tin  coffee-can,  replace  the  coffee-can’s 
metal  cover,  and  seal  it  up  with  tape 
so  it  is  air-tight. 

Then  I  let  my  hypersensitizer  stand  for 
at  least  48  hours  at  room  temperature, 
then  open  it  up,  and  send  the  film  to  be 
processed.  I’ve  since  learned  that  for 
spooled  film,  you  get  the  maximum  effect 
by  leaving  the  film  in  the  mercury  fumes 
for  a  week  or  ten  days.  If  you’re  in  a 
hurry,  you  can  speed  things  up  by  un¬ 
spooling  the  film  so  the  fumes  can  pene¬ 
trate  it  more  quickly;  in  that  case  you 
cut  the  time  down  to  about  36  to  40 
hours. 


Either  way,  you  can  get  a  stop  or  more 
increased  speed  out  of  your  film,  so  you 
can  shoot  at  normal  speed  where  other¬ 
wise  you’d  have  to  shoot  at  half-speed, 
or  use  an  / :  1.9  (or  faster)  lens. 

FRED  EVANS. 

Big-Screen  8mm. 

For  the  information  of  those  interested 
in  showing  8mm.  movies  on  auditorium- 
size  screens,  I  herewith  present  my  ex¬ 
periences  with  the  subject. 

« 

I  have  a  new  Keystone  A-8  8mm.  pro¬ 
jector  and  have  found  that  it  is  well 
suited  to  long  throws.  With  the  standard 
projection  lens  furnished  with  the  ma¬ 
chine  I  am  able  to  project  a  screen 
image  9  feet  7  inches  wide  at  a  distance 
of  56  feet.  The  projector  has  a  750- Watt 
lamp  and  the  screen  image  is  as  bright 
as  I  want  it  to  be. 

One  point  should  be  carefully  noted, 
however.  When  blowing  8mm.  movies 
up  to  9  feet  or  more,  or  anything  larger 
than  about  6  feet  wide,  it  is  necessary 
to  keep  the  audience  at  least  20  feet  from 
the  screen.  Closer  than  that,  the  image 
blurs  out.  Viewed  from  a  distance  great¬ 
er  than  20  feet  from  the  screen  the 
image  is  just  as  sharp  as  on  a  small 
screen. 

JOHN  F.  MEEKER. 

“Breezing”  in  the  Gate 

Though  the  performance  of  the  Bolex 
camera  I  use  for  professional  16mm. 
camerawork  is  excellent,  I  noticed  that 
in  some  instances  there  was  evidence  that 
the  film  was  “breezing”  slightly  in  the 
camera  aperture — that  is,  bowing  slight¬ 
ly,  so  that  the  picture  would  get  a  bit 
out  of  critical  focus  every  now  and 
then. 

I  cured  this  very  easily,  by  a  method 
which  ought  to  work  just  as  well  with 
other  kinds  of  cameras,  and  probably 
in  8mm.  as  well  as  in  16mm.  I  cut  out 
a  tiny  piece  of  Scotch  tape,  just  the 
size  of  the  16mm.  frame,  and  put  it  on 
the  aperture-plate  just  behind  the  pic¬ 
ture-taking  aperture.  This  is  just  enough 
to  hold  the  film  fiat  in  the  focal  plane, 
and  to  prevent  it  from  “breezing.”  I’ve 
shot  literally  hundreds  of  thousands  of 
feet  of  film  with  my  camera  fixed  that 
way,  and  with  no  damage  to  the  film. 

WILLIAM  A.  PALMER. 

Emergency  Splices 

It’s  embarrassing  when  the  film  breaks 
in  your  projector  in  the ,  middle  of  a 
show,  and  a  quickly-made  emergency 
splice  can  help  you  keep  the  show  run¬ 
ning  with  a  minimum  of  interruption. 
You  can  easily  supply  yourself  with 
ready-made  emrgency  splices  if  you  will 
stick  a  few  short  strips  of  Scotch  tape, 


just  the  width  of  your  film  (less  per¬ 
forations)  inside  your  projector-case. 
When  the  film  breaks,  just  slap  a  couple 
of  these  ready-cut  strips  on  the  film — 
front  and  back — and  you’re  ready  to  roll 
again.  If  the  Scotch  tape  doesn’t  cover 
the  perforations,  these  emrgency  splices 
will  even  go  through  the  projector  with¬ 
out  breaking. 

C.  WILLIAM  WADE. 

Cleaning  Lenses 

Even  the  best  of  the  so-called  “lens 
cleaning”  tissue  is  rough  enough  so  it’s 
likely  to  scratch  fine  lenses.  In  the 
studios  we  never  use  it.  Instead,  when 
we  have  to  clean  a  lens  we  wrap  a  little 
tuft  of  cotton  around  the  tip  of  one  of 
the  little  wooden  applicator  sticks  doc- 
toys  use,  dip  the  cotton  in  the  regular 
lens-cleaning  liquid  you  can  get  at  any 
optician’s  shop,  and  clean  the  lens  with 
this,  using  a  slow,  gentle  circular  mo¬ 
tion.  Afterward  we  dry  the  lens  with  a 
dry  cotton-covered  applicator. 

Several  things  are  important  in  this. 
First,  see  that  there’s  enough  cotton  on 
the  applicator  to  pad  the  end  of  the  stick 
so  the  wood  itself  doesn’t  touch  the 
lens.  (If  you  have  trouble  making  the 
cotton  adhere  to  the  stick,  moisten  the 
stick  with  water,  or  even  saliva,  before 
twisting  the  cotton  on.)  Second,  don’t 
use  too  much  of  the  cleaning  liquid; 
after  dipping  the  cotton  into  the  liquid, 
squeegee  the  excess  liquid  off  against  the 
mouth  of  the  bottle.  Finally,  never  scrub 
the  lens:  do  everything  gently,  and  use 
a  very  soft  camel’s-hair  brush  or  a 
small,  rubber  bulb  syringe  to  remove 
dust.  And  always  keep  the  lens  capped 
except  when  you’re  shooting! 

S.  L.  LENZ. 

Replacing  Photofloods 

Now  that  Photofloods  are  frozen,  every¬ 
one  is  looking  for  something  to  take  their 
place.  For  black-and-white,  several  of 
the  large-sized  Mazda  lamps,  and  partic¬ 
ularly  the  different  sizes  of  projector, 
stereoptican  and  spotlight  bulbs  will  do 
excellently.  But  they  are  too  red  for  use 
with  Kodachrome  unless  you  use  a  filter. 

However,  there  are  two  ways  of  get¬ 
ting  the  brighter  and  whiter  light  we 
need  for  Kodachrome  (when  we  can  get 
the  Kodachrome!)  One  is  to  use  regular 
house  lamps  with  a  step-up  transformer 
which  will  increase  the  voltage  by  one- 
third  to  one  half  or  more.  This  gives 
much  the  same  effect  as  a  Photoflood: 
a  very  intense,  white  light,  with  about 
a  2-hour  burning  period. 

The  other  way  is  to  do  what,  so  they 
say,  originated  Photoflood  bulbs.  There 
are  special  bulbs — usually  rated  at  from 
60  to  64  volts— made  for  lighting  rail¬ 
road  cars.  It  was  found  that  amateurs 
could  get  fine  photographic  light  by 
burning  these  bulbs  on  regular  110-volt 
house  current.  If  you  live  near  a  rail¬ 
road  center,  you  may  be  able  to  get  hold 
of  some  of  these  bulbs,  and  they’ll  do 
today  what  they  did  years  ago.  when 
they  started  the  Photoflood  idea  acci¬ 
dentally  on  its  way! 

A.  SMITH 


142  April,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


UNITE 

with  the  Motion  Picture  Industry 
LABOR  —  GUILDS  —  CRAFTS 

GIVE  NOW 

To 

THE 

AMERICAN 

RED 

CROSS 


j.  E.  BRULATOUR,  Inc. 

DISTRIBUTORS 

EASTMAN  FILMS 


16 

MM 

Y 

lome  M 

ovie  1 

Previews 

8 

MM 

RE-BOUND  BOOKS  WITH  BRAND- 
NEW  LOOKS 

Documentary,  400  ft.  16mm.  Koda- 

chrome. 

Filmed  by  Pat  Rafferty. 

When  the  average  amateur  attempts  to 
make  a  movie  about  his  business,  he  gen¬ 
erally  forgets  two  things.  The  first  of 
these  is  that  some  thread  of  story  is 
usually  necessary  to  make  it  palatable  to 
audiences.  The  second  is  that  he  should 
leave  nothing  untold — especially  in  close- 
ups — because  details  with  which  he  may 
be  expected  to  be  familiar  may  be  en¬ 
tirely  unfamiliar  to  audiences  who 
haven’t  his  day-to-day  contact  with  that 
particular  type  of  work. 

This  picture  is  one  of  the  compara¬ 
tively  few  which  fulfill  both  of  these 
conditions  almost  perfectly.  For  its 
thread  of  story,  it  tells  of  a  book,  bor¬ 
rowed  from  a  library  by  a  youngster, 
and  accidentally  tom  apart  in  an  al¬ 
tercation  with  a  friend.  From  this  point, 
it  follows  the  book  from  the  library  to 
the  firm  by  which  it  is  re-bound,  through 
all  the  mysterious  operations  of  rebind¬ 
ing,  until  it  finally  emerges  looking 
for  all  the  world  like  a  newly-purchased 
volume. 

The  major  part  of  the  picture  consists 
of  excellent  interior  scenes.  In  these, 
the  lighting  and  exposure  are  excellent, 
and  there  are  plenty  of  graphically  re¬ 
vealing  close-ups,  and  plenty  of  excel¬ 
lent  explanatory  titles.  In  fact,  with 
the  exception  of  the  fact  that  we  thought 
there  should  be  a  full-screen  close-up 
or  two  of  the  stitching  operation,  we 
couldn’t  find  anything  to  criticize  in  this 
film. 

WHEN  OCTOBER  COMES 

Scenic;  175  ft.  16mm.  Kodachrome. 
Filmed  by  Ray  Fowler. 

This  is  one  of  the  most  vividly  color¬ 
ful  presentations  of  autumnal  coloring 
we’ve  had  the  pleasure  of  screening. 
Photographically — as  regards  exposure 
and  composition — it  is  very  nearly  flaw¬ 
less. 

Unfortunately,  the  other  aspects  of 
production  fall  down  badly.  Filmer 
Fowler  has  made  a  praiseworthy  start 
by  showing  three  children  gathering  au¬ 
tumn  foliage,  and  keeping  a  fairly  logi¬ 
cal  and  obviously  well-planned  sequence 
of  movement  between  one  scene  or  se¬ 
quence  and  the  next.  He  fails,  however, 
to  tell  a  story.  The  story  could  be  sim¬ 
ple  enough — perhaps  a  few  introductory 
shots  of  the  children’s  mother  wishing 
she  had  some  autumn  foliage  to  decor¬ 
ate  the  home  for  Thanksgiving,  or  per¬ 
haps  the  children  studying  about  autumn 
in  school.  This  could  be  followed  by 
scenes  showing  the  children  (with  or 
without  their  parents)  deciding  to  go 
out  and  get  some.  The  actual  “going” 


needn’t  be  shown:  in  fact,  it  could  be 
concealed  by  a  gag,  such  as  a  close-up 
of  an  “A”  sticker  on  the  windshield  of 
the  family  car,  followed  by  a  title  “ — so 
we  won’t  tell  you  how  we  got  there!” 
Following  the  shots  of  the  actual  gath¬ 
ering  of  the  gorgeous  gold  and  orange 
leaves,  the  picture  could  be  quickly 
ended  by  a  few  shots  of  the  colorful 
leaves  being  put  into  decorative  use  at 
home  or  at  school. 

More  careful  cutting  would  be  very 
beneficial:  repeatedly  we  see  action 
started,  and  never  finished,  or  aggravat¬ 
ing  overlaps  of  action  between  succes¬ 
sive  scenes.  The  pictures  looks  as 
though  the  filmer  tried  to  edit  it  in  the 
camera,  and  almost  did  so,  but  forgot 
to  snip  out  these  false  starts  and  over¬ 
laps.  More  subtitles — colorful,  and  per¬ 
haps  worded  a  bit  poetically — would  also 
be  helpful. 

CERAMICS 

Documentary,  299  ft.  8mm.  Kodachrome. 
Filmed  by  Lorin  Smith. 

This  is  an  interesting  little  picture 
about  a  man  and  his  wife  whose  real- 
life  hobby  is  making  pottery.  Strung 
on  the  framework  of  a  visit  to  this 
couple  by  the  filmer’s  wife,  the  picture 
lets  the  couple  explain  how  they  make 
their  pottery.  It  is  told  with  excellent 
completeness,  using  the  flash-back  tech¬ 
nique  to  show  how  the  amateur  potters 
drive  to  the  clay  deposits  to  gather 
their  raw  material,  and  how  they  sub¬ 
sequently  work  it  into  pottery  bowls, 
dishes,  vases  and  ornaments. 

Both  the  photographic  and  the  pre¬ 
sentational  techniques  are  excellent. 
There  are  almost  enough  close-ups  of 
the  various  operations  ,and  abundant 
titles — excellently  made — tell  the  story 
clearly.  We  would  suggest,  though, 
that  most  audiences  would  rather  like 
to  know  how  the  rocky-looking  clay 
we  see  the  potters  gathering  becomes 
the  moist  plastic  that  is  molded  on  the 
wheel.  And  it  would  seem  better  tech¬ 
nique,  too,  if  no  shots  of  the  husband 
at  his  wheel  were  seen  until  the  two 
ladies  enter  the  workshop  and  bring 
the  story  to  that  stage  of  the  pottery¬ 
making. 

THE  MINOR  MINER 

Scenario-type  home  movie;  50  ft.  8mm. 

Kodachrome. 

Filmed  by  Wendell  Taylor. 

Here’s  a  very  clever  approach  to  the 
problem  of  making  a  movie  of  Junior 
and  giving  him  something  dramatically 
interesting  to  do.  Photographically,  the 
picture  has  distinct  shortcomings;  but 
the  cleverness  of  the  staging  lifts  it 
well  above  these  faults.  The  handling 
of  the  mine  cave-in  is  one  of  the  best 
bits  of  amateur  direction  and  staging 
we’ve  seen  in  a  long  time. 


It  is  unfortunate  that  the  introductory 
and  closing  sequences  could  not  have 
been  filmed  under  more  favorable  light¬ 
ing  conditions.  Kodachrome  is  never  at 
its  best  when  shot  under  such  heavy 
shade,  and  in  this  case,  the  contrast 
between  these  scenes  and  the  rest  of 
the  picture,  which  was  shot  under  nor¬ 
mally  bright  sunlight,  puts  the  film  at 
a  decided  disadvantage.  These  initial 
and  concluding  scenes  should  have  been 
shot  at  a  more  sunny  time  of  day,  or  in 
a  different,  and  sunnier,  location. 

The  editing  and  continuity  of  the  pic¬ 
ture  could  be  improved  by  closer  cutting 
and  the  removal  of  overlapping  action, 
as  for  example  in  the  long-shot  where 
the  youngster  is  shown  approaching  the 
mine  from  the  outside,  followed  by  a 
reverse-angle  shot  of  the  same  action 
made  from  inside  the  mine.  Here  the 
cut  should  have  been  made  when  the  boy 
was  at  approximately  the  same  spot  in 
both  scenes,  rather  than  showing  him 
walking  right  up  to  the  entrance  in  one 
shot  and  then  apparently  bounding  back 
ten  or  fifteen  feet  in  the  following  scene, 
and  going  through  the  same  action  all 
over  again. 

The  picture  could  stand  more  footage 
and  more  titles.  Perhaps  an  entire  new 
sequence  could  be  added  at  the  be¬ 
ginning,  showing  the  boy  being  repri¬ 
manded  for  some  minor  offense  as  his 
father  leaves  for  work  in  the  morning 
— perhaps  told  he  can’t  go  to  the  movie, 
or  some  similar  punishment  which  would 
give  him  reason  for  additional  footage 
and  for  saying,  via  title,  that  he  doesn’t 
see  any  reason  for  being  alive  if  he 
can’t  do  so-and-so.  This  would  furnish 
a  needed  dramatic  contrast  to  his  spok¬ 
en  title  at  the  end  of  the  film  in  which 
he  says  he  is  glad  to  be  alive.  This  and 
other  spoken  titles,  by  the  way,  should 
be  intercut  with  close-ups  of  the  person 
who  is  speaking. 

A  TRIP  TO  DREAMLAND 

Scenario-travelogue,  150  ft.  8mm.  Koda¬ 
chrome. 

Filmed  by  Earl  Everley. 

Here’s  another  little  picture  which 
points  the  way  to  how  you  can  with 
very  little  new  shooting  revise  your 
last-season’s  vacation  shots  into  an  in¬ 
teresting  picture.  The  story  thread  in 
this  case  is  provided  by  an  amateur 
who,  coming  home  from  work  exhaust¬ 
ed,  sinks  into  his  chair  after  dinner  and, 
starting  to  read  of  films  that  would  have 
won  national  honors,  drifts  off  to  sleep 
and  dreams  that  his  own  vacation  epic 
has  done  likewise. 

The  picture  is  at  its  best  in  these 
intimate  tie-in  shots.  The  photography 
and  lighting  are  good,  and  the  planning 
and  direction  excellent,  with  many  lit¬ 
tle  “human-interest”  touches  which  make 
(Continued  on  Page  148) 


i44  April,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


NATIONAL  CARBON  COMPANY,  INC. 

Unit  of  Union  Carbide  and  Carbon  Corporation 


CARBON  SALES  DIVISION,  CLEVELAND,  OHIO 
General  Offices:  30  East  42nd  St.,  New  York,  N.  Y. 

Branch  Sales  Offices: 

NEW  YORK  .  PITTSBURGH  .  CHICAGO  •  ST.  LOUIS  •  SAN  FRANCISCO 


American  Cinematographer  •  April,  1943 


145 


Photography  of  the  Month 

(Continued  from  Page  135) 

unusually  poor  (and  greasy)  make-up, 
which  allowed  the  cinematographers  no 
chance.  The  closing  action  of  the  wild- 
horse  stampede  was  spectacularly  han¬ 
dled,  both  directorially  and  photographi¬ 
cally.  Some  of  these  scenes  brought  forth 
spontaneous  applause  from  the  pre¬ 
view  audience,  and  all  who  saw  the  pic¬ 
ture  will  certainly  look  forward  to  see¬ 
ing  more  of  Meehan’s  work  in  Techni¬ 
color. 

EDGE  OF  DARKNESS 

Warner  Bros.’  Production. 

Director  of  Photography:  Sid  Hickox, 

A.S.C. 

Special-effects  by  Willard  Van  Enger, 

A.S.C. 

This  picturization  of  the  Norwegian 
“underground’s”  strife  against  the  Nazis 
offers  both  director  of  photography  Sid 
Hickox,  A.S.C.,  and  director  Lewis  Mile¬ 
stone  the  best  opportunities  either  has 
had  in  a  long  time.  As  if  realizing  this, 
they  have  worked  together  to  make  “Edge 
of  Darkness”  one  of  those  rare  produc¬ 
tions  in  which  direction  and  photography 
seem  working  genuinely  together  for 
dramatic  effect. 

Hickox  has  kept  a  note  of  realism  in 
his  camerawork  which  very  artfully  con¬ 
ceals  the  fact  that  when  the  dramatically 
significant  moments  arrive,  his  camera¬ 
work  is  excellently  attuned  to  the  neces¬ 
sary  mood.  At  times,  by  deliberately 
underplaying  his  camera  and  lighting 
effects,  he  makes  his  treatment  serve  as 
an  enhancing  counterpoint  to  the  dra¬ 
matic  values  of  the  action.  It  is  by  long 
odds  the  most  effective  work  we’ve  seen 
from  his  camera  in  a  long  time. 

The  special-effects  work  credited  to 
cinematograher  Willard  Van  Enger, 
A.S.C.,  and  director*  Lawrence  Butler  is 
generally  excellent,  though  there  are  two 
or  three  miniature  scenes  which  are  dis¬ 
tinctly  “miniaturish,”  and  do  not  help  the 
picture. 

Ray  June 

(Continued  from  Page  132) 

sets  were  L-shaped  painted  flats,  with 
maybe  a  door  or  a  window  in  them  if  nec¬ 
essary,  but  oftener  just  a  couple  of  walls 
— sometimes  with  half  the  furniture 
painted  on  them. 

“But  there  was  one  point  which  made 
up  for  all  the  other  crudities.  This  was 
the  trick  work.  Putting  thrills  in  those 
old-time  serials  called  for  a  lot  of  it — 
and  there  were  no  special-process  de¬ 
partments  in  those  days.  The  man  at  the 
camera  did  it  all,  right  in  the  camera. 

“There  was  one  advantage  in  using 
those  old  Pathes,  though.  When  you  had 
to  do  a  double-  or  triple-exposure  shot, 
you  could  develop  a  few  frames  of  a 
test-strip  and  put  the  developed  negative 
in  the  aperture  of  the  camera,  and  line 
up  the  next  part  of  your  shot  with  it  by 
focusing  on  it  through  the  little  peep¬ 


hole  and  magnifier  at  the  back  of  the 
box. 

“But  matching  up  action  was  another 
thing.  There  were  no  frame-counters  on 
those  early  boxes,  and  the  footage- 
counters  weren’t  as  accurate  as  .the  ones 
they  put  on  8mm.  cameras  today;  if  you 
were  lucky,  they  might  tell  you  within 
five  or  ten  feet  of  where  you  actually 
were.  Later  on,  some  of  the  boys  added 
Veeder  type  frame  and  footage  counters; 
but  at  the  time  I’m  talking  about,  the 
best  way  to  be  sure  of  your  footage  was 
to  count  the  crank-turns,  for  you  knew 
that  each  turn  of  the  crank  exposed  8 
frames — one-half  foot — and  if  something 
happened,  say,  ten  feet  from  the  start 
of  a  scene,  you  could  hit  it  pretty  accur¬ 
ately  by  beginning  from  a  marked  start¬ 
ing-point  and  counting  off  twenty  turns 
of  your  crank.  Another  nice  little  com¬ 
plication  of  those  days  was  that  often 
you’d  make  the  two  or  three  different 
parts  of  a  multiple-exposed  trick  scene 
several  days  or  weeks  apart,  and  mean¬ 
time  you’d  have  each  trick-shot  taped  up 
in  its  own  little  can,  with  cryptic  mark¬ 
ings  scrawled  all  over  the  can.  Often 
you’d  have  parts  of  a  dozen  or  more  of 
these  shots  lying  all  over  the  place. 

“I’ll  never  forget  the  thrill  I  had  when 
the  studio  finally  splurged  and  bought 
me  a  Bell  &  Howell.  It  was  so  much  more 
advanced,  and  so  much  more  accurate 
for  my  trick  shots,  that  I  was  in  a 
regular  cameraman’s ^  heaven!” 

When  World  War  I  came  along  in 
1917,  June  naturally  enlisted,  and  just 
as  naturally  was  assigned  to  the  motion 
picture  division  of  the  Signal  Corps. 
There,  his  professional  experience  stood 
him  in  too,  good  stead.  He  was  assigned 
to  the  famous  Signal  Corps  camera 
school  at  Columbia  University,  and  spent 
his  time  training  others — often  men  who 
had  never  seen  a  camera  before — and 
seeing  them  shipped  promptly  overseas, 
while  he  remained  at  home,  breaking  in 
more  photographic  rookies,  and  occa¬ 
sionally  “covering”  some  news-event  for 
the  Army.  He  must  have  been  a  good 
teacher,  though,  for  many  of  the  men  he 
taught  have  since  become  well-known 
figures  in  the  industry;  some  of  them  as 
cameramen,  others  as  directors  and  even 
producers. 

After  the  armistice,  he  went  back  to 
his  old  job  of  shooting  serials,  for  the 
same  producers.  When  they  moved  to 
California,  so  did  he.  But  his  first  really 
important  assignment  on  the  coast  was 
with  a  different  producer — Marshall 
Neilan,  who  was  in  those  days  one  of 
the  industry’s  best-known  producer-di¬ 
rectors.  On  his  first  picture  for  Neilan — 
a  silent-film  version  of  Booth  Tarking- 
ton’s  “Penrod” — he  had  an  experience 
which  amazed  him.  He  and  Neilan’s  reg¬ 
ular  cinematographer,  Dave  Kesson,  were 
to  handle  the  “production”  camerawork, 
he  found,  while  a  specialist  in  trick- 
photography  was  to  have  charge  of  the 
trick-work  of  making  “Penrod,”  day¬ 
dreaming  in  school,  imagine  he  had 
learned  fly,  and  float  lazily  up  out  of  his 
seat  and  through  the  ceiling,  only  to  re¬ 


turn — suddenly — when  his  teacher  rudely 
addresser  herself  to  his  physical  body  in 
the  classroom. 

“Why,”  asked  June,  “do  you  have  to 
call  in  a  trick  specialist?  On  those  serials 
we  used  to  take  people  through  brick 
walls,  and  do  all  sorts  of  much  harder 
tricks,  right  in  the  camera.” 

To  make  a  long  story  short,  the  work 
of  the  much-touted  “specialist”  didn’t 
come  up  to  expectations,  and  June  was 
given  a  chance  to  try  doing  the  shot  his 
way.  His  shot  stayed  in  the  picture — 
and  he  himself  stayed  with  Mickey 
Neilan  for  several  years. 

Finally,  in  1929,  his  first  big  oppor¬ 
tunity  came.  An  independent  producer 
named  Roland  West  was  making  one  of 
the  first  talkies  for  United  Artists’ 
release,  and  he  hired  Ray  June  to  direct 
its  photography.  That  picture,  “Alibi,” 
introduced  Chester  Morris  on  one  side 
of  the  cameras,  and  Ray  June  on  the 
other.  It  was  one  of  the  best  and  most 
spectacularly  successful  of  the  early 
sound-films,  not  only  as  a  box-office  hit, 
but  photographically,  as  well.  And  for 
the  following  seven  years,  the  United 
Artists  executives  saw  to  it  that  Ray 
June  stayed  at  their  studio,  and  en¬ 
trusted  their  best  pictures  to  his  cam¬ 
eras.  Among  them  was  Samuel  Gold- 
wyn’s  “Arrowsmith”  which,  to  this 
writer’s  mind,  stands  out  as  one  of  the 
two  or  three  most  perfect  photographic 
jobs  of  the  last  dozen  years,  and  along 
with  Jimmie  Howe’s  memorable  “Trans¬ 
atlantic” — the  first  really  well-photo¬ 
graphed  talkie — stands  eternally  to  the 
discredit  of  the  industry  which  failed  to 
give  them  merited  Academy  Award  rec¬ 
ognition  in  their  respective  years. 

Nearly  seven  years  ago,  June  moved 
out  to  Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer,  where  he 
has  remained  ever  since,  one  of  the  fore¬ 
most  artists  in  a  studio  with  more  than 
its  ordinary  share  of  outstanding  cine¬ 
matographers.  At  the  Culver  City  studio 
Ray  has  proven  his  versatility  by  suc¬ 
cessfully  handling  virtually  every  type 
of  production  from  frothy  musicals  and 
parlour  comedies  to  heavy  dramas  and 
mystery  films.  His  vei’satility  has  also 
brought  him  another,  less  enviable  as¬ 
signment:  whenever  any  of  the  studio’s 
other  cinematographers  falls  sick  or 
(whisper  it  softly!)  encounters  baffling 
photographic  difficulties,  Ray  is  sent  in 
as  the  studio’s  unfailing  pinch-hitter — 
and  always  delivers.  One  of  these  tasks 
was  directing  the  photography  of  what 
is  probably  the  all-time  most  spectacular 
musical  sequence  ever  screened  —  the 
celebrated  “A  Pretty  Girl  Is  Like  A 
Melody”  number  from  “The  Great  Zieg- 
feld.”  So  incredibly  complex  was  the 
timing  of  the  camera-movement,  the 
changes  of  lighting,  the  withdrawing  of 
the  successive  curtains,  and  the  inter¬ 
timing  of  these  with  music  and  action, 
that  the  studio  had  begun  to  consider  it 
impossible — until  Ray  June  did  it. 

His  approach  to  his  work  is  charac¬ 
teristic  of  this.  “Like  anybody  else,”  he 
says,  “I  study  the  script  beforehand, 
and  try  to  plan  out  in  my  own  mind  the 
most  suitable  treatment  for  the  story 


46 


April,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


JUST  RIGHT 


WITH  the  emphasis  on  getting  the  most 
out  of  every  foot  of  available  film,  it  is  a 
big  help  to  know  that  one  of  the  three 
Eastman  negative  films  is  just  right  for 
every  shot — in  the  studio  or  on  location, 
indoors  or  out.  Eastman  Kodak  Company, 
Rochester,  N.  Y. 

J.  E.  BRULATOUR,  INC.,  Distributors 

Fort  Lee  Chicago  Hollywood 


PLUS-X  SUPER-XX 

for  (general  studio  use  alien  little  liight  is  available 

BACKGROUXD-X 

for  baekigronnds  and  (general  exterior  work 

EASTMAN  NEGATIVE  FILMS 

American  Cinematographer  •  April,  1943  147 


and  players.  Then  I  try  to  come  as  close 
to  that  ideal  as  I  can;  usually,  when  I 
see  the  completed  picture  I  am  only  too 
aware  of  how  far  short  I’ve  fallen.  But 
if  you  take  your  work  seriously  to  heart, 
I  suppose  you  can’t  help  feeling  that 
way. 

“One  thing  I  try  always  to  keep  in 
mind:  that  a  good  cameraman  must 
never  let  himself  become  willing  to  do 
things  always  the  same  way.  It’s  one 
thing  to  develop  an  original  style:  it’s 
something  very  different  to  let  yourself 
fall  into  a  routine  and  do  things  in 
routine  fashion,  just  because  it’s  easier 
or  quicker. 

“I  think  a  big  help  in  avoiding  this 
is  to  study  the  work  of  other  cinema¬ 
tographers,  so  that  you  can  keep  fully 
in  step  with  the  times  not  only  in  the 
strictly  technical  things,  but  in  thought 
— in  your  approach  to  your  work.  Prog¬ 
ress  in  cinematography  isn’t  merely  a 
matter  of  advances  in  our  equipment 
and  materials:  it  is  much  more  a  mat¬ 
ter  of  changes  in  our  conception  of  what 
constitutes  good  photography. 

“There  are  certain  enduring  funda¬ 
mentals,  of  course :  but  we  may  put  them 
together  in  new  ways,  to  gain  effects 
that  are  more  in  keeping  with  the  times. 
This  applies  equally  to  both  technical 
and  artistic  treatment.  Incandescent 
lighting,  for  example,  is  considered  rela¬ 
tively  modern:  yet  the  first  artificially- 
lit  scenes  I  ever  filmed  were  made  under 
incandescent  lamps  about  twenty-eight 
years  ago. 

“Only  we  used  them  differently.  We 


would  have  a  bank  of  half-a-dozen  or 
so  lamps — big  blue  ones — on  the  floor  on 
one  side  of  the  camera,  and  a  similar 
bank  on  the  other  side.  Then  we’d  have 
a  flat,  overall  lighting  from  a  third  bank 
of  ‘inkies’  placed  overhead,  with  back¬ 
lighting  coming  from  a  few  arc  spot¬ 
lights  behind  and  above  the  actors.  Con¬ 
trast  that  with  a  modern  set,  lit  almost 
entirely  with  our  modern  Mazda  spot¬ 
lights,  with  scarcely  a  floodlight  (and 
never  a  ‘bank’)  in  sight.  It’s  the  same 
with  our  ideas  about  definition,  diffu¬ 
sion  and  almost  everything  else.  Maybe 
we’re  re-using  ideas  we  used  once  before : 
but  today  we  do  it  with  a  new  twist  that 
attunes  it  to  contemporary,  thought. 
Today’s  popular  increased-depth  tech¬ 
nique  may  be  similar  in  principle  to  the 
/:  64  sharpness  demanded  of  cameramen 
thirty  years  ago — but  there’s  a  world  of 
difference,  not  only  in  the  way  it  is  used, 
but  in  why  it  is  used.  Then,  we  did  it 
to  conceal  the  limitations  of  our  me¬ 
dium;  today,  we  do  something  similar 
in  order  to  take  fuller  advantage  of  the 
potentialities  of  our  medium. 

“It’s  easy  to  talk  about  ‘the  good  old 
days,’  and  remember  how  in  those  days 
before  the  business  grew  so  big  and 
bustling,  we  had  so  much  fun.  But  the 
fun  is  still  there,  though  it  has  changed 
to  the  very  different  enjoyment  of  try¬ 
ing  constantly  to  keep  ahead  of  the 
parade,  both  technically  and  mentally. 
That’s  a  challenge  that’s  perpetually 
worthwhile  for  all  of  us,  especially  as 
the  scope  of  our  work  is  so  constantly 
growing  in  its  effectiveness,  and  in  our 


ability  to  influence  and  help  other 
people!”  END. 


Home  Movie  Previews 

(Continued  from  Page  144) 
the  action  ring  true  to  most  audiences. 

The  actual  vacation  scenes,  while  ex¬ 
cellently  photographed,  don’t  measure 
up  to  this  introductory  sequence.  They 
lack  the  story-continuity  which  could 
so  easily  have  been  added,  especially 
since  the  same  cast  went  on  the  va¬ 
cation.  The  picture  also  needs  a  strong¬ 
er  ending,  to  point  up  the  fact  that 
it  was  all  a  dream.  This  could  easily 
have  been  done  by  adding  a  few  scenes 
in  which  the  filmer  found  himself  ap¬ 
parently  receiving  the  desired  honors, 
and  was  rudely  awakened  by  his  wife 
who  wanted  help  with  the  dish-washing 
or  some  similar  domestic  task.  Most 
complete  titling  would  also  help  this 
picture. 

THE  LITTLE  BUCCANEERS 

Scenario  type  home  movie;  140  ft.  16mm. 

Kodachrome. 

Filmed  by  Ted  and  Fay  Geurts. 

This  is  an  excellent  example  of  clever¬ 
ly  capable  “home  movie”  production. 
Instead  of  just  making  a  disconnected 
series  of  haphazard  shots  of  the  family’s 
new  sailboat  and  the  neighborhood 
youngsters,  these  filmers  have  built  up 
a  clever,  yet  simple,  little  story  of  juve¬ 
nile  piracy  inspired  by  seeing  Dad  put¬ 
ting  the  finishing  touches  on  the  craft. 
This  gives  a  valid  excuse  for  putting 
the  youngsters  in  colorful  costumes,  and 
for  getting  plenty  of  close  shots  of  all 
the  children.  The  thread  of  story, 
cbmaxed  by  a  clever  surprise  ending, 
makes  this  home  movie  a  film  interest¬ 
ing  to  audiences  beyond  the  mere  family 
or  neighborhood  group  who  know  the 
young  actors. 

Technically  the  picture  is  very  well 
handled.  The  exposure  and  compositions 
are  very  good,  though  in  the  early 
scenes  the  cameramen  apparently  forgot 
that  cross-lightings  and  back-lightings 
— especially  in  color — usually  require 
from  a  half-stop  to  a  stop  more  exposure 
than  a  straight  reflected-light  meter 
reading.  This,  incidentally,  can  be 
avoided  by  using  the  meter  for  incident- 
light  rather  than  reflected-light  read¬ 
ings. 

Continuity  is  excellent,  and  the  edit¬ 
ing  and  titling  are  very  nearly  perfect. 
The  simple  camera-trick  by  which  a 
rope  is  animated  to  spell  out  the  word¬ 
ing  of  the  main  and  end  titles — done  by 
placing  the  camera  upside-down  in  re¬ 
lation  to  the  title-card,  and  then  pulling 
the  rope  which  has  previously  been  ar¬ 
ranged  to  form  the  necessary  letters — 
gives  a  cleverly  professional  touch  to 
the  film.  It  is  unfortunate,  however, 
that  the  same  color-scheme — white  let¬ 
tering  on  a  dark-blue  background — was 
not  used  throughout  the  subtitles,  as 
well  as  the  main  title. 


R-K-O  Boom 

(Continued  from  Page  130) 
balance  with  the  approximately  450-lb. 
load  of  a  standard  high-speed  black- 


FOR  LIGHT  ON  EASTERN  PRODUCTION -- 

C.  ROSS 

For  Lighting  Equipment 

As  sole  distributors  East  of  the  Mississippi  we  carry  the  full  and 
complete  line  of  latest-type  Inkie  and  H.I.-Arc  equipment 
manufactured  by 

MOLE-RICHARDSON,  Inc. 

Hollywood  -  California 

Your  requirements  for  interior  or  exterior  locations  taken  care 
of  to  the  last  minute  detail  anywhere 

☆ 

MOTOR  GENERATOR  TRUCKS 
RENTALS  SALES  SERVICE 

☆ 

CHARLES  ROSS,  Inc. 

333  West  52nd  St.,  New  York,  N.  Y.  Phones:  Circle  6-5470-1 


148 


April,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


UNCLE  SAM  COMES  FIRST 

For  ©  Lighting  Equipment! 


—amt  Pul  AaijA, 

"Well  Done!” 


IV  Kcsgs* 


gP’ 


0*  <  5^ 


>^>:r  >*>*•  -5  >*;<*  ;f 

r^V  ,  V>  S^\.,Q  »*  „>.0' 


;» *>!  * 

\^S  K  0*  *  0*  *  S0^  ^  o9C< 

..„.  '%  s<-'v  ?**  C0**k*  -  s" 


^  >***;>  «.«* 
^VnV  *-  vc^'v  ^ 

r0^°  P  VP  \  3<# 

°  p\^& 


a^s 


0* 


Way  back  in  1939  the  Army  asked  us  to  design  and  manufacture  special,  lightweight,  portable 
searchlights  and  generators  for  military  field  use. 

For  nearly  four  years  we've  been  doing  it.  Where  these  units  are,  and  what  they've  been  doing, 
are  military  secrets — but  they  have  been  coming  from  our  shops  in  constantly  increasing  numbers,  to¬ 
gether  with  studio  lighting  equipment’  for  the  motion  picture  sections  of  the  Armed  Services. 

That's  why  our  friends  in  the  motion  picture  industry  have  found  us  unable  to  deliver  our  usual 
studio  lighting  products. 

But  our  Service  and  Rental  Departments  are  still  at  your  disposal  to  help  you  keep  the  cameras 
turning  "for  duration"  .  .  .  And  when  Victory  is  won,  what  we  are  learning  now  will  lead  the  way  to 
still  better  Mole-Richardson  studio  electrical  equipment. 


Mole-Richardson.  inc. 


ELECTRICAL  EQUIPMENT 
HOLLYWOOD,  CALIFORNIA 


MILITARY  AND  STUDIO 
9  3  7  NO.  SYCAMORE  AVE. 


American  Cinematographer  •  April,  1943  149 


FOR  COMPLETE  CONTROL 


Of  All 
Exposure 
Variables 
in  Ground, 

Aerial  and 
Mapping 
Photography 

CONTRAST 


Ifl®  R\WQ®  Meter 


EXPOSURE 


We  invite  members  of  the  Photographic 
Section  of  our  Armed  Services  and 
those  of  our  Allies  to  write  for  our  new 
booklet  on  the  use  of  the  Norwood 
Exposure  Meter  in  aerial  still,  mapping 
and  Motion  Picture  Photography. 


and  is  connected  to  the  boom’s  under¬ 
carriage  by  steel  cables  fore  and  aft 
which,  passing  through  pulleys  anchored 
to  “dead  men'’  at  each  end  of  the  track, 
form  what  is  virtually  an  endless-cable 
arrangement,  by  which  when  the  tractor 
moves  in  one  direction,  the  boom  moves 
automatically  in  the  opposite  direction. 

Speeds  up  to  10  miles  per  hour  may 
be  obtained  this  way,  and  with  a  skillful 
operator  at  the  controls  of  the  “Cat,” 
the  boom  may  be  started  and  stopped 
with  unusual  smoothness,  especially 
when  it  is  considered  that  the  camera 
rides  at  the  end  of  so  long  an  arm,  and 
is  82  feet  from  the  ground. 

The  camera  is  mounted  so  that  it 
shoots  straight  down  at  the  ground, 
upon  which  any  desired  type  of  minia¬ 
ture  set  may  be  constructed.  When  de¬ 
sired,  the  bombings  may  be  very  real¬ 
istically  simulated  by  dropping  minia¬ 
ture  bombs  from  beside  the  camera. 
When  it  is  not  necessary  to  follow  the 
bombs  to  their  target,  electrically-con- 
trolled  explosive  charges  planted  in  the 
set  may  of  course  be  used. 

As  designer  Martin  expressed  it,  “The 
boom  is  hardly  the  most  finished  piece 
of  equipment  in  the  industry,  but  it  was 
constructed  at  an  extremely  low  cost, 
almost  entirely  of  reclaimed  materials — 
and  it  does  what  we  want  it  to.  More¬ 
over,  when  the  steel  underframe  is 
wanted  for  another  marine  set,  the  boom 
can  be  disassembled  within  a  few  hours, 
and  reassembled  again  when  needed,  for 
in  our  adaptation  of  the  chassis  we 
haven’t  in  any  way  lessened  the  useful¬ 
ness  of  the  steel  frame  for  the  purpose 
for  which  it  was  originally  built.  Every 
component  we’ve  added  is  attached  by 
bolts,  rather  than  welding  or  riveting, 
so  what  we  have  is  really  a  dual-pur¬ 
pose  unit  which  can  quickly  be  converted 
to  serve  either  purpose,  yet  with  no  sac¬ 
rifice  of  strength  or  efficiency  in  either 
use.”  END. 


★  ★ 


PHOTO  RESEARCH  CORPORATION 


15024  Devonshire  St.,  San  Fernando,  California  •  Telephone  San  Fernando  3352 


and-white  camera  and  two  average-sized 
men.  The  design,  however,  makes  provi¬ 
sion  for  the  increased  loads  which  may 
at  times  be  necessitated  if  miniature 
planes,  foreground-pieces,  or  additional 
operators  may  be  needed. 

The  cables  which  hoist  the  camera  into 
position,  and  raise  or  lower  the  boom, 
are  operated  from  compressed-air 
winches  which  are  powered  from  a  port¬ 
able  air-compressor.  These  units,  too, 
were  reclaimed  from  other  service  in  the 
studio. 

Current  to  power  the  camera  is  pro¬ 


vided  by  a  small  gasoline-powered  gen¬ 
erator  mounted  on  one  corner  of  the 
boom’s  underframe.  This  supplies  a  much 
more  constant  power-supply  than  bat¬ 
teries,  and  since  miniatures  are  shot 
silent,  the  noise  of  the  generator  is  of 
course  not  objectionable. 

It  was  originally  intended  to  use  an 
electrically-powered  winch  as  the  motive 
power  for  moving  the  boom  along  its 
track.  As  such  winches  were  not  avail¬ 
able,  however,  a  Caterpillar  tractor  was 
pressed  into  service.  The  tractor  travels 
along  a  straight  path  beside  the  track, 


Take  Care  of  Your  Camera 

(Continued  from  Page  140) 
to  the  white  paper,  they  will  not  appear 
as  bright  as  the  direct  images.  Once 
they  are  properly  distinguished,  the  lamp 
socket  can  be  adjusted  until  the  re¬ 
flected  filaments  are  between  the  direct 
filaments.  This  adjustment  is  very 
rarely  necessary  though,  except  when 
new  lamps  or  lamps  of  different  wat- 
tages  are  used.  It  might  also  be  well 
to  mention  here  that  a  bulb  of  the  cor¬ 
rect  brilliance  is  almost  equally  im¬ 
portant.  One  that  doesn’t  provide  enough 
illumination,  or  on  the  other  hand  one 
that  is  so  bright  that  it  washes  out  the 
picture,  doesn’t  help  your  reputation  as 
a  good  projectionist.  Select  one  that 
is  proper  for  the  average  distance  and 
screen-size  at  which  your  pictures  are 
shown. 

So  much  for  the  camera  and  projector. 
Your  films  rank  next  in  importance  and 
your  friends  judge  your  cinematographic 
ability  accordingly.  There  are  many 


150  April,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


New  York  •  CHICAGO  •  Hollywood 
WORLD’S  MOST  COMPLETE  LINE  OF  MOTION  PICTURE  SOUND  EQUIPMENT 


various  ways  of  arranging  those  reels 
...  by  dates,  subject-matter,  type,  lo¬ 
cation,  ad  infinitum.  Whatever  your 
choice,  those  pictures  for  the  most  part 
can  never  be  replaced,  are  priceless,  and 
become  more  valuable  as  time  goes  on. 
They  will  last  indefinitely  if  given  just 
a  reasonable  amount  of  care.  Why  not 
dress  them  up  in  their  finest  form  now 
instead  of  considering  them,  as  poten¬ 
tial  prospects  ? 

To  do  this  may  require  excessive  use 
of  the  scissors,  but  be  frank  with  your¬ 
self.  Isn’t  it  much  more  satisfying  and 
interesting  to  look  at  10  feet  of  properly- 
exposed  action-shots  on  the  screen  than 
100  feet  of  poorly-exposed,  dull  scenes 
that  appeal  to  no  one  but  are  there  just 
because  they  happen  to  be  part  of  the 
reel  ?  Maybe  some  friends  will  aid  in 
giving  an  honest  opinion,  if  you  are, 
like  most  of  us,  biased  in  your  own  be¬ 
half,  and  can’t  stand  scrapping  so  much 
film.  At  any  rate,  don’t  spare  the 
scissors. 

If  at  all  possible,  some  sort  of  a  se¬ 
quence  should  be  built  up  between  in¬ 
dividual  scenes.  This  should  have  been 
taken  care  of  at  the  time  of  filming, 
but  a  few  titles  here  and  there  are  a 
great  help  in  bridging  the  gap  between 
unrelated  scenes.  They  should  be  kept 
at  a  minimum,  however,  lest  they  defeat 
their  own  purpose.  Brief,  direct-to-the- 
point  wording  is  sufficient,  and  easier 
on  the  audience.  Sometimes  a  clever, 
humorous  title  adds  snap  to  an  ordinary 
scene,  if  used  in  the  right  place.  A  pre¬ 
view  of  all  your  films  before  the  edit¬ 
ing  is  begun  is  advisable,  as  it  re¬ 
freshes  the  memory  and  suggests  prop¬ 
er  sequences.  Written  or  mental  notes 
should  be  made  of  all  shots  worth  con¬ 
sidering  for  your  new  reels. 

Once  the  cutting  has  begun,  every 
precaution  should  be  taken  to  keep  the 
scraps  of  film  off  the  floor.  There  are 
many  different  ways  for  the  amateur  to 
go  about  this  editing  systematically.  By 
placing  the  coils  of  film  on  a  large 
table  with  an  identifying  piece  of  paper 
on  each,  much  time  is  saved  and  the 
film  is  protected  from  dirt  and  finger¬ 
marks.  In  this  manner  the  pieces  can 
be  spliced  together  in  organized  fashion 
as  planned.  A  little  more  elaborate 
set-up  can  be  made  by  driving  nails  in 
a  piece  of  plywood,  about  3  or  4  inches 
apart.  The  film  can  then  be  hooked 
over  the  nails  which  are  numbered  to 
correspond  with  an  index  sheet,  listing 
each  scene.  When  the  film  is  all  prop¬ 
erly  arranged,  long  leaders  should  be 
placed  on  the  beginning  and  end  of  the 
reel.  This  saves  wear  and  tear  on  the 
actual  picture  area  and  enables  the  film 
to  be  started  from  the  very  beginning. 
Unexposed,  low-cost  positive  film  is  ex¬ 
cellent  for  this  purpose,  or  if  this  is  not 
available,  any  old  discarded  film  will 
serve  in  a  pinch.  A  very  good  idea 
is  to  save  for  this  purpose  all  the  leader 
from  the  laboratory  reels  your  film  is 
returned  on  after  processing.  Another 
thing,  always  use  reels  of  the  maximum 
footage-size  allowed  by  your  projector. 
It  saves  that  constant  rethreading  which 


is  so  boresome  to  an  audience. 

With  the  main  part  of  the  job  ac¬ 
complished,  it  is  a  wise  procedure  to 
clean  the  films  to  rid  them  of  any  dust 
they  may  have  accumulated  when  in  the 
process  of  editing.  Any  good,  reliable 
film  cleaner  will  do  if  instructions  are 
carefully  followed.  This  completed,  the 
next  step  is  to  label  the  film  containers 
for  easy  accessibility  at  all  times.  A 
typewritten  label  covered  with  a  piece 
of  Scotch  transparent  tape  makes  an 
attractive  identification  which  is  easily 
read  and  will  stick  permanently  on  the 
carton  or  tin.  Sometimes  people  prefer 
to  label  the  film  leader  also.  If  the 


leader  is  frosted  or  blank  film,  this 
can  be  done  by  using  India  ink  and  is 
an  added  precaution  in  selecting  the  de¬ 
sired  film. 

There  is  much  to  be  said  in  favor  of 
presenting  films  with  a  musical  back¬ 
ground  supplied  either  by  a  simple  elec¬ 
tric  phonograph  or  a  more  elaborate 
automatic  record  changer  or  perhaps  a 
dual-turntable  assembly.  If  you  have 
never  tried  playing  records  with  your 
movies  you  are  in  for  a  pleasant  sur¬ 
prise  when  you  try  it.  You  don’t  have 
to  be  a  sound  technician  to  handle  the 
job  properly.  Common-sense  will  tell 
you  the  right  type  of  music  to  select 


DeVRY — first  manufacturers  to  receive  the  coveted  Army-Navy 
"E”  Award  for  high  achievement  in  the  production  of  35  mm. 
Motion  Picture  Sound  Equipment,  assures  you  war-tested,  war- 
proved  DeVRY  precision  projector  and  sound  system  develop¬ 
ments  far  beyond  previously  accepted  standards  of  excellence. 
When  Peace  comes  —  watch  DeVRY!  BUY  U.  5.  WAR  BONDS 


FIRST 

FOR  | 
DeVRY 


American  Cinematographer  •  April,  1943 


151 


for  each  film.  At  the  conclusion  of  each 
selection,  fade  out  the  music  gradually 
by  turning  off  the  volume  control  and 
fade  in  the  new  recording  by  gradually 
increasing  the  volume.  This  makes  for 
more  harmonious  blending  and  is  as  im¬ 
portant  as  fades  and  dissolves  are  to  a 
movie.  The  dual-turntable  referred  to 
above  has  the  added  advantage  of  giv¬ 
ing  continuous  music  without  interrup¬ 
tion  by  blending  the  end  of  one  selec¬ 
tion  with  the  beginning  of  another,  simi¬ 
lar  to  a  lap-dissolve  in  a  film. 

In  conclusion,  let  us  resolve  to  treat 
ALL  our  photographic  equipment  as  it 
deserves  to  be  treated.  Let  us  learn 
to  get  the  most  out  of  our  hobby,  no 
matter  how  meager  or  elaborate  our 
equipment  is.  If  we  can  do  this  we  have 
many  pleasant  hours  of  entertainment 
in  store  for  us  .  .  .  not  only  in  the 
near  future,  but  for  a  lifetime.  END. 


Accent  on  Pantomime 

(Continued  from  Page  138) 

stage  admit  the  splendid  training  the 
cinema  affords  players  who  will  study 
and  absorb  the  successful  effect  they 
may  achieve  before  the  camera  lens. 
Such  a  critic  as  Elliot  Norton  of  the 
Boston  Post  had  this  to  say  of  Paul 
Lukas,  as  Kurt  Muller  in  the  stage  play, 
“Watch  on  the  Rhine,”  (which,  by  the 
way,  has  lately  been  made  into  a  pic¬ 
ture),  “  .  .  .  But  Mr.  Lukas  can  tell 
you  what  his  man  is  thinking  and  feel¬ 
ing,  and  even  what  he  has  thought  and 
felt  for  the  past  years,  with  his  eyes 
alone. 

“Because  playhouses  are  big  and  ges¬ 
tures  or  vocal  displays  are  generally 
considered  more  effective,  most  actors 
of  the  stage  are  not  now  masters  of 
pantomime.  Movie  actors,  on  the  con¬ 
trary,  compelled  to  face  a  curious  and 
demanding  camera,  have  a  chance  to  de¬ 
velop  pantomimic  ability.  It  is  per¬ 
fectly  possible  that  Mr.  Lukas’  incred¬ 
ibly  successful  use  of  it  in  this  play  is 
a  matter  of  film  training.” 

Examples  of  excellent  silent-film  pan¬ 
tomimic  technique  are  available  to  most 
of  us  through  the  film  rental  libraries, 
most  of  which  still  carry  both  16mm. 
and  8mm.  reductions  of  some  of  the 
better  silent  features.  Organized  film- 
study  groups,  I  believe,  can  also  obtain 
16mm.  prints  of  the  pictures  in  the 
library  of  the  Museum  of  Modern  Art, 
which  is  an  unexcelled  collection  of  the 
most  magnificent  professional  produc¬ 
tions  from  the  very  earliest  experiments 
up  to  the  more  recent  years  of  sound. 

In  using  any  of  these  silent  films,  by 
the  way,  it  is  most  important  to  remem¬ 
ber  that  they  were  photographed  for 
projection  at  the  silent  standard  speed 
of  16  frames  per  second,  and  if  run 
faster  (as  on  sound  projectors)  they  will 
seem  laughable,  and  their  action  exag¬ 
gerated.  Run  them  at  their  correct 
speed,  even  though  some  of  them  might 
have  a  musical  sound-track  added.  You’ll 
get  more  benefit  by  viewing  them  silent, 
at  the  correct  silent-picture  speed,  than 
by  listening  to  the  added  music  which 


necessitates  speeding  the  projector. 

Charlie  Chaplin  has  been  heralded  as 
the  greatest  of  silent-film  pantomimists : 
but  you’ll  find  much  to  learn  from  al¬ 
most  any  of  the  outstanding  players  of 
the  silent-picture  days.  If  you  can  get 
hold  of  some  of  Charles  Ray’s  old  si- 
lents,  you’ll  find  a  lot  to  study  in  his 
acting,  for  many  actors  have  gone  on 
record  as  considering  him  an  even  more 
expressive  pantomimist.  There’s  a  lot 
to  support  this  contention:  in  one  of  his 
pictures  I  believe  he  held  a  single 
close-up  for  more  than  200  feet  (that’s 
over  80  feet  16mm.)  in  which  he  not 
only  kept  the  audience  interested,  but 
made  every  frame  play  an  important 
part  in  advancing  the  story!  And  he 
had  no  dialog  to  help  him  in  this 
achievement:  he  had  to  carry  it  solely 
on  facial  pantomime. 

Some  of  the  Museum’s  German  pic¬ 
tures — especially  “Variety”  and  “The 
Last  Laugh,”  with  Emil  Jannings — are 
also  outstanding  studies  in  pantomime. 
The  latter  picture,  by  the  way,  was  told 
entirely  in  pantomime,  without  a  single 
subtitle. 

Among  the  more  easily  available 
rental  films,  don’t  overlook  films  like 
“The  Covered  Wagon.”  In  it — espe¬ 
cially  among  the  character  players  like 
Alan  Hale,  Tully  Marshall  and  Ernest 
Torrance,  you’ll  find  plenty  to  study  in 
putting  over  characterizations  by  visual 
means. 

Some  of  the  outstanding  amateur 
films  have  shown  careful  planning,  com¬ 
bining  story  continuity  with  a  player  or 
players  with  understanding  of  audience 
appeal  through  the  part  they  porti'av, 
using  silent  art  instead  of  elocution  as 
their  medium  of  expression.  James  A. 
Sherlock’s  “Nation  Builders”  was  a  fine 
example  of  a  complete  photoplay. 

A  short,  one-man  production  of  ut¬ 
most  simplicity  impressed  many  at  a 
Duncan  Little  Party,  a  few  years  ago 
— a  color  reel  too — from  the  lens  of  that 
serious,  cinema-minded  Fred  C.  Ells, 
“Consider  the  Lilies.”  Silent  eloquence 
on  the  part  of  a  man  and  his  blossoms! 

Dr.  Robert  Loscher’s  “Red  Cloud 
Lives  Again,”  and  Randolph  Clardy’s 
“New  Horizon,”  both  Grand  Prize  win¬ 
ners  in  The  American  Cinematog¬ 
rapher’s  International  Amateur  Movie 
Contests,  show  that  visual-minded  act¬ 
ing  and  direction  can  be  applied  to 
8mm.  as  well  as  to  16mm.  or  35mm. 

“Tarzan,  Jr.,”  with  which  William 
A.  Palmer  and  Ernest  Page  won  the 
first  of  these  Contests  ten  years  ago  is 
another  worthy  of  study,  and  one  which 
shows  that  children  are  just  as  capable 
projecting  sincere,  pantomimic  charac¬ 
terizations  as  are  adults.  Maybe  more 
so,  since  they  have  fewer  inhibitions. 

J.  Kinney  Moore’s  “Prize  Winner”  is 
another  amateur  film  that  deserves 
study  if  you’re  interested  in  characteri¬ 
zation  and  story  presentation.  And 
those  who  had  the  privilege  of  seeing 
the  films  turned  out  by  Richard  Lyford, 
Jr.,  before  he  went  from  the  amateur 
ranks  to  the  professionalism  of  the 
Disney  Studio  and,  more  recently,  into 
the  Army’s  photographic  service,  can 


vouch  for  the  fact  that  there  was  at 
least  one  amateur  who  could  turn  out 
a  chiller  melodrama  with  almost  as 
great  force  and  convincingness  as  a 
professional  Boris  Karloff  thriller.  More 
recently,  young  David  Bradley’s  fea¬ 
ture-length  films  like  “Oliver  Twist” 
and  “Peer  Gynt”  have  been  amateur 
productions  with  a  definite  accent  on 
visual  characterization. 

A  look  at  almost  any  of  these  films 
is  enough  to  make  you  want  to  get 
busy  and  try  to  turn  out  an  equally  fine 
picture  of  your  own.  Unfortunately, 
under  today’s  conditions,  not  many  of 
us  can  do  that,  though  it  might  be 
possible  if  a  sufficiently  organized  and 
enthusiastic  group  banded  together  and 
pooled  their  film,  transportation,  spare 
time  and  other  resources. 

But  after  all,  the  most  thoroughly 
satisfying  pleasure  enjoyed  by  all  ama¬ 
teur  movie  producers  is  the  realization 
that  theirs  is  a  hobby  for  combined  tal¬ 
ents  and  abilities,  and  which  offers  un¬ 
limited  possibilities.  And  this  pleasure 
can  be  enjoyed  almost  as  much  in  its 
mental  aspect  of  planning  and  anticipa¬ 
tion  as  in  the  actual  realization. 

During  this  crisis,  time  for  relaxa¬ 
tion  is  precious.  Many  of  our  friends 
have  been  called  into  uniform;  others 
follow  the  clock  around  in  the  War  In¬ 
dustries.  But  now  and  then  we  should 
make  it  a  point  to  get  together  at  our 
cinema  club — at  your  house,  or  at  mine 
— and  look  over  some  of  these  old  reels, 
talk  over  new  ones,  and  plan  outlines 
and  scripts  for  future  films. 

Maybe  it  will  be  only  a  matter  of  talk 
and  paper  planning,  but  it  will  prove  a 
worthwhile  relaxation,  and  one  which 
will  help  your  future  picture-making. 
Think  in  terms  of  camera-angles  and 
lighting,  of  cuts  and  transitions.  Above 
all,  think  in  terms  of  plain,  direct  act¬ 
ing  and  visual  story-telling  not  wholly 
dependent  upon  titled  speeches  or  re¬ 
corded  words. 

Compare  notes  with  your  group;  get 
up  group  parties  to  see  the  good  movi  ;s 
at  your  local  theatre,  so  that  you  can 
analyze  the  technique  together,  and  in 
the  inevitable  post-party  discussion,  try 
to  reduce  it  to  terms  of  workable  home- 
movie  practice.  And  as  you  grow  more 
actively  conscious  of  the  how  and  why 
of  continuity  and  visual  story-telling, 
you’ll  find  you’ve  gained  something 
which  will  make  your  own  movies  better 
in  that  longed-for  day  when,  after  Vic¬ 
tory,  we  can  get  back  to  our  normal 
activities  once  more!  END. 


A  Job  for  Your  Projector 

(Continued  from  Page  137) 

say,  in  an  awed  tone — “My  God!  An 
American  girl!” 

When  we  put  on  our  shows,  how  they 
ate  up  any  little  bit  of  entertainment 
we  could  give  them — !  They  were  so 
starved  for  it,  our  jokes  didn’t  need  to 
be  funny — our  singing  could  be  pretty 
bad  (it  was,  too!) — our  dancing  miles 
below  the  Fred  Astaire  class — but  they 
loved  it  just  the  same.  You  only  had 


152  April,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


to  open  your  mouth  and  they’d  laugh 
and  applaud  as  enthusiastically  as  though 
you  were  giving  them  the  greatest  show 
on  earth.  And  if  you  could  work  some 
“home  town”  color  into  your  lines — you 
know,  like  “On  our  way  from  Holly¬ 
wood  we  had  to  stop  over  in  Scranton — ” 
you’d  bring  the  house  down.  There  was 
sure  to  be  a  boy  from  Scranton,  or 
Okmulgee,  or  Hattiesburg  in  the  crowd, 
and  you  could  bet  he’d  yell  out,  “Gee, 
that’s  my  home  town!  How  is  the  old 
burg,  anyway?”  and  feel  a  lot  better 
for  days  because  he’d  seen  somebody 
who  had  just  been  through  his  home 
town. 

I’ll  let  you  imagine  how  they’d  go 
for  really  good  humor  dished  out  from 
a  sound-track  by  Jack  Oakie,  or  Laurel 
and  Hardy,  or  Bob  Hope  or  Red  Skel¬ 
ton  .  .  .! 

As  I’ve  said,  the  films — up-to-date  and 
in  16mm. — are  ready.  But  they  aren’t 
much  good  without  projectors.  And 
you  know  what  it’s  like  getting  pro¬ 
jectors — especially  16mm.  sound  pro¬ 
jectors — these  days.  The  Army  and  Navy 
have  been  buying  all  they  could  get 
their  hands  on,  for  training  purposes 
here  and  (under  the  Army’s  Special 
Service  Division)  for  entertainment 
abroad.  But  they’ve  nowhere  near 
enough  to  take  care  of  all  those  half- 
forgotten  big  and  little  posts  that  stretch 
from  Iceland  through  Africa,  Iran  and 
India  to  the  Solomons  and  Alaska. 

So  the  Editor  of  this  magazine  and 
I  have  asked  General  F.  H.  Osborn, 
the  head  of  the  Army’s  Special  Serv¬ 
ice  Division,  if  America’s  amateurs  and 
16mm.  professionals  could  have  the  privi¬ 
lege  of  giving  or  loaning  their  projectors 
for  this  overseas  service.  He  told  us 
that  “The  Special  Service  Division  will 
gladly  accept  as  gifts  16mm.  sound  pro¬ 
jectors  if  they  are  not  older  than  1938 
models  .  .  .  Projectors  donated  will  be 
shipped  to  troops  overseas.  Shipping 
instructions  may  be  secured  through 
the  Special  Service  Division  of  the  Army 
Supply  Force,  Distribution  Branch.” 

This  means  that  if  you’ve  got  a  16mm. 
sound-on-film  projector — any  make — 
there’s  a  job  for  it  overseas  that’s  just 
as  vital  to  the  welfare  of  our  boys  as 
packing  a  gun.  I  know  there  are  a 
lot  of  amateurs  who  have  sound  pro¬ 
jectors,  and  plenty  of  16mm.  profes¬ 
sionals  who  have  two  or  three  ma¬ 
chines,  of  which  they  could  spare  at 
least  one.  I  hope  you’ll  see  your  way 
clear  to  sending  these  machines  to  the 
boys  overseas,  where  they’ll  do  such 
a  very  big  job  helping  our  own  boys 
carry  on  with  the  happy,  fighting  spirit 
we  know  they’ve  got. 

Sure — I  know  16mm.  sound  projectors 
represent  an  investment  of  several  hun¬ 
dred  dollars;  I’ve  got  one  myself,  and 
a  good  one.  But  ask  yourself  just  how 
much  your  projector  will  be  worth  to 
you  if  the  morale  of  our  boys  at  the 
front  cracks,  and  the  Nazis  and  Japs 
win  .  .  .!  How  much  is  it  worth  to 
you  beside  the  knowledge  that  some¬ 
one  you  know — your  son,  your  husband, 
the  kid  next  door — has  gotten  down 


into  that  deadly  rut  of  feeling  nothing 
matters  .  .  .  just  because  he’s  lost  touch 
with  the  realities  of  being  a  normal, 
American  boy  .  .  .  because  he’s  had  so 
little  recreation  he  just  turns  into  an 
almost  mindless  machine  that  plods  on 
and  works  and  fights,  with  no  outlet 
for  the  humor  and  relaxing  happiness  of 
a  free  man —  ? 

I  know  what  the  answer  is  as  far  as 
I’m  concerned.  My  projector — it’s  brand- 
new;  I  got  it  just  before  I  left  for 
Africa — is  going  abroad.  I’ve  packed  it 
up  and  sent  it  on  its  way  with  only 
one  string  attached — that  it  must  not 
stay  in  this  country  .  .  .  that  it  must 
go  abroad,  to  the  places  where  our  boys 
are  fighting  to  keep  our  country  one 
in  which  we’re  free  to  own  projectors  if 
we  wish,  to  shoot  movies  if  we  wish, 
and  to  live  a  life  full  of  freedom  and 
happiness.  I  hope  mine  is  only  the 
first  of  hundreds  to  go  where  our  boys 
need  them  so  badly!  END. 


Academy  Awards 

(Continued  from  Page  131) 

tion  combine  so  vividly.  Yet  on  analysis 
you’ll  notice  that  much  of  the  color  is 
actually  subdued,  toned  down  either  in 
the  actual  set  or  costume,  or  toned 
down  by  Shamroy’s  careful  use  of  effect- 
lightings,  so  that  while  you  get  an  over¬ 
all  impression  of  strong  color,  you  get 
it  actually  without  being  chromatically 
surfeited.  This  reviewer  particularly 
liked  Shamroy’s  use  of  vigorous  effect- 
lightings,  even  though  some  of  them 
seemed  skating  a  bit  close  to  the  danger¬ 
line  of  extreme  low-key  lighting.  This 
treatment,  too,  made  possible  the  use  of 
many  very  striking  portrait-lightings  in 
the  closer  shots  of  the  principals.  In¬ 
deed,  your  strongest  after-recollection 
of  ‘The  Black  Swan’  is  of  some  of  the 
effect-lighted  close-ups  of  Tyrone  Power 
and  Maureen  O’Hara.” 

Cinematographer  Shamroy  says,  “It  is 
an  honor  I  deeply  appreciate  to  have 
been  associated  with  two  productions — 
black-and-white  and  color — in  one  year 
which  gave  me  such  opportunities  that 
my  fellow  cinematographers  twice  felt 
my  work  worthy  of  nomination  for  our 
highest  honors,  and  for  selection  as  the 
year’s  best  example  of  natural-color 
cinematography.  The  way  the  choice 
fell  between  my  two  pictures  is,  I  think, 
extremely  significant  of  the  part  natural- 
color  cinematography,  whether  by  Tech¬ 
nicolor  or  by  any  other  process,  is  com¬ 
ing  to  play  in  our  work.  In  black- 
and-white  cinematography,  we  have 
reached  a  saturation-point  in  artistic 
and  technical  achievement;  most  of  us 
have  done  everything  that  can  be  done 
with  light  and  lenses  in  black-and-white. 
We  must  constantly  rack  our  brains  to 
find  something  really  original  in  mono¬ 
chrome  camerawork  .  .  .  and  we  usually 
fail. 

“But  color  adds  a  new  dimension  to 
our  scope,  whether  for  realism,  for  pic¬ 
torial  effect,  or  for  dramatic  strength. 
The  simple  fact  of  color  adds  something 
not  even  the  best  of  us  can  hope  to 


achieve  in  black-and-white,  and  we  have 
not  even  begun  to  scratch  the  surface 
of  the  possibilities  of  this  new  and 
infinitely  more  expressive  medium;  we 
won’t  for  a  very  long  time.  Today, 
most  of  our  studios  seem  to  consider 
color  as  chiefly  an  added  attraction  for 
musicals:  but  my  experience  has  con¬ 
vinced  me  it  can  be  even  more  valuable 
to  almost  every  other  type  of  produc¬ 
tion — not  only  ‘action’  pictures,  but  the 
heavily  dramatic  stories  we  have  always 
done  in  monochrome.  I  am  eagerly 
looking  forward  to  the  day  when  I  may 
have  a  chance  to  explore  the  creatively 
photodramatic  possibilities  of  color  for 
a  dramatic  picture.  We’ve  seen  many 
great  cinematographic  achievements  in 
monochrome  in  pictures  of  this  type:  but 
I  am  sure  that  once  our  greatest  camera- 
artists  have  the  opportunity  to  exercise 
their  creative  skill  similarly  in  color, 
we  will  see  them  eclipse  everything 
they  — •  or  the  industry  —  have  ever 
achieved  before.  It’s  significant  that 
most  of  our  “production”  cinematog¬ 
raphers  have,  like  me,  started  their 
first  color  productions  more  or  less  un¬ 
der  protest — and  that  all  of  us,  once 
we’ve  found  out  what  an  expressive  me¬ 
dium  color  is,  hate  to  go  back  from 
color  to  monochrome  again. 

“In  closing,  I  want  to  extend  my 
deepest  appreciation  to  the  men  who 
composed  my  crew  on  ‘The  Black  Swan’ 
— to  my  Operative  Cinematographer, 
Bud  Mautino;  to  the  two  Technicolor 
Technicians,  Capt.  Clifford  Shirpser,  now 
with  the  Army  Air  Force  in  India,  and 
Paul  Hill;  to  Assistant  Cameraman  A1 
Lebovitz,  now  Technical  Sergeant  Lebo- 
vitz  of  the  U.  S.  Marine  Corps,  and  to 
my  Gaffer,  Clarence  Punter.  Their  un¬ 
failing  collaboration  played  a  very  great 
part,  indeed,  in  making  ‘The  Black  Swan’ 
a  picture  our  fellow-professionals  could 


TELEFILM 

(incorporated! 

direct  16  MM 

SOUND 

USED  BY: 

►  Douglas  Aircraft 

►  General  Elec.  (Welding  Series) 

►  Boeing  Aircraft 

►  North  American  Aviation 

►  U.  S.  Dept,  of  Interior 

►  U.  S.  Dept,  of  Agriculture 

►  Santa  Fe  Railroad 

►  Washington  State  Apple 

Commission 

►  Standard  Oil  of  Calif. 

►  Salvation  Army 

and  Many  Others 
A  BETTER  JOB  FASTER- 

MORE  ECONOMICAL! 

TELEFILM 

INCORPORATED 
603?  Hollywood  Blvd.,  HOLLYWOOD.  CALIF. 

Gladstone  5748 


American  Cinematographer  •  April,  1943  153 


single  out  for  the  honor  they  gave  it.” 

The  other  nominations  in  the  color 
division  were  “Arabian  Nights,”  (Uni¬ 
versal),  photograph  by  Milton  Krasner, 
A.S.C.,  with  Capt.  William  V.  Skall  and 
W.  Howard  Greene  as  his  Technicolor 
associates;  “Captains  of  the  Clouds,” 
(Warner  Bros.),  photographed  by  Sol 
Polito,  A.S.C.,  with  Capt.  Wilfrid  Cline, 
A.S.C.,  as  Technicolor  associate,  Major 
Elmer  G.  Dyer,  A.S.C.,  Charles  A.  Mar¬ 
shall,  A.S.C.,  and  Lt.  Winton  Hoch, 
A.S.C.,  in  charge  of  aerial  photography, 
and  special-effects  photography  by  Byron 
Haskin,  A.S.C.,  and  Rex  Wimpy,  A.S.C.; 
“Jungle  Book,”  (Korda-United  Artists), 
for  which  the  Academy  slighted  director 
of  photography  Lee  Garmes,  A.S.C.,  and 
named  only  his  Technicolor  associate, 
W.  Howard  Greene,  A.S.C.;  “Reap  the 
Wild  Wind,”  (Paramount),  photographed 
by  Victor  Milner,  A.S.C.,  with  Capt.  Wil¬ 
liam  V.  Skall,  A.S.C.,  as  Technicolor  as¬ 
sociate,  with  special-effects  photography 
by  Gordon  Jennings,  A.S.C.,  and  Farciot 


BUY 

WAR 

BONDS 


this"EYE"sks  into 

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B&H  Taylor-Hobson-Cooke 
Cine  Lenses  do  more  than  meet 
current  technical  demands.  They 
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anticipatesfuture  improvements  in 
film  emulsions.  They  are  THE 
long-term  investment  lenses. 
Write  for  literature. 

BELL  &  HOWELL  COMPANY 

Exclusive  world  distributors 

1848  Larchmont  Avenue, Chicago 

New  York:  30  Rockefeller  Plaia 
Hollywood:  716  N.  LaBrea  Ave. 
Washington,  D.  C.:  1221  G  St.,  N.  W. 
London:  13-14  Great  Castle  St. 


Edouart,  A.S.C.,  and  underwater  camera¬ 
work  by  Lt.  Dewey  Wrigley,  A.S.C.;  and 
“To  the  Shores  of  Tripoli,”  (20th  Cen¬ 
tury-Fox),  photographed  by  Edward 
Cronjager,  A.S.C.,  with  Capt.  William 
Skall  as  Technicolor  associate.  It  is  an 
unusual  and  highly  fitting  climax  to 
Capt.  Skall’s  many  years  of  specializa¬ 
tion  in  Technicolor  camerawork  that 
practically  all  of  his  final  year’s  work 
before  going  on  active  service  with  the 
U.  S.  Army  Air  Force  should  comprise 
three  out  of  the  six  color  productions 
nominated  for  the  industry’s  highest 
photographic  honor. 

When  we  reviewed  “Reap  the  Wild 
Wind,”  a  year  ago,  we  said  of  the  special- 
effects  work  of  Gordon  Jennings,  A.S.C., 
and  Farciot  Edouart,  A.S.C.,  “When  next 
year’s  Academy  Awards  are  passed  out, 
we  confidently  expect  to  see  Gordon  Jen¬ 
nings,  A.S.C.,  and  Farciot  Edouart,, 
A.S.C.,  step  forward  to  claim  the  one  for 
special  photographic  effects.  ‘Reap  the 
Wild  Wind’  would  be  bereft  of  both  its 
wind  and  much  of  its  wildness  if  you  re¬ 
moved  the  innumerable  scenes  in  which 
these  two  artists  have  brought  sea  and 
storm  into  the  confines  of  a  studio  tank- 
stage.  Their  work,  with  the  possible 
exception  of  one  or  two  miniatures 
which  could  well  have  been  retaken,  is 
a  convincing  tribute  to  the  skill  of  mod¬ 
ern  special-effects  and  transparency 
technicians.”  This  year’s  richly-deserved 
win  makes  it  twice  in  a  row  for  these 
redoubtable  specialists  in  camera  trick¬ 
ery — another  tradition-breaking  “first,” 
if  our  memory  serves  aright. 

Four  awards  for  scientific  or  technical 
achievement  were  made  this  year,  all 
of  them  of  Class  II,  which  carries  with 
it  a  plaque,  though  in  at  least  one  in¬ 
stance  the  achievement  so  recognized 
wpuld  seem  so  basic  as  to  merit  the 
Class  I  or  statuette  award.  It  is  ex¬ 
tremely  unfortunate  that  the  commit¬ 
tees  in  charge  of  making  these  awards 
tend  traditionally  to  be  ultra-conserva¬ 
tive — perhaps  because  final  decisions 
often  hinge  on  debates  between  cinema¬ 
tographers,  sound  engineers  and  labora¬ 
tory  technicians,  neither  of  which  may 
be  expected  to  be  fully  conversant  with 
what  is  and  what  is  not  genuinely  im¬ 
portant  in  the  others’  fields.  The  reports 
on  these  awards  should  certainly  be  more 
specific,  as  well,  giving  more  detailed  in¬ 


formation  on  the  device  or  process  being 
honored,  and  wasting  less  space  in  glori¬ 
fying  the  Academy’s  very  questionable 
interest  in  technical  and  scientific  ad¬ 
vances. 

Unquestionably  the  most  far-reaching 
of  the  technical  advances  honored  this 
year  was  in  the  development,  by  Daniel 
B.  Clark,  A.S.C.,  and  his  associates  at 
the  20th  Century-Fox  Camera  Depart¬ 
ment,  of  a  radically  new  system  of  cal¬ 
ibrating  photographic  lenses  by  photo- 
electrically-metered  measurements  of 
the  amount  of  light  actually  transmit¬ 
ted.  If  applied  on  a  national  scale,  it 
should  prove  a  revolutionary  advance, 
not  alone  in  studio  cinematography,  but 
in  all  phases  of  both  professional  and 
amateur  motion  picture  and  still  photog¬ 
raphy. 

The  plaque  awarded  to  Carroll  Clark, 
F.  Thomas  Thompson  and  the  RKO  Art 
and  Miniature  Departments  for  the  de¬ 
sign  and  construction  of  a  moving  cloud 
and  horizon  machine  extends  recognition 
to  a  development  of  particular  import¬ 
ance  in  these  days  where  large-scale 
marine  and  air  scenes  must  of  necessity 
be  filmed  on  a  studio  stage,  or  not  at  all. 
The  same  is  true  of  the  award  made  to 
Robert  Henderson  and  the  Paramount 
Studio  Engineering  and  Transparency 
Departments  for  the  design  and  con¬ 
struction  of  adjustable  light  bridges  and 
screen  frames  for  transparency  process 
photography.  The  award  made  to  Daniel 
J.  Bloomberg  and  the  Republic  Studio — 
Republic’s  first  Academy  recognition — 
for  a  device  for  marking  action  negative 
for  pre-selection  purposes  is  well-mer¬ 
ited  recognition  of  a  device  and  method 
which  results  in  a  worthwhile  saving  of 
film  and  laboratory  expenditure,  and  an 
improvement  in  the  ultimate  product. 

Other  awards  in  the  technical  field 
include  that  for  1942’s  best  sound  re¬ 
cording,  given  to  Col.  Nathan  Levinson 
and  the  Warner  Bros.,  Sound  Depart¬ 
ment  for  their  recording  of  “Yankee 
Doodle  Dandy;”  the  two  statuettes  for 
the  best  achievements  in  both  black- 
and-white  and  color  art-direction,  very 


154 


April,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


deservedly  won  by  the  20th  Century- 
Fox  team  of  Richard  Day  and  Joseph 
Wright,  and  the  award  for  the  best  film¬ 
editing,  given  to  Daniel  Mandell  for 
editing  the  Goldwyn-RKO  production 
“Pride  of  the  Yankees.” 

An  international  note  was  added  in 
the  bestowal  of  four  Special  Awards 
(certificates)  for  achievement  in  docu¬ 
mentary  film  production  to  the  makers 
of  documentaries  from  the  U.  S.  Navy, 
Australia,  the  U.  S.  S.  R.,  and  the  Spe¬ 
cial  Service  Division  of  the  U.  S.  Army. 
The  pictures  so  honored  were,  respec¬ 
tively,  “The  Battle  of  Midway,”  photo¬ 
graphed  in  16mm.  Kodachrome  by  Com¬ 
mander  John  Ford,  Lt.  Gregg  Toland, 
A.S.C.,  Photographer  Sterling  Barnett, 
and  Photographer  (2cl.)  J.  P.  MacKen- 
zie  of  the  U.  S.  Navy,  and  released  in 
35mm.  Technicolor;  “Kokoda  Front 
Line,”  filmed  by  Damien  Parer  for  the 
Australian  News  Information  Bureau; 
“Moscow  Strikes  Back,”  photographed 
by  ace  cameraman  I.  Beliakov,  Feodor 
Bunimovich,  A.  Krilov,  B.  Makesseyev, 
V.  Soloviev,  S.  Schekutev,  G.  Burbov,  P. 
Kasatkin,  A.  Lebedev,  B.  Nebilitsky,  N. 
Schneiderov,  S.  Scher,  A.  Elbert  and  R. 
Carmen  of  the  Central  News  Studios  of 
Moscow,  U.  S.  S.  R.;  and  “Prelude  to 
War,”  compiled  by  the  Special  Service 
Division  of  the  U.  S.  Army. 

This  year’s  Academy  banquet  was 
history-making  in  another  sense,  too. 
Climaxing  fifteen  years  of  increasingly 
ill-managed  functions,  it  not  only  re¬ 
duced  the  industry’s  major  cultural 
event  to  the  level  of  small-time  politics, 
but  affronted  the  key  men  upon  whom 
the  industry‘s  real  success  rests — the 
directors  of  photography,  the  recording 
engineers,  the  production  designers  and 
editors — by  railroading  their  portion  of 
the  Awards  program  through  with  far 
less  consideration  of  the  men  them¬ 
selves,  their  achievements,  or  the  funda¬ 
mental  significance  of  their  contribu¬ 
tions  to  production  than  that  given  the 
makers  of  short-subjects,  the  composers 
of  popular  songs,  or  the  set-dressers. 
If  the  mismanagement  of  this  year’s  af¬ 
fair  brought  rumbles  of  protest  from 
even  the  biggest  figures  of  the  industry, 
it  fanned  to  a  blaze  the  resentment  of 
the  technical  community  at  being  given 
so  rude  a  brush-off.  Unless  this  breach 
is  healed  by  sincere  and  positive  action 
— not  words — there  is  little  doubt  but 
that  regardless  of  whether  or  not  this 
year’s  Academy  Awards  banquet  will  be 


the  last  one,  as  is  freely  rumored,  it  will 
be  the  last  in  so  far  as  Hollywood's 
technical  community  is  concerned,  and 
the  cinematographers  and  other  tech¬ 
nical  people  of  the  industry  will  here¬ 
after  bestow  their  own  awards  in  their 
own  way.  END. 


"Horse  Operas" 

(Continued  from  Page  137) 

actually  climbing,  simply  slid  down, 
while  the  camera  photographed  the 
scene  upside  down.  In  editing,  the  scene 
was  turned  end  for  end.  As  the  result, 
the  action  was  reversed  and  our  hero 
climbed  up  the  rope  in  typical  “Fair¬ 
banks”  fashion.  It’s  an  old  trick — but 
it  works! 

An  interior  sequence  was  to  be  a 
stage-line  office  where  the  “Rider”  had 
to  escape  by  diving  through  a  window. 
Made-to-order  was  the  living-room  and 
bedroom  of  Director  McMahon.  Between 
these  two  rooms  was  a  window.  The 
camera  shot  from  the  bedroom  through 
the  window  (framed  in  the  foreground) 
into  the  living  room,  which  was  to  be 
the  stage  office.  After  being  discovered 
rifling  the  office,  the  “Rider”  ran  from 
the  far  end  of  the  room  and  dove  head¬ 
first  through  the  window — onto  the  bed 
in  the  bedroom!  The  bed  of  course  was 
just  out  of  scene. 

Leaping  boldly  onto  a  riding-academy 
horse  is  practically  impossible,  not  be¬ 
cause  the  rider  wasn’t  capable,  but  that 
the  horse  (although  nags  would  be  more 
appropriate)  wouldn’t  stand  for  it.  As 
the  masked  and  caped  figure  charged 
toward  him  to  mount,  the  horse  de¬ 
cided  to  move — fast.  It  soon  became 
apparent  the  dashing  outlaw  wouldn’t 
be  able  to  mount  in  the  necessary 
western  manner.  And  as  riding  acad¬ 
emy  horses  cost  one  dollar  an  hour, 
some  way  out  of  the  problem  had  to  be 
thought  of,  pronto,  in  order  to  save 
Adventure  Pictures  from  bankruptcy. 
It  became  necessary  to  throw  a  saddle 
over  a  wooden  saw-horse,  framing  just 
the  cantle,  seat,  and  horn  in  the  fore¬ 
ground.  Now  the  bandit  could  jump 
into  the  saddle  in  a  manner  as  spec¬ 
tacular  as  desired  by  the  director.  Im¬ 
mediately  upon  entering  the  saddle,  the 
film-editor  cut  to  a  long-shot  of  the 
“Rider”  actually  on  a  horse  and  just 
spurring  forward.  It’s  all  in  the  editing! 

The  boys  view  as  many  “hoss  operas” 
as  they  can  afford  and  consider  “The 


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focal  length  for  use  on  specialized  photographic  equipment  being  made  for  the  Motion 
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of  covering  35mm.  film  field,  including  Ernemann  4-inch  f :  1 .8  Ernostar  (as  fitted  to 
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American  Cinematographer  •  April,  1943 


155 


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PRECISION 

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play  an  important  part  in 
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be  able  to  supply  Goerz 
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We  suggest  your  inquiries 
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I  American  Lens  Makers  Since  1899 
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317  East  34th  Street,  New  York 

□  - 


Westerner”  with  Gary  Cooper  the  best 
Hollywood  has  yet  produced.  The  group 
is  still  trying  to  duplicate  Gregg  To- 
land’s  excellent  “dolly-shots”  and  espe¬ 
cially  the  fine  directing.  They  think 
Gary  Cooper  is  excellent  as  a  westerner. 
They  even  tolerated  the  heroine — “be¬ 
cause  she  could  act  and  her  presence  in 
the  film  was  logical.”  The  boys  are 
also  George  O’Brien  fans  and  have  seen 
almost  every  film  he’s  been  in,  includ¬ 
ing  the  silents  revived  at  the  Museum 
of  Modern  Arts. 

A  “hoss  opera”  without  trick  riding 
wouldn’t  be  right.  For  “Pals  of  the 
Plains,”  a  short  action  western,  a  group 
of  young  boys  ranging  in  age  from 
fourteen  to  sixteen  change  from  one 
galloping  horse  to  another,  fall  off,  and 
rear  their  steeds.  The  backyard,  where 
their  horses  are  kept  in  barns,  has  re¬ 
cently  been  remodeled  into  a  western 
town.  “Sheriff’s  Office,”  “Hotel,”  and 
“Livery  Stable”  signs;  wooden  awnings, 
hitchrails  and  wooden  sidewalks  have 
been  added  to  give  a  frontier  effect. 

“Jungle  Jim,”  the  well-known  news¬ 
paper  “comic”  strip  is  one  of  the  group’s 
favorite  adventure  tales.  Studying  the 
comic  strips  one  day  they  noticed  that 
Alex  Raymond’s  drawings  of  Africa  re¬ 
sembled  the  woods  around  a  small  brook 
nearby.  Director  McMahon  promptly 
wrote  a  screen-play,  casting  himself  as 
Jungle  Jim. 

The  screen-play  was  written  in  best 
Hollywood  tradition,  for,  when  he  had 
finished,  little  of  the  original  story  re¬ 
mained!  This  can  be  understood  because 
there  were  many  properties  and  sets 
that  could  not  be  reproduced  by  Adven¬ 
ture  Pictures  meager  budget.  To  create 
more  thrills  and  suspense,  shots  of  lions 
from  a  film-library  were  intercut  with 
their  own  scenes.  It  is  surprising  how 
these  stock-shots  can  be  trimmed  and 
inserted  to  fit  the  action  so  well. 

Another  feature  of  this  group  that 
Hollywood  might  study  to  advantage  is 
a  cooperative  spirit  and  financial  con¬ 
trol  which  makes  for  complete  elimina¬ 
tion  of  arguments  about  casting,  direct¬ 
ing  or  any  of  the  hundreds  of  jealousies 
and  “studio  politics”  which  tear  asunder 
friendships  in  the  West  Coast  Cinema 
Capitol.  Early  in  the  organization  of 
Adventure  Pictures  it  was  decided  that 
whoever  finances  a  picture  can  play 
the  hero. 

Otherwise,  many  of  the  things  that 
I  I  beset  the  industry  in  Hollywood  are  en- 


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ART  REEVES 

1515  North  Cahuenga  Boulevard 

HOLLYWOOD  Cable  Address — Cameras  CALIFORNIA 

Efficient-Courteous  Service  New  and  Used  Equipmnt 

Bought — Sold — Rented 

Everything  Photographic  Professional  and  Amateur 


countered  by  the  New  Jersey  boys.  For 
instance,  “The  Black  Rider”  went  through 
a  transformation  not  unlike  a  story- 
conference  in  Hollywood  where  a  South 
Seas  romance  may  emerge  as  a  northern 
thriller  after  a  dozen  continuity  writers 
thrash  out  the  original  script. 

The  “Rider”  was  written  and  financed 
by  the  “hero”  of  the  previous  picture 
who  wanted  to  be  the  “villain”  in  the 
new  one.  But  it  was  decided  he  was 
not  the  “dastardly  menace”  type  so  he 
suggested  wearing  a  mask  until  his 
face  could  be  revealed  in  one  carefully 
made  closeup.  As  the  plot  developed, 
it  became  a  “guess  who”  mystery  and 
it  was  then  decided  that  the  outlaw 
should  wear  a  long,  black  cape  as  well 
as  the  mask.  But  since  he  was  rather 
a  stout  fellow,  the  cape  did  not  fully 
conceal  his  identity  and  it  was  decided 
to  change  the  villain  into  the  comedian 
and  choose  a  slimmer  fellow  for  the 
dashing  young  outlaw. 

Music  plays  an  important  part  in  the 
exhibiting  end  of  the  movie  business  and 
it  is  only  natural  that  Adventure  Pic¬ 
tures  should  have  its  own  musical  di¬ 
rector.  It  is  his  job  to  select  the  music 
that  is  to  accompany  the  picture.  For 
synchronized  sound-effects,  a  home-made 
dual-turntable  and  amplifier  is  used.  And 
the  music  is  chosen  with  a  sensitiveness 
to  ear-appeal  that  might  well  be  emu¬ 
lated  by  Hollywood.  The  group,  as  well 
as  the  musical  director,  are  all  listeners 
to  symphonic  music  and  have  found  that 
many  of  Tschaikowsky’s  orchestral  works 
provide  the  aural  excitement  which  must 
match  the  thrills  on  the  screen.  In 
scoring  “The  Black  Rider,”  a  heavy 
thematic-type  music  was  desired.  It 
was  finally  agreed  that  Franz  Liszt’s 
“Faust  Symphony”  was  the  most  ap¬ 
propriate  that  could  be  found  on  rec¬ 
ords.  This  symphony,  with  its  different 
variations,  is  carried  through  the  entire 
film  wherever  the  “Rider”  appears. 

The  National  Broadcasting  Company 
featured  the  boys’  experiences  over  their 
popular  hobby  program,  “The  Bright 
Idea”  Club.  Columbia  Broadcasting  Sys¬ 
tem’s  television  studios,  after  review¬ 
ing  dozens  of  amateur  motion  pictures, 
transmitted  “The  Black  Rider.”  This 
was  an  honor  for  the  boys  as  their’s 
was  understood  to  be  the  first  amateur 
film  to  be  televised.  On  this  same  pro¬ 
gram  the  group  was  interviewed  by  Gil¬ 
bert  Seldes.  Mr.  Seldes,  often  referred 
to  as  Hollywood’s  “best  pal,”  thrilled 
the  boys  when  he  told  them  “  ‘The  Black 
Rider’  is  the  best  western  since  ‘The 
Great  Train  Robbery’  of  1903.” 

Their  films  are  now  being  featured 
on  programs  at  such  places  as  the 
Y.M.C.A.,  the  Boys’  Club,  and  Chambers 
of  Commerce  where  they  bring  roaring 
cheers  for  the  hero  and  hisses  for  the 
villain.  END. 


Editor's  Finder 

(Continued  from  Page  133) 

them  when  it  needed  them,  and  forget 
them  in  between. 

But  those  days  are  going  fast.  At  a 


156  April,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


conservative  estimate,  more  than  one- 
third  of  the  industry’s  trained  photo¬ 
graphic  talent  has  been  removed  from 
the  studios  by  draft  and  enlistment. 
More  are  following  them.  Others  are 
making  their  way  into  the  photographic 
departments  of  the  aircraft  industry  and 
other  defense  plants.  Good  assistants 
and  operatives  are  growing  as  scarce  as 
hen’s  teeth — and  a  good  deal  more  val¬ 
uable.  A  few  foresighted  studios  are 
even  placing  these  men  under  contract, 
so  they’ll  be  available  when  needed. 

But  they’re  forgetting  the  “fill-in” 
directors  of  photography  (and  their 
crews)  who  have  always  been  so  handy 
when  production  inched  momentarily 
above  the  bare  minimum  which  their 
usual  contract  camera  staffs  could  handle. 

And  unless  all  the  signs  are  wholly 
wrong,  before  the  year  is  out  the  once 
abundant  supply  of  these  “fill-in”  men 
is  going  to  be  gone — and  with  them 
many  more  of  the  contract  “regulars.” 
They’ll  be  in  uniform,  making  movies 
for  Uncle  Sam — and  the  studios  will  be 
begging  for  cameramen — any  cameraman 
— to  help  them  keep  up  the  production 
which  the  Washington  powers-that-be 
consider  so  essential  to  morale  and  in¬ 
ternational  propaganda.  Unfortunately, 
there  won’t  be  anyone  to  answer  those 
pleas.  And  we  wonder  what  reply  those 
camera  executives  who  are  now  so  proud 
of  running  an  economical  department 
will  give  their  bosses  when  the  bosses 
ask  them  why  they  didn’t  see  what 
was  coming  and  put  a  few  extra  cam¬ 
eraman  under  contract  while  they  could 
get  them ! 


Consistency 

(Continued  from  Page  129) 

brought  forth  a  considerable  variety  of 
objections  which  can  be  summed  up  by 
the  statement  that  “it  can’t  be  done.” 
So  we  were  forced  to  devise  our  own 
equipment  and  methods  for  doing  it. 
The  actual  calibrating  set-up  is  sim- 


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of  Specialists 

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Cable  Address:  RUBYCAM 


pie  enough.  The  lens  to  be  calibrated, 
in  its  standard  mount,  is  screwed  to  one 
end  of  a  light-tight-tube,  at  the  opposite 
end  of  which  is  mounted  the  photo¬ 
electric  cell,  and  of  course  with  the  lens’ 
image  accurately  focused  on  the  photo¬ 
cell.  In  front  of  the  lens  is  a  suitable 
light-source,  mounted  behind  a  ground 
glass  diffusing  panel,  and  wired  through 
an  accurate  voltage  control  and  meter. 
The  photocell  is  in  turn  wired  to  an 
ultrasensitive  microammeter. 

To  calibrate  a  lens,  the  light-source 
is  brought  to  a  known  intensity  by  means 
of  its  voltage  control,  and  checked 
through  a  carefully  preserved  master 
lens.  Then  the  lens  to  be  calibrated 
is  substituted  for  the  master  lens,  and 
the  diaphragm  manipulated  to  produce 
on  the  photocell-controlled  meter  a  read¬ 
ing  corresponding  to  that  produced  by  a 
setting  of  /: 3.2  on  the  master  lens.  This 
point  is  calibrated  as  /: 3.2.  Thereafter 
we  work  both  up  and  down  in  steps 
corresponding  to  the  mathematically  cor¬ 
rect  transmission-values  of  the  usual 
stops  above  and  below  this  median 
value.  The  stops  are  of  course  deter¬ 
mined  by  their  actually  measured  trans¬ 
mission. 

By  this  method,  every  lens  can  be 
calibrated  to  /-stop  values  which,  stop 
for  stop,  are  absolutely  identical  in 
transmission,  and  hence  in  exposure- 
producing  values,  regardless  of  the  de¬ 
sign  or  construction  of  the  lens.  In 
the  same  W3y,  coated  and  un-coated 
lenses  may  be  calibrated  so  that  both 
will  give  identical  transmission  values 
at  the  same  stops  rather  than  leaving 
the  coated  objective  a  half-stop  or  even 
a  full  stop  faster  at  a  given  aperture 
than  the  uncoated  one. 

Using  a  master  lens  in  adjusting  the 
calibrating  bench  is  an  important  safe¬ 
guard.  The  entire  system  is  based  on 
accurate  measurement  of  the  actual 
transmission  of  the  lens  being  calibrat¬ 
ed.  The  incandescent  lamp  used  as  a 
light-source  in  these  measurements  can 
and  does  deteriorate,  and  its  globe  black¬ 
en,  to  a  point  where  merely  applying 
a  known  voltage  to  it  is  no  guarantee 
that  it  is  emitting  the  intended  in¬ 
tensity  of  light.  Introducing  a  master 
lens  of  known  transmission  into  the 
system,  and  then  bringing  the  light- 
source  voltage  to  the  point  which  gives 
a  predetermined  reading  through  the 
photocell-meter  system  eliminates  this 
variable,  and  assures  that  all  lenses  will 
be  calibrated  to  a  known  and  accurate 
standard. 

Commencing  our  calibrating  procedure 
at  a  median  point,  as  represented  by  /: 3.2, 
is  an  absolute  essential  to  accuracy  in 
this  system  of  calibration.  In  our  earliest 
tests,  we  discovered  that  the  mere  fact 
that  a  lens  is  rated  at  /: 2.3  or  /: 2.5 
according  to  the  conventional  system 
does  not  by  any  means  indicate  that  its 
light-transmitting  power  is  actually  so 
high.  Distressingly  often  we  found  that 
lenses  conventionally  rated  by  their  ma¬ 
kers  at  /: 2.5  and  better  really  transmitted 
no  more  light  than  an  actual  /: 3.2  value. 


Starting  the  calibrating  procedure  this 
way,  in  the  middle  range,  enables  us 
to  give  each  lens  a  truly  accurate  max¬ 
imum-aperture  calibration,  and  also  to 
keep  all  calibrations  from  maximum  to 
minimum  in  their  correct  and  genuinely 
accurate  relationship.  When  other  organ¬ 
izations,  experimenting  with  this  system 
of  calibration,  have  attempted  to  reverse 
this  procedure  and  work  downward  from 
maximum  aperture,  the  results  have  al¬ 
most  invariably  proven  inaccurate,  and 
the  ratios  between  stops  misleading. 

A  number  of  authorities  have  been 
kind  enough  to  state  that  in  their  esti¬ 
mation  this  system  of  lens-calibration 
is  one  of  the  extremely  few  basic  ad¬ 
vances  in  photography  in  many  years, 
and  to  suggest  that  it  should  be  adopt¬ 
ed  as  at  least  a  national  standard,  and 


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American  Cinematographer  •  April,  1943 


157 


I  am  informed  that  steps  to  this  end 
are  already  being  taken.  Quite  apart 
from  my  own  participation  in  this  de¬ 
velopment,  I  sincerely  hope  that  this 
may  be  the  case,  for  my  own  experi¬ 
ence  as  a  practicing  cinematographer, 
as  well  as  head  of  a  major  studio’s 
camera  department,  has  furnished  abund¬ 
ant  proof  of  the  importance  of  anything 
which  will  give  the  man  at  the  camera 
absolute  reliance  on  the  consistent  accur¬ 
acy  of  the  stop  calibrations  of  all  of  his 
lenses.  Looking  forward  to  post-war 
photography,  such  a  standard  would 
seem  even  more  valuable  as  lenses  of 
newly-developed  optical  glasses  with  rad¬ 
ically  increased  light-transmitting  power, 
and  with  improved  types  of  coating,  etc., 
come  into  use  for  both  professional  and 
amateur  still  and  motion  picture  photog¬ 
raphy.  Consistently  correct  exposure  is 
the  foundation  of  success  in  any  type  of 
photography,  and  this  cannot  be  fully 
achieved  unless  the  lens  calibrations  by 
which  exposure  is  controlled  give  a  true 
and  accurate  representation  of  the 
amount  of  light  actually  reaching  the 
film  to  make  the  exposure. 

Experience  has  proven  the  advantages 
of  this  system  of  calibration.  Our  cine¬ 
matographers  have  been  turning  out 
more  consistently  uniform  results  under 
all  conditions,  in  the  studio  and  on  loca¬ 
tion,  than  ever  before,  and  maintaining 
this  consistency  regardless  of  the  lenses 
used,  to  a  degree  I  can  safely  say  is 
unparalleled  in  photographic  history.  Ap¬ 
plication  for  a  U.  S.  Patent  upon  the 
equipment  and  methods  used  in  this 
system  of  calibration  has  been  made 
and  is  proceeding  favorably,  while  at 
least  one  of  Hollywood’s  major  studios 


and  several  of  the  motion  picture  units 
of  the  U.  S.  Armed  Services  have  ar¬ 
ranged  to  employ  the  method  in  cali¬ 
brating  their  lenses. 

But  as  I  pointed  out  at  the  beginning, 
this  system  of  lens-calibration  is  only 
one,  though  unquestionably  the  most  im¬ 
portant,  of  three  closely  inter-related 
steps  toward  assuring  consistently  uni¬ 
form  phototechnical  quality.  It  could  not 
develop  its  full  value  alone,  without  the 
combination  of  a  consistently  accurate 
system  of  metering  illumination  on  the 
set,  or  the  consistently  accurate  time- 
and-temperature  processing  the  resultant 
negative  receives  in  the  laboratory. 
Neither  could  they  develop  their  full 
worth  without  the  consistency  in  ex¬ 
posure  made  possible  by  this  system  of 
uniformly  accurate  lens-calibration. 
Working  together,  these  three  develop¬ 
ments  have  enabled  20th  Century-Fox 
cinematographers  to  maintain  an  envi¬ 
able  record  of  phototechnical  consistency, 
whether  measured  by  the  records  of 
negative  densities  or  printing  values  of 
any  one  picture,  or  of  the  studio’s 
overall  production. 

None  of  these  aids  of  phototechnical 
consistency  can,  of  course,  take  the  place 
of  individual  artistic  skill  on  the  part 
of  the  cinematographers  involved.  But 
with  them,  the  minds  of  the  cinema¬ 
tographers  are  left  that  much  more  free 
of  routine,  mechanical  problems,  and 
more  able  to  concentrate  on  the  creative¬ 
ly  artistic  aspects  of  their  work.  That 
the  cinematographers  in  my  department 
have  utilized  these  aids  to  that  end  is, 

I  think,  thoroughly  attested  by  the  rec¬ 
ord  they  have  made  in  this  year’s  Acad¬ 
emy  Awards,  when  for  the  first  time  in 


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history  lour  ol  the  ten  films  nominated 
for  the  Award  for  the  year’s  best  black- 
and-white  cinematography  came  from 
one  studio!  END.. 


Contrast  Control 

(Continued  from  Page  127} 

sirable  to  study  the  sources  of  illumina¬ 
tion  which  may  be  arranged  at  any  point 
in  a  360°  circle  around  the  subject. 

The  360°  circle  should  be  considered 
as  being  divided  into  six  sectors,  as 
shown  in  Fig.  6.  The  meter  with  hood 
is  then  held  at  the  position  of  the  sub¬ 
ject  S.  Readings  are  then  taken  in  sec¬ 
tors  A,  B,  C,  D,  E,  and  F,  in  turn,  by 
means  of  rotating  the  meter-head.  A 
record  is  made  of  the  readings. 

This  record  may  then  be  used  at  a 
later  date  as  a  prime  aid  in  setting  up 
a  similar  lighting  arrangement. 

To  get  back  to  the  main  purpose  of  the 
device,  however,  which  is  illumination 
contrast  measurement  and  control,  it  is 
interesting  to  consider  how  useful  it 
would  be  in  connection  with  natural- 
color  photography. 

The  limitations,  with  respect  to  con¬ 
trast,  of  natural-color  photography  are 
quite  well  known.  If  the  illumination 
contrast  range  is  too  great,  the  result  is 
quite  likely  to  be  either  blocked-up 
shadows,  or  washed-out  highlights,  or 
both.  The  Norwood  meter  with  contrast 
hood  will  enable  the  photographer  to 
keep  safely  within  the  natural  latitude 
of  the  film. 

In  addition,  it  will  also  allow  the  main¬ 
tenance,  to  a  fine  degree,  of  any  pre¬ 
selected  contrast  ratio  throughout  the 
picture.  This  is  quite  desirable  because 
changes  in  illumination-contrast  are  very 
noticeable  in  natural-color  work,  and  are 
quite  disturbing. 

The  contrast  hood  has  been  so  designed 
that  it  may  be  attached  to  the  Norwood 
meter  very  easily  and  quickly.  It  may 
be  removed  just  as  easily  and  quickly. 
Thus  the  value  of  the  meter  as  an  ex¬ 
posure-meter,  with  hood  removed,  re¬ 
mains  unimpaired.  With  the  hood  added 
it  turns  into  an  illumination-contrast 
meter.  This,  in  effect,  places  two  val¬ 
uable  meters  at  the  disposal  of  the  cine¬ 
matographer.  An  exposure-meter  that 
will  keep  exposures  dependably  uniform, 
and  in  addition  an  illumination-contrast 
meter  that  will  allow  the  pre-selection 
and  then  the  maintenance  of  any  chosen 
contrast  ratio. 

When  a  layman  sees  a  picture  in  a 
theatre  he  usually  does  not  consciously 
recognize  the  existance  or  lack  of  the 
smoothness  provided  by  uniformly-ex¬ 
posed  negatives  and  uniformly-balanced 
illumination  of  all  scenes.  However,  if 
these  things  are  lacking  he  is  sure  to 
have  a  feeling  that  something  about  the 
picture  was  not  as  good  as  it  should  be. 

The  experienced  cinematographer  is 
the  one  who  appreciates  the  value  of 
quality  in  these  matters,  and  will  best 
visualize  and  understand  how  the  above- 
described  meters  will  assist  him  to  secure 
such  desirable  quality.  END. 


158  April,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


THE  BRITISH  CALL  THIS  VULTEE  DIVE  BOMBER  THE  “VENGEANCE”.  .  .  In  the  U.  S. 
Army  Air  Force  it’s  known  as  the  A-3 1  .  .  .  Each  ship  gets  its  first  bomb  load  months 
earlier,  due  to  the  time  originally  saved  by  Kodak’s  Matte  Transfer  method. 


new 


photographic  me 
gets  planes  into  production  60  d 


thod 

ays  sooner 


IN  SCORES  OF  OUR  AIRCRAFT  FACTORIES, 
the  designers  make  their  original  drawings  on 
metal  coated  with  Kodak’s  fluorescent  lacquer. 
These  are  then  transferred,  photographically, 
to  structural  metal  "sensitized”  by  the  Matte 
Transfer  process — metal  which  may  be  used 
to  build  a  full-scale  test  model  plane. 


The  human  hand  may  err,  or  the  mind 
may  wander.  But  a  photograph  allows  no 
mistakes.  The  hand,  in  transferring  a  tedi¬ 
ous,  detailed  mechanical  drawing,  is  slow 
— while  a  photograph  is  quickly  made. 

These  two  facts  are  the  key  to  another 
"industrial  revolution”  which  has  come 
within  the  last  year— lopping  from  two  to 
four  months  from  the  time  necessary  to 
put  an  airplane,  of  a  new  design,  into 
production. 

Kodak  perfected  Matte  Transfer  Paper 
—a  means  of  applying  a  photographic 
emulsion  to  other  surfaces.  At  the  aircraft 
factory,  under  "safe”  red  light,  the  transfer 
paper  is  cemented  to  a  sheet  of  metal — 
then  the  paper  base  is  stripped  away, 
leaving  the  emulsion  on  the  metal. 

If  desired,  this  metal  may  be  a  sheet 
of  structural  aluminum  which  is  used  in 
constructing  an  airplane.  The  metal  is  a 


"printing  surface” — capable  of  becom¬ 
ing  a  photographic  print. 

In  the  meantime,  the  draughtsmen 
are  at  work  on  another  sheet  of  metal, 
making  their  mechanical  drawing  of  an 
airplane  part.  The  sheet  on  which  they 
work  has  a  coating  of  Kodak’s  fluorescent 
lacquer.  This  glows,  with  a  blue  light, 
in  the  presence  of  X-rays — except  where 
the  pencil  lines  black  it  out. 

The  finished  drawing  sheet  is  exposed 
to  X-rays,  and  placed  in  contact  with  the 
sensitized  aluminum.  The  result  is  a  life- 
size  photograph  of  the  drawing  on  the 
metal.  Another  method  widely  employed 
is  conventional  photographic  copying 
and  enlarging — using  Matte  Transfer 
Paper  to  produce  a  printing  surface  on 
metal. 


With  either  method,  MatteTransfer  Paper 
brings  the  speed  of  photography — and 
no  mistakes  in  transfer.  Multiply  the 
saving  by  the  number  of  parts  in  an  air¬ 
plane  and  you  have  the  total  saving,  in 
time  and  money. 

For  test  flight,  experimental  models 
have  been  made  from  the  first  photo¬ 
graphic  copy  and  flown  with  fragments 
of  the  mechanical  drawings  showing  on 
the  airplane  parts.  Normally,  pattern 
plates — templates  —  are  made  from  the 
photographic  pattern;  and  from  then  on 
parts  are  duplicated  mechanically. 

In  any  case,  two  to  four  months  are 
saved — and  the  planes  so  vital  to  victory 
roll  that  much  more  quickly  off  the 
production  line . . .  Eastman  Kodak  Com¬ 
pany,  Rochester,  N.  Y. 


Serving  human  progress  through  Photography 


American  Cinematographer  •  April,  1943 


159 


B&H  RECONDITIONING  SERVICE  PUTS  IT  IN 

You  realize  that  every  projector  that  we  can  possibly  build  today 
must  go  to  the  United  States  Government  for  service  with  the 
armed  forces.  That  means  no  new  projectors  for  civilians  until 
the  boys  come  marching  home.  Meanwhile  —  let  B&H  Recon¬ 
ditioning  Service  put  your  Filmo  silent  or  Filmosound  Projector 
in  factory-new  condition. 

The  work  will  be  done  by  our  own  factory-trained  technicians 
who  know  every  sprocket,  gear,  bearing,  lamp,  and  lens  in 
your  machine  and  just  exactly  how  it  should  be  adjusted  to 
make  the  projector  function  at  peak  efficiency.  The  same  metic- 


FACTORY-NEW  CONDITION 

ulous  craftsmanship  for  which  all  B&H 
products  are  famed  goes  into  our  recon¬ 
ditioning  service.  When  you  send  your 
projector  to  us  for  a  complete  recondi-' 
tioning,  it  is  taken  apart,  lenses  cleaned, 
parts  requiring  lubrication  oiled,  worn  parts  (if  any)  replaced, 
then  refinished,  reassembled  and  adjusted.  For  complete  details 
concerning  this  service,  see  your  B&H  dealer  who  will  secure 
estimates  on  this  work  for  you  and  assist  in  packing  your  pro¬ 
jector  for  shipment  to  the  factory. 


“DIVIDE  AND  CONQUER". ..  a  Warner 
Bros.  Production  distributed  by  the  OWI ; 
this  picture  will  make  you  fighting  mad 
when  you  see  the  “master  race”  work¬ 
ing  out  its  “new  order. “ 


“AMERICAN  HANDICRAFTS"  shows 
details  of  textile,  carving,  and  glass  work. 


“HENRY  BROWNE,  FARMER”  .  .  .  ^ 

another  OWI  motion  picture  that  W 
shows  the  equality  of  opportunity 
and  freedom  for  every  citizen  of  this 
country. 


THE  HUMAN  BODY  IN  FIRST  AID” 

.  .  .  completes 


the  “Emer¬ 
gency  First 
Aid”  series. 


r 


BELL  &  HOWELL  COMPANY 

1848  Larchmont  Avenue,  Chicago.  Illinois 

Please  send  me  film  catalog.  I  have . mm. 

projector,  (sound) . (silent) . made  by 


I  am  interested  in  renting . buying . 

films  for  stimulating  morale . Educational 

films . Civilian  Defense  films . Enter¬ 
tainment  . 


Name 


Address 


City 


State 


PREC/SfOA 
MADE  BY 


Team  your  projector  with  the  FILMOSOUND 
LIBRARY  to  help  speed  Victory  .  . . 


You  and  your  projector,  teamed  with  the  Filmosound  Library,  can 
render  your  country  invaluable  wartime  service.  The  Filmosound  Li¬ 
brary,  always  one  of  the  most  comprehensive  sources  of  films,  today 
offers  a  selection  that  eclipses  anything  we  have  ever  before  been  able 
to  achieve — and  new  films  are  being  added  almost  daily. 

Many  of  these  are  pictures  that  every  American  should  see.  Morale  is 
the  "armament  of  the  mind" — and  when  your  friends  and  neighbors  see 
some  of  these  films  that  bring  home  to  them  the  grim,  stark  realities  of 
the  job  that  American  fighting  men  and  their  allies  must  finish  before 
Victory  can  be  ours,  less  mental  energy  will  be  wasted  on  the  trivialities 
of  coffee  and  shoe  rationing — and  more  of  it  focused  on  real  war  effort. 

Give  a  home  movie  party  with  a  greater  objective  than  entertainment. 
Show  pictures  like  "Russia  Strikes  Back”. .."Yanks  Invade  Africa”. .."U.  S. 
Carrier  Fights  for  Life” ...  or  "Divide  and  Conquer,”  an  OWI  release,  that 
portrays  how  the  theories  of  the  "master  race”  are  expressed  in  atrocious 
brutalities.  These  —  and  many  other  films  are  available  to  you  through 
your  dealer  and  the  Filmosound  Library,  on  a  purchase  or  rental  basis. 


Bell  &  Howell  Company,  Chicago;  NewYork;  Hollywood;  Washington,  D.C.;  London.  Est.1907 


"E"  for  EXCELLENCE— how  the  Army-Navy  Award  for 
extraordinary  performance  is  won  and  presented  is  shown  by 
this  one-reel  sound  film.  Service  charge  50c. 


WAR  BONDS 


REMEMBER  PLEASE  —  don't  throw  away  old  lamps. 
A  new  lamp  can  be  supplied  you  only  when  the 
burned-out  lamp  is  turned  in. 


Lamps  for  the  speed  of  emulsion 


THE  KEEN-EYED  PHYSICIST  pictured  here  is 
measuring  the  candle-power  of  light 
bulbs.  The  purpose  of  his  work  is  to 
standardize  the  lamps  that  are  used  for 
sensitometric  testing  of  film  coatings. 

Through  these  lamps  the  characteris¬ 
tics  of  motion  picture  film  emulsions  are 
tested.  The  results  from  a  series  of  sen¬ 
sitometric  readings  govern  the  mainte¬ 
nance  of  film  uniformity.  They  permit 
expressing  both  the  speed  and  contrast 
of  the  film  in  terms  which  are  readily  un¬ 
derstood  wherever  film  is  used. 


This  is  simply  one  of  many  precision 
tests  made  in  the  Du  Pont  Research  and 
Control  Laboratories.  It  assures  us  .  .  . 
and  you  .  .  .  that  when  your  camera  is 
loaded  with  Du  Pont  “Superior”  Nega¬ 
tive  you  know  that  its  speed  and  con¬ 
trast  measure  up  to  definite  standards. 
When  you  specify  the  film  .  .  .  why  not 
say  “Superior”  and  be  certain?  But  re¬ 
member,  war  needs  must  come  first,  and 
you  may  find  that  stocks  of  Du  Pont  Film 
are  temporarily  incomplete.  E.  I.  du  Pont 
de  Nemours  &  Co.  (Inc.),  Photo  Prod¬ 


ucts  Department,  Wilmington,  Del. 
Smith  &  Aller,  Ltd.,  Hollywood,  Calif. 


rEG.  U.S.  PAT  OFF- 

MOTION  PICTURE 
FILM 

Better  Things  for  Better  Living 

...THROUGH  CHEMISTRY 


162  May,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


PRECISION-MADE  BY 


When  your  camera  is  an  Eyemo,  it’s  always  ready  to  go 
into  instant  action  on  any  type  of  assignment . . .  anywhere. 

Because  of  the  versatility  and  dependability  of  Eyemo 
Cameras,  mechanically  and  as  to  picture  quality,  they’re  first 
choice  with  most  cameramen  on  news  fronts  the  world  over. 

Resolve  now  to  get  an  Eyemo  for  yourself  when  the  war 
is  over  and  Eyemos  are  again  available. 


EYEMO  MODELS  L  AND  M 

These  models  have  the  compact 
type  of  three-lens  turret.  View¬ 
finder  is  matched  to  six  lens  focal 
lengths  by  turning  a  drum;  shows 
"sound”  field  to  match  camera’s 
"sound”  aperture  plate.  Operating 
speeds:  Model  L— 4  to  32  frames 
per  second;  Model  M — 8  to  48. 


WILL  YOU  SELL  YOUR  EYEMO? 

Special  arrangements  are  being  made  in  our  service 
department  to  recondition  for  Government  use  all 
of  the  Eyemo  Cameras  we  can  obtain.  You  may  have 
exactly  the  lenses  needed  for  important  military 
service.  If  you  will  sell — fill  out  the  information 
WAR  BONDS  blank  in  this  advertisement. 


Bell  &  Howell  Company,  Chicago;  New  York;  Holly¬ 
wood;  Washington,  D.  C.;  London.  Established  1907 


EYEMO  MODELS  P  AND  Q 

Most  complete  of  the  seven  stand¬ 
ard  models.  Have  three-arm  offset 
turret,  prismatic  focuser  with  mag¬ 
nifier,  and  provisions  for  electric 
motor  and  external  film  magazines. 
Speeds:  Model  P — 4,  8,  12,  16,  24, 
and  32  f.p.s.;  Model  Q — 8,  12,  16, 
24,  32,  and  48  f.p.s. 


Pathe  Cameraman,  Howard  Winner 

with  his  Eyemo  " somewhere  in  Africa.  ”  At  right  is 
Capt.  John  D.  LeVien,  who  distinguished  himself 
in  Algeria  by  leading  the  90  troops  who  captured 
the  Italian  Armistice  Commission. 


EYEMOS  WANTED 


BELL  &  HOWELL  COMPANY 

1848  Larchmont  Avenue  Date . 

Chicago,  Illinois 
Gentlemen: 

I  own  an  EYEMO  Camera,  Model . .  Serial  No.. 

It  has  been  modified  as  follows: . 


I  will  sell  this  camera  for  $ . and  will  pay  trans¬ 

portation  and  insurance  to  Chicago. 

The  camera  is: 


In  good  operating  condition 
Inoperative  or  damaged  (give  details): 


Price  above  includes  these  lenses: 


I  offer  the  following  additional  lenses  at  the  prices  shown 
below: . 


Name . Address . 


City  &  State . AC5-43 

Do  Not  Ship  Until  You  Receive  Instructions  from  Factory  ! 


American  Cinematographer  •  May,  1943 


163 


VOL.  24  MAY.  1943  NO.  5 


CONTENTS 

Filming  “Desert  Victory” . By  Lt.-Col.  David  MacDonald,  Hon. 

A.S.C.,  As  told  to  Wm.  Stull,  A.S.C .  167 

Hollywood  Greets  Four  Soviet  War  Camera-Aces . 

. By  Wm.  Stull,  A.S.C.  168 

Leonard  Smith  Elected  President  of  the  A.S.C .  169 

Exposure  Control  in  Aerial  Photography . 

. By  Capt.  D.  W.  Norwood,  U.S.A.A.F.,  Ret.  170 

British  War  Camera  Ace  Wins  Honorary  Membership  in  the  A.S.C.  171 


The  Staff 

• 

EDITOR 

William  Stull.  A.S.C. 

• 

TECHNICAL  EDITOR 
Emery  Huse,  A.S.C. 

• 

WASHINGTON  STAFF  CORRESPONDENT 
Reed  N.  Haythorne,  A.S.C. 

• 

MILITARY  ADVISOR 
Col.  Nathan  Levinson 

• 

STAFF  PHOTOGRAPHER 
Pat  Clark 


Aces  of  the  Camera — XXVIII:  Milton  Krasner,  A.S.C . 

. By  Walter  Blanchard  172 


ARTIST 

Alice  Van  Norman 


Through  the  Editor’s  Finder . 

A.S.C.  On  Parade . 

Photography  of  the  Month . 

Vege-table-top  Follies . By  Charlotte  Anderson 

Putting  Slang  On  the  Screen . By  Walter  Blanchard 

How  to  Care  for  16mm.  Sound-Films . By  D.  Lisle  Conway 

Putting  Sound-On-Film  On  a  16mm.  Silent  Projector . 

. By  Earl  W.  Abbott 

The  How  and  Why  of  Titles . By  James  R.  Oswald 

Among  the  Movie  Clubs . 


173 

174 

175 
177 

179 

180 

181 

182 

183 


The  Front  Cover 

This  month’s  cover  shows  a  sergeant- 
cinematographer  of  the  British  Army  Film 
and  Photo  Unit  in  action  in  the  Western 
Desert  of  Africa  filming  a  scene  for  “Desert 
Victory.”  Note  the  cameraman’s  companion 
with  tommy-gun  at  the  ready,  and  shell- 
burst  in  near  background.  We  regret  that 
military  regulations  prohibit  identifying 
either  the  cinematographer  shown  or  the 
still-man  who  made  the  picture. 


CIRCULATION 
Marguerite  Duerr 

• 

ADVISORY  EDITORIAL  BOARD 
Fred  W.  Jackman,  A-  S.  C. 

Victor  Milner,  A.  S.  C. 

James  Van  Trees,  A.  S.  C. 

Farciot  Edouart,  A.  S.  C. 

Fred  Gage,  A.  S.  C. 

Dr.  J.  S.  Watson,  A.S.C. 

Dr.  L.  A.  Jones,  A.  S.  C. 

Dr.  C.  E.  K.  Mees,  A.  S.  C. 

Dr.  W.  B.  Rayton,  A.  S.  C. 

Dr.  Herbert  Meyer,  A.  S.  C. 

Dr.  V.  B.  Sease,  A.  S.  C. 

• 

NEW  YORK  REPRESENTATIVE 
S.  R.  Cowan,  132  West  43rd  Street 
Chickering  4-3278  New  York 

• 

AUSTRALIAN  REPRESENTATIVE 
McGill's,  179  Elizabeth  Street,  Melbourne, 
Australian  and  New  Zealand  Agents 

• 

Published  monthly  by  A.  S.  C.  Agency,  Inc. 
Editorial  and  business  offices: 

1782  North  Orange  Drive 
Hollywood  (Los  Angeles),  California 
Telephone:  GRanite  2135 
• 

Established  1920.  Advertising  rates  on  appli¬ 
cation.  Subscriptions:  United  States  and  Pan 
American  Union,  $2.50  per  year;  Canada,  $2.75 
per  year ;  Foreign.  $3.50.  Single  copies,  25c : 
back  numbers,  30c ;  foreign,  single  copies  35c, 
back  numbers  40c.  Copyright  1943  by  A.  S.  C. 
kgency,  Inc. 


Entered  as  second-class  matter  Nov.  18,  1937. 
at  the  postoffice  at  Los  Angeles.  California,  under 
the  act  of  March  3.  1879. 


164  May,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


Stars  without  99 Stand-ins 99 


SUPREME 

& 

ULTRA-SPEED 


NEGATIVE  FILMS 


Binghamton 


AGFA  ANSCO 

Hollywood 
MADE  IN  U.  S.  A. 


New  York 


Keep  out  eye  on  -@ndco  •  7it4t  with  the  *Tine5t 


American  Cinematographer  • 


May,  1943  165 


FRAME  ENLARGEMENTS  FROM  "DESERT  VICTORY."  Top  row,  left,  opening  barrage  at  El  Alamein,  filmed  by  flare  from  the  cannon's  mouth.  Right:  Sappers 

clearing  a  path  through  the  mine-field  before  British  advance.  Second  row,  left:  "Tommies"  drop  as.  shell  bursts  in  background.  Right:  Infantry  advance  while 

their  comrade  receives  first-aid  in  foreground.  Third  row,  left:  Infantrymen  take  cover  behind  a  tank  while  a  shell  bursts  too  close  for  comfort;  right:  accompanying 

the  tanks  into  action.  Bottom  row,  left:  Riflemen  fire  across  a  still-burning  lorry.  Right:  dive-bombing  a  road  convoy;  note  foreground  "frame"  of  helmets  of 

riders  in  truck  in  which  cameraman  rode. 


166 


May,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


Filming  'Desert  Victory" 

By  LT.-COL.  DAVID  MacDONALD,  HON.  A. S.C. 

Officer  Commanding,  British  Army  Film  and  Photo  Unit 


As  Told  to  WM.  STULL,  A.S.C. 


THE  story  behind  the  making  of 
“Desert  Victory’’  really  began  al¬ 
most  exactly  three  years  ago,  in 
the  spring  of  1940.  At  that  time  the 
then  War  Minister  and  the  Minister  of 
Information,  Sir  Brendan  Bracken,  were 
persuaded  by  various  figures  in  the  Brit¬ 
ish  Film  Industry  that  a  well-organized 
motion  picture  and  photographic  report¬ 
age  unit  would  be  of  value  both  to  the 
Army  and  to  the  Nation’s  information 
service. 

In  due  course  the  nucleus  of  such  a 
unit  was  formed,  and  I  was  commis¬ 
sioned  and  placed  in  charge  of  it.  After 
getting  some  of  the  basic  organizational 
work  under  way,  I  crossed  to  France  to 
discuss  practical  arrangements  with  the 
commanders  of  the  B.E.F.  and  with  the 
officers  in  charge  of  the  French  military 
motion  picture  services.  By  this  time  it 
was  the  summer  of  1940,  and  then,  as 
you  know,  things  began  to  happen  very 
suddenly.  Those  of  us  who  were  lucky 
found  ourselves  back  in  Britain,  with 
the  job  of  re-equipping  and  rebuilding 
an  Army  on  our  hands,  and  precious 
little  to  do  it  with. 

That  was  the  point  where  the  building 
of  the  A.F.P.U.  really  began.  We  faced 
a  problem  which  I  believe  rather  paral¬ 
lels  that  which  has  been  faced  by  the 
U.  S.  Military  and  Naval  photographic 
units  since  Pearl  Harbor.  Like  you,  we 
in  Britain  had  the  foundation  of  an  ac¬ 
tive  and  capable  professional  motion  pic¬ 
ture  industry  upon  which  to  draw  for 
key  personnel ;  we  had  cameramen,  sound 
recording  engineers,  cutters,  directors, 
winters,  laboratory-men,  and  both  studio 
and  newspaper  still-men. 

But  one  thing  our  experience  in  the 
Battle  of  France  had  taught  us:  for 
front-line  service,  cameramen,  no  less 
than  soldiers,  must  be  young — and  fit — 
in  order  to  keep  up  with  their  fast-mov¬ 


ing  subjects.  And  while  I  fancy 
our  British  studio  technicians 
average  somewhat  younger  than 
Hollywood’s,  because  our  indus¬ 
try  there  is  younger,  by  and 
large  they  still  averaged  a  good 
bit  over  the  age  when  they 
would  be  most  capable  of  going  into  the 
field  and  keeping  up  with  combat  units 
through  day  after  day  of  grueling  fight¬ 
ing.  Besides,  in  the  many  kinds  of 
educational  and  entertainment  films  to  be 
made  at  home  in  the  field  and  on  the 
studio,  they  had  quite  a  job  to  do,  too. 

So,  very  much  as  I  gather  some  of 
the  American  military  motion  picture 
units  are  doing,  we  had  to  go  afield — - 
beyond  the  ranks  of  the  recognized  pro¬ 
fessional  cinema  industry — for  our  com¬ 
bat  camera  crews.  Starting  with  a  nu¬ 
cleus  of  key  professionals — cinematogra¬ 
phers  like  Capts.  Osmond  Borradaile 
and  H.  W.  Rignold,  whose  experiences 
have  already  been  related  in  The 
American  Cinematographer,  sound  en¬ 
gineers,  unit  managers,  assistant  direc¬ 
tors,  and  the  like — to  provide  the  basic 
training  and  organizational  staff,  we  re¬ 
cruited  our  actual  combat  camera  per¬ 
sonnel  from  other,  younger  groups  both 
within  and  outside  of  the  professional 
industry. 

Some  of  our  cameramen  had  been  as¬ 
sistants  or  film-loaders  in  the  studios. 
Others  had  had  a  bit  of  picture-making 
experience  as  assistant  directors,  labora¬ 
tory  technicians,  prop-men,  and  the  like 
in  the  studios.  Others  were  recruited 
from  among  the  amateurs — very  good 
chaps,  some  of  these,  in  both  still  and 
movie  work — and  we  got  some  excellent 
stil  photographers  from  among  the  news¬ 
paper  still-men  from  both  the  London 
and  provincial  papers.  Some  of  these 
men  had  had  quite  a  bit  of  photographic 
experience  before  joining  the  Service; 


ACTION  IN  THE  DESERT!  A  remarkable  series  of 
frame  enlargements  from  "Desert  Victory."  Above, 
left,  a  shell  bursts  close  to  an  anti-tank  gun.  Right: 
gun  crew  already  feeding  their  piece,  while  wounded 
comrade  is  led  to  side.  Below:  The  gun  in  action, 
while  wounded  man  (foreground)  receives  first  aid. 


others  had  never  before  had  a  camera  in 
their  hands. 

In  this  connection,  I’d  like  to  make  it 
clear  that  none  of  the  men  in  my  unit 
were  empressed  or,  as  you  say  in  Amer¬ 
ica,  drafted.  Every  one  of  the  officers 
and  men  in  the  unit  were  volunteers. 
This  fact  justified  itself  very  excellent¬ 
ly  by  the  courage  and  enthusiasm  the 
men  showed  in  doing  their  work — often 
at  extraordinary  personal  risk — once 
they  got  under  fire. 

In  this  organizing  period,  during  the 
Battle  of  Britain  and  the  Commando 
raids  on  Norway  and  other  points,  our 
chaps  got  a  bit  of  experience  working 
under  fire.  But  it  was  not  until  last 
year,  when  the  entire  unit  was  sent  out 
to  North  Africa  and  attached  to  Gen¬ 
eral  Alexander’s  Middle  East  Command 
that  we  really  got  shaken  down  into  a 
cohesive  military  combat  camera  unit. 
Then  our  chaps  learned  to  handle  their 
cameras  under  actual  battle  conditions, 
and  the  commissioned  personnel  learned 
— also  under  actual  field-service  condi¬ 
tions — to  cope  with  the  problems  of  or¬ 
ganization  and  supply  which  are  so  es¬ 
sential  not  only  in  getting  films  and  pho¬ 
tos  of  combat,  but  in  getting  them  back 
in  the  shortest  possible  time.  These  lat¬ 
ter  activities  do  not  have  the  glamor  of 
front-line  combat  camerawork,  but  they 
(Continued  on  Page  186) 


American  Cinematographer  •  May,  1943  167 


Hollywood  Greets  Four 
Soviet  War  Camera -Aces 

By  WILLIAM  STULL,  A. S.C. 


THE  unusual  vigor  and  reality  of 
the  documentary  films  which  have 
lately  come  out  of  Soviet  Russia  is 
a  bit  more  clear  to  several  score  of 
Hollywood’s  leading  cinematographers 
who  recently  had  the  privelege  of  meet¬ 
ing  and  entertaining  four  of  Russia’s 
wartime  camera-aces.  These  four  Soviet 
cinematographers — Nicolai  Litkin,  Vla- 
dick  Mikosha,  Ruvim  Khalushakov,  and 
Vassili  Soloviev — had  all  been  serving 
continuously  on  the  Soviet-Nazi  fronts 
since  the  Germans  invaded  their  country 
nearly  two  years  ago.  They  had  par¬ 
ticipated  in  the  making  of  such  notable 
war  documentaries  as  “Moscow  Strikes 
Back”  and  “One  Day  of  War.”  They 
had  been  decorated  for  their  front-line 
achievements,  and  three  of  them  had  re¬ 
ceived  the  Soviet’s  highest  cultural 
award — the  Stalin  Prize  —  for  their 
achievements. 

Their  visit  to  Hollywood  was  in  itself 
in  the  nature  of  a  reward  for  their 
work  at  the  front,  though  not  an  easy 
one,  for  they  were  on  a  round-the-world 
trip  making  a  cinematic  record  of  the 
convoys  which  fight  their  way  from 
England  and  America  to  Russia  bearing 
supplies  for  the  armies  which  are  bat¬ 
tling  so  tenaciously  against  the  Wehr- 
macht.  On  this  assignment,  all  four  were 
attached  to  the  Soviet  Merchant  Marine, 
with  rank  equivalent  to  that  of  Lieu¬ 
tenant  Commander,  and  when  not  photo¬ 


graphing,  served  as  officers  of  the  ships 
on  which  they  sailed. 

Like  so  many  of  Russia’s  artists  and 
engineers,  these  men  were  young — three 
of  the  four  in  their  early  thirties,  and 
the  fourth  but  a  few  years  older- — and 
like  most  Soviet  film  people,  they  had 
entered  the  industry  through  the  four- 
year  course  at  their  Government’s  Cen¬ 
tral  Cinema  Institute,  where  cinematog¬ 
raphers,  sound-engineers,  film-editors, 
and  other  technicians,  as  well  as  direc¬ 
tors,  writers  and  players,  are  trained  for 
their  careers  as  are  doctors  or  lawyers 
in  this  country. 

Though  the  barrier  of  language  made 
it  difficult  for  the  cinematographers  of 
the  two  countries  to  communicate  read¬ 
ily  with  each  other  at  the  banquet  given 
jointly  by  the  governing  boards  of  the 
A.S.C.  and  of  Cameramen’s  Local  659, 
the  Hollywood  group  soon  found  that 
in  matters  of  equipment  they  were  all 
on  familiarly  common  ground.  Most  of 
the  Russians’  front-line  camerawork,  for 
example,  was  done  with  Russian-made 
versions  of  the  familiar  Eyemo  and 
DeVry  hand-cameras,  though  DeBries 
were  more  common  in  studio  use.  Lens- 
equipment  was  largely  the  familiar 
Cooke  objectives,  and  though  some 
Soviet-made  film  was  used,  a  great  deal 
of  work  was  done  on  the  familiar  East¬ 
man  Super-X. 

Since  for  so  many  years  Russia,  in 
solving  her  vast  educational  problem, 


AMERICAN  AND  RUSSIAN  CINEMATOGRAPHERS 
MEET.  Front  row,  left  to  right,  Soviet  ace  cameramen 
Nicolai  Litkin,  Ruvim  Khalushakov,  Vladick  Mikosha, 
and  Vassili  Soloviev.  Standing,  in  rear:  Maj.  Elmer 
Dyer,  A.S.C.,  U.S.A.A.F.;  Lt.  Harold  Wenstrom, 

A.S.C.,  U.S.N.R.;  Al  Brick,  newsreel  ace  who  "cov¬ 
ered"  Pearl  Harbor;  Lt.  A.  L.  Gilks,  A.S.C.,  U.S.N.R.; 
Lt.  Arthur  Arling,  A.S.C.,  U.S.N.R.;  Lt.  Ray  Flinsky, 
U.S.A.A.F.;  Capt.  Gilbert  Warrenton,  A.S.C.,  U.S. 
A.F.;  Lt.  Joe  August,  A.S.C.,  U.S.N.R.;  Sgt.  Pever- 
ell  Marley,  A.S.C.,  U.S.A.A.F.  Photo  by  Roman 
Freulich. 

has  leaned  heavily  upon  the  documentary 
film,  it  is  only  natural  that  these  war¬ 
rior  camera-aces  should  all  have  special¬ 
ized  largely  in  making  documentaries. 
Cinematographer  Khalushakov,  for  ex¬ 
ample,  related  that  for  twelve  years 
after  his  graduation  from  the  Cinema 
Institute,  he  had  specialized  in  filming 
documentaries.  Previous  to  his  war¬ 
time  achievements,  he  considers  his  most 
notable  achievement  the  filming  of 
“Sodov,”  a  film  showing  the  work  of 
the  Soviet  ice-breakers  near  the  North 
Pole. 

The  conditions  under  which  this  film 
was  made  were  complicated  not  only  by 
the  fact  that  many  of  the  scenes  were 
made  with  the  aid  of  flares  during  the 
three-months-long  Polar  night,  but  be¬ 
cause  he  had  constantly  to  work  at 
temperatures  of  50  degrees  below  zero. 
The  production,  however,  was  successful 
and  won  him  a  decoration  from  his  gov¬ 
ernment. 

In  his  wartime  work,  Khalushakov 
has  specialized  to  a  considerable  extent 
in  filming  the  work  of  the  tank  units. 
This  work,  he  states  emphatically,  is 
particularly  difficult  for  the  cameraman. 
If  one  works  inside  a  tank — as  is  neces¬ 
sary  if  he  is  to  keep  pace  with  the 
battle — there  are  smoke  and  vibration  to 
contend  with,  and  also  an  extremely  re¬ 
stricted  field  of  view.  In  the  scenes  he 
made  for  “One  Day  of  War,”  he  made 
his  shots  through  the  narrow  vision-slit 
of  the  tank;  the  tank-commander  stop¬ 
ping,  whenever  possible,  to  give  him 
as  nearly  vibrationless  a  shot  as  pos¬ 
sible,  and  then  proceeding  with  his  pri¬ 
mary  purpose  of  beating  and  destroying 
the  enemy  armor  and  other  troops. 

Dangerous — ?  But  that  of  course,  he 
says.  The  life  of  any  good  front-line 
cameraman  is  risked  at  any  moment, 
for  he  has  to  be  where  the  most  spec¬ 
tacular  shots  are  to  be  had.  That,  in 
turn,  means  that  the  men  who  fight 
with  cameras  must  be  in  the  front  lines, 
or  even  ahead  of  them.  On  one  occa¬ 
sion  he  and  the  unit  with  which  he  was 
working  got  so  far  ahead  of  the  lines 
that  they  were  completely  surrounded  by 
Nazis,  with  many  Stukas  and  Messer- 
schmitts  bombing  and  strafing  them. 
It  took  twenty-five  days  to  fight  their 
way  out  of  that  encirclement.  But,  he 
adds  with  a  ready  grin,  in  doing  it  they 
reduced  the  strength  of  the  German 
Army  somewhat — and  brought  out  spec¬ 
tacular  photographic  evidence  of  Soviet 
courage! 

Cinematographer  Mikosha  has  spe¬ 
cialized  largely  in  camerawork  with  the 
Russian  Navy.  Since  The  outbreak  of 
the  war  he  has  been  attached  to  all 
types  of  naval  vessels,  from  cruisers  to 
destroyers,  PT  boats  and  submarines, 
(Continued  on  Page  193) 


168  May,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


LEONARD  SMITH  ELECTED 
PRESIDENT  OF  THE  A.S.C. 


LEONARD  SMITH  was  elected 
President  of  the  American  Society 
of  Cinematographers  at  the  So¬ 
ciety’s  annual  election  last  month.  He 
succeeds  Fred  W.  Jackman  who,  after 
two  successive  terms  as  President,  now 
assumes  the  important  post  of  Execu¬ 
tive  Vice-President  and  Business  Man¬ 
ager  of  the  A.S.C.  Arthur  Edeson  and 
Arthur  Miller  were  elected  Second  and 
Third  Vice-Presidents,  respectively.  By¬ 
ron  Haskin  was  re-elected  Secretary- 
Treasurer,  and  George  J.  Folsey,  Ser- 
geant-at-Arms. 

The  Board  of  Governors  for  this,  the 
Society’s  twenty-fifth  year,  consists  of 
President  Smith,  Vice-Presidents  Jack- 
man,  Edeson  and  Miller,  Treasurer  Has¬ 
kin,  Sergeant-at-Arms  Folsey,  and  John 
Arnold,  John  W.  Boyle,  Joe  MacDonald, 
Sol  Polito,  Ray  Rennahan,  Charles 
Schoenbaum,  Leon  Shamroy,  Ralph 
Staub  and  Joe  Walker. 

The  new  President  is  a  veteran  of  the 
industry.  Making  his  start  with  the  Vita- 
graph  studios  in  the  pioneer  days  of  the 
movies,  more  than  30  years  ago,  he  has 
been  an  active  member  of  all  of  the  va¬ 
rious  organizations,  on  both  the  East  and 
West  coasts,  which  eventually  led  to  the 
present  A.S.C. — the  original  Motion  Pic¬ 
ture  Camera  Club  of  New  York,  organ¬ 
ized  in  1911,  the  famous  Static  Club,  the 
Cinema  Camera  Club  of  California,  and 
so  on.  During  World  War  I  he  was  a  cine¬ 
matographer  in  the  Signal  Corps  of  the 
U.  S.  Army,  and  spent  14  months  in 
overseas  service.  During  much  of  this 
time  he  was  at  the  front;  later  he  was 
attached  to  General  Pershing’s  staff,  and 
finally  to  President  Wilson,  in  which  lat¬ 


ter  post  he  filmed  the  signing  of  the  Ver¬ 
sailles  Treaty.  For  the  past  sixteen  years 
he  has  been  on  the  camera  staff  of  the 
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer  Studio,  where  he 
has  distinguished  himself  as  a  lead¬ 
ing  director  of  photography  in  both 
black-and-white  and  color.  He  was  one 
of  the  first,  if  not  actually  the  first  “pro¬ 
duction”  cinematographer  to  make  a 
Technicolor  picture  single-handed,  with¬ 
out  the  assistance  of  a  Technicolor  spe¬ 
cialist,  and  several  of  his  achievements 
in  Technicolor  have  placed  him  in  the 
Academy  Award  nominees  exclusive  cir¬ 
cle. 

Discussing  his  plans  for  his  term  as 
the  A.S.C.’s  fourteenth  chief  executive, 
the  new  President  said,  “I  feel  that  I 
am  taking  this  office  at  an  unusually 
favorable  time.  The  negotiations  Fred 
Jackman  started  for  divesting  the  A.S.C. 
of  the  responsibility  of  overseeing  the 
economic  welfare  of  directors  of  photog¬ 
raphy  as  a  collective  bargaining  agent 
— an  activity  never  intended  by  the 
Society’s  founders — are  now  virtually 
complete,  and  this  important  duty  will 
soon  be  placed  in  the  efficient  hands  of 
Local  659,  I.A.T.S.E.  This  will  put  a 
stop  to  a  long  and  sometimes  unneces¬ 
sarily  acrimonious  dispute  within  the 


craft,  and  will  give  the  camera  profes¬ 
sion  greater  strength  by  having  all  of 
its  members  from  top  to  bottom  repre¬ 
sented  economically  by  a  single,  all-em¬ 
bracing  agency. 

“At  the  same  time,  this  move  will  en¬ 
able  the  A.S.C.  to  revert  back  to  its 
original  function  as  a  social  and  educa¬ 
tional  society  or  guild  for  directors  of 
photography,  as  it  did  so  successfully 
for  the  first  fifteen  years  of  its  exist¬ 
ence.  Only  today  we  intend  to  make  its 
activities  for  its  members  and  for  the 
advancement  of  the  camera  profession 
generally  much  stronger,  and  on  a  wid¬ 
er  scale  than  ever  before.  The  program 
of  regular  social  and  educational  meet¬ 
ings,  which  had  to  be  neglected  during 
the  period  when  economic  considerations 
took  up  so  much  of  the  officers’  and 
members’  time,  will  be  resumed.  An  ac¬ 
tive  and  widespread  campaign  of  pub¬ 
licity  in  the  interests  of  cinematography 
and  cinematographers  will  be  inaug¬ 
urated.  Personal  business  management 
will  be  available  for  members  whose 
salaries  are  above  the  Union  scale,  and 
therefore  outside  the  purview  of  Local 
659. 

“In  all  of  this,  I  want  to  make  it 
(Continued  on  Page  192) 


American  Cinematographer  •  May,  1943 


169 


EXPOSURE  CONTROL  IN 
AERIAL  PHOTOGRAPHY 

By  CAPT.  D.  W.  NORWOOD,  U  S  A.A.F.,  (Ret.) 


COMPENSATING  for  the  effect  of 
aerial  haze  as  an  exposure  factor 
is  one  of  the  biggest  problems  of 
modern  aerial  camerawork,  whether  still 
or  movie.  A  great  part  of  modern  op¬ 
erational  flying,  including  bombing  and 
photographic  reconnaissance,  is  done  at 
altitudes  of  20,000  feet  or  more.  At 
these  altitudes  there  is  almost  always 
a  thick  blanket  of  haze  interposed  be¬ 
tween  the  camera  and  that  part  of  the 
earth’s  surface  which  is  being  photo¬ 
graphed.  This  haze  consists  largely  of 
moisture  in  the  air,  with  the  addition 
of  minute  but  innumerable  particles  of 
fine  dust  and  smoke. 

This  blanket  of  haze  acts  in  three 
ways  in  its  effect  upon  exposure.  In  the 
first  place,  it  absorbs  a  definite  propor¬ 
tion  of  the  light  falling  on  the  subject 
as  the  sun’s  rays  go  earthward  through 
the  haze;  this  absorption  is  dependent 
on  the  thickness  of  the  haze  blanket. 
Secondly,  it  absorbs  an  equal  proportion 
of  the  light  reflected  upward  from  the 
earth  to  form  the  image  in  the  camera. 
Thirdly,  a  portion  of  the  light  falling- 
on  the  haze  from  the  sun  is  reflected 
upward  again — often  so  much  that  un¬ 


less  a  filter  (or  sometimes  a  pola-screen) 
is  used  to  cut  out  this  reflected  light, 
the  resulting  picture  is  likely  to  be  more 
a  picture  of  the  haze  itself  than  the  ter¬ 
rain  beneath  it. 

Determination  of  correct  exposure  for 
stills  or  movies  taken  with  the  camera 
pointing  straight  down  from  the  plane 
will  therefore  involve  three  factors: 
(1)  the  intensity  of  the  light  coming 
from  the  sun  at  the  plane’s  photograph¬ 
ing  altitude;  (2)  the  intensity  of  light 
actually  falling  on  the  terrain  being 
photographed  (i.e.,  factor  1  minus  the 
absorption  factor  of  the  haze  blanket) ; 
and  (3)  the  amount  of  light  finally 
reaching  the  camera-lens  to  form  the 
picture  ( i.e .,  factor  2  minus  the  factor 
of  the  haze-blanket’s  absorption,  which 
is  proportionally  equal  for  light  going 
either  down  or  up.) 

Any  system  of  exposure-determination 
which  does  not  take  into  account  these 
three  factors  will  be  more  than  likely  to 
produce  an  erroneous  result.  For  exam¬ 
ple,  a  simple  measurement  with  a  re- 
flected-light  meter,  with  the  meter  point¬ 
ing  downward  from  the  plane,  would 
make  no  allowance  for  the  amount  of 


light  reflected  upward  by  the  haze  itself, 
and  would  also  fail  to  give  any  measure 
of  the  doubled  absorptive  influence  of 
the  haze  itself  on  both  the  direct  light 
illuminating  the  subject  and  the  reflect¬ 
ed  light  forming  its  image.  Similarly,  a 
simple  incident-light  measurement  of 
the  illumination  aloft  would  fail  to  meas¬ 
ure  or  allow  for  the  haze  absorpton, 
reflection,  etc. 

However,  a  very  simple  method  oi 
measuring  these  factors  by  means  of  the 
Norwood  Exposure-meter  has  been  de¬ 
vised,  together  with  a  system  of  deriv¬ 
ing  the  true  “aloft  exposure”  therefrom. 

The  first  step  is  to  measure  the  inci¬ 
dent-light  illumination  at  ground  level, 
before  taking  off.  Since  the  camera  will 
be  used  ovei'head,  shooting  straight 
down,  this  is  done  by  reading  the  meter 
with  its  hemispherical  light-collector 
pointing  directly  up.  The  exposure  in¬ 
dicated  by  this  reading  would  be  correct 
for  taking  pictures  of  the  ground  at  low 
altitudes  of  from  100  to  200  or  300  feet. 

The  next  step  is  to  take  a  second 
reading  when  the  plane  is  in  the  air  at 
approximately  the  altitude  from  which 
the  pictux-es  will  be  taken.  This,  too,  is 
taken  with  the  meter’s  light-collector 
pointing  straight  up. 

The  l-elative  values  of  these  two  lead¬ 
ings  will  indicate  how  much  illumination 
has  been  absoi-bed  by  the  haze  blanket 
as  the  light  makes  its  downward  trip. 
Obviously,  the  haze  will  absorb  an 
equal  proportion  of  the  reflected,  image¬ 
forming  light  on  its  upwai'd  trip  to  the 
lens.  For  this  reason  it  is  necessary  to 
modify  the  “ground  exposure”,  as  deter¬ 
mined  by  the  first  reading,  by  a  factor 
derived  from  the  transmission  charac¬ 
teristic  of  the  haze,  to  arrive  at  the 
time  “aloft  exposure”  at  which  the  pic¬ 
ture  should  be  made. 

For  example,  suppose  the  “aloft  illu¬ 
mination”  is  twice  as  great  as  the 
“ground  illumination.”  This  means  that 
the  haze  blanket  transmitted  only  one- 
half  the  light  on  its  downward  passage, 
and  in  turn  will  transmit  only  one  half 
the  light  actually  reflected  from  the  sub¬ 
ject  on  its  upward  passage  to  the  cam- 
(Continued  on  Page  191) 


170  May,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


BRITISH  WAR  CAMERA  ACE  WINS 
HONORARY  A.S.C.  MEMBERSHIP 


FOR  the  sixth  time  in  its  twenty- 
four  year  history,  the  American 
Society  of  Cinematographers  has 
bestowed  its  highest  honor — Honorary 
Membership.  The  recipient  of  this  zeal¬ 
ously-guarded  distinction  is  Lieutenant 
Colonel  David  MacDonald,  founder  and 
head  of  the  British  Army  Film  and 
Photo  Unit,  whose  film  of  the  British 
Eighth  Army’s  pursuit  of  Rommel  across 
the  Western  Desert  of  Africa,  “Desert 
Victory,”*  when  previewed  before  the 
membership  of  the  A.S.C.,  evoked  the 
most  enthusiastic  response  any  film  has 
ever  received  from  this  group,  and  an 
unparalleled  standing  ovation  to  the  man 
under  whose  guidance  it  was  made. 

In  citing  Colonel  MacDonald  for  this 
highest  honor  within  the  bestowal  of 
the  A.S.C.,  President  Leonard  Smith 
and  Executive  Vice-President  Fred  W. 
Jackman  stated  that  Honorary  Member¬ 
ship  in  the  American  Society  of  Cine¬ 
matographers  is  awarded  only  to  those 
most  outstanding  individuals  whose  con¬ 
tributions  to  the  progress  of  cinema¬ 
tography  have  had  a  basic  and  enduring 


effect  upon  the  camera  craft.  “In  the 
past,”  said  President  Smith,  “we  have 
bestowed  Honorary  Memberships  on  the 
men  who  invented  the  motion  picture 
and  made  it  a  practical  possibility,  and 
upon  those  whose  creative  effort  has 
given  us  perfected  tools  with  which  to 
work.  Today,  in  giving  this  honor  to 
Colonel  MacDonald,  we  are  honoring 
another  man  who  has  made  a  funda¬ 
mental  contribution  to  the  progress  of 
cinematography,  for  Col.  MacDonald  has 
brilliantly  pioneered  the  use  of  motion 
pictures  as  a  dynamic  part  of  the  United 
Nations’  War  Effort.  We  are  all  the 
more  ready  to  give  him  this  honor  be¬ 
cause  of  his  repeatedly  expressed  con¬ 
viction  that  the  real  credit  for  his  pro¬ 
duction  belongs  to  the  cameramen  of  his 
command  who  did  the  actual  camerawork 
at  and  beyond  the  firing  front.  That 
is  what  we  would  expect,  perhaps,  of 
a  truly  fine  gentleman  and  soldier  such 
as  our  new  Honorary  Member:  but  his 
modesty  cannot  conceal  the  fact  that 
without  his  own  ability,  vigor  and  broad 
vision,  the  cameramen  of  Britain’s 
Eighth  Army  could  never  have  had  the 
chance  to  do  the  magnificent  work  they 
have  done  in  advancing  the  use  of  mo¬ 
tion  pictures  in  our  united  War  Effort. 
We  hope  that  many  of  our  own  members 
now  in  the  film  services  of  the  United 
States’  Armed  Forces  will  be  privileged 
to  follow  along  the  paths  he  has  point¬ 
ed  out;  but  meantime,  we  are  proud  to 
honor  the  man  who  has  so  brilliantly 
shown  us  all  what  can  be  done.” 

In  accepting  his  honor,  Colonel  Mac- 

*  See  Page  175. 


Donald  stated  that  he  was  personally 
gratified  almost  beyond  speech  at  the 
high  and  surprising  honor  done  him. 
“But,”  he  said,  “I  don’t  accept  this  so 
much  in  a  personal  way  as  I  do  as  a 
tribute  to  those  men  in  my  command 
who  actually  did  the  work.  We  have 
some  damn  fine  lads  there  in  the  West¬ 
ern  Desert,  men  who  have  gone  through 
a  deal  of  blood  and  toil  to  prove  what 
motion  pictures  can  accomplish  in  mod¬ 
ern  warfare.  I  know  that  this  honor 
you  have  paid  to  all  of  us  through  me 
will  inspire  them  to  carry  on  even  more 
valiently  to  justify  this  very  great 
compliment  given  them  by  you  gentle¬ 
men  to  whom  they  look  up  as  the  great¬ 
est  exponents  of  cinematography  in  the 
world.  Since  Tripoli  our  chaps  have 
photographed  another  170,000-odd  feet 
of  battle  films,  and  soon,  as  our  united 
armies  push  Rommel  finally  into  the 
sea,  we’ll  be  able  to  send  you  back  an¬ 
other  picture  to  show  you  how  we’re 
carrying  on  in  our  united  effort.” 

The  distinction  of  honorary  member¬ 
ship  in  the  American  Society  of  Cine¬ 
matographers  is,  as  has  been  said,  so 
seldom  bestowed  that  it  has  become  in¬ 
ternationally  recognized  as  the  highest 
cinematographic  honor.  Up  to  the  time 
Col.  MacDonald  received  the  golden  card 
emblematic  of  his  membership,  but  five 
others  had  been  so  honored.  The  first 
of  these  was  the  late  Thomas  A.  Edison, 
“the  father  of  the  motion  picture.”  The 
next  was  the  late  George  Eastman, 
without  whose  celluloid  film  Edison’s 
invention  would  not  have  been  possible. 
Some  years  later,  the  third  of  these 
honors  wras  awarded  to  Albert  S.  Howell, 


A.S.C.  President  Len  Smith  hands  Lt.-Col.  David 
MacDonald  the  gold  card  of  honorary  membership 
in  the  American  Society  of  Cinematographers  while 
Executive  Vice-President  Fred  W.  Jackman  looks  on. 


of  Bell  &  Howell  fame,  who  first  gave 
the  industry  precision-engineered  cam¬ 
eras,  printers,  film-perforators,  and  the 
like,  to  replace  the  crude  equipment  of 
the  pioneer  days.  The  Society’s  fourth 
Honorary  Member  was  George  Mitchell, 
who  designed  and  with  the  collective 
cooperation  of  the  membership  of  the 
A.  S.  C.  perfected  the  Mitchell  camera 
which  for  nearly  twenty  years  has  won 
and  maintained  its  place  as  the  world’s 
standard  studio  camera.  The  fifth  Hon¬ 
orary  Member  was  Edward  0.  Black¬ 
burn  who  during  the  many  years  he  has 
represented  the  J.  E.  Brulatour  organi¬ 
zation  in  Hollywood  has  endeared  him¬ 
self  to  the  camera  profession  not  alone 
through  aid  in  technical  matters,  but 
by  his  inestimable  services  as  a  guide, 
counsellor  and  friend  to  all  cameramen. 

The  addition  of  Lt.  Col.  MacDonald  to 
this  select  group — the  first  other  than 
an  American  to  be  so  honored  —  is  a 
fitting  tribute  to  equally  great  and  time¬ 
ly  achievement.  As  the  organizer  and 
head  of  the  British  Army  Film  and 
Photo  Unit,  he  has  pioneered  in  the  lat¬ 
est  and  currently  the  most  important 
use  of  cinematography — as  a  vital  in¬ 
strument  of  modern  warfare.  As  the 
coordinating  genius  behind  the  photo¬ 
graphing  and  editorial  completion  of 
“Desert  Victory,”  he  has  not  only  given 
the  United  Nations  a  production  which 
ranks  as  the  greatest  film  document  yet 
to  come  out  of  the  war,  but  has  bril¬ 
liantly  proven  what  all  cinematograph¬ 
ers — British,  Russian,  Chinese  and 
American  alike — so  strongly  believe: 
that  motion  picture  film,  correctly  used, 
can  be  as  valuable  as  bullets  in  our 
united  effort  toward  victory.  END. 


American  Cinematographer  •  May,  1943 


171 


Aces  of  the  Camera 
XXVIII: 


Milton  Krasner,  A.S.  C. 


By  WALTER 


ONE  of  the  publicists’  favorite 
cliches  is  the  story  (often  only 
too  true)  of  the  little  starlet — or 
script-writer — or  director — who  grew  up 
right  across  the  street  from  a  Holly¬ 
wood  studio,  but  just  couldn’t  get  a 
job  there  until  she  (or  he)  travelled 
dispiritedly  to  New  York,  “clicked”  on 
Broadway  or  the  radio,  and  came  home 
to  a  big  contract  and  a  swimming-pool. 

We  hate  to  spoil  the  publicity-men’s 
dream,  but  Milton  R.  Krasner,  A.S.C.,  is 
a  living  refutation  of  their  pet  success- 
story.  Of  course,  he  didn’t  live  in  Holly¬ 
wood,  but  in  New  York:  but  there  he 
lived  right  down  the  street  from  one  of 
the  biggest  of  the  early  studios — Vita- 


BLANCHARD 


graph.  And  when  he  was  about  fifteen 
years  old,  he  marched  down  the  street 
to  the  Vitagraph  studio  and — got  a  job. 

But  if  the  start  was  easy,  what  fol¬ 
lowed  wasn’t;  it  took  Milt  the  better 
part  of  the  following  fourteen  years  to 
really  make  his  mark  on  the  profession 
and  emerge  as  a  full-fledged  director  of 
photography.  He  started,  like  many  an¬ 
other,  in  the  laboratory.  Then  he  switched 
for  a  while  to  cutting — just  long  enough, 
he  says,  so  he  knew  how  a  make  a  good 
splice,  and  have  a  slight  idea  of  what 
goes  on  in  the  editing  process. 

Then  he  got  a  chance  to  go  out  on 
a  camera,  as  an  assistant — a  utility  job 
which  was  just  beginning  to  appear  in 


the  better  studios.  He  carried  the  cam¬ 
era-cases,  held  the  slate,  loaded  and  un¬ 
loaded  the  magazines,  and  so  on,  for 
about  six  months.  And  then  he  was 
promoted  to  the  more  important  job  of 
Second  Cameraman  which,  despite  its 
importance,  has  proven  so  much  of  a 
dead-end  street  for  so  many  fond  photo¬ 
graphic  hopes.  And  there  he  stayed  for 
more  than  ten  years. 

“But,”  he’ll  remind  you,  “in  those 
earlier  days  a  Second  Cameraman’s  job 
wasn’t  what  it  is  today.  I  think  Bob 
DeGrasse  put  it  right  a  couple  of  months 
ago  when  he  said  that  the  Second  Man’s 
work  then  was  more  nearly  like  that  of 
an  associate  cinematographer.  Most 
companies  used  two  cameras  on  the  set: 
the  first  one,  operated  by  the  First 
Cameraman,  made  the  negative  used  for 
printing  the  domestic  release.  The  sec¬ 
ond  one  was  operated  by  the  Second 
Cameraman,  and  made  the  negative  used 
in  making  the  foreign  release-prints.  I 
suppose  that’s  how  those  titles  developed. 

“And  twenty-odd  years  ago,  the  Sec¬ 
ond  Cameraman  had  a  good  deal  wider 
scope  of  action  than  he  has  today.  When 
the  going  got  tough  and  the  front  office 
put  on  the  pressure  to  hurry  up  to 
meet  the  release-schedule,  the  company 
would  often  split  into  two  units,  a  good 
deal  as  it  does  today.  Only  in  those 
days,  the  Second  Unit  would  be  in  charge 
of  a  good  Assistant  Director  and  the 
Second  Cameraman. 

“Then,  as  the  laboratories  found  how 
to  make  better  dupe  negatives  for  print¬ 
ing  the  foreign  release,  the  need  for 
the  old-time  Second  Cameraman  dwin¬ 
dled.  At  the  same  time,  though,  the 
complexities  of  the  First  Cinematograph¬ 
er’s  job  began  to  increase — especially  as 
sound  came  in — and  there  grew  to  be 
a  real  need  for  an  experienced  man  who 
could  take  full  responsibility  for  operat¬ 
ing  the  camera,  while  the  First  Cine¬ 
matographer  concentrated  his  full  atten¬ 
tion  on  lighting,  composition,  and  the 
dramatic  aspects  of  his  job.  So  today’s 
Operative  Second  Cameraman  was  bom. 

“But  those  years  I  spent  as  Second 
and  Operative  were  the  best  sort  of 
training  anyone  could  have.  I  worked 
on  all  kinds  of  pictures — big  ones  and 
little  ones— with  the  very  best  cinema¬ 
tographers  in  the  industry.  I  learned 
not  only  what  one  man  would  do,  but 
what  half-a-dozen  really  great  cinema¬ 
tographers  would  do  when  confronted 
by  some  similar  problem,  whether  it  was 
lighting  some  particular  type  of  face,  or 
figuring  out  the  execution  of  some  pe¬ 
culiarly  difficult  set-up  or  dolly-shot. 

“That’s  why  no  ‘school’  of  photography 
other  than  the  old  college  of  hard  knocks 
can  really  turn  out  a  studio  cameraman. 
Just  think  of  the  tremendous  invest¬ 
ment  represented  not  only  by  the  big 
major-studio  ‘specials’  I  worked  on  with 
such  masters  as  John  Seitz,  A.S.C.,  Hal 
Mohr,  A.S.C.,  Lee  Garmes,  A.S.C.,  and 
the  others,  but  also  on  the  scores  of 
tough  little  program  quickies  and  west¬ 
erns.  Just  as  a  matter  of  plain  dollars 

(Continued  on  Page  186) 


172 


May,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


THROUGH  the  EDITOR'S  FINDER 


THERE  has  been  a  growing  tend¬ 
ency  of  late  among  the  industry’s 
so-called  top-flight  cinematographers  to 
insist  on  what  might  be  called  “limited- 
term”  contracts.  Instead  of  seeking 
hungrily  (as  may  have  been  necessary 
in  those  earlier  days  when  cinematog¬ 
raphers’  salaries  were  not  what  they  are 
now)  for  the  greatest  possible  number 
of  weeks  drawing  salary  on  a  studio’s 
payroll,  regardless  of  what  type  of  pic¬ 
ture  he  might  be  assigned  to,  more  and 
more  of  today’s  ace  cinematographers 
are  asking  —  and  getting  —  contracts 
which,  while  carrying  top  salaries,  put 
a  definite  limit  upon  the  amount  of 
time  the  producer  can  work  the  cine¬ 
matographer.  In  some  cases,  that  maxi¬ 
mum  is  expressed  in  weeks —  say  from 
30  to  36  weeks  out  of  the  year  In  others, 
it  is  expressed  in  terms  of  productions 
— usually  three  or  four  top-bracket,  long- 
schedule  ones  in  the  course  of  the  year. 
In  most  instances  these  new-day  con¬ 
tracts  give  the  cinematographer  the  vi¬ 
tally  important  right  to  choose  or  refuse 
productions  the  same  way  an  estab¬ 
lished  star  or  director  does. 

To  our  mind,  this  is  one  of  the  great¬ 
est  forward  steps  the  cinematographer’s 
status  has  taken  in  many  a  long  year.  It 
is  a  practice  we  believe  should  be  en¬ 
couraged,  not  only  by  the  cinematog¬ 
raphers  themselves,  but  by  the  producers 
as  well,  for  in  the  long  run  it  benefits 
both. 

To  start  with,  the  director  of  pho¬ 
tography  is  rightly  regarded  as  one  of 
the  two  or  three  key  men  of  produc¬ 
tion.  If  the  producer’s  responsibility  is 
to  see  to  it  that  script,  casting,  physical 
mounting  and  the  myriad  other  details 
of  production  are  well  in  hand  before 
the  picture  reaches  the  shooting  stage, 
and  the  director’s  is  to  see  to  that  the 
cast  most  perfectly  tells  the  story  hand¬ 
ed  him,  it  is  the  cinematographer’s  re¬ 
sponsibility  to  achieve  perfection  in  the 
visual  translation  of  the  story  from  set 
to  screen — and  often  enough  to  “carry” 
an  inefficient  director,  or  to  cover  up 
deficiencies  in  the  physical  details  of  pro¬ 
duction  mounting,  as  well. 

In  all  of  this,  the  director  of  pho¬ 
tography  is  expected  to  keep  up,  both 
physically  and  mentally,  with  directors, 
producers  and  players  who  spread  their 
vacations  over  from  three  to  six  months 
a  year. 

When  the  man  of  the  camera  has  gone 
from  picture  to  picture  with  only  days, 
or  even  hours,  in  between,  this  just  isn’t 
in  the  cards.  When,  as  in  too  many 
cases  we  know,  the  cinematographer  has 
been  kept  busy  not  merely  the  full  40 
weeks  of  the  traditional  contract,  but 
the  year’s  full  52,  and  may  have  gone 
without  any  real  vacation  for  three,  four 
or  even  five  consecutive  years,  even  the 
strongest  of  physical  and  mental  stamina 
must  break  down.  Under  such  condi¬ 
tions,  he  cannot  give  his  best  photo¬ 
graphically;  he  must  inevitably  slip,  to 


some  extent  at  least,  into  routine,  “form¬ 
ula”  photographic  treatments  in  place  of 
more  original  lightings  and  compositions 
which  might  conceal  pitfalls  for  a  tired 
man.  Certainly  he  can  neither  give  his 
best  cooperation  to  an  experienced  di¬ 
rector,  nor  his  professionally  best  pro¬ 
tecting  guidance  to  an  inexperienced  one. 

In  other  words,  under  such  circum¬ 
stances  the  studio  is  not  receiving,  and 
cannot  receive,  the  fullest  value  of  the 
photographic  skill  for  which  it  is  paying. 

On  the  other  hand,  entrusting  a  job 
of  camerawork  to  a  man  who  films  but 
three  cr  four  pictures  a  year,  and  has 
plenty  of  time  between  for  rest  and  re¬ 
laxation  means  inevitably  that  the  man 
at  the  camera  will  be  physically  and 
mentally  fresher  .  .  .  able  to  serve  more 
creatively  at  his  own  job,  and  also  to 
exercise  more  alertly  the  care  for  the 
producer’s  interest  as  regards  coopera¬ 
tion  with  the  director,  and  the  glossing 
over  of  wartime  production  shortcom¬ 
ings,  which  are  so  equally  a  part  of 
his  job. 

In  other  words,  the  producer  will  get 
more  for  his  money  on  such  a  basis 
than  he  ever  can  under  the  traditional 
get  -  the  -  most  -  work  -  possible  policy  of 
handling  cameramen. 

It  may  be  argued  that  such  a  policy, 
in  view  of  today’s  increasing  shortage  of 
trained  camera  personnel — especially  in 
and  near  the  so-called  top-bracket  class 
— would  result  in  a  serious  shortage  of 
what  the  producers  like  to  term  “A- 
picture  cinematographers.” 

In  reality,  it  wouldn’t.  It  would 
result  in  the  opposite  discovery  that 
there  really  are  no  “B-picture  camera¬ 
men.”  There  are  plenty  of  cinematog¬ 
raphers  who  photograph  nothing  but 
“B-pictures”  —  largely  because  they’ve 
been  typed  as  fast-working  “B-picture” 
men,  and  have  never  had  a  chance  at 
an  “A.”  Put  almost  any  one  of  them 
on  a  production  with  the  greater  pro¬ 
duction  values,  the  longer  schedule  and 
more  generous  budget  that  makes  an 
“A,”  and  you’d  find  you  were  getting 
“A-picture  photography”  on  the  screen. 
After  all,  it  doesn’t  take  such  a  very 
long  memory  to  recall  when  most  of 
today’s  top  camera  stars  were  shooting 
“B”  and  “C”  pictures,  and  doing  none 
too  brilliantly  at  it  .  .  .  when  Lee  Garmes 
was  doing  “quickies,”  and  Ted  Tetzlaff 
Westerns  .  .  .  when  Charlie  Lang  was 
on  the  verge  of  being  fired  for  in¬ 
different  work  on  program  pictures,  and 
Gregg  Toland  and  Bill  Daniels  were 
only  hopeful  assistants.  There  are  plenty 
of  men  doing  that  same  type  of  pic¬ 
tures  today  who  need  only  a  chance  at 
a  really  major  “A”  to  put  them  up  into 
the  Academy  Nominees  circle. 

So  we  hope  this  new  trend  toward 
“limited  term”  contracts  spreads,  for 
it  will  keep  the  studios  from  killing 
off  some  of  their  biggest  camera-assets 
through  sheer  overwork,  and  it  will  open 
up  an  entirely  new  field  of  new,  but 


thoroughly  experienced  men  already  able, 
and  oh  so  willing  to  handle  with  dis¬ 
tinction  even  the  industry’s  biggest  cam¬ 
era  assignments.  And  given  the  chance, 
they’ll  do  it  well. 

• 

SOME  day  we  hope  someone  will  be 
able  to  sum  up  all  the  important 
jobs  16mm.  is  doing  in  this  global  war. 
Among  those  we  can  think  of  immedi¬ 
ately  offhand  are  the  making  of  count¬ 
less  military  and  industrial  training  and 
research  films — the  latter  using  not  only 
16mm.  but  even  8mm.  at  times  for  super 
slow-motion  studies  of  fast-moving  ma¬ 
chinery — to  further  the  War  Effort  di¬ 
rectly;  the  use  of  16mm.  cameras  and 
sound-recorders  to  record  the  data  ob¬ 
tained  in  test-flying  aircraft;  its  use  in 
battle  photography  by  our  own  Army 
and  Navy,  and  in  camera-guns  of  both 
the  British  and  American  Air  Forces 
to  bring  back  a  photographic  record  of 
the  firing  of  each  gun — and  the  results 
obtained.  And  don’t  forget  the  V-Mail 
service,  which  is  entirely  on  a  16mm. 
basis,  and  means  so  much  in  quick  com¬ 
munication  between  the  men  at  the 
front — no  matter  how  distant — and  their 
folks  at  home.  Only  recently  we  re¬ 
ceived  a  V-Mail  letter  from  a  Marine 
cameraman  in  the  South  Pacific — not  too 
far  from  Guadalcanal,  we  suspect — in 
less  time  than  it  would  take  a  normal, 
peace-time  letter  to  go  by  regular  mail 
from  New  York  to  Hollywood. 

• 

IT  seems  to  us  that  cinematographers 
throughout  the  industry  should  exert 
themselves  to  put  a  stop  to  what  seems 
to  us  a  very  unjust  policy.  There  ap¬ 
pears  a  growing  tendency  to  give  screen 
credit  for  special  photographic  effects 
partly,  and  in  some  cases  exclusively,  to 
non-photographers.  In  some  studios  the 
credit  is  split  between  an  art-director 
and  a  cinematographer;  in  others,  there’s 
a  three-way  split  between  a  special- 
effects  director,  art-director  and  (only 
incidentally)  cinematographer.  And  in 
at  least  one  studio,  the  special-effects 
cinematographer  is  never  mentioned 
at  all. 

Yet  it  is  the  man  with  the  special- 
effects  camera  knowledge  who  really 
puts  the  scene  on  the  screen.  He  could 
— as  he  has  for  many  years  in  the 
past — carry  on  efficiently  without  the 
aid  of  either  special-effects  director  or 
art-director.  But  they  couldn’t  carry  on 
without  him — and  the  specialized  knowl¬ 
edge  and  skill  he  has  built  up  over  a 
period  of  two  or  even  three  decades  of 
intense  specialization. 

We’re  all  for  the  principle  of  credit 
where  credit  is  due — so  why  not  follow 
it?  There  is  a  limit  to  the  number  of 
credits  it  is  physically  or  economically 
possible  to  put  on  the  screen:  wouldn’t 
it  be  fairest  to  give  that  credit  to  those 
who  actually  do  the  work? 


American  Cinematographer  •  May,  1943  173 


A.S.C.  on  Parade 


For  lo,  these  many  months  Capt.  Ted 
McCord,  A.S.C.,  of  the  Army  Air  Force, 
and  Ye  Ed  have  been  most  inadvertently 
dodging  each  other.  You  see,  we  wanted 
his  pic  for  this  page  .  .  .  sooo — we  spent 
quite  a  few  Saturday  afternoons  sitting 
here  with  loaded  camera  hoping  for  a 
chance  to  “mug”  Capt.  Ted — and  missed 
him.  He  came  up  several  times  with 
similar  intentions,  only  to  find  us  else¬ 
where,  grappling  with  printers,  adver¬ 
tisers,  and  such.  Finally,  though,  at  the 
last  A.S.C.  meeting,  about  the  middle  of 
the  third  reel  of  “Desert  Victory,”  some¬ 
body  handed  us  a  very  official-looking 
Air  Force  envelope  with  this  handsome 
picture  of  Capt.  McCord  in  it.  Looks  as 
though  both  of  us  won  out  on  the  deal, 
for  this  portrait  by  an  uncredited  Air 
Force  photog  is  probably  a  lot  better 
than  we’d  have  done  ourself! 

★ 

Our  sympathies  to  Past-Prexy  John 
Arnold,  A.S.C.,  bedded  with  a  very  bad 
case  of  flu,  verging  closer  toward  pneu¬ 
monia  than  any  of  us  like  to  see. 

★ 

And  the  latest  bedside  report  from 
Ray  June,  A.S.C.,  is  encouraging:  while 
still  in  the  hospital,  he’s  improving,  and 
allowed  to  have  visitors  occasionally. 

★ 

By  the  way,  did  you  hear  the  moniker 
our  recent  Russian  gusts  pinned  on  Fred 
Jackman — ?  He  provd  such  a  nice  host 
they  called  him  the  Russian  version  of 
“Comrade  Santa  Claus” — but  at  first  he 
thought  it  meant  something  to  drink, 
for  it  was  Tovarich  Jackacola! 

★ 

Add  things  we  didn’t  know  about  A.S.C. 
members — Eddie  Cronjager,  A.S.C.,  is 
quite  the  piano  virtuoso  (classical  vari¬ 
ety).  Now  with  Eddie’s  piano,  George 
Barnes’  fiddle,  and  Sid  Wagner’s  very 
hot  sax,  we  ought  to  have  the  makings 


of  a  pretty  good  A.S.C.  orchestra!  Any¬ 
body  play  the  drums — ? 

★ 

During  the  last  several  weeks  a  lot 
of  folks  have  been  asking  us  about  that 
ad  Karl  Freund,  A.S.C.,  had  in  the  March 
issue,  congratulating  Arthur  Edeson, 
A.S.C..  and  Mike  Curtiz  for  their  joint 
achievement  in  “Casablanca.”  Our  an¬ 
swer  is  that  it’s  the  real  McCoy — con¬ 
ceived  in  Karl’s  brain,  and  paid  for 
(cash!)  out  of  his  pocket.  We  think  it’s 
a  mighty  fine  gesture  .  .  .  and  one  worth 
emulating  when  you  see  a  fellow  cinemo- 
tographer  come  up  with  a  similarly 
swell  piece  of  work. 

★ 

Miracles  do  happen — that  perennially 
busy  man,  Byron  Haskin,  A.S.C.,  after 
directing  we-can’t-tell-you-how-much  of 
“Action  In  the  North  Atlantic,”  and  per¬ 
forming  endless  special-effects  chores  on 
“Air  Force,”  “Mark  Twain,”  and  the 
other  Warner  biggies,  actually  managed 
to  get  himself  a  whole  week’s  vacation! 
Went  up  to  visit  relatives  in  ’Frisco,  so 
we  hear. 


Congratulations  to  the  A.S.C.’s  new¬ 
est  bridegroom — Master  Sergeant  Peve- 
rell  Marley,  A.S.C.,  U.S.A.A.F.,  and  his 
bride,  the  lovely  Linda  Darnell,  who  did 
a  surprise  elopement  to  Las  Vegas  a 
few  days  ago  for  the  knot-tieing.  Pev, 
you  know,  shot  Linda’s  first  test  when 
she  arrived  in  Hollywood,  and  then  her 
first  picture  .  .  .  thereby  starting  a 
friendship  that  grew  naturally  to  mean 
much  more  as  two  swell  people  really 
got  to  know  each  other.  The  only  thing 
we  can’t  understand  about  the  whole 
affair  is  where,  in  these  rationed  days, 
did  they  get  the  gas  to  drive  that  round- 
trip  to  Las  Vegas — ? 

★ 

Wonder  if  this  is  the  first  “second- 
generation  A.S.C.”  romance — ?  We’ve 
just  learned  that  1st.  Lieut.  David  P. 
Boyle,  son  of  John  W.  Boyle,  A.S.C., 
home  on  leave  from  duties  with  the  Sig¬ 
nal  Corps,  has  just  popped  the  ques¬ 
tion  to  Miss  Betty  Jane  Huse,  daughter 
of  Emery  Huse,  A.S.C. 


The  sincerest  sympathies  of  the  en¬ 
tire  A.S.C.  go  out  to  Faxon  Dean,  A.S.C., 
on  the  recent  death  of  his  wife. 

★ 

Everybody  patting  Johnny  Boyle, 
A.S.C.,  on  the  back  for  providing  the 
projectors  and  operating  ’em  at  the  last 
meeting  when  “Desert  Victory”  was 
shown  ...  If  they’d  seen  the  amount  of 
time  (and  sweat!)  he  put  in  beforehand 
overhauling  them  to  make  sure  they’d  be 
in  perfect  condition  for  the  meeting, 
they’d  give  him  a  medal! 

★ 

And  did  you  know  that  Sol  Polito, 
A.S.C.,  was  the  one  who  provided  that 
big  “tarp”  with  which  to  black  out  the 
sky-light  over  the  A.S.C.  lounge? 
Thanks,  Sol,  from  all  of  us! 


GEORGE  BLAISDELL 

It  is  with  profound  regret  that 
we  report  the  death,  on  April  20th, 
of  George  Blaisdell,  former  editor 
of  The  American  Cinematogra¬ 
pher,  and  a  pioneer  in  motion  pic¬ 
ture  journalism.  A  journalist  and 
printer  for  more  than  fifty  of  his 
nearly  80  very  active  years,  he  was 
credited  with  writing  the  first  re¬ 
view  of  a  motion  picture  in  a  “le¬ 
gitimate”  newspaper  when  on  the 
staff  of  the  New  York  “Sun”  more 
than  thirty  years  ago.  Since  that 
time  he  served  for  many  years  as 
editor  of  the  “Motion  Picture 
World,”  the  “International  Pho¬ 
tographer,”  and  The  American 
Cinematographer,  as  well  as  on 
the  staffs  of  such  publications  as 
“The  Billboard,”  ‘“The  Hollywood 
Reporter,”  “Variety,”  and  many 
others.  In  ill  health  since  he  was 
stricken  by  a  paralytic  stroke  last 
November,  he  had  been  recovering 
to  the  extent  that  we  hoped  soon 
to  have  some  articles  in  his  inimit¬ 
able  style  in  future  issues  of  this 
magazine. 

George  Blaisdell  will  be  missed 
by  a  remarkably  wide  circle  of 
friends — not  only  those  who  knew 
him  personally,  but  those,  too, 
who  knew  him  only  by  correspond¬ 
ence,  or  by  what  he  made  out  of 
the  magazines  placed  in  his  charge. 
His  was  a  unique  character:  a 
man  of  very  positive  opinions,  and 
unshakable  loyalty  to  his  friends 
and  to  his  concept  of  what  was 
right,  he  was,  as  one  friend  ex¬ 
pressed  it,  all  pepper-and-salt  on 
the  outside,  and  beneath  it,  the  fin¬ 
est  of  gentlemen  and  friends  to 
those  who  got  to  know  him  well. 
As  a  friend  and  fellow-worker  he 
knew  no  peer. 

Above  all,  he  was  a  man  who 
loved  life  and  who,  during  nearly 
four-score  years,  lived  it  to  the  full. 
The  sincere  sympathies  not  only  of 
the  A.S.C.  and  this  editor,  but,  we 
are  sure,  of  the  world-wide  circle 
of  readers  of  this  magazine  go  out 
to  Mrs.  Blaisdell,  and  to  his  grand¬ 
sons  and  great-grandchildren. 


174  May,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


PHOTOGRAPHY  OF  THE  MONTH 


DESERT  VICTORY 

Released  through  Twentieth  Century- 

Fox. 

Photographed  by  The  Officers  and  Men 

of  the  British  Army  Film  and  Photo 

Unit,  and  the  R.A.F.  Film  Production 

Unit. 

If  there  are  such  things  as  Academy 
Awards  next  year,  our  sincere  advice 
to  the  Academy  awarders  would  be  to 
take  all  of  the  “Oscars” — especially 
those  for  the  best  production,  best  di¬ 
rection,  cinematography,  script-writing, 
film-editing,  scoring,  etc. — and  melt  them 
down  into  one  man-sized  statuette  to  be 
presented  to  the  makers  of  “Desert  Vic¬ 
tory.”  Then  they  could  forget  the  ban¬ 
quet,  and  put  the  twenty  or  thirty-odd 
thousand  dollars  these  annual  fests  cost 
into  War  Bonds! 

For  “Desert  Victory”  is  by  long  odds 
the  picture  of  the  year.  It  is  indisput¬ 
ably  the  greatest  film  yet  to  come  out 
of  World  War  II,  not  only  as  cine- 
reportage,  but  as  an  example  of  thor¬ 
ough-going  film  craftsmanship  in  every 
department. 

Yet  “Desert  Victory”  is  no  piece  of 
staged  film  entertainment.  It  is  the 
actual,  documentary  story  of  the  British 
8th  Army’s  drive  across  North  Africa, 
which  first  dislodged  Rommel  from  his 
strong  point  at  El  Alamein  in  Egypt, 
and  then  chased  him  nearly  1400  miles 
across  the  desert  to  Tripoli  and  into 
Tunisia.  It  was  filmed  at  the  front  by 
a  combat  camera  detachment  of  26  en¬ 
listed  photographers  and  six  officers  of 
the  British  Army  Film  and  Photo  Unit, 
with  aerial  camerawork  by  members  of 
the  R.A.F.’s  Film  Production  Unit.  Dur¬ 
ing  the  making  of  the  picture  these  un¬ 
credited  but  heroic  camera-crews  kept 
so  consistently  with  the  front-line  fight¬ 
ing  that  the  majority  of  the  time  they 
were  nearer  to  the  Germans  than  to 
their  own  forces.  Their  losses  counted 
four  killed,  seven  wounded,  and  six 
taken  prisoner.  But  they  brought  back 
over  200,000  feet  of  negative,  together 
with  a  good  bit  of  very  useful  footage 
captured  from  German  combat-camera¬ 
men. 

From  this,  “Desert  Victory”  has  been 
edited.  In  its  final  release  length  of  5400 
feet,  there  are  but  179  feet  of  staged 
scenes  —  night-effects,  which  could  not 
be  obtained  under  actual  conditions. 

Photographically,  the  picture  is  re¬ 
markably  good  when  one  considers  the 
conditions  under  which  it  was  made. 
Here  and  there  the  contrasty  desert 
lighting  conditions  make  the  scenes  go 
too  contrasty,  and  at  other  times  the 
combination  of  flat  subject,  flat  lighting 
and  the  dust  and  smoke  of  battle  make 
some  scenes  too  flat;  but  a  very  sur¬ 
prising  lot  of  the  picture  is  almost  as 
good,  photographically,  as  could  be  ex¬ 
pected  of  a  studio  production’s  location 
scenes. 

The  night  -  effects  at  the  start  of 


the  bombardment  at  El  Alamein  are 
enormously  effective  photographically — 
filmed  entirely  by  the  almost  continuous 
flashes  from  the  mouths  of  Mont¬ 
gomery’s  artillery  as  it  laid  down  a  mur¬ 
derous  barrage  on  the  German  lines. 

The  cutting  and  scoring  of  this  se¬ 
quence  especially  are  of  incredibly  fine 
calibre,  bringing  to  mind  some  of  the 
sharply  dramatic  cutting  of  Eisenstein 
and  some  of  the  early  Russians.  This 
sequence,  in  fact,  relies  really  much 
more  upon  brilliant,  silent-picture  edit¬ 
ing  for  its  impact  than  upon  conven¬ 
tional  sound-film  technique. 

The  construction  of  the  film  should 
long  serve  as  a  model  for  future  war¬ 
reporting  pictures.  There  is  no  senti¬ 
mentalizing;  there  are  no  phoney  dra¬ 
matics  or  flag-waving:  but  there  is  told 
— for  the  first  time,  I  believe — the  com¬ 
plete  story  of  the  planning  of  a  major 
offensive,  its  execution  and  victorious 
culmination.  Due  footage  is  allotted  to 
the  problems  of  supply  and  transport; 
of  replacements  of  personnel  and  equip¬ 
ment;  of  physically  toughening  the  men 
themselves,  from  General  Officers  down 
to  privates.  Then  the  story  gives  a  clear 
explanation  of  the  commanders’  plans  of 
strategy,  and  follows  with  nearly  an 
hour  of  thrilling  action  scenes  which 
show  how  those  plans  were  carried  out 
by  all  arms — tanks,  artillery,  air  forces, 
and  infantry.  And  this  coverage,  when 
it  is  realized  it  was  accomplished  by  a 
relatively  small  group  of  men  dashing 
hither  and  thither  on  Jeeps,  with  only 
Eyemo  and  DeVry  hand-cameras,  is  su¬ 
premely  good. 

“Desert  Victory”  will  unquestionably 
go  down  as  the  really  great  picture  of 
this  war — and  as  such  we  can  only  urge 
you  to  see  it  —  and  see  it  again  and 
again. 

CHINA 

Paramount  Production. 

Director  of  Photography:  Lt.  Leo  Tover, 

A.S.C. 

Process  Photography:  Farciot  Edouart, 

A.fS.C. 

Special-effects:  Gordon  Jennings,  A.S.C. 

This  was  the  last  production  filmed 
by  Leo  Tover,  A.S.C.,  before  taking  his 
present  position  as  a  Signal  Corps  cine¬ 
matographer.  It  is  decidedly  one  of  his 
best,  too.  Essentially  one  of  the  virile 
wartime  action-dramas  in  which  direc¬ 
tor  John  Farrow  has  lately  specialized, 
“China”  offers  more  to  the  cameraman 
than  any  of  its  predecessors.  As  a  great 
deal  of  the  picture  is  played  in  night- 
effects,  cinematographer  Tover  manages 
to  get  a  great  deal  of  mood  and  pictorial 
effectiveness  into  his  work,  without  in 
the  least  lessenning  the  dramatic  “guts” 
of  the  story — in  fact,  rather  heightening 
them.  His  treatment  of  the  players  is, 
of  course,  characteristically  excellent, 
as  well. 

The  process  and  special-effects  work 
by  Farciot  Edouart,  A.S.C.,  and  Gordon 


Jennings,  A.S.C.,  is  fully  up  to  the  high 
standards  expected  of  these  men  and 
their  capable  staffs. 

TONIGHT  WE  RAID  CALAIS 

20th  Century-Fox  Production. 

Director  of  Photography:  Lucien  Bal¬ 
lard,  A.S.C. 

While  probably  ranking  as  a  program 
effort,  this  picture  is  an  almost  flawless 
example  of  melodramatic  photography. 
In  addition,  it  packs  more  of  a  dramatic 
wallop  than  many  an  “A”  we  could 
mention. 

Lucien  Ballard  has  done  one  of  those 
jobs  of  camerawork  that  ought  to  be 
studied  and  re-studied  for  its  perfection. 
With  the  exception  of  perhaps  two 
scenes — which  might,  at  that,  be  im¬ 
proved  in  printing — his  lighting,  com¬ 
position  and  general  treatment  were  so 
perfectly  in  balance,  and  so  well-attuned 
to  the  mood  of  the  action,  as  to  be 
exemplary. 

AT  THE  FRONT  IN  NORTH  AFRICA 

Warner  Bros.  Release  (Technicolor,  from 
16mm.  Kodachrome). 

Filmed  by  uncredited  Photographers  of 
the  U.  S.  Army. 

This  little  four-reeler — the  second  of 
the  battle  films  our  Services  have  pub¬ 
licly  released — is  rather  disappointing, 
especially  when  compared  to  “Desert 
Victory.”  We’ve  heard  a  good  many  con¬ 
flicting  stories  as  to  why  this  is:  some 
blame  those  who  supervised  its  making; 
others  hint  their  hands  were  tied  by  red 
tape  and  politics.  But  the  picture  as  it 
stands  serves  at  any  rate  to  show  rather 
impartially  both  the  good  and  bad  points 
of  16mm.  for  combat-camera  use.  Where 
the  man  at  the  camera  was  good,  so 
are  the  enlarged-to-Technicolor  results; 
where  the  man  behind  the  camera  was 
not  adequately  trained  photographically, 
the  result  is  such  as  even  a  third-rate 
amateur  would  blush  to  show.  All  of 
which  leads  to  the  inescapable  conclu¬ 
sion  that  for  combat  camerawork  16mm. 
Kodachrome  is  all  right  (or  better)  pro¬ 
vided  it  is  placed  in  the  hands  of  men 
who  know  their  business.  And  for  some 
of  the  rest  of  those  connected  with  this 
picture,  we’d  like  to  quote  an  admonition 
given  in  one  of  the  Signal  Corps  train¬ 
ing  classes:  “Don’t  pan  —  or  you’ll  be 
back  in  the  infantry!” 

AERIAL  GUNNER 

Pine-Thomas  Production;  Paramount 
Release. 

Director  of  Photography:  Fred  H.  Jack- 
man,  Jr.,  A.S.C. 

This  picture  might  be  described  as  the 
poor  man’s  “Air  Force,”  the  chief  dif¬ 
ference  between  the  two  being  about 
$1,930,000  in  budget  and  six  or  eight 
months  in  shooting  time.  In  addition, 
director  of  photography  Jackman  han¬ 
dled  all  of  the  photographic  work  on 
the  picture — not  only  the  “production” 
(Continued  on  Page  184) 


American  Cinematographer  •  May,  1943  175 


AND  THEN  YOU  CAN  EAT  THEM — !  Scenes  from  Carl  Anderson's  "Vegetable 
Follies."  Top,  left:  Senor  Cucumber  wears  a  Scotch  tape  zerape  and  his  donkey 
is  made  of  corn-husks;  miniature  cacti  and  a  folded  bath-towel  form  the  back¬ 
ground.  Right:  Carrot  Ballerinas'  faces  painted  in  poster-paint,  crepe-paper 
skirts.  The  chorines  are  attached  to  a  paper-covered  lath,  hinged  in  the 
middle.  The  prima  ballerina  is  animated  by  means  of  a  plastic  knitting-needle 
concealed  in  her  head-dress.  Middle,  left:  "Bubbles  Banana,"  strip-teaser;  face 


painted  on  peeled  surface,  hair  made  of  red  embroidery  cotton  with  small 
paper  flowers  .  .  .  costume — well,  you  guess!  Right:  "Carmen  Miranda"  .  .  . 
otherwise  a  turnip  with  painted  eyes  and  mouth,  head-dress  of  beads,  feathers 
and  turnip  tops.  Bottom,  left:  The  Onion  Sisters — four  onions,  two  large  and 
two  small,  with  skirts  and  kerchiefs  of  cotton  percale.  Right:  the  group  at 
work  filming  the  red-cabbage  "Arabian  Night." 


176  \y,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


UsiqsL-iablsL-JofL  J^oUisu L 

By  CHARLOTTE  ANDERSON 


IDEAS  are  never  rationed,  and  that 
is  a  happy  thing.  Gasoline  is,  so 
travelogues  are  “out”  for  the  dura¬ 
tion.  Film  is  scarce,  so  it  is  necessary 
for  film  fans  to  confine  their  activities 
to  smaller  areas  and  less  film-footage. 
In  view  of  the  situation,  we  decided  to 
film  a  table-top  short,  and  concluded  that 
vegetables  would  provide  attractive  and 
original  models  for  an  amusing  “Follies” 
motif. 

When  four  congenial  cinematographers 
with  some  talent  for  wielding  paint 
brushes,  and  creative  tendencies  toward 
presenting  table-top  entertainment,  get 
together,  the  fun  really  begins.  We 
devoted  some  thought  and  planning  to 
our  project  ahead  of  time,  and  an  entire 
week-end  to  shooting.  Essential  ingredi¬ 
ents  were:  Four  enthusiastic  16mm. 
fans  armed  with  scissors,  poster-paint, 
brushes,  assorted  vegetables,  wire,  and 
gay  bits  of  cloth;  6  No.  2  Photofloods; 
and  an  unlimited  number  of  ideas  for 
lighting,  staging,  and  gags. 

While  our  husbands  concentrated  on 
the  camera  detail  and  the  construction 
of  background  set-ups,  we  girls  dressed 
and  decorated  our  cast.  First,  however, 
we  wrote  a  short  scenario  or  outline  for 
our  Follies  idea,  and  “took  off”  a  few 
well  known  entertainers  in  vegetable 
form  to  intersperse  with  characters  of 
our  own  devising.  The  opening  shot  was 
of  Carmen  Miranda,  whose  intriguing 
smile  was  recorded  on  the  smooth  skin 
of  a  large  turnip,  and  using  the  natural 
foliage  around  which  to  build  the  well- 
known  turban,  we  cut  loose  with  plenty 
of  imagination  and  decoration  as  she  re¬ 
volved  before  a  lavishly-designed  back¬ 
ground  done  in  South  American  trend. 
We  have  a  painter  in  the  crowd,  who 


dashes  off  finished  titles  and  smart  back¬ 
grounds,  all  of  which  adds  up  to  a  snappy 
effect.  The  titles,  incidentally,  were  let¬ 
tered  on  black  backgrounds,  and  were 
animated  on  and  off  in  2-frame  wipes, 
then  the  desired  footage  was  run  through 
the  camera,  and  the  backgrounds  reshot 
for  the  following  scene.  Such  title  word 
phrase  as  The  Carrot  Ballerinas,  Seiior 
Cucumber’s  Donkey  Serenade,  and  Bub¬ 
bles  Banana,  Strip  Tease  Artist,  Takes 
Off,  furnished  us  with  inspiration  for 
various  characterizations. 

For  a  bit  of  action  south  of  the  border, 
we  used  Seiior  Cucumber  to  render  his 
“Donkey  Serenade.”  The  props  in  this 
scene  were  a  corn-husk  donkey,  a  grass 
hut,  some  miniature  cactii,  and  our  hero 
wearing  a  diminutive  straw  sombrero 
and  tiny  zerape.  We  lacked  something 
to  use  as  a  foreground  on  which  to 
place  our  scene,  so  a  fluffy  dusty-pink 
bath-towel  was  laid  in  realistic  slopes 
and  bumps  under  the  actors,  providing 
a  stunning  contrast  to  the  turquoise 
background.  This  is  the  “utilizing  what 
you  have”  policy.  We  seldom  use  any¬ 
thing  outside  our  own  household  gadgets 
for  props. 

After  working  for  awhile  with  our 
vegetable  models,  they  seemed  so  real 
that  we  addressed  them  as  “he”,  “she”, 
“Carmen”  or  “Bubbles”  without  the 
slightest  embarrassment,  for  after  all 
they  were  celebrities  and  entitled  to  the 
consideration  such  highly-paid  enter¬ 
tainers  usually  rate.  All  of  the  faces 
were  applied  to  the  vegetables  with 
show-card  colors,  and  we  managed  some 
amusing  characteristics  and  expressions. 
We  have  wondered  ever  since  if  the 
cast  really  got  along,  as  they  were  fairly 
well  behaved  while  we  were  shooting, 


TAKE  IT  OFF!  Hold  banana  in  place  with  a  long 
nail,  and  animate  skin  down  by  single-frame  anima¬ 
tion.  Then  animate  turning  away  from  camera — place 
on  curves — animate  back  to  position  and  continue 
stripping.  Finally  animate  turning  away,  and  dissolve 
in  red  heart  end-title. 

except  for  a  few  fragile  ones  who  would 
lose  their  heads! 

It  is  only  fair  to  mention  the  lift  a 
musical  accompaniment  gives  to  this  type 
of  production.  We  chose  to  open  with 
one  of  Carmen  Miranda’s  latest,  as  she 
introduces  the  program.  We  gave  the 
Carrot  Ballerinas  the  “Faust”  Ballet 
Music  and  trust  they  were  satisfied.  The 
strip-teaser  teased  to  the  “Strip  Tease 
Polka,”  and  other  scenes  were  accom¬ 
panied  by  charming  incidental  music, 
the  whole  proving  twice  as  effective  as 
it  would  have  without  appropriate  melo¬ 
dies  to  help  the  moods  along. 

In  order  to  introduce  our  full  cast, 
we  double-exposed  a  title  “The  Ensem¬ 
ble  on  Parade”.  Some  of  our  little  vege¬ 
table  people  were  mounted  on  a  block 
of  wood  and  pulled  one  or  two  at  a  time 
through  a  miniature  set  to  full  camera 
field.  The  cast  included  The  Onion  Twins, 
two  shy  little  maids  with  sizeable,  plump 
onions  for  bodies  and  smaller  ones  for 
heads,  gowned  in  ruffled  blue  skirts  and 
kerchiefs,  created  by  the  seamstress  of 
our  quartette.  Three  coy  lemon  pigs 
with  match-stick  legs,  paper  ears,  painted 
eyes  and  wire  tails  added  a  comedy  note 
to  the  crowd.  A  demure  artichoke  couple 
also  made  a  brief  appearance,  with  vari¬ 
ous  other  fanciful  characters  suggested 
by  the  material  at  hand,  all  of  which 
was  found  in  local  Victory  Gardens, 
around  the  house,  and  in  dime  stores. 

Our  next  sequence  was  really  fun. 
We  decided  on  a  ballet  number,  using 
a  graceful  array  of  carrot  ballerinas, 
which  we  garbed  in  yellow  crepe  paper 
skirts.  The  premiere  danseuse  wore 
a  white  and  chartreuse  ruffled  effect. 
The  chorus  was  literally  nailed  one 
at  a  time  to  a  long  lath  hinged  in  the 
center,  so  that  they  might  be  permitted 
to  do  a  V  formation,  forward  and  back, 
manipulated  by  two  of  us,  holding  the 
ends  of  the  lath  outside  camera-range. 
The  soloist  pirouetted  and  toe-danced 
in  front  of  the  ensemble,  suspended  by 
(Continued  on  Page  198) 


American  Cinematographer  •  May,  1943 


177 


3N08  3HI  Oi  S839NI3  33H  9NDI80M 


3A3  3H1  kNIH  3AV9  3HS 


SQV3H  8I3H1  ISO!  A3H1 


aSHOHH  383M  A3H1— 


9NIH30  3Hi  1IH  3HS 


QNnOH  V  SVM  3H 


GUESS  WHAT  slang  phrases  these  frame-enlargements  from  Robert  Fels'  "Cine  Whimsy"  illustrate — without  turning  the  magazine  upside-down  to  see!  Just  to  give 
you  a  hint,  the  one  at  the  left  on  opposite  page  is  "He  spun  her  a  yarn,"  and  the  center  top  one  is  "They  were  walking  on  air."  Below,  Newell  Tune  filming  the 
latter  shot;  right,  Robert  Fels. 


178 


May,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


PUTTING  SLANG  ON 
THE  SCREEN 


By  WALTER 


INE  WHIMSY”  is  an  unusual 

I  .  picture  in  several  respects.  It 
is  unusual  to  have  so  many 
trick  and  double-exposure  shots  in  a 
16mm.  film.  It  is  also  unusual  to  obtain 
perfect  lip-synchronization  in  a  film  shot 
silent  and  recorded  after  editing. 

Even  the  idea  behind  the  story  is  un¬ 
usual.  A  great  number  of  figures  of 
speech  or  colloquialisms  were  assembled 
in  logical  sequence  so  as  to  tell  a  regu¬ 
lar  story,  but  these  expressions  were 
portrayed  literally,  just  as  a  foreigner 
studying  the  American  language  might 
do  if  he  only  knew  the  dictionary  mean¬ 
ing  of  the  individual  words  and  was  not 
yet  acquainted  with  the  meaning  of 
these  slang  expressions.  If  the  expres¬ 
sion  used  was  “He  got  hot  under  the 
collar,”  you  would  actually  see  clouds  of 
smoke  coming  out  of  the  actor’s  neck  in 
the  picture.  As  this  scene  would  take 
only  a  moment,  you  can  imagine  how 
unexpected  the  action  becomes  with  a 
hundred  of  such  expressions. 

The  contrast  between  the  accepted 
meaning  of  the  colloquialism  and  the 
literal  meaning,  as  shown  on  the  screen, 
is  surprising,  often  comical,  and  fre¬ 
quently  fantastic.  To  a  certain  extent 
the  picture  is  a  guessing  game;  for  the 
audience  is  challenged  to  guess  the 
meaning  of  the  figure  of  speech  from  its 


BLANCHARD 


presentation  on  the  screen.  It  is  a  nov¬ 
elty  to  ask  audience  participation  in  a 
film  which  is  at  the  same  time  offered 
as  visual  entertainment.  It  is  amazing 
to  see  how  well  the  audiences  enter 
into  the  spirit  of  the  game. 

“There  is  no  need  to  be  told  that  ‘Cine 
Whimsy’  was  made  by  a  Frenchman. 
One  can  feel  the  French  touch  in  it  right 
away.”  This  was  told  after  the  preview 
to  Robert  Fels,  who  conceived  the  orig¬ 
inal  idea  and  directed  the  picture.  But 
looking  backwards,  Fels  feels  that  it 
was  particularly  difficult  for  a  French¬ 
man  who  had  been  here  only  a  few  years 
to  understand  the  precise  meaning  of 
our  American  expressions.  So  an  Ameri¬ 
can  friend,  Alice  Taylor,  translated  both 
the  accepted  and  the  literal  meanings 
of  hundreds  of  colloquialisms. 

At  this  point  two  amateur  movie¬ 
makers  joined  them.  Newell  Tune,  of 
the  Los  Angeles  Cinema  Club,  was  the 
cameraman  who  took  care  of  all  the 
technical  problems — trick-shots,  special- 
effects,  lighting,  etc.  Norman  Johnson 
collaborated  on  the  shooting  script,  and 
he  is  to  be  credited  with  the  dialogue. 
All  the  actors  are  amateurs.  They  do  so 
well,  under  Fels’  direction,  that  we 
would  never  think  that  they  had  never 
played  in  a  motion  picture  before.  Au¬ 
diences  have  especially  praised  the  two 


leads:  Andree  Rayburn  as  the  girl,  and 
Stephen  Brantley  as  the  young  man, 
both  of  whom  seem  to  have  professional 
screen  possibilities. 

Many  of  the  trick-shots  used  in  this 
picture  would  not  be  so  difficult  to  do 
with  a  35mm.  camera,  but  may  be  con¬ 
sidered  an  accomplishment  in  16mm. 
For  instance,  a  camera  moves  toward 
a  bundle  of  magazines  which  was  just 
thrown  from  a  passing  truck.  In  the 
close-up  a  pair  of  hands  cut  the  rope 
and  we  see  a  TIME  Magazine  with  a 
picture  of  a  stenographer  at  her  type¬ 
writer.  The  camera  travels  closer  and 
stops  at  an  extreme  close-up.  Then 
the  still  picture  comes  to  life  and  the 
girl  begins  to  type. 

This  was  accomplished  by  taking  a 
still  picture  from  the  same  tripod  posi¬ 
tion  as  the  movie  camera  and  later  en¬ 
larging  a  still  to  fit  the  beginning  ac¬ 
tion.  The  enlargement  was  glued  on  the 
front  of  the  Time  Magazine  which  was 
mounted  upside-down  on  top  of  several 
other  magazines  on  a  traveling  title- 
board. 

The  camera  was  started  with  the  ex¬ 
treme  close-up,  which  was  checked  in 
the  reflex  view  finder  to  coincide  with 
the  enlargement  of  the  beginning  of  the 
action  in  the  scene  following.  During 
the  exposure  the  camera  was  moved 
back  until  the  medium-shot  was  reached. 
When  the  film  was  returned  from  de¬ 
veloping  it  was  turned  end-for-end, 
making  the  action  reversed  and,  also, 
the  magazine  turned  right-side-up.  This 
made  a  transition  almost  as  smooth  as 
you  find  in  35mm. 

As  the  script  called  for  several  dolly- 
shots  (some  even  made  on  a  sandy 
beach),  a  three-rail  dolly-track  that  can 
be  put  together  or  dismounted  in  three 
minutes  was  made  out  of  1  x  3’s  and 
bolts  and  wing-nuts.  The  center  rail 
(Continued  on  Page  197) 


American  Cinematographer  •  May,  1943 


179 


How  To  Care  For  16mm. 
Sound-Films 

By  D.  LISLE  CONWAY 

President,  Syracuse  Movie  Makers  Association 


THE  past  few  years  have  seen  an 
enormous  increase  in  the  use  of 
16mm.  sound-films  and  projectors. 
They  are  being  used  for  visual  education 
purposes  not  only  by  schools  and  health 
associations,  but  by  our  War  Industries, 
and  by  every  branch  of  our  Armed  Serv¬ 
ices.  In  addition,  a  constantly  increasing 
number  of  civilian  amateurs  are  using 
16mm.  sound-films  in  various  projects 
for  bringing  film  entertainment  to  our 
troops,  through  YMCA,  USO  and  similar 
organizations  and  in  putting  on  volun¬ 
teer  shows  for  men  at  isolated  search¬ 
light  and  anti-aircraft  gun  posts,  and  in 
similar  spots  too  small  or  too  out-of-the- 
way  to  be  reached  by  the  usual  “organ¬ 
ized”  camp  shows. 

As  a  result,  more  and  more  of  the 
workers  in  these  fields  are  being  faced 
with  the  problem  of  taking  16mm.  sound- 
films  and  equipment  to  outside  meetings 
for  film  showings,  with  little  or  no  ex¬ 
perience  in  the  care  and  operation  of 
this  type  of  equipment. 

In  the  past,  if  film  was  damaged 
through  accidental  misuse,  or  the  equip¬ 
ment  broke  down,  it  could  be  replaced 
easily  enough.  Today,  however,  because 
of  the  war,  much  of  this  equipment  can¬ 
not  be  replaced.  Now  the  films,  projec¬ 
tion-lamps,  amplifier  tubes,  photocells, 
and  projectors  themselves,  must  be  made 
to  last  as  long  as  possible  with  the  least 

From  a  lecture  delivered  at  the  Convention  of 
New  York  State  Tuberculosis  Associations. 


possible  wear.  Many  of  the  tubes  used 
in  sound-projector  amplifiers  are  no 
longer  made;  others  are  obtainable  only 
on  a  priority  basis.  Projection  lamps  are 
being  rationed,  and  in  some  places  the 
old  ones  must  be  turned  in  for  the  new 
ones;  all  new  sound  projectors  are  go¬ 
ing  to  the  Armed  Services ;  electric  cables 
cannot  be  purchased;  and  many  other 
things  which  we  have  taken  for  granted 
could  be  easily  replaced — cannot  now  be 
had  at  any  price. 

For  these  reasons,  this  article  will  con¬ 
cern  itself  mainly  with  the  conservation 
and  protection  of  the  equipment  and  ma¬ 
terial  we  now  have  in  our  possession,  or 
still  may  be  able  to  obtain.  In  addition 
to  this,  hints  on  good  projection  practice 
will  be  given  later. 

To  your  audience,  the  most  important 
thing  is  the  picture  on  the  screen  and 
the  intelligibility  of  its  sound.  Dirty, 
scratched  pictures,  hissy,  uneven  sound, 
not  only  detract  from  the  appearance  of 
the  show  itself,  but  in  many  cases  result 
in  the  message  that  the  film  tells  being 
entirely  lost  through  distraction  of  the 
audience’s  attention.  Therefore  the  con¬ 
dition,  storage,  and  handling  of  the  films 
you  show  are  of  paramount  importance. 

The  rules  to  follow  in  helping  to  pre¬ 
serve  your  films  are  very  simple,  but 
nevertheless  very  important.  Remember, 
once  the  film  is  badly  damaged  through 
careless  handling  or  scratching,  it  can¬ 
not  be  repaired! 


Keep  your  films  clean!  Grease,  oil, 
dust,  and  dirt  are  deadly  enemies  of  mo¬ 
tion  picture  film.  Oil  is  sometimes  spat¬ 
tered  on  the  film  by  the  projector,  grease 
may  have  been  gotten  on  the  film  from 
fingerprints.  These  result  in  blobs  of 
off-tone  grey  on  black-and-white  film, 
and  a  change  of  color  on  Kodachrome  or 
any  other  color  film. 

This  grease  and  oil,  unless  removed, 
will  serve  as  catchers  and  collectors  of 
dust  and  dirt  from  the  atmosphere  and, 
in  turn,  result  in  scratched  films.  The 
dust  and  dirt  so  gotten  on  the  film  collect 
in  the  picture  and  sound  gates  of  the 
projector,  and  unless  removed  before 
each  projection  will  scratch  whole  sec¬ 
tions  of  film,  leaving  long  white  streaks 
which  can  never  be  removed.  The  pic¬ 
ture  area  on  the  screen  is  likely  to  be 
fringed  with  a  sort  of  moss  effect  and 
will  look  like  grass  growing  from  the 
top  and  bottom  of  the  picture.  The 
sound  will  grow  weaker  in  volume  and, 
when  the  sound  track  of  the  film  has 
been  scratched,  will  result  in  crackling, 
hissy,  unintelligible  speech. 

The  solution  of  this  is  simple,  periodic, 
film  cleaning  with  an  approved  film 
cleaner,  and  the  cleaning  of  the  picture 
and  sound  gates  before  each  projection. 
The  latter  will  be  dwelt  on  later. 

There  are  many  approved  film  cleaners 
on  the  market.  Eastman’s  Film  Cleaner, 
put  out  by  the  Eastman  Kodak  Co.,  is 
one.  However,  let  me  stress  here  that 
only  approved  film  cleaners  should  be 
used!  Ordinary  household  “spot  re¬ 
movers”  should  never  be  used,  as  the 
cleaning  agents  and  solvents  in  them 
are  most  often  deadly  enemies  of  mo¬ 
tion  picture  film.  This  is  especially  true 
of  cleaners  containing  alcohol  or  benzine, 
and  the  like,  which  will  not  only  ruin 
the  dyes  in  Kodachrome,  but  will  attack 
the  film  base,  as  well. 

The  process  of  cleaning  a  film  is  very 
easy.  With  most  cleaners  comes  a  piece 
of  lint-free,  soft,  plush  cloth.  This  is 
moistened  with  a  small  amount  of  the 
cleaner  and  the  film,  as  it  is  slowly 
(Continued  on  Page  194) 


180  May,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


Putting  Sound -On- Film  On 
A  16mm.  Silent  Projector 

By  EARL  W.  ABBOTT, 

Syracuse  Movie  Makers  Association 


WHAT  serious-minded  amateur  in 
possession  of  a  16mm.  projector 
has  not  wished  at  some  time  or 
other  that  he  could  run  sound-film  on 
his  machine?  I  know  I  had  always  en¬ 
vied  those  opulent  amateurs  who  owned 
sound  machines.  But  envy  them  was  all 
I  could  do,  for  the  little  item  of  expense 
stood  in  the  way  .  .  .  unless  maybe  I 
could  make  my  own. 

In  March,  1940,  I  purchased  an  East¬ 
man  EE  series  2  Projector  and  the  first 
time  that  I  examined  it  closely  I  was 
struck  by  the  ease  with  which  this  ma¬ 
chine  could  be  converted  to  sound-on- 
film.  Being  by  profession  a  toolmaker, 
and  having  had  some  previous  experi¬ 
ence  with  sound,  having  worked  on  the 
old  Fox-Case  sound  camera  (now  the 
Fox  Movietone)  all  through  the  experi¬ 
mental  stage  until  it  was  put  into  pro¬ 
duction,  and  also  having  built  a  sound- 
on-disc  recorder,  I  decided  maybe  I 
could  make  my  own  sound  conversion. 

Well,  to  get  back  to  the  projector,  I 
dragged  it  out  one  stormy  night  and 
with  divers  tools  and  instruments  pro¬ 
ceeded  to  design  a  sound-head  I  thought 
would  do  the  job,  and  of  course  taking 
into  consideration  the  fact  that  there  is 
a  separation  of  24  frames  between  the 
picture  and  the  sound. 


First  I  obtained  a  plate  of  cold-rolled 
steel  %  x  3%  x4%  inches.  I  cut  a  semi¬ 
circle  out  of  one  end  of  this  to  fit 
around  the  boss  on  which  the  lower  film 
sprocket  is  located. 

My  next  step  was  to  remove  1  inch 
of  steel  from  the  bottom  at  left  and 
gradually  flair  it  back  to  within  1% 
inches  of  the  top  of  the  plate.  This  will 
allow  the  machine  to  be  tipped  forward. 

Next,  starting  at  the  bottom  of  the 
plate,  I  cut  a  90-degree  included  angle 
slot  extending  upward  for  2(4  inches, 
and  located  from  the  right  hand  side  of 
the  plate  1%6  inches  to  center  of  slot. 
This  is  to  accommodate  a  Holmes  Sound- 
lens.  This  is  identified  in  the  picture  by 
No.  1  on  photograph. 

Next,  3%  inches  from  the  bottom  of 
the  plate  to  center,  and  directly  in  line 
with  the  slot,  I  bored  a  %-inch  hole  to 
which  I  fitted  a  piece  of  drill-rod  which 
was  %-inch  round  x  2%  inches  long,  and 
bored  out  to  accommodate  a  peanut- 
type  baseless  photoelectric  cell.  A  slit 
was  machined  in  the  bottom  end  for  the 
beam  of  light  from  the  sound-lens  to 
travel  through,  and  this  end  was  a  press 
fit  into  %-inch  hole  in  the  plate.  This 
was  then  hardened  and  given  a  high 
polish.  (No.  2.) 


The  author’s  Model  "EE",  as  converted  for  sound. 
Left:  I,  sound-lens;  2,  sound  pick-up;  3,  stabiliiing- 
drum;  roller  to  hold  film  against  pick-up;  5,  idler  for 
tension  against  stabilizer.  Dotted  line  indicates  path 
of  film  through  sound-head.  Right:  note  flywheel, 
extended  reel-arms  and  amplifier  in  base. 

Next  %  inches  from  the  top  of  the 
plate  and  %-inch  from  the  right-hand 
side  to  center,  I  drilled  and  tapped  a 
%-inch  24-thread  hole  for  the  shaft¬ 
bearing  of  the  film  stabilizing  drum. 
(No.  3.) 

This  shaft  is  of  %2-inch  drill-rod  and 
is  4%  inches  long,  with  a  32  thread  on 
each  end.  The  bearing  for  this  shaft  is 
of  %-inch  bronze  and  is  3^6  inches 
long.  Both  ends  are  threaded  with  a 
%-inch  24-thread.  When  the  plate  is 
fastened  to  the  projector  the  %-inch 
24-threaded  hole  is  spotted  through  to 
the  casting  of  the  projector,  and  this  hole 
is  then  drilled  straight  through  the  ma¬ 
chine.  At  assembly,  the  bearing-shaft 
which  had  of  course  a  %2-inch  hole 
through  it,  and  the  inside  of  this  hole 
was  relieved  with  a  small  boring  bar  to 
within  %-inch  of  each  end,  was  pushed 
through  the  hole  in  the  projector  and 
screwed  into  the  hole  in  the  plate,  after 
which  a  knurled  brass  nut  was  screwed 
onto  the  rear  of  the  shaft  up  tight 
against  one  back-plate. 

I  then  made  up  the  film  stabilizing 
drum  of  brass,  1-inch  in  diameter  at  the 
large  end  which  is  a  flange  %6-inch 
thick,  the  body  being  %-inch  in  diam¬ 
eter,  and  the  hole  being  %e-inch  thick. 
This  was  mounted  on  the  front  end  of 
the  shaft  and  the  film  stabilizing  fly¬ 
wheel  on  the  other  end  on  the  left  side 
of  the  projector. 

This  flywheel  was  made  of  brass  and 
is  2%  inches  in  diameter  and  %-inch 
thick.  The  machining  of  the  stabilizing 
flywheel,  film-drum  and  bearing  must 
be  done  very  accurately  as  the  slightest 
wobble  will  be  enough  to  ruin  the  sound 
in  the  finished  machine. 

The  next  step  was  to  remove  the  bot¬ 
tom  take-up  sprocket  and  to  replace  it 
with  a  precision  machined  sprocket  that 
can  be  purchased  from  several  com¬ 
panies  that  specialize  in  replacement 
parts  for  16mm.  sound-on-film  projectors. 
Nearly  all  16mm.  sprockets  are  standard. 

After  I  removed  the  take-up  sprocket, 
I  tested  the  shaft  with  an  indicator  and 
found  that  it  had  a  run-out  of  about 
.004-inch.  I  was  able  to  straighten  it 
with  a  brass  hammer  without  removing 
it  from  the  gear-box. 

The  old  sprocket  was  then  put  on 
an  arbor  and  the  teeth  turned  off  and 
a  film  roller  made  from  it.  This  was 
mounted  at  the  left-hand  corner  of  the 
plate.  I  purchased  from  the  local  Kodak 
dealer  a  film  shoe  the  same  as  those 
mounted  against  the  top  and  bottom 
sprockets.  This  is  mounted  against  the 
roller  as  if  it  were  a  sprocket.  (No.  4.) 
This  roller  is  mounted  to  the  left  and 
directly  in  line  with  one  photocell  hous¬ 
ing,  with  1%  inch  between  centers. 
When  all  the  parts  are  assembled  they 

(Continued  on  Page  196) 


American  Cinematographer  •  May,  1943  181 


One  week-end  we 
drove  out  to  see 
Lake  Minnetonka  ••• 


For  main  and  end  titles,  decorative  lettering  with 
painted  or  photographic  backgrounds  are  effective, 
but  for  subtitles  (third  from  bottom),  a  simple  let¬ 
tering,  preferably  in  black,  is  preferable.  Style  of 
type  shown  is  Kabel  Bold. 


By  JAMES  R.  OSWALD 


PERHAPS  one  of  the  greatest  faults 
of  the  average  amateur  movie  is 
the  absence  of  a  pleasant  blending 
of  scenes  or  sequence  arrangement.  This 
continuity  angle  should  always  be  taken 
into  consideration  at  the  time  of  filming, 
if  it  is  at  all  possible  to  do  so.  Thus 
a  natural  relationship  can  be  built  up 
between  successive  shots,  with  soothing 
transitions  joining  the  scenes.  Even  the 
simplest  of  home-movie  cameras  is  ca¬ 
pable  of  producing  fades— a  fact  which 
is  frequently  overlooked.  A  fade-out, 
used  at  the  conclusion  of  a  sequence,  is 
produced  by  gradually  reducing  the 
amount  of  light  reaching  the  film.  This 
is  accomplished  by  merely  rotating  the 
lens-barrel,  with  the  camera  running, 
from  the  point  of  proper  exposure  to  the 
closing  point  of  the  diaphragm,  which 
is  simply  a  “curtain”  that  regulates  the 
intensity  of  light  entering  the  camera. 
A  fade-in  introduces  a  new  sequence  and 
is  made  in  exactly  the  reverse  fashion 
.  .  .  that  is,  the  diaphragm  is  gradually 
opened  from  a  closed  position  to  the 
point  of  proper  exposure  for  the  partic¬ 
ular  subject  being  filmed. 

But  even  though  continuity  has  been 
shamefully  neglected  in  filming,  there 
is  still  much  that  can  be  done  with  pres¬ 
ent,  completed  films.  Don’t  be  like  many 
enthusiasts,  with  a  tendency  to  leave  the 
reels  in  the  exact  sequence  in  which 
they  were  shot.  Rearrangement  of  in¬ 
dividual  shots  in  a  more  logical  order 
will  make  a  world  of  difference.  Occa¬ 
sionally  this  is  not  enough,  however.  If 
the  scenes  are  totally  unrelated,  and  yet 
too  good  to  be  left  out,  a  more  drastic 
means  must  be  used  to  “bridge  the  gap.” 
In  such  a  case  it  is  a  definite  advantage 
to  insert  titles. 

Titles  are  used  for  identifying  time, 


location,  subject-matter,  and  a  host  of 
other  things.  They  range  from  simple 
wordings  on  plain  black  backgrounds 
to  be  complicated  multiple-exposures  with 
motion  picture  backgrounds.  Obviously, 
each  type  title  has  its  place,  but  for  our 
purpose  we’ll  stick  to  two  or  three  of  the 
simpler  types,  which  most  amateurs  are 
inclined  to  use. 

Probably  one  of  the  most  clever  and 
least  boring  styles  of  title  is  one  which 
is  hardly  recognized  as  such:  the  “nat¬ 
ural”  title.  For  example,  a  clock  or 
calendar  to  denote  time,  a  road-sign  or 
section  of  a  map  to  indicate  location,  a 
milestone  to  show  distance  travelled,  etc. 
Such  objects  are  easily  photographed 
without  any  special  title-making  equip¬ 
ment,  save  possibly  a  close-up  or  por¬ 
trait  lens,  and  require  no  art-work 
whatsoever. 

Next  comes  the  regular  printed  or 
hand-lettered  title.  With  these,  the 
wording  is  either  typewritten  or  printed 
on  a  card  or  even  a  snapshot,  and  pho¬ 
tographed  with  one  of  the  many  title¬ 
making  apparatuses  on  the  market.  If 
you  are  artistically  inclined,  there  is  no 
limit  to  the  possibilities  of  this  type  of 
title.  Those  who  do  not  feel  ambitious 
enough  to  do  their  own  work  can  take 
advantage  of  the  numerous  profession¬ 
ally  made  “stock”  titles  in  both  8mm. 
and  16mm.  sizes.  Made-to-order  titles 
from  your  own  copy  can  also  be  had  at  a 
nominal  cost. 

If  you  are  adept  at  developing  and 
printing  your  own  snapshots,  there  is 
no  reason  why  you  shouldn’t  find  en¬ 
joyment  in  making  and  developing  your 
titles.  Short  lengths  of  movie  film  can 
be  handled  in  your  own  darkroom,  the 
same  as  roll  film.  Low-cost,  positive 
(Continued  on  Page  191) 


Th  e  How  and  Why 
of  Titles 


182  May,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


AMONG  THE  MOVIE  CLLIBS 


Films  to  Show 
To  Service-Men 

An  increasing  number  of  ama¬ 
teur  movie  clubs  all  over  the  coun¬ 
try  are  putting  on  movie  shows  for 
service-men  —  sometimes  in  big 
camps  and  metropolitan  USO  Cen¬ 
ters,  and  sometimes  individually,  to 
small,  isolated  groups  like  barrage- 
balloon,  searchlight  and  anti-air¬ 
craft  gun  squads  whose  duty  pre¬ 
vents  leaving  their  posts  except  at 
long  intervals,  and  which  are  too 
small  to  be  reached  by  the  regu¬ 
larly  organized  entertainment  ser¬ 
vices.  These  patriotic  movie-makers 
are  performing  this  very  necessary 
service  on  their  own  time,  using 
their  own  projectors,  gas,  tires  and 
films — which  latter  they  have  often 
purchased  with  their  own  money. 

The  crux  of  the  matter  is  film — 
film  which  the  boys  at  these  posts 
haven’t  seen  too  often  already. 
Most  of  these  volunteer  16mm. 
showmen  have  built  libraries  of 
entertainment  16mm.  sound-films — 
but  when,  as  is  the  case  with  one 
group  we  know,  a  club  has  an 
Army  showing  from  three  to  six 
nights  every  week,  at  posts  where 
the  same  men  are  stationed  almost 
permanently,  it  doesn’t  take  very 
long  to  have  shown  all  the  films 
available. 

This  problem  would  be  a  lot 
simpler  if  the  various  clubs  and 
other  organizations  throughout  the 
country  could  from  time  to  time 
exchange  their  films,  for  what  Long 
Beach  has  screened  to  the  point  of 
boredom  might  be  new  to  Syracuse 
or  Miami,  and  vice-versa. 

Therefore  we  urge  the  people  re¬ 
sponsible  for  these  showings  to 
send  us  a  list  of  the  entertainment 
type  16mm.  sound-films  they  have 
available.  If  a  sufficient  response 
is  received,  we  will  publish  a  direc¬ 
tory  of  these  films  and  the  sources 
from  which  they  are  available  in  a 
forthcoming  issue  of  this  magazine. 
If  the  supply  of  films  does  not  war¬ 
rant  publication,  we  will  send 
copies  of  the  complete  listing  to 
those  who  contributed.  How  about 
it—? 


"Victory  Vacation"  For 
St.  Louis 

A  timely  feature  of  the  April  meeting 
of  the  Amateur  Motion  Picture  Club  of 
St.  Louis  was  the  screening  of  Member 
Rasmussen’s  1942  vacation  film,  appro¬ 
priately  titled  “Victoi-y  Vacation.”  This 
400-ft.  16mm.  Kodachrome  picture  was 
filmed  entirely  within  a  radius  of  150 
miles  of  St.  Louis.  Going  a  bit  farther 
afield,  new-member  F.  B.  Guerin  showed 
how  well  his  much-envied  Bolex  8  worked 
with  a  production  entitled  “Missouri 


State  Parks  and  Springs,”  an  excellent 
travelogue  of  the  Ozarks.  As  if  to  whet 
the  members’  appetites  for  post-war 
traveling,  a  1200-ft.  Kodachrome  sound- 
film  of  the  Rio  Grande  Valley  in  Texas 
was  shown  by  courtesy  of  the  Missouri 
Pacific  Railroad. 

A  surprise  feature  was  an  unan¬ 
nounced  screening  of  an  unusual  film 
from  the  library  of  The  American 
Cinamatographer,  “Garden  Life,”  by 
Eugene  L.  Ritzmann.  This  picture,  in 
16mm.  Kodachrome,  shows  flowers  ac¬ 
tually  growing  (by  means  of  stop-motion 
photography),  and  was  greeted  with  a 
hearty  round  of  applause  from  the  mem¬ 
bers. 

HOWARD  B.  PARSONS, 
Vice-President. 

Varied  Show  For  L.  A. 
Cinema 

The  April  meeting  of  the  Los  Angeles 
Cinema  Club  featured  an  exchange  show¬ 
ing  of  two  top  winners  from  the  L.  A. 
8mm.  Club’s  recent  Annual  Contest. 
These  were  “Those  Were  the  Days,”  by 
John  E.  Walter  (See  American  Cine¬ 
matographer,  January,  1943,  P.  18), 
and  “Two  Weeks’  Rest,”  by  Bill  Wade. 
Specially  shown  also  were  “Wonder 
Film,”  an  unusual  picture  on  and  about 
8mm.  by  the  ever-original  Joe  Hollywood, 
of  New  York’s  Metropolitan  and  8mm. 
Clubs,  and  “Vegetable  Follies,”  a  unique 
short  (200  ft.  16mm.  Kodachrome)  by 
Carl  Anderson,  both  loaned  through  the 
courtesy  of  the  Editor  of  The  American 
Cinematographer. 

EARLE  MEMORY,  President. 

Lighting  For  Tri-City 

The  April  meeting  of  the  Tri-City 
Cinema  Club  of  Rock  Island  and  Moline, 
Ills.,  and  Davenport,  la.,  featured  a  talk 
on  “Indoor  Lighting  for  Your  Home 
Movies”  by  Orrin  Stribley.  On  the  screen 
were  two  films  by  Dr.  Dunn,  “Sauk  and 
Fox  Indians,”  and  “William  Tell — the 
Dramatization  of  a  Struggle  for  Lib¬ 
erty.”  This  “program  piece”  consisted  of 
two  decidedly  unrelated  shorter  subjects 
in  16mm.  Kodachrome,  mounted  together 
on  an  800-ft.  reel  and  presented  with  a 
sound  background  from  records.  Two  of 
the  latest  OWI  16mm.  sound-films,  “Con¬ 
quer  by  the  Clock”  and  “Paratroops” 
were  shown  through  the  courtesy  of 
Harry  Lytle. 

WILLIS  F.  LATHROP, 
Secretary-Treasurer. 

Synchro-Sound  For  8-16 

Program  for  the  April  meeting  of  the 
8-16  Movie  Club  of  Philadelphia  included 
a  demonstration  of  the  Synchro-Sound 
device  for  keeping  disc  records  in  perfect 
sync  with  their  pictures.  Len  Bauer,  who 
conducted  the  meeting,  has  had  consider¬ 
able  experience  with  this  mechanism, 
having  used  it  to  excellent  advantage  in 
the  picture  with  which  he  gained  First 
Prize  in  the  recent  Gold  Cup  Contest.  As 


On  Its  Way 

Those  who  might  have  suspect¬ 
ed  that  actress  Carole  Landis’  offer 
of  her  own  new  16mm.  sound-pro¬ 
jector  for  use  entertaining  troops 
overseas,  as  published  in  last 
month’s  issue  of  this  magazine  was 
strictly  publicity  may  be  interested 
to  know  that  Miss  Landis’  projector 
has  been  presented  to  the  6th  Arm¬ 
ored  Division  of  the  U.  S.  Army, 
and  is  on  its  way  to  where  both  the 
projector  and  the  men  it  will  enter¬ 
tain  will  do  the  most  good. — Ed. 


a  practical,  “how  -  it  -  works”  example, 
Bauer’s  demonstration  featured  the  ac¬ 
tual  making  of  a  sound  record  to  accom¬ 
pany  a  projected  8mm.  film.  The  second 
portion  of  his  demonstration  consisted 
of  a  demonstration  of  interesting  new 
Kodachrome  title-making  ideas.  On  the 
screen  were  shown  “Solar  Pelexus”  and 
“Moods  of  Nature,”  from  the  library  of 
The  American  Cinematographer. 

Plans  are  being  made  for  an  inter¬ 
club  movie-making  contest.  As  the  plans 
stand  now,  a  story-idea  will  be  chosen 
jointly  by  the  various  clubs.  Each  group 
will  then  work  out  its  own  scenario  from 
that  basic  idea,  and  film  it,  with  a  suit¬ 
able  trophy  going  to  the  winning  club. 
All  movie  clubs  on  the  8-16  Club’s  mail¬ 
ing-list  are  invited  to  participate.  They, 
or  any  others  interested,  may  write  Sec¬ 
retary  John  Henrick,  2819  N.  Warnock 
St.,  Philadelphia,  for  fuller  information. 

FRANK  HEININGER. 

Long  Beach  Exchanges 

At  the  April  7th  meeting  of  the  Long 
Beach  (Cal.)  Cinema  Club,  a  delegation 
from  the  Los  Angeles  8mm.  Club  came 
down  to  present  the  three  top  winners  in 
their  annual  contest  —  an  exchange  of 
courtesies  repaying  a  visit  by  the  Long 
Beach  group  at  the  8mm.  Club’s  March 
meeting,  with  the  three  top  8mm.  win¬ 
ners  in  the  L.B.C.C.  contest.  The  films 
shown  by  the  L.  A.  8’s  were  “Those  Were 
the  Days,”  by  John  E.  Walter;  “Jungle 
Parade,”  by  President  Fred  Evans,  and 
“Two  Weeks’  Rest,”  by  C.  Wm.  Wade. 
Also  shown  were  “Sun  Valley,”  100-ft. 
16mm.  Kodachrome  by  L.B.C.C.-er  Her¬ 
bert  Goodall ;  “Grape  Production,”  800-ft. 
16mm.  Kodachrome,  by  Alfred  Lion,  of 
Fresno,  showing  the  workings  of  the 
grape  and  raisin  industry;  “Wonder 
Film,”  by  Joseph  F.  Hollywood  of  New 
York’s  Metropolitan  and  8mm.  Clubs,  and 
a  production  sent  by  the  Omaha,  Nebras¬ 
ka,  Amateur  Movie  Club. 

LORIN  SMITH,  Secretary. 

Lens  Lecture  In  Indianapolis 

The  April  meeting  of  the  Indianapolis 
Amateur  Movie  Club  featured  a  very  en¬ 
lightening  discussion  of  testing  projec¬ 
tion  lenses,  accompanied  by  a  well- 
planned  lecture  by  member  G.  A.  Del 
(Continued  on  Page  184) 


American  Cinematographer  •  May,  1943  183 


Valle.  He  also  explained  and  demonstrat¬ 
ed  the  difference  between  coated  and  un¬ 
coated  lenses.  On  the  screen  he  showed 
two  direct-16mm.  single-system  sound- 
films  he  had  made:  one  showing  his  son 
Billie’s  second  birthday  party,  and  the 
other,  a  reel  of  the  Club’s  recent  Annual 
Banquet,  shown  with  a  running  commen¬ 
tary  from  the  sound-track. 

The  staff  for  the  Club’s  1943  produc¬ 
tion  has  been  picked,  and  includes:  Di¬ 
rector,  E.  M.  Culbertson;  Assistant  Di¬ 
rector,  Roger  Sneden;  16mm.  camera- 
crew,  Dr.  W.  E.  Gabe,  assisted  by  A1 
Kaufmann;  8mm.  camera-crew,  Roger 
Sneden,  assisted  by  C.  Wetzel;  Lighting, 
Paul  Bradley,  Carl  Luethge,  Oscar 
Peters;  Properties,  Bill  Locey,  W.  Worl, 
Jim  Makin,  Dr.  H.  Collins  and  Dean 
Smith;  Script-girl,  Mary  Culbertson; 
Editing,  Members  Culbertson,  Sneden, 
Thomas  and  Gabe;  Casting,  Members 
Collins,  Reynolds  and  Vic  Maier.  The 
production  is  tentatively  titled  “You 
Can’t  Win,”  and  is  scheduled  to  run  400 
feet  of  16mm.  Kodochrome  when  finished. 

ELMER  M.  CULBERTSON, 

Corresponding  Secretary. 

Philly  Starts  8th  Year 

The  April  meeting  of  the  Philadelphia 
Cinema  Club  started  that  club’s  eighth 
year  of  movie-making  activity.  F ollowing 
the  election  of  officers,  the  results  of 
which  were  announced  last  month,  the 
new  administration  announced  three  new 
committee  chairmen,  as  follows:  Pro¬ 
gram,  Adolph  Pemsel;  Technical,  Dr. 
Robert  E.  Haentze,  and  Membership, 
Herbert  E.  Moore.  The  evening’s  screen 
program  included  a  number  of  members’ 
films,  and  an  excellent  instructional  pic¬ 
ture  from  the  Harmon  Foundation,  en¬ 
titled  “Your  Camera.”  This  latter  was 
followed  by  talks  from  several  of  the 
more  advanced  members  on  the  subject 
of  camera  equipment. 

On  April  19th,  the  Club  was  scheduled 
to  visit  the  Norristown  Club  and  present 
the  evening’s  program,  as  a  part  of  the 
inter-club  activities  which  have  been  ar¬ 
ranged  among  the  several  cine  clubs  in 
the  Philadelphia  area  for  the  coming- 
year. 

FRANCIS  M.  HIRST. 


Photography  of  the  Month 

(Continued  from  Page  175) 

camerawork,  but  the  aerial  scenes  and 
special-effects  and  miniatures  as  well. 

Judged  in  that  light,  he  has  done  an 
exceptional  job  on  this  picture.  The 
aerial  camerawork — done  in  only  two 
shooting  days — ranks  with  the  best;  his 
“production”  camerawork  is  as  good  as 
can  be  expected  when  he  was  given  a 
ten-day  schedule  and  sets  that  consisted 
almost  entirely  of  flats  and  backings. 
His  special-effects  work  is  decidedly 
good.  His  treatment  of  the  players  is 
adequate,  though  not  the  best  we’ve 
seen  him  do,  and  his  handling  of  the 
few  scenes  where  he  had  anything  like 


photogenic  sets  or  locations  to  work 
with  indicate  this  young  cinematogra¬ 
pher  is  rapidly  approaching  the  time 
when  he  will  be  ready  for  a  better 
‘break’  on  a  bigger  production. 

SPITFIRE 

Goldwyn-RKO  Release. 

Director  of  Photography:  Jack  Hildyard, 

A.C.T. 

This  story  of  the  development  of  Eng¬ 
land’s  most  famous  fighting  plane,  the 
Spitfire,  is  well  worth  seeing,  not  only 
dramatically  but  photographically.  For 
years  we  have  come  to  expect  from 
European  cinematographers  brilliant 
work  on  individual  scenes,  but  a  definite 
lack  of  uniformity  from  scene  to  scene 
and  sequence  to  sequence  throughout  the 
production.  “Spitfire”  is  the  first  Brit¬ 
ish  film  we’ve  seen  that  cannot  be  sub¬ 
ject  to  that  criticism,  and  it  marks  Jack 
Hildyard  as  decidedly  the  coming  star 
of  British  cinematography.  His  work, 
as  shown  here,  would  be  “A-picture” 
photography  in  Hollywood  or  anywhere 
else. 

PILOT  NO.  5 

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer  Production. 
Director  of  Photography:  Lt.  Paul  Vo¬ 
gel,  A.  S.  C. 

This  is  one  of  those  typically-MGM 
jobs  of  camerawork  that  are  so  smoothly 
and  effortlessly  done  that  they’re  likely 
to  slip  by  unnoticed.  As  one  of  the  last 
pictures  Paul  Vogel,  A.S.C.,  made  be¬ 
fore  his  enlistment  as  a  Signal  Corps 
cinematographer,  it  deserves  more  credit 
than  that,  for  it  is  excellent  in  every 
department.  Vogel  had  a  difficult  as¬ 
signment  in  this,  too,  for  as  the  story 
is  told  in  cut-back  form,  beginning  with 
a  small  group  of  fighting  Americans  and 
Dutch  in  those  last,  tragic  days  in  Java, 
and  cutting  back  ten  or  fifteen  years  to 
relate  the  story  of  “Pilot  No.  5,”  the 
picture  has  to  coordinate  a  decidedly 
wide  variety  of  moods  and  photographic 
treatment.  Vogel  does  this  so  excellently 
you’re  scarcely  conscious  of  the  photo¬ 
graphic  difficulties  involved.  At  the  cli¬ 
max,  miniature-expert  Don  Jahraus  and 
some  uncredited  special-effects  cinema¬ 
tographers  provide  some  more  unusually 
fine  marine  battle  miniatures. 

THEY  CAME  TO  BLOW  UP  AMERICA 

20th  Century-Fox  Production. 

Director  of  Photography:  Lucien  An- 

driot,  A.S.C. 

A  story  like  this  of  espionage  and 
counter-espionage  is  a  cameraman’s 
meat,  and  Lucien  Andriot  takes  full  ad¬ 
vantage  of  it.  Throughout,  he  makes 
excellent  use  of  the  modern  increased- 
depth  technique,  and  handles  his  pre¬ 
dominantly  strong,  realistic  lightings  ex¬ 
cellently.  Some  of  his  compositions  are 
of  particular  dramatic  effectiveness,  too. 
In  a  film  like  this,  the  players  are,  gen¬ 
erally  speaking,  rather  secondary  to  dra¬ 
matic  mood,  but  he  does  very  well  by 
them,  as  might  be  expected  of  a  cine¬ 
matographer  of  his  taste  and  ability. 


THE  YOUNG  MR.  PITT 

20th  Century-Fox  Production  (British.) 
Director  of  Photography:  Frederick 

Young,  F.R.P.S.,  A.C.T. 

This  picture  offers  further  evidence  (if 
any  is  needed)  of  why  Fred  Young  is 
rated  as  the  top  British  cinematographer. 
His  lightings,  both  of  sets  and  of  players, 
and  his  compositions,  could  scarcely  be 
surpassed  here  in  Hollywood.  Some  of  his 
scenes  of  individual  players — particularly 
in  the  portrait-like  closer  shots — are  de¬ 
lightful,  while  his  long-shots  are  a  richly 
pictorial  contrast  to  our  own  “rationed” 
sets. 

Some  fault  can  be  found  with  the  slight 
scene-to-scene  variation  in  densities  and 
general  mood — which  was  certainly  not 
helped  by  the  dupe  released  here — but  in 
view  of  the  other  excellences  of  the  pho¬ 
tography,  these  can  well  be  overlooked. 
The  crediting  of  the  famed  portrait  pho¬ 
tographer  Cecil  Beaton  for  set-design  and 
decoration  is  interesting,  as  is  Carol 
Reed’s  excellent,  if  slow-paced  direction. 
But  we’d  recommend  reading  up  a  bit 
on  English  history  before  seeing  the 
picture. 

LUCKY  JORDAN 

Paramount  Production. 

Director  of  Photography:  John  F.  Seitz, 

A.S.C. 

As  a  picture,  “Lucky  Jordan”  isn’t  par¬ 
ticularly  pretentious,  but  from  the  photo¬ 
graphic  viewpoint,  director  of  photo¬ 
graphy  John  Seitz,  A.S.C.,  has  made  it  a 
joy  to  see.  For  years  Seitz  has  been  rec¬ 
ognized  as  one  of  the  really  great  mas¬ 
ters  of  the  camera,  but  for  some  time  he 
has  not  had  many  opportunities  to  dis¬ 
tinguish  himself. 

In  “Lucky  Jordan,”  he  has— and  he 
does  so  with  a  smooth  sureness  which 
makes  it  a  picture  you’d  like  to  see  again, 
so  you  could  concentrate  on  enjoying 
Seitz’  compositions  and  lightings. 

AID  RAID  WARDENS 

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer  Production. 
Director  of  Photography:  Walter  Lun- 

din,  A.S.C. 

It’s  a  nice  thing  to  see  the  name  of 
Walter  Lundin,  A.S.C.,  on  the  screen 
again  in  a  major  feature.  Ordinarily,  a 
Laurel  and  Hardy  comedy  isn’t  exactly 
the  place  you’d  go  looking  for  good  cam¬ 
erawork,  but  surprisingly,  Lundin  sand¬ 
wiches  in  a  surprising  lot  of  it  between 
the  stars’  gags.  Wherever  possible — 
notably  in  the  closer  shots  of  some  of 
the  other  players — Lundin  manages  to 
get  in  some  really  pleasing  “feature” 
camerawork.  Yet  when  the  comics  are 
doing  their  stuff,  his  long  experience 
making  Harold  Lloyd’s  famous  laugh- 
makers  stands  him  in  good  stead,  and 
not  a  single  laugh  is  lost.  The  gags  are 
worth  study,  by  the  way;  some  of  them 
as  examples  of  the  best  silent-picture 
comedy  of  fifteen  years  ago,  and  others 
as  the  more  modern  (if  sometimes  less 
amusing)  verbal  comedy  too  prevalent 
today.  Wonder  why  someone  doesn’t 
make  an  “all-out”  revival  of  the  strictly 
visual  comedy  of  the  days  when  Sennett, 
Lloyd,  Laurel  and  Hardy,  and  others, 


184 


May,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


There  may  be 
Fewer  Pictures 
and 

Better  Pictures 


Certainly,  then  — 

The  Better  Pictures 
are  photographed  with 

EASTMAN 

NEGATIVES 

Because 

there  will  never  be  a 

BETTER  NEGATIVE 

unless  it’s  made  by 

EASTMAN 


J.  E.  BRULATOUR,  Inc. 
DISTRIBUTORS 

EASTMAN  FILMS 


were  making  the  world  laugh  at  their 
pantomimed  antics — ? 

SOMETHING  TO  SHOUT  ABOUT 

Columbia  Production. 

Director  of  Photography:  Franz  Planer, 

A.S.C. 

Franz  Planer,  A.S.C.,  has  given  this 
thoroughly  routine  backstage  musical  a 
much  better  photographic  mounting  than 
it  deserves.  He  has  not  had  very  much 
in  the  way  of  photogenic  opportunities 
with  which  to  work,  but  when  these  op¬ 
portunities  arise,  he  does  them  abundant 
justice.  Meantime,  he  treats  the  players 
very  well  indeed.  In  all  of  this  he  was 
handicapped  by  one  of  the  worst  labora¬ 
tory  jobs  we  have  seen  in  several  years 
— one  which  makes  us  wish  we  could  see 
a  really  good  print  of  the  production  so 
that  we  could  judge  Planer’s  work  more 
fairly  .  .  .  assuming,  of  course,  that  we 
could  bring  ourselves  to  sit  through  the 
trite  story  and  unnecessarily  blatant 
sound-track  and  shouted  dialog  again. 

THE  MEANEST  MAN  IN  THE  WORLD 

20th  Century-Fox  Production. 

Director  of  Photography:  Sgt.  Peverell 

Marley,  A.S.C. 

This  picture,  one  of  the  last  photo¬ 
graphed  by  Pev  Marley,  A.S.C.,  before 
he  joined  the  Army  Air  F’orce,  hardly 
represents  his  best  work,  but  through¬ 
out  it  shows  clearly  his  photographic 
skill.  He  handles  his  camera  and  light¬ 
ings  with  a  deft  smoothness  which  lifts 
the  picture  considerably  above  the  usual 
conventional  comedy  treatment. 

Milt  Krasner 

(Continued  from  Page  172) 

and  cents,  no  school  could  have  afforded 
the  huge  production  investment  which 
gave  me  my  real  training  in  practical 
cinematography.  And  without  that  prac¬ 
tical  experience  I  couldn’t  have  learned. 
None  of  us  could. 

“That  diversified  training  came  in 
handy  when  I  finally  got  my  break  as 
a  First  Cinematographer.  Do  you  re¬ 
member  how,  ten  years  ago,  Charles  R. 
Rogers  was  making  himself  a  bit  un¬ 
popular  on  the  Paramount  lot  by  turn¬ 
ing  out,  independently,  program  releases 
for  them,  using  their  stars  and  their 
studio  facilities,  but  at  a  cost  a  good 
deal  less  than  half  of  what  they  could 
do  it  for — ? 

“Well,  I  had  worked  with  Mr.  Rogers 
before,  at  the  old  First  National  and 
elsewhere,  and  he  had  confidence  in  me 
and  in  what  I  could  do.  I  worked  for 
him  on  several  of  these  pictures,  as 
Operative  Cameraman  for  Henry  Sharp, 
A.S.C.,  and  others,  and  finally  Mr.  Rog¬ 
ers  decided  I  was  ready  for  a  chance 
shooting  First  Camera  for  him.  So  he 
promoted  me — it  was  on  an  unimport¬ 
ant  little  picture  called  ‘Strictly  Per¬ 
sonal’ — and  while,  looking  back  on  it, 
I  don’t  think  I  did  any  too  well,  at 
least  it  suited  Mr.  Rogers,  and  was 
reasonably  good  and  done  very  fast.  So 


I  stayed  on  as  a  First  Cinematographer.” 

He  stayed  on  at  Paramount,  too,  for 
several  years.  Then  one  day  when  things 
were  slack  at  Paramount,  he  got  a  call 
from  MGM  ...  he  went  out  to  the 
Culver  City  plant  for  one  picture — and 
stayed  for  more  than  ten  months  before 
leaving  for  Universal,  to  answer  a  call 
from  his  old  chief,  Charles  Rogers,  who 
was  then  Universal’s  production  head. 
And  there  he  has  been  ever  since. 

His  work  there  has  included  a  good 
bit  of  everything  from  program  films 
and  chillers  to  some  of  the  studio’s  big¬ 
gest  productions  .  .  .  and  he  has  taken 
all  of  it  in  his  stride,  with  a  clearly 
perceptible  professional  growth.  It  was 
through  his  camera,  for  instance,  that 
Abbott  and  Costello  first  came  to  the 
screen  in  “Buck  Privates.”  And  at  the 
other  end  of  the  photographic  scale  he 
has  made  such  pictures  as  Frank  Lloyd’s 
“Lady  from  Cheyenne”  and  “The  Spoil¬ 
ers,”  the  latter  starring — and  satisfying 
— the  photographically  -  hard  -  to  -  please 
Marlene  Dietrich;  and  Walter  Wanger’s 
“We’ve  Never  Been  Licked,”  and  the 
Technicolored  “Arabian  Nights,”  which 
proved  so  strong  a  contender  for  this 
year’s  Academy  Award  for  Color. 

Krasner  feels  strongly  that  it  is  a 
cinematographer’s  professional  duty  as 
soon  as  he  reaches  the  point  where  lie 
is  known  and  sought  after,  to  see  to 
it  that  he  does  not  have  to  do  too  many 
pictures  a  year,  and  that  he  have  the 
privilege  of  choosing  his  stories  at  least 
as  freely  as  a  director  or  player  of 
equal  standing. 

“There’s  a  double  reason  for  that,”  he 
says.  “First  of  all,  it  keeps  me  at  my 
best,  physically  and  mentally,  so  I  can 
give  my  best  to  each  picture  I  photo¬ 
graph.  Second — and  maybe  more  im¬ 
portant  in  the  long  run — if  I  decline  a 
picture  because  I  don’t  like  the  story, 
or  because  I  feel  I  need  a  vacation  be¬ 
fore  taking  on  another  assignment,  it’s 
going  to  give  somebody  else  a  chance 
at  it.  Maybe  somebody  who  is  just 
itching  for  something  just  a  little  bet¬ 
ter  than  he’s  been  doing,  but  who  never 
would  have  had  it  if  the  studio  had  been 
able  to  persuade  me  to  do  it.  And 
that’s  likely  to  give  the  industry  an¬ 
other  ‘A-picture’  cameraman  ...  or 
rather,  let  them  discover  that  ability  in 
someone  they’ve  just  never  given  the 
chance  to  show  it. 

“I  feel  pretty  darn  strongly  on  that 
point.  My  own  experience  as  an  Oper¬ 
ator  and  as  a  ‘B-picture’  director  of 
photography  has  convinced  me  that 
there’s  an  awful  lot  of  good,  first-string 
talent  going  to  waste  in  those  categories, 
just  because  most  of  the  industry  is 
afraid  to  give  them  a  chance  .  .  .  be¬ 
cause  so  many  producers  demand  the 
security  of  established  ‘names’  to  photo¬ 
graph  their  big  pictures.  Well,  these 
last  ten  years  we’ve  seen  a  lot  of  those 
established  photographic  ‘names’  killed 
off  from  sheer  overwork.  Yet  somehow 
the  younger  fellows  who  have  come  up 
take  their  places,  whether  by  promotion 
from  operative  jobs  or  promotion  from 
‘B-picture’  oblivion,  have  managed  to  do 


just  about  as  well,  haven’t  they — ? 

“On  the  other  hand,  I  don’t  mean 
that  the  fellows  who  get  up  to  where 
they  can  pick  and  choose  their  pictures 
should  try  to  specialize  on  any  one  type 
of  picture,  or  on  working  with  any 
given  star,  director  or  producer.  Any 
cameraman  worthy  of  the  name  should 
be  able  to  do  any  sort  of  picture  with 
equal  facility. 

“And  he  shouldn’t  let  himself  be 
scared  away  by  the  report  that  this  star 
is  hard  to  photograph,  or  that  director 
or  producer  tough  to  work  with.  If  he 
approaches  the  assignment  open-minded- 
ly,  and  with  the  right  kind  of  ability  (not 
trying  slavishly  to  imitate  what  he’s 
seen  other  cinematographers  do  with 
the  same  star),  he’s  likely  to  find,  as  I 
have  on  several  occasions,  that  the  as¬ 
signment  he  thought  was  going  to  be 
difficult  is  actually  easy  and  pleasant. 
Instead  of  being  unequal  to  it,  he  may 
even  find  himself  being  praised  for  hav¬ 
ing  done  better  than  many  another  fel¬ 
low  with  a  bigger  name! 

“But  about  that  business  of  specializa¬ 
tion — I’ll  have  to  take  part  of  it  back. 
A  few  months  ago  I  finished  by  first 
Technicolor  picture,  and  before  long  I’m 
due  to  start  another.  And  if  I  had  to 
specialize  in  anything,  I  think  I’d  like 
it  to  be  color.  Despite  all  these  years 
of  rumors  about  the  difficulty  of  color 
camerawork,  I  found  it  surprisingly  easy 
— easier,  even,  than  black-and-white. 
And  it’s  so  much  more  gratifying  on 
the  screen,  and  so  much  more  filled  with 
as  yet  unattained  possibilities,  that  I’ll 
admit  I’d  like  to  do  more  of  it  ...  to  ex¬ 
plore  more  of  the  artistic  and  technical 
possibilities  of  what  is,  I  am  sure,  the 
coming  medium  for  truly  expressive 
camerawork.”  END. 

Desert  Victory 

(Continued  from  Page  167) 

are  none  the  less  of  the  greatest  impor¬ 
tance  in  making  the  work  of  a  combat 
camera  unit  of  practical  worth. 

Out  in  the  Middle  East,  we  had  a 
rather  large  territory  to  cover.  GHQ 
was  in  Cairo,  and  from  there  our  terri¬ 
tory  not  only  extended  west  to  the  firing 
front  in  the  Western  Desert  (which  ulti¬ 
mately  came  to  mean  a  distance  of  over 
1400  miles,  as  Rommel  was  driven 
back!),  but  westward  in  the  Mediterra¬ 
nean  to  Malta  and  Cyprus,  eastward  to 
Jerusalem,  Bagdad  and,  eventually,  Te¬ 
heran  in  Persia.  To  the  north,  we  had  to 
be  ready  to  film  anything  along  the 
Turkish  and  Russian  frontiers,  and 
when  we  first  got  to  Egypt,  our  respon¬ 
sibilities  also  extended  southward  to 
Eritrea  and  Ethiopia,  until  the  Italian 
forces  were  removed  from  those  parts, 
and  there  was  no  more  news  to  cover.  On 
the  map,  this  area  may  not  look  so  large: 
but  it  actually  measured  more  than  2200 
miles  from  east  to  west,  and  2,000  from 
north  to  south.  In  other  words,  it  in¬ 
cluded  an  area  about  like  the  Western 
part  of  North  America  from  Los  Angeles 
to  Chicago,  and  the  entire  Pacific  Coast 
from  well  above  Vancouver  to  a  point 


186  May,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


The  B  &  H  Eyemo  camera  shown 
here  mounted  on  the  “Professional 
Jr.”  Tripod  and  Shiftover  has  been 
especially  adapted  for  aerial  use 
by  the  Office  of  Strategic  Services, 
Field  Photographic  Branch,  Wash., 
D.  C. 


Unsurpassed  in  Quality,  Versatility  and  Rigidity 

+  The  friction  type  head  gives  super-smooth  pan  and  tilt  action,— 
360°  pan  and  80°  tilt.  A  generous  sized  pin  and  trunnion  assures  long, 
dependable  service.  "Spread-leg"  design  affords  utmost  rigidity  and 
quick,  positive  height  adjustments.  A  "T"  level  is  built  into  this  14  lb. 
superfine  tripod.  The  top-plate  can  be  set  for  16mm.  E.K.  Cine  Special, 
with  or  without  motor:  35mm.  DeVry  and  B  &  H  Eyemo  (with  motor), 
and  with  or  without  alignment  gauge. 

Tripod  Head  Unconditionally  Guaranteed  5  Years 

"Professional  Jr."  Tripods  and  Cameraquip  Shiftover  Alignment  Gauges  are  used 
by  the  U.  S.  Navy,  U.S.  Army  Air  Bases,  Signal  Corps,  the  Office  of  Strategic 
Services  and  other  Gov't  Agencies — also  by  many  leading  Newsreel  companies 
and  16mm  and  35mm  motion  picture  producers — for  important  work. 


I 

I 

* 

% 


SHIFTOVER  ALIGNMENT  GAUGE 

■ft  This  Shiftover  device  is  the  finest,  lightest  ond 
most  efficient  Available  for  the  Eyemo  Spider  Turret 
prismatic  focusing  type  camera. 

ft  The  male  of  the  Shiftover  attaches  to  the  cam¬ 
era  base  permanently  and  permits  using  the  regular 
camera  holding  handle  if  desired.  The  male  dovetail 
mates  with  the  female  dovetail  base  and  permits  the 
camera  to  slide  from  focusing  to  photographing 
positions  for  parallax  adjustment.  The  camera  can 
be  locked  in  desired  position  by  a  positive  locking- 
device. 

•ft  The  Shiftover  has  a  "stop-bracket"  which  pre- 
k  vents  the  camera  from  sliding  off  the  dove-  ^ 
%  tail  base  —  and  is  provided  with  dowel  pins  9 
which  position  it  to  top-plates  of  tri-  j 
* ^  pods  having  3/g  or  '/^-20  camera  ^9 
%  fastening  screw.  + 


I 

I 


several  hundred  miles  down  into  Mex- 
co’s  Baja  California.  And  we  couldn’t 
be  too  sure  when  some  newsworthy  ac¬ 
tion  might  suddenly  “break”  at  any 
point  in  or  adjacent  to  this  area! 

The  solution,  of  course,  was  to  sta¬ 
tion  still  and  movie  camera  crews  at 
strategic  points,  planned  so  that  they 
could  get  quickly  to  any  area  where  ac¬ 
tion  was  likely  to  occur,  and  to  back 
these  field  units  up  with  a  string  of  bases 
at  which  replacements,  still  laboratory 
services,  and  the  like,  could  be  set  up, 
and  from  which  stills  and  movies  could 
be  expedited  to  GHQ  at  Cairo,  at  which 
base  the  latter  could  be  processed,  and 
the  former  put  on  the  radiophoto  for 
quick  transmission  to  London. 

The  laboratory  bases  were  located  at 
Malta  and  Cyprus  in  the  Mediterranean, 
and  at  Beyrouth  in  Syria,  Jerusalem  in 
Palestine,  Bagdad  in  Iraq,  and  Teheran 
in  Persia  (Iran).  From  these  bases 
we  had  camera  crews  stationed  farther 
out  at  Aleppo,  Alexandria,  and  other 
advanced  points  as  needed,  including,  at 
first,  points  in  Eritrea,  Italian  Somali¬ 
land,  Ethiopia,  etc. 

So  much  for  this  basic  coverage!  Our 
main  activity,  like  that  of  the  8th  Army, 
was  to  be  in  the  Western  Desert  as  Gen¬ 
erals  Alexander  and  Montgomery  tried 
conclusions  with  Rommel. 

In  this,  our  organization-plan  was  laid 
out  along  more  strictly  military  lines. 
An  army  must  have  a  fixed  base  of  com¬ 
mand,  supplies,  replacements,  and  the 
like;  so  did  we.  At  GHQ  in  Cairo  we 
had  our  own  headquarters  base,  with 
all  that  this  implies.  There  was  located 
my  own  headquarters  and  that  of  my  staff 
officers,  from  which  all  the  activities  of 
the  unit  were  directed.  It  was  there 
that  our  motion  picture  films  were  de¬ 
veloped,  printed,  and  edited,  and  the 
“rushes”  screened. 

For  the  laboratory  work,  the  Cairo 
branch  of  the  Eastman  Kodak  organiza¬ 
tion  put  its  entire  35mm.  section  com¬ 
pletely  at  our  disposal.  In  addition  to 
the  16mm.  facilities  usually  found  at 
Kodak  branches,  this  plant  also  had  a 
completely  equipped  set-up  for  develop¬ 
ing  35mm.  negative  and  positive  (on  an 
excellent  machine,  by  the  way),  and  for 
print-making,  and  the  like.  We  simply 
moved  in  and  took  this  section  of  the 
plant  over,  staffing  it,  where  necessary, 
with  our  own  technicians.  I  might  say 
at  this  point  that  here,  as  elsewhere,  the 
Kodak  personnel  gave  us  invaluable  co¬ 
operation,  even  excelling  that  to  which 
most  of  us  have  been  accustomed  to  in 
normal  civilian  production. 

Also  at  Cairo  GHQ  were  our  still  pic¬ 
ture-editor,  who  functioned  about  like 
the  editor  of  a  big  newspicture  service, 
deciding  which  stills  were  newsworthy, 
providing  captions,  and  getting  them 
sent  to  the  appropriate  military  and 
civilian  outlets.  There,  too,  were  our 
staff  of  cine  film-cutters,  our  equipment 
office,  the  clerical  staff,  projection  facili¬ 
ties,  and  the  like. 

From  GHQ  westward  our  operational 
organization  extended  toward  (and  often 
beyond)  the  fighting  front.  The  first 
subdivision,  and  the  point  where  I  gen- 


eraly  made  my  headquarters,  was  at  the 
Field  Headquarters  of  the  8th  Army, 
from  which  General  Montgomery  direct¬ 
ed  the  battle.  There,  in  addition  to  such 
commissioned  officers  as  might  be  neces¬ 
sary,  we  kept  always  a  reserve  of  cam¬ 
eramen,  to  provide  replacements  as 
needed  for  more  advanced  units.  There, 
too,  we  maintained  our  field  repair-shop, 
in  mobile  mechanics  vans  staffed  by  two 
sergeant-mechanics,  both  of  whom  were 
highly  skilled  in  the  repair  and  main¬ 
tenance  of  both  cine  and  still  cameras. 
We  also  kept  Army  H.  Q.  supplied  with 
replacements  of  equipment  and  film. 


Hauling  an  Eyemo  up  to  an  observation  tower  for 
a  long-shot  of  a  port  town  just  captured  from  the 
"Eyeties." 

From  this  point,  our  line  of  photogra¬ 
phic  communications  paralleled  that  of 
the  Army,  branching  out  and  downward 
through  the  usual  military  command  sub¬ 
divisions  to  the  firing  front  proper.  At 
each  point  would  be  stationed  men  who 
could  serve  as  replacements  for  the 
front-line  units  when  necessary,  and  who 
would  see  to  it  that  film  returned  from 
the  front  would  be  routed  back  to  GHQ 
as  fast  as  possible.  At  Division  or  Bri¬ 
gade  HQ  would  be  our  Section  Leaders — 
commissioned  officers  whose  responsibil¬ 
ity  it  was  to  see  to  it  that  the  men  un¬ 
der  their  command  from  there  to  the 
front  had  everything  they  needed  to 
function  properly,  and  that  their  still 
and  movie  negatives  were  gotten  back  to 
GHQ  as  fast  as  possible. 

For  the  front-line  camerawork  itself, 
our  chaps  worked  in  two-man  teams — 
one  cine  cameraman  and  one  still  pho¬ 
tographer.  At  the  start,  we  had  tried 
to  economize,  and  have  one  man  shoot 
both  the  movies  and  stills.  It  didn’t 
work.  If  he  did  a  good  job  on  the  movies, 
he  would  likely  miss  the  really  impor¬ 
tant  still  shots;  if  he  got  the  stills,  he 
was  likely  to  slight  the  movies.  There¬ 
fore,  the  two-man  combat-camera  teams 
of  specialists. 

One  of  the  biggest  factors  in  success¬ 
ful  military  camerawork,  especially  in 
regions  where,  as  in  the  African  Desert, 


operations  are  so  extremely  fluid,  is 
transport  for  your  front-line  camera 
crews.  It  always  is,  for  transport, 
next  to  water,  is  one  of  the  most  val¬ 
uable  things  in  desert  warfare. 

At  the  start,  we  had  our  full  share 
of  trouble  in  getting  transport.  But 
after  a  little  while,  when  some  of  our  first 
films  had  to  come  back  to  show  the  au¬ 
thorities  how  valuable  they  could  be,  we 
managed  to  make  ourselves  self-sufficient 
in  this  respect.  Every  combat-camera 
team,  and  all  of  the  officers,  had  their 
own  transport — a  jeep  or  a  truck — and 
that  way  we  were  able  to  keep  up  with 
the  front-line  operations  of  the  army. 

From  the  front,  exposed  movie  and 
still  film  was  routed  back  to  GHQ  by 
the  fastest  possible  means.  Usually  this 
meant  motorcycle  riders  for  the  first 
few  laps  of  the  trip,  and  then  by  plane  to 
GHQ  from  Corps  or  Army  headquarters. 
We  did  rather  well  at  this,  too.  For  ex¬ 
ample,  when  the  battle  started  with  the 
big  barrage  against  the  German  positions 
at  El  Alamein,  we  got  our  first  stills  of 
the  artillery  firing  at  about  11:30  at 
night.  By  9:30  the  negatives  were  in 
the  laboratory  in  Cairo,  and  as  soon  as 
they  were  dry  they  were  put  on  the  wire- 
photo  and  radioed  to  London,  where  the 
pictures  appeared  in  the  papers  that 
same  afternoon!  Later  on,  as  distances 
stretched  out  and  operations  became 
more  fluid,  this  communications  problem 
grew  more  troublesome,  but  our  lads  did 
remarkably  well  at  keeping  supplies, 
equipment  and  personnel  replacements 
and  fresh  and  exposed  films  flowing  con¬ 
stantly  in  both  directions. 

For  field  service,  our  camera  equip¬ 
ment  had  to  be  light  and  rugged.  Our 
still  photographers  were  therefore  sup¬ 
plied  with  Zeiss  Ikontas,  and  our  movie 
men  with  De  Vrys,  and  a  few  Eyemos. 
The  Eyemos  were  scarce,  and  so  I  would 
estimate  that  around  95%  of  “Desert 
Victory”  was  ground  through  our  De 
Vrys,  whose  performance  and  ability  to 
stand  up  under  gruelling  desert  punish¬ 
ment  constantly  surprised  us. 

When  the  big  push  started  at  El  Ala¬ 
mein  on  the  night  of  November  23  last, 
we  had  twenty-six  enlisted  combat  cine¬ 
matographers  and  six  officer  section- 
leaders  spread  out  with  the  army  along 
the  front,  in  addition  to  the  chaps  co¬ 
operating  overhead  in  the  R.A.F.  Film 
Production  Unit.  When  we  reached 
Tripoli  80  days  later,  our  chaps  were 
still  with  or  ahead  of  the  army  units,  but 
we’d  had  severe  casualties:  four  of  our 
cameramen  had  been  killed — one  officer 
and  three  enlisted  photographers;  one 
officer  and  six  photographers  had  been 
wounded,  and  two  officers  and  four  pho¬ 
tographers  had  been  captured;  in  other 
words,  seventeen  good  lads  out  of  a 
starting  force  of  thirty-two.  But  those 
chaps,  together  with  those  who  survived 
and  the  others  who  came  forward  as 
replacements,  brought  back  200,000  feet 
of  absolutely  authentic  battle  films,  and 
innumerable  stills  to  show  the  world  just 
what  desert  warfare  is  like. 

And  I  want  to  make  it  very  clear  that 
the  real  credit  for  whatever  merit  “Des- 


188  May,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


ONCE  ONLY 


EASTMAN  Negative  Films,  with  their  high 
degree  of  uniformity,  make  it  easy  to 
confine  the  "takes”  to  one  to  each  scene 
...helping  to  close  the  gap  between  foot¬ 
age  exposed  and  footage  used.  Eastman 
Kodak  Company,  Rochester,  N.  Y. 

J.  E.  BRULATOUR,  INC.,  Distributors 

Fort  Lee  Chicago  Hollywood 


PLCS-X  SUPER-XX 

for  general  studio  use  when  little  light  is  available 

BACKGROIJXD-X 

for  baekgrounds  and  general  exterior  work 

EASTMAN  NEGATIVE  FILMS 


American  Cinematographer  •  May,  1943 


ert  Victory”  may  have  is  due  entirely  to 
those  young  chaps  who  filmed  and  fought 
and  bled  and  died  in  the  desert  making 
it.  The  rest  of  us  saw  to  it  that  they 
had  the  film,  equipment  and  personnel 
replacements  they  needed,  and  that  their 
exposed  footage  got  back  for  processing 
as  promptly  as  possible.  We  edited  their 
footage  and  tried  to  form  the  cream  of 
it  into  a  cohesive  picture.  But  the  lads 
with  the  cameras  at  the  front  really 
made  “Desert  Victory.” 

Those  chaps  were  without  doubt  the 
bravest  I’ve  ever  seen.  They  went  against 
the  enemy  with  both  guns  and  cameras, 
and  the  material  they  brought  back  with 
their  cameras  was  priceless.  And  let  me 
tell  you,  it  takes  something  more  than 
just  ordinary  courage  to  keep  grinding 
calmly  and  efficiently  with  a  camera 
when  somebody  four  or  five  miles  away 
is  sending  over  things  that  go  off  with  a 
Hell  of  a  bang  when  they  land — and 
hurt,  too. 

During  the  preliminary  training,  we 
had  stressed  two  or  three  things  rather 
heavily.  Not  only  such  photographic  es¬ 
sentials  as  “no  panning,”  but  other 
equally  important  maxims  for  combat 
camera  work.  For  one  thing,  we’d  rather 
rubbed  it  in  that  there  were  to  be  damned 
few  shots  of  our  infantry  from  the  rear; 
once  in  a  while  a  shot  like  that  may  be 
useful  to  show  what  our  chaps  were  ad¬ 
vancing  into ;  but  speaking  generally,  the 
rear  elevation  of  one  infantryman  is  a 
good  deal  like  that  of  any  other,  and 
when  the  audience  has  seen  the  back  of 
one  soldier’s  neck,  it’s  seen  them  all.  The 
really  dramatic  thing  is  to  see  our  lads 
as  the  enemy  do — coming  at  one  head-on, 
with  rifles  at  the  ready  and  bayonets  ret. 

Then  we’d  emphasize  the  importance 
of  getting  the  shots  of  action  as  close  as 
possible.  As  we  were  rather  short  on 
telephoto  lenses — the  longest  we  had  was 
a  six-inch,  and  some  cameras  had  only 
fours — this  meant  that  the  man  with  the 
camera  had  to  get  in  rather  close,  too. 
When  we  issued  our  camera-crews  their 
side  arms — .38  revolvers— we  told  them 
that  when  they  got  close  enough  to  Jerry 
to  use  those  rather  short-range  weapons 
on  him,  then  was  the  time  to  start  shoot¬ 
ing  film!  That’s  what  they  did,  too. 

We  tried  to  give  them  some  hints  on 
what  you  might  call  the  artistic  side  of 
desert  battle-photography,  too.  Deserts, 
as  such,  are  rather  uninteresting  places 
photographically,  and  present  a  rather 
drab  outlook  of  bare  sand  and  rock  and 
scrubby  brush.  The  fact  that  a  thousand 
yards  or  so  out  there  may  be  a  Jerry 
tank  burning  may  be  dramatic  in  itself, 
but  it  isn’t  very  photogenic.  But  if  you 
can  get  some  sort  of  a  foreground-piece 
to  make  your  composition  complete — one 
of  our  guns  firing,  some  of  our  chaps 
taking  cover  behind  a  tank,  or  even  just 
a  bit  of  a  burned-out  tank  or  lorry  in 
the  foreground — you’ll  have  a  much  bet¬ 
ter  picture. 

Putting  all  of  these  admonitions  into 
action,  our  lads  from  the  Film  and  Photo 
Unit  necessarily  had  to  spend  a  good 
deal  of  their  time  considerably  nearer 
the  enemy  than  they  were  to  our  own 


forces.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  we  beat  the 
army  into  Tobruk  by  a  matter  of  an  hour 
and  a  half,  and  in  the  scenes  that  show 
the  Swastika  coming  down,  and  the 
Union  Jack  being  run  up,  the  “actors” 
were  members  of  our  camera  unit. 

That,  incidentally,  meant  going  through 
the  mine-fields  before  our  sappers  had 
cleared  a  way.  Those  land-mines  are 
nasty  things  at  best.  They’re  buried  by 
the  hundreds,  just  a  few  inches  deep  in 
the  sand.  Sometimes  they  go  off  the  first 
time  a  man  steps  on  them,  or  the  wheel 
of  a  car  or  a  tank  rolls  on  one;  some¬ 
times  that  initial  pressure  simply  starts 
off  a  clockwork  mechanism  which  clicks 
off  a  mechanical  count  as  man  after  man 
or  vehicle  after  vehicle  passes  over  un¬ 
harmed — and  then  lets  go  explosively 
when  the  39th  or  the  47th  or  so  goes 
over. 

Booby  traps  are  another  unpleasant 
hazard.  When  Jerry’s  leaving  a  place, 
he  leaves  something  he  knows  is  desir¬ 
able,  and  wires  an  explosive  charge  to  it. 
Binoculars,  for  example,  are  invaluable 
in  desert  warfare— and  I  suppose  sol¬ 
diers  are  soldiers  no  matter  what  uni¬ 
form  they  wear.  When  Tommy  glances 
into  a  building  recently  abandoned  by 
the  Jerries,  and  sees  what  looks  like  an 
excellent  pair  of  Zeiss  binoculars  peering 
out  from  under  an  old  coat,  he’s  likely 
to  appropriate  them  for  his  own  use. 
When  he  picks  them  up  a  nice  little  mine 
blows  up — and  with  it  Tommy,  and  as 
many  of  his  friends  as  may  be  about. 

We  lost  quite  a  few  of  our  chaps  with 
mines  and  booby  traps.  Going  into  To¬ 
bruk,  for  example,  we  lost  two  fine  lads. 
A  mine  blew  up  under  one  of  our  jeeps, 
and  a  Sergeant-Photographer  was  killed, 
while  his  driver  was  tossed  30  yards  and 
very  badly  wounded. 

In  connection  with  the  way  our  cam¬ 
era-units  preceded  the  army,  I’ve  been 
interested  to  note  in  a  recent  newspaper 
account  of  the  first  meeting  between  men 
of  the  British  8th  Army  and  General 
Patton’s  Americans  that  the  British  rep¬ 
resentative  was  one  of  my  own  Sergeant- 
photographers  ! 

We  encountered  some  of  the  German 
field  cameramen,  too — as  our  prisoners. 
We  captured  several  of  them,  and  quite 
a  bit  of  undeveloped  film  from  their 
cameras,  and  prints  of  some  of  their 
newsreels,  as  well.  Cut  into  “Desert 
Victory,”  they  made  the  picture  more 
complete  by  showing  what  was  happen¬ 
ing  on  both  sides  of  the  lines — close-ups 
of  Rommel  and  his  staff  at  the  front,  and 
at  home  in  Berlin,  receiving  his  Field 
Marshal’s  baton  from  Hitler;  shots  of 
the  German  ground  forces  in  action,  and 
of  the  Luftwaffe’s  “Stukas”  peeling  off 
and  dive-bombing  our  chaps  before  the 
R.A.F.  drove  them  out  of  the  air. 

I  even  had  the  pleasure  of  meeting  my 
“opposite  number” — the  head  of  Rom¬ 
mel’s  photographic  unit.  It  was  comfort¬ 
ing  to  learn  from  him  that  his  camera¬ 
men  had  had  the  same  difficulties  we  had 
in  contending  with  the  dust,  the  heat, 
and  the  monotonous  terrain.  It  was  also 
interesting  to  learn  from  him  that  while 
the  Afrika  Korps  was  advancing,  he 


used  from  30  to  40  cameramen  to  cover 
the  action,  but  that  after  the  German 
retreat  began,  he  reduced  his  coverage 
to  a  mere  half-dozen  men! 

By  the  time  our  forces  had  taken  Trip¬ 
oli,  we  had  somewhat  over  200,000  feet 
of  excellent  film,  which  told  the  whole 
story  of  the  battle  from  El  Alamein  to 
Tripoli.  So  I  decided  to  take  it  back  to 
London,  where  I  could  sit  down  and  make 
a  picture  out  of  it.  In  this  I  was  aided 
by  J.  L.  Hodson,  who  collaborated  with 
me  on  the  script,  and  did  the  commen¬ 
tary,  as  well;  Capt.  Roy  Boulting,  Lt. 
Patrick  Jenkins,  and  Sgt.  Richard  Best, 
who  did  the  extraordinarily  fine  job  of 
editing.  William  Alwyn  composed  and 
directed  the  musical  score,  and  the  re¬ 
cording  was  done  on  the  unit  Western 
Electric  had  donated  to  us  “for  dura¬ 
tion.”  That,  by  the  way,  was  quite  a  gift, 
for  they  gave  us  a  complete  unit  of  their 
very  latest  recording  equipment,  at  no 
cost  whatsoever,  and  royalty  charges 
only  on  what  footage  might  be  given 
theatrical  release. 

In  completing  the  picture,  we  tried  to 
make  it  not  so  much  an  over-long  news¬ 
reel  of  battle  shots,  or  a  personalized, 
sentimental  story,  but  a  realistic  pre¬ 
sentation  of  all  that  goes  into  a  big 
modern  military  operation,  from  the  first 
preparation  in  the  shops  and  factories 
of  the  home  front,  and  the  training  of 
the  soldiers,  through  the  battle  itself 
(with  a  good  explanation  of  the  strat¬ 
egy  involved)  to  the  accomplishment  of 
the  mission,  as  shown  by  an  insert  of 
General  Alexander’s  wire  to  Mr.  Church¬ 
ill,  reporting  that  he  had  carried  out 
the  Prime  Minister’s  instructions  to 
drive  the  enemy  from  Egypt  and  adja¬ 
cent  regions. 

In  doing  this,  I  think  it  may  be  inter¬ 
esting  to  point  out  that  we  found  it 
necessary  to  “stage”  only  a  very  few 
shots  for  cut-in  purposes.  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  the  completed  picture  runs  5400 
feet,  and  the  “staged,”  or  as  I  like  to 
call  them,  “matched”  shots  comprise  only 
179  feet.  These  comprised  close  shots 
made  at  night  during  the  start  of  the 
bombardment  at  El  Alamein.  We  tried 
for  the  real  thing  there,  but  shooting 
actually  at  night,  there  was  so  little 
light  that  a  great  deal  of  our  footage 
came  from  the  developing-machine  with 
no  printable  exposure  on  it.  What  we 
had  that  was  printable,  went  into  the 
picture.  The  night-effects  we  had  to 
“stage”  for  cutting  purposes  measured, 
as  I  have  said,  179  feet.  So  I  hope  “Des¬ 
ert  Victory”  will  be  taken  generally  for 
the  authentic  document  that  it  is. 

The  picture  is  now  complete,  and 
going  into  release  in  this  country  through 
20th  Century-Fox.  I  hope  it  will  give  the 
people  of  both  our  countries  a  better 
understanding  of  what  our  own  chaps — 
Americans  as  well  as  British — are  going 
through  out  there  in  the  African  desert. 

Meantime  the  others  in  my  unit,  like 
good  picture  men,  have  already  gotten 
well  along  with  a  sequel  to  “Desert  Vic¬ 
tory.”  At  the  last  I  heard,  they  had 
more  than  170,000  feet  of  film  showing 
how  our  joint  forces  are  pushing  Rom- 


190  May,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


mel  back  from  Tripoli  into  Tunisia.  I 
hope  that  I  may  get  back  to  Africa  be¬ 
fore  our  joint  forces  push  him  finally 
into  the  sea.  But  whether  I  do  or  not, 
I  know  the  boys  with  the  cameras  are 
carrying  on  very  well,  and  the  show  is 
being  directed  very  well  by  four  very 
fine  directors  of  such  productions — Gen¬ 
erals  Montgomery,  Alexander,  Patton 
and  Eisenhower.  With  such  resources, 
I  am  confident  we  will  soon  come  back 
with  another  film  which  will  justify  all 
the  nice  things  everyone  I’ve  met  in 
America,  from  the  President  down,  has 
said  about  “Desert  Victory.”  END. 


Exposure  Control 

(Continued  from  Page  170) 

era.  This  means  that  it  will  be  neces¬ 
sary  to  increase  the  “ground  exposure” 
value  by  a  factor  of  2  to  get  the  proper 
“aloft  exposure.” 

A  special  computer  identical  with  the 
Norwood  contrast  computer  mentioned 
in  an  article  in  this  magazine  (see 
American  Cinematographer,  April, 
1943,  Pages  126-127)  is  used  to  perform 
this  correction.  In  using  this  computer 
for  aerial  exposure  control,  first  set  the 
“ground  illumination”  value  on  the  inner 
scale  next  to  the  “aloft  illumination” 
value  on  the  outer  scale.  Next,  locate  on 
the  outer  scale  the  value  already  found 
for  “ground  exposure,”  which  will  be 
identical  with  the  “ground  illumination” 
value.  Adjacent  to  this  reading  on  the 
outer  scale,  the  correct  “aloft  exposure” 
value  will  be  found  on  the  inner  scale. 
At  the  same  time,  the  bottom,  or  con¬ 
trast-factor  scale  will  indicate  the  light- 
transmission  of  the  haze  blanket. 

Reducing  this  example  to  practical 
terms,  let  us  assume  that  the  “ground 
illumination”  reading  is  /: 8,  and  the 
“aloft  illumination,”  / :  11.  The  computer 
will  then  be  set  as  shown  in  Figure  2, 
which  is  self-explanatory. 

Selecting  a  filter  for  aerial  camera¬ 
work  is  naturally  greatly  aided  by  know¬ 
ing  the  transmission  factor  of  the  haze 
through  which  the  still  or  movie  camera 
is  seeking  to  penetrate.  This  informa¬ 
tion,  gained  through  the  meter-readings 
and  computations  described  above,  when 
coupled  with  a  knowledge  of  the  charac¬ 
teristics  of  the  film  being  used,  will 
greatly  simplify  the  matter  of  selecting 
the  right  filter  for  the  job. 

The  same  computer  can  then  be  used 
to  make  the  necessary  compensation  be¬ 
tween  the  unfiltered  “aloft  exposure” 
and  the  final,  filtered  exposure.  Assum¬ 
ing  that  in  the  example  just  cited  a 
filter  with  a  4x  factor  is  selected.  Then — 
after  determining  the  correct,  unfiltered 
“aloft  exposure”  as  previously  out¬ 
lined — the  computer  index  on  the  lower 
scale  should  be  set  to  4,  as  shown  in 
Figure  3.  Then  on  the  upper  outer  scale 
locate  the  unfiltered  “aloft  exposure” — 
in  this  case,  /:5.6.  Adjacent  to  this  on 
the  inner  scale  will  be  found  the  correct 
(filtered)  “working  exposure,”  which  in 
this  case  is  /: 2.8. 


The  same  basic  technique  can  be  ap¬ 
plied  on  missions  where  some  consider¬ 
able  time  may  elapse  from  take-off  to 
arrival  at  the  point  where  the  pictures 
are  to  be  taken,  during  which  period  the 
sun’s  intensity  and  angle  may  change 
considerably.  An  initial  set  of  measure¬ 
ments  made  immediately  before  take-off 
and  upon  arrival  at  operating  altitude 
will  give  readings  for  the  ground  illu¬ 
mination,  aloft  illumination,  haze  fac¬ 
tor,  and  aloft  exposure  under  the  con¬ 
ditions  then  applying.  This  establishes 
a  known  relation  between  the  aloft  illu¬ 
mination  factor  and  the  haze  factor. 

Therefore,  unless  a  very  considerable 
visible  lessening  or  increase  of  haze 
should  take  place  between  the  start  of 
the  mission  and  arrival  at  the  place  the 
photographs  are  to  be  made,  it  may  be 
assumed  that  the  haze  factor  remains 
reasonably  constant.  Therefore,  a  new 
measurement  of  aloft  illumination,  in 
addition  to  the  factors  already  known, 
will  quickly  give  the  ground  illumina¬ 
tion  and  aloft  exposure  applying  under 
the  changed  overall  illumination  condi¬ 
tions,  and  the  correct  exposure  can  be 
quickly  determined. 

It  may  be  mentioned,  incidentally, 
that  in  making  these  ground  and  aloft 
readings  it  is  advisable  to  make  both 
readings  from  the  cockpit  or  navigator’s 
observation  post,  so  that  local  conditions 
immediately  surrounding  the  meter  may 
be  the  same  for  both  readings,  and  no 
element  of  local  error  be  introduced. 
Should  it  be  necessary  to  take  readings 


through  an  overhead,  transparent  dome, 
it  is  advisable  to  take  one  reading  (on 
the  ground)  beneath  the  dome,  and  an¬ 
other  one  in  as  nearly  as  possible  the 
same  position  outside,  in  order  to  de¬ 
rive  a  figure  by  which  any  measurable 
light-absorption  by  the  material  of  the 
dome  itself  may  be  measured  and,  if 
necessary,  compensated  for  in  making 
the  actual  operational  readings. 

Making  oblique  shots  from  the  air  will 
not  generally  require  the  special  tech¬ 
nique  outlined  above  for  vertical  air- 
shots,  unless  the  scene  is  taken  from 
a  high  altitude  and  it  is  definitely  de¬ 
sired  to  show  the  ground  in  the  dis¬ 
tance,  through  the  intervening  haze, 
which  then  must  of  course  be  compen¬ 
sated  for.  But  in  most  oblique  shots, 
which  are  generally  made  from  lower 
levels,  a  single,  simple  measurement  of 
light  is  necessary.  This  will  be  simply 
for  aloft  illumination,  and  made  with 
the  meter’s  hemispherical  collector  point¬ 
ing  in  exactly  the  opposite  direction 
from  that  in  which  the  camera’s  lens 
is  pointed.  END. 

Titles 

(Continued  from  Page  182) 
film  is  undoubtedly  the  most  suitable  for 
this  type  of  title  work.  In  addition  to 
its  high  contrast,  it  comes  in  five  differ¬ 
ent  color  bases  at  no  extra  cost.  Titles 
made  on  these  tinted  stocks  go  very  well 
with  Kodachrome  films.  One  thought 
must  be  kept  in  mind  when  using  posi- 


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manufactured  by 


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Your  requirements  for  interior  or  exterior  locations  taken  care 
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RENTALS 


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333  West  52nd  St.,  New  York,  N.  Y. 


Phones:  Circle  6-5470-1 


American  Cinematographer  •  May,  1943  191 


tive  film,  however:  since  such  film  will 
not  be  developed  by  the  reversal  process, 
the  color-values  of  the  title-cards  must 
be  reversed  from  the  way  they  are  to 
appear  on  the  screen.  That  is,  black 
printing  on  a  white  background  will  ap¬ 
pear  on  the  screen  as  white  printing  on 
a  black  background,  and  vice-versa. 

Without  doubt  the  most  perfect  titles, 
though,  are  those  made  on  reversal-film 
of  the  same  type  used  for  the  rest  of 
the  picture.  By  this  I  mean  not  only 
Kodachrome  titles  for  a  Kodachrome 
picture,  and  black-and-white  reversal- 
film  titles  for  a  black-and-white  picture, 
but  that  in  monochrome,  reversal-film 
titles  should  be  shot  on  the  same  brand 
and  type  of  film  used  for  the  picture. 

If  you’ve  used,  say,  Eastman  “Safety 
Film”  for  your  picture,  don’t  try  to  use 
Super-X  or  Super-XX  for  the  titles  just 
because  it’s  faster  to  artificial  light; 
still  less  any  other  brand  of  film.  If 
you  do,  there’s  likely  to  be  enough  differ¬ 
ence  in  the  thickness  of  the  film  to 
throw  your  titles  out  of  focus  when  the 
projector  is  correctly  focused  for  the  pic¬ 
ture,  and  probably  a  noticeable  differ¬ 
ence  in  contrast,  and  sometimes  in  the 
tone  or  coloring  of  the  titles  as  well  .  .  . 
the  latter  especially  if  you  use  another 
brand  of  film,  which  may  be  processed 
in  different  solutions. 

Many  cine-enthusiasts,  even  though 
they  make  good  titles,  don’t  seem  to  have 
a  very  clear  idea  of  when  to  use  the 
different  types  of  title.  Some  of  them 
like  to  use  very  elaborate,  “arty”  titles 
throughout  the  picture;  others  go  to  the 
other  extreme  and  use  the  simplest  pos¬ 
sible  titles  from  one  end  of  their  epic 
to  the  other.  Neither  practice  is  right. 

The  elaborate  ones — which  in  the  si¬ 
lent  days  the  professionals  used  to  call 
“art  titles” — correctly  belong  only  at 
the  beginning  and  the  end  of  a  picture, 
and  occasionally  as  an  introduction  to 
a  very  complete  change  of  sequence. 
Cut  in  anywhere  else,  they’re  too  likely 
to  interrupt  the  audience’s  concentration 


Photo  by  Wallace  Thompson 


on  the  picture  by  their  very  “artiness.” 
But  for  main  and  credit  titles,  end-titles, 
and  spots  where  you’re  making  a  very 
big  jump — one  that  amounts  to  a  basic 
change  of  thought — in  time,  space,  or 
action,  they’re  great.  And  you  can 
shoot  the  works  on  them,  dressing  them 
up  with  painted  or  photographic  back¬ 
grounds,  double-exposures,  animation, 
and  striking  lettering. 

On  the  other  hand,  for  subtitles  which 
are  inserted  within  a  scene  or  sequence 
merely  to  make  clear  something  your 
pictured  action  cannot  or  does  not  show, 
the  simpler  styles  of  titles  are  by  far 
the  best.  The  lettering  should  be  simple 
and  very  easily  read — plain  block  letter¬ 
ing  if  you  do  it  by  hand,  and  a  simple, 
plain  type-face  like  the  one  printers  call 
“Kabel  bold”  if  you  use  printed  title- 
cards.  The  backgrounds  should  be  just 
as  simple.  Usually,  regardless  of 
whether  you  use  color  or  monochrome, 
light  letters  (pi’eferably  white)  against 
a  black  or  at  least  dark-toned  back¬ 
ground,  will  be  best. 

Generally  a  plain  background  will  be 
better  than  a  patterned  one.  In  Koda¬ 
chrome,  a  flat  color  which  blends  pleas¬ 
ingly  with  the  overall  coloring  of  the 
scenes  before  and  after  the  title  is  best. 
Dark  blue,  for  instance,  with  white  let¬ 
ters,  is  always  good;  but  warmer  colors 
like  red,  purple,  orange  and  yellow,  as 
well  as  the  lighter  or  pastel  shades  of 
blue  and  green,  should  be  avoided.  Col¬ 
ored  lettering,  even  though  it  furnishes 
a  pleasing  contrast  with  the  background, 
should  usually  be  avoided  for  subtitles, 
for  it  is  visually  distracting. 

You  can  work  up  a  nice  argument, 
even  among  professional  title-makers,  as 
to  whether,  in  monochrome  subtitles,  a 
plain  black  background  or  a  dark  gray 
one  is  preferable.  Some  people  even  like 
a  very  slightly  patterned  or  mottled 
background  which  is,  or  will  at  least 
photograph  as  a  dark  gray.  Speaking 
broadly,  a  very  good  rule  to  follow  is, 
“when  in  doubt,  use  plain  black.” 

If  you  want  to  add  a  more  or  less 
distinctive  touch  to  your  pictures,  like 
a  recurring  trade-mark,  there’s  an  old 
trick  some  of  the  silent-film  producers 
used  in  the  subtitles  of  their  films,  which 
you  can  use  in  yours.  D.  W.  Griffith, 
for  instance,  had  a  little  line  border 
around  his  subtitles,  with  the  line  form¬ 
ing  at  one  corner  the  initials  “D.W.G.” 
Quite  a  few  of  the  other  top  producers, 
directors  and  stars  of  the  silent  days 
used  a  similar  trick.  Marshall  Neilan, 

I  believe,  used  his  swastika  trade-mark 
(remember,  this  was  twenty  years  be¬ 
fore  Hitler  made  the  Hindu  good-luck 
sign  so  unpopular ! ) ,  and  I  think  Charlie 
Chaplin,  Mary  Pickford,  Doug  Fair¬ 
banks,  Sr.,  Charles  Ray,  Norma  Tal- 
madge,  and  quite  a  few  others  used 
similar  monogrammed  subtitles. 

You  can  do  the  same  thing  easily 
enough  by  lettering  your  border  and 
monogram  on  a  sheet  of  clear  celluloid 
or  cellophane  which  can  be  placed  over 
the  subtitle-cards  when  photographing. 
A  medium  gray  is  best  for  this  design, 


as  it  will  be  visible  enough,  yet  not  so 
strong  as  to  distract  attention  from  the 
white  letters  of  the  subtitle. 

Titles  should  be  kept  to  a  minimum, 
lest  they  defeat  their  own  purpose,  and 
become  distracting  or  boring.  So  should 
the  wording.  Short,  direct-to-the-point 
wording  should  be  used,  and  the  copy 
carefully  edited.  But  don’t  make  the 
mistake  of  making  your  subtitles  so 
overly  brief  that  they  sound  telegraphic. 
“Lake  Minnetonka”  may  tell  the  story 
of  a  side-trip  from  a  visit  to  Minneap¬ 
olis — but  “One  week-end  we  drove  out  to 
see  Lake  Minnetonka”  tells  it  much 
more  smoothly  and  completely.  In  a 
word,  keep  subtitle-wording  short,  but 
literate ! 

In  the  more  elaborate  titles,  which 
are  usually  harder  to  read  because  of 
their  decorative  lettering  and  back¬ 
grounds,  you  really  need  to  be  brief  so 
that  your  audience  can  grasp  the  whole 
meaning  of  the  title  quickly.  This  ought 
to  be  easy,  though,  for  you  don’t  usually 
have  to  use  many  words  in  main  and 
credit  titles — and  when  you’ve  reached 
the  last  scene  in  the  picture,  what  is 
there  to  say  in  a  title  but — THE  END? 

Smith  New  A.S.C.  President 

(Continued  from  Page  169) 

clear  that  these  activities  are  as  much 
for  the  ‘little  fellows’  of  the  profession 
as  for  the  men  at  the  top;  more  so,  in 
fact,  for  the  men  on  top-bracket  major- 
studio  contracts  don’t  need  it  as  much, 
while  the  others  can  be  advanced  to  bet¬ 
ter  standing  in  the  industry  by  the  com¬ 
bination  of  interchange  of  technical 
ideas,  experienced  business  advice,  and 
well-planned  publicity  which  the  A.S.C. 
is  gearing  itself  to  offer.  The  camera 
profession  has  advanced  tremendously 
in  knowledge,  and  in  standing  in  the 
twenty-five  years  since  the  A.S.C.  was 
founded.  The  aim  of  my  administra¬ 
tion  is  to  carry  those  advances  still 
farther.  With  the  loyal  support  of  the 
officers,  the  Board  and  the  members,  I 
am  sure  we  will  do  it.” 

Executive  Vice-President  Jackman, 
who  declined  re-election  to  the  presi¬ 
dency  because  of  his  belief  that  two  con¬ 
secutive  terms  were  as  long  as  any 
one  man  should  hold  that  office,  and 
because  he  felt  that  the  chair  should  be 
occupied  by  an  active  director  of  photog¬ 
raphy,  supplemented  President  Smith’s 
remarks  by  saying.  “There  is  a  definite 
need  in  the  industry  for  organizations 
which  will  give  them  an  opportunity  for 
social  and  professionally  educational  ac¬ 
tivities.  But  the  two  don’t  mix;  they 
cannot  successfully  be  handled  by  a  sin¬ 
gle  organization.  We  can  speak  from 
experience  in  this — we’ve  tried  it. 

“Ten  years  ago,  unfortunate  circum¬ 
stances  forced  the  duty  of  economically 
representing  cinematographers  upon  the 
A.S.C.  As  one  of  the  pioneer  members 
of  the  Society,  I  can  say  that  this  was 
not  the  primary  purpose  of  its  founders, 
and  it  certainly  was  not  a  responsibility 
any  of  us  sought.  But  when  it  was 


192  May,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


forced  upon  us,  we  carried  on  to  the  best 
of  our  ability,  and  for  a  considerable 
period  the  type  of  administration  in  the 
organization  originally  set  up  for  this 
purpose  made  it  very  obvious  that  we 
must  carry  that  burden. 

“Today,  things  have  changed.  There 
has  been  a  thorough  house-cleaning  in 
the  I.A.T.S.E.,  and  our  personal  con¬ 
tacts  with  both  the  local  and  the  inter¬ 
national  officials  of  that  organization 
have  convinced  us  that  the  directors  of 
photography  will  get  a  square  deal  from 
them.  Accordingly,  I  started  that  nego¬ 
tiations,  which  are  now  being  finished 
by  President  Smith  and  myself,  to  turn 
these  duties  over  to  Local  659,  which 
can  represent  the  entire  camera  craft 
efficiently  and  honestly. 

“This  will  bring  the  A.S.C.  back  to  its 
original  purpose  of  getting  the  most 
progressive  members  of  the  camera 
craft  together  for  social  and  profession¬ 
al  contacts.  It  will  enable  us  to  advance 
the  professional  interests  of  First  Cam¬ 
eramen — as  apart  from  purely  labor- 
union  interests — in  ways  that  only  an 
organization  like  the  A.S.C.  can.  And 
with  them,  we  can  further  the  technical 
progress  of  the  industry  as  a  whole. 

“In  the  past,  as  veteran  members  of 
the  organization  know,  the  A.S.C.  and 
its  members  have  played  a  vital,  creative 
part  in  advancing  both  the  artistic  and 
the  technical  phases  of  cinematography. 
The  cameras  we  now  use — the  film  upon 
which  we  make  our  pictures — the  lenses 
through  which  we  make  them — all  owe 
much  of  their  present  perfection  to 
the  fact  that  at  meetings  of  the  A.S.C. 
the  practical  men  of  the  camera  and 
the  designers,  photochemists  and  opti¬ 
cians  could  sit  down  together  and  dis¬ 
cuss  their  mutual  problems  in  friendly, 
round-table  fashion. 

“I’m  not  taking  anything  away  from 
the  brilliant  men  on  the  engineering 
staffs  of  the  various  manufacturing 
companies  when  I  say  that  without  the 
practical  help  of  the  First  Cinematog¬ 
raphers  in  the  A.S.C.  they  could  not 
have  achieved  as  much  as  they  have 
during  these  last  twenty-five  years.  It 
has  been  the  cinematographers  who 
have  told  them  ‘We  want  this  ...  we 
need  that,’  or  even  with  brutal,  if  friend¬ 
ly,  frankness,  ‘You’ve  got  a  good  idea 
there,  but  here — and  here — and  here  are 
practical  bugs  that  must  be  eliminated 
before  it’s  really  worthwhile  for  pro¬ 
duction  use.’  And  only  in  an  organiza¬ 
tion  like  the  A.S.C.  is  that  interchange 
possible. 

“As  a  result,  we  have  marvellous  ma¬ 
terials  and  equipment  today.  But  im¬ 
provements  are  still  possible,  and  in 
many  details,  radical  changes  are  on 
the  way.  And  we  in  the  A.S.C.  today 
have  the  privilege  of  taking  again  an 
active  part  in  making  them  practical, 
and  of  being  in  on  the  ground  floor  of 
knowing  how  to  use  them  when  they 
are  finally  perfected  for  our  use. 

“So  I  think  that  now,  as  the  A.S.C. 
enters  its  twenty-fifth  year,  while  it 
has  great  achievements  to  look  back 
on,  it  has  much  greater  achievements, 


both  for  its  members  and  for  the  pro¬ 
fession  as  a  whole,  to  look  forward  to. 
In  every  way,  there’s  photographic  his¬ 
tory  to  be  made — and  we’re  going  to 
help  make  it!”  END. 

Russian  Camera  Aces 

(Continued  from  Page  168) 

largely  in  action  against  the  Nazis  with 
the  Black  Sea  fleet.  Naval  camerawork, 
he  tells  us,  is  no  sinecure  when  one  is 
being  attacked  from  all  sides  by  Nazi 
land,  sea  and  air  forces,  and  one’s  own 
ship  is  dishing  out  equal  punishment,  as 
well.  Then  is  the  time  when  one  must 
know  his  camera  and  lenses  so  perfect¬ 
ly  that  their  operation  will  take  no 
conscious  thought.  You  need  all  your 
mind,  he  says,  to  select  the  best  and 
most  spectacular  action  when  things  are 
happening  so  rapidly  and  both  you  and 
your  subject  change  positions  so  quickly. 

His  comrades  told  us  that  Mikosha’s 
favorite  position  for  a  camera  set-up  for 
filming  this  dangerous  action  was  di¬ 
rectly  atop  of  the  spare  torpedoes  on 
a  torpedo-boat.  As  there  were  often 
fifteen  or  twenty  Nazi  planes  bombing 
and  machine-gunning  his  boat — not  to 
mention  the  500  lbs.  of  TNT  in  the  war¬ 
head  of  torpedo  and  of  the  1500-lb. 
pressure  in  its  air  compartment,  this 
could  hardly  have  been  termed  the  most 
secure  of  camera  positions! 

At  another  time,  filming  a  bombing 
raid  on  Sulin,  he  returned  in  a  ship 
ventilated  by  no  less  than  64  bullet-holes, 
and  in  which  one  member  of  the  crew 
had  been  killed,  and  the  landing-gear 
so  damaged  that  the  big  ship  had  to 
make  a  crash  belly-landing. 

Mikosha  was  one  of  the  last,  if  not 
actually  the  last  to  be  evacuted  from 
the  siege  of  Sevastopol,  and  he  left 
then  only  because  he  was  shell-shocked 
and  wounded,  and  was  evacuated  over  his 
own  protests.  Before  that  he  had  been 
twice  wounded,  each  time  refusing  hos¬ 
pitalization  as  he  felt  he  had  more  im¬ 
portant  work  to  do  at  the  front! 

Cinematographer  Litkin,  before  the 
war,  had  done  some  production  camera¬ 
work  in  Moscow,  and  then  spent  five 
years  as  a  special  newsreel  correspond¬ 
ent  in  the  Far  East.  There,  he  served 
outstandingly  as  a  cameraman,  director 
and  writer  of  news  and  documentary 
films,  and  in  his  spare  time  hunted 
tigers  to  be  sent  back  alive  to  the  zoos 
of  the  larger  cities. 

Shortly  before  the  war  he  won  the 
Stalin  Prize  for  making  the  documentary 
film  “One  Day  in  the  Soviet  Union,” 
and  while  in  Hollywood  he  learned  that 
he  had  again  participated  in  this  high¬ 
est  award  for  his  part  in  making  “One 
Day  of  War.” 

His  special  advice  to  the  combat  cam¬ 
eramen  in  the  American  forces  is  to 
remember  always  not  only  not  to  ex¬ 
pose  his  own  life  unnecessarily  (that’s 
one’s  own  business)  but  always  to  be 
especially  careful  not  to  disclose  or  draw 
attention  to  the  various  units  of  the 
Army  which  may  be  disposed  in  his 
sector. 


The  wartime  cameraman,  he  adds, 
must  be  completely  familiar  with  his 
equipment  and  its  use.  The  equipment, 
too,  must  be  so  light  and  portable  that 
he  can  carry  all  or  most  of  it  in  his 
shoulder-bags.  He  must  have  a  lot  of 
initiative,  too,  for  he  cannot  wait  for 
orders  from  someone  else;  he  must  use 
his  own  judgment  for  the  most  part  in 
chosing  his  shots.  At  the  same  time, 
he  must  keep  in  contact  with  those 
officers  who  are  in  charge  of  planning 
military  operations,  so  that  he,  in  turn, 
can  make  sure  of  being  ready  with  his 
camera  at  the  places  where  photographic 
conditions  are  likely  to  be  best,  and 
where  the  most  spectacular  action  is 
likeliest  to  occur. 

One  of  his  most  interesting  experi¬ 
ences  was  a  fortnight  spent  with  the 
guerillas  who  operate  back  of  the  Nazi 
lines,  not  only  making  life  uncomfort¬ 
ably  dangerous  for  the  Germans,  but 
capturing  Nazi  officers  and  soldiers  and 
relaying  information  obtained  from  them 
back  to  the  Russian  command.  Dur¬ 
ing  one  of  these  guerilla  skirmishes, 
Litkin  took  part  in  a  forest  battle  in 
which  the  Nazis  were  defeated  and  scat¬ 
tered  through  the  forest:  he  himself 
followed  one  of  the  fleeing  Nazis,  pho¬ 
tographed  his  attempts  at  escape,  and 
finally  brought  him  back  a  prisoner — 
though,  he  says,  the  Nazi  is  a  much 
more  savage  beast  than  the  tigers  Litkin 
used  to  hunt! 

This  assignment  was  complicated  by 
fact  that  it  was  conducted  during  the 
Russian  winter  which  proved  such  an 
enemy  to  the  Nazis.  He  and  his  camera- 
crew  had  to  travel  light,  carrying  their 
cameras  and  about  900  feet  of  negative 
each,  and  due  to  the  intense  cold  they 
not  only  had  to  drain  the  oil  from  their 
cameras,  but  carry  both  cameras  and 
film  beneath  their  uniforms  to  keep  the 


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American  Cinematographer  •  May,  1943 


193 


cameras  from  freezing  and  the  film  from 
crumbling. 

Cinematographer  Soloviev  was  another 
who  in  peace-time  made  documentory 
films  both  in  the  studios  and  in  the 
field.  But  when  war  came,  he  went  to 
the  front,  where  he  has  remained  since 
September,  1941,  except  for  a  three- 
month  interval  during  which  he  was 
hospitalized  for  illness.  During  the  mak¬ 
ing  of  the  Academy  Award-winning 
“Moscow  Strikes  Back,”  he  worked  on 
the  Central  Front,  filming  not  only  tank 
battles  but  infantry  attacks  and  aerial 
action,  as  well. 

And  yet,  with  all  these  bloody  and 
nerve-racking  experiences  behind  them, 
these  four  cinematic  musketeers  had  one 
unanimous  answer  when  they  were  asked 
how  they  liked  Hollywood.  “It’s  an  in¬ 
teresting  place,”  they  said,  almost  to¬ 
gether,  “and  our  fellow-cinematograph¬ 
ers  here  treat  us  wonderfully.  But  we’re 
anxious  to  get  back  to  our  own  country, 
for  there,  at  the  front,  we’ve  still  got 
a  job  to  do!”  END. 


A  LONG-TERM 
INVESTMENT 

B&H  Taylor-Hobson-Cooke 
Cine  Lenses  will  serve  you  for 
many  years,  because  they  antici¬ 
pate  future  improvements  in  film 
emulsions  and  exceed  current 
technical  demands.  Write  for 
literature.  BUY  WAR  BONDS 


BELL  &  HOWELL  COMPANY 


Exclusive  world  distributors 


1848  Larchmont  Avenue,  Chicago 

New  York:  30  Rockefeller  Plaza 


Hollywood:  716  N.  La  Brea  Ave. 
Washington,  D.  C.r  1221  G  St.,  N.W. 
London:  13>14  Great  Castle  St. 


Care  of  16  mm.  Sound  Film 

(Continued  from  Page  180) 

wound  on  a  rewind  device,  is  allowed  to 
run  through  it  with  only  a  very  slight 
pressure  being  exerted  upon  it.  If  the 
cloth  is  held  near  the  reel  from  which 
the  film  is  being  unwound,  the  film  will 
be  dry  of  all  cleaner  by  the  time  it 
reaches  the  take-up  reel.  When  clean¬ 
ing  Kodachrome  or  color  films,  it  is  im¬ 
portant  that  as  much  as  possible  of  the 
cleaner  be  squeezed  from  the  cloth  before 
attempting  to  clean  this  type  of  film.  A 
glance  at  your  cleaning  cloth  after  clean¬ 
ing  a  hundred  feet  or  so  of  film  will  show 
how  much  oil  and  dirt  has  been  re¬ 
moved.  The  quality  of  the  projected 
image  on  the  screen  and  that  of  the 
sound  will  both  show  a  noticeable  im¬ 
provement. 

How  often  the  film  should  be  cleaned 
depends  upon  the  conditions  under  which 
it  is  shown,  and  how  it  has  been  stored. 
If  it  has  been  shown  in  a  dusty  room  or 
projected  under  dusty  conditions,  it 
should  be  cleaned  often.  The  same  also 
applies  if  it  has  been  stored  loosely 
wound  for  any  length  of  time  elsewhere 
than  in  a  dustproof  container.  An  ex¬ 
amination  of  the  film  on  a  rewind  or  edit¬ 
ing  device  that  reveals  spots  of  oil, 
grease,  fingerprints,  pieces  of  loose  emul¬ 
sion,  or  dust  is  a  sure  indication  that  it 
needs  cleaning. 

Films  with  torn  or  broken  sprocket 
perforations  should  be  repaired  as  soon 
as  possible.  This  is  especially  important 
in  the  case  of  16mm.  sound-film,  for  with 
this  type  of  film  there  is  only  one  row 
of  perforations  for  the  sprockets  and 
claw  to  engage.  Projection  of  these  films 
with  broken  or  torn  perforations  is  in¬ 
viting  trouble  in  the  form  of  ripped  and 
scratched  films,  and  the  loss  of  much 
valuable  footage. 

These  breaks  will  show  up  many  times 
when  you  are  cleaning  your  films,  as  the 
cleaning  cloth  will  catch  in  them.  When¬ 
ever  this  occurs,  immediately  stop  and 
repair  the  break.  It  is  also  a  good  idea 
to  occasionally  inspect  the  film  on  a  re¬ 
wind  device  by  allowing  the  film  to  run 
slowly  through  your  fingers;  holding  it 
only  by  its  edges.  If  your  film  has  any 
places  where  it  has  been  previously 
broken  and  joined  together  (spliced),  in¬ 
spect  these  places  and  look  for  any 
breaks,  tears  or  loose  edges  bettveen  the 


RENTALS  SALES  SERVICE 


MITCHELL 


Standard,  Silenced,  N.  C., 
Hi-Speed,  Process,  and 
Eyemo  Cameras. 


BELL  &  HOWELL 


Fearless  Blimps  and  Panoram  Dollys — Synchronizers — Moviolas 
35mm  Double  System  Recording  Equipment 


WE  SPECIALIZE  in  REPAIR  WORK  on  MITCHELLand  BELL  &  HOWELL  CAMERAS 


K 


FRANK-ZUCKER 

CABLE  ADDRESS:  CINEQUIP 

Camera  egi 

JIPMENT 

km*  1600  BROADWAY  n  yc  \ 

CIrcle  6-5080 

perforations.  At  the  same  time  inspect 
the  joint  by  twisting  it  slightly  to  see 
if  it  is  in  good  condition.  If  it  appears 
loose,  open  it  or  cut  it  out  and  re-splice  it. 

Repairs  on  torn  film  are  made  by  a 
very  simple  process  known  as  splicing. 
The  making  of  a  good  splice,  however, 
requires  the  use  of  an  instrument  known 
as  a  splicer  or  splicing  block.  There  are 
a  number  of  good  makes  of  these  on  the 
market,  to  be  had  in  all  price  ranges.  If 
you  project  your  film  only  once  in  a 
while,  I  would  suggest  that  you  have 
your  photographic  dealer  make  any  re¬ 
pairs  that  might  be  necessary.  However, 
if  you  handle  a  lot  of  film,  then  a  good 
splicer  is  a  most  essential  item  for  your 
use.  Here  it  might  be  said  that  Bell  & 
Howell  puts  out  a  diagonal  splicer  that 
makes  a  diagonal  splice  across  the  film, 
while  Eastman  and  Craig  put  out  splicers 
that  make  a  straight  splice  directly 
across  the  film,  at  right  angles  to  its 
edge.  For  strictly  professional  use, 
where  you  want  to  make  splices  that  are 
as  nearly  invisible  as  possible,  or  where 
you  are  working  with  Kodachrome  orig¬ 
inals  that  are  to  be  duped,  or  enlarged 
to  35mm.,  the  only  splicer  to  use  is  the 
Griswold,  which  is  the  only  16mm.  splicer 
made  which  will  make  the  narrow,  “nega¬ 
tive”  splice,  which  measures  .05"  wide 
as  compared  to  .072"  or  wider  for  most 
16mm.  splices.  These  splicers  are  only 
obtainable  on  a  priority  basis  at  this 
time,  however.  Which  type  you  wish  to 
use  and  the  amount  of  money  you  wish 
to  invest  is  a  matter  of  personal  choice 
and  budget  limitations. 

Essentially  the  making  of  a  good  splice 
is  the  same  regardless  of  the  instrument 
used.  The  damaged  sections  of  the  film 
are  removed  by  the  cutter  of  the  splicer. 
From  one  of  these  ends  the  emulsion  or 
picture-carrying  material  on  the  dull 
side  of  the  film  is  scraped  away  by  the 
splicer’s  scraper.  The  shiny  side  of  the 
unscraped  end  is  overlapped  onto  the 
scraped  end  so  that  both  of  the  dull  sur¬ 
faces  of  the  film  face  upwards.  The  ends 
are  separated  slightly,  a  little  film- 
cement  is  applied  to  the  scraped  end,  and 
the  two  ends  are  clamped  together  by  the 
splicer’s  clamp  for  about  thirty  seconds, 
at  the  end  of  which  time  the  splice  is 


194  May,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


completed  and  may  be  removed  from  the 
splicer.  The  whole  operation  is  very 
simple.  If  a  little  water  is  applied  to 
the  end  that  is  to  be  scraped,  it  will  be 
found  that  the  emulsion  may  be  re¬ 
moved  easier,  though  perhaps  not  so 
neatly.  Here  it  might  be  stressed  that 
all  of  the  emulsion  must  be  removed  from 
the  area  covered  by  the  scraper  if  the 
splice  is  to  hold  permanently.  It  is  also 
a  good  idea  to  roughen  the  film  base 
after  the  emulsion  has  been  removed  so 
that  the  welding  action  of  the  film-cement 
will  be  better.  The  registration  pins  of 
the  splicer  will  hold  the  film  in  correct 
registration  during  these  operations  so 
that  the  splice  will  be  perfect. 

After  the  splice  has  been  removed 
from  the  splicer,  test  it  to  make  sure 
that  it  won’t  come  apart,  by  twisting 
it  slightly.  Bad  splices  will  come  apart 
during  projection  and  may  cause  film 
damage.  These  bad  splices  are  caused 
by:  (1)  the  emulsion  not  being  thorough¬ 
ly  scraped  off;  (2)  an  insufficient  amount 
of  cement  being  put  into  the  splice;  (3) 
too  much  cement  on  the  splice  which  will 
dissolve  the  film  base  and  make  the  film 
weak  and  brittle  at  this  point;  and  (4) 
old  cement  which  has  lost  its  welding- 
power  or  will  cause  the  film  to  become 
stiff,  hard,  and  buckle  on  projection— 
usually  breaking  between  the  sprockets. 
Use  only  good,  fresh  film-cement  and 
keep  the  cover  on  tight  at  all  times  when 
not  using  it. 

On  sound-films,  whenever  a  splice 
passes  through  the  sound  gate,  you  may 
have  noticed  a  sudden  pop  or  blurp  from 
the  loudspeaker.  This  is  caused  by  the 
sudden  interruption  of  the  sound-track 
by  the  splice.  It  may  be  avoided  if,  at 
the  time  of  making  the  splice,  a  wide 
“V”,  with  its  legs  spread  far  apart,  is 
made  across  the  sound-track  area  of  the 
splice  with  black  water-color  paint  or 
other  opaque  material  that  will  not  read¬ 
ily  rub  off.  You  can  get  special  paint  for 
this,  known  as  “blooping  paint”  from 
most  theatre-supply  stores.  This  “V”  will 
serve  to  extinguish  the  track  gradually 
and  thus  eliminate  the  sudden,  objec¬ 
tionable  pop. 

As  was  mentioned  earlier,  motion  pic¬ 
ture  film  should  be  kept  in  dustproof 
containers  at  all  times. 

Immediately  after  the  film  has  been 
projected  it  should  be  returned  to  its  can 
and  covered — and  then  as  soon  after¬ 


wards  as  possible  it  should  be  rewound 
onto  the  original  reel,  ready  for  the  next 
projection.  In  rewinding  your  film,  do 
not  rewind  it  too  tightly.  On  the  other 
hand,  do  not  rewind  it  too  loosely,  as 
this  will  allow  it  to  shake  in  folds  in  the 
can  and  cause  frictional  wear  during 
transportation  and  projection.  Maintain 
a  fairly  even  pressure  on  the  rewind 
brake  or  supply  reel  when  winding  onto 
the  take-up  reel.  This  will  assure  the 
film  being  wound  smoothly  and  with  an 
even-tensioned  flow,  and  will  keep  the 
dust  from  settling  into  it  when  the  cover 
is  off  the  container  previous  to  loading 
and  unloading  the  projector.  If  your  film 
has  been  wound  too  loosely  on  its  reel, 
rewind  it  again:  never  take  it  by  its  end 
and  pull  it  tight.  If  you  do,  this  will 
cause  bad  scratch-marks  known  as  “cinch 
marks”  on  the  film. 

Stoi-e  your  films  in  a  cool  dry  place. 
This  is  especially  important  with  Koda- 
chrome  or  color  films  which  are  readily 
attacked  both  by  excess  moisture  and 
heat,  resulting  in  the  emulsion  blistering 
and  the  colors  fading.  Do  not  at  any 
time  allow  your  films  to  be  kept  near  a 
source  of  heat  such  as  a  furnace,  a  radia¬ 
tor,  hot-air  register,  steam  pipes,  etc.  To 
do  so  will  cause  the  film  to  shrink  so 
badly  that  it  will  be  impossible  to  pro¬ 
ject  it.  In  hot  weather,  do  not  leave 
your  films  in  a  closed  automobile — the 
temperature  will  build  up  amazingly  and 
may  ruin  your  film  if  the  car  is  left  in 
the  sun  for  any  length  of  time. 

Black-and-white  film  which  has  been 
stored  for  a  long  period  of  time  where  it 
is  very  dry  is  liable  to  become  quite  brit¬ 
tle  and  break  repeatedly  on  projection 
because  of  loss  of  its  moisture  content. 
This  happens  quite  frequently  in  office- 
buildings  heated  by  steam  radiators, 
where  the  air  is  liable  to  be  very,  very 
dry.  If  this  is  the  case,  the  film  should 
be  humidified  before  use.  In  the  bottom 
of  most  film  cans  is  a  small  blotter, 
covered  by  perforated  metal  or  wire 
mesh.  This  should  be  dampened  and  the 
film  stored  in  the  closed  can  for  from 
twenty-four  hours  to  three  days.  Do  not 
allow  any  water  to  touch  the  film  as  it 
will  mildew  and  be  ruined.  If  the  films 
have  to  be  stored  in  an  excessively  drj 
place  where  they  are  liable  to  dry  out, 
moisten  the  humidification-pads  or  blot¬ 
ters  every  four  to  six  months  depending 


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American  Cinematographer  •  May,  1943 


195 


GOERZ 


ClmsLkimn!’ 


CRAFTSMEN 


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forces, 

on  Land — 

on  the  Sea — 
in  the  Air — 


T  hese  precise  optical  units  are  of  the 
1  greatest  importance  to  our  armed 
forces,  for  without  accurate  military  in¬ 
struments  for  sighting,  fire  control  and 
photographic  aerial  reconnaissance  their 
fighting  machinery  would  be  of  little 
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0  ptical  science  together  with  our  crafts¬ 
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the  production  line,  will  hasten  victory. 


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"GOERZ  AMERICAN"  lenses  of  certain 
types  and  sizes  for  civilian  use.  We  sug¬ 
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upon  the  atmospheric  conditions.  KODA- 
CHROME  OR  COLOR  FILMS  SHOULD 
NEVER  BE  HUMIDIFIED.  With  them, 
the  humidification  process  will  fade  their 
colors  in  time. 

In  threading  your  films  into  your  pro¬ 
jector,  always  hold  the  film  by  its  edges 
being  careful  not  to  get  your  fingers  or 
hands  on  the  picture  area.  Provide  a 
long  enough  leader,  which  in  most  cases 
with  sound-films  should  be  about  six  feet 
in  length.  This  will  enable  you  to  thread 
and  check  the  running  of  the  machine 
on  the  leader,  thus  relieving  the  picture 
proper  of  the  strain  of  starting  and 
stopping.  If  at  any  time  the  projector 
does  not  sound  right,  or  you  should  lose 
the  loop  in  the  projector,  stop  it  immedi¬ 
ately  and  re-check  the  threading.  Con¬ 
tinual  loss  of  loops  usually  indicate  a 
film  which  either  is  shrunk  or  has  broken 
perforations  and  is  in  need  of  repair. 
When  handling  your  films  during  re¬ 
pairs,  be  sure  that  your  hands  are  free 
of  any  grease  or  oil  which  might  be 
transferred  to  the  film.  It  is  a  good  idea 
to  purchase  a  cheap  pair  of  cotton  gloves 
and  wear  these  when  handling  film. 

So  much  for  your  films.  Observe  the 
preceding  rules  and  you  will  do  much 
towards  lengthening  their  useful  life. — 
(To  be  continued) 


Sound  on  Silent  Projector 

(Continued  from  Page  181) 

all  have  to  line  up  with  the  lower 
sprocket  on  the  machine. 

Now  we  come  to  the  exciter-lamp 
which  is  a  standard  814 -volt  lamp.  The 
socket  was  purchased  from  one  of  the 
local  auto  accessory  stores  and  was 
mounted  on  a  bracket  approximately  %e~ 
inch  below  the  sound  lens.  I  then  fitted 
a  metal  shield  with  a  hole  about  %e-inch 
in  diameter  for  the  light  to  travel 
through  to  sound  lens.  This  shield  was 
made  so  that  it  could  be  slid  on  and 
off  should  it  be  necessary  to  change 
the  exciter-lamp.  This  covers  every¬ 
thing  up  to  assembly,  which  is  really 
quite  a  precise  job.  However,  I  made 
everything  that  would  need  adjusting 
with  plenty  of  leeway  for  adjustment. 

Three  holes  were  drilled  through  the 
top  of  the  plate  for  10  x  32  fillister-head 
screws.  These  were  spotted  into  pro¬ 
jector  and  then  drilled  through  with  a 
No.  21  drill  and  then  tapped.  The  plate 
was  then  mounted  on  the  projector  and 


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the  sound-lens  was  put  into  place  and 
fastened  with  a  clamp  made  of  thin 
brass  held  by  small  screws  which,  when 
loosened,  would  allow  the  lens  to  be 
moved  up  or  down  for  focusing. 

Next,  the  bearing  for  the  shaft  for 
the  film  drum  was  shoved  through  the 
holes  in  projector  and  screwed  into  the 
plate.  When  this  is  in  place  it  will 
fit  inside  the  drive  belt,  nicely  clearing 
it  on  both  sides.  The  drum  and  fly¬ 
wheel  pulley  are  put  on  the  shaft  and 
secured  with  a  nut  on  both  ends  of  the 
shaft. 

The  photocell  is  shoved  into  its  hous¬ 
ing  and  wires  soldered  to  the  leads  on 
the  tube.  These  wires  must  be  shielded 
and  grounded  or  a  heavy  hum  will  re¬ 
sult  when  the  amplifier  is  started.  A 
cap  was  then  fitted  over  the  housing. 
Then  leads  were  also  fastened  to  the 
socket  of  exciter  lamp.  We  are  now 
ready  for  the  amplifier,  of  which  I  will 
give  you  a  description. 

The  amplifier  is  very  versatile.  It 
was  built  to  my  specifications  by  my 
friend,  Wm.  R.  Stanmyre,  who  is  a 
sound  engineer.  I  had  on  hand  an 
amplifier  which  I  had  used  for  record¬ 
ing  and  play-back  of  sound-on-disc; 
he  tore  this  amplifier  down  and  salvaged 
what  parts  he  could  and  built  an  ampli¬ 
fier  with  the  proper  frequency  curve  for 
sound-on-film.  There  are  six  plug-in 
jacks,  one  for  microphone,  one  for  re¬ 
cording,  two  for  dual  phono  reproduc¬ 
tion,  one  for  photocell,  and  one  for 
exciter-lamp  supply. 

When  the  projector  is  set  on  the 
amplifier  it  is  secured  to  same  by  a 
knurled  screw  that  goes  through  a  hole 
in  the  projector-base  and  into  a  threaded 
bushing  in  the  top  of  the  amplifier.  The 
amplifier  is  crackle  finished,  as  is  also 
the  sound  plate,  matching  perfectly  the 
finish  on  the  projector.  The  working 
parts  mounted  on  the  plate  were  given 
a  coat  of  bright  nickel,  as  it  would  not 
do  to  have  them  buffed  as  that  would 
make  them  uneven  in  spots.  The  whole 
outfit  looks  as  if  it  might  have  been 
made  at  the  same  time  by  the  Eastman 
Kodak  Co.! 

The  next  problem  was  really  tougher 
than  the  work  I  have  just  described.  I 
was  faced  with  the  problem  of  length¬ 
ening  out  the  arms  to  accommodate 
1600-ft.  reels.  At  first  this  seemed 
very  simple,  but  when  I  started  to  do 
it  I  really  found  I  had  a  job  on  my 
hands!  After  many  trials  and  errors  I 
finally  hit  upon  a  design  that  would 
really  work.  If  I  were  to  do  it  over 
again  I  would  make  a  pattern  and  have 
them  cast,  which  would  be  easier  and 
neater. 

The  photo  will  give  you  as  good  a 
description  as  I  can  with  words.  To 
drive  the  take-up  reel  I  turned  up  a 
pulley  from  bronze  and  counterbored  it 
just  enough  to  set  the  regular  pulley 
into  it  to  center  it.  I  then  turned  up 
a  small  pulley  %-inch  in  diameter  and 
located  this  one  where  the  arm  makes 
its  first  bend. 

I  hooked  one  side  of  the  belt  over  this 


196  May,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


pulley;  otherwise  it  would  rub  against 
the  side  of  the  projector.  The  belt  was 
purchased  at  one  of  the  local  stores 
from  a  make-it-up  kit.  These  belts 
come  in  assorted  sizes  and  are  cut  off 
any  length  you  want.  It  is  necessary 
to  get  the  same  size  belt  that  comes  on 
the  projector  or  it  will  not  pull  enough 
to  take  up  a  large  reel. 

At  the  end  of  the  bottom  arm  I  bored 
it  out  to  take  the  spindle  that  came 
with  the  machine.  The  top  arm  was 
more  simple  to  elongate;  I  simply  cut 
the  regular  arm  in  two  and  fitted  a 
four-inch  piece  into  the  center.  The 
arms  were  then  crackle-finished  to 
match  the  rest  of  the  projector.  When 
using  400-ft.  reels,  the  belt  is  run  on 
the  small  pulley,  and  when  using  1200 
or  1600— ft.  reels  the  belt  is  run  on 
the  large  pulley.  The  belt  easily  stretches 
the  extra  length. 

The  speaker  is  a  General  Electric  with 
a  12-inch  cone.  The  speaker-case  also 
accommodates  the  amplifier  for  carry¬ 
ing  purposes.  There  are  25  feet  of  wire 
connected  to  speaker  for  average  home 
use,  and  I  carry  another  extension  of 
40  feet  to  couple  on  for  hall  or  Audito¬ 
rium  work. 

After  carefully  adjusting  the  machine 
I  threaded  it  up  with  a  musical  cartoon, 
and  with  heart  beating  somewhat  faster 
than  normal  I  adjusted  the  controls 
and  started  the  machine.  To  my  great 
satisfaction  I  heard  music — not  quite 
right  yet,  but  better  than  I  had  hoped 
to  hear  when  I  first  started  the  machine! 

I  adjusted  the  sound-lens  for  focus 
and  also  the  exciter-lamp,  but  the  sound 
was  still  a  little  choppy. 

Finally  I  took  a  pencil  and  started 
holding  it  at  different  points  against  the 
film  housing  to  add  tension  to  it;  and 
at  one  spot  half-way  between  the  photo¬ 
cell  housing  and  the  film  stabilizing 
drum,  the  sound  smoothed  out  and  was 
as  nearly  perfect  as  any  16mm.  sound 
that  I  had  ever  heard.  So  I  then  made 
a  small  roller  and  mounted  it  so  as  to 


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hold  the  film  up  closer  against  the 
photocell  housing.  This  is  shown  as 
No.  5  on  the  photo. 

I  then  threaded  the  machine  up  again, 
started  and  adjusted  it  to  sound  speed, 
and  with  a  feeling  of  pride  and  satisfac¬ 
tion  I  settled  down  and  enjoyed  the  pic¬ 
ture  and  heard  as  good  sound  as  I  have 
heard  from  any  factory-tailored  job.  I 
had  done  it!  I  had  added  S-O-F  to  my 
previously  silent  projector! 

In  ending  this  article  I  wish  to  say 
that  the  motor  supplied  with  the  pro¬ 
jector  will  run  the  projector  at  sound 
speed  through  full  1600-ft.  of  film  at 
a  constant  speed.  It  does  not  speed  up 
and  slow  down  as  do  those  on  most 
silent  projectors. 

The  cost?  Well,  here  is  a  list  of 


parts  purchased. 

Holmes  sound-lens  . $  9.00 

Photoelectric  cell  .  2.95 

Exciter-lamp  . 60 

Lamp  socket  . 20 

Film  shoe . 65 

Wire  . 30 

Parts  to  rebuild  amplifier .  10.00 


$22.70 

I  suppose  if  Stanmyre  and  I  had 
figured  in  proper  charges  for  our  time 
spent  in  making  the  conversion,  the 
price  would  run  up  to  something  that 
would  be  pretty  well  on  a  par  with  a 
professionally-made  job.  But  that  would 
take  it  out  of  the  amateur  class — and 
our  interest  in  the  whole  thing  was  as 
amateurs  who  wanted  16mm.  sound-on- 
film  without  paying  for  factory-made 
S-O-F  projectors  we  couldn’t  afford — ■ 
and  which  we  couldn’t  buy  at  any  price 
today  anyhow.  END. 

Slang  On  the  Screen 

(Continued  from  Page  179) 

was  staggered  so  the  dolly  could  move 
the  entire  length  of  the  boards. 

Several  of  the  shots  required  double¬ 
exposure  and  for  this  black  flannel  was 
found  superior  to  the  conventional  black 
velvet.  Velvet  has  too  much  sheen  in 
one  direction  and  it  is  sometime  difficult 
to  arrange  the  lights  to  avoid  this  re¬ 
flection.  Black  cotton  floe  is  also  better 
and  can  be  sprayed  over  any  irregular 
surface,  but  as  it  requires  a  varnish 
base  it  can  be  removed  only  with  paint 
remover  or  lacquer  thinner.  But  as  the 
actors  could  hardly  be  painted  with 
varnish  and  floe,  they  were  covered  with 
black  flannel  for  some  scenes. 

In  one  place  in  the  script  the  action 
called  for  them  to  “Paint  the  town  red.” 
The  scene  fades  in  on  a  skyline  scene 
of  New  York  City  at  night.  Dance 
music  fades  in  slowly  and  then  the 
camera  dollies  back  from  the  New  York 
City  skyline  which  reveals  itself  as  be¬ 
ing  a  picture  hanging  on  the  wall  of  a 
night-club.  The  young  man  and  the 
girl  come  skipping  in  in  front  of  the 
picture.  By  this  time  the  camera  has 
dollied  back  far  enough  to  show  the  bar 
of  the  night-club.  They  order  a  drink, 
and  then,  to  show  the  passage  of  time — 
and  drinks — a  close-up  is  shown  of  two 


highballs  being  brought  by  the  bar¬ 
tender’s  hands.  The  liquor  rapidly 
empties  itself  out  of  the  glasses  which 
are  quickly  replaced  with  two  more — 
and  two  more — each  larger  than  the 
previous.  This  was  done  by  single- 


tmr  dllflemlt  —  THE  ORIGINAL 

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American  Cinematographer  •  May,  1943  197 


frame  animation  during  which  one-half 
ounce  of  liquor  was  removed  from  the 
glass  between  exposures.  The  bar¬ 
tender’s  hands  replacing  the  glasses  was 
shot  at  12  frames  per  second  to  speed 
up  the  action. 

After  the  young  man  and  girl  had 
begun  to  feel  the  effects  of  the  drinks 
“They  lost  their  heads.”  We  see  a 
medium-shot  of  them,  somewhat  tight. 
Suddenly  their  heads  leave  their  bodies 
by  rising  in  the  air  and  finally  disap¬ 
pear,  while  one  actor  tries  to  drink  and 
the  other  to  smoke  without  finding  their 
heads.  Then  the  bartender  returns  to 
the  scene  with  a  tray,  which  he  drops 
when  he  sees  them  headless  and  ex¬ 
claims,  “My  gosh,  they  lost  their  heads!” 

That  trick  was  done  by  double¬ 
exposure.  A  target  for  aiming  the 
camera  by  means  of  the  cross-hairs  in 
the  reflex  finder  of  the  Cine  Special  was 
set  up  on  the  bar.  The  bar  background 
and  the  two  actor’s  bodies  were  covered 
with  black  flannel.  The  action  shows 
their  heads  looking  at  each  other  in 
amazement  as  they  float  away  from 
their  bodies. 

The  camera  was  panned  during  the 
action  so  the  heads  floated  out  of  the 
picture.  To  return  the  camera  to  the 
same  spot  after  rewinding  the  film,  the 
target  was  set  up  on  the  bar  and  ori- 


FOR  SALE 


IMPROVED  DUPLEX  35MM  PRINTER,  with  two 
Bell-Howell  Cams  and  Shuttles.  Perfect  Regis¬ 
tration  for  Color  or  Black  and  White,  also 
process  plates.  Bell-Howell  Standard  Silenced 
Camera ;  Educational  Blimp  and  Dolly ;  Sound 
and  Silent  Moviolas.  Equipment  slightly  used  at 
a  big  saving.  Hollywood  Camera  Exchange, 
1600  Cahuenga  Blvd.,  Hollywood. 


WE  BUY,  SELL  AND  RENT  PROFESSIONAL 
AND  16mm  EQUIPMENT,  NEW  AND  USED. 
We  ARE  DISTRIBUTORS  FOR  ALL  LEAD¬ 
ING  MANUFACTURERS.  RUBY  CAMERA 
EXCHANGE,  729  Seventh  Ave.,  New  York  City. 
Established  since  1910. 


RCA  MITCHELL  OR  BELL  AND  HOWELL 
3  phase  CAMERA  MOTORS,  $135.00  ;  RCA  R-2 
STUDIO  RECORDER,  $275.00  ;  TWO  ELE¬ 
MENT  GLOWLAMPS,  $9.50;  DEVRY  SINGLE 
SYSTEM  CAMERA  AT  SACRIFICE  ;  DUPLEX 
35MM  STEP  PRINTER,  $425.00  ;  BERNDT 
AURICON  16MM  RECORDER  WITH  NOISE 
REDUCTION,  BEAUTIFUL,  $595.00.  S.  O.  S. 
CINEMA  SUPPLY  CORPORATION,  NEW 
YORK. 


DUPLEX  35mm.  DOUBLE  HEADED  PRINTER 
with  two  drop  hoards.  (25)  No.  363  excellent 
condition,  used  by  private  party,  been  in  stor¬ 
age  for  six  years.  Box  1004,  American  Cinema¬ 
tographer. 


WILART  35mm.  CAMERA ;  new  automatic  dis¬ 
solving  shutter.  Four-lens  turret  front,  one 
wide-angle  ;  one  2-inch ;  one  3-inch  ;  one  6-inch 
telephoto  lens.  One  400-foot  magazine.  One  200- 
foot  magazine.  Masks.  Special  finder ;  carrying 
case  ;tripod ;  complete  outfit  cost  over  $800.00. 
Drafted,  sacrifice  for  $550.00.  Will  ship  subject 
to  examination.  Box  1003  American  Cinema¬ 
tographer. 


ented  by  the  cross-hairs  in  the  reflex 
finder.  Without  any  movement  of  the 
actors’  bodies  during  this  time  (you  re¬ 
member  their  heads  only  turned  and 
looked  at  each  other),  the  camera  is 
now  in  a  position  to  record  the  bodies 
so  they  fit  to  the  heads.  This  time  only 
the  actors’  heads  are  covered  with  black 
flannel  while  their  hands  bring  a  cig¬ 
arette  and  a  glass  up  to  where  the  heads 
should  be  but  cannot  be  located.  Then 
the  headless  bodies  get  up  and  start  to 
stagger  out  of  the  scene. 

In  the  next  scene  “They  got  hitched” 
- — still  headless,  of  course.  Outside  of  a 
parsonage  at  night  (shot  on  infra-red 
film)  the  two  actors  are  seen  in  front 
of  a  preacher  as  he  pronounces  them 
man  and  wife — during  which  the  cam¬ 
era  is  dollying  back  and  we  see  that 
they  are  hitched  to  a  gig  which  they 
start  pulling  away.  Then  the  parson 
says,  “In  other  words,  you  are  hitched.” 

As  we  see  only  the  backs  of  the  couple 
it  was  easy  for  them  to  lean  their  heads 
forward  and  raise  the  shoulders  of  their 
overcoats  so  you  can  see  no  trace  of 
their  heads  while  they  trot  down  the 
country  road.  This  imaginative  way  of 
portraying  a  marriage  scene  is  typical 
of  the  kind  of  humor  shown  in  the 
picture. 


WANTED 


DEVELOPMENT  ENGINEER  WANTED  with 
practical  experience  in  8  and  16mm.  cameras 
and  projectors.  Permanent  employment  with  large 
Chicago  manufacturer  now  engaged  in  100% 
war  work,  with  assured  post-war  production. 
Excellent  opportunity  and  substantial  salary  for 
right  man.  In  first  letter  give  age,  experience, 
education,  present  employment  and  other  quali¬ 
fications.  All  correspondence  held  in  strictest 
confidence.  Our  organization  knows  of  this  ad. 
Box  1002,  American  Cinematographer. 

GUARANTEED  HIGHEST  PRICES  PAID  FOR 
16MM.  CAMERAS— SOUND  PROJECTORS  35 
MM.  Eyemo  Cameras,  all  models ;  Bell  &  How¬ 
ell — Mitchell — Akeley  and  motors,  lenses,  acces¬ 
sories.  lao.  equipment.  WRITE  US  FIRST. 
THE  CAMERA  MART,  70  West  45th  St..  N.Y.C. 

WANTED  TO  BUY  FOR  CASH 
CAMERAS  AND  ACCESSORIES 
MITCHELL,  B  &  H,  EYEMO,  DEBRIE,  AKELEY 
ALSO  LABORATORY  AND  CUTTING  ROOM 
EQUIPMENT 

CAMERA  EQUIPMENT  COMPANY 
1600  BROADWAY,  NEW  YORK  CITY 
CABLE:  CINEQUIP 


WE  PAY  CASH  FOR  EVERYTHING  PHOTO¬ 
GRAPHIC.  Write  us  today.  Hollywood  Camera 
Exchange.  1600  Cahuenga  Blvd.,  Hollywood. 

CAMERAS,  EYEMO,  BELL  &  HOWELL  STAND¬ 
ARD.  MITCHELL,  ACCESSORIES.  16mm 
SOUND  PROJECTORS.  ANY  MAKE.  RE¬ 
CORDERS  or  WHAT  HAVE  YOU?  S.  O.  S. 
CINEMA  SUPPLY  CORPORATION,  NEW 
YORK. 


CINE  KODAK  SPECIAL  AND  ACCESSORIES. 
Western  Master  Exposure  Meter.  Cash.  Private 
Norman  Rosen,  304  Lancaster  Avenue,  Monroe, 
North  Carolina. 

PROFESSIONAL,  AMATEUR.  LABORATORY 
EQUIPMENT,  accessories  for  8-16-35  mm. 
Mogull’s,  57  West  48th  Street,  New  York. 

CINE  KODAK  SPECIALS,  LENSES,  MOTORS, 
16mm,  35mm  sound,  silent  projectors,  Auto¬ 
matic  Rolleiflexes.  Griswold  16-35mm  splicers, 
film  counters,  synchronizers,  35mm  motion 
picture  cameras,  Weston,  General  Electric 
meters,  raw  film  8-16-35  all  grades.  Moviolas. 
Mogull’s,  57  West  48th,  New  York. 


In  another  shot  “She  hits  the  ceiling” 
— This  was  done  with  the  help  of  plenty 
of  black  flannel  and  tilting  the  camera 
down  while  she  is  supposed  to  rise  and 
hit  the  ceiling  superimposed  on  a  sec¬ 
ond,  stationary-camera  shot  of  the  room 
alone.  A  quick  cut  to  a  close-up  of  the 
girl’s  head  bumping  against  the  ceiling 
with  an  expression  of  pain  on  her  face 
and  the  sound  of  the  bumping — all  this 
resulted  in  a  very  realistic  effect. 

The  most  difficult  trick  took  a  long 
time  to  figure  out  because  Director  Fels 
kept  asking  for  a  close-up  of  an  eye 
lying  on  a  man’s  hand,  alive  and  blink¬ 
ing  to  portray  the  expression  “She  gave 
him  the  eye.”  Finally,  after  asking  five 
or  six  times  how  it  could  be  done,  he 
asked  for  an  eye  in  the  hand!  Quick  as 
a  flash,  the  cameraman  said,  “Oh,  that’s 
easy,  why  didn’t  you  ask  it  that  way 
before?”  The  matte-shot  with  male  and 
female  cut-outs  mounted  on  glass  placed 
in  front  of  the  lens  was  suggested,  and 
this  worked  out  quite  satisfactorily. 

The  thing  about  the  picture  which 
surprises  most  professionals,  however,  is 
the  excellent  synchronism  of  the  post- 
recorded  sound.  After  finally  editing 
and  cutting  the  film,  the  actors,  the 
narrator,  Gordon  Bradley,  and  the  sound- 
effects  man  (amateurs,  too)  gathered. 
They  practised  their  parts  while  the 
film  was  projected  through  a  glass  win¬ 
dow.  All  the  sound-effects  required  by 
the  action  were  devised  and  rehearsed 
so  as  to  give  the  proper  illusion.  After 
about  six  rehearsals,  the  group  went  to 
a  recording  studio  where  the  entire 
sound  was  recorded  at  a  moderate  cost. 


Vege-Table-Top  Follies 

(Continued  from  Page  177) 

a  long  plastic  knitting-needle  concealed 
by  her  feathery  foliage.  Finally  on 
the  stage  alone,  she  bowed  a  graceful 
close  and  remained  away  despite  our 
admiring  applause.  All  of  this  action 
took  place  on  a  large  mirror,  reflecting 
the  entire  ballet  quite  effectively. 

Ah!  “A  Follies”  wouldn’t  be  worthy 
of  the  name  without  the  naughty  strip- 
teaser.  After  all  we  had  to  add  a  little 
spice  to  all  that  soup  material  .  .  . 

hence,  Bubbles  Banana.  Of  necessity 
we  used  a  stand-in  for  her,  as  we 

couldn’t  risk  a  change  of  complexion 
while  arranging  the  spot-light  and  back¬ 
drop  that  would  display  all  her  creamy 
loveliness.  When  ready  to  shoot,  we  saw 
the  fair  Bubbles  with  glamour  plus, 
wrapped  up  to  her  chin  in  her  natural 
attire  (satiny  yellow  skin)  slowly  drop 
her  robe  and  emerge — not  quite  as  you 

are  used  to  seeing  her,  to  be  sure,  for 

we  saw  fit  to  add  a  few  luscious  curves 
here  and  there.  Her  bannana-skin 
wrapper  was  peeled  down  bit  by  bit, 
during  which  time  her  additional  curves 
were  added  and  shot  with  single-frame 
action.  As  a  spectacular  climax  to  our 
star’s  performance,  we  dissolved  the 
End  Title  in  a  red  heart  right  across 
her  little  ...  er  ...  ah  ...  oh  well, 
you  know  what  they  always  say  at  the 
finish!  END. 


CLASSIFIED  ADVERTISING 


198  May,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


66 


Within  the  hour  l_  through  I^sdkllk  and  Wirephoto 


you 


SEE  th 


e  news 


happen 


It’s  a  "hot  news”  photograph. 

It  is  wrapped  around  a  cylinder,  locked 
in  a  machine  about  the  size  of  your  cabinet 
radio.  The  flick  of  a  switch,  and  the  cylin¬ 
der  begins  to  turn. 

The  same  switch  starts  similar  cylinders, 
each  with  a  wrapping  of  photographic  film, 
in  scores  of  other  cities,  where  newspapers 
use  the  Wirephoto  service. 

Have  you  seen  the  cylinder  record  re¬ 
volving  under  the  needle  in  a  modern  dic¬ 
tating  machine?  That  illustrates  how  the 
cylinder  in  the  Wirephoto  sending  machine 
spins  under  its  recording  "needle”.  .  . 

But  the  needle  is  a  noiseless  ray  of  light. 

It  lights  a  tiny  path  around  the  spinning 
cylinder.  Over  and  over,  200  turns  to  an 
inch.  And  the  reflection  of  this  light  from 
the  picture  is  actuating  a  photoelectric  cell 
which  converts  the  reflected  rays  into  elec¬ 
tric  impulses. 

In  each  receiving  machine,  these  electrical 


impulses  control  a  neon  light.  Through  a 
powerful  lens,  this  light  is  focused  to  a  pin¬ 
point  path  around  the  film.  As  the  film  is 
exposed  to  the  light,  it  becomes  a  prac¬ 
tically  perfect  negative  of  the  positive  pic¬ 
ture  in  the  sending  machine. 

"EXTRA!  EXTRA!”  If  the  event  is  big 
enough,  and  censorship  permits,  "within  the 
hour”  you  see  in  your  home-town  paper  the 
pictures  which  a  news  photographer  snapped 
hundreds  or  thousands  of  miles  away. 

Associated  Press  Wirephoto,  with  Kodak’s 
help,  within  a  few  short  years  has  brought 
the  electrical  transmission  of  photographs 
from  comparative  crudity  to  its  present 
near-perfection. 

KODAK’S  PART  WAS.  .  . 
to  produce  a  photographic  film  with  qualities 
unlike  any  other,  which  would  "process”  in 
a  fraction  of  the  usual  time . .  .  and  a  lens  of 


sufficient  power  to  focus  the  faint  gradations 
of  "cold”  neon  light  on  a  pinpoint  of  spin¬ 
ning  film,  with  complete  fidelity. 

The  job  has  been  done  so  well  that  you  can  see 
little  difference  in  quality  between  a  picture  snap¬ 
ped  in  North  Africa — and  transmitted  by  wireless 
and  wire  — and  a  picture  made  in  your  city,  and 
delivered  to  your  newspaper  on  the  original  film. 

Portable  sending  machines — the  size  of  a  suit¬ 
case —  have  recently  been  perfected.  They  can  send 
out  a  photograph  or  map  over  any  telephone  or 
radio  transmitter. 

WHAT  DOES  THIS  MEAN  TOWARD  FIGHTING 
THE  WAR?  News  pictures  for  us  at  home,  of 
course,  with  all  the  importance  to  public  morale 
of  getting  the  news  while  it’s  "new”. . . 

Plus  the  vital  new  "time” factor  in  strategy — the 
ability  of  those  in  our  Command,  with  today’s  battle 
scenes  and  maps  before  their  eyes,  to  direct  now  the 
next  movements  of  troops  and  ships  and  planes. 

The  details  are  confidential,  but  you  can  be 
sure  that  our  Army  and  Navy  are  using  this 
"weapon  against  time”  to  the  limit  .  .  .  Eastman 
Kodak  Company,  Rochester,  N.  Y. 


Serving  human  progress  through  Photography 


American  Cinematographer  •  May,  1943  199 


B&H  Preci 
Reconditio 


''(f  )  ) 


Think  of  tolerances  that  can  be  meas¬ 
ured  only  in  thousandths  of  an  inch. 
That’s  how  your  Filmo  Projector  was 
built.  It  is  a  precision  machine — built, 
assembled,  and  adjusted  with  all  of  the 
painstaking  care  you  expect  in  a  fine 
watch.  It  deserves  B&H  Precision  Re¬ 
conditioning  Service  when  recondi¬ 
tioning  is  needed. 

B&H  servicemen  are  Filmo  techni¬ 
cians.  They  know  how  every  gear, 
sprocket,  bearing,  lens,  and  lamp  should 
be  adjusted  to  make  your  projector 
function  at  peak  efficiency.  They  take  it 
completely  apart.  Lenses  are  cleaned. 
Parts  requiring  lubrication  are  properly 
oiled.  Worn  parts,  if  any,  are  replaced. 
Then  it  is  refinished,  assembled,  ad¬ 
justed,  and  returned  to  you  in  factory- 
new  condition. 

For  complete  details  on  this  service, 
estimates,  etc.,  see  your  B&H  dealer. 


DON’T  FORGET 

A  new  lamp  can  be  supplied  only  when 
the  burned-out  lamp  is  turned  in.  So  don’t 
throw  away  burned-out  lamps. 


BUY 
WAR  BONDS 


“E"  FOR  EXCELLENCE 

How  Army-Navy  Award  for  ex¬ 
traordinary  performance  is  won 
and  presented  is  shown  by  this 
one-reel  sound  film.  Service 
charge  50c. 


Show  These  Films  to  Help  Speed  Victory 

These  and  thousands  of  other 
films  quickly  available  to  you 
through  the  FILMOSOUND  Library 

Your  projector  is  a  weapon  that  can 
multiply  your  personal  fighting  power 
a  hundredfold.  Use  it  to  give  a  morale¬ 
building  party  for  your  friends  and 
neighbors.  Use  it  to  show  various 
groups  in  your  community  motion  pic¬ 
tures  that  make  each  individual  realize 
that  he  or  she  must  fight  in  one  way  or 
another  to  assure  Victory.  Use  it  to 
speed  civilian  defense  training.  Use  it 
to  help  your  friend  with  a  war  contract 
train  new  people  to  new  jobs. 

If  you  aren’t  sure  of  how  to  go  about 
contacting  those  who  need  the  help  of 
your  projector,  see  your  B&H  dealer. 
Through  him  you  can  get  the  right  kind 
of  films  from  the  Filmosound  Library, 
on  a  purchase  or  rental  basis.  There  are 
thousands  from  which  to  select — cover¬ 
ing  every  subject  and  including  the  new 
Government  films.  Mail  the  coupon  for 
the  Filmosound  Library  Catalog  and 
recent  bulletins. 

Bell  &  Howell  Company,  Chicago;  New  York; 

Hollywood;  Washington,  D.C.;  London. 

Established  1907 


PRECISION- 
MADE  BY 


—  the  Noxi  boast,  exposed  by  our  OWI  in  a 
film  that  shows  what  to  do  about  it.  All 
Government  films  are  available  through  our 
Filmosound  Libraryat  nominal  service  charges. 


—  is  one  reply  to  the  Axis  attacks.  This  B&H 
"original”  production  tells  "how”  to  raise 
food  for  your  family.  Another  film,  "Gardens 
of  Victory,”  tells  "why.” 


I  BELL  &  HOWELL  COMPANY 
1848  Larchmont  Ave.,  Chicago,  Ill. 


Please  send  me  film  catalog.  I  have . mm.  pro¬ 
jector,  (sound) . (silent) . made  by . 

. I  am  interested  in  renting . 

buying . films  for  stimulating  morale . Educa¬ 
tional  films . Civilian  Defense  films . Enter¬ 
tainment  films . 


Name. 


City. 


!<  THE  mOT/On  P/CTURE 


macaz/nE 


JUNE 

1943 


m 


JUN  -1 


Gateway  to  the  Tropics 


Here's  where  a  step  over  the 
threshold  takes  you  into  the  sultry 
atmosphere  of  an  equatorial  jungle! 

Behind  this  door  the  stability  and 
heat  resistance  of  Du  Pont  “Supe¬ 
rior”  Negative  Film  are  determined. 
It’s  one  of  many  such  chambers  lo¬ 
cated  in  the  Du  Pont  Research  and 
Control  Laboratories. 

Film  placed  in  the  “oven”  is  al¬ 
lowed  to  remain  there  for  various 
periods  of  time.  The  “climate”  arti¬ 
ficially  created  ages  the  film  rapidly. 
Hundreds  of  observations  are  made, 


and  from  them  have  developed  re¬ 
finements  designed  to  give  Du  Pont 
Film  the  longest  possible  life  under 
the  most  adverse  conditions.  Im¬ 
provements  have  also  been  made  in 
methods  of  packing,  so  that  today 
Du  Pont  Films  can  weather  the 
climate  wherever  they’re  used  ...  by 
armed  forces  in  the  tropics  or  by 
cinematographers  on  the  home  front. 

Here  is  just  another  example  of 
extensive  research  and  control  com¬ 
bined  to  produce  a  film  you  can  rely 
upon  at  all  times.  But  remember, 


war  needs  must  come  first,  and  you 
may  find  that  stocks  of  Du  Pont  film 
are  temporarily  incomplete. 

E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  &  Co. 
(Inc.),  Photo  Products  Department, 
Wilmington,  Del.  Smith  &  Aller, 
Ltd.,  Hollywood,  California. 


*eg  U  S.  PAT  Off. 

MOTION  PICTURE 
FILM 


BETTER  THINGS  FOR  BETTER  LIVING  .  .  .  THROUGH  CHEMISTRY 


202 


June,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


PRECISION-MADE  BY 


and 


THIS 


EYEMO 


ft  \M  / 

ncAiiL  'Harbor*  / 


★  War  Correspondents  and  other  professional  cameramen  must  be 
ready  for  whatever  breaks— good  or  bad.  These  men  have  learned 
from  experience  that  when  their  camera  is  a  35mm.  EYEMO — 
they  never  fail.  EYEMO  gets  the  picture! 

Today  EYEMO  Cameras  have  gone  to  war.  The  armed 
forces  need  more  than  we  can  supply.  That  is  why 
EYEMOS  are  not  now  available  to  civilians.  The 
armed  forces  must  be  served  first — we  know  you 
agree  with  that.  When  Victory  is  won  EYEMO 
Cameras  will  be  back  in  civilian  clothes. 

Then,  as  formerly,  if  a  stock  model 
EYEMO  does  not  meet  your  requirements 
exactly,  we  will  modify  or  change  it  for 
you.  You  will  never  have  to  accept  a 
compromise  in  an  EYEMO. 


<EYEMO  MODELS  L  AND  M  ...Three-lens  turret 
head;  "sound”  field  viewfinder  is  matched  to  six 
lens  focal  lengths  by  turning  a  drum.  "Sound”  aper¬ 
ture  plate.  Model  L  has  speeds  of  4,  8,  12,  16,  24, 
and  32  f.p.s.;  Model  M  has  speeds  of  8,  12,  24, 
32,  and  48  f.p.s. 


DECEMBER  7,  1941 — Jap  planes  bomb  Pearl 
Harbor.  Lett  H.  Roos,  A.  S.  C.,  F.  R.  P.  S.,  Staff 
War  Correspondent  Pathe  News,  films  the  action 
with  his  EYEMO. 

BUY  WAR  BONDS 


EYEMOS  WANTED  FOR  WAR  SERVICE 


BELL  &  HOWELL  COMPANY 

1848  Larchmoot  Avenue  Date . 

Chicago,  Illinois 
Gentlemen: 

For  the  purpose  of  aiding  the  war  effort,  1  am  willing  to  sell  my 

EYEMO  Camera,  Model . Serial  No . 

It  has  been  modified  as  follows:  . 


I  will  sell  this  camera  for  $ . and  will  pay 

transportation  and  insurance  to  Chicago. 

This  camera  is: 

. In  good  operating  condition 

. Inoperative  or  damaged  (give  details) : . . 


Price  above  includes  these  lenses: 


I  offer  the  following  additional  lenses  at  the  prices  shown 


here:  . 

Name . Address . 

City  &  State . AC  6-43 

Do  Not  Ship  Until  You  Receive  Instructions  from  Factory! 


EYEMO  MODELS  N  AND  O  . . .  Three-arm  offset-^- 
turret  permits  broader  choice  of  lenses.  Turret  lock 
is  particularly  appreciated  with  long,  heavy  lenses. 
Visual,  prismatic  focuser  with  magnifier.  Model  N 
has  speeds  of  4,  8,  12,16,24,  and  32  f.p.s.;  Model  O 
has  speeds  of  8,  12,  16,  24,  32,  and  48  f.p.s. 


-<-EYEMO  MODELS  P  AND  Q  .  . .  These  are  simi¬ 
lar  to  Models  N  and  O,  respectively,  except  that 
P  and  Q  are  equipped  for  alternate,  optional  use 
with  electric  motor  and  external  film  magazines. 
External  film  magazines  extend  maximum  scene 
length  from  5  5  to  400  feet.  Offset  finder  eyepiece 
prevents  interference. 

BELL  &  HOWELL  COMPANY 

Chicago;  New  York;  Hollywood;  Washington,  D.  C.; 
London.  Established  1907 


American  Cinematographer  •  June,  1943  203 


CONTENTS 


The  Staff 


Hints  On  Outdoor  Camerawork  for  Army  Combat  and  Training 

Films  . By  Russell  Harlan,  A.S.C.  206 

Russia’s  Newsreel  Cameramen  At  the  Front. . .  .By  Roman  Karmen  208 

Shooting  the  War  In  New  Guinea.  .An  interview  with  Frank  Prist 

. By  Wilma  Madden  209 

Unseen  Camera- Aces — I:  Maximilian  Fabian,  A.S.C . 

. By  Walter  Blanchard  210 

Preparation  Pays  A  Profit . By  Victor  Milner,  A.S.C.  211 

Aces  of  the  Camera — XXIX:  Sol  Polito,  A.S.C . 

. By  Walter  Blanchard  212 

Through  the  Editor’s  Finder .  213 


EDITOR 

William  Stull.  A.S.C. 

• 

TECHNICAL  EDITOR 
Emery  Huse.  A.S.C. 

• 

WASHINGTON  STAFF  CORRESPONDENT 
Reed  N.  Haythorne.  A.S.C. 

• 

MILITARY  ADVISOR 
Col.  Nathan  Levinson 

• 

STAFF  PHOTOGRAPHER 
Pat  Clark 

• 

ARTIST 

Alice  Van  Norman 

• 

CIRCULATION 
Marguerite  Duerr 


A.S.C.  on  Parade .  214 

Photography  of  the  Month .  215 

Planning  Club  Programs . By  Francis  M.  Hirst  216 

“Cheating”  on  Camera-Angles . By  Rudy  Mate,  A.S.C.  217 

Care  and  Operation  of  16mm.  Sound  Projectors . 

. By  D.  Lisle  Conway  218 


ADVISORY  EDITORIAL  BOARD 
Fred  W.  lackman.  A-  S.  C. 
Victor  Milner,  A.  S.  C. 

James  Van  Trees,  A.  S.  C. 
Farciot  Edouart,  A.  S.  C. 

Fred  Gage,  A.  S.  C. 

Dr.  J.  S.  Watson,  A.  S.  C. 

Dr.  L.  A.  Jones,  A.  S.  C. 

Dr.  C.  E.  K.  Mees,  A.  S.  C. 

Dr.  W.  B.  Rayton,  A.  S.  C. 

Dr.  Herbert  Meyer,  A.  S.  C. 
Dr.  V.  B.  Sease,  A.  S.  C. 


Better  Pictures  with  Less  Film . By  Hal  Hall  219 

More  About  “Strobo-Sync” . By  S.  Jepson  222 

Among  the  Movie  Clubs .  224 


The  Front  Cover 

This  month’s  cover  shows  Harry  Wild, 
A.S.C.  (to  right  of  camera,  wearing  hat), 
shooting  a  reverse-angle  “reaction  shot” 
while  Gypsy  Rose  Lee  does  her  “Star  and 
Garter”  strip-tease  for  Sol  Lesser’s  “Stage 
Door  Canteen.”  Note  “flags”  used  to  shield 
camera  from  lamps,  and  “barn  door”  on  the 
baby  keg  at  right. 


• 

NEW  YORK  REPRESENTATIVE 
S.  R.  Cowan.  132  West  43rd  Street 
Chickering  4-3278  New  York 

• 

AUSTRALIAN  REPRESENTATIVE 

McGill's,  179  Elizabeth  Street,  Melbourne. 
Australian  and  New  Zealand  Agents 

• 

Published  monthly  by  A.  S.  C.  Agency,  Inc. 

Editorial  and  business  offices : 

1782  North  Orange  Drive 
Hollywood  (Los  Angeles.  28),  California 
Telephone:  GRanite  2135 
• 

Established  1920.  Advertising  rates  on  appli¬ 
cation.  Subscriptions:  United  States  and  Pan 
American  Union,  $2.50  per  year ;  Canada,  $2.75 
per  year ;  Foreign.  $3.50.  Single  copies,  25c : 
back  numbers,  30c ;  foreign,  single  copies  35c. 
back  numbers  40c.  Copyright  1943  by  A.  S.  C. 
Agency,  Inc. 

• 

Entered  as  second-class  matter  Nov.  18,  1937, 
at  the  postoffice  at  Los  Angeles,  California,  under 
the  act  of  March  3.  1879. 


204  June,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


Make  every  foot  count 


THESE  days — with  less  film  avail¬ 
able — you  don’t  want  to  muff  a 
single  scene.  So — try  a  film  that  ama¬ 
teurs  have  long  relied  on  for  clear, 
sharp  results:  Agfa  Ansco  Hypan  Re¬ 
versible. 

Hypan  is  panchromatic.  It  has  plenty  of 
speed  for  average  outdoor  shooting,  or 
for  much  of  the  indoor  work  you  may  do. 
In  addition,  its  fine  grain  and  its  anti¬ 


halation  coating  both  contribute  to  the 
final  gem-like  brilliance  characteristic 
of  Hypan  when  it  is  projected  on  a 
screen. 

Next  time — try  Hypan.  Meanwhile,  if 
you  have  any  technical  questions  on 
films  or  emulsions,  ask  us.  We’ll  do  our 
very  best  to  answer  them  for  you. 
Address  your  letter  to:  Agfa  Ansco 
Information,  Binghamton,  N.  Y. 


Agfa  Ansco 

8  &  16mm. 

HYPAN 

REVERSIBLE  FILM 


KEEP  YOUR  EYE  ON  ANSCO  — FIRST  WITH  THE  FINEST 


American  Cinematographer  •  June,  1943  205 


Hints  On  Outdoor  Camerawork  For 
Army  Combat  And  Training  Films 

By  RUSSELL  HARLAN,  A.S.C. 


*  T  an  A.S.C.  meeting  the  other  night 
the  Editor  manoeuvered  me  into 
a  corner  and  waved  this  editorial 
black-jack  at  me:  “Russ,”  he  said,  “We 
get  a  lot  of  letters  from  Army  camera¬ 
men  asking  us  advice  about  camerawork 
in  the  field.  Now  you’ve  shot  close 
to  fifty  of  Harry  Sherman’s  ‘Hopalong 
Cassidy’  Westerns,  and  a  number  of 
Army  Training  Films  besides,  so  why 
don’t  you  sit  down  and  give  the  boys 
some  of  the  benefit  of  your  experience 
in  exterior  camerawork?” 

Well,  I  don’t  know  just  how  much 
“benefit”  there  is  to  be  gained  from 
anything  I  might  say  on  the  subject, 
for  shooting  studio  exteriors — even  on 
Westerns — is  quite  a  different  matter 
from  shooting  an  Army  Training  Film, 
and  even  more  different  from  combat 
camerawork  under  fire.  In  an  entertain¬ 
ment  picture,  your  camerawork  has  to 
center  on  the  story  and  the  players. 
In  a  training  film,  the  “star”  of  your 
production  is  the  gun,  or  tank,  or  hand- 
grenade  the  use  of  which  film  is  sup¬ 
posed  to  teach.  In  a  combat  film,  as 
I  understand  it,  your  main  job  is  to 
get  an  accurate  photographic  record  of 
what  happens  and  how  and  where.  And 
of  course  in  making  studio  exteriors, 
we  have  the  advantage  of  being  able 
to  control  our  photographic  effects  a 
lot  with  reflectors,  booster-lights,  scrims, 
and  so  on. 

But  I  suppose  that  Bill  is  right,  for 
there  are  certain  basic  fundamentals 
that  all  three  types  of  exterior  camera¬ 
work  have  in  common. 

One  of  the  first  of  these  is  one  I 
haven’t  seen  stressed  near  often  enough 
in  any  discussions  of  either  dramatic 
or  military  camerawork.  It  is  the 
necessity  of  absolute  simplicity  in  your 
camerawork.  Whether  you’re  trying  to 
“sell”  a  story,  a  piece  of  necessary 
military  information,  or  an  actual  bat¬ 
tle,  any  photographic  trickery  that  calls 
attention  to  itself — and  so  diverts  at¬ 


tention  from  the  main  purpose  of  the 
picture — is  bad. 

Filtering  is  one  of  these  tricks  that 
is  best  forgotten  except  in  very  unusual 
instances.  Whether  you’re  shooting  Bill 
Boyd  and  his  pals  galloping  across  the 
foothills  of  Mt.  Whitney,  or  the  pro¬ 
saic  operation  of  unlimbering  a  155mm. 
gun,  or  real  “for  keeps”  action  in  Africa 
or  New  Guinea,  you  want  the  scenes 
you  put  on  the  screen  to  look  real,  and 
the  action  to  be  clearly  distinguishable. 

And  one  of  the  easiest  ways  to  “louse 
up”  an  exterior  scene  is  to  try  and 
improve  on  it  by  using  a  filter.  Ninety- 
nine  times  out  of  a  hundred  you’ll  make 
it  worse,  instead  of  better — and  the 
hundredth  time  is  open  to  question,  too. 

First  of  all,  you  see,  a  filter  tends 
to  distort  the  color-rendition  of  what¬ 
ever  you’re  photographing.  This  may 
not  be  so  objectionable  in  an  entertain¬ 
ment  picture  if  it  is  only  a  mild  dis¬ 
tortion,  but  in  a  picture  for  any  mili¬ 
tary  purposes  it’s  murderous.  For  ex¬ 
ample,  suppose  you’re  shooting  a  train¬ 
ing  film  with  soldiers  in  summer  khaki 
uniforms.  Suppose  you  use  a  yellow- 
orange  filter  like  the  G  or  the  21,  or 
a  red  filter:  you’re  going  to  make  those 
already  light  tan  uniforms  whiten  out 
like  a  freshly-laundered  Navy  “whites.” 
And  unless  the  background  has  been 
summer-burned  to  almost  exactly  the 
same  shade  of  tan,  your  filtering  is 
going  to  make  those  soldiers  stand  out 
in  front  of  it  much  more  prominently 
than  they  actually  do  to  the  eye.  If 
the  background  is  normal  greenery, 
they’ll  stand  out  as  prominently  as  so 
many  snowballs  in  a  coal-scuttle. 

In  the  same  way  if  you’re  shooting 
men  in  camouflaged  outfits  like  those 
the  Marine  Raiders  and  similar  units 
wear,  any  filtering  will  give  an  untrue 
rendition  of  the  coloring  of  their  camou¬ 
flage  and  its  relation  to  the  background. 
By  careless  filtering  you  can  give  an 
absolutely  erroneous  impression  of  the 


Left:  the  author  at  work  on  location.  Note  use  ot 
reflectors  to  control  lighting  and  produce  result  sim¬ 
ilar  to  center  picture.  Right:  Cameramen  on  military 
combat  and  training  films  seldom  have  a  chance  to 
employ  such  studio  refinements  as  reflectors.  Nota 
also  that  in  a  shot  like  this  the  use  of  filters  would 
distort  color-rendition  of  camouflaged  ''Raider1' 
uniforms. 


way  a  camouflaged  soldier  or  a  camou¬ 
flaged  gun-position  blends  or  does  not 
blend  with  its  surroundings.  Either  way 
you’re  off  the  beam,  for  the  staff  officers 
who  study  such  films  want  to  know 
precisely  how  things  are,  rather  than 
what  you  can  reveal  or  conceal  with 
photographic  phenagling. 

Moreover,  most  filters — even  gelatin 
ones — tend  to  make  the  image  softer 
optically.  In  plainer  words,  they  cut 
down  definition — when  definition  is  one 
of  the  prime  requisites  of  most  out¬ 
door  photography,  whether  it’s  on  West¬ 
erns,  or  on  military  films  of  any  kind. 
In  either  case,  the  people  who  will  see 
the  films  are  more  interested  in  know¬ 
ing  exactly  what  is  happening  than  in 
how  “arty”  a  cameraman  you  may  be. 

Of  course  there  are  always  exceptions 
which  prove  the  rule.  In  shooting  ex¬ 
terior  night-effects  for  studio  films,  or 
in  some  types  of  reconnaissance  and 
mapping  photography  where  you  have  to 
penetrate  haze  to  accomplish  your  end, 
you  may  have  to  use  filters,  and  some¬ 
times  Infra-Red  film.  But  in  that  case 
your  distortion  of  color-rendition  is  done 
deliberately,  and  you  can  expect  the 
folks  who  study  your  pictures  to  under¬ 
stand  that,  and  make  allowances  for  it. 

But  otherwise,  my  sincere  advice  to 
the  military  cameraman  would  be  to  for¬ 
get  that  filters  were  ever  invented,  and 
do  all  his  work  without  them.  In  that, 
I’ve  really  expert  confirmation  in  a  com¬ 
ment  made  to  us  recently  by  the  A.S.C.’s 
newest  Honorary  Member,  Lt.-Col.  David 
MacDonald,  of  the  British  Army  Film 
and  Photo  Unit,  who  told  us  that  very 
early  in  the  game  out  there  in  the 
African  Desert  he  found  what  a  handi¬ 
cap  filters  could  be  to  battle  camera¬ 
work,  and  issued  an  order  to  all  his 
men  to  throw  away  their  filters! 

Next  comes  the  question  of  exposure. 
This  has  to  be  right  on  the  beam,  not 
only  to  get  the  best  print  out  of  your 
negative,  but  to  get  the  most  accurate 
tonal  value  and  the  best  definition.  Now 
exposure  has  to  be  keyed  to  the  normal 
processing  of  the  laboratory  that  handles 
your  negative,  so  I’d  say  that  the  first 
thing  would  be  to  find  out  what  that 
is,  and  then,  if  necessary,  correct  all 
your  experience  and  meter  film-speed 
settings  to  conform  to  it. 

Some  professionals  like  to  read  their 


206  June,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


Above:  a  shot  where  your  exposure-meter  can  fool 
you  unless  you  make  it  read  on  the  area  most  impor¬ 
tant  to  your  picture.  Center:  note  careless  use  of 
exposure-meter;  reading  would  be  much  more  accu¬ 
rate  if  the  meter  were  shielded  from  sun  and  scat¬ 
tered  light  by  user's  hands.  Right:  Camera-angles 
are  important.  Note  how  upper  picture,  with  tanks 
approaching,  shows  much  more  detail  than  lower 
picture  where  they  are  moving  in  opposite  direction 
and  half  hidden  by  dust-cloud. 

exposure  by  the  illumination  on  the 
ground  glass  of  the  camera — assuming, 
of  course,  that  it’s  a  studio-type  camera 
that  has  a  ground  glass.  But  with  to¬ 
day’s  fast  films,  that’s  a  pretty  decep¬ 
tive  thing,  as  several  of  us  have  found 
out  to  our  sorrow  at  one  time  or  an¬ 
other,  so  the  really  safest  thing  is  to 
use  a  meter.  I  don’t  much  care  what 
kind,  so  long  as  it  is  accurate  and  de¬ 
pendable,  and  you  really  know  how  to 
use  it. 

And  let  me  tell  you,  there  is  a  definite 
trick  to  using  a  meter  properly.  With 
a  reflected-light  meter  like  the  Weston 
and  most  others,  there’s  a  lot  more  to 
taking  a  meter-reading  than  just  stand¬ 
ing  up  and  pointing  it  in  the  general 
direction  of  your  subject.  Doing  it  that 
way,  you  can  not  only  get  miles  off  the 
beam,  but  you  can  kid  the  meter  into 
giving  almost  any  reading  you  think 
is  right! 

Perhaps  the  biggest  margin  for  error 
in  the  way  most  people  take  meter- 
readings  outdoors  is  that  if  you  just 
hold  the  meter  and  point  it  at  your 
subject,  the  meter  is  not  only  likely 
to  “see”  a  different  area  from  what 
your  camera  is  covering,  but  in  particu¬ 
lar  to  “see’  much  more  sky  than  your 
lens  takes  in.  That  sky  is  pretty  highly 
reflective,  and  even  if  the  meter  reads 
only  on  the  actual  sky-area  of  your 
shot,  that  excess  light  is  likely  to  boost 
your  reading  higher  than  the  correct 
exposure  for  the  part  of  the  shot  in 
which  you’re  really  interested. 

The  first  step  in  getting  around  this 
is  to  make  it  a  practice  always  to  point 
the  meter  downward — at  about  a  30° 
angle — so  that  you  deliberately  include 
more  of  the  usually  darker  foreground, 
and  less  of  the  sky.  This  in  itself  will 
give  you  more  consistently  accurate 
meter-readings. 

But  there’s  another  step,  a  little  trick 
that  makes  the  reading  even  more  ef¬ 
fective,  and  about  which  surprisingly 
few,  even  of  the  professionals,  know. 
Most  photographers  know  that  to  get 
really  good  pictures,  uninfluenced  by 
the  scattered  light  from  all  around  the 
subject-area,  and  which  does  not  play 
any  part  in  making  the  actual  picture, 
you’ve  got  to  have  a  good,  tight  sun¬ 
shade  on  your  lens. 


The  same  thing  applies  to  exposure- 
meters,  too.  The  same  scattered  light 
reflected  from  outside  the  picture  field 
— from  the  sky,  and  from  almost  every 
object  to  one  side  and  the  other  of 
your  actual  field — kicks  into  the  meter’s 
photocell  and  naturally  tends  to  boost 
your  reading.  If  you  want  a  really 
accurate  reading,  you’ll  have  to  shield 
you  meter’s  “eye”  from  this  unwanted 
light. 

The  simplest  way  I’ve  found  is  to 
make  it  a  habit  when  taking  meter- 
readings  to  fold  your  hands  over  the 
meter  so  that  the  palms  of  the  hands, 
projecting  at  each  side,  and  the  fingers, 
at  the  top,  make  a  little  sunshade  for 
your  meter.  I’ve  known  of  a  few  people 
who  have  even  made  neat  little  matte- 
boxes  for  their  meters;  and  when  you 
use  a  studio  camera,  you  can  often 
place  the  meter’s  cell  directly  behind 
the  camera’s  matte-box,  and  use  that 
for  a  sunshade  for  your  meter.  The 
rear  opening  on  the  wider-angled  lenses 
(from  35mm.  down  to  24mm.)  is  usu¬ 
ally  almost  exactly  the  size  of  the  “eye” 
of  a  Weston  meter,  so  if  you  use  a  cam¬ 
era  like  that,  there’s  a  useful  tip.  But — 
you  always  have  your  hands,  and  I’ve 
found  that  little  trick  of  using  your 
palms  and  fingers  for  a  sunshade  is 
usually  quite  enough  in  most  cases  to 
give  a  perfectly  accurate  reading. 

It’s  a  good  thing  to  remember,  too, 
that  by  manipulating  the  speed-setting, 
you  can  place  the  exposure  on  any  de¬ 
sired  portion  of  your  film’s  character¬ 
istic  curve.  If  you  want  to  favor  the 
shadows — and  especially  in  shots  where 
for  any  reason  (including  bullets)  you 
can’t  get  in  to  take  an  actual  reading 
on  those  shadows — you  can  do  so  by 
simply  using  a  film-speed  one,  two,  or 
even  three  or  more  points  slower  than 
you’d  use  under  normal  circumstances. 
Just  how  much  slower  a  setting  to  use 
will  depend  on  the  density  of  the  shad¬ 
ows,  and  particularly  on  what  propor¬ 
tion  of  the  total  picture-area  they  form. 
In  general,  if  the  action  you’re  inter¬ 
ested  in  occurs  in  the  shadows,  you 
won’t  go  wrong  exposing  by  the  old 
photographic  formula  of  “expose  for 
the  shadows,  and  the  highlights  will 
take  care  of  themselves.”  I’ve  made 
pictures  among  California’s  “big  trees” 
— the  Sequoias  and  Redwoods — and  I’ve 
found  nobody  complained  if,  when  the 
action  was  mainly  in  the  heavy  shade 
under  those  trees,  I  exposed  for  that 
and  let  the  sunlit  part  “burn  up”  if  I 
had  to.  I  suppose  it’s  the  same  shooting 
Army  films  in  the  jungles  of  New 
Guinea. 


I’ve  often  been  asked  about  the  mat¬ 
ter  of  controlling  exposure  where  you 
have  some  very  “hot”  highlight  ex¬ 
tremes,  as  on  a  brilliantly  sunlit,  sandy 
desert,  or  at  the  beach,  and  so  on, 
where  your  normal  exposure-reading  is 
likely  to  be  close  to  the  top  of  the 
meter’s  scale,  and  probably  at  or  below 
the  smallest  stop  on  your  lens.  Some 
people  advocate  using  Neutral  Density 
filters  to  control  exposures  in  such  con¬ 
ditions,  but  personally,  I  steer  clear 
of  the  Neutrals,  for  while  they  do  cut 
down  the  exposure,  they  also  tend  to 
flatten  out  your  picture.  And  as  a 
rule,  you  don’t  want  any  flattening  when 
you’re  striving  for  the  best  and  crisp¬ 
est  definition. 

Instead,  I  prefer  to  cut  the  aperture 
of  my  shutter.  This  is  possible  with 
studio-type  cameras,  though  not  with 
Eyemo  and  DeVry  hand-cameras,  and  it 
can  be  done  all  right  in  16mm.  if  you’re 
using  a  Cine-Kodak  Special  or  a  Bolex, 
both  of  which  have  adjustable  shutters. 

And  speaking  of  16mm.,  which  be¬ 
cause  of  its  compactness  and  the  very 
surprising  results  you  can  now  get  en¬ 
larging  16mm.  Kodachrome  to  35mm.  in 
either  black-and-white  or  Technicolor, 
seems  to  be  coming  more  and  more  into 
use  for  combat  camerawork,  most  of  the 
things  I’ve  said  about  35mm.  black-and- 
white  apply  just  as  well  to  16mm.  and 
Kodachrome.  Exposure,  for  instance, 
has  to  be  right  on  the  old  button  if 
you  want  the  best  results  in  color-ren¬ 
dition  and  definition.  There’s  one  ex¬ 
ception,  though:  if  you  know  your  Koda¬ 
chrome  is  to  be  used  as  an  original 
only,  give  the  correct,  “rule-book”  ex¬ 
posure;  if  you  know  it  is  going  to  be 
duped  or  enlarged  to  35mm.,  it’s  a  good 
idea  to  give  an  exposure  (outdoors) 
based  on  a  speed  of  Weston  6  or  even 
5,  to  soften  the  contrasts  and  get  bet¬ 
ter  into  the  shadows,  so  that  there  will 

(Continued  on  Page  237) 


American  Cinematographer  •  June,  1943 


207 


Russia's  Newsreel  Cameramen  At  The  Front 


FOR  a  number  of  years  Soviet  news¬ 
reel  cameramen  had  been  accus¬ 
tomed  to  film  the  peaceful  life  of 
our  country.  Documentary  film  and 
Soviet  newsreel  mirrored  the  onward 
march,  the  happy  life,  the  constructive 
and  joyful  labour  of  millions  of  people. 

But  there  came  the  day  when  Hitler 
flung  his  divisions  against  our  towns  and 
villages.  Upon  the  country  and  the  people 
that  was  giving  an  example  of  the  actual 
realization  of  the  great  march  of  human¬ 
ity  toward  democracy  and  social  justice, 
there  descended  the  full  force  of  the 
Hitlerite  hordes.  And  the  Soviet  people 
entered  into  battle — everyone  to  the  last 
man  rose  up  to  wage  a  sacred  patriotic 
war.  We  took  upon  ourselves  the  brunt 
of  the  blow.  And  for  the  first  time  in  the 
present  war  the  march  of  Hitler’s  hordes 
across  the  territories  of  the  countries 
of  Europe  was  halted — by  the  Red  Army. 

And  on  the  very  day  of  the  outbreak 
of  the  war,  newsreel  cameramen  left  for 
the  Front. 

Today,  when  eighteen  months  of  war 
are  behind  us,  we  can  sum  up  certain 
results  of  our  front  line  work.  Scores  of 
thousands  of  feet  of  film  have  been 
taken.  Each  of  us  has  run  great  risks 
and  been  not  infrequently  bombed,  trench- 
mortared  and  shelled  by  the  Germans. 
Many  of  our  comrades  have  perished  at 
their  post,  camera  in  hand,  and  many 
have  been  wounded,  returning  to  active 
work  immediately  on  recovery.  Digging 
into  the  earth  they  have  been  subjected 
to  fierce  enemy  bombardment,  together 
with  plucky  sharpshooters  they  have  lain 
in  wait  for  the  enemy,  suffering  trials 
and  hardships.  We  have  all  grown  un¬ 
used  to  the  feel  of  civilian  clothes  and 
have  learned  to  appreciate  the  supreme 
law  of  the  soldier’s  front  line  comrade¬ 
ship,  which  is  “Help  one  another.” 

Cameraman  Pechul  charged  into  the 
attack  side  by  side  with  his  Red  Army 
comrades,  rifle  and  grenade  in  hand.  The 
detachment  broke  through  the  encircle¬ 
ment.  In  this  action  Pechul  died  a  hero’s 
death. 

Another  cameraman,  Slavin,  was  twice 
wounded  and  twice  came  back  to  the 
front  immediately  he  recovered. 

Cameraman  Boris  Sher  spent  ten  weeks 
with  a  guerilla  detachment  that  wrought 
panic  among  the  Germans  in  an  un¬ 
named  district  near  the  Valdai  Hills. 

‘This  account  of  the  heroic  work  of  Russia’s 
newsreel  cameramen  at  the  front  comes  to  us 
through  the  courtesy  of  “The  Cine-Technician,” 
the  official  organ  of  Britain’s  Association  of  Cine- 
Technicians.  The  author,  Roman  Karmen,  is  a 
young  ace  newsreel  cameraman  who  shared  the 
Stalin  Art  Prize  for  his  part  in  making  “One 
Day  in  Soviet  Russia,”  and  “Moscow  Strikes 
Back.”  He  later  was  one  of  the  cameramen  on 
“Leningrad  Fights.”  Before  the  war  he  and  his 
camera  served  in  Madrid  (1936)  and  China  (1937) 
and  in  the  Arctic  Circle  during  night  flights 
over  the  Pole  in  search  of  the  lost  Soviet  airman 
Levanevsky.  He  also  acted  as  a  war-correspondent 
for  “Pravda”  at  home  and  abroad.  ED. 


By  ROMAN  KARMEN  * 

When  he  had  amassed  sufficient  material 
covering  the  activity  of  this  detachment 
and  planned  to  make  his  way  back  across 
the  enemy  lines,  the  guerillas  did  not 
want  to  part  with  this  plucky  young 
man.  They  had  come  to  consider  him  as 
belonging  to  their  ranks  and  he  had  won 
their  strong  affection — the  affection  of 
grim  and  courageous  men  who  look  death 
in  the  face  every  minute  of  the  day. 
The  guerillas  sent  a  letter  to  the  studio 
from  which  we  learned  much  in  regard 
to  which  our  comrade  had  modestly  kept 
silent.  They  wrote  that  Boris  Sher  had 
participated  in  several  daring  and  dan¬ 
gerous  operations  as  a  guerilla  trooper. 
At  night  time  when  filming  was  impos¬ 
sible  he  would  take  up  a  rifle  and  ac¬ 
company  the  detachment  into  battle. 
Boris  Sher,  like  many  another  front-line 
cameraman,  now  wears  the  Order  of  the 
Red  Banner  and  continues  his  newsreel 
work. 

Cameraman  Mark  Troyanovsky  was 
among  the  last  batch  of  Red  Army  men 
to  leave  Odessa — that  same  Mark  Troy¬ 
anovsky  who  accompanied  Papanin  on 
his  flight  to  the  North  Pole.  (His  film 
was  shown  in  England  under  the  title 
Conquerors  of  the  North).  Troyanovsky 
filmed  scenes  of  the  heroic  defense  of 
Odessa  and  the  exploits  of  its  defenders. 

Till  the  very  last  hour  Cameraman 
Vladick  Mikosha  stuck  to  his  post  film¬ 
ing  the  glorious  defense  of  Sevastopol, 
which  will  go  down  in  history  as  one  of 
the  most  heroic  pages  in  the  struggle  of 
progressive  mankind  against  bloody  Hit¬ 
lerism.  In  the  last  days  of  the  defense  of 
Sevastopol,  Mikosha  was  badly  shell¬ 
shocked  but  he  kept  on  working. 

The  work  of  the  cameramen  filming  in 
beseiged  Leningrad  deserves  special  men¬ 
tion.  Cameramen  Uchitel,  Fomin,  Stradin 
and  others  did  not  cease  filming  for  a 
minute.  In  rigorous  frosts,  under  fierce 
bombing,  and  incessant  shelling,  under 
conditions  of  blockade  and  hunger,  they 
created  for  future  history  truly  priceless 
cine-documents  of  the  life  and  struggle 
of  the  hero-city.  Like  all  Leningraders, 
the  cameramen  received  a  meagre  ration 
of  bread,  they  were  emaciated  and  could 
hardly  walk,  but  each  day  they  plodded 
to  the  city  carrying  heavy  tins  of  film 
and  kept  constantly  taking  shots.  We 
are  grateful  to  them  for  having  pre¬ 
served  for  us  the  inimitable  features  of 
proud,  indomitable  and  plucky  Lenin¬ 
grad,  for  having  perpetuated  the  unfor¬ 
gettable  scenes  of  the  winter  of  1941-42. 
They  filmed  in  the  factories,  on  the 
streets  and  in  the  advanced  front  lines. 
The  episodes  they  filmed  now  show  the 
whole  world  what  the  Soviet  people  are 
capable  of,  cherishing  deep  faith  in  their 
victory  and  profound  hatred  of  the 
enemy,  and,  in  the  name  of  this  faith 


and  hatred,  ready  for  all  privations  and 
exploits. 

At  Stalingrad,  too,  cameramen  worked 
filming  the  fierce  battles  wherein  the 
glorious  city’s  defenders  mauled  the  Ger¬ 
man  divisions,  and  where,  for  every  foot, 
for  every  inch  of  soil,  Hitler  paid  with 
the  lives  of  thousands  of  his  soldiers. 
Stalingrad  will  shortly  be  shown  in 
Britain. 

One  Day  of  the  Soviet  War  depicts  an 
ordinary  day  in  this  country  which  at 
the  call  of  their  great  leader,  Stalin,  the 
whole  Soviet  people  have  turned  into 
one  mighty  war  camp.  That  day,  from 
sunrise  to  sunset,  160  cameramen  filmed 
numerous  episodes  both  at  the  fronts 
and  in  the  interior.  This  film  has  re¬ 
cently  been  shown  in  Britain,  and  in 
America  through  “The  March  of  Time.” 

Soviet  film  workers  engaged  at  the 
front  know  that  each  foot  of  film  taken 
in  battle  is  of  historical  value.  It  will 
afford  an  edifying  narrative  for  future 
generations.  Humanity’s  future  is  being 
born  in  today’s  battle,  let  our  descen¬ 
dants  know  the  great  cost  of  their  happi¬ 
ness,  which  is  today  being  won  for  them 
by  the  Red  Army  men  defending  Stalin¬ 
grad,  by  the  Cossacks  of  the  Kuban, 
Terek  and  Don,  by  the  sailors  of  the 
Baltic. 

We  have  seen  some  splendid  pictures 
made  by  gallant  English  cameramen, 
filming  battles  in  the  air,  in  the  Libyan 
desert  and  on  the  Atlantic  Ocean,  we 
have  seen  newsreels  about  brave  R.A.F. 
men  making  death-dealing  raids  deep 
behind  the  enemy’s  lines.  We  applauded 
the  work  of  the  heroic  cameraman,  Tom 
Tanner,  who  filmed  the  Malta  convoy.  A 
while  ago  we  saw  a  new  newsreel  about 
Malta  and  admired  the  skill  and  gallan¬ 
tly  of  the  cameramen  filming  the  plucky 
fight  of  the  island’s  residents,  A.A.  men, 
R.A.F.  men  and  sailors. 

We  Soviet  cameramen  are  proud  that 
in  these  grim  days  we  wear  trench-mud¬ 
died  military  uniform.  And  on  behalf  of 
all  Soviet  newsreel  cameramen,  in  giving 
greetings  to  our  British  and  American 
colleagues,  I  should  like  to  say  with  all 
my  voice:  “Friends!  It  is  with  blood  and 
tears,  children,  brothers,  fathers  and 
mothers  that  the  Soviet  people  pays  for 
your  having  not  yet  suffered  all  the  hor¬ 
rors  of  an  enemy  invasion  of  your  coun¬ 
try.  But  hatching  dreams  of  world  dom¬ 
ination,  man-eating  Hitler  also  wants  his 
killers  and  marauders  to  lay  their  bloody 
trail  of  rapine  and  conflagrations  across 
your  country  too. 

“About  200  cameramen  work  on  va¬ 
rious  sectors  of  our  front.  A  further 
1,000  directors,  assistants,  editors,  lab¬ 
oratory  workers,  cutters  are  engaged  in 
producing  newsreel  issues  that  appear 
(Continued  on  Page  237) 


208  June,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


Shooting  The  War  In  New  Guinea 

An  Interview  With  FRANK  PRIST 


MAKING  pictures  in  the  South 
Pacific  theater  of  war  is  cer¬ 
tainly  a  hazardous  and  difficult 
proposition,  but  it’s  all  in  a  day’s  work, 
according  to  Frank  Prist,  and  he  should 
know.  Frank  is  one  of  Acme  Newspic- 
tures  war  photographers  and  the  first 
American  civilian  to  return  after  our 
soldiers  took  over  the  major  role  in 
pushing  the  Japanese  across  the  moun¬ 
tains  and  jungles  of  New  Guinea  and 
down  to  the  sea  at  Buna. 

Blond,  hlue-eyed  and  beamingly  spic- 
and-span  in  his  War  Correspondent’s 
Army  officer’s  uniform,  Frank  spoke 
cheerfully  of  dirt,  discomfort  and  dis¬ 
aster. 

Bullets  whizzed!  There  were  near 
misses.  Treks  through  jungle  swamps 
where  the  going  was  so  hard,  and  time 
so  limited,  that  there  was  little  time 
for  rest,  and  none  for  sleep. 

I  turned  to  Mrs.  Prist.  “It  must  be 
hard  for  you  to  realize  those  awful 
things  really  happened  to  Frank.  I  can 
hardly  believe  such  things  take  place 
even  with  the  war  news.” 

Frank  answered  for  her.  “I  know 
how  it  must  sound  to  you,  because 
although  I  was  in  the  thick  of  it  just 
a  short  time  ago,  even  to  me,  it  seems 
like  a  crazy  kind  of  nightmare.  Every¬ 
thing  is  so  much  the  same  here  at  home. 
Seems  hard  to  believe  it’s  still  going 
on  down  there!” 

Frank  spent  eleven  months  “down  un¬ 
der.”  Seven  months  of  the  time  he  was 
stationed  at  Port  Moresby,  New  Guinea. 
From  this  base  he  made  many  trips 
overland  on  foot,  by  canoe,  and  plane 
to  obtain  his  pictures.  More  than  three 
weeks  were  spent  in  the  front  lines 
when  the  “Battle  for  Buna”  was  at  its 
peak. 

The  enemy  bombed  Port  Moresby  con¬ 
stantly.  Many  of  the  200  houses  which 
comprise  the  city  were  wrecked  during 
the  bombing  raids,  which  added  to  the 
scene  of  desolation  surrounding  the  evac¬ 
uated  town.  Port  Moresby  was  the 
springboard  for  our  successful  drive  on 
the  Japanese,  and  many  thousands  of 


By  WILMA  MADDEN 


American  and  Australian  boys  who  ar¬ 
rived  at  this  little  port  will  never  for¬ 
get  it. 

Among  them  is  the  little  company  of 
writers  and  photographers  who  keep 
us  informed  on  the  progress  of  the  war. 
Frank  Prist  made  the  photographs  of 
Vern  Haugland  when  General  Mac- 
Arthur  presented  him  with  the  Silver 
Star  for  bravery.  Vern,  an  Associated 
Press  correspondent  who  once  covered 
Hollywood,  bailed  out  of  a  damaged 
plane,  and  spent  forty-two  terrible  days 
in  the  jungle. 

“The  morale  of  our  soldiers  is  mag¬ 
nificent!  The  war  correspondents  stacked 
up  pretty  well,  too.  Every  man’s  a  hero 
down  there,  though  they’d  hate  to  admit 
it.  Sometimes  after  hours  in  a  slit 
trench,  or  when  dreaming  over  Mother’s 
cooking,  there  was  a  little  good-natured 
griping,  but  that  seemed  to  be  mostly 
for  the  fun  of  thinking  up  wisecracks.” 

When  at  the  front  a  correspondent 
must  carry  along  the  full  equipment 
of  a  soldier — except  for  weapons — as 
well  as  his  photographic  equipment.  Sol¬ 
dier  equipment  consists  of  half  a  shelter 
tent,  mosquito  netting,  blanket,  toilet 
articles,  water  canteen,  and  “C  rations.” 

Frank  said  they  saved  “C  rations” — 
which  consist  of  tinned  pork  and  beans, 


At  top  of  page,  left:  Newsman  Prist's  quarters  in 
New  Guinea;  Center,  Prist  Leicaphotos  a  friendly 
"fuzzy-wuzzy";  Right:  Shooting  native  belles — with  a 
compact  16mm.  camera.  Above,  Frank  Prist  with 
weapons,  helmets  and  flag  which  are  no  iQnger  of 
use  to  their  original  Jap  owners. 


vegetable,  meat  and  hash, — for  special 
occasions,  usually  eating  the  front-line 
rations  of  bully  beef  and  hard-tack. 

Every  two  or  three  months  Frank 
would  fly  back  to  Australia,  on  business. 
When  on  these  trips  he  enjoyed  the 
cleanly  comfort  of  the  “War  Corres¬ 
pondents  Convalescents’  Home.” 

This  establishment  was  maintained  by 
all  the  war  correspondents  from  the 
States.  The  boys  rented  a  beautiful 
home  in  the  suburbs  of  Melbourne,  hired 
a  cook,  and  painted  a  large  sign  in  the 
above  manner.  Every  correspondent  or 
visitor  of  their  profession  was  given  a 
pair  of  crutches  and  photographed  by 
the  sign,  but  the  boys  were  afraid  to 
send  these  pictures  home  for  fear  friends 
and  relatives  wouldn’t  believe  they  were 
only  spoofing.  A  few  days  at  the  “Home” 
was  something  to  look  forward  to  dur¬ 
ing  the  hard  days  at  the  front. 

Frank  was  enthusiastic  over  the  co¬ 
operative  spirit  evidenced  by  all  men 
at  the  front. 

“Shooting  the  pictures  was  not  so 
much  of  a  problem.  There  is  no  red  tape 
at  the  front,  and  every  one  is  ready 
to  cooperate  from  buck  privates  to  high- 
ranking  officers.  Weather  conditions,  and 
lack  of  equipment  for  processing  pre¬ 
sented  the  major  difficulties.” 

The  war  photographer  is  his  own 
boss.  He  decides  what  to  shoot,  and 
writes  his  own  captions.  Frank  organ¬ 
ized  many  of  his  shots  so  as  to  make 
a  picture  story  of  war  operations. 

“We  sailed  Feb.  17,  1942.  I  made 
pictures  of  the  convoy  on  the  way  down. 
These  were  processed  in  Australia. 
When  we  arrived  I  made  a  great  many 
pictures  of  General  MacArthur,  his  fam¬ 
ily,  and  many  other  pictures  of  the 
Army  personnel.  This  was  interesting 
work.  These  pictures  were  also  proc¬ 
essed  in  Melbourne. 

“At  Darwin  my  troubles  began.  Film 
could  not  be  processed  for  several  rea¬ 
sons.  The  Army’s  supply  of  chemicals 
had  been  ruined  by  the  bombings,  and 
(Continued  on  Page  234) 


American  Cinematographer  •  June,  1943  209 


Unseen  Camera -Aces 


I 


Maximilian  Fabian,  A.  S.  C 
By  WALTER  BLANCHARD 


Some  of  Hollywood’s  finest  cinematographers  are  virtually  unknown  to  the 
world  at  large  .  .  .  sometimes  even  to  people  in  the  industry  but  not  associ¬ 
ated  with  the  same  studios.  In  some  instances,  they  may  perhaps  receive 
screen  credit  under  some  appellation  so  vague  it  conceals  rather  than  reveals 
their  contribution  to  the  picture.  In  others,  they  work  anonymously,  with 
never  a  line  on  the  screen  to  direct  credit  toward  a  job  well  done.  And  they 
are  almost  never  publicized,  for  the  studio  chiefs  have  the  opinion  that  to  do 
so  would  disillusion  the  public — as  if  that  could  be  done  in  this  universally 
camera-minded  age. 

Yet  without  these  men  and  their  quiet  contributions  to  production,  modern 
production  would  be  impossible.  It  is  with  great  pride,  therefore,  that  we 
commence  what  we  hope  will  be  a  lengthy  series  of  articles  on  the  screen’s 
unsung  heroes — the  special-effects  cinematographrs.  THE  EDITOR. 


IF  YOU  met  him  at  the  Camera  Table 
of  the  MGM  Commissary,  you  would 
hardly  notice  him  if  he  weren’t  per¬ 
petually  on  the  receiving  end  of  friendly 
ribbing  from  his  fellow-cinematograph¬ 
ers,  (which,  by  the  way,  he  quietly  en¬ 
joys)  this  shy  little  man  with  the  grey¬ 
ing  hair  and  the  sensitive  face  of  an 


artist.  If  you  were  a  stranger,  and  in¬ 
troductions  were  in  order,  you  would  re¬ 
spond  at  once  to  such  other  names  as 
Joe  Ruttenberg,  Bob  Planck,  George  Fol- 
sey,  Len  Smith,  and  the  others.  But 
when  your  host  introduced  Maximilian 
Fabian,  A.S.C.,  your  mental  reaction 
would  be  the  equivalent  of  a  blank  stare, 


for  it  has  been  something  over  eighteen 
years  since  he  received  screen  credit. 

Yet  without  his  patient,  tireless  efforts 
many  of  MGM’s  biggest  and  finest  pro¬ 
ductions  could  never  have  reached  the 
screen.  Remember  that  memorable  scene 
in  “Mrs.  Miniver” — to  many  minds  the 
emotional  climax  of  the  whole  film — in 
which  that  hardy  little  fleet  of  motor- 
boats  assembled  by  night  along  sleepy 
British  rivers  to  plough  fearlessly  into 
the  Hell  which  was  Dunkirk,  to  rescue 
an  army — ?  His  camera  made  it  pos¬ 
sible.  Do  you  remember  those  thrilling 
scenes  of  naval  battle  in  “Stand  By  For 
Action,”  which  made  the  rest  of  the 
film  endurable — ?  They  came  to  the 
screen  through  his  skill  and  patience. 
Do  you  remember  that  memorable  scene 
of  the  interminable  lines  of  trucks  car¬ 
rying  soldiers  to  a  World  War  I  front 
in  “The  Big  Parade”  eighteen  years 
ago — ?  His  camera  did  it!  Do  you  re¬ 
member  the  earthquake  in  “San  Fran¬ 
cisco” — ?  It  came  to  you  through  his 
lens  and  lighting! 

For  Max  Fabian  is  a  specialist  in  that 
most  difficult  of  arts — photographing 
miniatures,  and  doing  it  so  that  even  the 
camera-minded  in  the  audience  are  un¬ 
aware  that  they’re  not  looking  at  the 
real  thing.  Perhaps  the  finest  tribute  he 
has  ever  received  was  when  a  gold- 
braided  admiral  in  Washington  re¬ 
marked,  after  seeing  “Stand  By  For 
Action,”  that  he  hadn’t  realized  the  West 
Coast  Naval  Forces  had  enough  strength 
to  spare  from  wartime  duties  to  cooper¬ 
ate  so  fully  with  the  motion  picture  in¬ 
dustry.  Those  destroyers  and  battle¬ 
ships — the  entire  convoy,  for  that  mat¬ 
ter — were  miniatures  manipulated  be¬ 
fore  Max’s  magic  camera. 

He  didn’t  start  out  with  the  deliberate 
intention  of  becoming  a  miniature  spe¬ 
cialist.  His  first  film  job  was,  in  fact,  as 
far  removed  as  possible  from  trick- 
camerawork,  for  he  began  as  a  projec¬ 
tionist  in  the  old  Garrick  theatre  in  Los 
Angeles,  some  twenty-five  years  ago. 
But  as  he  peered  through  his  little  port¬ 
hole  to  watch  the  pictures  unwind  on 
the  screen,  some  latent  artistic  instinct 
told  this  young  Polish  boy  that  he  must 
get  into  a  position  where  he,  too,  could 
create  such  visual  beauty. 

Inquiry  told  him  that  the  stepping- 
stone  to  camerawork  in  those  days  was 
through  the  laboratory.  So  he  got  a  job 
in  the  old  Pacific  Laboratory,  and 
learned  photography  from  the  wet  end. 
He  learned  quickly,  too,  for  before  long 
he  was  considered  qualified  to  go  out  on 
a  camera,  and  rose  quickly  to  the  posi¬ 
tion  of  First  Cameraman.  That  was  long 
before  today’s  era  of  strict  specializa¬ 
tion  ;  but  he  became  what  we  would  con¬ 
sider  an  ace  production  cameraman, 
photographing  for  John  M.  Stahl  and 
other  top-ranking  directors  of  the  day, 
and  working  for  Fox,  Metro,  and  others 
of  the  best  studios  of  two  decades  ago. 

Between  pictures  one  day  at  Metro,  he 
received  a  sudden  call  to  go  to  one  of  the 
stages  to  attend  to  a  little  job  that  had 
to  be  done.  When  he  got  there,  he  found 
it  was  the  task  of  photographing  a 
(Continued  on  Page  238) 


210  June,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


Preparation  Pays  A  Profit 

By  VICTOR  MILNER,  A.S.C. 


FOR  years  a  comparatively  small 
group  of  us  within  the  industry 
have  been  arguing  that  a  system  of 
more  completely  detailed  preparation  not 
only  of  scripts,  but  of  all  the  physical 
details  of  production,  in  which  the  di¬ 
rector  of  photography,  the  special-effects 
specialists,  the  art  director,  costumers, 
and  others  could  work  closely  with  the 
director  and  producer  before  actual  pro¬ 
duction  starts,  would  give  us  not  only 
better  pictures,  but  much  more  efficient 
production.  The  majority  of  the  indus¬ 
try,  however — including  most  directors 
and  producers — have  taken  what  they 
like  to  term  the  “practical”  viewpoint: 
that  such  a  system  would  be  too  Utopian 
to  be  practical,  and  that  the  potential 
economies,  anyway,  were  vastly  over¬ 
rated. 

Yet  at  the  same  time,  these  “practical” 
men  of  production  have  wondered  how  it 
was  that  Cecil  De  Mille  could  turn  out 
the  big,  spectacular  productions  he  does, 
and  so  economically.  They’ve  wondered 
even  more  how  he  could  bring  those  pro¬ 
ductions  in  so  consistently  ahead  of 
schedule,  and  often  below  budget,  as  well. 

The  answer  is  that  De  Mille  utilizes  to 
the  full  that  same  principle  of  exhaust¬ 
ive,  cooperative  pre-production  planning 
which  the  “practical”  men  of  the  indus¬ 
try  dismiss  as  visionary.  He  realizes 
that  the  really  heavy  costs  of  production 
are  incurred  only  during  the  period  of 
actual  shooting.  During  this  period,  any 
loose  planning  or  lack  of  coordination  be¬ 
tween  the  members  of  his  key  production 
staff  will  be  reflected  in  mistakes  and  de¬ 
lays  on  the  set.  And  with  modern  pro¬ 
duction  costs  mounting  up  at  the  rate  of 
from  $15,000  to  $20,000  or  more  per 
shooting  day,  an  avoidable  delay  of  even 
a  few  minutes  is  prohibitively  costly. 

Therefore  De  Mille  prepares  for  each 
production  as  carefully  as  a  good  general 
would  prepare  for  the  opening  of  a  sec¬ 
ond  front.  He  and  his  production  staff 
— the  director  of  photography,  the  art 
director,  the  costumer,  the  first  assistant 
director,  the  special-effects  experts,  and 
others — literally  live  with  the  picture 
for  months  before  the  camera  turns  on 


the  first  take.  Once  the  picture  goes 
actually  into  production,  everyone  con¬ 
cerned  knows  precisely  what  each  scene 
and  set-up  is  and — equally  important — 
just  when,  where  and  how  each  is  to  be 
filmed. 

For  this  reason  there  is  almost  no  lost 
motion  on  a  De  Mille  set,  and  virtually 
every  inch  of  film  included  in  the  OK.’d 
takes  go  into  the  final  cut  of  the  picture. 
There  are  no  retakes:  in  nine  years’  as¬ 
sociation  with  Mr.  De  Mille,  I  can  re¬ 
member  retaking  only  a  single  scene. 

With  such  coordinated  staff -work  there 
should  be  less  surprise  that  his  produc¬ 
tions  are  brought  to  completion  so  quick¬ 
ly  and  economically.  To  name  only  two 
recent  instances,  “North  West  Mounted” 
was  finished  a  full  14  days  under  sched¬ 
ule,  and  “Reap  the  Wild  Wind,”  for  all 
its  technical  difficulties,  12  days  ahead 
of  time.  With  a  little  figuring  you’ll  see 
that  this  in  itself  resulted  in  a  direct 
saving  of  something  in  the  neighborhood 
of  a  quarter  of  a  million  dollars  on  each 
production.  To  this  add  the  additional 
savings  brought  about  by  the  fact  that 
the  surplus  scenes,  “protection-shots,” 
and  the  like  usually  considered  as  part 
of  the  inevitable  wastage  of  normal  pro¬ 
duction  are  never  made  for  a  De  Mille 
production.  The  sets  for  them  are  never 
built;  the  players  never  engaged;  the 
shooting  time  and  effort  never  expended, 
for  they  have  been  eliminated  from  the 
script  weeks  or  months  before  shooting 
started. 

As  a  specific  example  of  how  this 
method  of  pre-production  planning  works, 
let’s  consider  the  case  history  to  date  of 
De  Mille’s  forthcoming  production,  “The 
Story  of  Dr.  Wassell.”  It’s  scheduled  to 
go  before  the  camera  about  June  15th; 
but  the  script-writers  started  their  work 
on  it  last  July.  As  soon  as  the  first 
draft  of  the  script  began  to  jell— some 
time  in  August — De  Mille’s  assistant, 
Eddie  Salven,  started  his  phase  of  the 
planning.  In  September,  art  director 
Roland  Anderson,  costume-designer  Nat¬ 
alie  Visart,  and  I,  as  director  of  photog¬ 
raphy,  joined  the  staff  conferences  on  the 
picture.  Transparency  expert  Farciot 


Left  and  center:  Two  of  art  director  Roland  Ander¬ 
son's  preliminary  scene-sketches  for  "The  Story  of 
Dr.  Wassell."  You  won't  see  these  scenes  in  the 
picture,  as  they  were  eliminated  before  the  sets  were 
built.  Right:  actual  shooting  is  the  easiest  part, 
agree  the  author  (left)  and  Cecil  De  Mille,  as  they 
line  up  for  a  well-prepared  take. 


Edouart,  A.S.C.,  special-effects  special¬ 
ist  Gordon  Jennings,  A.S.C.,  and  Camera 
Department  Chief  C.  Roy  Hunter  were 
not  far  behind  us. 

For  the  seven  months  since  September, 
then,  we  have  all  participated  in  the 
many  budget  and  story  conferences 
which  are  such  important  parts  of  the 
business  of  getting  a  big  picture  ready 
for  production.  At  many  of  these  meet¬ 
ings,  nothing  directly  affecting  one’s  own 
phase  of  production  may  come  up  .  .  . 
but  when  such  questions  do  arise — and 
sometimes  they  do  with  unexpected  sud¬ 
denness — De  Mille  wants  to  get  an  au¬ 
thoritative  answer  to  it  immediately. 

In  this  connection,  I’d  like  to  mention 
for  the  benefit  of  those  who  do  not  know 
Cecil  De  Mille,  that  in  spite  of  all  the 
publicity  about  his  being  constantly  sur¬ 
rounded  by  “yes-men,”  he  will  accept  a 
well-founded  “no”  better  than  many 
another  producer  or  director.  But  you 
must  be  prepared  to  back  it  up  with  cold 
facts!  if  you  do,  he  will  defer  to  your 
judgment.  But  woe  betide  the  man  who 
gives  him  a  “yes”  for  politeness  when 
the  answer  really  should  be  “no”  or — 
worse  yet — takes  refuge  in  an  evasive 
“maybe”!  Polite  answers  like  that  be¬ 
forehand  are  usually  forerunners  of  un¬ 
necessary  mistakes  and  delays  on  the 
set.  And  these  can’t  be  tolerated  .  .  . 
especially  with  production  costs  increased 
over  100%  in  the  last  year. 

As  the  story  and  its  treatment  begin 
to  solidify,  several  things  begin  to  hap¬ 
pen  simultaneously.  The  first  of  these 
is  research — especially  on  the  part  of 
Salven,  art  director  Anderson,  costume- 
designer  Visart,  and  the  studio’s  research 
staff.  De  Mille  has  always  been  a  stick¬ 
ler  for  absolute  technical  accuracy  in 
his  pictures,  and  this  is  no  exception. 
All  concerned  have  delved  deeply  into 
everything  available  concerning  the  lo¬ 
cations  (China  and  Java)  of  the  histo¬ 
rical  events  the  picture  chronicles,  and 
into  the  events  themselves.  In  addition 
to  the  personal  collaboration  of  Com¬ 
mander  Wassel  himself,  every  conceiv¬ 
able  source  of  printed  reference  mate¬ 
rial,  including  eyewitness  accounts  and 
innumerable  photographs,  have  been  con¬ 
sulted.  As  many  individuals  who  actu- 
( Continued  on  Page  228) 


American  Cinematographer  •  June,  1943  211 


days  there  were  no  camera  blimps:  the 
camera  and  its  operator  were  locked  to¬ 
gether  in  a  big  soundproof  booth  about 
the  size  of  a  grocery-store  frigidaire. 
There  they  stayed  until  the  scene  was 
shot. 

“Planning  lightings  and  compositions 
for  six  or  eight  cameras,  shooting  from 
as  many  different  angles,  was  a  real 
problem.  Doing  that  really  well,  and  at 
the  same  time  operating  one’s  own  cam¬ 
era  too,  proved  impossible.  So  finally  I 
went  to  the  front-office  executives,  ex¬ 
plained  my  problem,  and  asked  that  I  be 
relieved  of  the  task  of  running  my  own 
camera,  so  that  I  could  more  efficiently 
direct  the  work  of  the  crews  manning  the 
other  cameras. 

“My  request  was  granted.  In  prac¬ 
tice,  it  worked  out  so  successfully  that 
the  idea  spread  quickly  throughout  the 
industry.  And  though  in  time  we  all  of 
us  learned  to  cut  the  sound  and  picture 
with  the  same  facility  we  had  known  in 
silent-picture  production,  the  idea  of  the 
Operative  Cameraman  and  the  Director 
of  Photography  held  on,  to  the  great 
benefit  of  cinematographers  and  cinema¬ 
tography.” 

Since  that  time,  too,  Polito  has  carried 
on  as  one  of  the  foremost  members  of 
the  camera  profession.  This  year  marks 
his  thirtieth  anniversary  as  a  cinema¬ 
tographer.  During  the  last  fifteen  years 
he  has  been  responsible  for  the  camera¬ 
work  of  some  of  the  industry’s  biggest 
and  best  productions:  every  year  since 
the  inception  of  the  Academy  Awards  he 
has  had  a  picture  placed  high  among 
the  list  of  nominees  for  the  Photography 
Award,  and  sometimes  for  the  Color 
Award  as  well.  He  has  pioneered  in 
many  important  innovations  and  devel¬ 
opments,  including  the  making  of  big  ex¬ 
terior  scenes  on  an  indoor  stage  (which, 
by  the  way,  has  saved  his  studio  tens  of 
thousands  of  dollars  on  many  a  picture), 
and  in  the  development  of  the  wave  and 
ripple  machine  which  made  possible  the 
filming  of  marine  exteriors  indoors,  with¬ 
out  the  use  of  process-backgrounds. 

How  did  he  get  his  start  in  the  in¬ 
dustry?  Let  him  tell  it:  “My  first  job  in 
the  picture  business  was  back  in  1912, 
when  I  got  a  card  as  a  duly  licensed 
projectionist — I  still  have  it,  by  the  way 
— and  with  it  a  job  grinding  the  pro¬ 
jector  in  that  now  forgotten  little  Nickel¬ 
odeon.  And  I  do  mean  grinding:  those 
were  the  days  when  the  projectors,  even 
in  the  most  deLuxe-equipped  houses, 
were  operated  solely  by  hand  power. 

“It  didn’t  take  very  long  watching 
the  pictures  I  ground  through  my  pro¬ 
jector  to  make  me  decide  I  wanted  to 
become  a  cameraman,  and  create  the 
pictures,  rather  than  just  run  them.  So 
I  began  to  cast  around  to  find  a  way 
to  get  into  the  production  end  of  the 
business,  and  especially  to  find  a  way 
to  learn  all  the  things  I  knew  I  would 
have  to  learn  before  I  could  be  a  real 
cameraman. 

“That  opportunity  came  when  I  met 
Tony  Gaudio,  A.S.C.,  who  was  then 
the  Chief  Cameraman  for  Carl  Laemmle’s 
(Continued  on  Page  226) 


By  WALTER  BLANCHARD 


THE  TERM  “Director  of  Photog¬ 
raphy”  owes  its  origin  in  no  small 
part  to  Sol  Polito,  A.S.C.,  for  it 
was  he  who,  back  in  the  early- Vitaphone 
days  of  sound-films,  convinced  the  execu¬ 
tives  of  Warner  Bros.’  studio  that  the 
cinematographer  in  charge  of  photo¬ 
graphing  a  picture  could  be  more  valu¬ 
able  in  a  supervising  or  directorial  ca¬ 
pacity  that  he  could  while  actually  oper¬ 
ating  his  own  camera. 

“Back  in  those  days,”  he  tells  us,  “the 
First  Cinematographer  cn  a  production 
actually  operated  his  own  camera.  If 
there  was  such  a  thing  as  a  Second  Cam¬ 
eraman  with  the  troupe,  he  was  there 
simply  to  operate  an  additional  camera. 


“Then  came  sound  .  .  .  and  in  those 
early  days  they  didn’t  think  they  could 
cut  the  sound-track  as  flexibly  as  they 
cut  the  picture-film.  This  was  particu¬ 
larly  true  at  Warner  Bros.,  where  the 
sound  was  at  first  recorded  on  disc  in¬ 
stead  of  film;  but  it  applied  equally 
throughout  the  industry,  regardless  of 
the  method  of  recording.  In  order  to 
avoid  having  to  cut  the  sound-track  (or 
disc  record,  in  our  case)  we  had  to  shoot 
every  cut  and  angle  of  a  whole  sequence 
at  one  take.  This  meant  using  six  or 
eight  cameras,  shooting  from  all  an¬ 
gles  at  once,  getting  close-ups,  long- 
shots,  medium-shots,  and  everything 
else  simultaneously.  And  in  those 


Aces  of  the  Camera 
XXIX: 

Sol  Polito,  A.  S.  C. 


212  June,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


THROUGH  the  EDITOR'S  FINDER 


WHILE  we  were  sitting  in  a  ma¬ 
jor-studio  camera  department 
the  other  day,  the  phone  rang. 
After  several  minutes  of  conversation, 
the  camera-chief  turned  to  us  and  re¬ 
marked,  a  bit  wearily,  “That  was  my 
opposite  number  at  the  so-and-so  stu¬ 
dio.  This  morning  he  called  and  asked 
if  we  could  loan  him  four  lenses  he 
needed  urgently.  We  loaned  them  to 
him,  first  having  our  shop  check  them 
carefully  to  make  sure  they’d  fit  any 
standard  mount.  Now  he  calls  to  tell 
us  that  though  he  uses  the  same  kind 
of  cameras  we  do,  three  out  of  the  four 
lenses  won’t  fit  into  his  mounts  .  .  . 
and  he  swears  his  mounts  are  ‘stand¬ 
ard,’  too.  Why  hasn’t  somebody  set  up 
real,  industry-wide  standards  on  these 
pieces  of  equipment  we  all  use — ?” 

This  isn’t  an  isolated  occurrence.  It 
happens  almost  every  day,  and  in  every 
studio,  major  and  independent  alike.  It 
happens  with  every  conceivable  kind  of 
photographic  equipment  and  accessories. 

Suppose  one  studio  is  at  a  production 
peak,  and  wants  to  borrow  a  camera 
from  another  where  production  is  mo¬ 
mentarily  slack.  The  question  immedi¬ 
ately  arises,  will  the  camera  from  studio 
A  fit  into  the  blimps  used  by  studio  B  ? 
Assuming  a  blimp,  too,  is  needed,  will 
the  blimps  from  one  studio  fit  onto 
the  tripod  boom  and  dolly  heads  of  the 
other?  For  that  matter,  would  the  bor¬ 
rowed  camera  and  blimp  combination 
meet  the  borrowing  studio’s  standards 
for  silent  operation?  We  could  name 
several  studios — even  using  the  same 
sound  system — where  the  answer  would 
be  a  decided  “No.” 

Then,  even  if  all  these  hurdles  were 
adequately  cleared,  there’s  the  problem 
of  driving  motors.  Chances  are  that  the 
motor  on  the  borrowed  camera  might  not 
operate  on  the  other  lot:  it  might  be 
the  wrong  type  of  motor  .  .  .  the  current 
frequencies  in  the  two  plants  might  be 
different  ...  or  the  systems  of  syn¬ 
chronizing,  or  power  distribution.  And 
leaving  aside  the  question  of  availabil¬ 
ity  of  a  spare  motor  in  the  second  studio 
(which  would  he  doubtful,  at  best,  if 
all  that  studio’s  “production”  cameras 
were  tied  up)  it  is  very  probable  that 
a  motor  built  to  coordinate  with  studio 
number  two’s  cameras  and  sound  or  proc¬ 
ess  synchronizing  systems  actually  could 
not  be  physically  applied  to  a  camera 
from  studio  number  one.  We’ve  known, 
too,  of  instances  where  a  rented  process 
projector  had  to  undergo  what  amounted 
virtually  to  a  major  rebuild  before  it 
could  be  operated  satisfactorily  under 
the  standards  of  another  studio. 

Before  the  war,  this  might  not  have 
a  matter  of  particular  importance.  As 
regards  photographic  equipment,  most 
major  studios,  at  least,  were  pretty 
well  self-sufficient.  There  was  some 
lending  and  renting  of  big  camera-booms 
and  similar  unusual  equipment,  but  for 


basic  equipment— cameras,  lenses,  mo¬ 
tors  and  the  like — most  studios  had 
enough  and  to  spare,  even  for  times  of 
unusual  peak  production.  If  any  emerg¬ 
ency  need  rose,  well,  new  equipment 
wasn’t  particularly  hard  to  get,  and  the 
emergency  might  well  serve  as  an  ex¬ 
cuse  to  add  something  lastingly  useful 
and  charge  it  to  the  production’s  budget, 
rather  than  the  camera  department’s! 

But  those  days  are  gone  “for  dura¬ 
tion.”  It  would  probably  be  letting 
a  military  secret  out  of  the  bag  (even 
if  we  knew  the  exact  figure — which  we 
don’t!)  to  say  just  how  many  camera 
outfits  and  lenses  Hollywood’s  studios 
have  supplied  to  the  Armed  Services. 
But  it  is  a  known  fact  that  major  stu¬ 
dio  camera  equipment  has  been  pared 
uncomfortably  close  to  a  bare  minimum. 
And  of  course  the  purchase  of  new 
equipment  is  an  impossibility  for  obvious 
reasons. 

Therefore  the  borrowing  and  renting 
of  camera  equipment  between  different 
major  studios,  and  even  between  major 
and  independent  studios,  has  increased 
to  an  amazing  extent.  And  we  are 
finding  out  what  industry-wide  standard¬ 
ization  for  such  equipment  would  be 
worth — if  we  had  it. 

Talking  about  rectifying  this  situation 
now  may  seem  like  suggesting  locking 
the  stable  after  the  horse  has  been 
stolen  .  .  .  and  so  it  is,  if  you  are  think¬ 
ing  about  complete  standardization  of 
every  detail,  small  and  large.  But  it 
seems  to  us  that  a  great  deal  can  be 
done  in  this  direction  right  now,  in  the 
studios’  own  camera  machine-shops, 
through  simply  correcting  and  standard¬ 
izing  such  minor  details  as  can  be  man¬ 
aged  under  today’s  conditions,  and  pro¬ 
viding,  of  course,  that  the  industry’s 
camera,  special-effects  and  sound  experts 
can  sit  down  together  and  face  the 
questions  realistically,  without  too  much 
prejudice  in  favor  of  the  individual  stu¬ 
dio  or  executive  preferences  which  were 
the  original  cause  of  most  of  this  lack 
of  standardization. 

And  in  view  of  present  experience, 
isn’t  the  thought  of  achieving  real-in¬ 
dustry-wide  standardization  of  photo¬ 
graphic  equipment  a  tempting  one  to 
put  down  as  the  number  one  “must” 
for  post-war  planning — ? 

• 

HAVE  you  ever  noticed — whether  in 
a  world-famous  professional  or¬ 
ganization  like  the  A.S.C.,  or  in  the 
smallest  of  amateur  movie  clubs — that 
it’s  the  members  who  don’t  often  bother 
to  show  up  at  meetings  who  put  up  the 
biggest  howl  about  how  little  they’re 
getting  out  of  the  organization,  while 
those  who  pitch  in  hardest  to  help  make 
the  meetings  work  seem  to  get  the  great¬ 
est  pleasure  out  of  their  club’s  activi¬ 
ties,  and  feel  they’re  getting  the  most 
out  of  it — ? 


AS  we  begin  to  get  into  the  period 
when  the  various  studios  are  an¬ 
nouncing  their  production  programs  for 
the  coming  season,  it’s  gratifying  to 
note  that  there  is  a  very  general  tend¬ 
ency  among  most  of  them  toward  pro¬ 
ducing  fewer  pictures,  but  allotting  big¬ 
ger  budgets  and  presumably  longer  shoot¬ 
ing  schedules  to  those  they  do  make. 
A  paramount  reason  for  this  change  is 
that  while  all  pictures  are  making  money 
today,  productions  given  the  extra  time 
and  money  which  makes  them  more  than 
just  ordinarily  adequate  ones  can  com¬ 
mand  sufficient  additional  playing  time 
in  the  theatres  so  that  a  comparatively 
few  genuine  “A’s”  can  earn  a  larger 
total  profit  than  the  conventional  pro¬ 
gram  of  a  few  “A’s”  and  a  larger  num¬ 
ber  of  cheaper  “B’s.” 

A  very  important  by-product  of  this 
policy — though  one  perhaps  not  imme¬ 
diately  foreseen  by  the  front-office  execu¬ 
tives — is  that  it  should  almost  guaran¬ 
tee  better  photography  on  such  pic¬ 
tures  as  are  made.  Very  likely,  as 
this  policy  begins  to  take  hold,  execu¬ 
tives  in  every  studio  will  look  at  the 
rushes  with  the  comment,  “Migosh! 
What’s  got  into  that  cameraman  that 
he  becomes  a  genius  overnight?” 

The  answer  will  be  simple.  The  longer 
schedule  has  simply  given  him  an  op¬ 
portunity  to  do  things  he  always  knew 
how  to  do,  but  was  never  given  time 
to  put  into  practice.  On  the  average 
“B-picture”  schedule,  which  may  range 
from  ten  days  to  three  weeks,  your 
cameraman  has  inevitably  had  to  sacrifice 
quality  to  speed.  With  from  twenty  to 
fifty  or  more  set-ups  to  be  photographed 
each  working  day,  he  daren’t  do  any¬ 
thing  else.  If  it’s  a  choice  between  using 
unimaginative  (but  safe  and  quick)  com¬ 
positions  or  lightings,  and  taking  the 
few  extra  minutes  on  each  set-up  neces¬ 
sary  for  getting  a  better  composition 
— perhaps  by  juggling  some  props,  or 
moving  a  wild  wall,  or  changing  to  a 
different  camera-position — or  for  polish¬ 
ing  the  lighting  more  carefully,  adding 
a  lamp  here  to  cast  a  decorative  shadow, 
or  rearranging  a  couple  of  others  to 
get  a  more  perfect  effect — he’ll  find  him¬ 
self  forced  to  take  the  safe  “B-picture” 
course. 

But  give  that  same  man  those  few 
additional  minutes  per  set-up  represent¬ 
ed  by  a  few  added  days  or  a  week 
or  two  in  the  schedule,  and  he’ll  delight¬ 
edly  make  use  of  it  to  give  his  picture 
better  photography.  The  benefit  of  those 
few  minutes  per  set-up  may  not  turn 
a  Joe  Doakes  into  a  Gregg  Toland — but 
you  can  bet  your  last  dollar  they’ll 
improve  his  camerawork  as  much  as 
though  the  producer  had  called  in  a 
cameraman  whose  salary  was  a  couple 
of  hundred  dollars  a  week  higher! 


American  Cinematographer  •  June,  1943  213 


A.S.C.  on  Parade 


A  very  special  salute  from  all  of  us 
goes  this  month  to  Capt.  Ray  Fernstrom, 
IL&.A.C.,  first  of  the  43  A.S.C.-members 
now  in  service  to  be  wounded  in  action. 
We’ve  just  received  two  V-Mail  letters 
from  him  which  are  well  worth  reading. 
The  first,  dated  April  23rd  (Good  Fri¬ 
day)  says,  “Dear  Bill  and  Fellow  Mem¬ 
bers — Into  the  second  year  of  Army 
life,  and  I’m  really  enjoying  it.  Tent 
living  is  healthy  and  I  eat  like  a  wolf, 
for  our  food  is  really  good.  Grand  op¬ 
portunities  for  movies,  and  I  hope  you’ll 
see  them  all.  I  still  have  my  old  luck 
and  am  riding  it  hard.  Yes,  as  you  have 
noticed,  I’m  in  the  Air  Corps  now  with 
wings,  ribbon  and  double  bars,  which 
gives  me  a  chance  to  use  all  my  varied 
camera  experience.  I  really  feel  ‘on  the 
beam’  at  last  and  am  trying  hard  to  do 
a  good  job  of  it.  Drop  in,  Bill,  on  my 
brother  Carl  at  Technicolor,  and  give 
my  best  to  Dr.  Kalmus,  Mrs.  Kalmus, 
Jerry,  Rackett,  George  Cave,  Bob  Riley 
and  the  boys.  Say  hello  to  Cinecolor  and 
all  our  old  Hollywood  pals.  Drop  me  a 
line  V-Mail.  As  ever,  Ray.”  The  sec¬ 
ond  letter,  written  three  days  later, 
reads,  “Good  Friday  came  along.  I  was 
busy  as  usual — in  the  air — good  movies 
— and  got  them — over  the  German  lines. 
But  my  left  leg  where  the  thigh  muscle 
is  the  hardest  and  deepest  caught  a 
hunk  of  steel  from  one  of  their  anti¬ 
aircraft  shells  that  popped  close  enough 
for  the  lens  but  too  close  for  my  leg.  So 
now  it’s  time  out  for  a  week  or  so  in  a 
grand  British  field  hospital,  where  we 
have  fresh  eggs  for  breakfast,  tea  at  ten 
and  four,  and  a  ration  of  whiskey  each 
evening.  These  British  X-rays  and  field 
stations,  their  immediate  anesthetic  with 
no  after-effects,  and  their  skilled,  tire¬ 
less  surgeons  positively  astound  me.  I 
can  never  live  long  enough  to  sing 
enough  praise  of  the  British  I  have 
lamed  to  know  well.  Regards  to  all, 
Ray.” 

• 

The  sincerest  sympathies  of  the  A.S.C. 
and  its  members  go  out  to  James  C. 
Van  Trees,  A.S.C.,  upon  the  death  of  his 
younger  son,  Lt.  Don  Van  Trees,  who 
was  killed  in  line  of  duty  while  serving 
with  the  Army. 

• 

Our  sympathies,  too,  to  Robert  C. 
Bruce,  A.S.C.,  on  the  recent  passing  of 
his  wife. 

• 

Out  best  wishes,  likewise,  to  Dan  Clark, 
A.S.C.,  reported  as  convalescing  satis¬ 
factorily  from  a  recent  operation. 

At  that  last  A.S.C.  meeting — Archie 
Stout,  A.S.C.,  happily  back  in  town  to 
stay  after  disposing  of  his  tungsten 
mine,  and  beaming  over  a  visit  from 
his  son,  Junius,  on  leave  from  Navy 
service. 


Months  ago,  when  Henry  Freulich, 
A.S.C.,  had  just  entered  the  Marine 
Corps  as  a  buck  private,  we  asked  him 
for  a  picture.  Since  then,  Henry  has 
been  busy  going  through  Officers’  Train 
ing  and  getting  out  into  active  service. 
But  the  other  day  Henry’s  uncle,  the 
dependable  Roman  Freulich,  sent  us  this 
picture  of  Capt.  Henry  Freulich,  A.S.C., 
U.S.M.C.  As  Henry  puts  it,  he’s  gotten 
rid  of  that  Stage  4  pallor,  and  loves 
the  life  of  a  leatherneck. 

• 

Nick  Musuraca,  A.S.C.,  gets  the  effect¬ 
lighting  assignment  on  RKO’s  chiller, 
“The  Seventh  Victim.” 

• 

What  well-known  director  of  photog¬ 
raphy  is  so  fond  of  gambling  that  he 
daily  matches  nickels  with  the  waitress 
at  a  very  major  studio  commissary  to 
see  whether  or  not  he  pays  for  his 
lunch — ?  And  what  Marine  Corps  Cap¬ 
tain  took  him  for  five  bucks  by  the  same 
route  the  other  day — ? 

• 

Even  in  Washington  The  American 
Cinematographer  and  its  staff  are  well 
known.  A  letter  from  Reed  N.  Hay- 
thorne,  A.S.C.,  encloses  an  envelope  ad¬ 
dressed  simply  “Reed  N.  Haythorne, 
A.S.C.,  Staff  Correspondent,  American 
Cinematographer,  Washington,  D.  C.” 
And  it  got  to  him  all  right!  The  contents, 
he  tells  us,  was  a  letter  from  Carl 
Pryer,  A.S.C.,  who,  it  seems  to  us,  is 
overdue  for  another  article  for  these 
pages. 

• 

And  over  at  Warners,  Sol  Polito, 
A.S.C.,  after  Technicoloring  the  stage 
numbers  for  “This  Is  The  Army,” 
switches  over  to  complete  the  story  part 
of  the  pic,  as  well. 


The  other  day  United  Artists  Pro¬ 
ducer  Harry  Sherman  held  a  big  cele¬ 
bration  over  the  starting  of  his  50th 
“Hopalong  Cassidy”  western.  Above 
you  see  Russell  Harlan,  A.S.C.,  express¬ 
ing  surprise  on  receiving  a  trophy  for 
his  outstanding  work  photographing  all 
fifty  of  them. 

• 

Tony  Gaudio,  A.S.C.,  as  soon  as  he 
finishes  “Corvette  K225”  for  Universal, 
moves  over  to  RKO  for  “Revenge,”  their 
big  Russian  epic.  Meanwhile,  Vern 
Walker,  A.S.C.,  hurries  to  Utah  to  get 
snow  scenes  for  the  same  pic  while  the 
snow  is  available. 


WILLIAM  C.  MARSHALL,  A.S.C. 

We  regret  to  have  to  chronicle 
the  passing  of  another  of  the  pro¬ 
fession’s  pioneers,  the  well-liked 
veteran  William  C.  (Billy)  Mar¬ 
shall,  A.S.C.,  who  died  recently  at 
the  age  of  58,  after  a  long  period 
of  ill  health. 

Billy  Marshall  was  a  veteran  of 
the  industry,  with  innumerable 
notable  achievements  to  his  credit. 
He  was  one  of  the  first,  if  not 
actually  the  first  American  cam¬ 
eraman  employed  by  Pathe  Freres 
when  they  opened  their  American 
studio  in  1912.  He  photographed 
the  first  production  made  by  the 
Fox  Film  Company,  and  was  for 
more  than  a  decade  the  ace  cam¬ 
eraman  for  Adolph  Zukor’s  Fa¬ 
mous  Players  Company,  later  Fa¬ 
mous  Players-Lasky  and  now  Para¬ 
mount.  During  this  period  he  photo¬ 
graphed  virtually  all  of  the  fore¬ 
most  stars  of  the  early  period,  in¬ 
cluding  Mary  Pickford,  Wallace 
Reid,  and  Rudolph  Valentino,  whose 
most  famous  picture,  “The  Sheik,” 
Marshall  photographed.  During  his 
many  years  of  studio  activity,  Mar¬ 
shall  not  only  lived  through  the 
period  when  cinematographic  his¬ 
tory  was  being  made,  but  helped 
make  a  great  deal  of  it  himself. 

During  recent  years,  Marshall 
had  been  comparatively  inactive 
professionally,  due  to  injuries  re¬ 
ceived  in  an  automobile  accident 
en  route  to  location.  But  his  friend¬ 
ly  presence  at  A.S.C.  meetings  will 
be  missed  by  all  who  knew  him. 
The  sincerest  sympathy  of  the 
A.S.C.  and  its  members  goes  out 
to  his  wife  and  friends. 


214  June,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


PHOTOGRAPHY  OF  THE  MONTH 


PRELUDE  TO  WAR 

Produced  by  the  Special  Service  Division, 

U.  3.  Army. 

Distributed  by  The  Motion  Picture  In¬ 
dustry. 

This  is  the  first  of  a  series  of  “orien¬ 
tation”  pictures  being  prepared  by  Col. 
Frank  Capra,  originally  strictly  for  Army 
use,  but  now  to  be  released  theatrically 
to  the  American  public.  It  should  be  a 
“must”  on  everyone’s  list,  for  it  shows  in 
unforgettable  visual  form  just  why  we 
are  at  war. 

The  picture  is  made  up  almost  entirely 
of  authentic  newsreel  shots  of  the  events 
leading  up  to  the  war,  with  a  sparse 
sprinkling  of  staged  inserts  and  close- 
ups  to  tie  the  action  together.  There 
are  authentic  shots  of  ten-  and  twelve- 
year-old  Axis  youngsters  engaging  in 
military  manoeuvers  with  guns,  gas¬ 
masks  and  gas  which  alone  are  enough 
to  make  any  sane-minded  viewer  burn 
to  wipe  totalitarianism  from  the  earth. 
There  are  intimate  shots  of  Hitler,  of 
the  clownish  Mussolini,  and  the  bloated 
Jap  warlords  which  speak  volumes  about 
the  kind  of  insanity  our  world  is  fighting 
against. 

Technically,  the  picture  is  of  sur¬ 
prisingly  good  newsreel  quality,  and  the 
most  magnificent  job  of  editing  this 
country  has  yet  produced.  Capra  em¬ 
ploys  filmic  rhythm  to  build  emotional 
effects  in  a  way  we  thought  only  the 
Russians,  and  a  few  Englishmen  like  Lt.- 
Col.  MacDonald’s  British  Army  Film 
and  Photo  Unit,  understood.  It  is  by 
long  odds  America’s  most  powerful  docu¬ 
mentary. 

ACTION  IN  THE  NORTH  ATLANTIC 

Warner  Bros.  Production. 

Director  of  Photography:  Capt.  Ted 

McCord,  A.S.C.,  U.S.A.A.F. 
Special-effects  cinematography  by  Ed¬ 
win  B.  DuPar,  A.S.C. 

“Action  in  The  North  Atlantic”  is  one 
of  the  season’s  best  war  films,  and  a  dis¬ 
tinguished  credit  to  those  cinematogra¬ 
phers  publicly  credited.  They  have 
achieved  greatly.  But  “Action  In  The 
North  Atlantic”  neglects  crediting  the 
one  man  who  really  deserves  the  most 
credit  for  what  is  one  of  the  outstanding 
cinematic  achievements  of  the  year: 
Byron  Haskin,  A.S.C.,  who  served  as 
virtually  the  uncredited  producer-direct¬ 
or-editor  of  the  film’s  most  spectacular 
portions.  As  head  of  the  Special-effects 
Department,  Haskin  personally  directed 
and  edited  what  we  would  estimate  as 
roughly  two-thirds  of  the  production. 
From  what  we  personally  observed  on 
the  set  and  in  the  cutting-room,  his 
work  went  far  beyond  conventional  spec¬ 
ial-effects  scenes:  he  dealt  with  whole 
sequences,  which  included  the  principals 
and  spectacular  special-effects.  These 
sequences  make  the  picture — and  in  them 
direction,  photography  and  editing  reach 


peaks  far  above  the  rest  of  the  produc¬ 
tion.  Put  this  down  as  one  of  the 
“must-see”  pictures  of  the  year. 

LADY  OF  BURLESQUE 

Hunt  Stromberg  production;  United  Ar¬ 
tists  Release. 

Director  of  Photography:  Robert  de 

Grasse,  A.S.C. 

Opinions  may  differ  as  to  the  enter¬ 
tainment  and  dramatic  merits  of  this 
murder-mystery  in  its  back-stage  set¬ 
ting,  but  there  can  be  no  doubt  that 
Robert  de  Grasse,  A.S.C.,  has  given  it  a 
vitally  interesting  photographic  mount¬ 
ing.  Sometimes,  perhaps,  it  may  be 
felt  that  he  slightly  overplays  his  camera 
through  his  use  of  unusual  angles  and 
arresting  compositions  and  lightings, 
but  all  told,  his  treatment  of  the  pic¬ 
ture  makes  it  vibrantly  unconventional. 
His  treatment  of  the  players  is,  as  al¬ 
ways,  smoothly  flattering,  in  spite  of  the 
crisp  treatment  and  melodramatic  light¬ 
ings  he  employs.  All  told,  “Lady  of 
Burlesque”  is  a  picture  which  should  en¬ 
title  him  to  an  even  firmer  hold  on  his 
acknowledged  place  as  one  of  the  rising 
generation  of  masters  of  the  camera. 

FIVE  GRAVES  TO  CAIRO 

Paramount  Production. 

Director  of  Photography:  John  F.  Seitz, 

A.S.C. 

This  highly  topical  production  marks 
another  upward  step  on  the  path  of  cine¬ 
matographer  Seitz  on  his  way  back  to 
the  heights  after  several  years  of  being 
buried  on  unimportant  pictures.  It  is,  in 
its  harshly  realistic  treatment,  quite  a 
departure  from  his  usual  pictorial  style, 
but  from  start  to  finish  you  can  see  the 
hand  of  a  master  behind  every  scene  and 
set-up.  His  camerawork  and  lightings 
are  beautifully  attuned  to  the  moods  of 
the  action  and,  as  we’ve  remarked  on 
other  occasions,  Seitz  seems  to  have  an 
inimitable  technique  for  projecting  tropi¬ 
cal  heat  visually,  without  ever  seeming 
consciously  to  do  so. 

MISSION  TO  MOSCOW 

Warner  Bros.  Production. 

Director  of  Photography:  Bert  Glennon, 

A.3.C. 

Special-effects  cinematography  by  Hans 

F.  Koenekamp,  A.S.C. 

Thanks  to  its  subject-matter,  this  is  a 
picture  everyone  will  want  to  see,  re¬ 
gardless  of  how  he  stands  in  his  opinion 
of  Soviet  Russia.  To  what  degree  the 
picture  answers  the  average  American’s 
questions  about  Russia,  only  our  readers 
in  Russia  can  answer;  but  the  documen¬ 
tary  quality  in  the  edirection  and  general 
treament  of  the  production  make  it  a 
notable  departure  in  American  enter¬ 
tainment  films. 

Photographically,  “Misison  to  Moscow” 
is  rather  on  the  disappointing  side. 


Almost  wholly  lacking — except  in  the 
newsreel  stock-shots  generously  intercut 
with  the  dramatic  action  scenes — is  the 
documentary  photographic  quality  needed 
to  complete  the  air  of  authenticity  im¬ 
parted  by  Michael  Curtiz’  direction  and 
the  excellent  writing  and  performances. 
In  addition,  Glennon  repeatedly  resorts 
to  his  characteristic  trick  in  effect- 
lighted  long-shots,  of  highlighting  the 
middle  distance  and  background,  but 
putting  just  too  much  front-light  on  the 
foreground  plane  to  let  it  be  silhouetted, 
yet  not  nearly  enough  to  be  an  honestly 
balanced  filler-light  in  its  relation  to  the 
background.  The  result  is  distressingly 
wishy-washy  .  .  .  the  more  distressing  be¬ 
cause  it  seems  to  be  the  only  weak  touch 
in  the  otherwise  forthright  and  vigorous 
treatment  of  the  dramatic  aspects  of  the 
production. 

DU  BARRY  WAS  A  LADY 

MGM  production  (Technicolor) 

Director  of  Photography:  Karl  Freund, 

A.S.C. 

This  picture  is  what  the  publicists 
would  call  “gloriously  Technicolored” — 
but  why,  we  can’t  understand.  In  a  few 
sequences — notably  Gene  Kelly’s  spec¬ 
tacular  solo  dance  number,  and  the 
“Black  Inn”  sequence — Freund’s  Tech¬ 
nicolor  artistry  is  afforded  real  oppor- 
unity,  and  rises  to  the  artistic  heights  of 
which  he  is  capable.  The  bulk  of  the  rest 
of  the  production  he  has  had  to  handle 
in  routine  fashion,  which  he  does  well 
enough,  though  after  viewing  what  his 
camera  has  recorded,  we  still  wonder 
why  so  much  good  film  was  wasted  on 
indifferent  material  .  .  .  especially  with 
film  rationed  as  it  is  today. 

CABIN  IN  THE  SKY 

MGM  Production. 

Director  of  Photography:  Sidney  Wag¬ 
ner,  A.S.C. 

This  is  one  of  the  best  pictorial  oppor¬ 
tunities  that  Sid  Wagner,  A.S.C.,  has  had 
in  many  a  day,  and  he  rises  excellently 
to  it.  He  invests  this  all-negro  fantasy 
with  excellent  pictorial  quality,  and  his 
personal  lightings — particularly  of  Ethel 
Waters — add  greatly  to  the  dramatic 
values  of  the  production.  As  entertain¬ 
ment,  too,  we  found  it  enjoyable,  though 
the  musical  aspects  were  a  severe  dis¬ 
appointment. 

DR.  GILLESPIE'S  NEW  ASSISTANT 

MGM  Production. 

Director  of  Photography:  George  Fol- 

sey,  A.S.C. 

Here’s  a  little  program  production 
which  is  a  gem  of  photographic  pictorial- 
ism,  as  might  be  expected  in  anything 
from  George  Folsey’s  camera.  We  can 
strongly  recommend  it  as  a  first-class 
study  in  decorative  lighting,  and  in  Fol¬ 
sey’s  facile  interpretation  of  the  film’s 
varying  dramatic  moods. 


American  Cinematographer  •  June,  1943  215 


Planning  Club  Programs 

By  FRANCIS  M.  HIRST  * 

Philadelphia  Cinema  Club 


T  HY  should  we  keep  our  movie 
W  dub  going;  why  not  discon- 
*  *  tinue  for  the  duration?  It  is 
difficult  to  obtain  film,  and  if  you  are 
able  to  buy  it  you  can’t  use  your  car  or 
take  trips  to  make  movies.  Where  are 
you  going  to  get  speakers?  Where  are 
you  going  to  get  people  to  put  on  inter¬ 
esting  demonstrations  or  anything  else 
to  hold  a  club  together?” 

“I’m  surprised  to  hear  a  fellow  like 
you  say  such  things.  Don’t  you  know 
that  movie  clubs  are  a  great  booster 
of  morale?  Where  else  can  one  spend 
such  a  pleasant  evening  with  so  little 
effort?  Don’t  you  think  it  would  be 
an  awful  let-down  for  any  of  the  fel¬ 
lows  to  come  home  on  leave  and  find 
the  club  doors  closed?  By  the  way,  I 
don’t  recall  having  seen  any  of  your 
films  at  the  club.  You  must  have  some 
to  show.” 

“Well,  I  guess  I  do  have  some  from 
the  last  trip  I  took,  but  I  don’t  go  in 
for  it  as  seriously  as  you  fellows  do. 
I  only  use  my  camera  to  make  a  record 
of  my  trip.  My  films  are  still  on  the 
reels  that  came  back  from  the  process¬ 
ing  station.  I  don’t  have  any  titles 
and  I  don’t  bother  to  cut  anything  out. 
That  was  our  trip — so  why  throw  part 
of  it  away?” 

“I  can’t  say  that  I  agree  with  you 
on  that  score.  Why  not  bring  your  film 
to  the  next  meeting  of  the  club?  We 
can  view  it  and  offer  constructive  criti¬ 
cism.  We  can  go  further  than  that.  I 
will  bring  a  splicer  and,  with  your  per¬ 
mission,  we  can  start  to  edit  right  at 
the  meeting.  This  will  give  everyone 
an  opportunity  to  see  how  it  is  done, 
and  that  which  we  do  not  complete  at 
the  meeting,  you  can  finish  at  home.  We 
can  also  give  suggestions  for  titles 

*  The  author  of  this  article  writes  on  the  sub¬ 
ject  of  planning  club  programs  from  a  basis  of 
practical  experience — not  theory.  For  more  than 
five  years  he  has  served  as  Program  Chairman 
of  the  very  active  Philadelphia  Cinema  Club  with 
results  which  require  only  a  glance  at  reports 
of  P.C.C.  activities  as  published  in  our  “Among 
the  Movie  Clubs”  page  to  speak  eloquently  for 
themselves.  Often  in  reading  these  reports  prior 
to  publication,  we’ve  wished  we  could  be  in 
Philadelphia  and  participate  too. — The  Editor. 


which  you  can  shoot  and  add  to  the 
film,  and  I  think  that  you  will  be  pleas¬ 
antly  surprised  at  the  result.  You  see 
we  have  planned  a  complete  meeting 
with  very  little  effort.” 

It  is  not  necessary  to  have  guest 
speakers.  Undoubtedly  you  have  hidden 
talent  among  your  own  club  members. 
How  many  times  have  you  heard  an 
argument  between  club  members  on  the 
correct  way  to  expose  film  ?  Surely  the 
man  who  can  give  a  good  argument  is 
capable  of  expressing  his  ideas  at  some 
meeting.  Pick  at  random  any  phase  of 
movie-making,  and  undoubtedly  someone 
in  the  club  will  be  versed  sufficiently 
on  the  subject  to  give  a  talk — and  some¬ 
body  else,  equally  expert,  can  disagree 
with  him  and  build  up  a  very  instructive 
pro-and-con  technical  program. 

I  would  like  to  bet  that  any  club 
could  start  these  talks  right  now  and 
they  would  continue  long  after  the  war 
has  ended.  I  could  also  guarantee  that 
each  talk  would  hold  the  interest  of 
the  members  to  such  an  extent  that  the 
meetings  would  increase  in  attendance. 
All  this  worry  about  guest  speakers  is 
needless. 

Our  club  has  held  two  quiz  contests 
between  eights  and  sixteens,  and  another 
would  be  apropos.  It  is  surprising  how 
easy  it  is  to  find  interesting  questions 
to  ask.  Have  each  member  turn  in  a 
question  for  a  contest.  On  the  night 
of  the  meeting,  ask  for  volunteers — about 
four  8mm.  fans  and  four  16mm.  fans. 
Make  your  own  rules  in  advance  and  have 
someone  act  as  quiz  master.  You  will 
find  that  a  lot  of  humor  develops  spon¬ 
taneously,  and  everyone  benefits  by  the 
knowledge  gained  and  fun  created.  I 
suggest  that  32  questions  be  used.  This 
will  give  each  contestant  four  ques¬ 
tions  to  answer,  taking  in  all  from  30 
to  45  minutes. 

One  of  the  most  interesting  problems 
of  movie-making  is  titling.  So  few  of 
us  really  get  down  to  this  indoor  part  of 
the  sport  because  of  some  little  quirk  in 
our  nature  that  says  it  is  too  difficult, 
or  that  it  takes  too  much  time  or  even 


Left,  a  well-attended  joint  meeting  of  the  Philadel¬ 
phia  Cinema  Club  (wearing  identification  buttons) 
and  the  Norristown  Cinema  Club.  Right,  the  author, 
who  for  five  years  planned  the  Philadelphia  club  s 
programs. 

that  the  train  of  thought  doesn’t  run 
along  that  track. 

Bosh!  You  need  only  to  make  the  start 
to  become  fascinated  with  this  part  of 
the  hobby.  There  are  no  set  rules,  for 
each  film  must  be  treated  individually. 
Why  not  have  three  or  four  members 
who  are  adept  at  making  titles  collabor¬ 
ate  and  give  a  discussion  at  one  of  the 
meetings?  Each  could  show  his  own 
film  and  explain  how  he  went  about  mak¬ 
ing  his  titles. 

One  learns  more  quickly  by  doing 
rather  than  by  seeing  or  hearing,  so  it 
would  be  well  to  have  one  or  two  titlers 
at  the  meeting.  The  opportunity  of  being 
able  to  assemble  and  shoot  titles  will 
overcome  the  chief  obstacle  in  title¬ 
making,  namely,  the  start.  When  one  is 
convinced  of  the  ease  and  simplicity  of 
this  operation,  better  films  will  result. 
It  may  be  arranged  for  those  who  have 
never  made  titles  to  bring  their  cameras 
to  the  meeting  and  shoot  some. 

At  the  present  time  our  club  is  run¬ 
ning  a  series  of  educational  films,  ob¬ 
tained  from  the  Harmon  Foundation,  en¬ 
titled  “You  Can  Make  Good  Movies.” 
Each  film  covers  a  specific  phase  of 
movie-making  and  shows  in  detail  the 
many  problems  facing  movie-makers, 
and  how  they  are  solved.  One  of  these 
films  could  be  shown  in  conjunction  with 
your  title  meeting.  Follow  through 
with  a  prepared  talk  on  this  subject,  and 
you  will  find  that  one  of  the  most  inter¬ 
esting  meetings  of  the  club  has  ended 
enthusiastically. 

Do  you  have  members  who  cut  their 
own  records?  We  have  at  our  club,  and 
several  demonstrations  have  been  given. 
To  be  more  precise,  at  one  of  our  former 
meetings  a  member  spoke  into  a  micro¬ 
phone,  adding  narration  as  his  film  was 
shown  on  the  screen.  Immediately  the 
film  was  shown  again  and  the  recorded 
voice  played  back.  The  ease  with  which 
this  was  accomplished  surprised  and  de¬ 
lighted  the  club. 

Of  course,  hours  of  work  are  required 
to  make  a  complete  musical  accompani¬ 
ment  for  a  film,  selecting  the  proper  mu¬ 
sic  and  sound-effects  and  the  correct 
narration.  Here  again,  as  in  making 
titles,  each  film  must  be  treated  individ¬ 
ually,  for  records  must  be  carefully 
chosen  to  complement  the  mood  of  the 
film.  It  is  not  my  purpose  to  discuss  the 
method  of  dubbing  in  music  and  sound 
effects,  but  I  think  it  sufficient  to  show 
the  possibilities  for  a  club  meeting. 

Some  time  ago  our  club  was  in  need 
of  a  new  screen.  One  school  of  thought 
favored  the  beaded  screen,  while  the 
other  considered  the  halftone  most  de¬ 
sirable.  To  settle  all  arguments,  two 
screens  were  procured,  one  beaded  and 
the  other  halftone.  A  film  was  selected 
and  shown,  first  on  one  screen  and  then 
on  the  other.  We  then  butted  the  screens, 
side  by  side,  and  projected  the  film 
again.  A  white  light  was  next  played 
(Continued  on  Page  233) 


216  June,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


Rudy  Mate,  A.S.C.  (standing  at  left  in  lower  picture) 
making  two  of  the  angle-shots  he  discusses  from 
"Pride  of  the  Yankees." 


length,  and  threading  the  shank  with  the 
correct  screw  thread  to  fit  your  tripod. 

As  for  higher  shots,  with  the  lens  point¬ 
ing  vertically  downward,  that  is  also 
easy.  They  make  quite  a  variety  of  tilt- 
heads  for  still-cameras;  you’ve  probably 
seen  them  in  your  dealer’s  shop  .  .  . 
wooden  or  metal  affairs  which  can  be 
screwed  to  any  tripod,  and  which  are 
hinged  so  as  to  permit  the  camera  90° 
up  or  down,  locking  in  place  with  a  slot¬ 
ted  brace  and  a  knurled-headed  screw. 
The  commercial  types  don’t  cost  much, 
or  if  you’re  handy  with  tools  you  can 
make  your  own.  Replace  your  regular 
lilthead  with  one  of  these  and  you  will 
find  little  trouble  in  making  most  verti¬ 
cal  shots. 

If  your  shot  demands  more  height  than 
your  tripod  will  afford,  or  if  your  lens- 
angle  is  such  that  you  would  be  likely 
to  include  the  front  legs  of  the  tripod 
in  your  scene,  there  is  a  little  trick  you 
can  borrow  from  professional  practice. 
First,  plan  your  shot  so  it  can  be  shot 
in  or  very  close  to  a  door.  Then  mount 
your  tilthead,  by  means  of  one  of  those 
(Continued  on  Page  232) 


By  RUDY  MATE,  A.S.C. 


ONE  evening,  not  long  ago,  one  of 
my  friends  who  is  a  16mm.  ama¬ 
teur  said  to  me,  “Rudy,  I  wonder 
if  you  professionals  realize  how  we  ama¬ 
teurs  envy  you,  and  the  resources  you 
have  to  work  with?  Take  the  matter 
of  angle-shots,  for  instance.  When  you 
professionals  want  to  make  a  shot  from 
an  unusually  low  camera-angle,  you  think 
nothing  of  calling  in  a  couple  of  car¬ 
penters  and  tearing  a  hole  in  the  floor 
big  enough  so  you  can  get  your  lens 
right  down  to  floor-level.  If  you  want 
to  make  a  straight-down  shot  from  a 
high  angle,  you’ve  got  big  camera-booms, 
and  special  tripods  and  heads  that  per¬ 
mit  you  to  point  the  lens  straight  down¬ 
ward.  We  amateurs  can’t  do  that.  Un¬ 
less  we  try  to  get  by  with  a  hand-held 
shot — which  are  just  as  bad  form  in 
serious  amateur  circles  as  they  are 
among  professionals — we’re  restricted  by 
the  fact  our  tripods  will  only  go  so 
low,  or  so  high,  and  that  our  tiltheads 
have  a  very  restricted  vertical  arc.” 

This  surprised  me,  for  as  I  told  him, 
most  professionals  feel  the  shoe  is  on 
the  other  foot.  We  rather  envy  some  of 
the  characteristics  of  16mm.  and  8mm. 
cine-cameras,  such  as  the  extreme  focal 
depth  of  substandard  lenses,  which  give 
the  amateur  “pan-focus”  possibilities 
35mm.  can’t  even  approach,  and  the 
compact  handiness  of  even  the  larger 
amateur  16mm.  cameras  which  let  them 
get  into  positions  from  which  you 
couldn’t  work  a  studio  camera. 

Besides,  the  amateur,  even  today,  can 
get  or  build  several  little  accessories 
which  will  give  him,  at  very  small  cost, 
the  equivalent  of  the  “high  hats”  and 
other  special  gadgets  we  use  when  the 
script  calls  for  getting  unusually  low 
or  high  angles  with  our  big  Mitchells. 
For  example,  suppose  one  wants  some 


shots  from  a  very  low  camera  position. 
Do  you  know  those  little,  round  metal 
mounts,  not  much  larger  or  thicker  than 
a  pancake,  and  fitted  with  a  standard 
tripod-screw,  which  dealers  use  for  dis¬ 
playing  home  movie  cameras  in  their 
showcases?  Well,  get  yourself  one  of 
those.  It  will  prove  more  easily  obtain¬ 
able,  I’ve  no  doubt,  now  that  your  dealer 
has  so  few  cameras  to  display  on  them! 
And  if  you  detach  the  tilthead  from 
your  tripod  and  screw  it  onto  this  base, 
you’ll  have  a  very  excellent  low-angle 
mount  or  “high  hat”  for  your  camera. 

If  your  camera  doesn’t  balance  prop¬ 
erly  on  this  mount  when  you’ve  tilted 
it  to  the  upward  extreme,  you  can  usual¬ 
ly  cure  this  by  nailing  or  screwing  the 
flat  display  base  to  a  pair  of  crossed 
lx4’s  long  enough  to  extend  about  a 
foot  beyond  the  base.  Sometimes  these 
bases  have  holes  already  drilled  in  them 
through  which  you  can  put  your  nails 
or  screws  (the  bases  of  “Dinky  Inkies” 
do),  but  if  they  haven’t,  a  few  minutes’ 
work  with  a  small  metal  drill  will  cor¬ 
rect  the  omission. 

If  you  want  to  mount  your  camera 
at  “baby  tripod”  height — say  one  or 
two  feet  above  the  floor,  but  lower  than 
your  regular  tripod  will  go — you  can 
make  use  of  the  same  principle,  but 
use  a  thicker  block  like  a  section  of 
4x4  or  6x6  under  the  display  base. 

At  this  point  my  friend  interrupted 
to  remark  that  in  extreme  low  set-ups 
the  handle  of  most  amateui  tripod- 
heads  might  strike  the  floor  and  inter¬ 
fere  with  getting  the  maximum  tilt.  Well, 
I  don’t  believe  there  is  any  law  saying 
you  can’t  use  a  shorter  handle — and  you 
can  make  one  (or  a  longer  one,  too)  by 
simply  buying  a  screwdriver  with  a  shank 
the  right  size  to  fit  your  tilthead,  cut¬ 
ting  off  its  blade  to  the  approximate 


“CHEATING"  ON 

CAMERA-ANGLES 


American  Cinematographer  •  June,  1943  217 


Q gUisl  and,  OpsJvaiion,  oft, 
16mm,.  Sound,  (pAoj&dtoAA, 


By  D.  LISLE  CONWAY 

President,  Syracuse  Movie  Makers  Association 


SIXTEEN  millimeter  motion  picture 
sound-projectors,  like  any  other  pre¬ 
cision-made  instruments,  must  be 
handled  carefully  and  given  good  atten¬ 
tion.  If  they  are  abused  by  being  banged 
around,  allowed  to  become  dirty  or  grimy, 
and  are  not  lubricated  properly  they  will 
set  up  the  most  ungodly  noise  in  a  room- 
full  of  quiet  people  that  can  be  imagined. 
Sometimes,  they  will  just  simply  lay 
down  on  the  job  without  a  moment’s 
notice  and  refuse  to  function,  leaving  a 
very  red-faced  projectionist  and  a  dis¬ 
appointed  audience.  Then,  too,  there  are 
certain  parts  of  a  projector  that  need 
frequent  checking  and  sometimes  re¬ 
placements.  These  are  the  projector’s 
lamps  and  amplifier  tubes.  A  few  sim¬ 
ple  rules  will  help  to  avert  most  of 
this  and  assure  trouble-free  projec¬ 
tion. 

Keep  your  projector  clean!  As  with 
films,  cleanliness  is  also  a  paramount 
rule  with  projection  equipment.  The 
lens  should  be  cleaned  periodically,  or 
whenever  dust  or  fingerprints  appear 
of  its  surfaces,  with  lens-tissue  or  better 
yet,  with  cotton  moistened  with  lens¬ 
cleaning  fluid.  Both  the  fluid  and  the 
tissue  may  be  obtained  from  almost  any 
optical  house  or  optician.  Avoid  us¬ 
ing  harsh  cloths  for  lens-cleaning  pur¬ 
poses  as  these  will  scratch  the  polished 
glass  surfaces  and  eventually  affect  the 
sharpness  of  the  picture  on  the  screen. 
The  projector  picture  gate  should  be 


cleaned  before  each  projection,  to  elimi¬ 
nate  any  dust  or  bits  of  hardened  emul¬ 
sion  that  may  have  gathered  in  it,  which 
will,  in  turn,  scratch  the  film  as  it 
passes  through.  This  gate  can  be 
cleaned  by  using  a  soft  brush  which 
will  take  out  most  of  the  dust.  The 
edges  of  the  picture  aperture  may  be 
carefully  scraped  with  a  piece  of  bone 
or  an  orange  stick.  Never  use  a  piece 
of  metal  in  doing  this  as  you  are  liable 
to  scratch  the  surface  of  the  gate. 

If  the  gate  becomes  gummy  from  a 
collection  of  oil  or  grease,  a  strip  of 
lintless  cloth,  moistened  slightly  in  al¬ 
cohol  or  film  cleaner  and  rubbed  up  and 
down  over  the  deposit  lightly,  will  dis¬ 
solve  and  remove  it.  The  claw  aper¬ 
ture  should  also  be  cleaned  by  the  same 
method  as  it,  too,  will  collect  dust,  oil, 
and  dirt  particles. 

The  sound  gate  of  the  projector  must 
also  be  cleaned  at  regular  intervals,  as 
dirt  and  oil  collecting  in  it  will  not 
only  lower  the  volume  of  the  sound  but 
will  also  distort  the  quality  of  the  sound 
heard  from  the  speakex*.  Dirty  sound 
gates  not  only  affect  the  quality  of  the 
sound,  but  will  in  time  scratch  the 
sound  tracks  of  the  films  passing 
through  it  so  that  the  sound  will  be¬ 
come  crackly,  noisy,  hissy  and  uintelli- 
gible,  even  when  played  on  perfect 
projectors. 

Some  sound  drums,  as  on  the  Victor 
projectors,  may  be  readily  detached  for 


cleaning  purposes,  by  means  of  a  thumb¬ 
screw.  Others  using  the  ERPI-type  gates, 
such  as  the  Holmes,  are  opened  up  and 
cleaned  in  a  different  manner.  Consult 
your  instruction  manual  for  informa¬ 
tion  as  to  this.  Make  sure  that  all 
sprockets  and  external  points  are  kept 
free  from  oil  or  grease  so  that  they  will 
not  dirty  the  film. 

Most  projectors  need  only  a  little  oil, 
but  they  do  need  it,  and  at  regular  in¬ 
tervals,  too.  This  is  most  important! 
Correct  lubrication  of  moving  parts  in 
all  mechanisms  is  essential  if  the  mech¬ 
anism  is  to  run  smoothly  and  quietly. 
Over-oiling  can  do  as  much  damage  as 
under-oiling  in  many  instances,  so  con¬ 
sult  the  lubrication  chart  of  your  pro¬ 
jector  and  follow  its  instructions  re¬ 
ligiously.  When  oiling,  be  careful  not 
to  get  any  oil  on  the  belts,  picture  gate 
or  sound  drum.  Again  let  me  stress  that 
the  lubrication  of  your  projector  is 
most  important — learn  to  do  it  right, 
and  when  necessary. 

Projection  bulbs  are  becoming  in- 
(Continued  on  Page  230) 


218  June,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


Better  Pictures  With  Less  Film 

By  HAL  HALL 


WITH  vacation  time  just  around 
the  corner  ,for  those  who  will 
have  vacations,  many  amateur 
movie  enthusiasts  are  now  worrying 
over  their  film  supply  for  filming  of  those 
summer  vacations  movies.  Curtailment 
of  film  for  civilian  use  has  put  quite  a 
crimp  in  home  movie  making,  with  little 
hope  for  relief  in  sight. 

However,  the  film  shortage  really 
should  not  cause  a  great  deal  of  worry 
on  the  part  of  intelligent  users  of  8-mm. 
and  16mm.  cameras.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  the  wartime  film-shortage  might 
well  prove  a  blessing  to  many  amateur 
movie  makers,  for  it  will  tend  to  make 
them  more  careful  and  perhaps  prove  to 
them  that  in  years  past  they  have  wasted 
many  hundreds  of  feet  of  film  on  un¬ 
necessary  shooting. 

From  my  own  experience  I  can  sin¬ 
cerely  say  that  it  is  possible  for  any 
amateur  to  come  up  with  just  as  much 
edited  footage  during  this  year’s  vaca¬ 
tion  period,  but  with  only  one-half  the 
usual  amount  of  film  actually  exposed  as 
in  prewar  years.  If  the  home  movie 
maker  will  adopt  the  slogan,  “more  fin¬ 
ished  picture  on  less  film,”  he  will  not 
only  come  back  from  his  vacation  with 
better  pictures,  but  also  at  considerably 
less  cost. 

The  secret  of  getting  plenty  of  ex¬ 
cellent  pictures  with  less  film  lies 
wholly  in  careful  planning.  The  ordin¬ 
ary  vacationer  starts  on  his  trip  with 
no  thought  of  what  he  is  going  to  film. 
In  prewar  days  he  went  to  his  photo¬ 
graphic  dealer,  bought  a  vast  amount  of 
film  and  started  out  prepared  to  shoot 
anything  and  everything  that  suited 
his  fancy;  he  would  come  upon  a  beau¬ 
tiful  and  breathtaking  vista:  out  would 
come  the  camera  and  he  would  grind  and 
grind  and  grind,  with  no  thought  of 
footage.  Around  the  next  turn  of  the 
road  he  would  stumble  across  another 
scene  still  more  gorgeous,  and  again 
he  would  over-shoot.  Throughout  his 
entire  vacation  he  would  expose  endless 
feet  of  film  whenever  he  turned  his 
lens  upon  an  interesting  subject. 

Vacation  over,  our  cameraman  would 
then  set  to  work  editing  his  film.  Then, 
and  only  then  he  would  discover  that  he 
had  to  throw  away  hundreds  of  feet 
of  film  or  else  have  a  slow,  dragging, 
boring  film  to  show  his  friends. 

My  suggestion  is  to  edit  your  pictures 
before  you  shoot  them.  If  you  do  that 
you  will  find  you  will  not  need  half 
the  film  you  have  used  in  the  past.  It 
is  a  simple  thing  to  do  if  you  make  up 
your  mind  to  it.  And  it  will  save  you 
money. 

A  good  way  to  set  about  this  is  to 
write  down  on  paper  the  things  you  want 
to  include  in  your  vacation  film.  You 
should  have  a  general  idea  of  where 
you  are  going  and  what  you  are  likely 


to  see,  so  it  should  not  be  difficult  to 
roughly  lay  out  your  “scenario”  or  plan. 
Next,  decide  the  length  you  think  you 
will  want  your  completed  film  to  run. 
Get  all  this  definitely  in  mind  before 
you  start  out. 

Then,  when  you  discover  a  bit  of 
scenic  beauty  you  want  to  shoot  decide 
how  much  footage  you  will  want  of  it  in 
your  edited  picture  before  you  start 
shooting.  If  you  decide  on  fifteen  feet, 
ten  feet  or  twenty-five  feet,  shoot  just 
that  and  no  more. 

If  you  happen  to  be  planning  to  at¬ 
tend  a  rodeo  on  your  trip,  plan  care¬ 
fully  and  watch  your  footage,  for  in 
the  excitement  of  the  occcasion  you  are 
likely  to  overshoot  greatly.  Most  ama¬ 
teurs  at  such  an  event  are  prone  to 
shoot  too  much  long-shot  material.  Most 
of  the  long-shots  are  eventually  thrown 
on  the  cutting  room  floor — so  why  shoot 
them? 

At  a  rodeo  I  would  suggest  you  check 
up  on  the  events  ahead  of  time.  Decide 
which  you  think  will  be  the  most  in¬ 
teresting.  Then  prepare  your  shooting 
outline  somewhat  like  this:  15-foot  pan 
shot  showing  the  crowd.  10-foot  med¬ 
ium-close  shot  of  horses  in  corral.  Eight- 
foot  medium-close  shot  of  riders  sitting 
on  corral  fence.  If  you  see  small  child 
peeking  through  the  fence,  get  a  4-foot 
close-up  of  him  for  human  interest.  If 
there  is  a  particularly  ferocious  bull 
nawing  up  dirt  and  snorting  in  a  corral, 
try  to  get  about  10  feet  of  him  as  close 
as  possible.  If  you  can’t  get  close,  don’t 
shoot  it.  Get  close  to  the  chute  out  of 
which  the  horses  come  into  the  arena 
and  make  five  to  10-foot  action  shots  as 
they  start  into  their  first  and  wildest 
bucking. 

If  you  see  a  rider  is  fairly  good,  hold 
your  shooting  until  the  horse  really 
gets  into  action.  Then  train  your  cam¬ 
era  on  him  and  get  about  ten  to  fifteen 
feet  of  that  action.  Usually  the  rider 
will  be  thrown  in  that  length  of  time — 
if  you  wait  for  the  horse  to  really  get 
seriously  bucking.  Don’t  start  shooting 
from  the  time  the  horse  and  rider  appear 
until  it  is  all  over.  Be  ready  for  acci¬ 
dents,  and  if  a  rider  is  down  and  about 
to  be  trampled  swing  your  camera  and 
get  that,  but  don’t  keep  on  shooting  after 
he  is  rescued. 

In  all  of  your  shooting,  whether  scenic 
or  action,  cut  down  on  your  long-shots 
and  get  more  close  and  medium-close 
shots.  You  should  long  ago  have  noticed 
that  in  the  making  of  professional  films, 
long-shots  are  only  used  to  establish  the 
action  or  locale,  after  which  the  cutter 
“moves  in”  to  closer  angles.  Follow  the 
same  procedure  in  making  your  films. 

That  it  is  very  feasible  to  determine 
the  length  of  each  shot  before  shooting 
is  being  proven  every  day  among  the 
smaller  independent  film  producers  of 


A  sequence  like  this  tells  its  story  of  a  chuck-wagon 
lunch  perfectly — and  with  a  little  planning,  you  can 
shoot  it  without  wasting  an  inch  of  film! 


Hollywood  who  are  compelled  to  make 
their  pictures  on  a  small  budget.  This 
writer,  away  back  in  1926,  first  had  oc¬ 
casion  to  use  this  system  in  directing  a 
series  of  one-reel  pictures  that  were  re¬ 
leased  by  the  then  well-known  Tiffany 
Company.  We  were  using  the  old  two- 
color  Technicolor  process,  and  were  mak¬ 
ing  the  pictures  on  almost  a  shoestring. 

In  those  days  the  negative  was  hyper- 
sensitized  in  Hollywood  and  had  to  be 
shipped  in  iced  containers  to  wherever 
it  was  to  be  used.  The  negative  cost 
fifty  cents  a  foot,  which  was  consider¬ 
able.  On  a  limited  budget  you  had  to 
figure  to  the  foot,  almost,  or  you  would 
lose  money.  You  ordered  just  what 
amount  you  needed.  If  you  had  any  left 
over  it  stood  a  good  chance  of  spoiling 
unless  you  kept  it  packed  in  ice  all  the 
time. 

When  I  prepared  to  make  the  first  of 
(Continued  on  Page  230) 


American  Cinematographer  •  June,  1943 


219 


CAMERA  EQUIPMENT  COMPANY  j 


IT  Si  2  IP  ©  ®  With  Removab. 

and  the 

Field  Developing  Kit  and  " 


The  New  Type  Removable  H 

★  The  new  removable  head  feature 
"Professional  Jr."  Tripod.  It  is  now  pc 
head  from  the  tripod  legs  base  by  simpl 
nut.  The  tripod  head  can  then  be  me 
for  low  setups. 

The  friction  type  head  gives  super-smo 
80°  tilt.  A  generous  sized  pin  and  tri 
"Spread-leg"  design  affords  utmost  ri 
ments.  A  "T"  level  is  built  into  this  sup« 
16mm  E.K.  Cine  Special,  with  or  withoi 
(with  motor),  and  with  or  without  alig 
ditionally  guaranteed  5  years.  More  < 
With  Removable  Head  is  contained  in 

The  Field  Dt 

★  The  kit  serves  as  a  portable  darkrc 
motion  picture  film  in  the  field  or  on  loi 
and  1000  ft.  Mitchell,  Bell  &  Howell  ai 
available  for  Cineflex  magazines.  The 
size  thermos  bottles  for  developer,  hyp 
data  will  be  sent  upon  request. 

"Professional  Jr."  Tripods,  Developing  I 
Camera  Equipment  Co.  are  used  by  tl 
Strategic  Services  and  other  Gov't  Agenc 
and  35mm  motion  picture  producers. 


FR 

(Tflni€Rfl  < 


NNOUNCES 


THE  NEW  TYPE 


C.  ZUCKER 

DUIPm€(lT  (o. 


i  Head 

[i-Hat" 


f " Professional  Jr."  Tripod 

Is  great  flexibility  to  the  versatile 
e  to  easily  remove  the  friction  type 
icrewing  a  finger-grip  head  fastening 
d  on  a  "Hi-Hat"  low-base  adaptor 


loping  Kit 

for  developing  hand  tests  of  35mm 
n.  The  kit  is  equipped  to  take  400  ft. 
'all  magazines.  A  special  adaptor  is 
loping  kit  is  furnished  with  3  special 
id  water.  More  complete  descriptive 


aan  and  tilt  action,  —  360°  pan  and 
n  assures  long,  dependable  service. 
/  and  quick,  positive  height  adjust- 
i  tripod.  The  top-plate  can  be  set  for 
)tor;  35mm  DeVry  and  B  &  H  Eyemo 
it  gauge.  The  tripod  head  is  uncon- 
about  the  "Professional  Jr."  Tripod 
ature  that  will  be  sent  upon  request. 


Hi-Hats"  and  Shiffover  Alignment  Gauges  made  by 
S.  Navy,  Army  Air  Bases,  Signal  Corps,  Office  of 
Iso  by  many  leading  Newsreel  companies  and  16mm 


" Hi-Hat "  and  Shiftover  Alignment  Gauge 

Illustrated  is  the  B  &  H  Eyemo  camera  mounted  on  the 
Shiftover  Alignment  Gauge  and  "Hi-Hat"  low-base  adaptor. 
The  "Hi-Hat"  low-base  adaptor  takes  the  "Professional  Jr." 
tripod  head  for  setups  where  the  tripod  legs  cannot  be  used. 
The  Shiftover  device  (designed  by  Camera  Equipment  Co.  and 
patent  applied  for),  is  the  finest,  lightest  and  most  efficient 
available  for  parallax  correction  for  the  Eyemo  Spider  Turret 
prismatic  focusing  type  camera.  The  male  of  the  Shiftover 
attaches  to  the  camera  base  permanently  and  permits  using  the 
regular  camera  handle  if  desired.  Further  data  about  the 
"Hi-Hat"  and  Shiftover  will  be  sent  upon  request. 


VJfl O'UL  about  "Sthobo-SipUL' 

By  S.  JEPSON, 

Secretary  Amateur  Cine  Society  of  India 


IN  recent  issues  of  The  American 
Cinematographer  I  have  read  arti¬ 
cles  by  D.  Lisle  Conway  and  others 
regarding  the  stroboscopic  method  of 
synchronizing  16mm.  and  8mm.  films 
with  sound-on-disc.  These  interested 
me  very  much,  as  we  out  here  in  Bombay 
have  done  quite  a  bit  of  successful  work 
with  this  easiest  and  least  expensive 
method  of  adding  sound  to  silent  ama¬ 
teur  films.  And  since  Mr.  Conway  asked 
for  any  further  information  on  the  sub¬ 
jects  from  other  amateurs  who  have  in¬ 
vestigated  this  system,  here  are  a  few 
practical  tips  from  our  experience  which 
may  help  other  amateurs  overcome  their 
difficulties. 

For  example,  with  some  of  the  lighter 
recorders  put  up  in  portable  form,  there 
is  a  difference  between  the  recording  and 
play-back  times.  This  is  obviously  due 
to  the  fact  that  during  recording  the 
steel  needle  is  cutting,  but  when  playing, 
the  needle  is,  of  course,  merely  riding  in 
the  groove.  I  have  found  this  cutting 
lag  (shall  we  call  it?)  to  vary  as  much 
as  10%  to  20%  over  the  play-back 
timings.  There  is  also  a  slight  variation 
between  the  lag  on  the  outside  and  inside 
of  the  disc,  though  for  practical  pur¬ 
poses  this  may  be  disregarded,  provided 
you  do  not  cut  right  into  the  middle  of 
the  disc  near  the  label. 

I  have  therefore  found  it  desirable  to 
take  time  with  a  stop-watch  when  cutting 
with  a  strobo-synced  disc.  The  play¬ 
back  time  is  then  noted,  and  I  keep  an 
assortment  of  strobo-discs  and  can  work 
out  mathematically  from  the  lag  what 
disc  will  be  required  for  synchronization 
in  playing. 

This  sounds  a  little  complicated,  but 
in  reality  it  is  not,  and  will  enable  exact 
synchronization  to  be  achieved  even 
when  there  is  this  irritating  difference 


between  cutting  and  play-back  time.  I 
have  found  that  a  difference  of  three  bars 
in  the  play-back  stroboscope  will  meet  the 
case,  and  if,  for  instance,  I  cut  with  a 
39-bar  strobe  I  can  play-back  on  36 
bars  to  the  circle.  I  had  an  artist  make 
me  up  a  set  of  master  strobe  discs  rang¬ 
ing  from  35  to  42  bars,  and  made  nega¬ 
tives  of  these  so  that  I  can  make  photo¬ 
graphic  prints  either  by  contact  or  en¬ 
largement  to  stick  onto  the  records.  If 
you  don’t  want  to  go  to  the  trouble  of 
photographing  the  drawing,  you  can  have 
it  made  with  India  ink  on  tracing-paper, 
which  can  be  used  as  a  negative  for 
printing. 

Another  method  of  compensation  is 
to  cut  at  80  r.p.m.  and  play  back  at,  say, 
76  r.p.m.  by  having  a  spare  pulley  for 
the  friction  drive  of  the  recorder  trans¬ 
mission  below  the  plate.  I  have  arrived 
at  this  method  and  find  that  if  I  cut  at 
80  r.p.m.  I  get  a  correct  pitch  of  voice. 
If  the  voice  seems  too  high,  the  play¬ 
back  time  is  too  fast,  of  course.  When 
using  two  turntable-speeds  in  this  way, 
one  of  course  keeps  the  same  strobe  disc. 

Another  uncertain  factor  is  that  after 
playing  some  scores  of  times  the  play¬ 
back  time  increases  with  these  soft 
acetate  discs.  Therefore  it  is  necessary 
to  put  the  original  play-back  time  on  the 
label,  and  check  it  after  some  months. 
All  one  has  to  do  then  is  to  fit  a  strobo- 
disc  which  permits  a  slightly  slower  rate 
of  playing  for  synchronization. 

I  imagine  this  difference  is  due  to  the 
fact  that  the  grooves  become  polished 
by  the  needle.  I  have  had  some  discs 
over  a  year  and  played  them  hundreds  of 
times  (they  are  still  very  good  except 
where  scratched  with  side-slipping)  and 
after  I  have  altered  the  strobe  for  this 
wear-and-tear  adjustment  I  have  not 
found  it  necessary  to  do  so  a  second  time. 


The  weight  of  the  pick-up  head  is  im¬ 
portant,  because  if  it  is  too  heavy  the 
needle  will  not  travel  on  these  discs,  or 
may  damage  the  grooves,  while  the  wear 
on  the  disc  will  almost  certainly  be  in¬ 
creased.  This  weight  may  be  reduced 
either  by  a  small  spring  at  the  end  of 
the  pick-up  arm,  or  by  a  counterpoise 
weight  to  lighten  the  weight  of  the  pick¬ 
up  end  of  the  arm.  Trailer  needles, 
which  have  a  bend  in  the  middle,  will 
track  on  heavier  pick-ups  without 
trouble.  Thorn  or  cactus  needles  are 
good  for  drawing-room  work,  but  lack 
the  volume  of  metal  needles  for  large 
halls.  The  thorn  must  also  be  of  the 
right  shape,  and  not  too  finely  pointed  or 
it  will  break. 

Mr.  Conway  illuminates  his  strobo 
by  a  mirror  near  the  projector’s  gate. 
If  the  light  spilled  from  the  gate  does 
not  come  through  the  shutter  movement, 
then  this  idea  will  not  work.  And  in 
some  projectors  in  which  the  shutter  is 
placed  in  front  of,  rather  than  behind 
the  gate,  the  light  is  spilled  from  the 
gate,  but  not  through  the  shutter.  (The 
old  Eastman  “Model  A”  is  an  example 
of  this.) 

A  better  idea  is  to  place  a  piece  of 
optical  glass  (an  old  negative,  perfectly 
clean)  in  front  of  the  lens.  The  picture 
can  then  go  through  to  the  screen,  while 
an  image  reflected  from  the  front  of  the 
glass  can  be  thrown  onto  the  turntable, 
providing  sufficient  light  for  lighting  the 
disc.  If  the  optical  quality  of  the  glass 
is  good,  the  focus  of  the  projected  pic¬ 
ture  should  not  be  affected  (most  thea¬ 
tres  project  through  a  glass  window, 
you  know)  and  there  should  not  be  any 
noticeable  loss  of  light  in  the  projected 
image.  If  the  focus  or  illumination  should 
be  affected,  this  glass  can  be  so  placed 
that  it  can  be  removed,  or  merely  placed 
in  position  now  and  again  to  test  synchro¬ 
nization  or  to  resynchronize  if  the  speed 
has  been  altered  to  make  up  lost  time 
through  picture  and  record  getting  out 
of  step.  This  method  is  simple  and  very 
effective,  and  the  phonograph  turntable 
can  even  be  placed  at  the  side. 

In  a  small  room  the  turntable  can 
be  illuminated  from  screen  flicker  itself, 
and  can  thus  be  placed  near  the  screen. 

(Continued  on  Page  228) 


222  June,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


There  may  be 
Fewer  Pictures 
and 

Better  Pictures 


Certainly,  then  — 

The  Better  Pictures 
are  photographed  with 

EASTMAN 

NEGATIVES 

Because 

there  will  never  be  a 

BETTER  NEGATIVE 

unless  it’s  made  by 

EASTMAN 


J.  E.  BRULATOUR,  Int. 
DISTRIBUTORS 

EASTMAN  FILMS 


AMONG  THE  MOVIE  CLUBS 


7  Clubs  Meet  Jointly  in  L.  A. 

On  Tuesday  evening,  May  11th,  the 
Los  Angeles  8mm.  Club  held  a  joint 
meeting  with  the  Water  &  Power  Cam¬ 
era  Club,  a  group  composed  entirely  of 
employees  of  the  Los  Angeles  Dept,  of 
Water  &  Power.  The  spacious  Southern 
California  Edison  Auditorium  had  been 
donated  for  the  evening  and  invitations 
extended  to  neighboring  clubs,  including 
the  L.  A.  Cinema  Club,  the  Cine  Club 
of  Glendale,  the  La  Casa  Moviemakers 
of  Alhambra,  the  Southwest  8mm.  Club, 
and  the  Long  Beach  Cinema  Club,  all  of 
which  sent  sizeable  delegations,  resulted 
in  a  packed  house. 

The  meeting  opened  with  the  singing 
of  our  National  Anthem.  Hereupon  fol¬ 
lowed  the  screening  of  visiting  fellow 
members  prize  winning  films.  Shown 
were:  “South  Sea  Island  Fever”  by 
Newell  Tune;  “American  Indians”  by 
Mrs.  Mildred  Zimmerman ;  “Ten  Gal¬ 
lons  of  Gas”  by  Leo  Caloia;  all  mem¬ 
bers  of  the  Los  Angeles  Cinema  Club. 
“Utah — Land  of  Enchantment”  by  D.  A. 
Powell,  of  the  La  Casa  Movie  Club  of 
Alhambra;  “Mr.  X”  by  Norman  L. 
Brown,  President  of  the  Cine  Club  of 
Glendale;  “Calumet’s  Xmas  Contest”  by 
Mrs.  Jean  Holbrook  of  the  Southwest 
8mm.  Club. 

The  program  wound  up  with  the  show¬ 
ing  of  two  professional  16mm.  sound 
films  in  Kodachrome:  “Railroadin’,”  a 
thrilling  picture  on  the  railroads  of  the 
nation,  produced  by  Jack  Boland,  who 
was  introduced,  and  “Curves  of  Color,” 
by  General  Electric,  depicting  the  latest 
development  in  the  matching  and  record¬ 
ing  of  color  graphically. 

A.  W.  APEL, 
Secretary-Treasurer. 

Philly,  Norristown,  Exchange 
Honors 

The  old  adage  “Variety  is  the  Spice  of 
Life”  works  for  movie  club  programs. 
To  add  variety  to  a  neighboring  club’s 
program  is  not  as  difficult  as  the  sug¬ 


gestion  seems.  Last  month  the  Philadel¬ 
phia  Cinema  Club  arranged  a  program 
for  our  neighboring  club  in  Norristown. 

The  Cinema  Club  of  Norristown  reci¬ 
procated  with  a  program  at  the  May 
meeting  of  the  P.C.C.  Highlighting  the 
evening’s  entertainment  were  “Nassau,” 
8mm.,  by  Pres.  Julian  W.  Barnard; 
“This  Is  Florida,”  16mm.,  by  Vice-Pres. 
and  Mrs.  Oscar  Rahn;  “Christmas,” 
8mm.,  by  Merrill  Bean,  and  “Scenes  of 
Pennsylvania,”  16mm.,  by  Linford  Um- 
stead. 

The  fine  films  shown  at  our  meeting 
justify  the  pride  which  Norristown  has 
in  her  amateur  movie  group.  This  in¬ 
ter-club  co-operation  has  resulted  in  a 
program  for  each  club  with  the  mini¬ 
mum  of  effort,  better  club  relations,  new 
friendships  formed  and  above  all,  an  in¬ 
teresting  meeting  which  will  long  be  re¬ 
membered  and  perhaps  become  an  event 
to  look  forward  to  annually. 

One  of  the  problems  which  faces  all 
movie  clubs  is  that  of  obtaining  mem¬ 
bers’  films  to  show  at  meetings.  Most 
members  seem  to  have  the  same  obses¬ 
sion — fear  of  criticism.  A  member  may 
say,  “I  would  like  your  criticism  of  my 
film.”  The  sad  part  of  it  is  that  he 
wants  your  help  but  receives  instead  a 
hurt  to  his  pride.  A  solution  to  this 
problem  may  be  found  in  a  film  rating 
sheet,  wherein  a  member  receives  an 
average  and  will  try  for  a  better  score 
on  his  next  film.  The  technical  commit¬ 
tee  could  use  this  sheet  in  an  informative 
manner  to  aid  the  filmer  in  improving 
his  work. 

The  Philadelphia  Cinema  Club  has 
such  a  sheet  that  has  worked  out  quite 
well  for  our  club  and  we  would  be  happy 
to  co-operate  in  standardizing  a  film 
rating  plan  among  all  movie  clubs.  If 
interested,  please  contact:  George  Pitt¬ 
man,  1808  E.  Tulpehocken  St.,  Philadel¬ 
phia,  Pa.  FRANCIS  M.  HIRST 

Prize  Films  in  Syracuse 

The  May  4th  meeting  of  the  Syracuse 


Left:  Long  Beach  Cinema  Club  officials  christen  the 
first  sound-projector  owned  by  an  American  amateur 
club.  Left  to  right,  President  Claude  Evans,  "Assist- 
ant-secretary"  Pat  Smith,  Clarence  Aldrich,  Treasurer 
A.  W.  Nash,  Vice-President  Mildred  Caldwell,  and 
Secretary  Lorin  Smith;  photo  by  Cliff  Lothrop.  Right, 
above,  officers  of  the  Norristown  Cinema  Club  who 
conducted  the  May  meeting  of  the  Philadelphia 
Cinema  Club.  Left  to  right:  Vice-Pres.  Oscar  Rahn; 
President  John  W.  Barnard,  and  Secretary-Treasurer 
Wilbur  Harris.  Below,  P.  C.  C.  officials.  Standing, 
Francis  M.  Hirst,  Publications;  Dr.  Robert  Haentie, 
Technical;  Adolph  Pemsel,  Program;  William  Brink 
and  Wilmer  Coles,  Executive,  and  Herbert  E.  Moore, 
Membership.  Seated:  Secretary  James  R.  Maucher; 
President  George  Pittman;  Vice-Pres.  Arthur  Hurth, 
and  Treas.  Herbert  L.  Tindall;  photo  by  H.  E.  Moore. 

Movie  Makers’  Assn,  was  featured  by  a 
comparison  of  members’  cameras,  tabu¬ 
lating  the  good  and  bad  features  of  each 
type  in  the  same  way  projectors  were 
compared  and  tabulated  at  a  recent 
meeting.  At  the  May  18th  meeting,  three 
films  from  the  library  of  The  American 
Cinematographer  were  screened.  These 
were  “Solar  Pelexus,”  “Ritual  of  the 
Dead,”  and  “To  the  Ships  of  Sydney,” 
all  International  Prize-winners  from 
A.S.C.  amateur  contests.  The  Club,  by 
the  way,  is  also  launching  its  own  pub¬ 
lication,  a  4-page  mimeographed  jour¬ 
nal,  “The  Viewfinder,”  announcing  and 
chronicling  club  activities. 

HARRIS  RUSSELL 

Right  and  Wrong  in 
Indianapolis 

Dr.  Wm.  E.  Gabe  was  host  at  the 
April  21st  meeting  of  the  Indianapolis 
Amateur  Movie  Club.  He  showed  sev¬ 
eral  of  his  clever  films,  including  “Right 
and  Wrong,”  an  800-ft.  Kodachrome 
(16mm.)  showing  all  the  wrong  things 
to  do  in  exposing  Kodachrome,  followed 
by  the  right  way  to  do  the  same  scene; 
“Potpourri,”  a  clever  and  very  interest¬ 
ing  film  showing  what  can  be  done  with 
odds  and  ends  of  film  such  as  all  ama¬ 
teurs  accumulate;  and  “Spring  Mill 
Park,”  a  beautiful  job  of  photographing 


224  June,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


£till  in  Hclltfioccd 

Manufacturing  motion  picture  lighting  equip¬ 
ment  and  accessories  has  been  our  business  in  the 
past.  Manufacturing  the  same  equipment’  for  Uncle 
Sam  will  be  our  business  for  the  duration.  We  want 
our  friends  to  know  that  we  are  still  in  Hollywood 
and  operating  on  a  bigger  scale  than  ever,  but 
devoting  our  entire  facilities  to  the  production  of 
war  materials. 

Final  victory  and  the  peace  which  follows  will  find 
us  carrying  on  with  the  same  service  to 
our  friends  and  clients. 


Bardwell  &  McAlister,  inc. 

DESIGNERS  AND  MANUFACTURERS 

7636  SANTA  MONICA  BOULEVARD 
HOLLYWOOD 


American  Cinematographer  •  June,  1943  225 


Movie  Clubs 

(Continued  from  Page  224) 

one  of  Indiana’s  most  photogenic  parks, 
showing  it  isn’t  necessary  to  travel  long 
distances  to  get  a  picture  with  audience 
appeal.  Also  shown  was  the  new  16mm. 
sound-film,  “A  Day  at  War  in  Russia.” 
ELMER  M.  CULBERTSON, 
Corresponding  Secretary. 


Pie  and  Ice  in  Pittsburgh 

The  April  meetings  of  the  North  End 
Cinema  Club  of  Pittsburgh  were  fea¬ 
tured  by  Jerry  Miller  and  William 
Hager. 

Jerry  Miller  presented  an  interesting 
program  on  care  of  your  equipment. 
Mr.  Miller’s  program  was  timely  since 
we  must  take  care  of  our  cameras  and 
projectors  more  than  ever  during  these 
times. 

“The  Ice  Follies  of  1943”  was  William 
Hager’s  presentation.  A  picture  in 
16mm.  Kodachrome  in  which  he  collab¬ 
orated  with  another  member,  Frank 
Rimolt.  Mr.  Hager  also  showed  his 
hilarious  comedy,  “The  Modern  Pieneer,” 
a  black  and  white  film  on  “How  not  to 
bake  a  pie.”  A  baker  by  trade,  he  should 
know,  and  has  put  it  very  nicely  on  film. 

Several  of  the  club  members  are  mak¬ 
ing  “Victory  Garden”  pictures  and  Jerry 
Miller  has  consented  to  write  a  script. 

GUS  WOLFF 

Sol  Polito 

(Continued  from  Page  212) 

old  Victor  Company,  which  was  a  sub¬ 
sidiary  of  his  Universal.  There  were  no 
such  things  as  Assistant  Cameramen 
back  in  those  days,  but  Tony  was  gener¬ 
ous  enough  to  take  an  ambitious  young 
Italian  boy  like  me  under  his  wing 
as  a  sort  of  combination  protege-appren¬ 
tice,  and  teach  him  the  camera  business. 

“Don’t  imagine  from  that,  though,  that 
I  had  any  official  standing  with  the 
company!  I  didn’t.  If  I  wanted  to  come 
along  with  Tony  and  help  him  “for 
free,”  while  I  learned  what  I  could 
about  camerawork,  that  was  all  right. 
But  as  for  paying  me  a  salary,  or 
even  giving  me  any  official  considera¬ 
tion  from  the  company,  that  was  an¬ 
other  thing  entirely. 

“Most  of  the  pictures  were  made  out¬ 
doors,  on  location,  in  those  days.  And 
as  I  wasn’t  a  regular  member  of  the 
troupe,  there  naturally  wasn’t  any  place 
for  me  in  the  company  cars  that  drove 
the  troupe  to  the  day’s  location.  Some¬ 
times,  when  I  was  very  lucky,  I  might 
perhaps  be  permitted  standing-room  on 
the  running-board.  Much  more  often, 
I  paid  my  own  way  to  the  location  by 
trolley-car,  and  supplied  my  own  box- 
lunch  into  the  bargain.  Sometimes  I 
even  hitch-hiked. 

“But  I  learned!  And  it  wasn’t  so 
very  long  before  I  had  learned  enough 
so  that — by  the  easy-going  standards 
of  1913,  at  least — I  was  a  fully-qualified 
cameraman. 


“Then  I  got  my  first  pay  job,  as  a 
cameraman  for  the  IMP  (Independent 
Motion  Picture)  Company,  which  was 
the  producing  branch  of  the  Universal 
organization.  Andre  Barlatier,  A.S.C., 
was  the  company’s  Chief  Cameraman, 
and  I  stayed  there  for  about  a  year. 

“The  reason  for  my  leaving  the  IMP 
Studio  sounds  funny  today,  but  it  was 
deadly  serious  then.  We  had  been  mak¬ 
ing  our  interiors  with  Cooper-Hewitt 
mercury-vapor  floodlights.  Then  some 
of  the  first  arcs  were  introduced — the 
old  ‘Aristo’  overhead  arc  floodlights,  and 
some  of  the  pioneer  arc  spotlights.  On 
one  scene  I  decided  to  try  what  we  would 
now  call  an  effect-lighting.  That  is,  I 
used  one  of  the  arcs  to  cast  strong  shad¬ 
ows  on  the  set.  When  the  rushes  came 
through,  the  executive  were  furious  .  .  . 
the  shadows,  they  said,  distracted  atten¬ 
tion  from  the  actors,  and  ruined  the 
scene!  The  upshot  of  it  was  that  I  was 
fired.  Yet  today  it’s  traditional  among 
cinematographers  that  they’re  paid  more 
for  the  shadows  they  create  than  for  the 
highlights ! 

“But  if  IMP  didn’t  want  me,  Biograph 
— then  the  foremost  of  those  early-day 
producing  organizations — did.  I  stayed 
there  for  some  time  and  a  very  pleas¬ 
ant  association  it  was. 

“When  Biograph  moved  to  the  Coasts  I 
stayed  in  New  York,  joining  the  World 
Film  Co.,  founded  by  David  0.  Selz- 
nick’s  father,  the  late  Lewis  J.  Selznick. 
Among  the  interesting  experiences  I  had 
there  was  photographing  a  picture  star¬ 
ring  Lillian  Russell. 

“After  a  while,  though — I  think  it 
was  about  1918  or  1919 — I  decided  to 
come  out  to  Hollywood,  as  the  more 
and  more  of  studios  were  beginning  to 
move  to  the  coast.  My  first  job  after 
reaching  Hollywood  was  a  little  ten-day 
‘quickie’  starring  Lew  Cody.  It  really 
was  a  twenty-day  picture  made  in  ten, 
for  we  worked  day  and  night,  trying  to 
get  out  with  the  picture  in  time  to  ‘beat' 
a  rather  sensational  divorce  trial  then 
monopolizing  the  headlines,  and  upon 
which  the  picture  was  based. 

“I  was  nearly  a  wreck  when  that  pic¬ 
ture  was  finished  .  .  .  but  the  hard  work 
proved  profitable,  for  Jack  Pickford  saw 
the  picture  and  decided  that  if  I  could 
do  that  well  on  a  ten-day  ‘quikie,’  I  could 
certainly  do  much  better  on  the  longer 
schedules  his  pictures  offered.  So  my 
first  major  job  on  the  coast  was,  oddly 
enough,  with  the  First  National  Com¬ 
pany,  which  is  now  a  part  of  the  Warner 
Brothers’  organization,  and  through 
which  Jack’s  pictures  were  released. 

“The  next  few  years  after  this  we 
spent  free-lancing,  like  many  another 
cameraman.  I  worked  a  while  at  the 
old  Metro  studio  .  .  .  then  spent  several 
years  with  Edwin  Carewe,  who  released 
through  First  National  .  .  .  then  more 
free-lancing  on  both  big  pictures  and 
little  ones,  until  I  made  a  connection 
with  Hunt  Stromberg,  who  had  just 
started  producing  on  a  very  thin  shoe¬ 
string.  After  a  while  Stromberg  was 
joined  by  Charles  R.  Rogers,  and  our 
organization  became  more  stable. 

“In  due  time,  the  Rogers  producing 


unit  moved  over  to  First  National,  and 
when,  after  a  time,  he  left  First  Na¬ 
tional,  I  stayed  on  there,  doing  all  kinds 
of  pictures,  big  and  little.  Among  them 
were  a  number  of  westerns  with  Ken 
Maynard,  who  was  one  of  First  Nation¬ 
al’s  top  boxoffice  stars.  The  experience 
I  gained  in  making  those  pictures  was  to 
come  in  handy  nearly  twenty  years  la¬ 
ter,  when  I  made  such  deLuxe  super- 
modem  westerns  as  ‘Dodge  City’  and 
‘Gold  Is  Where  You  Find  It’  for  War¬ 
ners,  in  Technicolor,  and  other  similar 
pictures  in  black-and-white  with  Errol 
Flynn. 

“As  time  went  on,  sound  came  in, 
and  then  Warner  Brothers  absorbed 
First  National — and  still  I’ve  remained 
on  the  same  lot.  All  told,  since  I  came 
to  First  National  with  Jack  Pickford, 
I’ve  been  just  twenty-three  years  with 
First  National  and  Warner  Bros.,  which 
I  believe  comes  pretty  close  to  a  record 
for  staying  at  one  studio.  It’s  interest¬ 
ing  to  look  back  on  those  old  pictures 
I  did  twenty  years  ago,  and  on  the  still 
eai’lier  ‘flickers’  I  did  with  IMP  and 
Biograph,  and  compare  them  with  a  big, 
midern  picture  like  ‘Sergeant  York’  or 
‘This  Is  the  Army,’  which  I’m  now 
photographing  in  Technicolor.  Things 
have  certainly  changed — and  I  think  that 
we  cinematographers  have,  on  the  whole, 
managed  to  keep  pace  with  those 
changes  as  well  as,  or  maybe  even  a 
bit  better  than  any  other  group  in  the 
industry. 

“For  example,  while  quite  a  few  of  the 
men  who  had  been  front-rank  cinema¬ 
tographers  in  silent  pictures  dropped 
back  professionally  when  sound  came  in, 
and  a  proportionate  number  of  new  cam¬ 
era  talent  came  to  the  top  as  a  result 
of  the  change,  I  think  that  cameramen, 
as  a  class,  suffered  less  by  this  transi¬ 
tion  than  did  the  actors,  directors, 
writers  and  others.  And  certainly  we  all 
agree  today  that  the  foresight  and  cour¬ 
age  the  Warner  brothers  showed  in 
championing  sound  as  they  did  lifted  the 
entire  industry  out  of  the  doldrums,  both 
artistically  and  as  a  medium  of  enter¬ 
tainment.  You  have  only  to  try  and 
visualize  how  empty  any  of  today’s  pic¬ 
tures  would  be  if  the  element  of  sound 
were  removed,  to  realize  how  much  sound 
has  meant  to  the  motion  picture. 

“But  at  the  time  of  transition,  it  was 
a  hard  and  bitter  dose  to  swallow,  for  it 
meant  un-learning  a  lot  of  what  we 
thought  was  unchangeably  basic  tech¬ 
nique,  and  learning  a  lot  of  new  and 
strange  facts  and  methods  of  working. 
In  some  ways,  this  change  was  hardest 
for  the  cinematographers,  for  they  had 
to  accustom  themselves  not  only  to  the 
medium  of  sound  itself,  but  to  new  types 
of  film,  new  lamps,  new  methods  of 
lighting,  and,  in  fact,  an  entire  new  sys¬ 
tem  of  camerawork. 

“I’m  convinced  that  a  very  important 
part  in  this  has  been  played  by  the 
various  organizations  through  which 
cinematographers  have  been  brought  to¬ 
gether  to  interchange  ideas  and  tech¬ 
nical  information,  and  to  establish  pro¬ 
fessional  and  technical  standards  of 


226  June,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


ONCE  ONLY 


EASTMAN  Negative  Films,  with  their  high 
degree  of  uniformity,  make  it  easy  to 
confine  the  "takes”  to  one  to  each  scene 
...helping  to  close  the  gap  between  foot¬ 
age  exposed  and  footage  used.  Eastman 
Kodak  Company,  Rochester,  N.  Y. 

J.  E.  BRULATOUR,  INC.,  Distributors 

Fort  Lee  Chicago  Hollywood 


PLIJS-X  SUPER-XX 

for  general  stadio  ase  alien  little  light  is  available 

BACKGROUND-X 

for  backgrounds  and  general  exterior  u-ork 

EASTMAN  NEGATIVE  FILMS 


American  Cinematographer  •  June,  1943  227 


achievement.  I  was  a  member  of  the 
old  Cinema  Camera  Club  in  New  York 
— the  pioneer  organization  which  first 
attempted  to  bring  the  cameramen  from 
the  different  studios  together  to  develop 
professional  fellowship.  When  I  came 
to  California,  well,  I  can’t  lay  claim  to 
having  been  one  of  the  Charter  Mem¬ 
bers  of  the  A.S.C.,  but  I  am  proud  that 
I  was  admitted  to  membership  very  soon 
after,  in  the  summer  of  1919,  and  I 
have  been  a  member  ever  since.  I 
know  my  own  work  is  the  better  for 
what  I’ve  learned  from  my  fellow  cine¬ 
matographers  at  A.S.C.  meetings,  and 
for  the  improvements  in  equipment  and 
materials  which  have  resulted  directly 
or  indirectly  from  the  forward-pressing 
influence  of  the  Society  and  its  mem¬ 
bers.  And  after  more  than  twenty-four 
years,  I  think  that  influence  is  only 
just  beginning  to  bear  its  full  fruit,  for 
there  are  greater  problems  to  be  met, 
and  greater  improvements  to  be  made, 
than  ever  before.  END. 

Preparation 

(Continued  from  Page  211) 

ally  went  through  the  evacuation  of  Java 
as  were  available  have  been  interviewed 
personally;  cineamateurs  will  probably 
be  interested  to  know  that  even  8mm. 
Kodachrome  movies  of  Java  (including 
some  scenes  of  the  evacuation)  shot  by 
a  Dutch  merchant  marine  captain,  have 
been  repeatedly  studied. 

All  told,  an  incredible  number  of  de¬ 
tailed  files  on  every  possible  phase  of  the 
entire  subject  have  been  painstakingly 
built  up,  analyzed  and  broken  down  by 
Salven  to  provide  the  rest  of  us  with  the 
most  authentic  data  possible  concerning 
every  detail  of  the  picture. 

Meantime,  art  director  Anderson  and 
costume-designer  Visai't  have  also  been 
studying  the  data  concerning  their  spe¬ 
cialties.  Anderson,  for  example,  had 
to  master  a  detailed  knowledge  of  the 
Chinese  and  Javanese  locations — towns, 
roadsides,  docks,  homes,  and  even  ships 
— While  Miss  Visart  studied  not  only 
the  costumes  of  the  natives,  the  Dutch 
and  other  civilians  and  the  American 
military  and  naval  personnel  who  par¬ 
ticipated,  but  even  the  precise,  clinical 
details  of  the  bandages  worn  by  the 
wounded  under  Dr.  Wassell’s  care.  Few 
people  other  than  doctors  and  nurses  will 
probably  notice  it  on  the  screen,  but  as 
the  actors  who  play  the  parts  of  wounded 
sailors  and  civilians  progress  through 
their  parts,  they  will  appear  in  surgic¬ 
ally  correct  reproductions  of  the  band¬ 
ages  real  wounded  men  would  wear  at 
the  same  stage  of  their  progress  from 
field  dressing-station  to  field  hospital  to 
base  hospital,  and  thence  through  the 
various  stages  of  convalescence  and  re¬ 
covery. 

At  the  same  time,  working  closely  with 
Mr.  De  Mille,  Anderson,  Salven  and  I 
begin  breaking  each  scene  and  sequence 
of  the  script  into  its  component  camera 
set-ups.  Anderson  first  draws  a  master 
sketch  of  the  scene — usually  embracing 
the  basic  long-shot  angle.  Then  he 
breaks  this  down  into  the  component 


closer  angles.  These  sketches  are  smaller, 
but  quite  detailed.  Arranged  in  their 
proper  order,  they  show  the  entire  visual 
progression  of  the  sequence;  in  the  case 
of  boom  or  dolly  shots,  of  course,  only 
the  start  and  finish,  and  perhaps  a  few 
key  intermediate  positions  are  sketched 
out.  These  form  what  might  be  called 
a  rough  working  blueprint  of  the  scene 
as  it  will  appear  on  the  screen.  They 
are  not  followed  slavishly,  of  course: 
perhaps  actual,  physical  conditions  on  the 
set  may  lead  to  minor  deviations  from 
the  planned  sketch.  An  actor  cast  for 
a  certain  part  may  be  taller  or  shorter 
than  we  had  visualized  when  we  made 
the  final  sketch,  or  it  may  be  more  con¬ 
venient  or  dramatically  better  to  place 
him  or  the  camera  a  bit  differently  from 
the  way  we  had  planned  to.  But  in  gen¬ 
eral,  those  sketches  serve  as  a  remark¬ 
ably  accurate  guide  to  what  all  of  us 
will  do  on  the  set — where  Mr.  De  Mille 
will  play  his  action,  and  how,  and  what 
basic  angles  and  compositions  I  will  use, 
and  so  on. 

This  method  permits  us  all  to  study 
the  picture  in  advance,  and  in  the  many 
conferences  which  thresh  out  each  scene 
and  set-up  in  detail,  we  can  and  do  elim¬ 
inate  unnecessary  scenes,  sets  and  action 
— sometimes  eliminating  them  entirely, 
and  sometimes  telescoping  that  action 
into  parts  of  other  scenes.  All  this  long 
before  the  sets  are  actually  built. 

When  actual  construction  starts,  An¬ 
derson  knows  how  I  am  planning  to 
light  and  photograph  each  scene  and 
set-up,  while  I  know  to  a  nicety  just 
what  sort  of  a  set  I  am  going  to  be 
working  on.  Thus  we  can  coordinate 
our  efforts.  We  have  one  sequence,  for 
example,  played  in  a  Dutch  hospital.  It 
probably  won’t  be  shot  for  a  month  or 
so  yet,  but  already  we  know  just  how  it 
will  be  treated.  Anderson  knows  from 
what  directions  my  basic  lighting  will 
come,  and  how  I  plan  to  orient  my  closer 
shots.  On  my  part,  I  know  there  will  be 
open  windows  and  skylights  here,  and 
opaque  walls  there.  I  know  that  at  cer¬ 
tain  points  Anderson  is  providing  remov¬ 
able  ceiling-panels,  to  facilitate  my  light¬ 
ing.  I  know  that  certain  of  the  walls 
will  be  solid,  and  others  will  be  “wild,” 
and  probably  of  fabric,  to  facilitate  re¬ 
moving  them.  We  know  that  in  one  set¬ 
up,  I  will  have  to  shoot  at  an  extremely 
low  angle,  from  underneath  a  cot.  The 
three-film  Technicolor  camera  is  pretty 
big,  so  we’ve  provided  a  special  cot  with 
telescoping  extension  legs,  so  that  it  can 
be  raised  to  clear  the  bulky  camera.  By 
removing  a  couple  of  pins  the  cot  sep¬ 
arates  into  two  pieces,  so  that  we  can 
dolly  right  up  to  and  past  it  without 
waiting  for  special  modifications  on  the 
set. 

These  sketches,  by  the  way,  are  made 
not  only  in  color,  but  in  precisely  the 
colors  of  the  actual  sets  and  props.  This 
is  naturally  important  on  a  Technicolor 
picture,  but  we  do  it  when  working  in 
black-and-white,  too.  De  Mille  wants  to 
know  just  how  everything  will  look  on 
the  actual  set — and  he  turns  to  me  con¬ 
stantly  with  the  question,  “How  will  this 
photograph?”  whether  we’re  working  in 
monochrome  or  color.  Under  this  system, 


there  are  no  waits  on  the  set  while  this 
detail  or  that  are  spray-painted  while 
the  overhead  mounts  merrily  up. 

At  the  same  time,  Roy  Hunter  and  I 
are  working  out  the  strictly  phototech- 
nical  problems.  For  instance,  we  have 
some  low-angle  shots  for  which  the 
lens  must  be  lowered  to  the  floor  than  is 
usually  possible  with  a  Technicolor  out¬ 
fit.  Therefore  a  special  underslung 
boom-head  is  being  obtained.  In  another 
scene,  we  have  a  regular  Gregg  Toland 
“pan-focus”  shot  to  be  done  on  an  ex¬ 
tremely  big  set,  with  the  necessity  of 
obtaining  sharp  definition  in  a  close  shot 
of  Gary  Cooper — less  than  eight  feet 
from  the  lens — and  carrying  equally 
sharp  definition  to  action  around  a  huge 
Buddha  more  than  sixty  feet  from  the 
lens.  In  black-and-white  this  might  be 
done  by  over-lighting  and  stopping  down 
a  short-focus  lens  until  the  desired 
depth  was  obtained.  In  Technicolor, 
with  its  slower  emulsions,  this  can’t  be 
done.  The  nature  of  the  scene  prohibits 
split-screen  double-exposure.  So  we  are 
designing  a  special  bifocal  lens — on  pre¬ 
cisely  the  same  principle  as  a  pair  of  bi¬ 
focal  spectacles — in  which  the  lower  seg¬ 
ment  will  be  comparatively  long-focus 
objective — say  a  3-inch — to  give  us  the 
big-head  shot  of  Cooper  in  the  fore¬ 
ground,  while  the  upper  segment  will  be  a 
shorter-focus  lens  focused  on  the  back¬ 
ground.  The  position  and  shape  of  the 
blend  between  the  two  will  be  suited,  of 
course,  to  the  nature  of  the  scene’s 
action. 

All  told,  this  preparation  makes  the 
actual  shooting  of  the  picture  perhaps 
the  easiest  part  of  the  job,  for  every  day 
we — and  everyone  else  on  the  set — know 
precisely  what  each  set-up  is  to  be,  how 
it  is  to  be  treated,  and  when  it  will  be 
photographed.  As  Salven  points  out, 
ordinarily  a  lot  of  valuable  production 
time  is  wasted  because,  in  making  one 
shot,  a  lot  of  unused  lamps,  furniture, 
props,  and  the  like  from  the  previous 
set-up  may  be  piled  indiscriminately  to 
one  side — and  then,  on  the  very  next  set¬ 
up,  it  is  found  that  they  must  be  moved 
again  as  either  action  or  camera  may 
have  to  occupy  that  spot!  On  a  De 
Mille  set,  that  never  happens,  for  every¬ 
one  from  “C.  B.”  himself  down  to  the 
lowest  member  of  the  stage  crew  knows 
precisely  what  shot  is  going  to  be  made 
next  throughout  the  day. 

Small  wonder,  then,  that  De  Mille  and 
his  crew  so  consistently  surprise  the 
“practical  men”  of  the  industry  with 
their  all-around  efficiency  on  big  pro¬ 
ductions.  The  real  wonder  is  that  more 
directors  and  executives  haven’t  learned 
from  his  example  of  the  practical  profits 
preparation  can  pay!  END. 

"Strobo-Sync" 

(Continued  from  Page  222) 

though  it  is  not  desirable  as  it  involves 
a  second  person  to  look  after  the  phono¬ 
graph,  and  some  means  of  signalling  to 
the  man  at  the  projector. 

The  best  method  of  all  is  a  blinking 
electric  light  through  a  commutator 


228 


June,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


its  effective 
ness  if  cinema- 
tographers 

L  I 

k: 

couldn’t  make 


use  of  modern 
arc  lighting.”  . 


KK^ICTOR’ 

liH  BUYl 


.  '  . 

Sir  2s. 


1  ■ :  ■  EH 


. 

. 


NATIONAL  CARBON  COMPANY,  INC. 

Unit  of  Union  Carbide  and  Carbon  Corporation 

CARBON  SALES  DIVISION,  CLEVELAND,  OHIO 
General  Offices:  30  East  42nd  St.,  New  York,  N.  Y. 

Branch  Sales  Offices: 

NEW  YORK  •  PITTSBURGH  .  CHICAGO  •  ST.  LOUIS  •  SAN  FRANCISCO 


American  Cinematographer  •  June,  1943 


229 


fitted  near  the  shutter  of  the  projector, 
and  a  small  neon  bulb  fixed  in  a  cigar¬ 
ette  tin  hanging  over  the  disc.  This 
means  the  record-player  can  he  anywhere 
— even  behind  the  projector,  which  is  a 
very  good  place  for  it.  I  find  this  elec¬ 
tric  method  simple  and  satisfactory. 

In  spite  of  the  advantages  of  being 
able  to  show  one  reel  and  play  one 
33 1/3  r.p.m.  record  with  it,  I  think 
most  amateurs  will  prefer  the  standard 
phonographs  of  78  r.p.m.  and  two  turn¬ 
tables  played  through  one  amplifier. 
(Especially  as  78  r.p.m.  turntables, 
though  hard  to  get,  are  more  easily  ob¬ 
tained  than  33  1/3  r.p.m.  ones!  Ed.) 
This  is  perfectly  simple.  All  you  do  is 
switch  over  from  one  turntable  to  the 
next  when  the  sync-mark  flashes  onto 
the  screen.  In  this  way  I  have  given 
shows  in  Bombay — sometimes  to  several 
hundred  people — and  with  two  project¬ 
ors  running  one  can  carry  on  quite  com¬ 
fortably,  while  many  in  the  audience 
think  they  are  listening  to  sound-on- 
film.  END. 

Better  Pictures — Less  Film 

Continued  from  Page  219 

those  pictures  I  very  carefully  went  over 
the  shooting  script  and  figured  the  exact 
footage  for  each  scene.  In  other  words, 
I  cut  the  picture  before  shooting.  If  I 
figured  I  wanted  only  six  feet  for  a  close- 
up,  I  shot  only  seven  feet,  giving  a  foot 
over  for  cutting  waste.  When  I  had 
figured  the  footage  we  telegraphed  for 
that  amount  of  film,  and  no  more.  Then 


the  picture  had  to  be  shot  at  that  length. 

The  Technicolor  cameraman  who  ar¬ 
rived  in  New  York  to  photograph  the 
picture  had  just  finished  shooting  the 
Technicolor  sequences  in  Cecil  B.  De 
Mille’s  spectacle  “The  King  of  Kings” 
in  which  footage  knew  no  bounds.  So, 
you  can  imagine  his  look  of  wonder¬ 
ment,  almost  dismay,  when  I  told  him 
how  our  picture  was  to  be  shot.  He 
shook  his  head  and  said  that  pictures 
weren’t  shot  that  way.  I  told  him  ours 
would  be.  Well,  when  the  shooting  was 
done  the  picture  was  already  edited.  All 
that  was  necessary  was  to  splice  in  the 
silent  titles  of  those  days. 

I  recall  one  of  those  films  which  re¬ 
ceived  much  favorable  reaction  from 
critics  all  over  the  country.  It  was  a 
picture  called  “Memories.”  In  it  was 
a  beautiful  young  girl  named  Anita 
Fremault.  She  is  now  known  to  picture 
lovers  as  Anita  Louise.  When  we  had 
finished  making  the  final  shot  on  that 
picture  we  had  exactly  THREE  feet  of 
negative  left  over.  The  system  must  have 
been  all  right,  for  “Memories”  played  one 
week  at  the  New  York  Paramount  thea¬ 
tre  and,  to  my  personal  amazement,  was 
praised  by  the  film  critics  of  the  New 
York  papers  ahead  of  the  feature  pic¬ 
ture.  It  then  ran  12  consecutive  weeks 
with  a  Harold  Lloyd  picture  in  New 
York,  and  did  its  14th  week  in  Times 
Square  at  Loew’s. 

Why  not  try  this  system  of  pre¬ 
shooting  editing  and  save  work,  film,  time 
and  money — and  remove  the  worries  of 
wartime  film  shortage.  END. 


Projector  Care 

Continued  from  Page  218 

creasingly  hard  to  get  now,  and,  in 
many  parts  of  the  country  your  old 
bulb  must  be  turned  in  if  you  want  to 
receive  a  new  one.  This  means  that  it 
is  most  important  that  we  lengthen  the 
lives  of  these  lamps  as  much  as  pos¬ 
sible.  A  little  understanding  of  them 
will  do  much  to  extend  their  useful 
service  quite  a  bit. 

First,  do  not  operate  a  projection 
lamp  beyond  its  rated  voltage.  '  For 
instance,  if  a  750-Watt  lamp  is  rated 
or  marked  from  100  to  105  to  110  Volts, 
it  should  not  be  burned  at  120  Volts. 
To  do  so  will  materially  cut  down  on 
its  life.  Today,  it  is  better  to  sacrifice 
a  little  light  on  the  screen  and  have  it 
last  longer.  If  you  operate  your  pro¬ 
jector  in  a  factory  district  or  where 
electrical  voltages  are  liable  to  be  ir¬ 
regular  due  to  the  starting  and  stopping 
of  large  electric  motors,  then  it  is  a 
good  idea  to  put  into  your  projector  a 
120-Volt  bulb  for  use  on  the  110-Volt 
line.  This  will  cut  down  on  the  light 
efficiency  a  bit  maybe,  but  at  the  same 
time  any  sudden  surges  caused  by  the 
operation  of  large  electrical  motors 
which  might  be  transmitted  to  your 
projector  will  not  have  such  a  straining 
effect  on  the  lamp.  Some  projectors 
have  voltage  control  rheostats  built  into 
them,  so  that  the  voltage  to  the  lamp  can 
be  lowered.  These  are  very  helpful  in 
prolonging  the  life  of  the  lamp. 

Second,  if  your  projector  is  equipped 
with  separate  motor  and  light  switches, 
always  switch  your  motor  on  first,  and 
then  your  light.  This  will  lessen  the 
effect  of  the  peak  voltage  surge  that 
the  lamp’s  filament  would  have  to 
bear  due  to  the  extra  power  needed  to 
start  the  motor. 

Third,  do  not  try  to  over-power  your 
projector.  If  the  projector  is  supposed 
to  take  a  500  or  750  Watt  lamp,  do 
not  try  to  use  a  1000  Watt  lamp  to  get 
extra  light.  The  cooling  capacity  of 
the  projector  probably  isn’t  sufficient  to 
cool  this  larger  lamp  and  the  over¬ 
heated  globe  will  probably  die  an  early 
death.  The  extra  heat  as  the  film  passes 
the  lamp  will  also  injure  the  film — espe¬ 
cially  Kodachrome. 

Fourth,  handle  your  projection  lamps 
carefully.  If  your  projector  is  to  be 
transported  over  long  distances  or  over 
bad  roads  where  it  is  liable  to  be  bounced, 
remove  the  lamp  first  and  put  it  into 
a  box  lined  with  some  soft  material 
so  that  the  filament  will  not  be  dam¬ 
aged.  The  same  applies  to  the  ampli¬ 
fier’s  tubes  and  the  exciter-lamp. 

Remember,  there  is  a  definite  short¬ 
age  of  projection  bulbs  and  amplifier 
tubes.  Treat  yours  carefully,  and  keep 
a  spare  lamp  with  your  projector  at  all 
times,  just  in  case  it  bums  out  while 
you  are  showing  a  picture.  Even  with 
the  best  of  care  they  do  bux*n  out,  and 
usually  at  the  most  inopportune  time. 

The  exciter-lamp  of  your  projector 
furnishes  the  light  which  is  passed 
through  the  sound-track  to  the  photo¬ 
electric  cell.  Inasmuch  as  this  bulb  is 


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230  June,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


Photograph  from  Official  British  Army  Film  “DESERT  VICTORY”  Released  through  noth  Century  Fox 


WAR’S  HOWLING  HELL 

. .. DeVRY  Cameras  Took  It  Too 


Into  the  toughest  kind 
of  punishment  man  or 
mechanism  could  be 
asked  to  take  —  with 
those  26  men  and  six  of¬ 
ficers  who  filmed  “DES¬ 
ERT  VICTORY”,  went 
DeVRY  motion  picture 
cameras.  And  they  took 
it!  Heat!  Sand!  Hour- 
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grueling,  grinding  per¬ 
formance  at  the  hands 
of  men  who  were  out  to 
make  the  picture  of  pictures — even 
though  they  died  making  it — which 
four  did.  DeVRY  cameras  caught 


LI.  Col  David 
who  directed 
of  "DESERT 
and  "friend, 
Model  A 


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You  want  to  see  “DES¬ 
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also  subject  to  occasional  burning  out 
it  is  wise  to  keep  a  replacement  with 
the  machine  as  standard  equipment. 

The  adjustment  of  the  voltage  on 
the  photoelectric  cell  should  be  such 
that  with  the  volume  control  half-way 
open  the  sound  from  the  loud  speaker  at 
the  screen  should  be  about  normal. 
If  it  is  too  loud  or  too  soft  at  this  point 
the  voltage  adjustment  should  be 
changed  so  that  normal  volume  can  be 
heard  with  the  volume  control  half¬ 
way  open.  This  will  allow  extra  power 
for  additional  speakers  if  needed  and 
yet  keep  the  quality  of  the  sound  nor¬ 
mal  in  respect  to  the  frequency  response. 
Consult  your  manual  as  to  where  this 
adjustment  should  be  made. 

Whenever  the  sound  drum  is  re¬ 
moved  and  the  exciter  lamp  is  open 
to  cleaning,  clean  its  surface  of  any 
dust  or  dirt  that  may  have  collected 
on  it.  At  the  same  time  remove  the 
cover  of  the  photoelectric  cell  and  clean 
the  surface  of  this  bulb  also.  With  an 
ERPI-type  gate  the  lens  that  focuses 
the  light  from  the  exciter-lamp  onto  the 
sound-track  should  also  be  occasionally 
cleaned  and  checked  for  proper  focus. 
Your  instruction  manual  will  give  you 
directions  as  to  how  to  do  this.  It  is  im¬ 
portant  with  any  type  of  sound  optical 
system  that  the  optical  unit  be  focused 
sharply  on  the  sound-track  at  all  times, 
otherwise  the  sound  is  liable  to  be  fuzzy 
and  indistinct.  On  some  projectors  there 
is  an  adjustment  to  compensate  the 
sound  pick-up’s  focus  for  reversal  orig¬ 
inals  and  35mm.  reductions,  in  which 
the  emulsion-side  runs  facing  the  lens, 
and  for  reversal  dupes  (including  Koda- 
chrome),  in  which  the  emulsion  is  away 
from  the  lens.  For  the  best  sound 
quality,  be  sure  to  use  this  adjustment 
if  your  machine  has  it. 

Through  age  the  photoelectric  cell  may 
lose  its  output  gradually.  A  spare  should 
always  be  kept  on  hand  so  that  this 
essential  unit  may  be  replaced. 

By  all  means  keep  a  spare  projection 
lamp  and  a  spare  exciter  lamp  with 
the  projector  at  all  times.  If  either  of 
these  bum  out,  the  light  on  the  screen 
or  the  sound  from  the  speaker  will 
cease  and  the  show  will  have  to  be 
stopped  until  a  replacement  can  be  lo¬ 
cated. 

The  sound  amplifier  of  your  projector 
uses  tubes  similar  to  those  used  by  ra¬ 
dios  and  public-address  systems.  Con¬ 
sequently  they  should  be  checked  about 
once  every  six  to  eight  months  by  a 
competent  radio  service  man  or  dealer 
to  make  sure  that  they  are  giving  the 
performance  that  they  should.  Inas¬ 
much  as  a  number  of  these  tubes  are  no 
longer  made,  due  to  the  war,  a  complete 
set  of  spares  should  be  obtained.  If 
your  radio  dealer  does  not  have  them 
or  cannot  get  them  for  you,  order  them 
direct  from  the  manufacturer  of  your 
projection  equipment;  he  may  still  be 
able  to  obtain  them  or  locate  some  for 
you,  or  suggest  substitute  types  which 
are  obtainable. 

Amplifier  troubles  are  usually  indi¬ 
cated  by  a  sudden  loss  of  volume, 
crackling  in  and  out  of  volume  levels, 


severe  distortion,  hum,  hiss,  etc.  When 
this  occurs,  or  the  sound  ceases  entirely, 
check  over  your  entire  system,  making 
sure  that  the  exciter  lamp  is  not  burned 
out,  the  photoelectric  voltage  is  being 
supplied  to  the  photoelectric  cell,  the 
amplifier  fuse  is  not  burned  out,  and 
that  the  path  of  light  between  the  ex¬ 
citer  lamp  and  photoelectric  cell  is  not 
blocked.  Also  check  the  wiring  connec¬ 
tions  to  amplifier  and  speaker  to  be 
sure  that  they  have  not  pulled  loose. 

If  you  are  operating  your  projector 
out  of  town,  check  to  be  sure  that  the 
voltage  supplied  to  your  projector  is  cor¬ 
rect  and  that  it  is  60  cycle  alternating 
current  for  your  amplifier,  unless  your 
equipment  is  built  for  other  frequencies 


(i.  e.  50  or  30  cycle;  AC-DC;  or 
other).  More  on  this  later.  If  the 
sound  still  cannot  be  properly  heard, 
have  your  tubes  checked  and  try  re¬ 
placing  the  photoelectric  cell  with  a 
spare.  Sometimes  parts  in  an  am¬ 
plifier  break  down.  Your  radio  service¬ 
man  will  be  able  to  replace  these.  Your 
photo-supply  dealer  maintains  a  service 
to  check  anything  wrong  internally; 
consult  him  about  your  troubles.  He 
will  advise  you  what  to  do — maybe  send 
the  machine  back  to  the  factory,  or  he 
will  be  able  to  refer  you  to  a  reliable 
radio  service-man  who  will  be  able  to 
help  you. 

A  word  about  fuses.  Fuses  are  the 
safety  valves  of  your  projector’s  electri- 


American  Cinematographer  •  June,  1943  231 


cal  system.  If  they  blow,  something 
is  wrong  somewhere.  You  may  have 
made  a  misconnection  or  plugged  into 
the  wrong  voltage  outlet.  Most  modem 
16  mm.  sound-projectors  have  universal 
AC-DC  motors;  that  is,  they  will  operate 
on  either  direct  or  alternating  current. 
However,  the  amplifier  units  of  these 
projectors  have  to  have  AC  or  alter¬ 
nating  current  of  the  60-cycle  type,  un¬ 
less  otherwise  specified  when  ordered. 

By  the  same  token,  most  power  com¬ 
panies  supply  110-Volt  60-cycle  current 
as  standard.  Occasionally  in  small 
towns  110-Volt,  30-cycle  or  50-cycle  cur¬ 
rent  is  supplied.  Also  occasionally, 
such  as  in  hospitals  and  other  insti¬ 
tutions  that  manufacture  their  own 
power,  110-Volt  DC,  or  direct  current, 
is  supplied. 

Amplifiers  rated  to  operate  on  110- 
Volt  60-cycle  current  will  not  operate  as 
a  rule  on  either  30  or  50-cycle  AC  or 
direct  current — or  voltages  other  than 
that  for  which  they  are  rated.  The  re¬ 
sult  of  trying  to  use  your  amplifier  or 
projector  on  other  than  rated  voltage 
values  and  types  will  be  a  blown  fuse — 
or  possibly  a  bumed-out  amplifier  and 
motor.  Therefore,  if  your  fuse  blows 
when  you  plug  into  an  electric  outlet 
and  turn  on  the  switch,  check  as  to  the 
rating  and  type  voltage  supplied  to 
your  projection  and  sound  equipment. 

It  is  a  very  wise  idea  to  contact  your 
power  company  about  the  power  supplied 
to  various  institutions  and  outlying 
communities  that  you  might  have  to 
visit,  if  you  have  any  doubt  in  your 
mind  about  them.  Always  carry  an  extra 
fuse  with  you  in  your  equipment.  If 
your  second  fuse  blows  after  you’ve 
ascertained  that  the  cause  of  the  first 
one  blowing  was  not  due  to  wrong  volt¬ 
age  values  or  a  misconnection,  do  not 
try  to  operate  your  equipment,  but  see 
your  photo  dealer  or  repair-man  about 
it.  Chances  are  that  something  is 
wrong  internally. 

Whenever  you  have  a  showing  sched¬ 
uled,  try,  if  time  permits,  to  have  your 
equipment  set  up  and  completely  checked 
through  in  respect  both  to  the  picture 
on  the  screen  and  the  volume  of  the 
sound  before  your  audience  arrives. 
Load  the  film  into  your  projector  and 
run  off  a  few  feet  so  that  the  picture 
can  be  properly  focused  and  the  sound 
and  tone  levels  be  predetermined. 

Some  projectors  have  to  warm  up 
thoroughly  several  minutes  before  they 
are  used  so  that  they  will  run  steadily. 
If  they  are  taken  in,  set  up,  and  started 
with  the  picture  immediately  without  a 
warm-up  period,  they  will  “wow”  or 
waver  in  tone,  and  the  music,  if  any, 
will  sound  “sour”  as  it  comes  from  the 
screen.  Then,  too,  the  speech  may  be 
abnormally  low  and  slow.  Allow  time 
to  warm  up  if  your  projector  happens 
to  do  this.  Most  amplifier  tubes  also 
have  to  be  warmed  up  for  half  a  minute 
or  so  before  they  will  transmit  sound. 

Try  to  place  the  loudspeaker  of  your 
equipment  high  and  to  the  side  of  the 
screen,  so  that  the  sound  from  it  will 
carry  to  all  parts  of  your  audience.  If 
you  place  the  speaker  on  the  floor,  the 
bodies  of  your  audience  will  absorb  a 


great  deal  of  the  volume,  so  that  you  will 
have  to  use  a  volume-setting  higher  than 
is  really  necessary.  Never  place  the 
speaker  behind  the  screen  unless  the 
screen  you  are  using  is  a  specially  per¬ 
forated  sound  screen.  Regular  amateur 
screens  will  cut  off  all  the  high-fre¬ 
quency  sounds  and  make  the  speech 
muffled  and  indistinct  if  the  speaker  is 
placed  behind  it. 

If  you  have  the  opportunity  of  se¬ 
lecting  the  room  in  which  you  are  to 
show  your  films,  try  and  choose  a  room 
that  is  “dead”  or  will  not  reverberate 
and  echo  sounds.  Rooms  with  flat,  hard, 
bare  walls,  smoothly  finished,  are  liable 
to  be  very  “live”  and  thus  give  the 
sound  a  very  boomy  effect,  making  it 
hard  for  the  audience  to  understand. 
In  addition  there  may  be  dead  spots 
where  sound  echoes  tend  to  cancel  one 
another  out  and  the  volume  will  appear 
to  be  very  weak  at  these  points.  The 
converse  of  this  is  also  true.  If  you 
are  compelled  to  show  sound-films  in  a 
room  of  this  type,  set  your  tone  control 
so  that  as  much  bass  is  removed  from 
the  sound  as  is  needed  to  make  the 
speech  clearly  understandable. 

Quite  often  what  appears  to  be  loud 
enough  volume  at  the  projector,  is  really 
too  loud  for  the  audience.  The  sound 
from  the  speaker  has  to  compete  with 
the  noise  from  the  projector  and  this 
sometimes  results  in  the  operator  set¬ 
ting  the  volume-control  high  enough  so 
that  he  can  understand  the  speech  beside 
the  projector.  However,  the  speaker’s 
sound  may  be  too  loud  for  those  away 
from  the  projector  and  it  thus  will  be¬ 
come  objectionable.  You  cannot  accu¬ 
rately  pre-set  your  volume  by  listening 
before  your  audience  is  seated,  for  their 
bodies  will  absorb  quite  a  bit  of  the 
sound,  so  that  a  volume  setting  which 
is  right  for  an  empty  room  may  be  too 
low  for  one  that  is  filled  with  people. 
Therefore,  after  your  show  is  started, 
quietly  walk  around  the  back  of  your 
audience  and  check  on  the  volume.  The 
sound  should  be  heard  distinctly,  but 
not  blarey;  let  the  picture  on  the  screen 
carry  the  main  interest  and  the  sound 
supplement  it.  In  addition,  loud  sounds 
are  more  likely  to  set  up  objectionable 
echoes  resulting  in  a  distortion  of  what 
is  heard. 

If  you  have  to  show  your  films  in  a 
large  hall  or  auditorium,  plan  to  use 
two  speakers.  Most  amplifiers  make 
provision  for  the  use  of  additional 
speakers  and  you  will  find  that  the 
quality  and  clearness  of  the  speech  will 
be  better  if  you  use  two  or  more  of 
them.  One  speaker  cannot  carry  much 
of  a  load  and  when  forced  to  do  so  will 
distort  the  sounds  and  may  even  cause 
internal  injuries  to  itself,  necessitating 
expensive  repairs. 

SUMMARY 

In  summing  up  the  foregoing,  certain 
definite  rules  might  be  restated  as  fol¬ 
lows: 

Films 

1 —  Keep  them  clean. 

2 —  Repair  any  broken  perforations 
or  splices  as  soon  as  possible. 

3 —  Keep  your  films  in  dust-proof 
cans  only. 


4 —  Store  them  in  a  cool,  dry  place. 

5 —  Handle  them  only  by  the  edges, 
never  by  the  picture  area. 

6 —  Never  pull  the  film  tight  on  the 
reel  by  hand. 

7 —  Provide  a  long  enough  leader 
(six  feet)  and  test  the  thread¬ 
ing  of  your  projector  on  it. 

Projectors  and  Amplifiers 

1 —  Keep  them  clean. 

2 —  Lubricate  them  according  to  the 
manufacturers  instructions. 

3 —  Clean  the  picture  gate  before  each 
projection. 

4 —  Keep  the  sound  gate  and  lens 
clean. 

5 —  Do  not  attempt  to  overvolt  your 
projection  lamp. 

6 —  Do  not  try  to  use  a  lamp  of 
greater  power  (Wattage)  than 
specified  for  your  projector. 

7 —  Keep  a  spare  projection  lamp,  ex¬ 
citer  lamp  and  extra  fuses  with 
your  equipment  at  all  times. 

8 —  Keep  a  spare  photoelectric  cell 
and  a  spare  set  of  amplifier  tubes 
on  hand. 

9 —  Do  not  try  to  operate  your  equip¬ 
ment  on  the  wrong  current  fre¬ 
quency  or  voltage. 

10 — Try  to  have  your  equipment  com¬ 
pletely  set  up,  focused,  and 
checked  for  sound  volume  and 
tone  before  arrival  of  your  audi¬ 
ence. 

If  you  will  observe  these  simple  rules, 
you  will  do  much  towards  eliminating 
many  embarrassing  stoppages  or  break¬ 
downs  in  your  performances.  END. 

"Cheating" 

Continued  from  Page  217 

display  bases,  on  a  good,  sturdy  plank 
— about  a  1x4  unless  you’ve  a  very  heavy 
camera — long  enough  to  span  the  opening 
of  the  door.  Next,  borrow  a  pair  of 
large  C-clamps  from  your  friend  whose 
hobby  is  woodworking,  and  use  these 
clamps  to  hold  your  board  acroso  the 
opening  of  the  door,  at  the  required 
height.  In  some  instances  it  may  be  a 
good  precaution  to  add  a  vertical  brace 
made  from  a  2x2,  running  from  the 
floor  straight  up  to  your  board-mount 
at  a  point  just  under  the  camera.  It 
can  be  nailed,  or  held  in  place  with 
a  smaller  C-clamp.  Either  way,  it  is 
an  added  safeguard  and  will  give  greater 
rigidity. 

Again  my  friend  interrupted.  “This 
was  all  very  well  for  most  shots,”  said 
he,  “but  how  about  angles  like  some  of 
those  in  your  picture  ‘Pride  of  the  Yan¬ 
kees?’  I  remember  one  sequence  where 
Gary  Cooper  and  Teresa  Wright,  as  Lou 
Gehrig  and  his  bride,  engaged  in  a 
friendly  little  scuffle,  wrestling  all  over 
the  floor  and  ending  up  with  Mrs.  Gehrig 
pinning  her  husband’s  shoulders  to  the 
mat.  There  were  some  angles  there, 
where  you  shot  past  Cooper’s  head  and 
shoulders,  looking  upward  at  Miss 
Wright,  that  you  couldn’t  have  gotten 
without  dropping  the  camera  into  a  pit 
in  the  floor — and  which  even  an  8mm. 
amateur  couldn’t  have  gotten  by  the 
means  you  suggested.” 


232  June,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


That  was  accomplished  by  “cheating.” 
We  put  the  camera  as  low  as  we  could 
get  it  on  a  “high  hat”  surmounted  by 
the  regular  tilthead.  Of  course  this  put 
the  lens  two  or  three  feet  above  floor- 
level. 

So  we  simply  built  our  action  up  to 
the  necessary  height  for  our  shot.  In¬ 
stead  of  being  actually  on  the  floor, 
Cooper  lay  on  some  planks,  supported  by 
stout  boxes,  which  brought  his  head  and 
shoulders  to  a  point  where  we  could  get 
them  in  the  foreground  of  our  shot. 
Miss  Wright — also  on  the  planks — went 
through  her  action,  pinning  his  shoulders 
to  the  planks,  rather  than  to  the  floor. 

On  the  screen,  the  result  was  exactly 
the  same  as  though  we  had  put  the 
camera’s  lens  at  or  below  the  actual 
floor-level,  and  shot  the  scene  that  way. 
It  was  intercut  with  other  shots  that 
showed  the  couple  actually  wrestling 
around  on  the  floor,  so  the  audience 
accepted  this  particular  cut  as  showing 
them  still  on  the  floor.  But  from  our 
point  of  view,  the  scene  was  much  easier 
to  stage  as  we  played  it.  Similar  scenes 
should  be  just  as  easy  for  amateurs  who 
use  the  same  method  of  “cheating.” 

I  don’t  recall  at  the  moment  whether 
the  composition  in  that  particular  shot 
made  it  necessary  to  include  in  the 
background  portions  of  any  tall  furniture, 
like  the  cabinet  in  which  Gehrig  kept 
his  baseball  trophies.  If  it  did,  we 
probably  “cheated”  with  that,  too,  rais¬ 
ing  the  cabinet  to  the  necessary  height 
by  putting  blocks  under  the  legs. 

This  type  of  “cheating”  is  carried 
out  every  day  in  the  studios.  Suppose, 
for  instance,  we  have  a  medium  close-shot 
of  a  man  sitting  at  a  desk,  and  want  the 
desk  to  figure  prominently  in  the  fore¬ 
ground,  but  yet  don’t  want  to  drop  the 
camera  as  low  as  would  ordinarily  be 
necessary  for  this  effect.  Well,  we  sim¬ 
ply  put  the  desk  on  block  “lifts”  of  the 
desired  thickness,  and  there  is  our  ef¬ 
fect,  very  easily  obtained,  and  without 
distorting  the  perspective  on  the  actor. 

In  the  same  way,  if  we  have  a  player 
seated  in  a  chair  in  a  scene  where  he  is 
playing  a  sequence  in  fairly  close-angle 
shots  with  another  player,  cutting  from 
one  to  the  other  in  reverse-angles,  with 
the  player  being  spoken  to  in  the  fore¬ 
ground  or  background  of  each  shot,  we 
often  raise  the  chair  in  which  the  player 
is  sitting  by  means  of  these  little  “lift” 
blocks,  which  of  course  do  not  show  in 
the  close  shots,  and  which  are  naturally 
removed  for  the  long-shots.  You  can,  by 
the  way,  study  an  excellent  example  of 
this  if  you’ll  look  at  the  cover  of  the 
March  issue  of  this  magazine. 

Remember,  too,  that  in  a  sequence  of 
this  sort  one  can  very  frequently  play 
one  actor  or  the  other  in  a  position 
several  feet  to  one  side  or  the  other  of 
the  position  he  occupied  in  the  establish¬ 
ing  long-shot,  if  it  is  necessary  for 
compositional  or  dramatic  reasons. 

In  fact,  the  whole  subject  of  “cheat¬ 
ing”  with  camera-angles  can  be  summed 
up  by  saying  that  once  you’ve  estab¬ 
lished  a  basic  relationship  between  the 
players  and  the  set  in  your  long-shots, 


you  can  move  them  about  to  a  quite 
unreal-seeming  degree  in  making  the 
closer  angles,  for  the  audience  never 
sees  what  is  outside  of  the  camera’s 
field,  and  takes  it  for  granted  that  a 
relationship  or  position  established  in  the 
long-shot  angles  continues  throughout 
the  closer  ones.  Remember  this,  and 
you  will  find  it  easy  to  add  a  very 
pleasing  variety  of  camera-angles  to 
your  pictures — with  much  less  difficulty 
than  you  anticipate!  END. 

Planning  Programs 

Continued  from  Page  216 

on  both  screens,  and  we  measured  the  re¬ 
flected  light  with  a  luminosity  meter. 

I  am  telling  of  this  incident  because 
of  the  interest  it  created,  and  the  time 
consumed  in  the  discussion  filled  in  most 
of  the  meeting.  The  members  were  con¬ 
tinually  moving  about  the  room,  view¬ 
ing  the  pictures  from  all  angles  and  re¬ 
ceiving  an  education  about  screens  and 
their  light-reflecting  properties.  This 
should  prove  an  interesting  experiment 
for  any  other  club. 

Have  you  ever  discussed  the  principles 
of  composition  ?  In  most  movie  groups 
there  are  some  members  who  are  artists 
or  who  have  had  art  training.  All  that 
is  needed  is  a  blackboard  and  a  piece 
of  chalk — and  let  your  artist  go  to  work 
with  simple  line  drawings.  A  demon¬ 
stration  of  this  kind  will  hold  the  inter¬ 
est  of  the  whole  club.  It  is  very  prac¬ 
tical  and  need  not  be  too  elaborate  to 
prove  its  effectiveness.  The  pointers 
learned  in  a  simple  demonstration  of 
grouping  in  the  form  of  triangles,  rec¬ 
tangles,  etc.,  will  help  all  who  see  it  to 
select  better  compositions  and  angles 
for  their  future  pictures. 

While  we  are  on  the  subject  of  compo¬ 
sition  from  an  art  angle,  a  follow-up 
meeting  on  color  would  be  in  order.  Color 
exerts  such  a  strong  influence  on  our 
daily  lives  that  we  dare  not  overlook 
this  important  subject.  Picture,  if  you 
can,  a  colorless  world,  and  how  drab  it 
would  be!  The  food  we  eat,  the  clothes 
we  wear,  our  immediate  surroundings, 
trees,  flowers,  sky,  water — all  that  we 
see — is  distinguishable  by  virtue  of  its 
color.  Here  is  food  for  thought  and 
good  material  for  a  lecture — color  har¬ 
mony  in  its  simplified  form,  how  it  can 
be  applied  to  our  movie  making,  what 
constitutes  good  color  composition  and 
how  we  may  attain  more  perfect  color 
balance  in  our  films.  The  majority  of 
us  use  color  film,  and  a  meeting  devoted 
to  this  especially  interesting  subject 
should  be  a  “must”  on  all  movie  club 
programs. 

In  the  past  we  were  often  extended 
the  courtesy  of  lectures  by  the  various 
manufacturers  of  light  meters.  These 
very  educational  talks  were  the  incen¬ 
tive  which  led  many  of  us  to  purchase 
these  very  useful  instruments.  It  would 
be  a  splendid  idea  for  some  of  the  mem¬ 
bers  who  have  these  various  makes  and 
styles  of  meters  to  get  together  and 
plan  a  discussion.  Here  is  a  piece  of 
movie-making  equipment  with  which  the 


user  develops  his  own  style  of  handling. 
There  is  nothing  mysterious  about  this, 
neither  can  it  be  said  that  one  person 
has  more  ability  than  another.  Some 
photographers  are  able  to  achieve  better 
results,  however,  than  others.  Surely 
the  experience  of  the  various  members 
in  the  use  of  their  own  pet  meters  would 
be  valuable  to  the  club  as  a  whole.  The 
more  we  talk  about  our  hobby,  the  more 
proficient  we  become.  Don’t  hide  your 
light  (meter)  under  a  bushel.  Bring 
it  to  the  fore  in  a  helpful  discussion. 

Did  it  ever  occur  to  you  that  each  time 
a  contest  is  held,  many  very  fine  films 
are  shown  and  that  we  very  seldom  see 
them  afterwards?  Why  not  have  a  re¬ 
vival  of  these  prize-winning  pictures  ? 
Those  who  were  unable  to  be  present  at 
the  various  contests  would  more  than 
welcome  the  opportunity  of  seeing  these 
splendid  films.  Those  who  have  seen 
them  would  hardly  be  averse  to  seeing 
them  again,  for  all  of  us  can  bring  to 
mind  some  beautiful  picture  we  have 
seen  in  the  past  and  hope  that  it  might 
be  shown  again.  Why  not  a  contest  to 
select  the  best  of  the  contest  films  of 
yesterday  ? 

I  have  heard  remarks,  while  pictures 
were  being  shown,  that  this  or  that  shot 
was  made  by  a  telephoto  lens.  “You  can 
usually  pick  them  out  for  they  seem  to 
be  overexposed,”  some  folks  say — and 
are  often  proved  wrong.  No  matter 
which  lens  is  used,  there  should  be  no 
difference  in  the  quality  of  the  picture. 

Here  is  another  subject  which  can  be 
discussed  for  the  enlightenment  of  our 
club  members.  Why  not  ascertain  the 
different  types  of  lenses  there  are  in 
the  possession  of  your  members?  Have 
them  displayed  on  a  table  for  all  to  see 
and  examine.  There  are  members  in 
all  clubs  who  are  well  experienced  in  the 


TELEFILM 

|  I  N  C  Q~  R  P  O  RATE  D  | 

direct  16  MM 

SOUND 

USED  BY: 

►  Douglas  Aircraft 

►  General  Elec.  (Welding  Series) 

►  Boeing  Aircraft 

►  North  American  Aviation 

►  U.  S.  Dept,  of  Interior 

►  U.  S.  Dept,  of  Agriculture 

►  Santa  Fe  Railroad 

►  Washington  State  Apple 

Commission 

►  Standard  Oil  of  Calif. 

►  Salvation  Army 

and  Many  Others 
A  BETTER  JOB  FASTER- 

MORE  ECONOMICAL! 

TELEFILM 

INCORPORATED 
403?  Hollywood  Blvd.,  HOLLYWOOD.  CALIF. 
Gladstone  5748 


American  Cinematographer  •  June,  1943  233 


use  of  all  kinds  of  lenses  and  who  could 
talk  inteligently  on  the  subject. 

I  think  that  a  vivid  illustration  of  the 
result  of  these  various  objectives  could 
be  easily  shown  by  projecting  a  still 
picture  on  the  screen.  Mask  off  areas 
indicating  the  use  of  various  lenses.  This 
can  be  accomplished  by  cut-out  masks 
placed  in  front  of  the  projection  lens. 
By  simply  moving  the  projector  farther 
back  and  filling  the  screen  with  each 
masked  area,  the  startling  results  of  the 
use  of  each  lens  is  quickly  and  dramatic¬ 
ally  brought  to  the  screen.  In  this  man¬ 
ner,  the  lecturer  could  illustrate  the  use 
of  each  lens  as  he  talks  about  it.  The 
possibilities  of  developing  this  into  a 
full  and  interesting  meeting  need  no 
further  explanation. 

The  foregoing  is  a  suggestion  of  what 
can  be  done  in  your  own  club.  A  little 
thought  and  planning  may  turn  any 
number  of  movie-making  problems  into 
material  for  a  club  meeting.  By  all 
means  keep  up  the  activities  of  your 


club.  Create  enthusiasm  by  member- 
participation.  Why  search  further  when 
you  have  “acres  of  diamonds”  in  your 
own  back  yard?  END. 


Shooting  in  New  Guinea 

Continued  from  Page  209 
the  water  was  so  hot  it  was  impossible 
to  do  anything  with  it. 

“Water  was  brought  overland  40 
miles  through  a  steel  pipe.  The  hot 
sun  beating  down  on  that  pipe  was 
better  than  an  electric  heater,  and  a 
shower  would  literally  cook  a  person. 

“Drinking  water  was  obtained  by  sink¬ 
ing  a  large  metal  container  (about  the 
size  of  a  large  garbage  can)  in  deep 
holes  in  the  ground  and  covering  it 
over.  In  two  or  three  days  the  water 
was  quite  cool  and  pleasant  to  drink. 

“The  water  in  the  pipe  began  to  cool 
off  after  dark,  and  about  two  or  three 
A.M.  the  boys  would  roll  out  for  a 
shower. 

“At  best  the  temperature  was  never 
much  less  than  80°,  and  as  about  70° 
is  the  maximum  for  safe  negative  de¬ 
velopment,  I  didn’t  process.  There  was 
no  ice-machine  available,  or  I  would 
have  tried  using  ice  to  cool  the  water. 
The  one  machine  in  use  could  hardly 
make  enough  ice  for  the  hospital. 

“For  three  and  one  half  months  I  had 
no  idea  how  my  pictures  were  coming 
out.  I  didn’t  know  how  my  film  was 
holding  up  (it  was  not  tropical  pack), 
or  if  my  cameras  were  in  adjustment. 

“I  would  wrap  up  the  day’s  take,  and 
look  for  a  plane  bound  for  GHQ  in 
Australia.  There  the  film  was  inspected 
and  re-wrapped  for  shipment  to  Wash¬ 
ington,  D.C.,  where  the  film  was  de¬ 
veloped. 

“Finally,  I  was  able  to  make  a  test. 
I  located  a  makeshift  darkroom,  in  a 
basement,  and  was  able  to  prove,  to  my 
great  satisfaction,  that  my  pictures  were 
coming  out  all  right. 

“When  I  left  the  States,  I  took  along 
a  4x5  Speed  Graphic  with  a  5%  -in  /:4.5 
lens.  (The  leather  cover  went  bad,  but 
the  bellows  stood  up  O.K.)  I  also  had  a 
Rolleicord  with  an  /:3.5  lens,  and  a  Leica 
with  6-in.  lens.  For  all  around  work  I 
found  this  equipment  very  satisfactory. 

“I  also  took  along  three  cases — 30 
doz.  to  the  case — of  4x5  cut  film,  (East¬ 


LENSES  for  Today 
and  the  Future 

B&H-THC  Cine  Lenses  are 
not  merely  ideally  corrected 
for  today’s  monochrome  and 
color  work;  their  design 
anticipates  the  possibility  of 
future  improvements  in  film 
emulsions.  Thus  they  are  long¬ 
time  investments.  Write  for 
details.  BUY  WAR  BONDS 

BELL  &  HOWELL 
COMPANY 

Exclusive  world  distributors 

1848  Larchmont  Avenue,  Chicago 

New  York:  30  Rockefeller  Plaza 
Hollywood:  716  N.  La  Brea  Ave. 
Washington,  D.  C.:  1221  G  St.,  N.  W. 
London:  13-14  Great  Castle  St. 


man)  and  48  rolls  of  No.  120  rollfilm 
(all  Eastman  Super-XX).  Two  dozen 
film-packs — 12  exposures  in  each  pack — 
and  5  rolls  of  35mm.  film.  All  this 
film  was  regular  pack.  I  had  no  trop¬ 
ical  pack  until  six  weeks  before  I  left 
the  South  Seas.” 

Frank  told  of  one  unusual  experience 
in  New  Guinea  with  a  roll  of  Super-XX 
roll  film.  He  had  exposed  the  film  and 
placed  it  in  a  canvas  duffle-bag  which 
was  accidentally  dumped  in  the  water 
where  a  stream  emptied  into  the  Pacific 
Ocean.  He  made  a  quick  dive  to  rescue 
his  precious  bag  .  .  .  and  was  told  later 
that  particular  stream  was  infested  with 
crocodiles!  Back  at  base  camp  in  Port 
Moresby,  Frank  decided  to  develop  the 
film,  just  for  fun.  He  was  sure  it  had 
been  ruined  by  the  salt  water,  but  to  his 
surprise  all  twelve  negatives  were  in 
excellent  condition. 

“When  I  arrived  at  Port  Moresby, 
our  base  camp  on  New  Guinea,  the  work¬ 
ing  conditions  were  somewhat  better 
than  they  were  at  Darwin.  All  civilians 
had  been  evacuated,  and  we  had  the  best 
house  in  town  for  our  quarters.  Rain¬ 
water  was  collected  in  a  huge  vat  for 
piped  to  the  house.  There  I  was  able 
to  do  some  processing. 

“Then  one  fine  day  the  Signal  Corps 
set  up  portable  darkroom  equipment,  and 
an  ice-making  machine  to  keep  the  solu¬ 
tions  cool,  and  I  had  no  more  trouble 
processing  my  negatives. 

“I  sent  out  my  negatives  whenever 
possible.  Sometimes  I  had  only  two  or 
three  ready.  Other  times  I  sent  out  as 
many  as  200.” 

“In  the  jungle  I  shot  most  of  my 
pictures  at  1/25  to  1/10  of  a  second 
wide  open.  All  the  pictures  I  shot  at 
Port  Moresby  were  made  with  K-2  filter. 
This  was  possible  because  there  were 
fewer  trees  than  in  the  jungle  country, 
and  the  air  was  drier.  In  the  jungle  it 
was  not  feasible  to  use  filter  because 
they  fogged  over.  Sometimes  on  aerial 
shots  (when  shooting  from  a  plane)  I 
used  a  dark  red  filter  to  cut  through 
the  haze  and  boost  the  contrast. 

“The  extreme  humidity  created  the 
worst  problems.  I  had  the  most  trouble 
with  the  film-packs.  The  safety  paper 
between  the  films  would  prespire,  caus¬ 
ing  the  films  and  paper  to  stick  together. 
I  also  had  a  great  deal  of  trouble  with 
cut  film.  Because  of  the  moisture  in  the 
air,  perspiration  does  not  evaporate,  and 
as  a  result  one’s  hands  are  always  damp. 
The  closed  space  in  the  changing  bag 
makes  the  hands  perspire  more  than 
ever,  and  in  working  with  the  film  damp 
hands  leave  finger-prints. 

“The  main  problem  with  light  was 
not  due  to  the  light  itself,  but  from 
the  lens  fogging  over,  because  of  the 
humidity.  It  was  difficult  getting  good 
pictures  in  the  jungle,  but  that  was  due 
to  a  deficiency  of  light,  not  a  deficiency 
of  the  film.  If  you  can  imagine  going 
out  to  take  pictures  in  a  tunnel  with¬ 
out  flash-bulbs,  you  can  visualize  the 
problem  of  shooting  pictures  in  the 
jungle.  We  were  unable  to  use  flash¬ 
bulbs  because  that  would  advise  the 


234  June,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


Japs  of  our  position.  Then,  too,  there 
was  a  question  of  weight.  One  travels 
very  light  in  the  jungle.  On  account 
of  the  hard  going,  every  unessential 
ounce  of  weight  and  every  inch  of  bulk 
has  to  be  eliminated. 

“I  soon  learned  how  to  make  the  best 
use  of  my  equipment  under  the  condi¬ 
tions  down  there.  The  Speed  Graphic 
was  good  for  layouts  and  pictures  I 
could  plan  at  least  slightly  in  advance. 
The  Leica  came  in  handy  for  shooting 
bombing  planes,  and  other  long  distance 
shots,  and  on  the  actual  fighting  front 
I  used  the  Rolleicord  most  of  the  time. 

“This  camera  gave  excellent  service 
for  a  number  of  reasons.  It  was  small 
in  weight,  easy  to  carry  and  handle, 
and  valuable  when  it  was  necessary  to 
make  a  number  of  quick  pictures  before 
taking  time  out  to  change  films.  The 
Rolleicord  can  also  be  used  as  an  aerial 
camera  by  closing  the  Reflex  hood  and 
using  the  frame  viewfinder. 

“I  didn’t  spend  much  time  sitting 
around  base  camp,  but  exercised  my 
prerogative  as  a  war  correspondent  to 
move  from  camp  to  camp,  meeting  the 
men,  and  making  pictures  of  their  ac¬ 
tivities.  When  you  do  this  you  really 
learn  what  is  meant  by  ‘living  under 
field  conditions.’ 

“To  make  a  bed  in  the  jungle,  for 
instance,  you  cut  a  couple  of  six-inch 
poles,  then  lay  branches  and  twigs  across 
them  to  keep  you  off  the  soupy  ground. 
With  half  a  shelter  tent  strung  above, 
you  achieve  a  slight  protection  from 
the  rains,  but  this  isn’t  good  enough 
for  your  camera.  The  best  way  I  found 
to  protect  my  equipment  in  such  a  sit¬ 
uation,  was  to  wrap  it  in  my  rain  coat, 
and  suspend  the  bundle  by  rope  from 
a  tree.  That  kept  it  a  good  deal  drier 
than  I  usually  was! 

“When  the  Japanese,  last  fall,  pushed 
to  within  35  airline  miles  of  Port  Mores¬ 
by,  we  all  waited  impatiently  for  march¬ 
ing  orders.  There  was  plenty  to  do 
around  the  port,  which  was  teeming  with 
activity.  Supplies  had  to  be  unloaded 
and  distributed.  Our  men  had  to  be 
trained  to  adapt  themselves  to  the  moun¬ 
tain  jungle  conditions  they  were  so  soon 
to  meet. 

“The  natives  of  New  Guinea  helped 
greatly;  unloading  supplies,  etc.  Most 
of  the  native  women,  and  children  had 
been  evacuated  inland,  but  there  were 
a  few  around  Port  Moresby.  The  natives 
lived  in  a  little  village  on  stilts  at  the 


water’s  edge,  just  outside  of  the  town. 

“The  women  were  mostly  remarkable 
for  their  lack  of  clothes.  They  wear 
an  unattractive,  bulky  grass  skirt,  and 
many  of  them  are  tattooed.  The  men 
go  in  for  sarongs,  and  fancy  hair  orna¬ 
ments  of  flowers,  or  shell  and  bone. 
For  state  occasions  they  daub  them¬ 
selves  in  fancy  patterns  with  some  sort 
of  sticky  yellow  substance. 

“They  do  themselves  up  in  this  swanky 
manner  to  greet  new  arrivals  .  .  .  but 
these  same  sport-model  darkies  were  very 
useful  in  leading  our  men  through  the 
jungles. 

“Getting  lost  in  the  jungle  is  very 
simple.  Just  step  off  the  trail,  and  it 
is  accomplished.  One  day  I  was  twenty 
feet  from  the  trail  and  hopelessly  lost. 

“Jap  air  raids  were  a  daily  occur¬ 
rence.  On  land  the  Australians  were 
driving  them  back-trail  and  over  the 
mountains.  Meanwhile,  our  U.  S.  Engi¬ 
neers  were  building  roads  through  the 
jungles  to  our  jumping-off  place.  Many 
of  our  Engineers  are  Negroes,  and  I 
often  marvelled  over  their  good  humor 
and  ready  courtesy.  Cutting  jeep  trails 
through  the  virgin  jungle  is  extremely 
hard  work,  and  the  workers  were  con¬ 
stantly  beseiged  by  mosquitos,  flies,  ants 
and  other  insects,  as  well  as  having  to 
contend  with  incessant  rains  and  oppres¬ 
sive  heat,  but  those  Negro  boys  sang 
and  laughed,  and  kidded  the  jungle  in 
a  way  that  was  truly  admirable.  They 
were  always  ready  to  stop,  and  help 
with  heavy  loads,  free  a  bogged  jeep, 
or  help  in  any  way  required  of  them. 

“Finally  we  received  our  marching 
orders,  and  at  the  jumping-off  place  we 
had  to  struggle  with  the  jungle  in  a 
hand-to-hand  battle  that  was  no  small 
thing  in  itself.  The  jungle  is  a  slimy, 
dank  dark-green  hell  of  it’s  own  with¬ 
out  the  menace  of  the  Nips.  Every 
foot  of  the  way  had  to  be  hacked  out 
on  our  overland  trip  to  the  front. 

“The  Fuzzie-Wuzzies  were  a  great 
help.  Some  of  them  showed  great  brav¬ 
ery,  and  were  dependable  guides  and 
leaders.  Many  of  our  soldiers  who  made 
that  first  trek  across  the  island  from 
Port  Moresby  to  Buna  were  saved  from 
probable  death  when  the  natives  took 
over  their  heavy  packs  during  the  worst 
of  the  trip.  More  than  once  when  I 
thought  I  could  not  take  another  step, 
a  native  would  trot  up  and  take  my 
camera  and  field  pack  into  camp. 

“These  boys  are  crazy  about  American 


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American  Cinematographer  •  June,  1943  235 


GOERZ 


"5 osiht dmsLtucMv’ 


CRAFTSMEN 


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oJisl  doing- 

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T he  production  line  of  "GOERZ  AMER- 
1  ICAN"  is  formed  by  skilled  men,  who 
through  painstaking  work  create  high- 
grade  photo-lenses  and  optical  units  for 
military  instruments  used  by  our  armed 
forces, 

on  Land — 

on  the  Sea — 
in  the  Air — 


T  hese  precise  optical  units  are  of  the 
1  greatest  importance  to  our  armed 
forces,  for  without  accurate  military  in¬ 
struments  for  sighting,  fire  control  and 
photographic  aerial  reconnaissance  their 
fighting  machinery  would  be  of  little 
value  to  them. 


^ptical  science  together  with  our  crafts¬ 
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"GOERZ  AMERICAN"  lenses  of  certain 
types  and  sizes  for  civilian  use.  We  sug¬ 
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cigarettes,  and  a  single  smoke,  or  candy 
bar  is  considered  sufficient  reward  for 
very  considerable  services. 

“That  first  trip  to  the  front  was 
something  to  remember.  Men  hacked 
and  chopped  through  the  matted  vines 
and  heavy  underbrush.  Sometimes  we 
struggled  through  thick,  sharp  Kunai 
grass,  seven  or  eight  feet  high,  which 
disagreeably  stings  the  face  and  hands. 
We  pushed  through  dangerous,  foul¬ 
smelling  swamps,  and  crossed  crocodile- 
infested  rivers.  A  mile  in  two  hours 
was  making  good  time.  At  the  start, 
we  were  given  10  minute  rest  periods  out 
of  every  60.  That  was  soon  changed 
to  10  minutes’  rest  out  of  every  30, 
and  that  still  wasn’t  enough. 

“On  the  last  advance  up  coast,  our 
contingent  got  lost  in  the  jungle.  We 
forded  one  river  fifteen  times,  and  the 
going  was  extraordinarily  tough.  We 
were  down  to .  ‘C  rations,’  and  they 
eventually  gave  out.  Finally  we  solved 
our  problem  by  following  the  river  down 
to  the  sea.  At  a  small  mission  we 
found  another  unit  who  gave  us  our  first 
meal  in  three  days. 

“We  were  now  close  to  Buna.  We  had 
licked  the  jungle,  and  were  ready  for 
the  Japs.  So  far,  our  advance  had  not 
been  detected  by  the  enemy. 

“At  the  advance  post  we  were  greeted 
festively  by  the  Fuzzie-Wuzzies  who  had 
donned  their  best  yellow  paint  to  greet 
us.  Chanting  happily,  they  helped  us 
stack  and  cover  supplies. 

“I  made  a  quick  trip  back  to  Port 
Moresby  by  plane  to  process  my  pic¬ 
tures  and  get  them  under  way  then  I 
flew  back  to  the  front  in  a  plane  that 
was  hauling  badly  needed  supplies. 
Heavy  winds  tumbled  the  storm  clouds 
which  obliterated  the  Owen  Stanley 
Mountains.  After  several  attempts,  the 
pilot  decided  to  ‘blind’  fly  it.  That 
was  quite  a  moment!  We  hit  raging 
winds  over  the  ridge,  but  we  made  it 
and  wound  up  in  a  little  place  only 
a  few  miles  from  the  front  lines.  We 
soon  advanced  to  within  two  miles  of 
Buna.  The  jungle  hid  us,  fortunately, 
for  we  were  not  far  from  the  main 
body  of  Japanese  troops. 

“Our  bombers  were  giving  the  Japs 
a  heavy  pounding  to  ‘soften’  them  up 
before  the  final  drive  for  Buna.  The 
Australians  joined  our  air  attack,  and 
I  saw  plenty  of  Zeros  crash  into  the 
sea.  Only  a  few  minutes  later  the  Japs 
drew  blood  at  our  position.  Time  after 


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time  the  Zeroes  circled,  low,  firing  at 
our  men.  By  that  time  we  were  all 
pretty  good  at  digging  slit  trenches. 

“One  morning  the  Japs  gave  us  our 
worst  bombing.  They  came  in  from 
the  sea,  30  strong,  circled  our  posi¬ 
tion,  then  out  again  to  swoop  down 
to  sea  level  where  they  could  mark 
our  position  under  the  trees,  then  the 
bombing  began. 

“They  would  circle  low,  and  we  would 
get  a  rain  of  machine-gun  bullets.  I 
was  flattened  in  a  slit  trench.  Bombs 
burst  closer  and  closer.  My  back  was 
covered  with  dirt,  sand  and  mud.  Final¬ 
ly,  a  bomb  exploded  near  enough  to 
throw  me  completely  out  of  my  slit 
trench. 

“We  dug  our  trenches,  ‘New  Guinea 
Coffins,’  we  called  them,  with  our  mess 
kits  and  helmets.  I  have  seen  our  boys 
lie  in  them  for  24  hours  at  a  stretch, 
unable  to  smoke,  soaked  with  mud  and 
rain,  just  waiting  for  a  chance  to  ad¬ 
vance. 

“After  our  successful  battle  for  Buna 
I  came  back  to  the  States  on  leave.  I’ll 
be  shipping  out  again  soon.  Where?  I 
won’t  know  that  until  I’m  on  my  way.” 

To  anyone  who  expects  to  be  sTioot- 
ing  pictures  in  the  South  Pacific  area, 
Frank  suggests  taking  the  same  equip¬ 
ment  he  carried. 

The  Speed  Graphic  and  supplies 
should  be  left  at  base  camp,  for  pic¬ 
tures  that  can  be  planned  in  advance. 
For  active  work  at  the  front,  take  the 
Rolleicord  with  its  regular  /:3.5  lens 
and  the  Leica  with  a  6-in.  lens.  And 
be  sure  and  take  along  lots  of  rollfilm 
.  .  .  tropical  pack  preferred. 

When  asked  about  the  problems  con¬ 
fronting  a  motion  picture  cameraman, 
Frank  told  this  little  story. 

“A  motion  picture  photographer  for 
March  of  Time  (an  Englishman)  had 
just  finished  shooting  a  planned  picture 
— a  short  on  the  alertness  of  pilots  on 
the  field — when  we  got  a  real  alert. 
When  the  fellow  realized  that  the  real 
thing  was  going  on,  he  made  for  the 
top  of  a  hill  to  take  pictures  of  the 
bombing.  He  reached  the  top  of  the 
hill  in  time  to  get  some  good  pictures 
but  realized  he  was  out  of  film  when 
he  started  shooting.  By  the  time  he 
re-loaded  all  the  bombs  had  been 
dropped! 

Had  he  obtained  the  pictures,  they 
would  have  been  among  the  most  spec¬ 
tacular  of  any  bombing  in  Port  Moresby.” 

It  seems  that  the  35mm.  camera  is 
too  large  and  difficult  to  handle,  and 
it  is  almost  impossible  to  carry  an 
adequate  amount  of  film. 

“I  traveled  at  the  front  with  Martin 
Barnett,  of  Paramount  News,  and  I  saw 
some  of  the  problems  he  had  to  con¬ 
tend  with  regarding  movies.  He  car¬ 
ried  a  35mm.  Eyemo  camera.  I  believe 
his  lenses  were  a  2-in.  and  a  6-in.  focal 
length,  and  he  would  take  along  about 
2,000  feet  of  35mm.  negative.  But  while 
actually  shooting  at  the  fighting  front 
he  could  take  along  only  four  or  five 
hundred  feet. 

“Now  if  he  had  been  equipped  with 


236  June,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


16mm.,  his  camera-outfit  would  have 
been  rather  less  than  half  as  big  and 
half  as  light.  With  the  lighter  and  more 
compact  16mm.  film,  he  could  have 
carried  enough  footage  to  give  him 
five  times  the  screen  time  of  the 
bulkier  35mm.  stock  he  carried — say 
enough  to  give  him  the  equivalent  in 
screen  time  of  1500  to  2500  feet  of 
35mm.  And  of  course  using  Kodachrome 
he  could  have  gotten  35mm.  enlarge¬ 
ments  that  would  compare  very  favor¬ 
ably  with  anything  he  could  shoot  with 
35mm.  under  field  conditions.  In  a 
word,  he  could  go  farther  from  his  base, 
and  stay  longer,  and  bring  back  much 
more  in  actual  picture  using  16mm.  than 
could  be  possible  with  35mm. 

“And  I  think  that  both  the  official 
war  films  and  the  commercial  short-sub¬ 
jects  made  in  16mm.  Kodachrome  and 
released  in  35mm.  blow-ups,  whether 
black-and-white  or  Technicolor,  have 
pretty  well  proved  that  16mm.  is  just 
as  good  as  the  man  behind  the  camera. 
In  the  hands  of  a  capable,  cool-headed 
professional  like  the  newsreel  crowd 
and  the  A.S.C.-members  who  are  now 
in  the  military  and  naval  photographic 
services,  16mm.  can  pay  big  dividends 
when  compared  to  35mm.  for  front-line 
camerawork.” 

Summarizing  what  his  experience  in 
New  Guinea  had  taught  him,  Frank  re¬ 
iterated  this  important  advice.  “Take  the 
best  possible  care  of  all  equipment! 
Remember  that  new  equipment  is  not 
easily  obtained — especially  if  you’re  6,000 
miles  from  your  home  office — and  if  you 
want  to  keep  on  making  pictures,  you’ve 
got  to  ‘make  do’  with  the  outfits  you 
start  out  with. 

“Lightweight  equipment  is  essential! 
When  you  get  out  to  the  real  front, 
you’ll  have  to  carry  it  yourself.  That’s 
bad  enough  in  itself  when  the  going  gets 
tough — buit  its  a  thousand  times  worse 
when  you  have  to  dodge  bullets  too. 
Compact,  lightweight  equipment  is  a  good 
deal  easier  to  protect,  too,  when  weather 


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conditions  get  bad,  as  they  always  do 
at  the  front.  And — remember  that  a 
man  trying  to  use  a  big  camera  of  any 
kind  in  the  field  makes  a  lot  bigger  target 
than  the  same  man  using  a  smaller, 
lighter  camera!”  END. 


At  the  Front 

Continued  from  Page  208 

regularly  every  three  days,  including 
war  news  shots.  Aeroplanes,  trains  and 
dusty  khaki-colored  bullet- punctured 
front  line  lorries  daily  deliver  to  the 
Central  Newsreel  Studio  in  Moscow  their 
tins  of  films.  One  winter  morning  a  car 
containing  tins  of  film  drove  up  as  usual 
to  the  Central  Studio.  Inside  the  vehicle 
lay  the  dead  body  of  our  colleague,  cam¬ 
eraman  Pavlov.  He  had  been  filming  the 
Red  Army  taking  a  town  in  the  front 
line  and  had  been  killed  by  shrapnel.  At 
the  precise  moment  at  which  this  heroic 
cameraman  was  being  buried,  the  studio 
was  mixing  the  sound  track  for  its  next 
newsreel  issue,  which  showed  the  actual 
scenes  of  our  troops  retaking  Malo- 
Yaroslavets,  the  very  same  battle  in 
which  Pavlov  had  met  his  death. 

“The  war  of  the  Soviet  people  against 
Hitler’s  hordes  knows  many  instances  of 
sublime  heroism  and  valour.  It  would 
be  difficult  today  to  say  where  Soviet 
newsreelmen  could  not  be  found  filming 
this  war  throughout  the  vast  expanse  of 
the  front  stretching  from  the  Black  Sea 
to  the  Arctic  Ocean. 

“These  cameramen  ascend  in  war¬ 
planes  and  their  cameras  travel  deep 
into  the  enemy’s  rear  where  Soviet  air¬ 
craft  hurl  their  cargo  of  bombs;  they 
descend  deep  underwater  aboard  Soviet 
submarines;  they  will  always  be  found 
at  their  posts  in  infantry  units  even  in 
the  most  strenuous  moments  of  enemy 
charges;  they  film  guerilla  action  far 
behind  the  enemy’s  lines.  The  camera¬ 
man  often  becomes  the  Red  Army  man, 
laying  aside  his  camera  and  taking  up  a 
machine-gun  or  tommy-gun. 

“I  should  very  much  like  to  bet  you, 
my  friends,  cameramen  of  Great  Britain 
and  America,  that  we  shall  meet  you 
working  and  fighting  hand  in  hand  with 
us  when  the  Second  Front  is  at  last 
opened. 

“Then,  firmly  gripping  each  other  in 
a  handshake,  in  close  creative  co-opera¬ 
tion,  we  shall  film  the  final  shots  and 
make  the  great  historic  film  of  the  deci¬ 
sive  battle  and  victory  of  freedom-loving, 
progressive  mankind.”  END. 


Outdoor  Camerawork 

Continued  from  Page  207 

be  less  increase  in  both  visual  and  light¬ 
ing  contrasts  in  the  dupe  or  enlarge¬ 
ment. 

In  Kodachrome,  too,  there’s  very  lit¬ 
tle  to  be  done  in  filtering,  with  the 
exception  of  the  filters  made  to  cor¬ 
rect  Type  A  Kodachrome  for  exterior 
use,  and  occasionally  to  penetrate  haze 
in  extreme  long-shots.  In  the  first  in¬ 


stance,  you’ve  simply  got  to  use  a  filter. 
In  the  second,  you  can  use  either  the 
Eastman  “Kodachrome  Haze  Filter”  or 
— and  I  think  this  is  better— a  Pola- 
Screen.  The  Haze-filter  frequently  tends 
to  distort  color-rendition  in  the  dis¬ 
tance.  The  Pola-Screen  gets  through 
distant  haze  just  as  well,  and  has  the 
advantage  of  keeping  the  background 
color-rendition  unaffected.  For  that 
matter,  I’ve  found  the  Pola-Screen  use¬ 
ful  at  times  in  35mm.  black-and-white, 
not  only  to  eliminate  unwanted  glare  or 
rpflections,  but  also  to  “pull  down”  the 
sky  without  affecting  the  color-rendi¬ 
tion  elsewhere.  So  if  you  feel  you 
simply  must  go  into  action  armed  with 
at  least  one  filter,  I’d  recommend  mak¬ 
ing  that  one  a  Pola-Screen,  and  for¬ 
getting  the  rest.  END. 


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American  Cinematographer  •  June,  1943  237 


Max  Fabian 

(Continued  from  Page  210) 

miniature  battlefield  for  a  relatively  un¬ 
important  little  program  picture  being 
directed  by  King  Vidor  and  photo¬ 
graphed  by  John  Arnold,  A.S.C.  ...  it 
was  called  “The  Big  Parade.” 

As  he  tells  it  now,  “That  assignment 
was  something  of  a  surprise  to  me;  I 
had  never  photographed  a  miniature  be¬ 
fore,  and  I’ll  confess  I  wasn’t  at  all  sure 
I  knew  how  to  go  about  it!  But  some¬ 
how  I  managed  to  get  the  shot  filmed, 
and  everyone  was  very  surprisingly 
pleased  with  my  efforts.  So  I  kept  on 
doing  miniatures,  which  were  then  just 
beginning  to  come  into  general  use. 

“Oh,  in  between,  I’d  do  a  production 
now  and  then — went  over  to  Fox  for 
some  of  them — but  all  the  time  Metro 
kept  calling  me  back  to  do  more  minia¬ 
tures.  So  finally  I  just  stuck  to  it  .  .  . 
and  they’ve  kept  me  busy  at  it  ever 
since. 

“I’m  not  sorry,  either.  Once  you  get 
into  it,  there’s  a  strange  fascination 
about  making  miniatures  look  real  on  the 
screen.  Besides,  now  that  production 
camerawork  has  become  more  compli¬ 
cated  and  more  nerve-racking,  I  figure  I 
get  out  of  a  lot  of  headaches  letting  the 
other  boys  handle  the  production  work. 


FOR  SALE 


IMPROVED  DUPLEX  35MM  PRINTER,  with  two 
Bell-Howell  Cams  and  Shuttles.  Perfect  Regis¬ 
tration  for  Color  or  Black  and  White,  also 
process  plates.  Bell-Howell  Standard  Silenced 
Camera ;  Educational  Blimp  and  Dolly ;  Sound 
and  Silent  Moviolas.  Equipment  slightly  used  at 
a  big  saving.  Hollywood  Camera  Exchange. 
1600  Cahuenga  Blvd.,  Hollywood. 

WE  BUY.  SELL  AND  RENT  PROFESSIONAL 
AND  16mm  EQUIPMENT,  NEW  AND  USED. 
WE  ARE  DISTRIBUTORS  FOR  ALL  LEAD¬ 
ING  MANUFACTURERS.  RUBY  CAMERA 
EXCHANGE,  729  Seventh  Ave.,  New  York  City. 
Established  since  1910. 


RCA  MITCHELL  OR  BELL  AND  HOWELL 
3  phase  CAMERA  MOTORS,  $135.00;  RCA  R-2 
STUDIO  RECORDER.  $275.00;  TWO  ELE¬ 
MENT  GLOWLAMPS,  $9.50;  DEVRY  SINGLE 
SYSTEM  CAMERA  AT  SACRIFICE;  DUPLEX 
35MM  STEP  PRINTER.  $425.00;  BERNDT 
AURICON  16MM  RECORDER  WITH  NOISE 
REDUCTION,  BEAUTIFUL.  $595.00.  S.  O.  S. 
CINEMA  SUPPLY  CORPORATION,  NEW 
YORK. 


CINE  SPECIAL  FOR  SALE  ONLY  WITH  AURI- 
con  Recorder  $975,  both  like  new.  Fine  lenses 
available  to  buyer.  Auricon  alone.  $525.  Trade 
16mm  lenses  for  Filmo  Sportster.  Box  1006 
American  Cinematographer. 

LIGHTING  EQUIPMENT  FOR  SALE,  12 

Broadsides  complete  with  cables,  plugs  and 
diffusers  $40.00  each.  12  Converted  18-inch 
spots.  Fresnel  lenses,  stands,  cables  and  plugs 
$40.00  each.  18-inch  spots  complete  $25.00 
each,  without  stands  $15.00  each.  Sold  only 
in  lots  of  six  or  more.  Crating  extra,  Don 
Malkames,  40  Standish  Ave.,  Tuckahoe,  N.  Y. 


ONE  PAIR  CRAIG  16mm.  FILM  WINDERS 
for  2,000-foot  reels  $15.00 ;  one  Beaded  Screen 
on  tripod  36  x  48  inches,  like  new  $15.00. 
One  Kleigl  floodlight  2,000  watts,  no  reflectors 
or  cable,  like  new  $37.50.  One  Kleigl  5,000- 
watt  floodlight,  $75.00.  Will  take  also  1,000- 
watt  lamp.  Photos  of  Kleigl  lights  sent  for  25c 
coin.  Box  1005  American  Cinemotographer. 


SPEED  GRAPHIC,  3%  x  4 Vi,  F:4.5  ZEISS  TE3- 
SAR,  rangefinder,  speed-gun,  pack  and  film- 
holders,  case,  etc.,  $200.  Bell  &  Howell  f  :2.5 
8mm  camera,  new  condition,  $75.  Thalhammer 
tripod,  $20.  Box  1006,  American  Cinematog¬ 
rapher. 


“As  we  work  it  out  here  at  MGM,  I 
have  a  pretty  free  hand.  I  work  in 
friendly,  cooperative  fashion  with  the 
directors  and  art  directors  of  the  minia¬ 
ture  department,  but  in  the  actual  shoot¬ 
ing,  I’m  pretty  much  on  my  own.  They 
may  provide  the  set,  and  indicate  how 
they  want  the  action  played,  but  it’s  my 
‘know  how’  that  puts  the  shot  on  the 
screen.  And  I’m  not  always  harried — 
as  production  men  are — by  unit  man¬ 
agers  urging  one  to  hurry  and  get  the 
overhead  over  with.  Several  times  re¬ 
cently  I’ve  turned  down  chances  to  take 
a  .fling  at  production  camerawork.  I’m 
quite  content  to  be  the  biggest  photo¬ 
graphic  frog  in  my  own  small  puddle. 

“Besides,  I  like  miniature  work.  Every 
shot  is  different,  and  has  its  own  chal¬ 
lenging  problems.  Sometimes,  my  minia¬ 
tures  are  for  a  big  picture,  and  I  have 
weeks  of  time  and  a  six-figure  budget 
to  do  them  with  ...  so  that  I  can  use 
large-scale,  three-dimensional  miniatures, 
and  take  my  time  getting  the  best  pos¬ 
sible  results.  At  other  times,  usually  for 
less  important  shots  or  pictures,  I  have 
to  work  comparatively  fast,  and  with  the 
sketchiest  of  materials.  Then  I’ll  use 
cut-outs,  and  play  around  with  lighting, 
perspective  and  camera-speeds  to  create 
the  illusion  I’m  after. 

“But  don’t  look  down  on  cut-outs  just 


WANTED 


GUARANTEED  HIGHEST  PRICES  PAID  FOR 
16MM.  CAMERAS— SOUND  PROJECTORS  35 
MM.  Eyemo  Cameras,  all  models ;  Bell  &  How¬ 
ell — Mitchell — Akeley  and  motors,  lenses,  acces¬ 
sories,  lao.  equipment.  WRITE  US  FIRST. 

THE  CAMERA  MART,  70  West  45th  St.,  N.Y.C. 


WANTED  TO  BUY  FOR  CASH 
CAMERAS  AND  ACCESSORIES 
MITCHELL.  B  &  H,  EYEMO,  DEBRIE,  AKELEY 
ALSO  LABORATORY  AND  CUTTING  ROOM 
EQUIPMENT 

CAMERA  EQUIPMENT  COMPANY 
1600  BROADWAY,  NEW  YORK  CITY 
CABLE:  CINEQUIP 


WE  PAY  CASH  FOR  EVERYTHING  PHOTO¬ 
GRAPHIC.  Write  us  today.  Hollywood  Camera 
Exchange.  1600  Cahuenga  Blvd.,  Hollywood. 


CAMERAS,  EYEMO,  BELL  &  HOWELL  STAND¬ 
ARD.  MITCHELL,  ACCESSORIES.  16mm 
SOUND  PROJECTORS,  ANY  MAKE.  RE¬ 
CORDERS  or  WHAT  HAVE  YOU?  S.  O.  S. 
CINEMA  SUPPLY  CORPORATION,  NEW 
YORK. 


WANTED:  D.  C.  MOTOR  FOR  DEBRIE  LE 
Parvo  camera.  Please  give  full  details  in  air 
mail  letter.  G.  O.  Russell,  136  E.  Bay  Street, 
Jacksonville,  Fla. 


HIGHEST  PRICES  PAID  FOR  16mm  SILENT 
and  Sound  Projectors.  Give  complete  details 
including  make,  model,  condition  and  price. 
Erker  Bros.,  610  Olive  St.,  St.  Louis,  Mo. 


because  they’re  simple  and  comparative¬ 
ly  cheap.  Those  ‘Miniver’  miniatures 
were  cut-outs,  and  so,  I  understand,  were 
the  shots  of  the  Jap  fleet  in  ‘Wake 
Island.’  But  if  you  can  make  them  look 
real,  it  doesn’t  matter  what  they  may 
actually  be. 

“That’s  the  big  thing  about  shooting 
miniatures  or  any  other  kind  of  special- 
effects  shot:  make  it  look  real.  Once 
you’ve  done  that,  bend  every  effort  to 
making  your  composition  and  lighting 
artistic.  And  with  that  combination, 
you’ve  the  whole  sum  and  substance  of 
successful  miniature  work. 

“In  all  of  it,  none  of  us  today  are  try¬ 
ing  to  fool  the  public.  Instead,  we’re  try¬ 
ing  to  put  on  the  screen  something 
necessary  to  the  story,  but  which  can’t 
be  done  by  conventional,  straightforward 
methods.  If  the  average  audience  doesn’t 
notice  our  work  as  such,  we  can  feel 
we’ve  really  succeeded.”  END. 

New  Aircraft  Identification  Kit 

A  very  complete  new  kit  of  336  air¬ 
craft  identification  silhouettes  in  2"  x  2" 
miniature  slides,  recently  prepared  by 
“Flying”  magazine  is  now  being  dis¬ 
tributed  exclusively  through  the  Society 
for  Visual  Education,  Inc.  The  kit  has 
been  tested  with  excellent  results  in  ap¬ 
proximately  150  aircraft  identification 
courses  in  high  schools,  colleges,  and 
among  various  units  of  the  Armed 
Forces. 

Material  for  this  kit  was  prepared  by 
a  highly  specialized  staff  of  experts  and 
is  specifically  designed  for  group  instruc¬ 
tion.  It  includes  110  different  types  of 
aircraft  used  by  the  world’s  major  air 
powers.  Each  type  of  aircraft  is  com¬ 
pletely  identified  with  three  individual 
silhouettes  on  separate  slides,  which 
show  side,  bottom,  and  front  views.  In 
addition,  there  are  six  introductory 
slides,  showing  front  and  bottom  views 
of  various  wing  types. 

The  kit  includes  an  indexed  case, 
slides,  and  an  instructor’s  manual.  Each 
slide  is  accurately  keyed  to  the  master- 
index  on  the  cover  of  the  case,  which 
lists  the  guide  number  and  type  of  air¬ 
craft.  The  instructor’s  manual  includes 
an  alphabetical  index  of  aircraft  types 
and  provides  suggestions  concerning  the 
proper  use  of  the  slides.  The  standard 
kit  is  available  at  $35.00  in  cardboard 
Eezeemounts  and  a  De  Luxe  Kit,  with 
silhouettes  mounted  between  glass  in 
S.V.E.  Slide  Binders,  will  sell  at  $55.00. 

Smaller  units  of  supplementary  slides 
will  be  made  available  by  the  Society  for 
Visual  Education,  Inc.,  as  rapidly  as  the 
staff  of  “Flying”  magazine  may  secure 
detailed  information  concerning  new 
types  of  military  aircraft  and  prepare 
new  drawings.  It  is  also  likely  much  of 
this  same  material,  including  the  orig¬ 
inal  kit,  will  be  made  available  on  slide- 
films,  for  the  benefit  of  those  who  do  not 
have  projectors  for  miniature  slides. 
Complete  information  covering  these 
new  and  effective  training  aids  may  be 
secured  from  the  Society  for  Visual  Edu¬ 
cation,  Inc.,  100  East  Ohio  Street,  Chi¬ 
cago,  upon  request. 


CLASSIFIED  ADVERTISING 


238  June,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


A1/fi4C£ES 

aided  by 
Recordak  System 

OUR  NAVY  “came  back”  after  Pearl 
Harbor  to  fight  the  bitterest  series  of 
engagements  in  Naval  history.  Ships  critically 
wounded  have  had  to  fight  again  —  and 
again.  The  Nation’s  life  has  depended  on 
miracles  of  repair  .  . . 

A  set  of  blueprints  for  a  destroyer  covers 
a  quarter  of  an  acre,  and  may  be  filed  in 
Washington  —  yet  quick  reference  to  these 
plans  and  specifications  on  the  spot  is  essen¬ 
tial  to  a  workmanlike  repair  job. 

After  the  hell  of  Pearl  Harbor,  the  Navy 
isn’t  waiting  for  tons  of  blueprints  to  be 
shipped.  Little  rolls  of  35-mm.  microfilm 
can  cut  priceless  weeks  from  the  time  re¬ 
quired  to  send  a  battered  ship  back  into 
action. 

Through  Kodak’s  Microfile  Recordak  Sys¬ 
tem,  the  photographic  method  behind 
V- . .  —  Mail,  the  Navy  condenses,  on  micro¬ 
film,  the  bulky  original  plans.  These  can  be 
flown  halfway  around  the  world  within  hours 
...  or  are  already  on  hand  at  distant  repair 
bases  .  .  .  may  even  be  on  a  “mother  ship,” 
for  repairs  at  sea. 

This  is  only  one  of  many  instances  where 
Recordak  is  increasing  the  effectiveness  of 
America’s  war  effort. 

"Ration  banking,”  war  maps 

Recordak  was  originated  to  duplicate,  on  micro¬ 
film,  every  check  cleared  through  a  bank  —  safe¬ 
guarding  depositors  and  simplifying  banking.  It 
was  revolutionary,  but  no  one  could  have  fore¬ 
seen  its  manifold  destiny. 

Your  ration  coupons  have  become  as  essential 
as  money.  They  are  turned  in  by  your  dealer  to 
his  bank.  The  larger  banks — 90%  of  them — have 
Recordak  machines,  which  photograph  the  record 
of  their  ration  transactions  with  dealers  and 
wholesalers. 


Official  U.S.  Navy  Photographs 


Above — Fantastic  patterns  of  flame  and  smoke  at  the 
moment  the  magazine  exploded  on  the  bombed  destroyer 
Shaw  at  Pearl  Harbor.  The  end  of  the  Shaw? 


Right — This  is  the  same  shaw.  She  was  floated  ...  re¬ 
paired  in  San  Francisco  .  .  .  showing  what  repair  can  do! 


Our  jighting  jorces,  in  new  offensives,  carry 
Recordak  duplicates  of  available  maps  and  photo¬ 
graphs  of  the  region. 

In  Selective  Service ,  Recordak  made  error- 
proof  copies  of  each  of  the  9,000  numbers — 
critical  in  the  lives  of  17,000,000  young  Ameri¬ 
cans — as  they  were  drawn. 

In  our  uar  industries,  engineering  drawings 
and  shop  orders  that  could  occupy  acres  are 
reduced  by  Recordak  to  “capsule”  size. 

Your  Social  Security  records  and  your  War 
Bond  purchases  are  microfilmed  by  Recordak. 

The  U.  S.  Census — going  back  to  1790 — is  now 
in  this  condensed,  time-proof  form.  The  accessi¬ 
bility  of  these  records  has  enabled  the  Govern¬ 
ment  to  issue  "Certificates  of  Citizenship”  to 
thousands  without  birth  certificates — put  them 
into  war-production  jobs. 

Your  food  rationing  problems?  Think  of  the 
bookkeeping  job  that  your  dealer,  his  bank,  whole¬ 
salers,  and  the  Government  must  do  to  keep  their 
records  straight!  At  the  bank  Recordak  does  much 
of  this  work— tirelessly,  without  a  chance  of  error. 


Forestalling  the  "Blitz” 

In  those  fateful  days  of  1939,  when  the  war  clouds 
were  bursting  over  Europe,  Recordak  machines 
were  at  work  day  and  night,  duplicating  the 
priceless  manuscripts  and  volumes  of  the  British 
Museum,  and  the  records  of  the  great  British 
banking  houses  and  insurance  companies.  These 
miniature  duplicates  were  stowed  away  beyond 
the  reach  of  bomb  and  fire  — they’re  not  among 
the  missing. 

In  its  greatest  crisis,  civilization  has  found  a 
way  to  condense  and  perpetuate  its  culture — its 
"heart”  as  well  as  its  "hard  business  head.”  You 
realize  this  as  you  read  the  V«*--Mail  letter  of 
your  boy  —  his  own  writing,  flown  to  you  on  a 
thumbnail  bit  of  film  halfway  around  the  world 
. . .  Eastman  Kodak  Company,  Rochester,  N.  Y. 

Serving  kuman  progress 
tkrougk  Pkotograpky 


American  Cinematographer  •  June,  1943  239 


,el\  achieve- 


How  about  helping  train  First  Aiders  for  your 
local  Red  Cross  Unit  ...  or  showing  the  new  releases, 
"Battle  for  Tunisia”  and  "Surrender  at  Stalingrad,”  at 
your  next  OCD  meeting  ...  or  helping  a  local  war  plant 
lick  a  personnel  problem? 

Yes, you  can  do  these  and  other  vital  jobs  for  your  com¬ 
munity  ...  by  making  your  Filmo  Projector  available 
when  and  where  it’s  needed  .  .  .  and  by  teaming  up  with 
the  Filmosound  Library.  In  this  vast  collection  of  films  are 
the  very  ones  your  community  may  need  to  do  a  morale¬ 
building  job  ...  to  instruct  war  workers  ...  or  to  provide 
an  hour  or  an  evening  of  precious  relaxation. 

Let  the  Filmosound  Library  team  up  with  you  and  your 
Filmo  Projector  .  .  .  give  your  town,  your  neighborhood, 
your  children’s  school  a  powerful  new  weapon  in  the 
home-front  fight. 

TO  DO  THIS  IMPORTANT  WORK  your  Filmo  Projector 
must  be  at  its  peak  of  efficiency.  Send  it  to  us  for  com¬ 
plete  reconditioning. Trained  factory  technicians  examine, 
clean,  oil  the  mechanism  .  . .  repair  or  replace  worn  parts 
and  return  your  projector  in  factory-perfect  working 
order.  Your  camera  dealer  will  get  estimates  for  you  and 
will  help  you  pack  your  projector  for  safe  shipment  to  us. 


Which  important 
home-front  job  will  you 
and  the  Filmosound 


Library  tackle  first? 


"SURRENDER  AT  STALINGRAD” — Captured  German  film  shows  the 
blasting  attack  on  the  Russian  stronghold  .  .  .  then,  on  Russian  film, 
the  thrilling  end  of  this  historic  siege. 


Here’s  a  MUST  for  your  next  OCD  meeting 

TWO  TERRIFIC  BATTLE  ACTIONS  IN  ONE  FILM 


"BATTLE  FOR  TUNISIA” — Actual  battle  scenes  filmed  during  the  cam¬ 
paign  in  North  Africa.  The  most  amazing  tank  action  ever  filmed  . .  .  with 
opposing  forces  in  full  camera  range! 


These  will  record  a  Victorious  America  for  you  . 


Filmo  “Companion”  8  Camera 


“Drop-in”  loading 
— no  sprockets. 
Four  speeds  plus 
single-frame  con¬ 
trol.  Interchange¬ 
able  F3.5  lens. 
Finder  masks  for 
sped al  lenses. 
Built-in  exposure 
chart.  As  always, 
precision -  made 
and  Lifetime  Guar • 
anteed. 


Filmoarc  Projector 

Engineered  as  an 
arc  projector,  this 
16mm.  machine 
provides  sufficient 
light  for  large  audi¬ 
toriums.  High  out¬ 
put  amplifier  and 
two  high-fidelity 
permanent  magnet 
dynamic  speakers 
included.  Shows 
sound  or  silentfilm. 


.  .  after  the  war  is  won 


Filmo  Auto  Load  Camera 

Color  or  mono¬ 
chrome  film  in¬ 
stantly  inter¬ 
changeable  in  mid- 
reel  with  pre¬ 
threaded  film  car¬ 
tridge.  Four  speeds 
plus  single-frame 
exposure.  F2.7  lens 
and  brilliant  finder. 

Built-in  exposure 
chart  for  both  color 
and  monochrome. 


Eyemo  Camera 

The  “tailor-made” 
camera.  Your  needs 
dictate  its  specifi¬ 
cations.  Seven 
standard  models 
plus  a  complete  se¬ 
lection  of  preci¬ 
sion-engineered 
accessories  give  you 
a  wide  selection  of 
ideal  equipment 
for  almost  every 
camera  job. 


Filmo  70-D  Camera 

Long-time  favorite 
of  serious  workers, 
it  gives  you  theater- 
quality  pictures. 
Loads  with  50-  or 
100-foot  spools  of 
16mm.  color  or 
monochrome  film. 
Operates  at  seven 
speeds.  Three-lens 
turret  head  equip¬ 
ped  withyourselec- 
tion  of  fine  lenses. 


Filmo“Master"  16mm.  Projector 

750  - watt  lamp. 
Fast  FI. 6  lens, 
instantly  inter- 
changeable. 
Equipped  with 
clutch,  re  verse,  and 
two-way  tilt. 
‘‘Safe-lock’ * 
sprockets  prevent 
incorrect  film 
threading  and 
damaged  film.  Fa¬ 
mous  B&H  all¬ 
gear  drive. 


THOSE  HOME  MOVIES  OF  YESTERYEAR— 

You’ll  be  showing  them  more  than  ever, 
these  days  when  your  youngsters  are  in 
uniform  far  away.  Your  precious  films  will 
look  better — and  keep  better — if  you  let  us 
clean  and  "Vap-O-rate”  them.  This  pro¬ 
fessionally-proven  process  makes  film  im¬ 
pervious  to  moisture  and  oil,  and  greatly 
increases  resistance  to  scratches  and  heat. 
Bell  &  Howell  Company,  Chicago;  New 
York;  Hollywood;  Washington,  D.  C.; 
London.  Established  1907. 

SEND  THIS  COUPON  for  a  list  of  new  Patriotic  Films 
just  released  . . .  and  for  information  on  the  Peerless 
"Vap-O-rate”  Film  Treatment. 


BELL  &  HOWELL  COMPANY 

1848  Larchmont  Avenue,  Chicago,  Illinois 


WHEN  YOU  ORDER  new  lamps,  remember  to  return  the  old  ones.  New  lamps  can 
BUY  be  sold  only  when  old  lamps  are  turned  in. 

?  BONDS  "E”  FOR  EXCELLENCE— -how  the  Army-Navy  Award  for  Extraordinary  Performance 
is  won  and  presented  is  shown  by  this  one-reel  sound  film.  Service  charge  50c. 

MOTION  PICTURE  CAMERAS  AND  PROJECTORS 


Please  send  me  Supplement  1943-C.  I  have . mm. 

projector,  sound.  .  .  silent.  .  .  .made  by . 

I’m  interested  in  buying . renting . films  for 

stimulating  morale.  .  .  .educational  films.  .  .  .Civilian 

Defense  films . entertainment . 

I'd  like  to  know  more  about  the  Peerless  “Vap-O-rate” 
Film  Treatment. 

Name . 

Address . 

City . State 


PRECISION- 
MADE  BY 


AC  6-43 


ft  c£  <.  •  *  i. 

<  aRSfcrasfcaH 


,  ,  -'  .  .,  ",  ■  a  &*.»  •„  T-* 

-'rj 

,  .  *  .  '•  ,  /:*...  *'  ‘  v  : 


- .  •'  '*  A ... 

JS-rn*  ■ 

*>v 


.  r  JLyV  JT 


it#  <*•  ***'-•*'  *&*!#'•• 


JULY 


1943 


A  jury  with  an  electric  decision 


THE  pH  meter  is  an  instrument 
commonly  used  for  measuring 
acidity  and  alkalinity.  You  will  see  it 
in  use  in  chemical  laboratories  and  a 
great  many  industrial  establishments. 

In  making  Du  Pont  Motion  Picture 
Film,  emulsions  must  be  of  the  right 
pH.  They  must  be  within  a  certain 
small,  well-defined  range.  Excess  acid¬ 
ity  or  alkalinity  of  the  emulsion  will 
affect  its  characteristics.  And  so  with 
the  aid  of  a  pH  meter  an  electric  de¬ 
cision  is  obtained. 

Chemists  at  the  Du  Pont  Research 
and  Control  Laboratories  also  use  pH 
meters  to  check  the  accuracy  of  de¬ 
veloper  and  fixer  formulae  as  well. 
This  assures  that  their  routine  experi¬ 
ments  and  laboratory  tests  measure 
up  to  the  most  exacting  standards  of 
uniformity. 

Such  careful  attention  to  detail  en¬ 
ables  Du  Pont  to  produce  a  film  that 
gives  you  uniform  results  .  .  .  results 
which  you  may  rely  upon  at  all  times. 
E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  &  Co.  (Inc.), 
Photo  Products  Dept.,  Wilmington, 
Del.;  New  York  Office:  Empire  State 
Bldg. ;  Smith  &  Aller,  Ltd.,  6656  Santa 
Monica  Blvd.,  Hollywood,  Calif. 


MOTION  PICTURE 
FILM 


242  July,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


BETTER  THINGS  FOR  BETTER  LIVING 
...THROUGH  CHEMISTRY 


That’s  why  there 
are  no  Eyemos 
for  civilian  use 
for  the  duration 


Eyemos  have  always  been  famous  for  their  unfailing 
performance  under  conditions  that  put  both  men  and 
machines  to  the  supreme  test.  Good  going  or  tough— 
Eyemo  gets  the  picture.  That  is  why  our  armed  forces 


4  EYEMO  MODELS  L  AND  M 

have  the  compact  type  of  three- 
lens  turret.  V iewfinder  is  matched 
to  6  lens  focal  lengths  by  turning 
a  drum;  shows  "sound”  field  to 
match  camera’s  "sound”  aperture 
plate.  Operating  speeds:  Model 
L — 4  to  32  frames  per  second; 
Model  M — 8  to  48. 

EYEMO  MODELS  PAN  D 

most  complete  of  the  seven  stand¬ 
ard  models,  have  three-arm  offset 
turret,  prismatic  focuser  with 
magnifier,  and  provisions  for 
electric  motor  and  external  film 
magazines.  Speeds:  Model  P — 

4,  8,  12,  16,  24,  and  32  f.p.s.; 

Model  Q— 8,  12,  16,  24,  32,  and 
48  f.p.s. 

WILL  YOU  MAIL  THIS  TO  US  NOW?  t 

Special  arrangements  are  being  made  in  our  service 
department  to  recondition  for  Government  use  all 
of  the  Eyemo  Cameras  we  can  obtain.  You  may  have 
exactly  the  lenses  needed  for  important  military 
BUY  service.  If  you  will  sell— fill  out  the  information 

WAR  BONDS  blank  in  this  advertisement. 


PRECISION-MADE  BY 

and  (^/owedl 


need  every  Eyemo  we  have  or  can  build.  The  need  is  so 
acute,  in  fact,  that  all  Eyemos  must  go  to  the  armed 
services.  That’s  why  we  can’t  supply  civilian  demands 
for  this  famous  35  mm.  camera. 

But  this  war  won’t  last  forever.  When  the  boys  come 
marching  home,  you’ll  again  be  able  to  get  any  one  of 
the  seven  Eyemo  models  that  best  suits  your  needs  .  . . 
and  then,  as  in  the  past,  if  your  particular  requirements 
call  for  a  special  Eyemo— we  will  modify  any  model 
to  suit  you.  You’ll  never  have  to  accept  a  compromise 
in  an  Eyemo  Camera. 

Bell  &  Howell  Company,  Chicago;  New  York;  Hollywood; 

Washington,  D.  C.;  London.  Established  19 07. 

EYEMOS  WANTED  FOR  WAR  SERVICE 

BELL  &  HOWELL  COMPANY 

1849  Larchmont  Avenue  Date . 

Chicago,  Illinois 

Gentlemen : 

For  the  purpose  of  aiding  the  war  effort,  I  am  willing  to  sell  my 

EYEMO  Camera,  Model . Serial  No . 

It  has  been  modified  as  follows: . 


I  will  sell  this  camera  for  $ . and  will  pay 

transportation  and  insurance  to  Chicago. 

This  camera  is: 

. In  good  operating  condition 

. Inoperative  or  damaged  (give  details) : . 


Price  above  includes  these  lenses: . 

I  offer  the  following  additional  lenses  at  the  prices  shown 

here: . . . 

Name . Address . 

City  &  State . .  7_43 

Do  Not  Ship  Until  You  Receive  Instructions  from  Factory  I 


American  Cinematographer  •  July,  1943  243 


CONTENTS 


The  Staff 


Making  A  Documentary  Film  At  Sea . By  Edouard  Buckman 

With  the  Advancing  Army . By  Roman  Karmen 

Screen  Tests  Aren’t  Necssary . By  Charles  E.  Rogers 

The  Rhapsodic  Technique . By  E.  S.  Rooberts 

Hollywood’s  Own  War  Plants . By  William  Stull,  A.S.C. 

Aces  of  the  Camera — XXX:  Virgil  Miller,  A.S.C . 

. By  Walter  Blanchard 

Unseen  Camera-Aces — II:  Linwood  Dunn,  A.S.C . 

. By  Walter  Blanchard 

Through  The  Editor’s  Finder . 

A.S.C.  On  Parade . 

Photography  of  the  Month . 

16  mm.  Movies  For  Our  Soldiers . By  La  Nelle  Fosholdt 

Props — The  Secret  of  Really  Natural  Home  Movies . 

. By  James  R.  Oswald 

Do  Your  Mistakes  Teach  You  What  Not  To  Do? . 

. By  Phil  Tannura,  A.S.C. 

Incident-light  Readings  With  Your  Exposure-meter . 

. By  William  Stull,  A.S.C. 

Strobo-Sync  Sound  Quiz . By  S.  Jepson 

Among  the  Movie  Clubs . 

Home  Movie  Previews . 


246 

248 

249 

250 

252 

253 

254 

255 

256 

257 

258 

259 

262 

263 

264 

265 

266 


The  Front  Cover 

This  month’s  cover  shows  a  unit  from 
Canada’s  Associated  Screen  Studios  film¬ 
ing  a  French-language  short,  “Un  de  Vingt- 
deuxieme,”  for  the  Canadian  Film  Board. 
Behind  the  camera  (with  earphones)  is  the 
late  Lucien  Roy,  recently  killed  in  line  of 
duty.  Note  use  of  newsreel  -  type  Wall 
single-system  sound-camera,  and  micro¬ 
phone  concealed  behind  the  gate. 


EDITOR 

William  Stull.  A.S.C. 

• 

TECHNICAL  EDITOR 
Emery  Huse.  A.S.C. 

• 

WASHINGTON  STAFF  CORRESPONDENT 
Reed  N.  Haythome,  A.S.C. 

• 

MILITARY  ADVISOR 
Col.  Nathan  Levinson 

• 

STAFF  PHOTOGRAPHER 
Pat  Clark 

• 

ARTIST 

Alice  Van  Norman 

• 

CIRCULATION 
Marguerite  Duerr 

• 

ADVISORY  EDITORIAL  BOARD 
Fred  W.  Jackman,  A-  S.  C. 

Victor  Milner.  A.  S.  C. 

James  Van  Trees,  A.  S.  C. 

Farciot  Edouart,  A.S.C. 

Fred  Gage.  A.  S.  C. 

Dr.  J.  S.  Watson,  A.  S.  C. 

Dr.  L.  A.  Jones,  A.  S.  C. 

Dr.  C.  E.  K.  Mees,  A.  S.  C. 

Dr.  W.  B.  Rayton,  A.  S.  C. 

Dr.  Herbert  Meyer,  A.  S.  C. 

Dr.  V.  B.  Sease,  A.  S.  C. 

• 

NEW  YORK  REPRESENTATIVE 
S.  R.  Cowan,  132  West  43rd  Street 
Chickering  4-3278  New  York 

• 

AUSTRALIAN  REPRESENTATIVE 
McGill's,  179  Elizabeth  Street,  Melbourne, 
Australian  and  New  Zealand  Agents 

• 

Published  monthly  by  A.  S.  C.  Agency,  Inc. 
Editorial  and  business  offices: 

1782  North  Orange  Drive 
Hollywood  (Los  Angeles,  28),  California 
Telephone:  GRanite  2135 
• 

Established  1920.  Advertising  rates  on  appli¬ 
cation.  Subscriptions:  United  States  and  Pan- 
American  Union.  *2.50  per  year;  Canada,  $2.75 
per  year ;  Foreign.  $3.50.  Single  copies,  25c : 
back  numbers.  30c :  foreign,  single  copies  35c, 
back  numbers  40c.  Copyright  1943  by  A.  S.  C. 
Agency,  Inc. 

• 

Entered  as  second-class  matter  Nov.  18.  1937, 
at  the  postoffice  at  Los  Angeles,  California,  under 
the  act  of  March  3,  1879. 


244  July,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


Illustration  from  the  Walt  Disney  Feature.  " VICTORY  THROUGH  AIR  POWER. "  Major  Alexander  P.  de  Seversky’s  best-selling  book. 


*FANTA SY  OF  FACTS... 

"Fantastic!”  would  have  been  [the  word  for  the  Douglas  B-19  in  1903.  For  the 
Wright  Brothers’  epochal  flight  was  only  120  feet  — 92  feet  less  than  the  wing 
span  of  the  B-19.  Yet,  with  a  tail  as  high  as  a  three-story  building,  this  plane  is 
only  a  promise  of  the  mighty  achievements  still  to  come  in  aviation. 

Production  of  aircraft  equipment  used  on  the  B-19  and  nearly  every  leading 
United  Nation’s  military  plane  was  an  evolution  of  ADEL’S  original  plans  for 
making  cinematographic  equipment.  A  unique  lens  focusing  device  led  to  the 
development  of  a  carburetor  dual  control  mechanism  which,  in  turn,  led  to  the 
manufacture  of  other  aircraft  devices.  While  ADEL  efforts  are  now  devoted  100% 
to  the  aviation  industry,  future  plans  include  advanced  cinematographic  equipment 
utilizing  the  engineering  and  designing  skills  that  created  ADEL’S  international 
acceptance  in  aviation.  Hasten  the  day  of  Victory  by  taking  Mickey’s  good  advice. 


MICKEY  MOUSE 
SAVS*  "BONDS  Witt 
BUY  BOMBS- 
PLANES  LIKE 
THIS  WILL  DELIVER  THEM* 


OFFICES:  DALLAS,  TEXAS  •  DETROIT,  MICHIGAN  •  DAYTON,  OHIO  •  HUNTINGTON,  WEST  VIRGINIA  •  HAGERSTOWN,  MARYLAND  •  TORONTO,  CANADA 

*TRADE  MARK  COPYRIGHT  1943  ADEL  PRECISION  PRODUCTS  CORP. 


American  Cinematographer  •  July,  1943 


Making  A  Documentary 
Film  At  Sea 

By  EDUARD  BUCKMAN 


AFTER  our  shooting  was  over  and 
/-%  we  were  in  Halifax  on  our  way 
-^back  to  the  studios  of  the  National 
Film  Board  in  Ottawa,  something  hap¬ 
pened  that  reflected  our  whole  experience 
while  making  documentary  films  on  East 
Coast  fishing  in  Canada.  Cinematog¬ 
rapher  Sinclair  had  to  buy  a  pair  of 
shorts.  I  went  into  the  store  with  him. 
When  we  came  out,  he’d  found  not  only 
shorts,  but  a  suit  and  a  sport  jacket,  and 
I’d  gotten  a  top-coat.  That  was  just  the 
way  with  our  films.  We’d  come  expect¬ 
ing  to  find  one  thing — something  quite 
ordinary  like  shorts  —  and  we’d  run 
across  something  unique  —  like  Bond 
Street  clothes. 

It  had  happened  before  on  our  docu¬ 
mentary  expeditions.  No  one  without 
first-hand  knowledge  of  a  section  can  sit 
miles  away  and  expect  to  write  a  script 
about  the  section  which  will  be  correct. 
Research  never  seems  to  turn  up  just 
those  things  which  bring  a  film  to  life. 
For  instance,  we  went  up  to  the  James 
Bay  area  to  do  a  film  on  trapping  with 
the  expectation  that  there  were  white 
trappers  and  kindly,  bearded  Hudson’s 
Bay  company  factors.*  What  we  found 
were  Indian  trappers  and  a  Scotsman  in 
a  business  suit  who,  as  post  manager 
(not  factor),  prided  himself  that  his 

•(See  'The  Indians  Had  a  Word  for  Us,"  AMERI¬ 
CAN  CINEMATOGRAPHER.  August,  1942,  p. 
-150.) 


store  was  as  up-to-date  as  any  city  es¬ 
tablishment. 

When,  last  summer  and  fall,  we  were 
assigned  to  the  Nova  Scotia  fishing  front, 
our  ideas  were  as  mixed.  We  were  to 
feature  the  fishing  co-operatives,  “mar¬ 
vels,”  we  were  told,  of  communal  achieve¬ 
ment,  where  the  humble  fisherfolk,  band¬ 
ing  together  in  the  face  of  the  depression 
and  the  oppression  of  industrial  mag¬ 
nates,  had  literally  pulled  themselves  up 
to  prosperity  by  their  own  sea-boot 
straps!  Another  member  of  the  Film 
Board  staff  had  done  the  preliminary  re¬ 
search  ;  and  when  it  was  decided  that  the 
Sinclair-Buckman  Unit,  because  of  its 
experience  in  the  “roughing-it”  type  of 
location,  was  best  qualified  to  make  the 
film,  his  files  were  turned  over  to  us.  Of 
his  tentative  scripts,  one,  we  later  found, 
was  almost  a  word-for-word  transcrip¬ 
tion  of  a  chronological  account  of  a  day 
on  a  fishing  boat  as  set  forth,  for  chil¬ 
dren,  in  a  Nova  Scotian  grade-school 
textbook  (published,  if  we  recall  aright, 
in  1912). 

All  of  this  has  only  reinforced  the 
attitude  Douglas  Sinclair  and  myself 
have  always  had  about  making  document¬ 
ary  films.  You  have  to  go  to  the  section 
in  question,  live  among  the  people,  gain 
their  confidence  and  then  report  photo¬ 
graphically  what  is  there,  not  what  you 
wanted  or  hoped  to  find,  if  the  film  is 
to  have  validity  and  truth. 

I  intentionally  write  validity  and  truth. 


They  do  not  necessarily  mean  that  the 
documentary  will,  as  a  film,  be  good  or 
interesting.  Had  we  conscientiously  done 
the  co-operatives,  our  film,  if  true,  would 
have  been  depressing.  Our  survey  showed 
the  co-operatives  to  be  such  in  name 
only:  a  few  fishermen  with  a  little  capi¬ 
tal  and  encouraged  by  a  religious  or¬ 
ganization  with  a  government  grant,  had, 
in  a  given  community,  set  up  businesses 
and  were  themselves — not  the  community 
as  a  whole — receiving  such  meager  prof¬ 
its  as  there  were.  In  Little  Dover  (where 
it  was  suggested  we  work  because  socio¬ 
logical  sermonizers  had  cited  it,  in  book 
after  book,  as  Nova  Scotia’s  finest  co¬ 
operative  effort),  we  found  that,  three 
months  after  the  inhabitants  had  built 
and  operated  their  own  lobster-canning 
factory,  over  ninety  percent  of  the  fam¬ 
ilies  were  again  on  relief!  Such  con¬ 
ditions,  if  re-enacted  for  documentary 
purposes,  might  provide  good  propa¬ 
ganda,  but  wouldn’t  make  good  publicity. 
And  our  films,  however  documentary  in 
intent,  were  designed  to  show  Canada 
favorably  on  educational  screens  outside 
the  Dominion. 

I  write  “documentary  in  intent”  with¬ 
out  scruple  or  reservation.  Having,  as 
a  unit,  produced  four  films  for  the  Na¬ 
tional  Film  Board,  Douglas  Sinclair  and 
myself  certainly  have  the  right  to  call 
ourselves  documentary  film  makers.  But 
although  we  were  trained  in  the  school 
under  John  Grierson,  the  dynamic  Scots¬ 
man  who  personally  promoted  the  docu¬ 
mentary  from  a  sporadic  and  unrecog¬ 
nized  occurrence  to  its  present  estab¬ 
lished  place  on  the  screens  of  the  world, 
neither  of  us  are  able  to  define  exactly 
what  a  documentary  is.  To  those  who 
grew  up  in  the  Grierson  school  in  Eng¬ 
land,  documentary  undoubtedly  suggests 
propaganda.  But  to  those  of  us  who 
grew  up  in  a  new  country  like  Canada, 
it  is  impossible  to  place  old-world  ideas 
upon  new-world  realities.  So  when  the 
two  of  us  were  faced  with  tangible  reali¬ 
ties,  like  the  North  or  the  Nova  Scotian 
fishing  scene,  we  just  had  to  discard  pre¬ 
conceived  ideas  and  go  to  work  on  what 
we  found  about  us. 

What  we  finally  found  about  us  in 
Nova  Scotia  was  Lunenburg.  In  our 
survey  of  the  co-operative  ground  we’d 
driven  through  the  town  and  been  en¬ 
tranced  with  its  photographic  possibili¬ 
ties.  Further,  as  it  was  the  most  im¬ 
portant  fishing  center  in  the  area  and 
as,  after  all,  our  film  was  to  treat  the 
fishing  industry,  we  decided  to  make  our 
picture  there. 

With  a  town  like  Lunenburg,  which 
is  a  Scandinavian  dream  come  to  roost 
on  North  American  soil — every  ornate 
gable,  dormer,  roof-tree  of  the  wooden 
houses  brilliant  with  paint  (Lunenburg 
County  is  said  to  use  as  much  as  all  the 
rest  of  the  province ! ) ;  with  the  water¬ 
front  a  floating  forest  of  tall,  spare 
spars,  against  which  fishermen  in  sea- 
clothes  shoulder  great  bundles  of  sails, 
carry  them  past  the  patient  oxen  hitched 
to  the  carts  of  dried  fish  before  loading 
platforms;  with  the  schooners  them¬ 
selves,  each  a  world  of  its  own,  a  com¬ 
munity  going  by  itself  far  out  into  the 


246  July,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


Atlantic;  with  many  of  the  fishermen 
coming  from  adjacent  villages  where  tiny 
houses  vividly  dot  the  rugged  grey-blue 
rolling  rocks  washed  by  the  green-blue 
sea:  with  all  these  things,  is  it  any  won¬ 
der  that,  as  documentary  film  makers, 
we  hardly  knew  on  what  to  focus  our 
cameras? 

Besides,  we  were  working  in  Koda- 
chrome.  And  color,  in  a  way,  is  a  handi¬ 
cap  to  documentary  treatment.  It  itself 
can  create  effects  likely  to  take  the  spec¬ 
tator’s  attention  away  from  the  ideas 
behind  the  picture.  To  make  a  propa¬ 
ganda  documentary  in  color  anywhere  is 
decidedly  difficult.  It  appeared  an  im¬ 
possibility  in  Lunenburg  where  the 
rigged  ships,  the  fishermen,  the  ox-carts, 
all  seemed  to  belong  to  another  age,  to 
have  no  connection  with  the  effect  World 
War  II  had  on  Canadian  fishing  (the 
revised  theme  of  our  film). 

However,  the  guiding  principle  behind 
any  documentary  was  what  actually 
made  our  decision  for  us:  feature  the 
most  important  thing.  That,  of  course, 
was  fishing.  But  it  was  a  pretty  all- 
inclusive  subject,  for  there  were  the  little 
in-shore  boats  which  worked  the  waters 
a  few  miles  off-shore,  and  there  were  the 
schooners  which  went  a  couple  of  hun¬ 
dred  miles  out  to  the  Banks.  And  there 
was  the  human  side,  too:  the  way  the 
fishermen  lived  in  the  villages  and  aboard 
the  vessels.  We  drew  up  a  tentative  out¬ 
line  script,  calculated  to  show  a  little  of 
the  life  in  a  typical  village — we  chose 
Blue  Rocks,  photographically  ideal — then 
follow  its  men,  first  the  in-shore  fisher¬ 
men,  then  those  who  did  the  deep-sea 
fishing  on  the  schooners. 

Now  any  documentary  film-maker  has 
to  beware  of  delusions  of  grandeur.  I’m 
not  speaking  in  the  color  sense.  I  mean 
he  is  definitely  limited  as  to  the  amount 
of  material  he  can  hope  to  include  in  a 
two-reeler.  With  Kodachrome  the  price 
it  was  (and  is  more  so  now),  anything 
longer  than  two  reels  isn’t  acceptable  to 
the  average  budget  of  a  16mm.  film  li¬ 
brary.  But  the  more  we  saw  of  the  life 
about  us,  the  more  we  wanted  to  include 
in  our  film.  Besides,  there  literally 
seemed  no  end  to  the  color  possibilities, 
and  the  more  we  saw  the  warmth  of 
these,  the  farther  away  went  the  cold 
counsel  we’d  received  about  the  economic 
wartime  fishing  which  the  documentary 
was  intended  to  reveal. 

We  did  the  village  first.  The  material 
presented  no  difficulties  except  for  cer¬ 
tain  interiors  absolutely  essential  if  the 
documentary  were  to  suggest  the  social 
life  in  the  village.  This  breaks  out 
sporadically  in  big  get-togethers,  known 
in  summer  by  the  misleadingly  refined 
name  of  “garden  parties”  and  in  the 
winter  by  the  more  plebian  and  accurate 
appellation  of  “chowder  supper.”  The 
main  feature  of  the  evening  is  a  con¬ 
tinual  supper — served  from  nine  to  mid¬ 
night — at  long  tables  facing  the  walls 
of  the  hall  where  the  gatherings  are 
held.  With  inadequate  power  supply  for 
our  lights,  our  problem  was  to  photo¬ 
graph  the  extent  of  these  fifty-foot 
tables,  something  which  had  to  be  done 
if  the  film  were  to  accurately  document 


the  occasion.  Cinematographer  Sinclair 
solved  the  problem  by  mounting  the 
camera  on  a  three-wheel  collapsable  dolly 
and  making  a  dolly-shot  down  the  table, 
his  camera  covering  a  field  of  some  8 
feet,  while  the  power  company  electri¬ 
cian  and  myself  walked  on  either  side  of 
the  camera,  each  keeping  a  No.  4  Victor 
focused  on  its  field. 

Where  our  illusions  of  grandeur  came 
up  against  the  most  aggravating  inhibi¬ 
tions  was  on  the  “Flora  Alberta.”  She 
was  a  deep-sea  fishing  schooner,  one  of 
the  newest  vessels  in  the  Lunenburg 
fleet.  A  craft  of  some  100  tons,  about 
125  feet  in  length,  her  lines  were  long 
and  rakish  in  the  best  Bluenose  style. 
She  had  just  been  repainted  and  had 
become  something  a  color  cinematog¬ 
rapher  might  dream  about  for  the  tor¬ 
tured  nights  of  a  lifetime,  and  never 
expect  to  behold  in  his  waking  moments. 

Above  the  hull,  black  with  gold  trim¬ 
mings,  her  decks  were  green  and  red, 
with  white  pilot-house,  hatches,  bulwarks 
and  railings.  Two  thick  masts  rose  in 
varnished  yellow  to  hold  white  sails.  Up 
fo’r’ard  were  stacked  the  dories — small 
18-foot  flat-bottomed  boats  from  which 
the  men  did  the  actual  fishing.  One 
stack  of  six  was  yellow  with  green  trim¬ 
mings;  the  other,  red  with  white.  The 
dory  gear — line  tubs,  high-flyer  bouys, 
masts  and  sails — was  multicolored.  Given 
such  a  background,  the  men  themselves 
supplied  the  final  touch  of  color  perfec¬ 
tion  through  their  yellow  oilskins  and 
vivid  checked  shirts.  Cinematographer 
Sinclair  claims  all  one  had  to  do  was  to 
stand  anywhere  on  the  deck  and  focus 
the  camera,  and  composition  automatic¬ 
ally  resulted.  Naturally,  that’s  exagger¬ 
ating.  But  certainly,  for  anyone  know¬ 
ing  what  he  wanted,  everything  was  at 
hand  on  the  deck  of  the  “Flora  Alberta.” 

Delays  seem  inevitable  when  one  is 
making  documentaries.  Before  we  could 
sail  on  the  “Flora  Alberta”  we  had  to 
wait  for  the  paint  to  dry.  Much  of  the 
time  we  passed  in  the  captain’s  cabin, 
getting  details  about  the  routine  on  the 
week  to  ten  days’  fishing.  In  document¬ 
ary  work,  our  method  has  always  been 
to  get  an  idea  first  of  what  is  to  happen 
— and  get  it  from  those  who  do  it,  not 
from  those  who  merely  write  about  it — 
and  then  try  to  cast  this  information  into 
film  form  on  paper.  And  then,  before 
doing  any  actual  shooting,  check  every¬ 
thing  against  actual  performance  and 
make  script  revisions  accordingly.  So, 
while  waiting  for  the  paint  to  dry  and 
then  waiting  for  the  weather  to  clear — 
we  had  three  days  of  torrential  rain, 
September  21st,  the  equinox! — we  drew 
up  a  tentative  shooting  script  for  the 
deep-sea  fishing. 

Finally  the  sun  came  out,  and  with 
our  shooting  notes,  the  Eastman  Cine- 
Special,  two  Filmo  70-DA’s,  20  100-ft. 
reels  of  Kodachrome,  a  Leica,  an  Exakta 
and  still  film,  we  set  sail  one  fine  high 
noon.  How  beautiful  it  was  sailing 
through  the  harbor  narrows!  But  the 
open  sea  wasn’t  so  beautiful.  From 
equinoctial  storms,  the  waves  were  run¬ 
ning  high.  Seaworthy  a  Bluenose 
schooner  may  be,  but  she  can  roll. 


Above  and  on  opposite  page  are  scenes  from  the 
film  director  Buckman  and  cinematographer  Sinclair 
madeof  Nova  Scotia's  "Bluenose"  fishing  fleet. 
Above,  top,  the  "Flora  Alberta"  at  her  dock  and  at 
sea;  center,  on  watch  while  dories  are  out  setting 
lines;  bottom,  loading  in  the  catch.  Photos  by  the 
author. 

When  we  decided  to  get  a  shot  of  the 
vessel  from  the  aft  cabin  roof  we  learned 
the  precarious  angle  of  which  a  Bluenose 
deck  is  capable.  No  tripod  and  camera 
could  have  stayed  on  the  pitching  roof. 
Then  the  crew,  whose  sea-legs  were  the 
steadiest  things  aboard,  came  to  our  help. 
Three  of  them  lying  flat  on  the  cabin 
roof  each  held  a  leg  of  the  tripod,  and 
a  fourth,  his  arm  hooked  around  a  guy- 
rope,  held  the  cinematographer  while  he 
somehow  got  his  meter-reading  (which, 
because  of  the  brilliance,  required  that 
he  shield  the  “eye”  with  h’s  cupped 
(Continued  on  Page  277) 


American  Cinematographer  •  July,  1943  247 


With  The  Mincing  Awg 

By  ROMAN  KARMEN* 

Translated  from  the  Russian 
By  George  Krainukov 


THE  offensive  began  at  daybreak. 
Our  Soviet  infantry  broke  through 
the  fortified  line  of  German  de¬ 
fense.  On  the  very  first  day  of  the 
advance  our  troops,  by  direct  frontal 
storming  and  by  clever  flanking  at¬ 
tacks,  dislodged  the  Germans  from  many 
populated  points,  and  when  on  the  fol¬ 
lowing  day  the  snowstorm  which  had 
made  camerawork  impossible  for  my 
comrade  cinematographer  Bobrov  and 
myself,  died  down,  the  battle  was  already 
rolling  in  waves,  farther  away  from  us 
to  the  west.  And  following  in  the  foot¬ 
steps  of  yesterday’s  bloody  fighting  the 
reserves  were  moving  forward — infan¬ 
try  and  tanks  coming  up,  and  artillery 
moving  forward  the  better  to  batter  the 
retreating  enemy. 

We,  too,  followed  in  the  footsteps  of 
the  battle.  Amid  the  fields  scattered 
with  dead  heaps  of  bumed-out  German 
tanks,  Nazi  corpses,  and  disabled  Ger¬ 
man  cars,  guns  and  cartridge-cases,  was 
many  a  mute  tableaux  which  at  a 
glance  told  its  silent  story  of  victory 
and  defeat.  Here,  in  front  of  an  anti¬ 
tank  gun  destroyed  by  our  shells,  are 
piles  of  spent  cartridges  .  .  .  several 
Nazi  corpses  ...  and  on  all  of  these  are 
the  imprint  of  the  heavy  treads  of  a 
Soviet  tank.  Wordlessly  these  told  their 
tale:  the  Germans  had  shot  at  the  tank, 
firing  with  increasing  speed  and  despera¬ 
tion  as  the  advancing  monster  drew 
nearer;  but  the  tank,  like  our  now- 
advancing  Allied  armies,  relentlessly 
overpowered  the  Fascist  bandits,  ground 
them  into  the  earth,  and  plowed  farther 
on,  to  repeat  its  job  again  and  again 
on  other  enemies. 

As  we  finally  reach  the  front  of  the 
little  sector  to  which  we  are  assigned, 
we  see  the  field  in  front  of  the  German 
fortifications  covered  by  the  fire  of  doz¬ 
ens  of  machine-guns,  light  guns  and 
automatic  rifles.  Our  troops,  without 
giving  the  Germans  a  moment’s  rest, 
storm  these  fortifications.  Our  artillery 
covers  the  German  ramparts  with  a 


murderous  fire.  Our  bombers  drop  their 
deadly  cargo.  Our  mortarmen  add  their 
thunderous  salvos  to  the  hail  of  explo¬ 
sions  which  seem  to  make  earth  and 
air  alike  tremble  with  the  fire  with 
which  our  warriors  of  all  arms  deluge 
our  enemies. 

For  a  cameraman,  working  on  this 
sector  of  the  Central  Front  is  a  prob¬ 
lem.  Our  duty  is  to  film  the  action  of 
the  Red  Army  as  it  conducts  an  ad¬ 
vancing  battle.  Against  us  we  have 
not  only  the  fire  of  the  enemy  and  some¬ 
times  the  speed  of  his  retreat,  but  also 
our  ally — militarily  good  but  often 
photographically  very  bad — the  Russian 
winter.  Yesterday,  on  the  first  day  of 
the  attack,  we  battled  a  snow-storm; 
the  soft,  fresh  snow  covered  our  lenses 
like  a  clinging,  white  paste,  and  swirled 
through  the  air  so  thickly  that  one 
could  not  see  objects  only  a  few  yards 
away.  But  today,  with  a  clear,  blue  sky 
and  the  sun  sparkling  over  the  valley 
in  which  the  battle  is  unrolling,  we 


Through  a  remarkable  coincidence  we  learned  that 
the  author  of  this  article,  Cinematographer  Roman 
Karmen  (left)  and  the  translator,  Cinematographer 
George  Krainukov  (right)  were  personal  friends,  as 
this  picture,  made  in  1938  in  Hankow  when  they 
were  "covering''  the  early  stages  of  the  Sino- 
Japanese  war  for  the  Soviet  Kino-Journal  and 
Universal  Newsreel,  respectively,  shows. 


look  eagerly  forward  to  getting  some 
fine  scenes. 

To  make  our  way  up  to  the  front 
lines  is  not  an  easy  job.  At  10  A.M. 
sharp,  our  artillery  again  begins  a  pre¬ 
paratory  softening-up  barrage.  Over 
our  heads  screams  the  continuous  din 
of  the  endless  flight  of  our  shells  to¬ 
ward  the  enemy  positions.  Around  us, 
guns  of  all  calibres  are  barking.  Long 
ago  we  had  left  our  shelter  of  the  night 
before.  Now  our  job  is  to  go  forward 
as  far  as  we  can — close  to  the  enemy, 
where  we  can  see  and  photograph  his 
positions  in  the  village  toward  which 
our  attack  is  progressing.  We  must  be 
in  lens-range  of  the  bursting  shells  of 
our  artillery  .  .  .  close  enough  to  film 
how  the  waves  of  our  infantry  advance, 
and  the  work  of  our  dive-bombers  over¬ 
head,  pouring  down  their  rain  or  bombs! 

The  farther  forward  we  go,  the  more 
often  we  have  to  crouch,  or  even  throw 
ourselves  on  the  ground:  not  all  of  the 
enemy’s  artillery  is  destroyed  yet,  and 
the  German  guns  are  replying  quite 
strongly  across  the  valley.  When  we 
hear  the  familiar,  disgusting  shriek  of 
an  approaching  German  shell,  we,  with 
cameraman  Bobrov,  duck  hastily  into 
what  only  yesterday  had  been  the  Ger¬ 
man  trenches.  Out  here,  beyond  the 
original  first  line  of  Nazi  defense 
breached  yesterday  by  our  troops,  on 
every  hand  we  see  either  a  dugout,  a 
gun-emplacement  or  trenches.  As  we 
move  forward,  we  must  keep  strictly 
on  the  trail,  for  elsewhere  at  every  step 
one  is  likely  to  tread  upon  a  hidden 
German  land-mine  which  our  sappers 
have  not  yet  had  time  to  dig  out  and 
render  harmless. 

At  last  we  reach  the  observation-post 
of  one  of  the  farthest-advanced  com¬ 
panies.  From  here  we  can  survey  the 
field  of  battle  like  the  palm  of  one’s 
hand.  Over  there  is  the  village  toward 
which  our  troops  are  advancing.  At 
last  we  can  begin  our  shooting! 

But  good  war  films  cannot  be  entirely 
long-shots.  We  must  get  closer  yet  to 
the  village  .  .  .  closer  yet  to  the  battle 
we  see  progressing  .  .  .  right  into  the 
thick  of  things,  where  we  can  get  really 
close  shots  of  the  action! 

Bobrov  and  I  discuss  our  plans  with 
the  commander  of  the  unit  here,  re¬ 
questing  permission  to  get  into  a  tank 
and  roll  ahead  with  it  to  a  point  where 
we  can  get  the  real  battle-shots  that  are 
our  aim.  This  permission  granted,  we 
quickly  arrange  our  plans  with  the 
(Continued  on  Page  276) 


248  July,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


Screen  TeJU  fren  t  HeceAAarif! 

By  CHARLES  R.  ROGERS 

President,  Rogers  Productions,  Inc. 


THE  other  day  a  very  pretty  19- 
year-old  girl  named  Peggy  O’Neill 
was  brought  to  my  office  by  her 
agent,  Leon  Lance.  She  was  looking  for 
a  screen  career. 

Peggy  explained  that  she  had  no  ex¬ 
perience  in  films,  had  never  been  in 
front  of  a  motion  picture  camera,  so 
consequently  had  no  screen  test  to  show 
me.  We  chatted  a  few  minutes  about 
her  background  and  education  and  her 
few  appearances  on  the  stage  of  the 
San  Francisco  Community  Playhouse. 
She  then  read  some  lines  from  a  script 
and  I  immediately  signed  her  to  a  long¬ 
term  contract. 

“But  you  don’t  mean  to  say  you 
signed  her  without  making  a  screen 
test  of  her!”  exclaimed  one  of  my 
friends  when  I  had  told  him  about  my 
new  “find”. 

His  exclamation  brings  me  to  my 
point.  I  do  not  believe  it  is  necessary 
to  make  a  screen  test  in  selecting  talent 
because  the  Directors  of  Photography 
in  Hollywood  have  become  such  masters 
of  their  art  that  you  need  have  no  fears 
over  how  a  man  or  woman  is  going  to 
look  on  the  screen.  Especially  is  this 
true  when  your  own  eyes  tell  you  that 
the  girl  you  are  looking  at  is  photo¬ 
genic.  So  why  waste  film — particularly 


in  these  days  when  it  is  so  scarce — on 
a  “test”  that  will  only  tell  you  some¬ 
thing  that  your  eyes  and  your  past  ex¬ 
perience  with  cinematographers  will 
have  told  you  already? 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  there  are  some 
very  positive  arguments  against  making 
screen-tests  of  talent,  anyway.  For  one 
thing,  a  player — even  an  experienced 
one — making  a  test  for  a  contract  or  an 
important  part  is  almost  certain  to  be 
nervous,  so  nervous,  often,  that  he  or 
she  won’t  perform  as  freely  as  on  the 
actual  production.  Then,  too,  there  is 
likely  to  be  some  tendency  among  the 
crew — the  director,  the  make-up  man, 
the  stage  crew  and  sometimes  even  the 
cinematographer — to  more  or  less  “walk 
through”  a  test  just  because  it  is  “only 
a  test,”  and  they  will  know  that  both 
they  and  the  player  can  and  will  do 
better  when  the  production  itself  starts. 
You  need  only  look  into  the  files  of  any 
of  our  studios,  where  you’ll  find  con¬ 
demnatory  verdicts  on  tests  of  players 
other  studios  later  signed  and  built  into 
stars,  to  realize  how  unfair  and  unnec¬ 
essary  such  tests  can  be. 

There  have  been,  and  still  are,  many 
stars  who  owe  their  screen  glamor  to 
the  cinematographers.  These  players 
recognize  the  fact  and  in  many  instances 


No  screen  test  is  necessary  to  tell  you  that  Peggy 
O'Neill  (left)  and  Harald  Ramond  are  good  screen 
bets — especially  when  photographed  by  s'cil Ifu I  Holly¬ 
wood  cinematographers.  (Portraits  by  Maurine. 

demand  that  only  certain  cameramen 
photograph  their  pictures. 

It  would  not  be  fair  to  mention  names 
in  this  article,  but  we  in  the  picture  in¬ 
dustry  know  that  the  art  of  our  cine¬ 
matographers  hides  even  scars  and 
blemishes  on  the  faces  of  some  of  our 
stars.  Some  feminine  noses  that  are 
anything  but  beautiful  become  actually 
glamorous  on  the  screen  because  of  the 
manner  in  which  our  cameramen  can 
photograph  them.  Some  eyes  that  are 
actually  “washed  out”  and  lusterless 
take  on  vivacity  and  sparkle  because  of 
our  cameramen’s  tricks  of  lighting. 

These  cameramen  are  artists  in  the 
use  of  lights  and  shadows,  using  the 
highlight  to  accentuate  the  best  fea¬ 
tures  and  soft  shadows  to  subordinate 
the  less  favorable  ones.  I  have  seen 
some  of  these  artists,  lighting  a  close- 
up  of  a  not  particularly  glamorous  girl, 
blend  in  decorative  shadow-patterns  on 
the  back-wall  with  the  lights  and  shad¬ 
ows  on  the  subject  giving  his  composi¬ 
tion  a  delightful  softness  that  made  the 
girl  seem  gorgeously  beautiful.  Our 
photographers  have  developed  a  tech¬ 
nique  which  I  call  “suggestion”.  A 
suggestion  of  glamor  is  given — and  the 
imagination  of  the  audience  does  the 
rest. 

For  a  number  of  years,  many  stage 
stars  who  knew  they  were  not  glamor¬ 
ous,  shunned  the  films  for  fear  they 
would  not  be  able  to  compete  with  what 
was  known  as  the  typical  film  glamor- 
girl.  There  were  some  producers,  too, 
(Continued  on  Page  276) 


American  Cinematographer  •  July,  1943  249 


“The  (ZkapMdic  “Technique 


By  E.  S.  ROBERTS 


THE  Office  of  War  Information 
has  accepted  “The  Thousand 
Days”  for  distribution  in  the  Uni¬ 
ted  States — the  first  Canadian-produced 
motion  picture  to  be  placed  on  their  list 
of  War  Films  for  War  Use.  It  is  recom¬ 
mended  for  use  in  programs  to  promote 
United  Nations  unity. 

This  subject,  produced  by  Associated 
Screen  Studios  of  Montreal,  is  interest¬ 
ing  on  other  counts  as  well.  Indepen¬ 
dently  produced  for  original  theatrical 
release,  it  is  the  first  authentic  motion 
picture  record  by  Canadians  of  Canada’s 
war  years — covering  the  first  thousand 
days  since  September,  1939,  when  Can¬ 
ada  declared  war  on  Germany. 

Perhaps  of  greater  interest  is  the  tech¬ 
nique  used  by  the  producer  in  telling  the 
story  of  Canada’s  first  three  years  of 
war,  as  exemplified  in  “The  Thousand 
Days.”  Gordon  Sparling,  production  su¬ 
pervisor  for  Associated  Screen  Studios, 
directed  the  two-reeler,  and  coined  the 
term  “rhapsodic”  to  describe  the  treat¬ 
ment  of  this  Canadian  cameo  produc¬ 
tion.  It  does  suggest  a  new  and  specific 
form  in  the  art  of  motion  picture  ex¬ 
pression. 

The  technique  used  here  has  been 
termed  “rhapsodic”  since  the  story  is  told 
by  linking  otherwise  disconnected  bits 
and  pieces.  Visually  and  orally  there 
are  a  large  number  of  disconnected  se¬ 
quences.  Each  by  itself  has  little  or  no 
meaning,  yet  blends  in  natural  relation¬ 
ship  in  the  complete  composition. 

As  in  musical  expression,  the  rhap¬ 
sodic  treatment  uses  recurring  themes 


to  carry  the  pattern  with  sweep  and  flow. 
Visually,  characters  may  be  introduced 
repeatedly  to  provide  conjunctive  indi¬ 
vidual  scenes. 

Recurring  words  or  voices  also  serve 
this  purpose,  as  do  repeated  individual 
sounds.  Repetition  of  musical  themes 
serves  to  build  an  emotional  climax  from 
these  seemingly  disconnected  bits. 

The  rhapsodic  technique  has  been  em¬ 
ployed  experimentally  in  a  number  of 
Associated  Screen  pictures,  but  “The 
Thousand  Days”  was  the  first  two-reel 
film  making  use  of  this  style  throughout. 
As  with  any  new  variation  in  artistic 
treatment,  there  is  an  understandable 
reluctance  to  venture  away  from  tried 
and  proven  methods.  It  was  not  until 
the  producer  had  partially  proven  the  ef¬ 
fectiveness  of  the  technique  in  previous 
films  and  had  a  vehicle  which  seemed 
ideally  suited  to  the  new  style,  that  it 
was  given  a  fair  chance  to  prove  itself. 

Gordon  Sparling  does  not  look  on  “The 
Thousand  Days”  as  an  example  of  the 
perfection  of  the  rhapsodic  technique, 
but  does  feel  that  much  has  been  done  to 
crystallize  the  basic  factors  employed, 
and  particularly  that  it  hints  at  the  pos¬ 
sibilities  for  developing  an  interesting 
and  powerful  form  of  film  expression. 

Many  of  the  effects  are  admittedly  sub¬ 
conscious — not  in  themselves  noticed  by 
the  audience — but  they  provide  impor¬ 
tant  undercurrents  in  the  progression  of 
the  story. 

The  first  experimental  use  of  the  rhap¬ 
sodic  technique  was  about  ten  years  ago 
in  the  production  of  “Rhapsody  in  Two 


Languages”  ...  an  interpretation  of  the 
life  of  bi-lingual  Montreal  from  dawn 
to  dawn. 

Since  that  time,  it  has  been  employed 
for  sequences  in  a  number  of  other  pic¬ 
tures  .  .  .  for  instance  in  “The  Kinsmen” 
.  .  .  which  was  produced  for  The  Canadian 
Wheat  Board.  The  rhapsodic  technique 
was  employed  to  good  effect  in  one  se¬ 
quence  to  describe  that  period  of  sus¬ 
pense  from  the  spring  days  when  the 
seed  had  been  planted  until  it  was  safely 
harvested.  The  days  between  are  fraught 
with  worry  for  the  prairie  farmer.  Three 
common  items  are  repeated  over  and  over 
again  .  .  .  farmers  gazing  at  the  sky  .  .  . 
farmers  at  their  radios  listening  to  the 
daily  crop  reports  .  .  .  the  wheat  itself 
gradually  growing  to  maturity.  Whis¬ 
pering  voices  are  heard  in  a  slow  rhythm, 
saying,  “No  frost”  .  .  .  “Enough  rain” 

.  .  .  “No  hail”  .  .  .  The  passage  of  time 
is  indicated  by  a  vibrant  voice  punctuat¬ 
ing  the  sequence  with  “June”  .  .  .  “July” 

.  .  .  “August”  .  .  .  and,  blending  through 
it  all,  an  orchestral  score  which  starts 
with  tremolo  violins  and  gradually  builds 
up  to  a  crescendo  of  strings  and  wood¬ 
winds  interrupted  by  stabbing  trumpet 
notes  expressive  of  the  farmers’  thoughts 
and  worries. 

The  rhapsodic  technique  differs  from 
the  dramatic  or  the  documentary  in  that 
there  is  less  obvious  progression.  In  the 
dramatic  treatment,  the  plot  is  developed 
through  words  and  actions  of  the  char¬ 
acters  used.  In  documentary,  a  commen¬ 
tator  delivers  a  lecture  illustrated  by 
scenes  .  .  .  scenes  which  are  usually 
chosen  for  their  factual  rather  than  their 
aesthetic  value.  In  the  new  rhapsodic 
technique,  seemingly  unrelated  bits  of  ac¬ 
tion  are  used,  eavesdropping  on  snatches 
of  conversations,  employing  only  the  key 
bits  of  scenes — but  always  with  some 
sort  of  bridging,  either  visual,  vocal,  or 
musical.  No  one  commentator  carries 
the  main  theme,  but  many  voices  may  be 
used,  some  of  them  by  visible  characters, 
others  merely  as  thoughts. 

In  “The  Thousand  Days,”  a  newspaper 
editor  lifts  a  phone  to  reveal  a  thread 
that  carries  the  story.  Overhearing  his 
conversation  with  an  assistant,  we  learn 
something  important  is  happening.  The 
editor  answering  the  phone,  and  the 
hammering  teletype,  give  us  the  answer. 

Twto  quick  scenes  dramatize  that  an¬ 
swer  .  .  .  first  a  storm  cloud  obscuring 
the  sun,  and  then  a  quiet  hospital  room, 
during  which  an  impersonal  vo;ce  says: 
“September  third,  nineteen  thirty-nine. 
In  Europe,  a  storm  broke.  In  Canada,  a 
child  was  born  .  .  .  into  what  sort  of  a 
world?” 

A  new  era  dawns  with  the  declaration 
of  war,  and  what  came  out  of  it  is 
represented  by  that  baby.  Its  later  ap¬ 
pearances  in  the  picture  have  the  double 
symbolism  of  Canada’s  growing  war  ef¬ 
fort  and  its  bearing  on  the  character  of 
the  new  era.  The  second  appearance  of 
the  infant,  in  its  mother’s  arms,  at  the 
end  of  the  first  year,  adds  to  the  sym¬ 
bolism  of  the  war  effort  and  its  develop¬ 
ment,  and  provides  an  opportunity  to 
slow  down  the  pace  for  building  to  a 
later  climax.  It  also  provides  the  basis 


250  July,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


tor  an  emotional  change  as  we  bring  in 
the  idea  of  ‘women  without  men’  carry¬ 
ing  on. 

The  inactive  first  winter  of  the  war, 
with  its  conflicting  opinions  and  uncer¬ 
tainties,  is  treated  rhapsodically  by  a 
matter-of-fact  scene  of  two  stock-brokers 
examing  a  ticker  tape  which  says  “De¬ 
cember,  1939  .  .  .  Nothing  to  Report.” 
One  stock-broker  says,  “Funny  kind  of 
war  this  is,”  and  the  other  replies, 
“ Funny  war?  .  .  .  It’s  a  phony  war,  if 
you  ask  me.”  The  elements  of  this 
scene  not  only  plant  a  mood  in  the  minds 
cr  the  audience,  but  supply  a  pictorial 
theme  for  providing  continuity  for  the 
sequence.  In  other  words,  the  war  is 
a  thing  far  off.  It  touches  people  only 
indirectly,  as  when  the  news  comes  over 
their  ticker  tape. 

Another  flash  of  the  tape  says  “Janu¬ 
ary,  1940  .  .  .  Nothing  to  Report.”  Then 
a  flash  of  our  newspaper  editor  amused 
by  a  dispatch  showing  the  ponderous 
pace  of  the  war  machine. 

The  ticker  tape  again:  “February, 
1940  .  .  .  Nothing  to  Report.”  A  business¬ 
man,  symbolic  of  the  complacent  attitude 
of  the  Chamberlain  regime,  comments: 
“Well,  I  think  we’ve  got  Hitler  bluffed. 
He  doesn’t  dare  risk  a  first-clas  war.” 

Again  the  ticker  tape.  “March,  1940 
.  .  .  Nothing  to  Report.”  Then,  for  con¬ 
trast,  the  thoughts  of  a  working  man 
who,  on  the  average,  was  perhaps  not 
as  sure  of  the  “good”  state  of  affairs. 
A  machinist  would  have  done  ...  a 
lathe-  or  milling  machine-operator.  But 
in  the  final  script  a  figure  symbolic  of 
them  all,  yet  logical,  evolved — a  black¬ 
smith. 

He  is  used  to  bring  to  a  climax  those 
days  when  the  war  seemed  to  be  a  wait¬ 
ing  stalemate.  The  blacksmith  at  his 
anvil  stops  with  hammer  poised  to  say 
to  a  friend:  “All  this  talk  of  Hitler  mak¬ 
ing  peace  proposals  is  the  bunk.  He’s 
getting  ready  .  .  .  and  when  he’s  ready, 
he’s  gonna  strike!” 

That  last  word  is  emphasized  by  his 
hammer  striking  the  anvil.  The  brief 
scene  immediately  following  is  of  a  news¬ 
boy  shouting  “Hitler  strikes!”  as  he 
holds  up  his  papers.  The  headline  reads 
“Norway  Invaded.”  The  anvil  rings 
again,  to  complete  the  conjunction  of  the 
two  sequences.  Other  newspaper  head¬ 
lines  flash  by:  “Denmark  Bows”  .  .  . 
“Holland  Overrun”  .  .  .  “Belgium  Beat¬ 
en”  .  .  .  “France  Falls”;  .  .  .  and,  as  each 
appears,  the  anvil  is  heard  again.  The 
rhapsodic  use  of  the  image,  visual  or 
auditory  of  “striking”  thus  not  only 
advances  the  story,  but  plants  an  idea 
which  will  be  used  for  the  final  climax 
of  the  picture. 

It  is  the  spirit  of  the  ordinary  man 
and  woman  which  will  win  the  final  vic¬ 
tory.  So  it  is  natural  that  the  black¬ 
smith  should  appear  for  the  picture’s  tag 
line.  A  number  of  types  set  the  scene, 
as  one  after  the  other  they  appear,  in 
big  close-ups,  to  speak  a  short  phrase, 
or  just  a  word:  “We  have  stood  up  to 
the  enemy.”  .  .  .  “We  can  strike  back 
harder  ...” 
“..longer...”  .  .  .  “Now  it’s  our  turn 
.  .  .  ”  (and  here  the  blacksmith  is  again 


seen  at  his  anvil)  .  .  “  ...  to  choose 

when  and  where  we  strike.  And,  when 
we  do  .  .  .  watch  out!”  The  repetition 
of  the  clanging  hammer  on  anvil  carries 
through  the  fadeout  into  the  end-title 
music. 

There  are  perhaps  a  few  other  in¬ 
stances  which  might  bear  quoting  to 
demonstrate  how  symbolism  may  be  em¬ 
ployed  in  the  rhapsodic  technique,  and 
how  unrelated  scenes  may  be  integrated 
in  logical  sequence. 

Close-up  of  an  alarm-clock.  Time : 
7:35.  As  a  voice  says:  “At  dawn  on 
war’s  eight  hundred  and  twenty-fifth  day 
...  ”,  the  alarm  commences  to  ring 
violently,  coming  to  extreme  close-up, 
showing  the  words  “MADE  IN  JAPAN.” 

The  ringing  of  a  telephone  bell  blends 
with  that  of  the  alarm-clock.  A  man 
answers.  “Hello  .  .  .  yes  .  .  .  Washing¬ 
ton  and  Ottawa  .  .  .  right  ...  to  the  West 
Coast.” 

Then  a  babble  of  voices  and  flashing 
scenes — Soldiers  marching,  “To  the  West 
Coast.”  Planes  in  the  air,  “To  British 
Columbia.”  Destroyer  at  sea,  “To  Alas¬ 
ka.”  “To  the  West  Coast.”  This  is 
followed  by  quiet  scenes  of  the  Japanese 
fishing-fleet  interned,  and  voice  saying, 
“Now  the  democracies  knew!  At  last 
the  masks  were  down,  and  friend  and  foe 
stood  clear” — thus  was  told  the  story  of 
Japan’s  entry  into  the  war  on  the  side 
of  the  Axis,  in  rapid  tempo,  in  rhapsodic 
style. 

Another  example:  Newspaper  head¬ 
line:  “Hitler  attacks  Russia!”  Scene  in 
a  club,  one  man  reading  a  paper  looks 
up  to  say:  “So  another  stab  in  the  back 
gives  us  a  new  friend.”  Another  man: 
“Looks  bad.  I  suppose  it  will  be  the 
same  thing  again.  The  Germans  will  go 
through  them  like  ...”  Scene  and  sen¬ 
tence  are  cut  off,  replaced  by  factory 
worker,  his  buzz-saw  cutting  through 
wood.  “But  as  long  as  they  can  tie  up 
Adolph’s  armies,  they  are  giving  us  the 
chance  of  a  lifetime.” 

There  is  no  ordinary  continuity  be¬ 
tween  a  rather  smug  scene  in  a  men’s 
club  and  a  woodworking  shop,  yet  these 
two  brief  flashes  are  made  to  bear  a  logi¬ 
cal  relation  in  the  rhapsodic  treatment. 
By  taking  two  conversations — the  one 
between  two  men  in  their  club,  the  other 
between  two  factory  workers — either  of 
which  could  have  been  complete  in  it¬ 
self,  and  cutting  them  in  such  a  way 
and  at  such  a  point  that  one  seems  to 
answer  the  other,  there  is  achieved  a 
continuity  typical  of  the  rhapsodic  tech¬ 
nique. 

The  rhapsodic  technique  is  particu¬ 
larly  suitable  as  a  means  for  compress¬ 
ing  much  into  a  short-length  film.  It  is 
not  a  style  to  use  for  leisurely  develop¬ 
ment  of  a  story,  but,  like  its  musical 
namesake,  is  rather  a  treatment  for  tell¬ 
ing  a  story  in  which  contrasts  and  rapid 
emotional  changes  are  required.  It  is 
useful  in  bridging  wide  gaps  in  time  and 
place. 

Rhythm  is  important  in  the  successful 
use  of  the  rhapsodic  technique.  This  ap¬ 
plies  not  only  to  the  action,  the  sounds, 
and  the  music,  but  especially  to  the  ac- 


Above,  several  of  the  disconnected  thematic  visual 
elements  interwoven  to  make  "The  Thousand  Days." 
On  opposite  page,  a  photomontage  of  some  of  these 
elements  which  were  used,,  however,  as  straight  cuts, 
rather  than  as  superimpositions. 

tual  cutting.  The  dramatic  and  climactic 
effect  of  a  sequence  may  often  be  height¬ 
ened  by  “rhythmic  cutting” — that  is: 
where  the  physical  lengths  of  scenes  is 
exactly  the  same,  regardless  of  the  ac¬ 
tion  in  them  individually.  This  requires 
careful  choice  of  action  to  insure  that  the 
most  significant  portion  of  each  is  re¬ 
tained.  By  careful  planning,  an  entire 
sequence  may  be  composed  of,  say:  3- 
foot  (2-second)  scenes.  Thus,  there  is  a 
purely  mechanical  and  subconscious 
rhythm  implanted  on  the  audience.  If 
desirable,  these  lengths  can  be  gradually 
reduced  to  speed  up  the  tempo  toward 
a  climax.  This,  of  course,  is  not  a  new 
principle,  but  it  is  a  method  which  proves 
itself  particularly  adaptable  to  the  rhap¬ 
sodic  technique. 

In  “The  Thousand  Days,”  80%  of  its 
scenes  were  not  more  than  five  seconds 
in  length.  This  required  careful  writing, 
to  make  every  spoken  word  significant  to 
the  point  that  was  being  made.  It  re¬ 
quired  painstaking  rehearsal  and  shoot¬ 
ing  to  assume  the  proper  tempo  within 
(Continued  on  Page  275) 


American  Cinematographer  •  July,  1943 


251 


Helium >c4 A  Om  War  Plant 6 

By  WILLIAM  STULL,  A.  S.C. 


IT  isn’t  revealing  any  military  secret 
when  one  admits  proudly  that  the 
many  major  firms  which  have  so 
long  supplied  Hollywood’s  studios  with 
cameras,  film,  lenses,  sound  equipment, 
and  the  like  are  now  diverting  all,  or  at 
least  a  major  part  of  their  production  to 
the  War  Effort.  But  it  is  not  so  well 
known  that  many  of  the  smaller  organi¬ 
zations  located  directly  in  the  film  capi- 
tol,  and  which  have  provided  the  indus¬ 
try  with  such  special’zed  equipment  as 
lighting  units,  studio  cameras,  and  the 
like,  are  doing  perhaps  an  even  more 
spectacular  job  in  turning  their  produc¬ 
tion  and  designing  facilities  to  the  serv¬ 
ice  of  the  Nation  at  war.  Some  of  them 
are  turning  out,  in  vastly  increased  quan¬ 
tities,  their  regular  or  similar  products. 
Others  have  in  addition  taken  over  the 
development  and  manufacture  of  spe¬ 
cialized  items  in  moi'e  or  less  allied  fields, 
but  for  wartime  uses. 

Perhaps  the  most  spectacular  and 
varied  of  these  is  the  record  chalked  up 
by  Bardwell  &  McAlister,  the  peace-time 
manufacturers  of  the  “Keglights,” 
“Dinky  Inkies,”  and  other  lighting  units 
so  familiar  in  every  studio.  A  compara¬ 
tively  new  and  highly  progressive  com¬ 
petitor  in  the  studio  lighting  field  before 
the  war,  this  firm  has  expanded  both  its 
plant  and  its  products  until  now  it  is 
turning  out  an  amazing  variety  of 
vitally-needed  wartime  products.  Months 
before  Pearl  Harbor,  the  already-expand¬ 
ing  aircraft  industry  began  to  draw  upon 
Bardwell-McAlister  “know  how”  to  speed 
and  simplify  the  production  of  hard-to- 
shape  sheet-metal  subassemblies  for  Axis¬ 
blasting  aircraft.  Today,  these  products 
are  streaming  out  in  constantly  heavier 


truck-loads  to  do  their  part  on  the  fight¬ 
ing  fronts.  B  and  M  ingenuity,  too,  had 
developed  a  radically  different,  quickly 
changeable  pilot-light  for  instrument 
panels,  which  slashed  the  time  for  chang¬ 
ing  these  tiny  but  necessary  units  from 
over  an  hour  to  a  minute  or  less.  Since 
then,  the  firm’s  specialized  experience  in 
designing  and  building  lighting  equip¬ 
ment  has  brought  forth  an  amazing 
variety  of  specialized  instrument  and 
desk  illuminants  for  planes  which  are  in 
action  on  all  our  fighting  fronts.  Mean¬ 
time,  the  production  of  studio-type  light¬ 
ing  equipment  for  the  Army,  Navy,  Air 
Force  and  Marine  Corps  training  film 
studios  has  swelled  to  match  the  expand¬ 
ing  needs  of  these  Service  cinematogra¬ 
phic  branches. 

Small  wonder  it  is,  then,  that  only  last 
month  Bardwell  &  McAlister  became  the 
first  Hollywood  firm  of  those  normally 
supplying  the  film  industry  to  be  awarded 
the  coveted  Army-Navy  “E”  for  excel¬ 
lence  in  production. 

Nearby,  Mole-Richardson,  Inc.,  the 
parents  of  today’s  Fresnel-lensed  “inkies” 
and  Technicolor  arcs,  have  kept  equally 
busy  turning  out  not  only  their  regular 
photographic  lamps,  but  also  special, 
highly  secret  portable  searchlight  and 
generator  equipment  for  spotting  enemy 
planes  in  the  air  wherever  American 
troops  are  in  action.  They,  too,  have 
received  high  commendation  from  the 
high  officials  of  our  Services  who  have 
seen  the  performance  of  this  equipment 
in  the  actual  combat  zones. 

Most  of  Hollywood’s  studio  cameras 
have  come  from  the  plant  of  the  Mitchell 
Camera  Corp.  ...  but  today,  Mitchell 
cameras  of  all  types  are  being  turned 


HOLLYWOOD'S  FIRST  "E"— Cecil  Bardwell  (left, 
standing)  receives  the  Army-Navy  "E"  Award  for 
excellence  in  War  Production. 

out  in  greater  quantity  than  was  ever 
believed  possible,  for  these  units  are 
anxiously  awaited  by  Uncle  Sam’s  mili¬ 
tary  cameramen  all  over  the  world.  Other 
devices— secret  and  very  special— are 
being  made,  too,  on  a  production  scale 
even  the  most  optimistic  would  have  con¬ 
sidered  impossible  for  such  precision 
equipment  only  a  brief  two  or  three 
years  ago. 

Bell  &  Howell’s  Hollywood  plant,  so 
long  a  service  center  for  specialized 
equipment,  and  the  starting-point  for 
many  a  design  for  revolutionary  studio 
and  laboratory  equipment,  is  today  work¬ 
ing  at  full  pressure  and  on  an  expanding 
scale,  producing  and  developing  intensely 
specialized  cinemachinery  for  the  photo¬ 
graphic  sections  of  many  of  the  nations 
now  united  to  crush  the  Axis — and 
record  it  on  film  in  the  process. 

Art  Reeves  is  another  of  the  suppliers 
of  camera,  laboratory  and  sound  equip¬ 
ment  who  has  found  his  regular  prod¬ 
ucts  in  heavier  demand  than  ever  before, 
as  adjuncts  to  the  varied  uses  being 
made  today  of  military  photography. 

So,  too,  is  Eric  M.  Berndt’s  “Auricon” 
16mm.  single-  and  double-system  sound¬ 
recording  equipment.  It  is  hardly  telling 
tales  out  of  school  to  hint  that  one  of 
our  most  distinguished  actors — inciden¬ 
tally  a  16mm.  filmer  of  note  and  ability — 
is  using  this  equipment  to  make  special 
instructional  films  for  the  Air  Force  in 
overseas  combat  areas. 

No  listing  of  the  War  Effort  contribu¬ 
tions  of  Hollywood’s  cinetechnical  firms 
and  branches  could  be  complete  without 
mention’ng  the  work  being  done  by 
Emery  Huse,  A.S.C.,  and  his  staff  in  the 
Eastman  Kodak  West  Coast  Technical 
Department  in  the  joint  A.S.C.-Academy 
projects  of  training  combat  cameramen 
for  the  Signal  Corps  and  Marine  Corps, 
for  it  is  under  Huse’s  tutelage  that  these 
students  get  their  grounding  in  the  more 
theoretical  side  of  photchemistry,  sensi- 
tometry,  optics,  etc.,  before  passing  on 
to  John  Arnold  and  other  A.S.C.  mem¬ 
bers  for  their  practical  instruction  in 
camera-handling.  The  total  of  these 
trainees  is  probably  a  military  secret, 
but  it  is  considerable,  and  the  graduates 
are  already  distinguishing  themselves  on 
all  our  combat  fronts,  as  well  as  in  train¬ 
ing  film  production. 

In  a  brief  summary  like  this,  it  is  in¬ 
evitable  that  some  of  the  firms  making 
distinguished  contributions  to  the  War 
Effort  should  be  left  out — in  some  cases 
deliberately,  because  of  the  confidential 
nature  of  their  work.  But  all  of  them 
are  responding  vitally  to  the  Nation’s 
call  of  need,  turning  their  specialized 
skills  and  their  knowledge  of  how  to  solve 
intricate  and  often  unconventional  tech¬ 
nical  problems  overnight  to  the  benefit 
of  their  country.  In  fact,  as  one  expert 
recently  expressed  it,  “The  normal  de¬ 
mands  of  Hollywood’s  studios,  who  cus¬ 
tomarily  expect  the  technically  impos¬ 
sible  to  be  served  up  in  working  order 
(Continued  on  Page  268) 


252  July,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


xxx : 

Virgil  Miller,  A,  S.  C. 


By  WALTER  BLANCHARD 


Aces  of  the  Camera 


VERSATILITY  is  the  word  for  Vir¬ 
gil  E.  Miller,  A.S.C.  He  is  versatile 
above  average  as  a  cinematog¬ 
rapher,  for  in  his  twenty-seven  year 
career  as  a  cameraman  he  has  proven  his 
artistry  and  technical  skill  on  upwards 
of  200  productions — super-specials  and 
program-pictures  alike — and  he  is  equally 
at  home  working  in  black-and-white, 
Technicolor  or  professional  16mm.  Koda- 
chrome.  But  beyond  this,  he  is  also  a 
capable  executive  (he  has  headed  the 
Camera  Departments  of  two  major  stu¬ 
dios),  a  skilled  electrical  engineer,  a 
capable  writer  of  both  prose  and  verse, 
and  in  his  spare  time  talented  artist  with 
pencil  and  brush.  He  has,  too,  a  notable 
string  of  cinetechnical  “firsts”  and  a 
great  deal  of  important  cinematographic 
research  to  his  credit. 

Virge  Miller,  you  see,  didn’t  start  out 
specifically  to  be  a  cameraman.  He  grew 
up  as  a  farm  boy  in  southern  Illinois 
and,  after  completing  high  school,  busi¬ 
ness  college,  and  a  year  at  a  neighbor¬ 
ing  college,  he  decided  he’d  better  work 
for  a  while  to  build  up  a  war-chest  to 
help  take  him  through  college.  And  for 
some  reason  he  decided  to  come  out  to 
Southern  California  to  do  the  working. 
His  first  job  was  with  a  crew  running  the 
first  electric  power-line  between  what 
are  now  Hollywood  and  Burbank;  today 
it’s  a  well-populated  residential  district, 
with  several  studios  like  Warner’s,  Uni¬ 
versal  and  Walt  Disney’s  “mouse-fac¬ 
tory”  strung  along  the  route;  but  thirty- 
odd  years  ago  it  was  a  bare  desert. 

Electrical  work  fascinated  young 
Miller  so  much  that  he  decided  to  learn 
as  much  about  it  as  he  could.  He  learned 
quickly,  too — so  quickly  that  before  long 
he  found  himself  working  as  foreman  of 
one  of  the  crews,  and  gaining  an  excel¬ 
lent  practical  knowledge  of  electrical  in¬ 
stallation.  And  he  decided  that  electrical 
engineering  was  the  profession  he  wanted 
to  learn. 

So,  when  the  bankroll  was  sufficiently 
built  up,  back  he  went  to  enroll  in  Kan¬ 
sas  State  College  as  a  student  in  elec¬ 
trical  engineering.  His  practical  experi¬ 
ence  in  electrical  work  helped  him  im¬ 
measurably  in  working  his  way  through 
college,  for  after  a  short  period  of  the 
usual  working-through-school  occupation 
of  dishwashing,  one  of  his  professors 


recommended  him 
for  a  post  in  the 
college’s  electrical 
maintenance  depart¬ 
ment,  and  only  a 
short  time  later, 
when  the  head  of 
that  department  re¬ 
tired,  he  recom¬ 
mended  young  Miller 
over  the  heads  of 
many  senior  stu¬ 
dents  to  be  his  suc¬ 
cessor.  Thereafter 
Virge  remained  as 
college  electrician 
until  graduation, 
staying  on  in  the 
summer-time  not  only 
to  help  his  bankroll,  but  also  to  gain  more 
experience.  He  re-wired  most  of  the 
buildings  on  the  campus,  and  ran  labora¬ 
tory  and  practical  tests  on  electrical 
equipment  for  various  of  the  State’s  de¬ 
partments.  In  his  Senior  year,  he  was 
called  upon,  too,  to  serve  as  an  instruc¬ 
tor  in  electricity  for  junior  engineering 
students,  and  the  following  year,  while 
he  waited  for  the  girl  who  is  now  Mrs. 
Miller  to  graduate,  he  served  on  the 
faculty  as  a  full-fledged  instructor. 

After  his  wedding,  he  decided  that 
California  would  be  a  good  place  for  a 
young  man  to  make  his  future  and  raise 
a  family  at  the  same  time.  He  was  right 
on  both  counts,  for  he  quickly  found  an 
excellent  position  as  resident  engineer 
for  one  of  California’s  first  big  power- 
plants,  tucked  away  in  the  High  Sierras 
beyond  Bishop.  Some  months  later  he 
found,  too,  that  the  first  of  his  five  sons 
was  on  his  way  to  join  the  family.  And 
as  an  isolated  power-plant  high  in  the 
mountains  isn’t  exactly  the  best  place  in 
the  world  for  an  expectant  parent,  Virge 
decided  to  move  back  to  Los  Angeles  and 
civilized  conveniences. 

This  move — though  he  didn’t  realize  it 
at  the  time— marked  the  major  turning- 
point  in  his  life.  Scouting  around  for 
jobs  at  which  an  aspiring  young  electri¬ 
cal  engineer  could  be  useful,  he  learned 
that  the  Universal  Studio  (then  still  in 
Hollywood)  was  looking  for  an  electrical 
expert  to  install  an  electrical  depart¬ 
ment.  He  went  after  the  job— and  got  it. 
So,  during  1913  and  1914,  Virgil  Miller 
installed  and  headed  the  first  electrical 
department  in  any  West  Coast  studio. 


“That  was  a  revolutionary  departure 
for  those  days,”  he  reminds  you,  “for  the 
movie  companies  had  come  to  California 
originally  because  of  the  sunshine  ...  so 
that  they  could  make  pictures  all  year 
’round  without  having  to  rely  on  the 
faint  winter  sunlight  of  the  East,  or  on 
expensive  artificial  light  for  making  pic¬ 
tures  during  the  winter.  Plenty  of  people 
laughed  at  Universal  for  putting  in  an 
electrical  department — said  it  was  like 
carrying  coals  to  Newcastle  to  use  lamps 
when  you  had  the  famous  California  sun¬ 
shine  to  light  your  sets  free.  But  one 
after  the  other,  all  the  studios  came  to 
it,  ‘blacking  out’  the  glassed-in  stages 
they  had  originally  used,  and  building 
new  ones  with  opaque  walls  when  new 
stages  were  needed.  One  or  two  of  those 
old  ‘glass  stages’  still  remain — as  scene 
docks  and  prop-storage  lofts — but  the 
last  one  actually  in  Hollywood,  at  the  old 
Fox  Western  Avenue  Studio,  was  torn 
down  only  a  few  weeks  ago.  Maybe 
another  link  with  the  past  is  gone — but 
when  you  think  of  the  tremendous  strides 
cinematography  has  made  since  we  first 
started  using  artificial  light  for  our  pic¬ 
tures,  rather  than  half-controlled  sun¬ 
light,  you  couldn’t  wish  those  ‘good  old 
days’  back!” 

After  heading  Universal’s  electrical 
department  for  two  years,  during  which 
he  participated  in  the  planning  and  much 
of  the  installation  for  Universal’s  new 
ranch-studio,  Universal  City,  which  still 
houses  today’s  Universal,  Miller  began 
to  develop  an  interest  in  cameras  and 
camerawork,  and  was  in  time  transferred 
(Continued  on  Page  270) 


American  Cinematographer  •  July,  1943  253 


Unseen  Camera-Aces 

II: 

Linwood  Dunn,  A.  S.  C. 

By  WALTER  BLANCHARD 


ONCE  in  a  while,  on  the  credit- 
titles  of  RKO  productions,  you 
may  chance  to  see  the  line,  “Opti¬ 
cal  Effects  by  Linwood  Dunn,  A.S.C.” 
You  only  see  that  credit-line  on  rarely 
spectacular  occasions,  though,  for  Lin 
Dunn  is  an  optical  printer  expert,  and 
optical  printing  is  one  of  the  industry’s 
prime  “trade  secrets.”  But  Lin  is  not 
only  one  of  the  most  valued  members  of 
Vern  Walker’s  RKO  Camera  Effects  De¬ 
partment,  but  indisputably  one  of  the 
foremost,  if  not  actually  the  foremost 
of  optical  printer  virtuosos  in  the  in¬ 
dustry. 

Many  people,  even  within  the  industry, 
haven’t  a  very  clear  idea  of  what  an 
optical  printer  really  is,  except  that  it 
seems  to  be  a  photographic  magician’s 
hat  out  of  which  a  skilled  specialist  can 
pull  almost  any  variety  of  photographic 
miracle.  But  as  Lin  explains  it,  an  opti¬ 
cal  printer — or  at  least  its  basic  prin¬ 
ciple — is  simple  enough:  it’s  a  device  in 
which  a  camera-head  is  precisely  aligned 
with  a  lenseless  projector-head  which, 
equipped  with  a  pilot-pin  movement, 
moves  a  developed  film  past  a  dif¬ 
fused  light-source  so  that  the  film  in  the 
camera-head  records  that  image  frame 


by  frame  as  the  two  movements  work  in 
synchronism.  That’s  the  basic  idea — but 
you  can  dress  it  up  with  all  sorts  of 
gadgets  for  producing  special  effects; 
you  can  gear  the  two  movements  so  that 
they  operate  at  different  frame-frequen¬ 
cies,  enabling  you  to  print  only  every 
second,  third,  or  fourth  frame,  or  to  print 
a  single  frame  on  an  indefinite  footage 
in  the  camera-head.  You  can  print  the 
action  of  the  film  in  the  printer  side 
either  forward  or  backward.  You  can 
alter  the  separation  of  the  two  heads 
during  a  shot,  or  use  a  “zoom”  lens,  and 
make  a  stationary-camera  shot  into  a 
dolly-shot  (or  vice-versa).  You  can  add 
mechanical  and  optical  gadgets  which 
permit  an  almost  endless  variety  of 
wipes,  fades,  melts  and  tricky  transi¬ 
tions  and  superimpositions.  And  when 
you  begin  to  ask  an  optical  printer  to  do 
these  tricks  you  find  yourself  in  need  of 
an  optical  specialist  like  Lin  Dunn. 

Strangely  enough,  in  view  of  the  in¬ 
tensely  technical  work  which  he  is  now 
doing,  Lin  didn’t,  at  the  outset,  care  for 
technical  studies.  In  fact,  during  his 
school  years  in  Brooklyn,  he  tried  to 
avoid  them  as  much  as  possible,  pre¬ 
ferring  to  study  music.  He’s  still  an  ac¬ 


complished  musician,  playing  the  saxo¬ 
phone,  clarinet,  violin  and  a  variety  of 
other  instruments,  and  for  a  long  time 
retained  his  membership  in  the  Musi¬ 
cians’  Union  which,  in  earlier  days  when 
camerawork  hit  slack  periods  and  he 
needed  something  to  keep  the  wolf  away 
from  his  door,  proved  a  very  practical 
bit  of  sentiment. 

“I  became  interested  in  motion  pic¬ 
tures,”  he  says,  “because  my  uncle, 
Spencer  Bennet,  was  a  director  on 
Pathe  serials.  But  as  there  was  no  open¬ 
ing  just  then  with  the  Pathe  Serial  Unit, 
I  worked  for  two  years  as  a  projection¬ 
ist  in  the  non-theatrical  field  for  the 
American  Motion  Picture  Corp. 

“When  I  finally  got  a  chance  with  my 
uncle’s  unit,  I  began  as  an  Assistant 
Cameraman,  and  worked  my  way  slowly 
up  to  Second  Cameraman  and  finally  to 
First  Cameraman.  And  when  my  ‘break’ 
as  a  First  Cinematographer  finally  came, 
it  forced  me  to  make  a  heart-wrenching 
decision.  I’d  wanted  that  chance  for 
years.  I  had  also  wanted  a  chance  to 
make  a  trip  around  the  world.  And  both 
opportunities  were  presented  at  the  same 
time — the  latter,  as  musical  director  on 
one  of  the  Dollar  Line’s  globe-girdling 
cruisers. 

“That  was  a  tough  choice  to  make — 
but  I  chose  camerawork,  and  I’m  not 
sorry  I  did.  By  a  strange  coincidence,  I 
started  my  first  picture  as  a  full-fledged 
First  Cinematographer,  not  only  on  the 
same  day  the  ship  sailed,  but  on  location 
less  than  two  blocks  from  the  pier! 

“Getting  back  to  pictures,  I’ve  always 
felt  that  the  training  I  received  making 
those  serials  was  invaluable  to  me,  for 
serials  cover  almost  every  variety  of 
cinematography,  and  under  all  sorts  of 
conditions,  both  good  and  bad.  Serials — 
even  more  than  comedies,  I  think — give 
a  cameraman  an  all-round  practical 
training  that  can  only  be  compared  to 
theatrical  stock  company  work  for  an 
actor.  After  you’ve  put  in  a  few  years 
photographing  serials,  you  feel  as  though 
you  could  tackle  anything.” 

This  confidence  was  tested  when  finally 
the  Pathe  Serial  Unit  was  disbanded. 
Lin  spent  some  time  free-lancing  in  both 
the  major  studios  and  the  independent  or 
“quickie”  field.  Finally  he  joined  RKO 
in  1929,  when  the  studio’s  trick  depart¬ 
ment  was  just  being  established  .  .  .  and 
got  his  first  look  at  an  optical  printer. 
Since  then,  he  has  done  almost  every 
type  of  trick  and  special-process  photog¬ 
raphy,  but  he  likes  optical  printing  the 
best,  for  he  feels  that  good  optical  print¬ 
ing  is  one  of  the  mainstays  of  any  well- 
organized  trick  department. 

Modern  special-effects  camerawork,  as 
he  points  out,  embraces  a  remarkably 
wide  variety  of  specialized  processes  and 
operations.  In  some  studios,  the  staff 
working  with  each  of  these  processes 
forms  a  more  or  less  separate  depart¬ 
ment;  in  others,  as  with  Vern  Walker’s 
department  at  RKO,  the  specialists 
handling  matte  shots,  miniatures,  back¬ 
ground-projection  “process-shots,”  opti¬ 
cal  printing,  and  sometimes  titles  and  in- 
(Continued  on  Page  268) 


254  July,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


THROUGH  the  EDITOR'S  FINDER 


A  MONTH  ago  in  this  space  we  un¬ 
burdened  ourselves  of  a  few  re¬ 
marks  about  the  need  for  greater  stand¬ 
ardization  of  studio  camera  equipment 
and  accessories.  That  this  need  is  not 
confined  wholly  to  35mm.  professional 
cinemachinery  is  indicated  by  a  letter  we 
received  soon  after,  from  the  president 
of  one  of  the  most  progressive  amateur 
cinema  clubs  in  the  east-coast  region. 
Said  he,  “Your  plea  for  standardization 
of  studio  equipment  hit  home  here  with 
the  amateurs  as  well.  As  you  know,  the 
same  deviation  in  regard  to  lens-mounts, 
etc.,  exists  to  an  even  greater  extent  in 
amateur  equipment.  I  can  name  at  least 
two  major  manufacturers  who  put  out 
products  in  which  essential  units  which 
should  and  could  be  standardized  are  not 
interchangeable  between  different  models 
of  the  same  make  and  size  of  equipment. 
For  example,  two  different  cameras  of 
the  same  make  and  size — either  both 
16mm.,  or  both  8mm. — are  fitted  with 
lens-mounts  which  are  not  interchange¬ 
able.  Even  the  frame-lines  of  some  of 
the  identical  models  of  a  product  will 
not  match  up,  nor  can  you  be  sure  your 
film  will  be  aligned  the  same  way  in  two 
otherwise  identical  projectors  of  the  same 
make.  Of  course,  as  you  say,  there’s 
nothing  much  that  we  can  do  about  it 
now;  but  after  the  war,  if  something 
could  be  pushed  through  along  these 
lines  to  make  some  of  the  manufacturers 
see  the  light,  the  amateurs  of  this  coun¬ 
try  would  sure  appreciate  it!” 

This  need  for  greater  standardization 
in  the  substandard  field  extends  with 
equal  importance  to  the  16mm.  profes¬ 
sional  field.  True,  we  have  well-estab¬ 
lished  dimensional  standards  for  film, 
perforations,  frame-sizes  and  sound¬ 
tracks  for  16mm.  (we  have  all  except 
the  latter  for  8mm.,  too)  but  these  stand¬ 
ards  are  not  always  adhered  to,  and  some 
others,  badly  needed,  don’t  even  exist. 
For  example,  in  starting  a  professional 
16mm.  production,  the  first  thing  any 
experienced  16mm.  cameraman  or  pro¬ 
ducer  considers  is,  if  more  than  a  single 
camera  is  to  be  used,  will  the  scenes 
shot  with  all  the  cameras  (or  magazines) 
used  frame  up  identically.  Interchange- 
ability  of  lens-mounts,  sound  drives,  etc 
— or  the  lack  of  it — is  another  problem. 
And  the  lack  of  uniformity  between 
16mm.  sound  projectors  is  a  perpetual 
hazard  to  the  producers,  recorders  and 
sponsors  of  professional  16mm.  films; 
even  if  a  picture  sounds  perfect  on  the 
producer’s  or  sponsor’s  own  machines, 
there  is  no  guarantee  that  it  will  sound 
that  well — or  even  sound  acceptable — on 
machines  in  the  field,  even  of  the  same 
make. 

There  seems  little  doubt  that  substand¬ 
ard  cinematography — both  16mm.  and 
8mm.,  and  professional  and  amateur — 
will  experience  after  the  war  an  even 
greater  boom  than  followed  the  intro¬ 
duction  of  8mm.  and  the  “candid  camera 
craze”  of  some  seven  or  eight  years  ago. 
Today,  our  makers  of  cinemachinery, 


while  they  are  of  course  immediately 
busy  with  war  production,  are  unques¬ 
tionably  giving  thought  to  vastly  im¬ 
proved  post-war  equipment.  And  while 
they  are  now  mentally  or  otherwise 
“tooling  up”  for  post-war  production,  let 
us  hope  that  they  are  also  giving  due 
thought  to  increasing  the  standardization 
and  interchangeability — on  an  industry¬ 
wide  scale — of  these  basic  elements  and 
accessories  of  their  products.  We  would 
not  by  any  means  have  all  substandard 
cameras,  lenses  and  projectors  identical 
in  all  features  and  performance:  but  the 
assurance  that  any  16mm.-mounted  lens 
would  fit  on  any  16mm.  camera,  or  any 
8mm.-mounted  lens  on  any  8mm.  camera, 
and  that  film  shot  in  a  camera  of  any 
given  type  would  align  with  film  shot  in 
any  other  camera,  and  on  any  projector, 
would  immeasurably  advance  substand¬ 
ard  cinematography,  whether  as  a  hobby 
or  as  a  profession. 

• 

WE  wish  somebody  would  explain  to 
us  the  logic  of  the  way  some 
studios  too  often  preview  their  pictures. 
They  spend  hundreds  of  thousands — 
sometimes  millions — of  dollars  in  mak¬ 
ing  a  production.  They  spend  a  great 
part  of  this  in  glamorous  acting  per¬ 
sonalities,  and  in  scripts,  direction  and 
acting  which  combine  to  produce  definite 
dramatic  moods.  They  spend  many  thou¬ 
sands  of  dollars  and  great  care  picking 
a  director  of  photography  whose  work 
they  know  will  set  off  these  players  to 
the  best  advantage,  and  aid  most  power¬ 
fully  in  establishing  and  building  by 
visual  means  the  emotional  responses 
they  want  from  their  audiences. 

Then  they  show  the  picture  to  the 
press — in  the  form,  all  too  often,  of  a 
work-print  which  is  scratched  and  dirty, 
perhaps  with  the  fades  and  other  transi¬ 
tions  or  effects  not  yet  cut  into  place. 
Or  they  show  what  seems  like  a  first 
composite  print,  in  which  scene  densities 
are  not  yet  balanced  as  perfectly  as  they 
will  be  in  the  release-print,  and  often 
with  the  1000-foot  reel-units  temporarily 
spliced  to  the  2000-foot  projection  reels 
with  embarrassingly  obvious  tape  splices. 
Sometimes  they  may  show  a  print  made 
for  low-intensity  projection  on  a  high- 
intensity  projector,  or  one  made  for 
high-intensity  projection  on  a  low-in¬ 
tensity  machine. 

And  they  expect  the  press,  very  few 
of  whom  are  capable  of  making  allow¬ 
ance  for  these  technicalities,  and  the  im¬ 
provements  that  can  be  expected  when 
a  properly-balanced  print  is  shown  un¬ 
der  normal  projection  conditions,  to 
judge  the  picture  by  what  they  see  on 
the  screen  under  these  generally  un¬ 
recognized  handicaps! 

Of  course,  from  the  producer’s  view¬ 
point  it  does  not  matter  too  greatly  if 
those  reviewers  who  do  comment  on  pho¬ 
tography  give  the  cameraman  an  un¬ 
favorable  review  when  they  see  a  picture 
under  these  unfavorable  conditions.  But 
it  should  matter  very  much  to  the  pro¬ 


ducer  if  for  this  reason,  which  is  entire¬ 
ly  within  his  control,  the  critics  say  that 
his  star  does  not  look  well,  or  that  some¬ 
how  his  picture  failed  to  evoke  the  emo¬ 
tional  response  it  ought  to.  Bad  prints, 
with  or  without  bad  projection,  can  pro¬ 
duce  just  such  comments.  No  producer 
today  would  gamble  on  previewing  a 
1943  production  on  a  1923  DeForest 
Phonofilm  sound-film  projector.  Pre¬ 
viewing  unbalanced  work-prints  or  first 
prints,  or  using  ill-matched  print  and 
projection  illumination  is  just  as  haz- 

arduous  a  gamble.  So  why  do  it - ? 

• 

PERHAPS  blowing  one’s  own  horn 
isn’t  exactly  the  best  of  taste,  but 
we  can’t  help  expressing  a  glow  of  sat¬ 
isfaction  over  the  evidence  we  have  that 
The  American  Cinematographer  is 
without  doubt  one  of  the  most  exten¬ 
sively  read  and  quoted  cinetechnical  jour¬ 
nals  in  the  world.  Some  months  ago,  we 
were  informed  that  this  was  one  of  the 
“learned  journals”  selected  by  the  U.  S. 
State  Department  for  microfilm  trans¬ 
mission  to  China,  and  we  are  constantly 
surprised — and  pleased — when  we  find 
that  official  cinetechnical  visitors  from 
distant  lands  like  Russia,  Britain,  Aus¬ 
tralia,  China,  India  and  Latin-America 
are  as  familiar  with  our  magazine  and 
its  staff  as  though  they  lived  across  the 
street  from  us  here  in  Hollywood. 

We  were  flattered,  too,  when  within 
a  very  few  days’  time  recently  the  post¬ 
man  brought  us  cine-  and  phototechnical 
journals  from  points  as  far  separated  as 
Australia  and  England  in  which  articles 
from  The  American  Cinematographer 
were  reproduced  in  whole  or  in  part, 
while  permission  to  reproduce  another 
article  dealing  with  16mm.  sound  pro¬ 
jection  was  sought  almost  simultane¬ 
ously  by  a  national  magazine  for  pro¬ 
fessional  projectionists,  and  by  the 
visual-education  departments  of  two  of 
our  foremost  universities,  while  letters 
from  officers  in  charge  of  training-film 
work  among  our  Armed  Services  told  us 
of  many  articles  designated  as  “required 
reading”  for  the  men  in  their  commands. 
We  cannot  overlook,  either,  that  one 
manufacturer  of  a  rather  expensive  pro¬ 
fessional  instrument,  who  since  he 
started  business  nearly  two  years  ago 
has  advertised  only  in  this  magazine,  has 
sold  hundreds  of  these  costly  instruments 
not  only  in  this  country  but  in  Latin 
America,  England,  South  Africa  and 
also  so  extensively  among  the  photo¬ 
graphic  sections  of  our  Armed  Services 
that  he  can  now  accept  virtually  no 
civilian  orders. 

All  this  is  recognition  .  .  .  but  it  is 
also  irrefutable  evidence  of  a  responsi¬ 
bility  we  do  not  take  lightly.  And  despite 
all  the  difficulties  of  getting  out  a  techni¬ 
cal  magazine  in  times  like  these,  we  will 
strive  to  continue  to  bring  the  best  of 
cinetechnical  information  to  the  world¬ 
wide  circle  of  readers  who  have  so  flat¬ 
teringly  expressed  their  appreciation  of 
our  efforts  in  their  behalf. 


American  Cinematographer  •  July,  1943  255 


A.S.C.  on  Parade 


Hats  off  again  to  our  favorite  Swede, 
Air  Force  Capt.  Ray  Fernstrom,  A.S.C. 
Last  month  we  printed  his  letters  tell¬ 
ing  how  he  was  wounded  in  action  over 
the  German  lines.  This  month,  word 
comes  officially  that  he  has  become  the 
first  A.S.C.-member  to  be  decorated.  On 
May  26th,  in  the  African  base  hospital 
where  Ray  is  recuperating  from  his 
wound,  Major  General  Lewis  H.  Brere- 
ton,  U.  S.  Middle  East  Commander, 
pinned  not  only  the  Purple  Heart  Medal, 
but  also  the  Air  Medal  with  bronze 
Oak  Leaf  Cluster,  indicative  of  a  sec¬ 
ond  Air  Medal  award,  on  Ray’s  tunic. 
The  sketch  of  Capt.  Fernstrom  above  was 
made  by  Lt.  Atkins,  of  the  Air  Force, 
and  sent  to  us  with  a  cheery  note  from 
Ray,  from  the  American  hospital  from 
which  we  hope  he  is  now  discharged  as 
cured.  Nice  going,  Ray,  we’re  proud  of 
you! 

★ 

Congratulations  to  Navy  Lieutenants 
Joe  August,  A.S.C.,  Harry  Davis,  A.S.C., 
A1  Gilks,  A.S.C.,  Sol  Halprin,  A.S.C., 
A1  ,Siegler,  A.S.C.,  Gregg  Toland,  A.S.C., 
and  Harold  Wenstrom,  A.S.C.,  on  re¬ 
ceiving  well-earned  promotions  to  the 
rank  of  Lieutenant  Commander.  Most  of 
them  have  been  on  active  duty  since 
months  before  Pearl  Harbor,  and  doing 
exceptional — if  unpublicized — work  all 
over  the  world.  We’re  proud  to  learn 
they’re  now  “two-and-a-half-stripers.” 

★ 

We’re  sorry  to  report  that  Charles 
Rosher,  A.S.C.,  has  been  absent  from 
his  usual  haunts  out  MGM  way,  due 
to  serious  illness,  but  the  latest  bul¬ 
letin  is  that  he’s  getting  better  fast. 
Ray  June,  A.S.C.,  is  also  reported  as 
improving,  but  not  yet  able  to  receive 
visitors.  We  wish  both  of  them  a 
speedy  recovery. 

★ 

When  things  happen  to  Bob  Burks, 
A.S.C.,  they  don’t  happen  singly:  as¬ 


signed  to  direct  the  photography  of 
Warners’  “In  Our  Time,”  his  first  ven¬ 
ture  into  “production”  cinematography 
after  long  experience  with  special-proc¬ 
ess  work.  About  the  same  time  he  be¬ 
came  a  papa — also,  we  believe,  his  first; 
and  to  cap  the  climax,  a  slip  on  the 
set  landed  him  in  the  hospital  with  a 
broken  leg.  As  we  go  to  press,  report 
is  that  he  is  recovering  as  comfortably 
as  possible,  with  a  big  cast  on  his  in¬ 
jured  leg  .  .  .  well,  we’d  rather  have  a 
cast  on  our  leg  than  some  casts  we’ve 
known  on  our  hands! 

★ 

A  note  from  Capt.  Osmond  Borradaile, 
A.S.C.,  up  in  Canada  recuperating  from 
injuries  received  in  North  Africa,  asks 
us  please  to  correct  the  statement  made 
some  time  back,  that  he  was  decorated 
for  his  achievements.  ‘T’ain’t  so,  he 
says,  though  the  brass  hats  did  pat  him 
soundly  on  the  back  for  what  he  did 
in  Abyssinia  and  North  Africa. 

★ 

The  other  day  we  had  a  surprise  visit 
from  Reggie  Lyons,  one  of  the  earliest 
members  of  the  A.S.C.  He  is  now  work¬ 
ing  as  a  civilian  cinematographer  with 
the  Signal  Corps  Training  Film  Lab. 
at  Wright  Field,  Ohio — or  rather  work¬ 
ing  out  of  there,  for  he  tells  us  that 
within  the  past  few  months  he’s  been 
on  18  locations  all  the  way  from  Brook¬ 
lyn  to  California,  shooting  training  films 
for  the  Army  Air  Force.  He  promises 
an  article  on  training  film  production 
as  soon  as  he  gets  time  to  write  it. 

★ 


An  unexpected  visitor  from  out-of- 
town  this  month  was  genial  Len  H.  Roos, 
A.S.C.,  F.R.P.S.,  who  represents  the 
Newsreel  Pool  in  the  Hawaiian  area. 
On  a  quick  trip  to  see  his  bosses  in 
New  York  (and  maybe  to  tell  them 
more  about  his  hush-hush  experience 
‘covering’  Pearl  Harbor  that  memorable 
Dec.  7th)  we  were  lucky  enough  to  grab 
the  above  shot  of  War-Correspondent 
Len  being  welcomed  home  the  camera- 
shy  by  A.S.C.-Prexy  Len  ,Smith  .  .  . 
we  don’t  intend  to  be  corny,  but  we’re 
tempted  to  caption  the  pic  “Two  swell 
Lens-ers.”  Ouch!  We’ll  be  good! 


Congratulations  to  Associate  Member 
E.  P.  “Ted”  Curtis,  A.S.C.  For  the  past 
several  months  he’s  been  doing  a  whale 
of  a  job  on  General  Spaatz’  Air  Force 
staff  in  North  Africa,  and  now  word 
comes  from  Washington  that  he  has 
been  promoted  to  Brigadier  Genera). 
’Way  back  in  1940  Ted  took  leave  of 
his  job  as  head  of  Eastman’s  Motion 
Picture  Film  Sales  Dept.,  and  went  on 
active  duty  as  an  Air  Force  Major — 
the  same  rank  he  held  at  the  end  of 
World  War  I,  from  which  he  came  home 
as  one  of  America’s  leading  “aces”  and 
a  Squadron  Commander,  as  well.  His 
climb  from  that  rank  to  Brigadier  Gen¬ 
eral  is  something  anyone  who  ever  knew 
the  genial,  efficient  General  Curtis  could 
have  easily  foretold,  one  in  which  all 
his  friends  can  take  sincere  pride. 

★ 

Thanks  to  Russell  Harlan,  A.S.C.,  for 
inviting  us  to  bring  our  ten-year-old 
son  to  visit  his  set  .  .  .  and  a  double 
portion  for  the  fine  way  he  and  the  whole 
“Gun  Master”  troupe  went  out  of  their 
way  to  give  a  youngster  the  thrill  of 
his  life. 

★ 

Merritt  B.  Gerstad,  A.S.C.,  draws  a 
nice  assignment  at  Warners’,  filming 
“Conflict.” 

★ 

Nice  to  see  Norbert  Brodine,  A.S.C., 
coming  to  roost  at  20th-Fox,  directing 
the  photography  of  “Dancing  Masters,” 
with  Laurel  and  Hardy. 

★ 

Monogram  briefs:  Marcel  Le  Picard, 
A.S.C.,  finishes  “Outlaws  of  Stampede 
Pass.”  while  Jackson  Rose,  A.S.C.,  starts 
“I  Was  a  Criminal.” 

★ 

And  Ira  (“Joe”)  Morgan,  A.S.C.,  is 
busy  making  “Tiger  Fangs”  for  PRC. 

★ 

At  Paramount,  Charles  Lang,  A.S.C., 
starts  “Standing  Room  Only;”  Victor 
Milner,  A.S.C.,  gets  rolling  on  De  Mille’s 
“The  Story  of  Dr.  Wassell;”  and  Theo- 
(Continued  on  Page  268) 


256  July,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


PHOTOGRAPHY  OF  THE  MONTH 


CRASH  DIVE 

20th  Century-Fox  Production  (Techni¬ 
color).  k 

Director  of  Photography:  Leon  Sham- 

roy,  A.S.C. 

The  first  few  reels  of  this  picture  are 
Technicolored  in  adequate  but  thorough¬ 
ly  routine  fashion.  But  thereafter — 
from  the  time  the  submarine  first  sub¬ 
merges  and  the  dramatic  effect-lightings 
begin — one  can  see  why  Leon  Shamroy, 
A.S.C.,  was  the  first  “production”  cine¬ 
matographer  to  capture  an  Academy 
Color  Award  single-handed.  Without 
the  visual  drama  his  camera  and  light¬ 
ings — especially  the  undersea  ones  mak¬ 
ing  vivid  dramatic  use  of  projected 
color — give  to  the  production,  “Crash 
Dive”  would  probably  be  considered 
pretty  banal  entertainment.  But  be¬ 
cause  of  what  Shamroy’s  artistry  does 
in  creating  emotional  responses,  not 
only  in  the  heavily  dramatic  moments, 
but  in  the  love-scenes  (particularly 
some  of  the  night-effects  in  the  car  and 
outside  the  girls’  school),  the  picture 
takes  on  a  dramatic  stature  it  would 
not  otherwise  have  enjoyed. 

Some  of  the  special-effects  work — 
notably  the  explosions  in  the  Nazi  U- 
boat  base — is  excellent;  but  much  of 
the  rest  is  decidedly  mediocre.  The 
process  backgrounds,  especially,  we  con¬ 
sidered  poor.  In  many  of  them  was  no¬ 
ticeable  a  pronounced  “hot  spot”  which 
with  today’s  technique  shouldn’t  be 
there.  In  others,  the  background  plates 
were  unduly  grainy,  and  looked  as 
though  they  had  either  been  photo¬ 
graphed  in  very  indifferent  monopack, 
or  unnecessarily  printed  down.  But  for 
all  that,  “Crash  Dive”  is  worth  seeing 
if  you  want  to  see  what  a  fine  cinema¬ 
tographer  can  do  to  make — in  the  dra¬ 
matic  sense — a  picture. 

BACKGROUND  TO  DANGER 

Warner  Bros.  Production. 

Director  of  Photography:  Tony  Gaudio, 

A.S.C. 

Special-effects  by  Warren  Lynch,  A.S.C., 

and  Willard  Van  Engcr,  A.S.C. 

This  mystery-melodrama  takes  rank 
very  close  indeed  to  “Casab’anca”  as 
one  of  the  season’s  most  spectacularly 
pictorial  jobs  of  black-and-wlr'te  cine¬ 
matography.  Laid  against  a  rather  sim¬ 
ilar  background,  giving  ample  opportu¬ 
nity  for  pictorial  effect-lightings,  “Back¬ 
ground  to  Danger”  suffers,  in  our  opin¬ 
ion,  from  direction  inclined  too  much 
toward  action  and  too  little  toward  co¬ 
operation  with  the  cameraman,  and  from 
sets  less  photogenic  than  those  of  its 
predecessor. 

But  within  these  limitations,  director 
of  photography  Tony  Gaudio,  A.S.C.,  has 
done  a  magnificent  job.  Where  condi¬ 
tions  permit,  his  pictorial  compositions 
are  delightful,  and  his  effect-lightings 
something  that  make  you  want  to  see 
the  picture  again.  His  treatment  of  his 


players  is,  as  usual,  first-rate,  regard¬ 
less  of  the  handicaps  we  feel  he  must 
sometimes  have  been  working  under. 

The  special-effects  work  by  Warren 
Lynch,  A.S.C.,  and  Willard  Van  Enger, 
A.S.C.,  is  another  outstanding  part  of 
the  production.  A  great  deal  of  it  is 
wholly  unrecognizable  as  special-effects 
camerawork,  and  all  of  it  is  handled  in 
an  unusually  capable  manner.  We  can’t 
help  wishing,  though,  that  a  bit  of  op- 
t;cal  print’rg  had  been  done  on  one  of 
the  railroad  scenes  to  smudge  out  a 
name  painted  boldly  across  an  engine 
drawing  a  train  out  of  a  station,  and 
which  made  it  painfully  obvious  that  the 
scene  had  been  shot  at  Victoria  Station, 
London,  rather  than  in  Ankara! 

CONEY  ISLAND 

20th  Century-Fox  Production  (Techni¬ 
color). 

Director  of  Photography:  Ernest  Palm¬ 
er,  A.S.C. 

Here’s  another  of  those  delightfully- 
Technicolored  20th  Century-Fox  musi¬ 
cals.  And,  with  the  exception  of  the 
first  couple  of  reels  where,  at  least  in 
the  print  we  saw,  the  contrast  seemed 
abnormally  high,  Ernest  Palmer’s  cam¬ 
erawork  makes  the  picture  doubly  a  de¬ 
light.  The  further  the  picture  pro¬ 
gresses,  the  more  delightful  become  his 
camerawork  and  lightings.  Art-directors 
Richard  Day  and  Joseph  Wright  have, 
as  usual,  given  Ir'm  almost  perfect  sets 
to  photograph,  and  the  costuming  com¬ 
pletes  a  picture,  which  needs  only  the  in¬ 
spired  camera-artistry  of  a  man  like 
Palmer  to  make  a  perfect  gem  of  frothy 
Technicolor  pictorialism.  If  by  any 
chance  you  don’t  want  to  see  “Coney 
Island”  a  second  time  to  enjoy  again  its 
breezy  entertainment  and  mus’c  (not 
to  mention  the  excellently-Technicolored 
Betty  Grab’e),  you’ll  want  to  see  it  once 
more  just  for  the  pleasure  of  enjoying 
its  photographic  beauty  and  the  almost 
flawless  combination  of  color-design  and 
camerawork. 

BATAAN 

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer  Production. 
Director  of  Photography:  Sidney  Wag¬ 
ner,  A.S.C. 

In  “Bataan,”  S’d  Wagner,  A.S.C.,  of¬ 
fers  not  only  the  finest  photographic 
achievement  from  h:s  camera  in  many  a 
long  moon,  but  what  we’d  like  to  pre¬ 
dict  as  a  strong  candidate  for  Academy 
Award  honors.  You  may  or  may  not 
care  for  its  theme  of  heavy  war  drama 
of  an  heroic  rear-guard  action  on  Ba¬ 
taan,  but  if  you  care  at  all  for  great 
cinematography,  you’ll  want  to  see 
“Bataan”  more  than  once. 

Both  story,  action,  and  locale  call  for 
a  very  difficult  combination  of  realism, 
effect-lighting  and  photograph’c  mood 
treatment.  Wagner  provides  this  visual 
setting  magnificently,  in  a  way  that 
enhances  the  dramatic  values  of  the 


production  enormously.  We  might  say 
that  to  our  mind  some  of  the  extreme 
night-effect  scenes  should  better  have 
been  printed  down  a  bit  to  give  a  visu¬ 
ally  and  dramatically  better  impression 
of  nocturnal  menace,  though  this  may 
have  been  merely  the  result  of  high- 
intensity  projection  on  a  comparatively 
small  screen.  But  “Bataan”  is  full  of 
visual  impressions  which  will  constantly 
repeat  themselves  in  your  memory  once 
you’ve  seen  the  film.  We  won’t  say 
which  they  are,  for  tastes  differ:  but 
there  are  enough  of  them  to  suit  every 
taste,  and  to  make  “Bataan”  one  of  the 
year’s  most  spectacular  photographic 
achievements. 

The  special-effects,  especially  the  min¬ 
iatures,  which  we  assume  to  be  the  un¬ 
credited  work  of  Maximilian  Fabian, 
A.S.C.,  are  another  notable  part  of  the 
production,  as  is  Bronislau  Kaper’s  su¬ 
perb  musical  score,  to  our  mind  quite  the 
best  of  the  year. 

THE  KANSAN 

Harry  Sherman  Production,  United  Art¬ 
ists’  Release. 

Director  of  Photography:  Russell  Har¬ 
lan,  A.S.C. 

You  can’t  d:smiss  this  well-budgeted 
“Western”  with  the  remark  that  it  is  a 
collection  of  Russell  Harlan  exteriors, 
and  that  Russ  is  “tops”  in  this  type  of 
camerawork.  That’s  true  enough,  but 
in  “The  Kansan,”  Harlan  has  plenty  of 
interiors  which  he  hand’es  so  excellently 
as  to  disprove  for  all  time  any  thought 
that  he  is  strictly  a  “Western”  special¬ 
ist.  This  reviewer  is  admittedly  par¬ 
tial  to  smoothly-photographed  exteriors 
(which,  incidentally,  Russ  has  provided 
in  so  far  as  fluctuating  weather  condi¬ 
tions  on  location  permitted),  but  some 
of  his  favorite  scenes  were  among  the 
interiors,  especially  some  of  the  effect- 
lighted  scenes  in  the  saloon. 

Harlan’s  treatment  of  the  players  was 
exceptional,  too.  especially  in  the  case  of 
Richard  Dix,  who.  despite  all  the  years 
he  has  spent  in  pictures,  Harlan’s  cam¬ 
era  makes  an  actually  believable  roman¬ 
tic  lead,  though  his  appearance  wou’d 
have  been  still  better  with  a  sl'ghtly 
thinner  application  of  the  make-up 
artist’s  cosmetic  retouching.  We’d  like, 
bv  the  way,  to  see  some  producer  give 
Victor  Jory  a  part  in  which  a  camera¬ 
man  could  give  him  extreme  dramatic 
lightings — something,  perhaps,  like  those 
Pev  Marley,  A.S.C.,  used  on  Charles 
Laughton  in  “Les  Miserables”  .  .  .  any¬ 
way,  some  which  would  take  better  photo- 
dramatic  advantage  of  his  mobile  fea¬ 
tures  than  we’ve  ever  seen  done. 

DIXIE 

Paramount  Production  (Technicolor). 
Director  of  Photography:  Lt.  William  C. 

Mellor,  A.S.C. 

This  production — the  last  one  Billy 
(Continued  on  Page  268) 


American  Cinematographer  •  July,  1943  257 


I6ttttn.  IJtcVieA  Jot  Out  £cl4ietA 

By  LA  NELLE  FOSHOLDT 

Long  Beach  Cinema  Club 


WE’VE  bounced  around  in  every¬ 
thing  from  an  Army  Jeep  to  a 
two-ton  searchlight  truck  since 
we  started  showing  movies  to  the  Army 
Camps — and  we  love  it.  If  you  want  to 
have  the  time  of  your  life  and  be  doing 
something  the  boys  in  the  service  really 
appreciate,  start  showing  them  movies, 
as  we  are  doing. 

A  few  months  ago,  when  civilians  were 
being  urged  to  help  entertain  the  sol¬ 
diers,  the  Long  Beach  Cinema  Club  vol¬ 
unteered  their  services  through  the 
Recreation  Division  of  the  Long  Beach 
Council  of  Defense,  which  is  the  co¬ 
ordinating  agency  for  military  and  civil¬ 
ian  recreation  efforts  in  this  area.  Midge 
Caldwell  was  appointed  chairman  of  a 
volunteer  group  to  show  16mm.  films  as 
entertainment  to  the  boys  in  camps  sta¬ 
tioned  near  us. 

The  first  night  we  went  out,  we  won¬ 
dered  just  what  type  of  films  the  boys 
would  enjoy  most,  so  we  took  along  an 
assortment  to  find  out  their  reactions. 
They  sent  an  Army  truck  for  us  and  we 
were  soon  rambling  along  feeling  rather 
proud  as  we  noticed  the  envious  looks 
from  pedestrians  on  the  street.  It  took 
us  about  twenty-five  minutes  to  get  there, 
and  going  over  a  few  rough  places  we 

*  The  Long  Beach  Cinema  Club  was  one  of  the 
first  American  amateur  movie  groups  to  volun¬ 
teer  to  put  its  members  and  projectors  to  use  in 
entertaining  servicemen,  and  with  the  project 
under  the  guidance  of  Vice-President  Mildred 
Caldwell,  it  is  well  in  the  lead  as  one  of  the 
most  active  in  this  worthwhile  work,  though  other 
clubs,  including  the  Syracuse  Movie  Makers’  As¬ 
sociation,  the  Metropolitan  Motion  Picture  Club 
of  New  York,  and  others,  including  the  Aus¬ 
tralian  Amateur  Cine  Society  of  Sydney,  Aus¬ 
tralia,  have  also  gone  actively  to  work  bringing 
film  entertainment  to  servicemen.  We  hope  that 
this  account  of  the  Long  Beach  group’s  activities 
will  inspire  other  clubs  and  individuals  to  follow 
along  the  same  path. — The  Editor. 


wondered  what  condition  our  fellow  pro¬ 
jectionist  would  be  in,  for  he  was  riding 
in  the  back  with  the  equipment — and 
really  bouncing  around. 

We  arrived  at  the  Mess  Hall  in  time 
to  see  the  cook  slicing  thick  steaks,  bacon 
and  pork  chops.  For  a  minute  we  feasted 
our  eyes  and  wished  we  were  in  the 
Army  as  the  meat  shortage  was  very 
bad  at  that  time.  While  we  set  up  the 
screen  near  the  officers’  entrance,  the 
boys  came  in  the  back  door  by  groups 
anxiously  asking,  “You  aren’t  going  to 
show  us  training  films  are  you?”  We 
gave  them  a  list  of  the  pictures  we  had 
and  they  began  to  pick  them  out  in  the 
order  they  wanted  to  see  them. 

They  selected  a  400-ft.  sound  comedy 
first,  “Run  Sheep  Run,”  then  a  silent 
amateur  picture,  “Father’s  Time,”  by 
Ray  Fosholdt,  a  club  production,  “Fire 
from  the  Skies,”  followed  by  two  fast- 
moving  professional  shorts,  “Here  Comes 
the  Circus”  and  “Ice  Follies.”  The  boys 
enjoyed  the  pictures  so  much  we  decided 
to  line  up  members  of  our  group  to  make 
a  trip  each  Friday  evening. 

The  following  week,  we  found  out  they 
were  very  much  interested  in  the  latest 
sound  newsreels.  We  had  hesitated  about 
taking  any  of  these  films  along  thinking 
that  with  war  continually  on  their  minds 
they  would  enjoy  films  on  other  subjects. 
That  evening,  the  show  consisted  of 
“Coral  Sea,”  a  newsreel  in  sound,  and 
two  highly  entertaining  sport  sound  pic¬ 
tures,  “Ride  ’em  Cowboy,”  and  “Sport 
Spellbinders.”  Clarence  Aldrich’s  ama¬ 
teur  production  “Ranch  Romance”  and 
“Bathing  Beauty  Parade,”  finished  up 
the  evening.  The  Bathing  Beauty  Parade 
really  “went  over”  with  whistling,  clap¬ 


Above:  Members  of  the  Long  Beach  Cinema  Club 
put  cn  a  16mm.  show  for  soldiers  at  an  isolated  gun- 
battery,  with  the  mess-hall  for  a  theatre.  Below: 
making  a  16mm.  sound-film  (note  blimped  Cine- 
Special  and  Auricon)  of  a  show  put  on  by  soldiers 

at  another  battery.  Photos  by  Clifford  Lothrop. 

ping  of  hands  and  stamping  of  feet  to 
give  emphasis  to  their  favorites.  They 
were  elated  to  learn  the  Parade  was 
staged  each  year  and  their  hopes  really 
fell  when  we  said  it  had  been  discon¬ 
tinued  “for  the  duration.”  We  went  out 
in  one  of  their  largest  trucks  which  had 
running-boards  a  good  ways  from  the 
ground.  When  it  came  time  to  go  home, 
Midge  and  I  hesitated  a  moment  trying 
to  decide  the  best  way  to  reach  that  high 
running-board  gracefully  with  an  aud¬ 
ience  looking  on.  They  suddenly  decided 
to  send  us  back  in  a  reconnaissance  car 
which  was  much  easier  to  get  into!  We 
stopped  in  our  tracks  as  a  voice  boomed 
through  the  darkness,  “Halt!  Who  goes 
there?”  The  Sergeant  said,  “Come  on, 
that’s  just  a  sentry  over  on  the  landing 
field.  He  wants  to  make  sure  he’s  heard 
before  he  starts  shooting!” 

The  next  Friday  night,  Pat  and  Nora 
Rafferty  went  along  with  Midge.  I  called 
afterwards  to  see  how  everything  went. 
A  Sergeant  picked  them  up  in  a  Cap¬ 
tain’s  jeep  and  going  up-hill,  Nora  be¬ 
came  doubtful  if  they  would  make  it. 
The  Sergeant  soon  assured  her  the  jeep 
could  go  through  sand,  mud,  or  up  the 
side  of  a  building. 

The  pictures  were  shown  in  the  bar- 
(Continued  on  Page  274) 


258  July,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


PROPS"  -  -  -  THE  SECRET  OF 
REALLY  NATURAL  HOME  MOVIES 

By  JAMES  R.  OSWALD 


IN  the  midst  of  a  very  gala  occa¬ 
sion,  which  was  literally  a  movie¬ 
maker’s  paradise,  I  chanced  to  over¬ 
hear  someone  make  an  impertinent  com¬ 
ment  concerning  the  many  cine  fans 
present  at  this  affair.  The  remark  im¬ 
plied  that  it  was  pointless  and  showed 
lack  of  judgment  to  ever  “waste”  val¬ 
uable  film  on  unfamiliar  objects  and 
places,  seemingly  of  little  interest,  and 
on  “unimportant”  persons  who  were 
total  strangers,  even  to  the  photogra¬ 
pher.  Since  footage  was  being  shot  at 
a  rapid  rate  with  cameras  grinding  all 
around  me,  it  became  still  more  obvious 
that  the  implication  was  uncalled-for 
and  without  foundation.  Likewise  it 
became  apparent  that  the  person  mak¬ 
ing  it  had  little  knowledge  of,  or  inter¬ 
est  in,  photography,  either  still  or  mo¬ 
tion  picture.  Little  did  this  individual 
know  or  understand  what  really  consti¬ 
tutes  a  good  picture.  Little  did  he  real¬ 
ize  that  these  insignificant  objects,  yes 
and  human  beings  too,  were  merely  part 
of  the  picture,  and  a  very  small  part 
at  that.  And  that  they  were  actually 
nothing  more  than  “accessories,”  care¬ 
fully  chosen  by  the  cameraman,  to  make 
a  worthwhile  scene  out  of  an  ordinary, 
commonplace  setting. 

The  advanced  amateur  knows  only 
too  well  the  tendency  people  have  to 
“freeze  up”  and  become  stiff  the  mo¬ 
ment  the  cine  camera  is  pointed  their 
way.  Folks,  who  might  otherwise  be 


the  life  of  the  party,  immediately  be¬ 
come  self-conscious  when  requested  to 
act  in  a  movie  scene.  It’s  indeed  sur¬ 
prising  how  they  suddenly  can’t  find  a 
thing  to  do  while  in  front  of  the  buzz¬ 
ing  camera.  Such  scenes  usually  create 
quite  a  laugh  from  future  audiences, 
but  they  don’t  show  the  subject  as  he 
or  she  really  is,  and  they  certainly 
should  not  be  classed  as  good  movies. 

Everyone  knows  the  value  of  a  nat¬ 
ural,  seemingly  unposed  scene  of  a  per¬ 
son  as  he  really  is  in  everyday  life. 
People  also  have  the  ability  to  recog¬ 
nize  good  composition  when  they  see 
it,  whether  they  can  define  the  word 
or  not.  How,  then,  can  we  attain  this 
naturalness  so  desirable  both  in  human 
subjects  and  in  material  subjects,  such 
as  backgrounds,  etc.?  The  answer  is 
quite  simple.  Every  little  detail  within 
the  camera  field  should  be  closely 
watched.  These  minor  incidentals,  some 
placed  in  the  hands  of  the  actors,  oth¬ 
ers  merely  a  part  of  the  picture,  will 
dress  up  the  scene  in  general,  making 
the  result  more  attractive.  The  minor 
incidentals  which  I  refer  to  as  accesso¬ 
ries,  are  professionally  known  as  “photo¬ 
graphic  props.” 

Props  are  little  more  than  common, 
everyday  objects  which  are  included  in 
the  picture  area  to  enhance  its  value. 
If  properly  used  they  may  not  even  be 
noticed  by  the  casual  observer,  but  their 
absence  would  have  a  decided  weaken¬ 


Above,  left:  Note  naturalness  given  this  scene  by 
tea-set  ''props"  which  give  the  actors  something  to 
do.  Right,  top:  Without  props,  the  girl  is  still  and 
self-conscious;  beneath,  given  a  letter  to  write,  she 
relaxes  and  is  natural.  Middle:  A  simple  drink  of 
"coke"  makes  this  scene  more  natural,  though  bottle 
in  foreground  should  be  removed,  as  it  distracts 
attention  from  main  action.  Bottom:  A  $1  Venetian 
blind  on  a  bare  wall,  plus  a  vase  on  a  stand,  make 
this  shot  more  natural.  A  darker  vase  would  be 
better,  however,  as  it  wouldn't  stand  out  so  promi¬ 
nently.  Photos  above  by  James  R.  Oswald;  at  left, 
by  Wm.  Stull,  A.S.C. 

ing  effect,  noticeable  to  anyone.  On  the 
other  hand,  if  they  are  not  used  to 
best  advantage,  the  resulting  picture 
may  be  worse  than  one  had  they  been 
omitted  entirely.  A  little  common-sense 
before  shooting  will  do  much  toward 
the  skillful,  harmonious  arrangement 
of  seemingly  insignificant  details.  Any 
time  spent  in  preparation  of  this  sort 
(Continued  on  Page  273) 


American  Cinematographer  •  July,  1943  259 


CAMERA  EQUIPMENT  COMPANY  A 


TOaiP®®  wmrsa  sa®&®  &s^ii 


.  I 

Ul  mm 

The  New  Removable  Head  “ 

The  new  removable  head  feature 
"Professional  Junior"*  Tripod.  It  is  noi 
type  head  from  the  tripod  legs  base  b 
fastening  nut.  The  tripod  head  can  the 
adaptor  for  low  setups. 

The  friction  type  head  gives  super-sr 
and  80°  tilt.  A  generous  sized  pin  . 
service.  "Spread-leg"  design  affords  ut 
adjustments.  A  "T"  level  is  built  into  t 
be  set  for  16mm  E.K.  Cine  Special,  wi 
B  &  H  Eyemo  (with  motor),  and  with  or 
head  is  unconditionally  guaranteed  5  ye 
Junior"*  Tripod  With  Removable  He 
be  sent  upon  request. 

- 

Field  Devc 

The  kit  serves  as  a  portable  darkroc 
motion  picture  film  in  the  field  or  on  lo 
ft.  and  1000  ft.  Mitchell,  Bell  &  Ho 
adaptor  is  available  for  Cineflex  mag< 
with  three  special  size  thermos  bottles 
complete  descriptive  data  will  be  sent 


"Professional  Junior"*  Tripods,  Devel 
Gauges  made  by  Camera  Equipmer 
Bases,  Signal  Corps,  Office  of  Strafe 
also  by  many  leading  Newsreel  cor 
producers. 

*  Patent  No.  2318910. 


NOUNCES  THE  NEW  TYPE 


C.  ZUCKER 


x  J  oifia 


" Hi-Hat "  and  Shiftover  Alignment  Gauge 


*  Illustrated  is  the  B  &  H  Eyemo  camera  mounted  on  the 
Shiftover  Alignment  Gauge  and  "Hi-Hat"  low-base 
adaptor.  The  "Hi-Hat"  low-base  adaptor  takes  the 
"Professional  Junior"*  tripod  head  for  setups  where  the 
tripod  legs  cannot  be  used.  The  Shiftover  device  (de¬ 
signed  by  Camera  Equipment  Co.  and  patent  applied 
for),  the  the  finest,  lightest  and  most  efficient  available 
for  parallax  correction  for  the  Eyemo  Spider  Turret 
prismatic  focusing  type  camera.  The  male  of  the  Shiftover 
attaches  to  the  camera  base  permanently  and  permits 
using  the  regular  camera  handle  if  desired.  Further  data 
about  the  "Hi-Hat"  and  Shiftover  will  be  sent  upon 
request. 


'sia-iUM'" 


fessional  Junior”*  Tripod 

■>  great  flexibility  to  the  versatile 
isible  to  easily  remove  the  friction 
i ply  unscrewing  a  finger-grip  head 
mounted  on  a  "Hi-Hat"  low-base 

i  pan  and  tilt  action, — 360°  pan 
runnion  assures  long,  dependable 
rigidity  and  quick,  positive  height 
jperfine  tripod.  The  top-plate  can 
without  motor;  35mm  DeVry  and 
out  alignment  gauge.  The  tripod 
More  data  about  the  "Professional 
contained  in  literature  that  will 


oping  Kit 


»r  developing  hand  tests  of  35mm 
n.  The  kit  is  equipped  to  take  400 
and  Wall  magazines.  A  special 
».  The  developing  kit  is  furnished 
developer,  hypo  and  water.  More 
i  request. 


Kits,  "Hi-Hats"  and  Shiftover  Alignment 
.  are  used  by  the  U.  S.  Navy,  Army  Air 
srvices  and  other  Government  Agencies — 
is  and  16mm  and  35  mm  motion  picture 


bo  tfcufi  WltitakeA  “Teach  tfou 
What  Wet  To  bo-? 

By  PHIL  TANNURA,  A.  S.  C. 


There’s  a  story  told  about  a  prize¬ 
fighter  who  once  walked  squarely  into 
Joe  Louis’  Sunday  punch  .  .  .  and  when, 
considerably  later,  the  birdies  stopped 
singing,  remarked  philosophically,  “Well, 
at  least  that  taught  me  what  not  to  do!” 

This  may  seem  like  a  rather  negative 
way  of  accumulating  knowledge,  but  it  is 
undeniably  effective.  Besides,  there  are 
always  two  aspects  of  learning  how  to 
do  anything:  what  to  do,  and  what  not 
to  do.  Of  the  two,  I  think  the  “nots”  are 
often  the  more  important,  and  the  harder 
to  learn,  probably  because  they’re  mis¬ 
takes  most  of  us  want  to  bury  in  quick 
oblivion.  But  if  we  dig  them  out  and 
study  them  they  can  often  be  every  bit 
as  instructive  as  our  most  cherished 
successes. 

Take  those  mistakes  we’ve  all  made  in 
moviemaking,  for  example.  Whether  we 
shoot  for  pay  or  pleasure,  we  don’t,  as  a 
rule,  care  to  screen  past  mistakes  very 
often.  But  now  that  film  is  scarce,  every 
one  of  them  can — or  should — carry  a 
lesson  of  something  we  want  to  avoid 
in  the  future,  to  avoid  wasting  precious 
film.  So  before  you  do  any  more  shooting, 
why  not  dig  out  all  of  your  “horrible 
examples”  you  can  lay  hands  on,  and 
spend  a  quiet  evening  with  your  projec¬ 
tor,  studying  and  analyzing  the  things 
you  shouldn’t  do? 

And  while  you’re  digging  that  film  out, 
let’s  go  over  a  few  of  the  more  familiar 
things  you  shouldn’t  have  done  (but  did) 
and  suggest  a  few  simple  remedies  for 
them. 

First  on  almost  anybody’s  list  of  home 
movie  “should  nots”  is  over-fast  panning. 
Most  experienced  amateurs  will  probably 


chime  in  at  this  point  that  they  learned 
all  about  that  long  ago — and  learned 
that  the  simplest  and  safest  cure  was 
simply  not  to  pan.  That’s  all  right  as 
far  as  it  goes:  but  even  if  (unlike  the 
unlucky  professional)  you  don’t  have  a 
pan-mad  director  working  with  you  and 
insisting  on  moving  the  camera  all  over 
the  room  or  landscape,  you’ll  still  find 
occasions  when  you’ve  just  got  to  pan. 

In  a  case  like  that,  your  first  remedy 
is  to  set  the  tension  on  your  tripod’s  pan¬ 
head  tight  enough  so  it  offers  enough 
resistance  to  hold  you  down  to  a  decently 
slow  pan  .  .  .  and  then  remember  to  pan 
even  slower  than  that.  But  this  remedy 
isn’t  very  much  help  when,  through  ne¬ 
cessity  or  very  questionable  choice,  you 
may  have  to  make  the  shot  with  the 
camera  hand-held.  In  that  case,  you’ll 
find  it  a  good  idea  to  speed  the  camera 
up  enough  so  it  will  automatically  slow 
the  pan  for  you.  If  you’re  shooting  for 
silent,  16 -frame -per -second  projection, 
speed  the  camera  up  to  24-frame  speed; 
if  you’re  shooting  for  24-frame  sound- 
speed  projection,  whack  it  up  to  32 
frames  per  second.  Sure — that  uses 
more  film:  but  no  more  than  you’d  use 
if  you  panned  at  the  properly  slow  rate. 
And  it  will  slow  and  smooth  your  pan 
like  magic. 

Another  thing  to  remember  is  to  have 
a  legitimate  reason  behind  your  pan.  As 
a  rule,  there  are  only  two  real  reasons 
for  panning.  First,  to  follow  some  mov¬ 
ing  object.  Second,  to  show  some  pan¬ 
orama  which  simply  cannot  he  shown, 
or  at  least  cannot  be  shown  effectively, 
in  a  single,  stationary-camera  shot  or  a 
series  of  such  shots. 


A  familiar — and  instructive — mistake:  The  long-shot 
was  filmed  unfiltered,  while  the  filter  used  on  the 
close-up  to  darken  the  sky  made  the  red  dress  several 
shades  lighter,  and  "washed  out"  the  face-tones. 


In  the  first  instance,  you  simply  follow 
your  moving  object  as  smoothly  as  you 
can,  keeping  it  constantly  centered  in 
your  finder  so  it  won’t  weave  back  and 
forth  on  the  screen. 

In  the  second  instance,  you’d  better 
remember  that  a  pan  should  be  like  a 
crescendo  of  interest,  leading  from  some¬ 
thing  less  interesting  to  something  else 
more  interesting.  There’s  been  a  lot  of 
argument — verbal  and  printed — in  ama¬ 
teur  circles  as  to  whether  horizontal 
pans  should  properly  be  made  from  right 
to  left,  or  from  left  to  right,  and  if  ver¬ 
tical  pans  should  ever  be  made  descend¬ 
ing.  This  matter  of  interest  should  form 
the  conclusive  answer  to  all  these  argu¬ 
ments:  just  begin  with  the  least  interest¬ 
ing  part  of  your  scene,  and  pan  to  the 
part  that  is  more  interesting  —  and  di¬ 
rection  be  hanged!  Oh  yes,  be  sure,  too, 
that  you  both  begin  and  end  on  a  good 
composition. 

Just  review  the  panning  in  some  of 
your  less  satisfactory  pictures  and  see 
how  much  it  would  be  improved  by  fol¬ 
lowing  these  few  simple  hints! 

Missed  exposure  is  another  “should 
not”  you  can  find  a  cure  for  it  if  you 
re-analyze  your  old  films.  If,  like  nine 
out  of  ten  of  us  today,  you  use  some  sort 
of  a  meter,  you’ll  probably  discover 
when  you  study  your  incorrectly-exposed 
scenes,  that  the  reason  you  went  wrong 
on  them  was  either  that  your  exposure- 
meter  didn’t  “see”  the  same  area  your 
camera  did,  or  that  it  took  simply  an 
overall  reading  on  the  whole  scene,  while 
you  were  really  interested  in  some  por¬ 
tion  of  the  scene-area  which  called  for — 
but  didn’t  get — special  exposure  treat¬ 
ment. 

In  both  cases  the  fault  most  probably 
was  that  you  simply  held  up  the  meter, 
pointed  in  the  general  direction  of  the 
scene,  and  accepted  what  it  said  without 
further  thought.  Now  in  most  exterior 
scenes,  you’re  likely  to  include  a  good 
deal  of  sky,  which  reflects  a  lot  of  light 
and  boosts  your  reading  accordingly. 
But  you’re  not  interested  so  much  in  the 
sky  as  in  the  landscape,  and  probably 
the  people  in  the  scene.  So  tilt  the  meter 
down  about  30°,  so  it  won’t  “see”  so 
much  of  the  sky,  and  you’ll  get  a  more 
accurate  reading.  If  in  addition  you 
make  a  little  shade  over  the  meter  with 
your  hands — especially  in  a  back-light 
— and  shield  the  meter  still  more  from 
that  “hot”  area,  you’ll  get  still  better 
results. 

Or  your  subject  may  require  special 
exposure  treatment — maybe  it’s  a  person 
or  object  in  the  shade  against  a  strongly- 
illuminated  background,  or  out  in  the 
sun  in  front  of  a  large,  shady  fore¬ 
ground,  or  a  dark-clad  person  against  a 
light  background,  or  vice-versa.  In  that 
case,  while  your  overall  exposure  may  be 
strictly  on  the  beam,  the  exposure  for 
(Continued  on  Page  272) 


262  July,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


Incident- Light  Readings 

With 

Your  Exposure -Meter 


By  WILLIAM  STULL,  A.S.C 


TAKING  exposure-meter  readings 
by  incident,  rather  than  reflected, 
light  has  become  the  universal 
practice  among  studio  cinematographers. 
Regardless  of  what  type  of  meter  they 
may  use,  all  of  them — especially  on  in¬ 
terior  scenes — have  found  that  they  get 
more  accurate  results  by  pointing  their 
meter’s  “eye”  at  the  light  illuminating 
the  subject  than  by  pointing  it  at  the 
subject  itself.  Virtually  all  of  the  arti¬ 
cles  on  exposure-metering  from  the  pro¬ 
fessional  cinematographer’s  viewpoint 
which  have  appeared  in  The  American 
Cinematographer  during  the  past  sev¬ 
eral  years  have  dealt  almost  exclusively 
with  incident-light  metering. 

Inevitably,  the  result  has  been  an  in¬ 
creasing  number  of  letters  from  ama¬ 
teurs  and  16mm.  professionals  alike,  all 
asking  the  same  basic  question:  “Since 
incident-light  meters  like  the  expen¬ 
sively  professional  Norwood  and  the 
British-made  Smethurst-Avo  are  obvi¬ 
ously  ‘out’  for  the  duration,  how  can 
an  ordinary  civilian  like  me  protect  my 
exposures  by  using  the  incident-light 
method?  Is  it  at  all  possible  to  do  it 

with  my -  (you  fill  in  the  name!) 

meter?” 

The  answer  is  yes — and  almost  al¬ 
ways,  regardless  of  the  make  of  meter 
you  may  be  using,  so  long  as  it  is  of 
the  photoelectric  type.  The  results  you’ll 
get  may  not  be  as  perfect  as  would  be 
the  case  with  a  meter  designed  solely 


for  this  type  of  reading,  but  once  you’ve 
gotten  the  hang  of  using  your  meter  for 
incident-light  readings,  you’re  almost 
certain  to  get  results  you’ll  like  better 
than  those  you  ordinarily  get  with  re- 
flected-light  readings — especially  under 
difficult  conditions. 

The  easiest  of  the  commonly-used  me¬ 
ters  to  adapt  to  the  incident-light  method 
is  the  new-type  General  Electric.  This 
meter,  as  most  G-E  users  know,  has  a 
removable  hood  and  a  three-range  calcu¬ 
lator  dial.  If  you’ll  look  at  that  calcu¬ 
lator,  you’ll  notice  three  pointers  on  the 
lower  part  of  the  outer  dial.  The  one 
at  the  left  is  marked  “cover  closed”;  the 
one  in  the  middle  is  marked  “cover 
open.”  And  the  third — which  you’ve 
probably  more  or  less  ignored,  is  labeled 
“dim  light,  hood  off.” 

When  you  take  the  hood  off  this  meter 
and  make  your  exposure-calculations 
with  this  right-hand  pointer,  the  G-E 
meter  is  intended  to  be  used  as  an  inci¬ 
dent-light  meter.  Using  it  this  way,  you 
simply  place  the  meter  in  subject-posi¬ 
tion  (preferably  close  to  the  face  of 
your  principal  subject),  point  the  photo¬ 
cell  toward  the  camera,  and  take  your 
reading.  As  the  General  Electric  engi¬ 
neers  somewhat  conservatively  point  out 
in  their  Exposure  Meter  Manual,  “This 
incident-light  method  of  measuring  ex¬ 
posure  is  highly  dependable.” 

But  this  is  only  for  the  generally 
lower  illumination-levels  you  encounter 


Above,  left,  Rudy  Mat4,  A.S.C.,  takes  an  incident- 
light  reading  with  his  G-E  meter;  note  reducing 
matte  in  meter.  Right,  this  meter  can  be  used  for 
incident-light  leadings  indoors  by  removing  hood 
(as  below)  and  using  "Dim  Light"  pointer  (top  of 
dial,  above)  in  making  calculations.  For  incident- 
light  readings  with  any  meter,  simply  place  a  bond- 
paper  diffuser  with  10%  transmission  over  the  photo¬ 
cell,  and  use  calculator  as  usual. 

in  filming  interiors.  Using  the  same 
technique  on  exteriors,  and  pointing  the 
meter  at  the  camera  on  an  average 
sunny  day  when  you’re  shooting  in  more 
or  less  of  a  flat  front-light,  you’d  prob¬ 
ably  shoot  the  needle  up  to  the  top  of 
the  scale  and  then  (figuratively,  at 
least)  wrap  it  a  couple  of  times  around 
the  peg.  And  naturally  with  older  G-E 
models,  or  with  meters  of  other  makes, 
(Continued  on  Page  272) 


American  Cinematographer  •  July,  1943 


263 


Strobo-Sync  Sound  Quiz 

By  S.  JEPSON. 

Secretary  Amateur  Cine  Society  of  India 


DUE  to  the  increasing  interest  in 
the  simple,  but  effective  method 
of  putting  sound  to  silent  16mm. 
and  8mm.  films  by  the  stobocopically- 
synchronized  disc  method,  we  have  had 
a  number  of  inquiries  on  various  phases 
of  the  subject.  Most  of  these  are  excel¬ 
lently  covered  in  the  following  “Strobo- 
Sync  Sound  Quiz”  by  Mr.  S.  Jepson, 
Secretary  of  the  Amateur  Cine  Society 
of  India.  (THE  EDITOR.) 

Q:  If  the  film  breaks  what  should  I 
do? 

A.:  Try  and  stop  both  projector  and 
phonograph  together,  and  on  no  account 
lift  the  needle;  otherwise  you  might 
find  it  difficult  to  find  the  place  again. 
After  splicing  or  sticking  the  film  to¬ 
gether  temporarily  with  Scotch  tape, 
start  them  both  together.  If  the  phono¬ 
graph  has  gone  on  for  quarter  of  a  min¬ 
ute  or  so,  start  it  for  a  few  seconds  to 
get  the  commentary  and  then  stop  it 
with  needle  in  position,  then  start  the 
projector,  and  when  the  picture  arrives 
at  the  commentary  place  where  the 
needle  is,  start  the  phonograph. 

Q:  If  the  record  gets  out  of  synchro¬ 
nization,  what  should  I  do? 

A:  There  are  several  possibilities,  but 
make  sure  first  whether  the  sound  is  in 
front  of  the  picture  or  vice  versa,  other¬ 
wise  you  will  make  the  matter  worse. 


If  the  sound  has  got  in  front  of  the  pic¬ 
ture  you  can  speed  up  projector  until 
the  film  has  overtaken  the  record  and 
then  come  back  to  the  proper  speed  by 
watching  the  strobo-disc. 

Or  if  you  don’t  want  to  do  this,  you 
can  stop  the  record  (turning  down  the 
volume  before  you  do  it  and  when  you 
restart  so  that  there  is  no  noise)  by 
pressing  the  electric  switch  (never  touch 
the  needle),  and  as  soon  as  the  picture 
has  overtaken  the  last  few  words  and 
the  gap  is  closed,  restart  the  record. 
It  is  not  desirable  to  increase  the  speed 
of  the  record  in  order  to  overtake  the 
picture  because  this  will  give  a  high 
pitch  tone  to  the  voice,  but  there  is  no 
objection  to  slowing  down  the  record 
very  slightly  in  order  to  bring  the  com¬ 
mentary  back  to  the  picture.  A  simple 
and  effective  way  of  doing  this  is  by 
applying  a  handkerchief  loosely  to  the 
edge  of  the  turntable — the  advantage  is 
that  when  the  handkerchief  is  removed, 
the  speed  goes  back  to  what  it  was  for¬ 
merly,  i.e.,  the  correct  speed.  If  you 
set  the  speed  correctly  according  to  the 
stroboscopic  disc,  there  should  be  no  need 
to  vary  it  much  and  the  simplest  way  is 
to  alter  the  speed  of  the  projector. 

Q:  Is  it  necessary  to  have  two  rec¬ 
ord-playing  turntables? 

A:  No,  though  the  effect  is  better 
as  there  is  no  break.  With  one  turn¬ 
table  you  can  allow  an  interval  of  15 


secs,  during  which  the  phonograph  can 
be  stopped,  record  changed,  needle  put 
on  the  first  groove  and  the  record  re¬ 
started  as  soon  as  the  second  sync  mark 
appears.  This  means  there  is  15  secs, 
silence  whilst  changing  the  record. 

Q:  If  the  voice  is  too  high,  what  should 
I  do? 

A:  This  means  that  the  phonograph 
speed  is  too  fast.  About  76  to  78  r.p.m. 
is  the  best  speed.  If  the  voice  is  too 
low,  it  means  the  speed  is  too  slow.  In 
case  of  doubt  you  can  check  a  turntable’s 
revolutions  by  actually  counting  the 
revolutions  with  a  stop-watch. 

Q:  Is  it  necessary  to  project  at  16 
frames  per  second? 

A:  No,  what  is  necessary  is  that  the 
ratio  originally  established  between  pro¬ 
jector  (or  camera)  and  turntable  in  the 
recording  must  be  maintained  in  pro¬ 
jecting.  You  can  make  your  record  with 
projector  and  turntable  operating  at  any 
speed,  but  you  must  always  maintain 
those  relative  speeds  thereafter. 

Q:  Why  is  the  playing  time  put  on  the 
record? 

A:  As  a  guide  so  that  you  know  how 
long  it  will  last,  also  so  that  after  some 
months  you  can  check  it  and  see  if  the 
grooves  have  become  polished,  when  it 
might  play  faster.  In  this  case,  you  will 
have  to  fit  a  disc  containing  more  bars 
than  the  original  one,  when  the  disc 
appears  to  revolve  to  the  right,  this 
means  a  disc  of  more  bars  is  required. 
Fifteen  secs,  clockwise  revolution  in  one 
complete  circle  means  a  difference  of 
two  bars,  and  30  secs.,  one  bar. 

Q:  How  can  I  remember  easily  how 
to  synchronize  the  disc? 

A:  If  the  disc  is  apparently  moving 
clockwise  you  must  increase  the  speed 
and  vice  versa.  So  remember  the  for¬ 
mula  “down  to  the  right;  up  to  the  left.” 

Q:  Are  the  records  breakable? 

A:  No.  But  the  acetate  surfaces  are 
soft,  and  very  susceptible  to  finger¬ 
prints.  Never  touch  the  face  of  the 
disc,  either  before  or  after  recording. 

Q:  What  needles  should  I  use? 

A:  This  is  important,  for  if  you  use 
hard  needles  or  the  wrong  kind,  or  old 
ones  which  are  worn  (you  can  examine 
them  under  a  glass  to  see  how  they  are 
worn),  records  will  wear  out.  “Tran¬ 
scription  needles,”  which  are  soft,  are 
the  best  and  give  the  best  tone,  though 
trailer  needles  bent  at  an  angle  are  also 
good.  Wooden  fibre  needles  are  good 
but  do  not  last,  and  if  they  become  blunt 
they  will  give  an  echo.  They  should  be 
resharpened  with  a  knife  or  patent 
sharpener.  The  Indian  Babul  bush 
thorn  of  the  right  shape  makes  a  good 
needle,  as  do  cactus  spines,  but  will  not 
give  as  much  volume  as  the  metal 
needle. 

Q:  What  are  the  different  methods  of 
synchronization? 

A:  The  record  has  on  it  a  stroboscopic 
disc,  and  if  the  record  is  started  when 
the  white  circle  sync-mark  flashes  on 
the  screen,  then  sound  and  picture  are 
synchronized.  If  it  gets  “out  of  sync," 
(Continued  on  Page  272) 


264  July,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


AMONG  THE  MOVIE  CLUBS 


Post-War  Cameras 


Though  neck-deep  in  war  pro¬ 
duction,  the  makers  of  America’s 
home  movie  cameras  are  none  the 
less  planning  the  improvements 
they  will  incorporate  in  their  post¬ 
war  designs.  In  this,  they  need  the 
help  of  the  users  of  substandard 
cine  equipment.  Recently  J.  Harold 
Booth,  Vice-President  of  Bell  & 
Howell,  sent  a  letter  to  most  of 
America’s  amateur  movie  clubs, 
asking  what  they  wanted  in  post¬ 
war  cinemachinery.  For  the  bene¬ 
fit  of  clubs  this  letter  may  not  have 
reached,  and  of  individual  cine- 
filmers,  whose  opinions  may  be  no 
less  valuable,  we  reprint  some  of 
the  highlights  of  Mr.  Booth’s  letter: 

“What  type  of  lens  equipment 
do  you  consider  ideal  for  home 
movie  making?  How  long  should 
the  ‘spring  run’  be,  remembering 
that  power  for  extra  footage  means 
extra  weight?  What  ‘gadgets’  are 
really  useful,  as  compared  with 
gadgets  that  are  actually  used 
only  infrequently,  and  simply  com¬ 
plicate  your  movie  making?  Would 
you  be  interested  in  making  sound- 
on-film  movies  in  16mm.?  ...  in 


8mm.? 

“A  few  movie  clubs  have  already 
had  sessions  with  ‘The  Camera  of 
the  Future’  as  their  topic.  They 
report  these  sessions  were  out¬ 
standing.  We  suggest  that  at  one 
of  your  early  meetings  you  plan  a 
similar  program.  Then  send  us  a 
brief  summary  of  the  general  ideas 
suggested  by  your  members  for  the 
movie  camera  of  tomorrow.” 

We  at  The  American  Cinema¬ 
tographer  would  also  welcome  sug¬ 
gestions  from  our  readers  along 
these  lines,  for  we  would  like  to 
set  forth  not  only  what  we  per¬ 
sonally  feel  is  possible  in  post-war 
camera  design,  but  what  our  read¬ 
ers  want.  All  of  us,  as  practical 
users  of  substandard  equipment, 
have  our  ideas  of  what  should  con¬ 
stitute  the  ideal  home  movie 
camera  or  projector.  We  have  com¬ 
plained  over  the  shortcomings  of 
existing  models.  Now — while  the 
manufacturers  are  laying  plans  for 
post-war  designs — we  at  last  have 
a  chance  to  make  our  desires  and 
opinions  heard  effectively.  Let’s 
make  the  most  of  it!  The  Editor. 


N.  Y.  Metro  Elects 

Following  the  balloting  at  the  May 
meeting  of  the  Metropolitan  Motion  Pic¬ 
ture  Club  of  New  York,  the  following 
were  announced  elected  as  directors  of 
the  club  for  a  three-year  term:  George 
A.  Ward,  Annette  C.  Decker,  George 
Mesaros  and  Joseph  J.  Harley.  At  the 
May  25th  Board  Meeting,  the  new  board 
elected  the  following  officers  for  the  com¬ 
ing  season :  President,  Leo  HefFernan ; 
1st  Vice-President,  Joseph  J.  Harley; 
2nd  Vice-Pres.,  Frank  E.  Gunnell;  Sec¬ 
retary-Treasurer,  Sidney  Moritz.  As  Bob 
Coles,  the  club’s  perennial  Secretary,  has 
been  called  into  the  Armed  Service,  it 
was  decided  to  combine  the  offices  of  Sec¬ 
retary  and  Treasurer  “for  duration  plus 
six  months,”  with  the  hope  that  military 
life  may  have  hardened  Bob  for  another 
long  term  of  club  office. 

Scheduled  for  the  June  10th  meeting, 
which  closes  both  the  club’s  season  and 
Joe  Hollywood’s  term  as  program  chair¬ 
man,  are  the  following:  “Sun  Valley,” 
by  Harry  Groedel;  “Winter  Holiday”  and 
“Manhattan,”  by  George  Serebrykoff; 
and  “Mars,”  a  fantasy-film  made  by  Ad¬ 
venture  Pictures,  of  Passaic. 

FRANK  E.  GUNNELL. 

4  Hits  for  L.  A.  Cinema 

The  June  meeting  of  the  Los  Angeles 
Cinema  Club  was  made  memorable  by 
the  presentation  of  four  of  the  most  out¬ 
standing  16mm.  films  the  club  has  ever 
screened.  First  was  “Old  Mexico,”  16mm. 
Kodachrome  by  Russell  B.  Mullin.  Sec¬ 


ond  was  Fred  Ells’  Kodachrome  remake 
of  his  classic  “In  the  Beginning,”  accom¬ 
panied  by  phonograph  records.  Third 
was  “Cine  Whimsy,”  black-and-white 
sound-on-film,  by  Member  Newell  Tune 
and  Robert  Fels  (See  American  Cine¬ 
matographer  for  May,  P.  179.)  The 
fourth  was  a  surprise  feature,  sent  by 
the  Indianapolis  Amateur  Movie  Club  to 
William  Stull,  A.S.C.,  of  The  American 
Cinematographer,  and  brought  to  Los 
Angeles  specially  for  the  meeting  by  its 
director,  Dr.  (now  Lieutenant  Com¬ 
mander)  J.  W.  Sovine,  now  serving  with 
the  Navy  Medical  Corps  in  San  Diego. 
Titled  “Amateuriana,”  and  running  800 
feet  of  16mm.  Kodachrome,  this  film 
proved  to  be  an  unusually  clever  satire 
on  the  making  of  club  productions.  At 
its  conclusion  a  hearty  vote  of  apprecia¬ 
tion  was  extended  to  both  the  Indiana¬ 
polis  Amateur  Movie  Club  and  Dr.  So¬ 
vine  for  going  to  so  much  trouble  to 
make  this  showing  possible. 

ALICE  CLAIRE  HOFFMAN, 

Secretary-Treasurer. 

Minneapolis  Nominates 

The  June  22nd  meeting  of  the  Min¬ 
neapolis  Cine  Club  turned  political  as  the 
nominees  for  the  club’s  1943-44  offices 
were  to  fight  it  out  at  the  polls.  Nomi¬ 
nated  for  President  were  Dr.  Leonard 
Martin  and  Earl  Ibberson;  for  1st  Vice- 
Pres.,  Bill  Weber  and  Oscar  Haertel; 
for  2nd  Vice-Pres.,  Steve  Boyles  and  Dr. 
Kenneth  Miner;  for  Secretary,  A1  An¬ 
derson  and  Ralph  Bowman;  and  for 


Treasurer,  Oscar  Berglund  and  Charles 
Beery.  For  the  two  vacancies  on  the 
Board  there  were  three  nominees:  Fal¬ 
coner  Thomas,  Rev.  Henry  Lewis,  and 
Fred  Grabow.  Following  this  meeting, 
the  club  will  take  its  usual  vacation  ad¬ 
journment  until  next  September. 

ROME  A.  RIEBETH. 

Varieties  for  Utah  Cine  Arts 

The  June  meeting  of  the  Utah  Cine 
Arts  Club  (Salt  Lake  City)  scheduled 
an  unusually  varegated  program,  in- 
cb’ding  “Down  Mexico  Wav,”  16mm. 
Kodachrome  by  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Vern 
I  unt;  “Western  Wild-life,”  16mm. 
Kodachrome  by  Frank  E.  Gunnell  of 
New  York’s  Metropolitan  Motion  Picture 
Club;  “Riding  My  Hobby,”  by  G.  Van 
Tussenbroek,  and  a  demonstration  of 
moviemaking  by  an  exnert. 

VIRGINIA  SMITH, 
Secretary-Treasurer. 

Ladies  Win  In  Syracuse 

It’s  no  longer  “the  boys  from  Syra¬ 
cuse”  with  the  Syracuse  Movie  Makers 
Association.  During  the  nine  years  of  the 
organization’s  life  it  has  maintained  a 
strictly  bachelor  existence  —  excluding 
women,  not  because  we  wanted  to,  but 
because  there  had  been  no  demand  from 
the  fairer  sex.  However,  due  partly  to 
an  editorial  remark  in  the  club’s  new 
paper,  “The  Viewfinder,”  and  partly  to 
pressure  from  some  members’  wives,  the 
by-law  was  amended  and  women  amateur 
cinematographers  are  now  given  full  and 
active  membership  in  the  club  if  they 
decide  to  join.  Five  at  once  did  so,  and 
the  June  1  gathering  was  their  first 
meeting.  On  the  screen  was  a  dual  sneak 
preview  of  the  club’s  finished  production, 
“The  Hollow  Idol.”  in  both  its  16mm.  and 
8mm.  versions.  Following  a  general  dis¬ 
cussion,  suggestions  for  changing  the 
8mm.  copy  so  it  would  more  closely  tally 
with  the  16mm.  version  were  noted  down, 
and  it  was  also  revealed  (much  to  the 
chagrin  of  the  8mm.-ers)  that  the  16mm. 
bovs  had  done  a  much  superior  job  of 
editing  and  titling.  An  exchange  film 
from  the  Philadelphia  8-16  club,  show¬ 
ing  the  production  of  their  journal, 
“Close-Ups,”  was  shown,  a^d  inspired 
us  (when  we  can  get  the  film!)  to  try 
our  hand  at  making  a  similar  comedy 
about  the  production  of  our  own  club 
paper. 

On  June  29th,  the  club  is  holding  an 
outing  and  picnic  supper  in  one  of  the 
city  parks,  and  three  films  from  the 
library  of  The  American  Cinematog¬ 
rapher — “Nite  Life,”  “Red  Cloud  Lives 
Again,”  and  “Garden  Life” — w'll  be 
shown.  A  summer  of  outdoor  meetings 
in  parks  and  on  members’  lawns  is 
planned,  as  a  substitute  for  the  out-of- 
town  outings  and  vacations  of  pre-gaso¬ 
line-rationing  days. 

D.  LISLE  CONWAY, 
President. 


American  Cinematographer  •  July,  1943  265 


HOME  MOVIE  PREVIEWS 


AMATEURIANA 

Scenario  film,  800-ft.  16mm.  Kodachrome. 
Filmed  by  the  Indianapolis  Amateur 

Movie  Club. 

Here’s  a  picture  that  every  movie 
club — and  particularly  those  whose  form 
of  the  hobby  is  making  scenario  produc¬ 
tions — ought  to  screen.  It  is  a  delightful 
satire  on  the  making  of  a  club  produc¬ 
tion,  deftly  directed  by  Dr.  Joe  W. 
Sovine  and  excellently  Kodachromed  (in 
the  16mm.  version  viewed)  by  Dr.  Wil¬ 
liam  E.  Gabe. 

The  story  is  very  cleverly  told,  though 
it  seemed  to  us  that  a  few  more  close- 
ups  and  spoken  titles  could  have  been 
used  in  some  sequences,  and  some  im¬ 
provement  might  be  possible  in  the  way 
these  spoken  titles  were  cut  into  the 
action  scenes.  Too  few  amateurs  remem¬ 
ber  how  this  technique  was  used  back 
in  the  days  of  silent  professional  films. 
Then,  the  best  practice  was  to  cut  to 
a  close  shot,  if  not  an  actual  close-up, 
of  the  player  beginning  to  speak;  then 
as  soon  as  his  mouth  started  moving, 
cut  in  the  title,  and  thereafter  cut  back 
to  the  same  action-scene  as  before,  but 
just  at  the  end  of  the  actor’s  lip-move¬ 
ment.  This  made  it  absolutely  clear 
who  was  speaking  at  all  times — a  very 
important  consideration  in  silent  pic¬ 
tures,  and  doubly  so  when  using  ama¬ 
teur  actors. 

Dr.  Gabe’s  camerawork  is  generally 
excellent,  though  here  and  there  one  re¬ 
members  a  scene  in  which — probably 
for  very  good  reasons — the  background 
intruded  somewhat  on  the  more  impor¬ 
tant  foreground  action.  His  handling 
of  the  interiors  was  uncommonly  fine — 
especially  the  difficult  task  of  lighting 
for  a  Kodachrome  long-shot  the  very 
large  room  used  for  the  club  meeting 
scenes.  In  this,  it  may  be  that  a  scarc¬ 
ity  of  lighting  units  (not  to  mention  bad 
moments  with  the  fuse-box!)  made  his 
lighting  a  good  deal  more  sketchy  than 
some  of  Eastman’s  experts  would  prob¬ 
ably  recommend:  but  on  the  other  hand, 
the  result  was  an  effect-lighting  which 
would  win  the  praise  of  any  studio  cine¬ 
matographer,  and  which  was  vastly  more 
realistic  than  any  technically  perfect, 
flat,  overall  lighting  ever  could  be.  The 
film  we  saw  was  a  duplicate,  made  by 
Geo.  W.  Colburn’s  laboratory,  and  an 
excellent  one  throughout. 

WONDER  FILM 

Documentary,  125  ft.  8mm.  Kodachrome. 
Filmed  by  Joseph  F.  Hollywood. 

Joseph  Hollywood  has  an  exceedingly 
clever  technique  of  putting  what  most 
of  us  might  term  unpictorial,  abstract 
ideas  into  visual  form  on  the  screen.  In 
this  case,  it  is  the  remarkable  perform¬ 
ance  of  8mm.  film.  When  you  put  down 
in  cold  type  the  facts  that  an  8mm. 
frame  measures  4.8  x  3.5mm.,  or  a  total 
area  of  16.80mm.,  and  that  when  it  is 


projected  onto  a  screen  six  feet  wide, 
with  an  area  of  2,430,000mm.,  the  origi¬ 
nal  8mm.  image  is  magnified  144,643 
times,  you  begin  to  have  an  apprecia¬ 
tion  of  what  8mm.  can  do.  But  when 
you  see  this  pictorially  illustrated  for 
you,  as  Hollywood  does  it,  you  can  really 
begin  to  appreciate  the  marvel  modern 
photochemical  and  optical  science  have 
put  into  our  hands. 

As  usual,  Hollywood’s  photographic 
technique  is  excellent,  especially  in  the 
effect-lighted  scenes  showing  the  pro¬ 
jector  apparently  running,  and  in  the 
others  showing  the  picture  apparently 
on  the  screen.  His  cutting  and  titling 
are  also  up  to  his  customary  standard, 
the  latter  enhanced  considerably  by  the 
U9e  of  color.  However,  as  he  himself  ad¬ 
mits,  the  closing  part  of  the  picture  does 
not  quite  seem  to  “jell”.  My  suggestion 
for  remedying  this  would  be  to  show, 
after  the  shots  of  the  8mm.  camera,  a 
succession  of  breath-takingly  beautiful 
Kodachrome  scenes  showing  what  8mm. 
at  its  best  can  put  on  the  screen,  as  well 
as,  perhaps,  a  few  “homey”  shots  of  the 
typical  home  movies  for  which  8mm.  is 
so  extensively  used.  This,  preceding  the 
film’s  present  ending  (beginning  with 
the  silhouette  shots  of  the  projector 
running)  should  bring  “Wonder  Film” 
to  a  climax  befitting  its  subject  matter 
and  medium. 

PORTLAND,  CITY  OF  ROSES 

Travelogue,  150  ft.  8mm.  Kodachrome. 
Filmed  by  William  Peterson. 

One  of  the  hardest  things  to  do  is  to 
make  a  home  movie  reel  which  really 
typfiies  your  home  town.  Photograph¬ 
ically,  this  little  picture  is  excellent, 
especially  if  one  makes  allowance  for 
the  moist  climate  of  the  Pacific  North¬ 
west.  But  as  a  picture,  it  could  stand 
a  bit  of  improvement. 

.  The  first  things  for  anyone  who  wants 
to  make  a  picture  of  this  type  to  do  is 
to  sit  down  and  try  and  list— on  paper — 
the  various  details  which  make  his  par¬ 
ticular  town  different  from  others.  And 
there’s  always  something — even  though 
you’re  so  accustomed  to  it  that  you’re 
likely  to  pass  it  by  unnoticed.  In  Port¬ 
land,  of  course,  it’s  the  roses  and  the 
celebrated  Rose  Festival.  But  that  isn’t 
in  itself  quite  enough  material  upon 
which  to  hang  a  picture  really  repre¬ 
senting  your  town. 

In  this  reviewer’s  estimation,  the  se¬ 
quences  with  which  this  picture  opens 
fail  to  do  this.  They  show  Portland,  in¬ 
deed,  but  in  aspects  which  tend  too  much 
to  show  features  which  are  basically  the 
same  in  all  cities  of  that  size,  rather 
than  those  which  set  it  apart  from  the 
others.  Nearly  all  such  cities  have  tall 
buildings  and  bustling  streets.  Most  of 
them,  save  in  dim-out  areas,  have  spec¬ 
tacular  displays  of  neon  signs — very 
excellently  photographed,  these,  by  the 


way,  in  this  picture.  Most  cities  have 
an  abundance  of  neat,  typically-Ameri- 
can  homes.  But  none  of  these  details 
set  Portland  apart  from  any  other  city 
of  its  size. 

This  reviewer  doesn’t  happen  to  know 
Portland,  so  it’s  up  to  cinefilmer  Peter- 
sone  to  find  the  answer  in  detail.  I  no¬ 
ticed  one  such  little  detail,  however, 
which  was  lost — in  fact,  deliberately 
panned  away  from — in  too  close  atten¬ 
tion  to  conventional  shots  of  big  build¬ 
ings.  This  detail  was  one  Mr.  Peterson 
probably  didn’t  notice,  it  was  so  com¬ 
monplace  to  him,  or,  if  he  did,  he  con¬ 
sidered  it  obtrusive.  It  was  an  electric- 
trolley-bus  rolling  down  one  of  the  main 
streets — and  Portland  is  one  of  the  few 
cities  in  America  which  uses  these  track¬ 
less  trolleys.  A  complete  sequence  could 
be  built  up  on  this  detail  alone.  Similar 
sequences  could  be  built  up  on  other  sim¬ 
ilarly  exclusive  details,  not  only  of  scen¬ 
ery,  but  of  family  life  and  customs. 
And  you’d  end  up  with  a  real  picture  of 
Portland  as  it  would  appear  to  a  vis¬ 
itor’s  eyes,  seeking  the  unusual,  and 
culminating,  of  course,  in  the  excellent 
scenes  of  the  Rose  Festival  minus,  we 
hope,  the  short  shot  of  the  float  with 
the  Japanese  children  waving  the  rising 
sun  flag! 

CINE  WHIMSY 

Scenario,  800-ft.  16mm.  black-and-white; 

post-recorded  sound-on-film. 

Filmed  by  Robert  Fels  and  Newell  Tune. 

This  is  a  clever  picture  of  very  nearly 
professional  quality,  based  on  the  amus¬ 
ing  idea  of  presenting  literally  some 
current  slang  expressions.  Its  chief 
faults  are  that  it  really  needs  a  some¬ 
what  faster  tempo  in  both  cutting  and 
action,  and  that  it  was  photographed 
on  black-and-white  negative  rather  than 
on  Kodachrome.  The  latter,  of  course, 
is  wholly  excusable  in  these  days  of 
film-shortages.  The  former  could  prob¬ 
ably  be  remedied,  to  some  extent,  at 
least,  through  quicker  re-cutting. 

A  remarkable  feature  of  the  picture 
is  the  excellence  of  the  trick  camera¬ 
work,  and  also  how  well  the  post-record¬ 
ed  dialog  generally  matches  the  lip- 
movements  of  the  players.  All  told, 
while  the  film  may  not  quite  reach  the 
mark  at  which  its  director  aimed,  it 
is  none  the  less  a  very  worthy  short, 
and  one  which  is,  besides,  thoroughly 
amusing. 

CALIFORNIA  WASHDAY 

Scenario  Home  Movie,  100  ft.  8mm. 

Kodachrome. 

Filmed  by  Dr.  Joe  Sovine. 

Here’s  another  amateur  picture  that 
deserves  wide  distribution.  It  is  noth¬ 
ing  that  could  not  be  photographed  eas¬ 
ily  in  any  filmer’s  back-yard — just  the 
story  of  a  little  girl’s  wash-day,  and 
how  she  carefully  launders  her  “Dumbo” 
doll.  But  between  Dr.  Sovine’s  excellent 
Kodachrome  camerawork,  which  is  al¬ 
most  perfect  as  to  exposure,  and  excel¬ 
lently  composed,  and  his  keen  sense  of 
continuity,  “California  Washday”  is  an 
almost  perfect  example  of  what  a  real 


266  July,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


OBJECTIVE— 

Smooth —  Pleasing —  U  nif  orm 
PHOTOGRAPHY 

AMMUNITION— 

Lights —  Camera — 

EASTMAN  NEGATIVES 

Dailies —  Master  Prints — 

Preview —  Release  Prints — 
MISSION  ACCOMPLISHED 
with  POSITIVE  results! 

Insist  upon 

EASTMAN 

EXCLUSIVELY— 


J.  E.  BRULATOUR,  Inc. 
DISTRIBUTORS 

EASTMAN  FILMS 


home  movie  could  be — but  seldom  is. 
We’ve  seldom  seen  a  film  which  evi¬ 
denced  better  continuity;  here  and  there, 
perhaps,  a  slight  rearrangement  of 
scenes  might  be  advisable — as,  for  ex¬ 
ample,  a  closer  grouping  of  the  various 
shots  showing  young  Miss  Sovine  dunk¬ 
ing  her  doll  up  and  down  in  the  tub — - 
but  in  general,  Dr.  Sovine  has  turned 
out  a  picture  which  ought  to  be  studied 
by  most  of  the  home  filmers  we  know. 
The  performance  his  young  star  turns 
in  is  also  something  that  ought  to  rate 
an  amateur  Oscarette  as  well. 

Photography  of  the  Month 

(Continued  from  Page  257) 

Mellor  photographed  before  entering  the 
Army — is  another  example  of  Techni- 
colored  filmusicals  at  their  picturesque 
best.  In  this  case,  the  locale  is  the  ante¬ 
bellum  South,  and  the  birth  of  the  min¬ 
strel  type  of  entertainment,  background¬ 
ed  against  Dan  Emmett’s  delightful 
songs.  Cinematographer  Mellor’s  con¬ 
tribution  is  perhaps  his  best  job  of 
color  camerawork  yet,  and  one  which 
makes  “Dixie”  well  worth  the  price  of 
a  repeat  admission. 

The  uncredited  special-effects  work  by 
Gordon  Jennings,  A.S.C.,  and  the  trans¬ 
parency-projection  process  work  by 
Farciot  Edouart,  A.S.C.,  and  his  capable 
staff,  are  further  highlights.  Some  of 
Edouart’s  process-shots  —  especially  on 
the  river-boat — are  unusually  fine  exam¬ 
ples  of  the  intricate  type  of  perspective¬ 
matching  between  set  and  background 
at  which  he  so  greatly  excels. 

A.S.C.  On  Parade 

(Continued  from  Page  256) 
dor  Sparkuhl,  A.S.C.,  is  assigned  to 
“Ministry  of  Fear.”  Thanks,  too,  to 
Charlie  Lang,  Karl  Struss  and  Camera 
Chief  C.  Roy  Hunter  for  their  courtesy 
to  our  friend,  Lt.-Cmdr.  Joe  Sovine,  of 
the  Navy  Medical  Corps,  when  we  took 
him  over  there  to  see  how  movies  (other 
than  8mm.)  are  made. 

★ 

We  spent  a  pleasant  fifteen  minutes 
the  other  day  when  we  dropped  in  to 
say  “Hello”  to  William  Sickner,  A.S.C., 
busily  putting  another  Universal  serial 
on  film.  Hope  we  didn’t  cramp  his  style 
...  he  only  got  two  set-ups  shot  in  that 
time! 

★ 

Add  pleasant  surprises:  the  other  day 
we  walked  on  Johnny  Fulton’s  big  proc¬ 
ess  stage  out  at  Universal,  and  who 
should  we  see  working  there  but  Eddie 
Linden,  A.S.C.,  and  Harry  Zech,  A.S.C. 
And  was  that  spare  cigar  of  Harry’s  a 
godsend  when  we  found  ourself  fresh  out 
of  cigarettes  with  four  or  five  errands 
yet  to  do  on  the  lot! 

★ 

Did  you  know  that  Major  Ted  Tetzlaff, 
A.S.C.,  has  a  double  rating  in  the  Army 
Air  Force — ?  He’s  not  only  a  cinema¬ 
tographer  (everybody  knows  that!)  but 
holds  a  Service  Pilot’s  rating,  as  well. 


Hollywood's  War  Plants 

(Continued  from  Page  252) 

on  a  few  minutes’  notice,  and  the  wildly 
inconceivable  to  be  accomplished  over¬ 
night,  have  given  Hollywood’s  cinetechni- 
cians  the  ideal  training  for  wartime  pro¬ 
duction.  The  normal,  peace-time  work  of 
their  daily  lives  has  convinced  them  that 
there  are  no  such  words  as  ‘impossible’ 
or  ‘it  can’t  be  done’  to  a  fellow  who,  like 
these  men,  combines  sound  technical  en¬ 
gineering  with  the  fertile  ingenuity  of 
the  motion  picture  industry.  Like  the 
man  in  Edgar  Guest’s  poem,  the  unsung 
engineers,  technicians  and  workmen  in 
the  many  big  and  little  plants  which 
have  so  long  served  the  film  industry  are 
rolling  up  their  sleeves  and  accomplish¬ 
ing  the  impossible.”  END. 


Lin  Dunn 

(Continued  from  Page  254) 

serts,  may  be  grouped  together  in  a 
single,  centralized  organization. 

In  any  event,  optical  printing  can  do 
a  great  deal  to  simplify  and  supplement 
the  work  of  all  these  other  specialists 
by  taking  their  individual  contributions 
to  a  trick-shot  and  combining  them  into 
a  final  composite  scene.  For  example,  the 
background  plate  for  a  back-projection 
process  shot  may  call  for  a  scene  which 
combines  full-scale  “live  action”  with  a 
miniature,  and  topped  by  a  matte-shot. 
The  optical  printer  can  take  all  these 
various  separately-photographed  com¬ 
ponents  and  blend  them  together  to 
produce  a  wholly  natural-looking  scene 
which  is  then  used  as  the  projected 
background  for  the  process-shot.  Then 
the  optical  printer  may  again  come  into 
play  to  begin  or  end  the  composite 
process-shot  by  blending  it  into  another 
scene  by  means  of  optically-produced 
wipes,  fades  or  dissolves. 

In  addition,  the  optical  printer  can  do 
a  very  great  deal  to  improve  conven¬ 
tional  “production”  scenes  in  ways  the 
director,  producer  or  cutter  may  not 
think  possible.  For  example,  dolly-shots 
can  often  be  made  into  stationary- 
camera  shots,  and  stationary  shots  into 
dolly-shots  by  skilled  optical  printing. 
Often  if  the  set  crew  dollied  too  close  in, 
or  not  close  enough,  or  at  the  wrong 
level,  this  can  be  corrected  in  the  print¬ 
er.  And  these  optically-made  dollies, 
if  done  perfectly,  cannot  be  distin¬ 
guished,  even  by  experts,  from  those 
made  actually  on  the  set. 

Dunn  has  used  his  printer  to  “doctor 
up”  many  a  scene  which  would  other- 
wiwse  have  had  to  be  retaken.  One  of 
this  writer’s  favorites  was  when,  some 
years  ago,  the  rushes  disclosed  that  in 
an  oil-field  location  scene  a  truck,  bear¬ 
ing  all  too  prominently  the  name  of  a 
well-known  oil  company  on  its  side 
drove  nonchalantly  through  the  scene. 
Working  carefully,  frame  by  frame, 
Dunn  completely  obscured  the  objec¬ 
tionable  lettering,  and  saved  the  day.  On 
another  occasion  a  crashing  airplane  was 
supposed  to  come  to  rest,  upside  down, 


and  the  injured  pilot  drop  out  and  crawl 
away  just  as  the  wreck  enveloped  itself 
in  menacing  flames.  Everything  went 
off  perfectly  on  the  set — except  that  the 
flames  failed  to  start  until  the  actor 
was  well  out  of  the  scene.  Dunn’s 
printer  obligingly  moved  the  flames 
ahead,  so  that  in  the  final  print  they 
seemed  to  burst  out  at  precisely  the  most 
suspenseful  moment — and  a  retake  was 
neatly  avoided. 

Dunn’s  first  really  spectacular  achieve¬ 
ment  in  optical  printing  was  in  “Flying 
Down  to  Rio”  in  which,  some  years  ago, 
RKO  introduced  not  only  Fred  Astaire 
but  the  striking  trick  effects  an  optical 
printer  could  produce  for  transitions. 
The  picture  included  a  dazzling  display 
of  wipes,  melts,  and  other  transitions, 
carefully  synchronized  to  music  and 
action,  and  never  since  excelled,  though 
for  some  years  every  studio  tried  to  do 
so  before  settling  down  to  accept  such 
optical  transitions  as  a  complement  to, 
rather  than  a  substitute  for  such  con¬ 
ventional  scene-changes  as  fades  and 
dissolves,  which  latter,  of  course,  are 
now  made  optically  too. 

But  by  no  means  all  optical  printer 
work  is  of  so  obvious  a  “trick”  nature. 
“  ‘Citizen  Kane,’  for  instance,”  Lin  re¬ 
marks,  “was  one  of  my  recent  pictures 
which  employed  optical  tricks  to  the 
limit.  The  picture  was  about  50%  optic¬ 
ally  duped,  some  reels  consisting  of  80% 
to  90%  of  optically-printed  footage. 
Many  normal-looking  scenes  were  optical 
composites  of  units  photographed  separ¬ 
ately,  and  which  could  have  been  handled 
completely  by  straightforward  methods. 
One  such  scene  was  a  pan  down  from  a 
statue  of  a  man  to  live  action  at  the 
base  of  the  statue.  The  statue  itself 
was  a  miniature,  and  both  it  and  the 
full-scale  action  at  its  base  were  photo¬ 
graphed  as  separate,  stationary  shots. 
The  two  separate  scene-components  were 
joined  by  a  traveling  split-screen  and  the 
vertical  panning  movement  was  also  put 
in  on  the  optical  printer. 

“Another  scene  of  the  same  type  was 
the  shot  of  the  camera  rising  from  the 
stage  of  the  opera-house  to  show  two 
men  in  the  flies,  far  above,  showing 
their  disgust  at  an  indifferent  perform¬ 
ance  going  on  below.  This  was  photo¬ 
graphed  in  three  sections.  First,  the 
camera  sn  an  elevator,  rising  from  a  full- 
scale  stage;  second,  a  miniature  of  con¬ 
tinued  upward  movement  through  ropes, 
curtain  and  sets,  and  finally  another 
elevator-shot,  full-scale,  up  to  the  two 
men  in  the  flies. 

“This  differed  from  the  previous  ex¬ 
ample  in  that  the  upward  camera  motion 
was  originally  photographed,  of  course 
with  the  camera-speeds  of  the  miniature 
and  full-scale  components  carefully 
matched.  But  the  scenes  had  to  be  fitted 
together  in  the  optical  printer,  using  a 
synchronized,  soft-edged  downward  wipe- 
off,  blending  on  and  aligning  certain 
matched  parts  of  the  three  sets.  The 
final  composite  scene  created  a  feeling 
of  long  travel  from  the  stage  to  vast 
heights. 

“Both  of  these  illustrations  are  definite 


268  July,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


EASTMAN 

FILMS 


More  than  ever  the  main¬ 
stay  of  the  motion  picture 
industry,  with  every  foot 
contributing  its  full  share 
of  exceptional  quality. 


EASTMAN  KODAK  COMPANY 

J.  E.  BRULATOUR,  INC.,  DISTRIBUTORS 
Fort  Lee  Chicago  Hollywood 


American  Cinematographer  •  July,  1943  269 


examples  of  the  way  optical  printing 
can  create  a  scene  which  has  no  appear¬ 
ance  of  being  a  trick-shot,  because  to 
most  people — even  studio  technicians — 
there  is  no  obvious  reason  for  it  to  be 
made  by  other  than  straightforward  ‘pro¬ 
duction’  methods,  But  by  making  these 
scenes  as  outlined,  certain  production 
difficulties  (usually  appearing  unex¬ 
pectedly)  were  overcome,  with  a  sizable 
saving  to  the  studio — but  possibly  a  few 
headaches  to  the  optical  man! 

“There  are  certain  essential  fundamen¬ 
tals  to  successful  optical  printing  which 
cannot  be  overlooked.  One  is  the  design 
of  the  printer:  it  must  be  practical 
from  the  operator’s  viewpoint.  Too 
often  one  finds  mechanically  excellent 
machines  which  are  unnecessarily  awk¬ 
ward  or  slow  to  operate.  Such  machines 
were  probably  designed  by  mechanical 
engineers  who  took  little  or  no  time  to 
consult  —  much  less  collaborate  —  with 
the  optical  printer  conematographer.  Yet 
even  so  simple  a  detail  as  high-speed  re¬ 
wind  may  save  as  much  as  an  hour  or 
so  of  working  time  in  a  single  day’s 
routine  operations. 

“Equally  important  is  thorough-going 
cooperation  between  the  optical  man  and 
the  laboratory.  Even  the  simplest  of 
optical  work  involves  the  making  of  dupe 
negatives,  and  some  of  the  more  com¬ 
plicated  shots  may  mean  making  of 
double  and  triple  dupes.  If  the  labora¬ 
tory  operations  are  not  perfectly  con¬ 
sistent,  and  perfectly  coordinated  with 
the  requirements  of  the  optical  man,  the 
results  cannot  be  perfect.  Some  years 


ago  I  developed  a  special  strip  to  aid  in 
this  laboratory  control.  It  is  now  used 
throughout  all  our  trick  laboratory  work, 
and  has  been  adopted  at  the  Consoli¬ 
dated  Film  Industries’  Laboratory  as  one 
of  their  checks  on  density,  contrast,  defi¬ 
nition,  flare,  fluctuation  and  other  fac¬ 
tors  in  both  negative  and  positive  pro¬ 
cessing,  especially  where  trick  work  is 
concerned.  Fortunately  for  me,  the  co¬ 
operation  I’ve  received  from  Vernon 
Walker,  A.S.C.,  head  of  the  RKO  Camei’a 
Effects  Department,  from  my  assistants 
and  other  co-workers  in  both  this  and 
the  editing  department,  and  from  the 
Consolidated  Film  Lab.  has  made  my 
work  most  interesting  and  enjoyable.” 

In  his  spare  time,  Dunn  is  designing 
special  optical  printers  for  the  U.  S. 
Navy,  Signal  Corps  and  Air  Force,  which 
are  being  built  by  the  Acme  Tool  and 
Mfg.  Corp.  in  Burbank.  His  hobbies  are 
his  three  small  girls,  music,  and  16mm. 
cinematography.  (He  is  an  active  mem¬ 
ber  of  the  Los  Angeles  Cinema  Club.) 
He  has  recently  completed  the  first 
truly  profssional  (as  judged  by  major 
studio  standards)  16mm-to-16mm.  optical 
printer. 

“The  big  problem  in  this,”  he  says, 
“is  to  find  the  time  I  would  like  to  spend 
in  16mm.  experimentation,  for  I  feel  that 
after  the  war  16mm.  is  certain  to  take 
the  place  of  35mm.  in  practically  all  pro- 
fesisonal  uses  except  major  studio  pro¬ 
duction — and  possibly  in  some  types  of 
studio  work,  at  that.  The  time  when  we 
could  regard  16mm.  as  a  mere  hobbyist’s 
toy  is  definitely  over;  the  big  job  it  is 


doing  in  military  and  industrial  training 
films  is  evidence  enough  of  that.  The 
greatest  obstacle  now  in  the  way  of 
16mm.  is  carelessness  in  those  who  use 
it.  When  16mm.  is  photographed  and 
processed  with  the  same  standard  of 
care  and  accuracy  that  35mm.  now  en¬ 
joys,  we’re  going  to  see  vastly  improved 
results  which  will  surprise  many  of  us.” 
END. 


Virge  Miller 

(Continued  from  Page  253) 
to  the  Studio’s  camera  machine  shop, 
where  he  served,  first  as  assistant  and 
later  as  chief,  until  1916. 

There  he  found  plenty  of  problems  to 
interest  his  active  and  mechanically-in¬ 
clined  mind.  “The  cameras  we  used  in 
those  days,  not  only  at  Universal  but  at 
any  other  studio,”  he  says,  “were  prob¬ 
ably  the  most  motley  collection  of  photo¬ 
graphic  machinery  ever  assembled.  The 
studio  had  some  cameras,  but  a  lot  of 
the  best  men  prided  themselves  on  hav¬ 
ing  their  owm  outfits.  About  every 
imaginable  kind  of  camera  was  repre¬ 
sented:  there  were  French  Gaumonts  and 
Eclairs  (wre  called  the  latter  ‘Gillons’ 
for  some  reason  nobody  ever  could  tell), 
DeBries  and  the  old,  dependable  Pathe 
Professionals;  there  were  English  Prest- 
wiches,  Moys  and  Williamsons;  and  the 
aristocrats  of  the  camera  stable  were  a 
few  of  the  then  ultra-modem  Bell  & 
Howells. 

“Keeping  those  old  babies  in  working 
order  was  an  assignment  that  would 
make  many  a  modern  camera-mechanic 
acutely  sick.  No  two  of  them — even  of 
the  same  make — were  likely  to  be  quite 
alike,  and  the  differences  weren’t  only  in 
the  big,  obvious  things  like  movements, 
film-magazines  and  lens  mounts,  but  in 
irritating  little  things  like  screws,  bolts 
and  threads.  Some  would  be  built  to 
metric  standards;  others  more  or  less  to 
British  standards,  and  a  few  to  American 
standards.  Often,  to  replace  a  lost  or 
damaged  screw,  you’d  have  to  cut  your 
own,  and  until  the  Bell  &  Howell  came 
along,  most  of  the  cameras  were  built  by 
rule  of  thumb  and  guesswork  rather  than 
by  the  precision  engineering  we  know 
now. 

“Adding  to  the  problem  were  the 
innumerable  gadgets  each  cinematog¬ 
rapher  tacked  onto  his  individual 
camera.  Some  of  them  were  workable 
and  some  weren’t;  most  of  them  were 
designed  to  eliminate  ‘static,’  which  was 
the  big  bugaboo  of  cinematography  until 
the  early  ’20s,  when  Eastman  brought 
out  their  ‘X-back’  negative.  Until  then, 
film  had  one  side  coated  with  emulsion, 
and  the  other  just  bare  celluloid.  In  cool 
weather,  a  charge  of  static  electricity 
would  build  up  in  the  film,  and  as  the 
negative  unrolled  in  the  magazine  or 
went  through  the  camera,  blue  electric 
sparks  would  crackle  along  the  film  just 
like  sparks  from  a  cat’s  fur,  or  from  an 
amber  rod  that’s  been  rubbed  in  a  piece 
of  silk.  The  result  on  the  negative  was 
something  like  a  crooked,  many-limbed 
tree-trunk,  usually  right  down  the 


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?70  July,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


automatically  compensates  for  the  photo¬ 
graphic  value  of  all  the  light  falling  on  the  sub¬ 
ject,  regardless  of  its  angle.  Used  extensively 
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studios. 

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middle  of  the  frame.  Probably  it  was 
caused  by  friction  against  the  bare  cel¬ 
luloid  (which,  for  this  purpose,  acts  quite 
like  an  amber  rod),  and  the  felt  light- 
traps  we  had  in  most  magazines  prob¬ 
ably  helped,  too;  the  fact  that  most 
cameras  were  housed  in  a  wooden  box, 
almost  completely  insulated  from  the 
ground  by  the  wooden  tripod-legs  and  the 
wooden  handle  of  the  camera-crank  was 
also  very  likely  a  factor. 

“At  any  rate,  every  cameraman  had 
his  pet  gadget  for  ‘positively  eliminat¬ 
ing’  static.  Some  had  little  spirit-lamp 
heaters  attached  to  the  camera  to  warm 
it  up;  others  had  elaborate  systems  of 
wiring'  (which  usually  led  from  nowhere 
to  nowhere)  to  draw  off  the  charge — 
they  hoped! — and  the  variety  of  non¬ 
static  pressure-plates  of  felt,  rubber, 
glass  and  even  polished  wood  were  in¬ 
credible.  Some  of  these  gadgets  may 
probably  have  helped,  as  did  the  sensible 
precaution  of  avoiding  subjecting  the 
film  to  quick  changes  of  temperature  in 
cold  weather:  but  it  took  Eastman’s 
‘X-Back,’  which  consisted  of  some  sort 
of  coating  on  the  back  of  the  film,  really 
to  cure  it. 

“We  had  another  problem  in  those 
early  days  which  was  more  in  my  line. 
Often  in  shooting  interiors  under  arti¬ 
ficial  light,  the  boys  found  their  fades — 
all  of  which  were  made  in  the  camera — 
flickering  inexplicably.  The  fade  might 
start  normally  as  the  cameraman  began 
to  cut  his  shutter-opening,  and  then  all 
of  a  sudden  there  would  be  a  completely 
black  frame,  or  an  irregular  succession 
of  them,  which  made  the  fade  flicker  in 
and  out  most  unpleasantly. 

“That  was  an  easy  one  to  solve, 
though.  We  were  using  50-cycle  Alter¬ 
nating  Current  then,  and  as  I  knew  that 
an  arc  operated  on  A.C.  goes  completely 
out  at  each  cycle-change,  I  knew  that  the 
flicker  was  caused  because  the  decreas¬ 
ing  aperture  of  the  shutter  which  made 
the  fade  would  sometimes  reach  a  point 
where  the  shortened  exposure-period  of 
the  revolving  shutter  would  synchronize 
with  the  dark  period  of  the  arcs  lighting 
the  scene.  (That,  by  the  way,  could  still 
happen  with  any  modern  professional 
camera  or  a  16mm.  like  the  Cine-special 
making  shutter  fades  on  a  set  lit  with 
A.C.-powered  arcs.)  I  cured  it  by  intro¬ 
ducing  diaphragm  fades,  for  which  I  had 
to  rebuild  the  diaphragms  on  all  the  stu¬ 
dio’s  lenses  so  that  they  would  close 
down  to  a  complete  blackout,  just  as  the 
lenses  on  some  amateur  cameras  like 
the  Pilmo  8’s  do  today.  This  couldn’t 
sync  with  the  arc-flicker,  so  it  proved  an 
effective  cure.  Other  studios  tackled  it 
differently,  switching  over  to  Direct  Cur¬ 
rent  instead  of  A.C.,  which  took  most  of 
the  flicker  out  of  the  arcs,  though  really 
flickerless  arcs  didn’t  come  until  a  few 
years  ago,  when  they  were  developed  for 
use  with  Technicolor.” 

As  Virge  got  closer  and  closer  to 
cameras  and  camerawork  through  his 
camera-shop  experience,  he  began  to 
learn  more  and  more  about  cinematog¬ 
raphy.  Before  long  he  was  making 
photographic  tests  of  cameras  and  equip¬ 


ment.  Then  he  began  to  help  various 
cameramen  out  with  intricate  multiple- 
exposure  and  other  trick  shots,  in  which 
his  engineering  experience  proved  valu¬ 
able.  And  now  and  then  in  an  emergency 
he  would  go  out  on  the  set  and  grind  an 
extra  camera  when  one  was  necessary. 

Finally  a  real  emergency  came.  One 
of  Universal’s  troupes  had  to  do  some 
work  at  night  in  order  to  finish  up  with 
an  important  player  who  had  to  start 
another  picture  elsewhere  the  next  day. 
The  cameraman  for  some  reason  couldn’t 


work  that  night,  and  about  7  P.M.  came 
a  hurried  call  for  Miller  to  go  out  and 
“fill  in”  as  First  Cameraman  for  the 
night’s  work.  Feeling  he  had  at  least 
half  the  world’s  responsibilities  resting 
on  his  shoulders,  Virge  grabbed  a  camera 
and  kept  the  troupe  going. 

A  day  or  so  later,  after  seeing  that 
night’s  rushes,  the  director  came  to 
Miller  with  a  request  that  he  finish  the 
picture.  At  first  Virge  refused,  unwilling 
to  displace  another  man;  but  later  the 
other  cinematographer  —  solidly  estab- 


American  Cinematographer  •  July,  1943  271 


lished  as  one  of  the  studio’s  ace  camera¬ 
men — insisted  on  stepping  off  the  picture 
so  that  Virge  could  have  a  chance  at 
camerawork.  And  Virgil  Miller  became  a 
full-fledged  First  Cameraman. 

And  as  a  First  Cameraman  or  Direc¬ 
tor  of  Photography  he  has  stayed  since 
that  day  in  1916.  Ten  full  years  he  spent 
at  Universal,  where  he  photographed  110 
feature  productions,  including  the  memo¬ 
rable  silent  version  of  “Phantom  of  the 
Opera,”  and  many  others  which  ran  just 
about  the  complete  gamut  of  camera- 
fodder,  from  “westerns”  to  mystery 
melodramas  and  drawing-room  comedy, 
so  it  is  no  wonder  he  became  one  of  the 
very  earliest  members  of  the  A.S.C.. 

The  three  following  years  he  spent  at 
Warner  Bros,  and  RKO,  until  in  1929  he 
was  appointed  head  of  Paramount’s 
camera  department.  During  his  six-year 
tenure  in  this  office  he  pioneered  many 
of  the  phototechnical  developments  which 
helped  the  industry  adjust  its  camera 
technique  to  sound,  and  during  this  pe¬ 
riod,  too,  Paramount  directors  of  photog¬ 
raphy  captured  the  Academy  Award  for 
six  consecutive  times. 

Leaving  Paramount,  he  paused  long 
enough  to  photograph  one  picture,  and 
then  became  head  of  the  Selznick  Studio’s 
camera  department,  where  in  addition  to 
his  administrative  duties  he  served 
actively  behind  a  camera  on  special- 
effects  and  other  sequences  for  several 
productions,  including  the  Technicolored 
“Garden  of  Allah.”  After  this  came  a 
year  of  free-lancing,  including  some  time 
spent  on  special  color  research,  and 
finally  a  six-years’  association  with  20th 
Century-Fox,  during  which  time  he  has 
done  just  about  everything  from  “Char¬ 
lie  Chan”  and  “Mr.  Moto”  whodunits,  with 
their  always  intriguing  opportunities  for 
effect-lighting,  to_conventional  program 
films  and  pinch-hitting  on  important 
Technicolor  specials. 

Miller’s  approach  to  his  work  is  to 
strive  first  and  foremost  for  visual 
smoothness,  with  pictorial  effectiveness 
dependent  on  story  values.  Photography, 
in  his  estimation,  should  be  always  held 
subservient  to  the  story;  and  so  well  does 
he  adhere  to  this  that  often  players 
working  with  him  for  the  first  time  have 
expressed  amazement  that  while  he  keeps 
his  camerawork  so  generally  unobtru¬ 
sive,  he  manages  also  to  make  them  ap¬ 
pear  to  such  advantage  on  the  screen. 
Yet  when  story  and  action  permit,  his 
camerawork  can  be  as  spectacularly  pic¬ 
torial  as  that  of  almost  any  man  in  the 
profession.  His  camerawork,  in  fact,  re¬ 
flects  his  personality  to  a  striking  de¬ 
gree,  for  while  genial  and  friendly,  he 
tends  also  to  be  somewhat  shy  and  re¬ 
tiring  until  he  has  something  to  say: 
then  he  says  it,  and  with  a  clarity  that 
leaves  you  in  no  doubt  that  this  man 
Virge  Miller  has  plenty  on  the  ball!  END. 


Strobo-Sync  Quiz 

.{Continued  from  Page  264) 
increase  or  decrease  speed  of  projector 
for  a  while. 

When  the  stroboscopic  disc  appears  to 
be  stationary,  it  is  synchronized,  and 


the  disc  has  to  be  illuminated  by  the 
projector  flicker.  This  can  be  done  in 
several  ways. 

1.  By  lighting  it  from  the  screen,  near 
the  screen. 

2.  By  putting  the  running  projector 
light  on  the  revolving  disc  before 
starting  and  keeping  projector  and 
phonograph  steady  afterwards. 
This  does  not  allow  you  to  com¬ 
pensate  for  loss  of  sync. 

3.  By  throwing  some  light  on  the 
stroboscopic  disc  from  the  front  of 
the  lens  by  allowing  the  projector 
ray  to  pass  through  any  piece  of 
optical  glass  (an  old  cleaned  nega¬ 
tive  will  do)  tilted  at  the  right 
angle  found  by  experiment.  This 
is  recommended  as  it  is  simple  and 
effective. 

4.  By  linking  projector  electrically 
with  a  neon  bulb  fixed  over  the 
phonograph.  This  is  complicated 
but  best  of  all. 


Mistakes  Teach 

(Continued  from  Page  262) 

the  person  or  object  in  which  you’re  most 
interested  will  be  over  or  under,  depend¬ 
ing  on  that  subject’s  relation  to  the  rest 
of  the  scene.  The  answer  is  simply  to 
barge  right  in  close  to  the  subject  and 
make  your  meter-reading  from  a  point 
so  close  the  meter  “sees”  only  that  and 
misses  that  “hot”  background  or  that 
shadowed  foreground.  Then,  though  your 
overall  exposure  may  suffer,  you’ll  be 
on  the  beam  as  far  as  your  really  im¬ 
portant  subject  is  concerned. 

And  by  the  way,  now  that  Kodachrome 
is  such  a  scarce  commodity,  a  lot  of  us 
are  going  to  have  to  shoot  black-and- 
white — and  like  it — instead  of  the  color- 
film  to  which  we’ve  become  accustomed. 
This  means  we’ll  have  to  watch  out  for 
monochrome  tonal  values,  and  make  tonal 
and  lighting  contrasts  take  the  place  of 
color-contrasts  in  giving  us  the  separa¬ 
tion  we  need  to  make  a  subject  stand 
well  out  from  its  background. 

In  Kodachrome,  for  instance,  you  can 
shoot  a  girl  in  a  dark-blue  dress  standing 
in  front  of  a  dark-green  hedge  and  be 
quite  sure  that  the  color-contrast  be¬ 
tween  the  blue  dress  and  the  green  foli¬ 
age  will  make  your  girl  stand  out  pleas¬ 
ingly  from  her  background.  But  in  black- 
and-white,  the  dark  blue  of  the  dress  and 
the  green  of  the  shrubbery  will  very 
probably  both  come  out  in  much  the 
same  tone  of  dark  gray,  and  girl  and 
hedge  will  merge  together  in  your  shot 
almost  as  completely  as  though  a  cam¬ 
ouflage  engineer  had  been  at  work. 

The  answer  to  this  is  to  change  your 
viewpoint  so  that  you  get  your  girl  in 
front  of  a  different  background  which — 
judged  from  a  viewpoint  of  black-and- 
white  rendition,  is  either  darker  or 
lighter  in  tone  or  in  illumination  than 
your  girl  and  her  costume.  Or,  if  condi¬ 
tions  permit,  you  can  shoot  the  scene  in 
a  back-light,  which  would  produce  an 
outlining  highlight  around  the  girl,  and 
so  separate  her  from  the  similar-toned 
background. 


If  your  moviemaking  goes  back  before 
the  days  of  Kodachrome,  just  run  a  few 
of  your  black-and-white  scenes — good 
and  bad — and  you’ll  be  able  to  figure  out 
a  lot  of  little  tricks  like  this  which  will 
help  you  make  the  transition  back  to 
monochrome  without  wasting  film. 

Another  fault  we  see  only  too  often  is 
cropping  off  foreheads  or  shoulders  in 
close  shots.  This  is  simply  because  the 
man  at  the  camera  forgot  that  the  finder, 
necessarily  removed  at  least  slightly 
from  the  position  of  the  lens,  and  the 
lens  itself  do  not  cover  quite  the  same 
field  when  the  subject  gets  within  about 
ten  feet  of  the  camera.  Technically  it’s 
called  finder  parallax,  and  if  you  want  to 
you  can  work  up  all  sorts  of  interesting 
gadgets  to  offset  it,  including  alignment 
gauges  which  permit  you  to  slide  the 
camera  so  that  for  lining  up,  the  finder 
occupies  the  same  position  the  lens  will 
in  shooting,  and  interchangeable,  or  even 
automatically  moving  mattes  in  the 
finder,  to  indicate  the  correct  framing 
for  closer  shots. 

But  the  simplest  way  to  do  is  to  fit 
onto  your  finder  a  little  mask  of  colored 
cellophane  or  Scotch  tape  which  will  in¬ 
dicate  the  direction  in  which  the  crop¬ 
ping  occurs,  and  approximately  the  pro¬ 
portion  you’ve  found  cropped  off  on  the 
closest  shots  you  usually  make.  If  your 
finder  is  directly  above  the  lens,  the  mask 
should  trim  off  a  strip  at  the  top  of  the 
finder;  if  it  is  directly  beside  the  lens, 
the  finder  mask  should  be  at  the  side;  if 
the  finder  is  above  and  to  one  side  of  the 
lens,  the  mask  should  indicate  both  top 
and  side.  This  way,  the  finder  is  per¬ 
fectly  adequate  for  long-shots,  while  for 
close-ups  that  little  transparent  colored 
mask  will  serve  as  a  reminder  that  if 
you  don’t  want  to  waste  film,  you’d  better 
allow  for  finder  parallax! 

There  are  plenty  of  other  film-wasting 
faults  you’re  likely  to  find  if  you  review 
your  old  films — especially  the  bad  ones — 
carefully.  Each  of  them  will  tell  you 
something  you  should  not  do  if  you  want 
to  get  the  maximum  usable  footage  out 
of  the  film  you  may  be  lucky  enough  to 
buy.  In  many  cases  you  may  be  able  to 
rig  up  some  simple  gadget  like  those 
cellophane  finder-masks  which  will  re¬ 
mind  you  of  that  particular  mistake. 
And  at  any  rate,  by  looking  along  your 
celluloid  back-trail,  you  can  find  “ should 
nots ”  which,  coupled  with  the  other 
things  you’ve  since  learned  you  should 
do,  will  lead  to  better  pictures  on  less 
film.  END. 


Incident-light  Metering 

(Continued  from  Page  263) 
you  can’t  use  this  system  at  all. 

The  answer  here  is  to  reduce  the 
amount  of  light  affecting  the  meter’s 
cell  to  a  proportion  which  won’t  over¬ 
load  the  cell,  but  which  will  still  give 
you  an  accurate  reading.  There  are  sev¬ 
eral  ways  of  doing  this. 

Studio  cinematographers,  who  use 
both  G-E’s  and  Westons  for  incident- 
light  readings  while  making  interiors, 
generally  make  this  compensation  by 


272  July,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


using  a  little  metal  matte  with  a  hole 
in  the  center  which  will  admit  only  10% 
as  much  light  as  would  reach  the  photo¬ 
cell  without  the  matte.  This  is  a  step 
in  the  right  direction :  the  proportion 
is  correct,  but  using  a  matte  which  em¬ 
ploys  only  a  comparatively  small  part 
of  the  photocell’s  total  sensitive  area  is 
a  chancy  matter.  The  meter-makers 
themselves  will  admit — if  pressed — that 
when  turned  out,  as  they  must  be,  on  a 
mass-production  basis,  it  is  impossible 
to  be  absolutely  certain  that  every  sec¬ 
tion  of  every  photocell  will  have  a  uni¬ 
form  sensitivity  to  light.  So  if  you  con¬ 
centrate  the  10%  of  the  cell-area  you 
are  using  into  a  single  section,  it  is 
entirely  possible  that  you  may  intro¬ 
duce  considerable  errors  which  can 
throw  your  reading  badly  off. 

Using  a  matte  perforated  with  small 
holes,  scattered  uniformly  over  the  cell 
area,  but  totaling  only  10%  of  the  total 
area  of  the  matte,  is  a  much  better 
method — but  it’s  also  a  mathematical 
headache  for  most  of  us. 

A  much  more  simple  and  practical 
method  is  to  cover  the  cell  with  a  trans¬ 
lucent  diffusing  screen  which  will  cut 
down  the  transmission  to  the  10%  you 
want.  This  diffuser  can  be  of  opal  or 
ground  glass,  but  the  simplest  way  to 
make  one  is  to  use  a  simple  sheet  of 
white  bond  paper  having,  of  course,  the 
desired  10%  transmission,  cut  to  the 
right  size  and  shape  to  cover  your  cell, 
and  mounted  at  the  end  of  a  suitable 
little  cardboard  tube. 

Determining  that  transmission  factor 
is  easy  enough.  Just  take  an  incident- 
light  reading  on  a  comparatively  low- 
powered  light-source  (so  you  won’t  over¬ 
load  your  photocell),  and  then  try  dif¬ 
ferent  pieces  of  glass  or  paper  until  you 
get  a  reading  one-tenth  of  that — natur¬ 
ally,  with  the  light-source  and  meter  al¬ 
ways  in  the  same  relative  positions.  For 
instance,  say  your  first  reading  is  50 
on  your  meter’s  scale:  a  diffuser  with 
the  10%  transmission  you  want  will 
give  you  a  reading  (with  the  meter,  re¬ 
member,  the  same  distance  from  the 
lamp  both  times!)  of  5. 

After  that,  you  can  use  your  meter — 
whether  it’s  a  Weston  or  a  G-E  of  any 
model,  or  any  other  type — for  incident- 
light  readings  indoors  or  out. 

The  exposure-readings  you'll  get  using 
the  meter’s  calculator-dial  in  the  normal 
way  will  be  as  valid  for  incident-light 
readings  as  they  would  be  (minus  the 
diffuser)  for  reflected-light  readings. 
And  usually  a  good  deal  more  accurate! 

Unless  used  with  more  than  ordinary 
expertness,  you  see,  a  reflected-light 
reading  can  be  thrown  off  the  beam  by 
an  amazing  number  of  variables.  First 
of  all,  either  on  interiors  or  exteriors, 
such  a  reading  can  be  thrown  badly  off 
by  difference  in  either  illumination  or 
reflectivity  between  the  actual  subject 
and  the  background.  For  instance,  a 
reflected-light  reading — especially  from 
camera-position — of  a  girl  in  a  white 
dress  against  a  background  of  dark 
foliage  will  be  thrown  off  by  the  larger 
area  of  dark  background  until  the  white- 


clad  girl  is  likely  to  be  overexposed. 
Similarly,  a  dark-clad  person  in  front 
of  a  light  background — whether  it’s  a 
white  stucco  wall  or  the  vast,  reflective 
expanse  of  the  Grand  Canyon  on  a 
sunny  day — will  probably  be  underex¬ 
posed  because  of  the  greater  area  of 
more  highly-reflective  background.  The 
same  thing  applies  to  subjects  or  back¬ 
grounds,  one  or  the  other  of  which  is  in 
the  shade. 

Indoors,  under  lights,  your  meter¬ 
reading  is  likely  to  be  thrown  off  the 
same  way  unless  you  take  your  reading 
with  the  meter  only  three  or  four  inches 
from  your  subject’s  face.  Even  then 
it’s  subject  to  error,  for  you’re  all  too 
likely  to  read  on  the  shadow  your  meter¬ 
holding  hand  casts  from  one  of  the 
front-lights.  If  you  use  any  back-light 
or  cross-light,  your  reflected-light  meter¬ 
reading  is  always  likely  to  be  boosted 
because  one  or  more  of  these  lamps  may 
be  shining  directly  into  the  meter’s  eye. 

Using  the  meter  as  outlined  above 
for  incident-light  readings,  you  elimi¬ 
nate  most  of  these  variables.  The  most 
important  thing  in  most  shots  is  the 
tonal  (and  color)  rendition  of  the  sub¬ 
ject’s  face.  Luckily,  it  is  usually  one  of 
the  middle  tonal  values  of  a  picture,  so 
if  you  get  the  face-exposure  right,  the 
other  parts  of  the  picture  will  take  care 
of  themselves,  going  up  or  down  from 
this  median  tone  as  they  naturally 
should.  So,  whether  in  black-and-white 
or  color,  if  you  balance  your  exposure 
to  the  illumination  on  the  subject’s 
face,  you’re  almost  certain  to  have  a 
correctly-exposed  picture,  even  when 
you’re  shooting  in  a  hot  back-light  with¬ 
out  reflectors,  or  with  your  subject  in 
the  dappled  shade  under  a  tree.  The 
same  is  true  on  interiors,  too,  only  if 
anything  rather  more  so. 

Still,  there  are  some  little  common- 
sense  points  you’d  better  observe  in 
making  incident-light  readings  this  way 
if  you  want  complete  accuracy.  In  a  flat 
light,  either  indoors  or  out,  you  can  get 
quite  accurate  results  if  you  just  place 
the  meter  in  the  position  of  the  sub¬ 
ject’s  face  and  point  the  photocell  at 
the  camera.  But  most  of  us  who  have 
passed  beyond  the  novice  stage  like  a 
little  modeling  in  our  lighting:  we  like 
to  have  a  highlight  side  and  a  shadow 
side  to  our  subject.  Now,  a  meter  re¬ 
vamped  as  I’ve  outlined  doesn’t  have 
the  Norwood’s  patented  hemispherical 
diffuser,  which  automatically  compen¬ 
sates  for  the  angular  quality  of  every 
bit  of  light  falling  on  the  hemisphere, 
which  in  effect  represents  the  subject’s 
face.  Since  you’re  working  with  a  flat 
light-collecting  surface,  you’ll  have  to 
make  commonsense  meter-handling  take 
the  place  of  the  rounded  collector  in 
making  this  compensation.  If  you  want 
to  favor  the  shadow  side  a  bit,  simply 
tilt  your  meter  over  a  bit  to  that  side 
when  you  take  your  reading,  so  that 
about  the  same  proportion  of  the  me¬ 
ter’s  light-collecting  surface  is  shad¬ 
owed.  With  a  little  practice,  you  can 
learn  how  to  do  this  so  that  you  can 
“balance”  your  shadows  and  highlights 


to  any  degree  you  want.  In  other  words, 
make  your  meter  read  on  the  illumina¬ 
tion  falling  on  the  part  of  the  subject 
you’re  most  interested  in,  and  your  over¬ 
all  exposure  will  take  very  good  care 
of  itself!  END. 


"Props" 

(Continued  from  Page  259) 

is  not  wasted,  as  results  will  show. 

Even  in  long-range,  outdoor  movies, 
simple  props  are  often  beneficial  to  lend 
perspective  to  a  scene.  For  example, 
by  gently  waving  a  small  pine  branch 
a  few  feet  in  front  of  the  lens,  a  strik¬ 
ing  third-dimensional  effect  is  obtained 
in  a  distant  mountain  view.  Such  a  shot 
would  otherwise  be  flat  and  perhaps  not 
very  interesting,  but  the  use  of  this 
simple  prop  definitely  gives  it  that  “lift” 
out  of  the  ordinary. 

Although,  as  mentioned  above,  props 
are  important  in  giving  depth  to  many 
distant  scenes,  they  undoubtedly  play 
their  leading  role  in  semi-closeups  and 
close-ups.  These  are  the  kind  of  pictures 
you  or  I  take  around  home,  many  times 
indoors,  with  limited  equipment.  We 
don’t  have  the  expensive  sets  and  props 
of  professional  studios,  but  that  needn’t 
stop  us.  Props  can  make  or  break  an 
amateur  movie  as  well  as  a  professional 
one !  That  is  why  special  attention 
must  be  given  to  every  minute  detail 
which  appears  in  the  viewfinder.  Pos¬ 
sibly,  you  may  have  to  choose  between 
a  number  of  interesting  articles  that 
would  serve  almost  equally  well  as 
props.  Since  there  are  no  hard  and  set 
rules  regarding  what  is  right  and  what 
is  wrong,  let  your  eye  be  the  judge. 
You’ll  find  it  surprising  how  often  peo¬ 
ple  see  things  alike  in  this  respect! 

When  a  decision  is  reached  and  the 


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►  U.  S.  Dept,  of  Agriculture 

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GL adstone  5748 


American  Cinematographer  •  July,  1943  273. 


desired  props  selected,  don’t  be  content 
to  “throw”  them  into  the  scene.  More¬ 
over,  do  not  overdo  a  good  thing  by 
seeing  hoiv  many  objects  can  be  squeezed 
into  one  scene.  They  should  appear  nat¬ 
ural,  as  though  they  belong  there,  and 
not  as  if  they  were  put  there  just  “to 
have  their  picture  taken.” 

Once  the  general  scheme  of  things  is 
arranged,  try  shifting  the  camera  to 
get  the  best  effect.  Props  are  very  use¬ 
ful  in  covering  up  or  eliminating  un¬ 
wanted  portions  of  rooms,  thus  giving 
a  free  choice  of  camera-angles  to  insure 
the  most  desirable  backgrounds.  Those 
in  the  distance  may  not  even  be  dis¬ 
tinguishable  in  close-up  views  because 
of  the  short  depth  of  focus  resulting 
from  the  large  lens  stops  frequently 
used  in  this  type  of  work.  Nevertheless, 
they  add  “that  certain  something,”  even 
though  partially  out  of  focus.  It  is  well 
to  bear  in  mind  that  these  props,  though 
important  enough  in  themselves,  seldom 
should  dominate  the  picture,  or  divide 
the  attention  from  the  main  subject. 


LENSES  for  Today 
and  the  Future 


B&H-THC  Cine  Lenses  are 
not  merely  ideally  corrected 
for  today’s  monochrome  and 
color  work;  their  design 
anticipates  the  possibility  of 
future  improvements  in  film 
emulsions.  Thus  they  are  long¬ 
time  investments.  Write  for 
details.  BUY  WAR  BONDS 

BELL  &  HOWELL 
COMPANY 

Exclusive  world  distributors 

1848  Larchmont  Avenue, Chicago 

New  York:  30  Rockefeller  Plaza 
Hollywood:  716  N.  La  Brea  Ave. 

Washington,  D.  C.:  1221  G  St.,  N.  W. 

London:  13-14  Great  Castle  St. 


They  usually  are  not  the  principal  in¬ 
terest. 

In  color  movies,  added  precaution 
should  be  taken  in  this  respect,  else  the 
props  may  appear  too  prominent  be¬ 
cause  of  color,  even  though  they  would 
be  considerably  subdued  were  the  scene 
in  black-and-white.  If  good  balance  is 
maintained  both  in  color  and  in  compo¬ 
sition,  nothing  will  look  ridiculous  or 
out  of  place.  How  much  more  natural 
the  results  will  be  than  with  the  stiff, 
unnatural  close-ups  which  are  all  too 
common  among  cine  fans. 

A  trip  to  your  nearest  movie  theater 
will  convince  you  of  the  importance  of 
props,  if  nothing  else  will.  Carefully 
analyze  each  changing  scene  as  it  ap¬ 
pears  on  the  screen.  Notice  how  true-to- 
life  every  detail  is.  Watch  the  actors’ 
hands.  See  how  props  give  them  some¬ 
thing  to  do,  put  them  at  ease  by  taking 
away  any  trace  of  self-consciousness. 

Page  through  your  favorite  magazine. 
Note  the  naturalness  of  the  outstanding 
pictures  that  attract  you  as  favorites. 
Chances  are  that  props  are  to  be  found 
there  too,  though  maybe  you  didn’t  no¬ 
tice  at  first  glance.  They  can  bolster 
your  own  pictures  in  the  same  way. 
True,  the  large  professional  studios 
maintain  a  special  department  just  for 
this  purpose.  But  in  your  own  home, 
if  you  will  but  glance  around,  you  will 
find  your  own  collection  of  props  ...  a 
fountain  pen  ...  a  book,  or  better  .  .  . 
some  curtains  or  a  Venetian  blind  to 
“dress  up”  an  otherwise  bare  wall — 
anything  to  make  your  scenes  more  nat¬ 
ural,  or  give  your  actors  “something  to 
do”  to  overcome  camera-fright.  Yes, 
you  will  see  that  your  own  property  de¬ 
partment  can  more  than  fill  the  bill  for 
any  average  movie  such  as  you  may 
want  to  take. 

You  may  be  just  a  casual  cinematog¬ 
rapher  with  no  aim  for  “super”  produc¬ 
tions.  But  remember,  any  movie  either 
inside  or  out,  is  a  better  movie  with 
suitable  props!  END. 


16mm.  Movies  For  Soldiers 

(Continued  from  Page  258) 

racks  where  the  elite  rated  loge  seats  on 
their  cots.  If  they  found  the  picture  bor¬ 
ing,  they  could  go  to  sleep.  That  night 


they  saw,  “Thrill  a  Second,”  “Run  Sheep 
Run,”  “Yanks  in  Africa,”  Pat  Rafferty’s 
“Bull  Fight,”  and  Ted  Phillips’  “Bathing 
Beauty  Parade.” 

The  following  Saturday  we  received  a 
call  from  the  Chaplain  of  a  detail  near 
one  of  the  airports  where  we  had  shown 
pictures  three  weeks  before,  asking  us  to 
dinner.  He  said  he  wanted  us  especially 
that  day  because  they  were  having 
steaks.  We  were  seated  at  the  officers’ 
table  which  was  set  with  china  plates. 
They  admitted  rushing  around  to  find 
some  for  us  so  we  wouldn’t  have  to  eat 
from  mess-kits. 

We  asked  those  around  us  if  they  liked 
the  type  of  pictures  we  had  been  show¬ 
ing.  They  said  the  boys  thought  they 
were  very  entertaining  and  the  only 
suggestion  they  could  make  would  be 
for  the  showing  of  35mm.  features  that 
have  been  reduced  to  16.  They  mentioned 
some  old  pictures  they  would  like  to  see 
again  such  as  “Lives  of  a  Bengal 
Lancer,”  “Lost  Horizon,”  “Rio  Rita,”  and 
some  Pete  Smith  Shorts.  During  that 
meal  I  lost  any  ideas  I  might  have  had 
that  our  soldiers  were  not  being  fed 
properly. 

The  camp  had  two  dogs  and  a  pet 
duck,  “Donald.”  After  dinner,  Midge 
asked  permission  to  take  pictures  of  the 
boys  and  their  pets.  They  enjoyed  this 
almost  as  much  as  seeing  the  movies 
and  suggested  we  might  find  material 
for  a  newsreel  type  of  picture  made  up 
of  the  pets  of  the  various  camps. 

Sometimes  the  posts  had  no  chairs  and 
the  boys  would  sit  on  a  concrete  floor,  but 
they  were  generally  our  most  receptive 
audiences  for  they  are  stationed  where 
their  duties  keep  so  many  of  them  oc¬ 
cupied  that  it  is  impossible  to  get  a 
large  enough  group  together  to  rate  one 
of  the  regular  “live  shows”  sent  out  from 
Hollywood. 

Most  of  our  shows  have  been  for  small 
units  like  this — sometimes  just  a  squad 
or  two  stationed  at  an  anti-aircraft  or 
searchlight  battery,  and  sometimes  for 
larger  units;  our  largest  audience  so  far 
has  numbered  an  unexpected  250.  One 
thing  all  of  these  groups  have  in  com¬ 
mon:  they  are  constantly  on  active  duty 
guarding  our  coast  or  one  of  the  strate¬ 
gic  war  plants  in  our  area.  Usually  they 
are  so  isolated  that  the  boys  can  get  only 
a  few  short  hours’  leave  in  a  matter  of 
weeks,  or  even  months,  which  means  that 
on  the  rare  occasions  they  get  into  town, 
there  is  only  time  for  essential  business, 
and  none  for  moviegoing  or  other  recrea¬ 
tion.  One  outfit  we  visited  told  us  that 
ours  was  the  first  entertainment  they’d 
had  in  eight  months !  At  others,  we 
found  that  only  half  or  perhaps  one-third 
of  the  men  can  be  away  from  their  guns 
at  one  time,  so  we’ve  given  our  show 
to  half  the  men  on  one  evening,  and  then 
repeated  it  another  evening  for  the  other 
half. 

The  next  Friday  the  group  that  went 
out  found  the  camp  they  had  been  as¬ 
signed  to  was  wired  for  60  cycles.  The 
turntables  which  furnished  the  synchron¬ 
ous  music  for  some  of  the  silent  pictures 
were  for  50  cycles  so  Midge  Caldwell’s 


274 


July,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


Kodachrome  Hawaiian  pictures  couldn’t 
be  shown  with  sound. 

The  boys  were  so  disappointed  at  this 
that  the  next  day  they  ran  in  a  special 
wire  from  the  house  across  the  street 
and  then  called  in  a  request  for  a  special 
showing.  The  committee  by  that  time 
was  pretty  sick  of  seeing  the  same  pic¬ 
tures  over  again  so  Bill  Stull,  A.S.C., 
Editor  of  The  American  Cinematog¬ 
rapher,  sent  down  “Tarzan,  Jr.”  and 
“Jungle  Trails.”  To  those  were  added 
a  comedy  and  “Jack  Frost.” 

Afterwards  the  boys  decided  to  enter¬ 
tain  our  group  and  brought  out  an  ac¬ 
cordion  and  sang  for  us.  We  were  in¬ 
formed  they  had  just  acquired  a  new 
mascot,  so  we  went  out  to  see  it  ex¬ 
pecting  anything  from  a  duck  to  a  St. 
Bernard  dog.  We  were  due  for  a  sur¬ 
prise  for  it  turned  out  to  be  a  bawling, 
flapping  baby  seal  named  Flipper. 

After  hearing  the  circumstances  of 
how  they  acquired  it,  Midge  immediately 
sensed  a  good  story  for  a  picture  and 
dated  the  boys  and  their  mascot  up  for 
scenes  the  following  Sunday.  She  and 
Ray  Fosholdt  and  Clarence  Aldrich  spent 
the  three  following  Sundays  completing 
a  clever  picture  appropriately  titled 
“The  Government  Seal.”  The  boys  in¬ 
vited  them  to  dinner  and  worked  so  en¬ 
thusiastically  with  them  that  it  made  it 
an  added  pleasure  to  produce  the  film. 

Incidentally,  as  the  frequency  of  our 
showings  has  increased,  our  projection- 
units  have  been  becoming  more  and  more 
accustomed  to  eating — and  well! — at 
Army,  Navy  and  Coast  Guard  mess- 
tables.  Often  they  are  invited  to  dine 
with  the  officers  or  men  before  the  show, 
and  afterwards,  the  boys  nearly  always 
insist  on  serving  a  special  supper  of 
coffee,  fresh  rolls  and  fruits,  and  the 
like,  before  taking  us  home.  We  can 
certainly  testify  that  the  American  Sol¬ 
dier  and  Sailor  live  well,  and  that  they 
are  unendingly  appreciative  of  anything 
like  this  that  we  civilians  can  do  for 
them. 

Last  week  we  were  invited  to  see  a 
comedy  melodrama  skit  entitled,  “Wild 
Nell,  the  Pet  of  the  Plains,”  or  “Her 
Final  Sacrifice.”  The  cast  included  sol¬ 
diers  from  a  searchlight  battery  of  a 
Coast  Artillery  Anti-Aircraft  battalion 
where  we  had  shown  pictures.  The  boys 
took  both  masculine  and  feminine  parts. 
The  play  proved  so  entertaining,  that 
Clarence  Aldrich  took  his  sound  camera 
out  the  following  week  and  with  the 


help  of  Midge  and  Ray  photographed  the 
play  so  that  the  boys  could  show  it  to 
other  batteries. 

Next  to  live  talent,  motion  picture  en¬ 
tertainment  is  rated  first  above  all  other 
forms  of  entertainment  at  the  camps.  At 
our  club’s  last  meeting,  members  vol¬ 
unteered  for  a  certain  night  each  week 
to  show  full  length  sound  pictures  that 
are  being  sent  down  by  the  Los  Angeles 
U.S.O.  Mobile  Unit,  with  which  we  are 
now  officially  affiliated.  So  now  pictures 
will  be  shown  at  a  different  camp  every 
night  of  the  week.  These  films  are  re¬ 
duced  from  current  35mm.  pictures  that 
are  playing  the  theaters — or  sometimes 
not  even  released  yet — and  are  kept  up- 
to-date. 

We  are  all  deriving  a  deep  and  joyous 
satisfaction  from  the  knowledge  we  are 
bringing  entertainment  to  our  armed 
forces  through  the  movies  that  have  long 
been  a  hobby  and  pleasure  to  us.  We 
hope  other  Clubs  are  doing  the  same  for 
the  Army  and  Navy  Posts  stationed  nea 
them.  We  hesitated  to  start  with  just 
our  own  members’  films,  but  we  soon 
found  out  we  had  full  cooperation  from 
motion  picture  magazine  editors,  the 
U.S.O.  Mobile  Unit,  business  firms  and 
war  production  plants  who  possess  en¬ 
tertaining  films  and  are  willing  to  loan 
them.  And  the  warm  appreciation  all 
the  men — from  commanding  Colonels 
down  to  buck  privates — show  for  our  ef¬ 
forts  (even  with  our  silent,  amateur 
films)  is  enough  in  itself  to  make  the 
whole  task  worthwhile.  It  sends  an  in¬ 
describable,  warm  glow  over  one,  which 
simply  can’t  be  put  into  words.  But  we 
hope  lots  of  other  amateurs  and  clubs 
throughout  the  country  will  give  them¬ 
selves  a  chance  to  experience  it!  END. 

Rhapsodic  Technique 

(Continued  from  Page  251) 
the  limits  of  time  allowed  by  changing 
staccato  scenes.  It  required  careful  edit¬ 
ing  to  select  significant  bits  of  action 
that  would  highlight  the  story  to  be  told. 
It  required  accurate  cueing  of  voice, 
music,  and  sound-effects. 

The  rhapsodic  technique  is  not  one  to 
be  indiscriminately  used  or  carelessly 
handled.  But,  from  the  experience  of  the 
producers  of  “The  Thousand  Days,”  it 
is  considered  a  style  that  lends  itself  to 
further  development,  and  offers  ex¬ 
tremely  interesting  possibilities  as  an 
important  form  of  motion  picture  ex¬ 
pression.  END. 


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American  Cinematographer  •  July,  1943  275 


GOERZ 


Cbwhkanl' 


CRAFTSMEN 


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cuts,  doimf. 
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^he  production  line  of  "GOERZ  AMER¬ 
ICAN"  is  formed  by  skilled  men,  who 
through  painstaking  work  create  high- 
grade  photo-lenses  and  optical  units  for 
military  instruments  used  by  our  armed 
forces, 

on  Land — 

on  the  Sea — 
in  the  Air — 


J"  hese  precise  optical  units  are  of  the 
greatest  importance  to  our  armed 
forces,  for  without  accurate  military  in¬ 
struments  for  sighting,  fire  control  and 
photographic  aerial  reconnaissance  their 
fighting  machinery  would  be  of  little 
value  to  them. 


^Iptical  science  together  with  our  crafts¬ 
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With  the  Advancing  Army 

(Continued  from  Page  248) 

tank’s  commander,  and  the  tank  starts 
forward. 

Inside  the  tank  one  feels  confidently  as¬ 
sured,  for  to  the  tough  armor  of  the 
tank,  bullets,  fragments  of  shells  and 
mines,  and  the  like,  are  like  so  many 
peas  tossed  against  a  stone  wall.  There 
is  but  one  inconvenience:  taking  pictures 
is  possible  only  from  the  open  hatch. 
The  regular  vision-slits  of  the  tank  are 
so  narrow  that  while  they  give  a  fair 
visual  view  of  the  countryside,  they  are 
too  small  for  the  lenses  of  our  cameras 
to  be  put  through.  So  we  must  stand 
up  and  work  our  good  Russian-built 
“Eyemos”  through  the  open  hatch  at 
the  top. 

Even  before  we  were  well  started 
forward,  we  began  to  shoot.  Close  by,  a 
German  shell  hit  a  truck  which  was 
pulling  a  field-gun  forward  to  a  closer 
position  for  direct  firing.  The  truck, 
which  was  loaded  with  shells,  is  in 
flames,  but  the  fighters  saved  the  gun, 
though  they  have  to  unhook  it  from 
the  flaming  inferno  and  roll  it  away. 
They  do  it  quietly,  methodically  ...  in 
a  few  minutes  the  gun  is  uncoupled 
from  the  blazing  truck  and  attached  to 
a  new  one — on  its  way  forward  again. 
We  record  all  of  this  little  episode  of 
unsung  heroism  on  film. 

Our  tank  moves  straight  toward  the 
village.  Not  far  from  here,  other  tanks 
await  the  order  to  attack  the  Germans, 
who  are  putting  up  a  stubborn  resist¬ 
ance.  Our  own  tank  moves  a  little  to 
one  side,  to  give  us  a  good  camera-angle. 
We  begin  shooting  again.  Our  subject 
at  last  is  the  village. 

The  spectacle  must  be  immortalized! 
The  village,  which  has  become  the  base- 
point  of  the  German  defense,  literally 
seethes  with  explosions  and  shell-bursts 
from  our  artillery.  Every  minute  thun¬ 
derous  volleys  of  our  shells  crashing 
into  it  send  thick  billows  of  smoke 
and  flame  toward  the  sky.  A  group 
of  our  dive-bombers  appear,  and  they, 
too,  unload  their  lethal  cargoes  upon 
the  Germans  in  the  village. 

Quickly  we  reload  our  cameras.  Our 
cameras  are  working  fine  .  .  .  what  a 
difference  from  our  experience  last  year! 
Last  winter  we  suffered  plenty  from 
having  cameras  freeze  up  in  the  intense 
cold.  The  only  way  to  keep  them  warm 


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at  all  was  to  carry  them  constantly 
against  our  chests,  under  our  heavy  win¬ 
ter  coats.  Consequently,  many  interest¬ 
ing  shots  were  lost.  But  now  we  are 
completely  free  from  this  trouble,  thanks 
to  cinematographer  Dobronitsky,  who 
invented  a  non-freezing  method  of  lub¬ 
ricating  cameras.  Now  our  cameras 
are  working  like  fine  watches! 

The  tanks  start  to  advance.  We  take 
close  shots  of  the  caterpillar  treads 
throwing  fountains  of  snow  as  the 
tanks  move  rapidly  over  the  field.  Now 
the  Germans  are  putting  up  a  heavy 
counter-barrage  in  front  of  the  village. 
We  film  the  bursts  of  the  German  shells. 
We  film  chains  of  our  fighters  advanc¬ 
ing  toward  the  village.  They  advance 
like  ghosts  in  their  winter-white  camou¬ 
flage  robes,  pulling  behind  them  both 
heavy  and  hand  machine-guns.  Not  for 
a  second  do  we  stop  shooting:  when  I 
pause  to  wind  or  reload  my  camera, 
close  by  my  ear  I  can  hear  the  steady 
purr  of  Bobrov’s  camera. 

During  the  few  days  of  this  battle 
wTe  photographed  over  three  thousand 
feet  of  film.  Over  in  the  next  sector, 
cinematographer  Verov  was  doing  much 
the  same  thing  covering  his  part  of  the 
battle.  Our  negative  was  rushed  back 
from  the  front,  and  our  shots  were  in¬ 
cluded  in  the  next  issue  of  our  National 
newsreel  “SKJ,”  the  Soviet  Kino-joumal. 

Making  such  films  enriches  our  cam¬ 
eramen  with  battle  experience,  but  it 
does  more  than  that.  We  plan  to  make 
many  more  such  scenes  from  a  tank, 
for  films  like  this  give  our  Soviet  home- 
front  audiences  an  opportunity  to  be — 
if  only  vicariously — right  in  the  middle 
of  a  present-day  battle  in  which  the 
men  of  our  heroic  Red  Army  inflict 
devastating  blows  against  the  Hitlerite 
troops.  These  pictures  show  our  peo¬ 
ple  what  their  own  soldiers  and  airmen 
are  doing  against  the  Nazi  bandits  who 
have  sought  to  despoil  our  country.  We 
are  happy  to  see  also  the  films  that  are 
beginning  to  reach  us  which  show  our 
American  and  British  allies  in  action. 
And  we  who  man  the  Soviet  cameras 
will  be  most  happy  when  the  day  comes 
— and  come  it  must — when  our  advanc¬ 
ing  armies  and  we  can  clasp  the  hands 
of  our  comrades  who  man  the  cameras 
of  the  American  and  British  Armies  in 
a  world  where  Fascism  is  no  more!  END. 

Screen  Tests 

(Continued  from  Page  249) 
who  did  not  want  those  stars,  for  the 
same  reason.  They  had  become  accus¬ 
tomed  to  having  nothing  but  the  most 
beautiful  women  as  their  stars.  How 
could  a  distinctly  homely  woman,  no 
matter  how  great  an  actress  she  might 
be,  be  glamorized  for  the  screen? 

But  our  cinematographers,  always  in 
the  lead  in  helping  to  perfect  motion 
pictures  eventually  proved  that  pro¬ 
ducers  need  not  worry  about  how  the 
player  will  look.  All  they  need  to  worry 
about  is  how  his  or  her  voice  will 
sound  and  whether  or  not  they  can 
act — the  cameramen  will  put  them  on 
the  screen  in  a  manner  that  will  make 


276  July,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


everybody  happy. 

Of  course,  the  producer  and  director 
must  give  the  cinematographer  co¬ 
operation  and  let  him  be  more  than  just 
a  mechanical  camera-cranker  if  the  fin¬ 
est  results  are  to  be  accomplished.  If  a 
director  or  producer  insists  on  photo¬ 
graphing  a  subject  from  a  bad  angle, 
then  the  cameraman  cannot  be  blamed 
for  bad  results.  If  the  director  does 
not  convey  to  his  cameraman  the  mood 
of  the  picture,  how  can  the  cameraman 
put  that  mood  upon  the  screen?  If  the 
producer  or  unit  manager  is  constantly 
hounding  the  cameraman  to  “stop  wast¬ 
ing  time  fooling  with  those  lights,”  he 
is  simply  cheating  himself  out  of  the 
benefit  of  the  lighting  skill  for  which 
the  cameraman  was  hired  in  the  first 
place. 

But,  getting  back  to  selecting  talent 
without  screen  tests,  I  have  also  just 
signed  another  player  I  have  never  seen 
on  the  screen.  He  is  a  young  French 
actor  named  Harald  Ramond,  who  after 
fighting  with  the  French  Army  against 
the  Germans  in  the  great  Battle  of 
France,  finally  escaped  occupied  France 
and  made  his  way  to  America.  I  took 
one  look  at  him  and  felt  that  here  was  a 
man  who  would  be  a  sensation  on  the 
screen,  and  I  signed  him  to  a  term  con¬ 
tract  within  ten  minutes  after  meeting 
him.  As  in  the  case  of  Peggy  O’Neill, 
I  never  gave  a  thought  to  how  he  would 
photograph,  for  I  knew  our  American 
cameramen  would  place  him  upon  the 
screen  to  advantage. 

In  the  case  of  Peggy  O’Neill,  I  have 
had  a  story  called  “Peggy  O’Neill”  filed 
away  for  several  years  waiting  until 
the  right  red-headed  Irish  type  of  girl 
came  along  to  fit  the  title  role.  The 
moment  Peggy  walked  into  my  office  I 
knew  she  was  the  girl  I  had  been  look¬ 
ing  for.  Why  bother  to  wait  for  a 
screen  test  which  I  knew  would  be  good! 
Perhaps  while  waiting  she  might  be 
signed  by  someone  else.  Beautiful  of 
face  and  figure,  five  feet  and  five  inches 


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tall,  gorgeous  brown  eyes  and  a  head  of 
red  hair  such  as  is  rarely  seen,  an  en¬ 
gaging  smile,  excellent  breeding  and 
education,  graceful  in  motion,  pleasing 
in  speech — that  is  Peggy. 

Tall,  dark-complexioned,  black-haired, 
beautifully  chiseled  features,  manly  to 
the  extreme,  flashing  white  teeth — that 
is  Ramond.  He  and  Peggy  will  make  a 
grand  screen  couple,  and  I  know  our 
cameramen  will  present  them  on  the 
screen  in  a  manner  which  will  bring 
gasps  of  excited  pleasure  from  audi¬ 
ences.  You  may  gather  from  this  that 
I  not  only  am  sold  on  Peggy  and  Ra¬ 
mond,  but  on  Hollywood’s  Directors  of 
Photography  as  well.  I  am:  I  know 
from  experience  that  they  are  tops ! 
END. 


Documentary  At  Sea 

(Continued  from  Page  247) 

hand)  and  then  used  the  Special  on  what 
later  became  part  of  the  film’s  opening 
sequence  —  the  schooner  ploughing 
through  heavy  seas  with  the  men  walk¬ 
ing  on  deck  with  that  rolling  gait  pe¬ 
culiar  to  sailors  the  world  over. 

From  the  build  of  the  schooner,  we 
were  not  bothered  overmuch  with  direct 
spray,  though  it  was  always  present 
minutely  in  the  air,  and  we  had  regu¬ 
larly  to  go  over  our  equipment  with 
watchmaker’s  oil  to  remove  the  incrusted 
brine  that  gradually  built  up  on  every 
surface.  Incidentally,  we  also  learned 
that  lenses  used  continually  in  the 
brightness  and  salt  spray  of  sunlit  seas 
lose  their  life. 

But  we  didn’t  have  to  worry  about 
that — our  two  weeks  on  the  ocean  were 
too  short:  the  thing  that  troubled  us 
most  was  keeping  the  camera  both  level 
and  steady  on  the  rolling  deck.  When 
the  sea  was  calmer — as  it  was  during 
our  week  on  the  Grand  Banks,  some 
three  hundred  miles  offshore — we  found 
we  could  use  ropes,  guy-wires  and  other 
devices  attached  to  railings  and  other 
parts  of  the  vessel  to  hold  the  camera 
down.  And  a  good  part  of  the  time,  of 
course,  the  deck  was  sufficiently  steady 
to  permit  a  set-up  without  auxiliary 
assistance,  especially  on  the  homeward 
voyage  when  we  passed  and  photo¬ 
graphed  a  convoy  outward-bound. 

But  it  wasn’t  the  calm  that  really 
helped  our  film.  It  was  the  rough 
weather.  We  have  both  found  that 
people  always  work  much  better  with  us 
once  they  see  we  are  willing  to  adapt 
ourselves  to  their  way  of  life.  Only  after 
the  dog-team  trail  up  North  were  we 
really  accepted.  And  only  after  the  gale, 
which,  figuratively  and  literally,  we  stood 
out,  did  the  “Flora  Alberta’s”  crew  so 
unhesitatingly  do  everything  for  us.  They 
never  knew  how  near  we  were  to  desert¬ 
ing  ship  on  the  third  day  when  another 
fishing  vessel,  on  its  way  back  to  Lunen¬ 
burg,  chanced  to  pass! 

Good  sailor  though  he  was,  Cinematog¬ 
rapher  Sinclair  had  only  recently  come 
from  a  hospital  bed  and  an  operation. 
Our  sleeping  accommodation  was  the 
captain’s  bunk.  It  had  the  dimensions 


of  an  oversize  herring-tin,  and  the  aroma 
surrounding  it  was  that  of  a  tin  long 
opened.  To  a  fishing  schooner’s  usual 
olfactory  orgies — oil  fumes  from  the 
diesel  blended  with  billious  bilge  stench 
of  fish  from  voyages  innumerable — a  new 

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Scheibe’s  Monotone  Filter 


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GRADUATED  FILTERS 


4 

FOG  SCENES,  DIFFUSED  FOCUS  AND  OTHEI  EFFECTS 

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American  Cinematographer  •  July,  1943  277 


stomach-turning  perfume  was  added :  the 
cloying,  sickly  emmanations  of  freshly- 
dried  paint. 

It  wouldn’t  have  been  so  trying  if  we’d 
been  able  to  get  on  deck;  but  a  gale 
blew,  the  vessel  was  laying-to,  and  we 
had  to  keep  to  the  cabin.  It  lasted  for 
three  days  and  two  nights.  In  the  roll¬ 
ing  moments  of  the  second  dawn,  Sin¬ 
clair,  unable  to  do  what  he  most  wanted 
— be  sick  or  die — gasped:  “Ted,  I  can’t 
stand  it.  I’ve  got  to  get  back  to  Lunen¬ 
burg.  I’m  sick.  They  can  row  me  to 
the  other  vessel.  It’s  still  near  enough. 
It  laid-to  all  night.” 

“Okay,  Doug,”  I  said,  “but  I’m  stay¬ 
ing.  Leave  the  camera  and  I’ll  finish  the 
job!” 

If  steadying  shock  were  possible  on 
the  pitching  schooner,  my  words  provided 
it.  And  if  haughty  indignation  were 
possible  in  the  embryo-like  posture  the 
herring-tin  bunk  enforced,  Sinclair 
achieved  it  when  he  told  me  he’d  rather 
die  than  leave  the  job  to  me.  My  face 
was  turned  away  from  him  so  he  couldn’t 
see  my  gleeful  grin.  My  suggestion — • 
untenable  to  me — had  worked  the  desired 
end.  Afterwards,  on  deck,  he  never  even 
glanced  at  the  other  vessel,  still  laying- 
to  within  rowing  distance  on  a  sea  that 
was  perceptibly  abating. 

Half  the  battle  in  making  any  docu¬ 
mentary  successful  is  to  get  your  people 
to  forget  that  you  are  strangers  and  that 
your  camera  is  a  strange  thing.  Once 
the  people  are  your  friends,  they  do  not 
feel  you  as  a  stranger;  but  the  camera 
can  still  make  them  self-conscious,  es¬ 
pecially  at  close  range.  That’s  why  many 
documentary  makers  —  notably  Robert 
Flaherty — use  telephoto  lenses  up  to  12 
inches  so  that  they  may  be  distant  from 
a  subject  while  actually  taking  a  close- 
up.  With  us,  it  was  impossible  to  get 
very  far  away  from  our  fishermen  on  the 
deck  of  the  “Flora  Alberta”;  and  be¬ 
sides,  we’d  nothing  larger  than  a  3-inch 
lens — all  the  studio  had  been  able  to 
furnish  us. 

However,  after  the  gale  brought  us  to¬ 
gether,  the  crew  did  anything  we  asked 
them.  They  were  especially  good  about 
not  staring  at  the  camera— something 
which  ruins  so  many  documentary  shots. 
We  couldn’t  have  told  them  not  “to  mug,” 
when  “to  mug  up”  meant  to  eat  in  Blue- 
nose  sea-talk! 

They  went  about  their  daily  tasks  for 
us  as  if  no  camera  were  there.  Possibly 
because  the  work  required  full  strength 
and  concentration,  it  made  it  easier  for 
them  to  forget  the  camera.  Though  in 
the  sequence  we  took  in  their  fo’c’s’l 
quarters,  where  they  were  relaxing  in  a 
poker  game,  they  continued  in  the  same 
natural  way  ...  so  much  so  that  it  ap¬ 
pears  as  if  the  game  goes  on  just  as  it 
would  have  if  our  lights  hadn’t  flooded 
the  cabin  with  unnatural  brilliance. 

We  managed  these  interior  shots  when 
the  boat  was  at  the  fish  plant  dock  and 
a  power  hook-up  could  be  made  with  the 
town  circuit.  At  sea,  the  Delco  lighting 
plant  had  insufficient  current  for  any 
size  photoflood,  let  alone  our  five  No.  4 
Victors. 

Another  technical  difficulty  we  encoun¬ 


tered  was  photographing  the  men  at 
work  in  the  dories.  These  are  dropped 
from  the  vessel  cruising  over  a  three- 
mile  fishing  ground.  From  them  the 
men  set  their  lines;  then  come  back  to 
the  vessel  (usually  for  a  meal) ;  and  af¬ 
terwards  return  to  the  line  buoy  to  haul 
the  fish  aboard  the  dory. 

Cinematographer  Sinclair  was  able  to 
get  the  Eastman  Special  set  up  in  the 
bow  of  one  of  the  dories  and  photograph 
the  vessel  as  it  slid  past  during  the 
launching.  He  was  further  able  to  pho¬ 
tograph  the  man  pulling  in  the  300-foot 
lines  laden  with  cod. 

But  to  get  he  fisherman  setting  the 
lines — playing  them  out  over  the  side  of 
the  dory — here  was  something  that  the 
angle  from  the  dory  itself  didn’t  satis¬ 
factorily  cover.  Pulling  up  the  fish,  the 
fisherman’s  face  was  continually  turn¬ 
ing  towards  the  bottom  of  the  dory  where 
the  fish  were  being  tossed;  but  when  he 
set  his  lines,  he  faced  out  to  sea.  The 
shot  was  essential:  the  lines  had  to  be 
shown  set  in  order  that  the  later  scene 
make  sense  when  they  were  pulled  up. 

We  finally  found  that  if  the  fisherman 
went  through  the  motion  of  setting  the 
lines — they’re  tossed  out  rhythmically 
over  the  end  of  a  short  stick — while  he 
stood  in  the  top  dory  of  the  stack  on 
deck  and  the  camera  angle  was  low, 
from  the  deck  upward,  a  perfect  illu¬ 
sion  of  reality  was  created.  The  vessel 
happened  to  be  rolling  nicely,  so  that 
the  clouds  were  photographed  in  motion 
behind  the  fisherman.  In  the  black-and- 
white  dupe,  from  which  the  cutting  copy 
was  edited,  these  unfortunately  didn’t 
register.  Criticism  immediately  arose 
because  the  scene  looked  static;  but  the 
point  was  cleared  up  the  moment  a  few 
feet  of  the  master  were  run  through  a 
viewer. 

On  the  “Flora  Alberta”  our  document¬ 
ary  illusions  of  grandeur  momentarily 
got  the  better  of  us.  We  had  an  un¬ 
usual  opportunity  and  sufficient  film ;  and 
the  color  everywhere  was  amazing,  won¬ 
derfully  suited  to  Kodachrome  because 
blues,  reds  and  yellows  predominated, 
with  scarcely  any  green,  always  the  most 
unsatisfactory  tone  register  in  Koda¬ 
chrome. 

Cinematographer  Sinclair  expanded 
our  tentative  shooting  script  as  he  caught 
every  phase  of  the  colorful  fishing  about 
him.  We  sailed  through  a  convoy;  he 
recorded  it.  We  discovered  the  men 
hated  the  sharks  which  infested  the 
Banks,  would  lure  them  to  a  noose  at 
the  ship’s  stern,  then  lasso  them;  he  got 
this. 

For  once  our  pretended  grandeur  was 
practical.  When  we  returned  to  the  Film 
Board  studio  and  the  rushes  were 
screened,  it  was  decided  our  material 
warranted  two  films:  a  single-reeler  on 
in-shore  fishing  and  village  life,  and  a 
two-reeler  on  the  fishing  schooner.  We 
completed  and  recorded  these  two  films 
before  we  left  the  Board.  Because  the 
color  is  so  unusual,  and  it  guided  the 
form  of  the  film  and  the  words  of  the 
commentary,  we  are  hoping  wartime  re¬ 
strictions  on  Kodachrome  prints  will  not 


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preclude  a  few  being  made  of  our  tribute 
to  the  Nova  Scotian  fishing  fleet.  TO  BE 
CONTINUED. 


278  July,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


(These  pictures  illustrate  methods  used  — have  no  connection  with  actual  enemy  spy  activities) 


SPIES’  MEETING  PLACE  ...  To  get  evidence 
that  will  convict,  investigators  may  con¬ 
ceal  a  Cine-Kodak  in  an  adjacent  room, 
make  thousands  of  feet  of  movies  of  such 
"business  conferences”  as  thatshown  here. 


How  the  Cine-Kodak  is  sound-proofed 
and  arranged  to  "see”  through  an  inno¬ 
cent-looking  wall  .  .  .  and  other  photo¬ 
graphic  details  necessary  for  satisfactory 
results  .  .  .  can’t  be  told  now. 


7/ 


Secret  Agents  not  so  Secret 

to  IS«)dlaIk9§  special-purpose  films 


A  CASUAL  LETTER  loses  its  "inno¬ 
cence”  when  a  Kodak  film,  with  the 
aid  of  ultraviolet  rays,  discloses  the 
real  message — in  invisible  ink. 


BURNING  an  incriminating  document 
no  longer  safeguards  an  enemy  agent 
—  Kodak  Infrared  Film  makes  frag¬ 
ments  of  charred  paper  readable. 


MUGGING”  the  criminal — taking 
his  picture  "full  figure,  full  face, 
and  profile” —  is  the  widest  use  of 
photography  by  the  police.  That’s 
useful— after  he’s  caught. 

But  first,  catch  him  .  .  .  be  sure 
he’s  the  wanted  man  .  .  .  get  evi¬ 
dence  no  jury  can  question  . . .  these 
are  counter-espionage  activities 
which  photography  has  made  an 
exact  science. 

A  jury  will  believe  what  it  sees  with 
its  own  eyes.  Photography  makes 
this  possible.  Cameras  are  often  on 
the  alert  near  the  meeting  places  of 
suspected  enemy  agents — even  their 
"casual”  meetings  on  the  street. 

Kodak  special-purpose  films  find 
unseen  fingerprints  on  surfaces 


dusted  with  a  fluorescent  powder . . . 
unseen  chemical  erasures,  or  blood¬ 
stains  on  cloth,  when  illuminated  by 
infrared  or  ultraviolet  rays  . . .  tell¬ 
tale  differences  in  ink,  or  ink  strokes, 
on  a  document  which  has  been  tam¬ 
pered  with  .  .  .  can  even  photograph 
a  man  in  absolute  darkness,  with 
the  aid  of  invisible  infrared  "light.” 

f  t  1 

And  photography  isn’t  finished  with 
the  enemy  agent  when  he’s  trapped. 
Through  Kodak’s  Recordak  System, 
the  "records”. . .  photographs,  finger¬ 
prints,  and  police  history ...  of  3,000 
criminals  can  be  condensed  on  one 
small  roll  of  16-min.  film  — for  future 
reference  . . .  Eastman  Kodak  Com¬ 
pany,  Rochester,  N.  Y. 


Serving  human  progress  through  Photography 


American  Cinematographer  •  July,  1943  279 


oN  public  Z*n‘e*.  -  Guarani 

“pic  -HcH^Uag 


FILMOSOUND  V..  •  —  Fulfills  every  requirement  of  traditional  B&H  perform¬ 
ance  yet  is  built  with  limited  critical  materials.  It  is  available  now  only  to  the  armed 
forces.  The  same  skill  which  perfected  the  Filmosound  V  •  •  •  —  will  produce  even  finer 
motion  picture  equipment  for  you  .  .  .  after  Victory. 


You  be  the  boss.  Build  the  kind  of  a  movie  pro¬ 
gram  you’d  like.  Travel  .  .  .  sports  .  .  .  late  Hollywood  hits 
with  big  name  stars  .  .  .  battle  pictures  filmed  at  the  front .  .  . 
almost  any  sort  of  picture  you  could  want  ...  all  from  the 
Filmosound  Library. 

This  great  store  of  entertainment  and  instruction  has  thou¬ 
sands  of  motion  pictures  on  a  vast  array  of  subjects.  It  is 
being  called  on  constantly  by  the  Army  and  Navy  for  specific 
educational  subjects  ...  by  industry  for  job  training  and 
morale  films  ...  by  schools  for  help  in  educating  your  chil¬ 
dren  •  •  •  by  Civilian  Defense  groups  for  special  films  about 
their  important  work  .  .  .  and  by  thousands  like  you,  who 
enjoy  home  movies  and  like  to  share  that  enjoyment  with 
their  friends. 

^  kind  of  movies  would  you  like  to  show  at  home?  The 
chances  are  that  you’ll  find  them  in  the  Filmosound  Library’s 
thousands  of  subjects. 

A  Beauty  Treatment  for  Your  Own 
Irreplaceable  Movies 

You-ilbe  showing  your  own  movies  more,  now  that  new  film 
is  harder  to  get .  . .  and  you’ll  want  them  in  top  condition  . . . 
want  them  to  stay  that  way.  The  exclusive  B&H  Vap-O-rate 
film  process  will  do  wonders  in  protecting  your  precious 
movies.  Your  films  come  out  of  this  proved  professional 
treatment  clean  and  clear — impervious  to  moisture  and  oil — 
amazingly  resistant  to  scratches  and  heat .  .  .  ready  for  all  the 
extra  times  you’ll  be  showing  them. 


THESE  WILL  AGAIN  BE  YOURS  TO  OWN..  .WHEN  THE  WAR  IS  WON 


Filmo-Master  “400"  8mm.  Projector 

This  large-capacity 
model  is  the  ace  of 
“eights.”  All-gear 
drive  and  power  re¬ 
wind.  400-  or  500- 
watt  lamp.  Fast 
FI. 6  lens  is  inter¬ 
changeable.  Full 
400-foot  reels  per¬ 
mit  half-hour  un¬ 
interrupted  show. 

Eyemo  Camera 

The  “tailor-made” 
camera.  Seven 
standard  models 
plus  a  complete 
choice  of  precision - 
engineered  acces¬ 
sories  fit  your 
Eyemo  to  your  spe¬ 
cific  needs.  From 
quick  field  work  to 
exacting  studio 
projects  .  .  .  Eyemo 
is  ideal. 


Filmoarc  Projector 

Engineered  as  an 
arc  projector,  this 
16mm.  model  gives 
plenty  of  light  for 
large  auditoriums. 

Has  high  output 
amplifier  and  high- 
fidelity  permanent 
magnet  dynamic 
twin  speakers. 
Shows  sound  or 
silent  film. 


Filmo  70D  Camera 

Long-time  favorite 
of  serious  workers 
because  it  gives 
true  theater-qual¬ 
ity  pictures.  Loads 
50-  or  100  -  foot 
spools  of  16mm. 
color  or  mono¬ 
chrome  film.  Cper- 
ates  at  seven 
speeds.  Three-lens 
turret  head 
equipped  with  your 
selection  of  fine  lenses. 


Filmo  Turret  8  Camera 

Turret  mounts  3 
lenses  and  match¬ 
ing  finders.  Critical 
focuser  shows  full 
frame  through 
lens.  Four  speeds 
including  slow  mo¬ 
tion,  also  single- 
frame  exposure. 

Built-in  exposure 
calculator.  Footage 
dial  resets  automatically. 

Showmaster  Projector 

Here’s  the  ideal 
Filmo  for  silent 
home  movies. 
Shows  up  to  80 
m  i  n  u tes  of  u  n  - 
interrupted  film. 
Has  many  fine  B&H 
refinements  like 
Safe-lock  sprock¬ 
ets,  power  rewind, 
fast  FI  .6  inter¬ 
changeable  lens,  Magnilite  conden - 
increases  screen  brilliance 
32%,  for  clearer,  sharper  images. 


*Trade-mark  Registered 


SAVE  AND  RETURN  OLD  LAMPS  when  ordering  new  ones. 
New  lamps  can  be  shipped  only  when  old  lamps  are  turned  in. 

franrH^R  EXCELLENCE.  How  the  Army-Navy  Award  for  Ex- 
P*rJ°rmaJlce  is  won  and  presented  is  shown  in  this 
one-reel  sound  film.  Service  charge  50c. 

n9,PQV;2“iC!.is1the.combined  sciences  Of  Optics  and  Electronics. 

’li  simu|taneous  research  and  engineering  by  Bell  & 
Howell  in  these  and  the  mechanical  sciences  have  brought  im¬ 
portant  advantages  to  our  fighting  forces.  Opti-onlcs  will  bring 
many  new  things  to  American  living,  after  the  war  K 


MOTION  PICTURE  CAMERAS  AND  PROJECTORS 


How  Long  Since  Your  Projector 
Had  a  Checkup? 

So  gradually  do  intricate  projector  parts  wear 
that  you  may  not  realize  how  much  smoother 
your  projector  could  operate.  Here  at  Bell  & 
Howell,  trained  technicians  check  every  mech¬ 
anism,  oil  and  adjust,  repair  and  replace  until 
your  Filmo  Projector  is  every  bit  as  fine  as  the  day 
it  was  made.  Your  B&H  dealer  can  tell  you  the 
standard  charge  on  your  projector  for  the  kind 
of  checkup  you  want,  and  will  help  you  pack 
your  Filmo  for  safe  shipment  to  the  factory. 
Bell  &  Howell  Company,  Chicago;  New  York; 
Hollywood;  Washington,  D.  C.;  London.  Estab¬ 
lished  1907. 


SEND  THIS  COUPON  for  a  catalog  and  recent  sup¬ 
plements  of  Filmosound  Library  releases  .  .  .  and 
for  information  on  the  Peerless  ”  Vap-O-rate”  Film 
T reatment. 


4 


BELL  &  HOWELL  COMPANY 
1848  Larchmont  Avenue,  Chicago,  Illinois 
I’d  like  to  build  my  own  Home  Movie  Program.  Send  me 
the  Filmosound  Library  Catalog  and  Supplements  (  ) 
Send  me  your  folder  about  the  Vap-O-rate  Film  Treat¬ 
ment  (  ) 


Name 


PRECISION  - 
MADE  BY 


Address 


City 


State 


1  have  a  . mm.  projector,  sound .  silent.... 


made  by 


AC  7-43 


Seeing  double  ...for  a  single  reason 


T'HE  chemistry  of  film  manufac¬ 
ture  embraces  many  activities. 
The  chemist  pictured  here  is  using  a 
double  microscope  in  comparing  film 
emulsions  at  the  Du  Pont  Research 
and  Control  Laboratories. 

In  “seeing  double”  he  is  making  a 
visual  comparison  of  the  emulsion 
grain  in  two  specimens  of  Du  Pont 
Motion  Picture  Film.  One  specimen 
is  a  control  sample  already  approved. 
The  other  represents  a  new  emulsion, 


and  the  silver  grains  of  each  speci¬ 
men  are  compared.  The  control 
emulsion  thus  provides  a  basis  of 
measurement  for  the  other. 

Research  and  control  operations 
such  as  this  assure  users  of  Du  Pont 
“Superior”  Negative  that  these  films 
are  dependable  and  uniform  in  qual¬ 
ity  at  all  times. 

E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  &  Co. 
(Inc.),  Photo  Products  Dept.,  Wil¬ 
mington,  Del.;  New  York  Office: 


Empire  State  Bldg.;  Smith  &  Aller, 
Ltd.,  6656  Santa  Monica  Blvd., 
Hollywood,  California. 


<mm> 


«*«  IU.MT.W 


MOTION  PICTURE 
FILM 

Better  Things  jor  Better  Living 

...THROUGH  CHEMISTRY 


282  August,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


MONTHS  before  Tunisia . . .  before  Casa¬ 
blanca  fell . . .  Eyemos  had  already  helped 
to  win  the  "DESERT  VICTORY."  On 
earlier  battle  fronts,  Eyemos,  in  skilled 
hands,  had  filmed  the  strategies  and  tricks 
and  methods  of  the  enemy  .  .  .  had  re¬ 
corded  ways  to  meet  and  squelch  those 
tricks. 

And  in  military  camps  a  thousand  miles 
away,  grim  young  men  watched  those 
Eyemo  films,  studied  them  relentlessly 
. . .  and  learned  the  lessons  that  they  held 
• . .  and  later,  used  them  well ...  to  win  a 
vital  "DESERT  VICTORY.” 

Eyemos  filmed  "Desert  Victory,”  too 
...  in  preparation  for  future  victories  on 
other  battlefields  .  .  .  and  every  victory 
thus  will  plant  the  seeds  of  more  and 
more  .  .  .  until  the  enemy  is  finally  and 
completely  smashed.  Bell  &  Howell  Com¬ 
pany,  Chicago;  New  York;  Hollywood; 
Washington,  D.  C.;  London.  Est.  1SX)7. 

YOUR  EYEMO  IS  NEEDED. ..FOR  OTHER  VICTORIES! 

Special  arrangements  are  being  made  in  our 
service  department  to  recondition  for  Govern¬ 
ment  use  all  the  Eyemo  Cameras  we  can  obtain. 
You  may  have  exactly  the  lens  needed  for  an 
important  military  operation.  If  you  will  sell — 
fill  out  this  information  blank  and  send  it  to  us. 


t 

1.  British  Army  cameraman  filming 
bombardment  in  Libyan  battle  zone — 
protected  from  surprise  attack  by  a 
Bren  gunner. 


2.  Eyemo  goes  aloft.  Camera¬ 
man  climbs  to  bird’s-eye  view 
on  observation  post  in 
Tobruk  and  hoists  his 
equipment  up  after  him.  — 


3.  The  man  and  his  weapon. 
He  fights  alongside  his  bud¬ 
dies  as  a  regular  soldier — 
and  does  the  extra  job  of 
filming  battle  actions.  Many 
of  these  men  have  long  civil¬ 
ian  experience  as  news  pho¬ 
tographers  or  in  British  and 
American  film  studios. 


All  pictures  courtesy  of  Official  British  War  Film  “Desert 
Victory,''  released  through  20th  Century- Fox. 


EYEMO  MODELS  P  AND  Q— Three-arm 
offset  turret  permits  broader  choice  of 
lenses.  Visual  prismatic  focuser  with  mag¬ 
nifier.  Equipped  for  optional  use  with 
electric  motor  and  external  film  maga¬ 
zines.  Finder  is  offset  to  avoid  interference. 
Speeds:  Model  P — 4,  8,  12,  16,  24,  and 
32  f.p.s.  Model  Q — 8,  12,  16,  24,  32,  and 
48  f.p.s. 


BUY  WAR  BONDS 


EYEMOS  WANTED  FOR  WAR  SERVICE 

BELL  &  HOWELL  COMPANY 

1848  Larchmont  Avenue  Date . 

Chicago,  Illinois 
Gentlemen: 

For  the  purpose  of  aiding  the  war  effort,  1  am  willing  to  sell  my 

EYEMO  Camera,  Model . Serial  No . 

It  has  been  modified  as  follows: . 


*Opti-onics  is  OPTIcs  .  .  .  electrONics  .  .  . 
mechanics.  It  is  research  and  engineering  by 
Bell  &  Howell  in  these  three  related  sciences 
to  accomplish  many  things  never  before  ob¬ 
tainable.  Today,  Opti-onics  is  a  WEAPON. 
Tomorrow,  it  will  be  a  SERVANT  ...  to  work, 
protect,  educate,  and  entertain. 

^Trade-marl:  registered 


I  will  sell  this  camera  for  $ . and  will  pay 

transportation  and  insurance  to  Chicago. 

This  camera  is: 

. In  good  operating  condition 

. Inoperative  or  damaged  (give  details) : . 


Price  above  includes  these  lenses: 


MOTION  PICTURE  CAMERAS  AND  PROJECTORS 


PRECISION-MADE  BY 

and 

i _ _ 


I  offer  the  following  additional  lenses  at  the  prices  shown 

here: . 

Name . Address . 

City  &  State . . . AC  8_43 

Do  Not  Ship  Until  You  Receive  Instructions  from  Factory 


American  Cinematographer  •  August,  1943  283 


CONTENTS 

© 


Illumination  On  Walls . By  Karl  Freund  286 

Commentary- Writing  For  Documentary  Films. By  Eduard  Buckman  287 

The  Russian  Influence  In  Hollywood . By  Peter  Furst  288 

Burlesque  In  Swing .  291 


The  Staff 

• 

EDITOR 
Hal  Hall 

• 

TECHNICAL  EDITOR 
Emery  Huse,  A.S.C. 

• 

WASHINGTON  STAFF  CORRESPONDENT 
Reed  N.  Haythome,  A.S.C. 

• 

MILITARY  ADVISOR 
Col.  Nathan  Levinson 


The  New  Fastax  High  Speed  Camera . By  C.  L.  Strong 

Using  “Strobo-Sync” . By  Edward  J.  Kingsbury,  Jr. 

Aces  of  the  Camera — XXX:  Lee  Garmes . By  Hal  Hall 


A.S.C.  on  Parade . 

Among  the  Movie  Clubs . 

The  Floral  Spectrum . By  F.  M.  Hirst 

Remarks  On  Cine  Speeds  for  Amateurs . By  Everett  Marsh 

Editorially  Speaking . . . 


292 

294 

295 

296 

297 
300 
302 

-  312 


The  Front  Cover 

This  month’s  cover  is  a  shot  of  players  and  crew  on  the  set  of 
“The  Girl  From  Leningrad,”  a  Gregor  Rabinovitch  production, 
with  Eugene  Frenke  as  associate  producer,  Fedor  Ozep  director,  and 
John  Mescal,  A.S.C.  director  of  photography.  Left  to  right  front 
row,  Dialog  director  Don  Brodie  (with  script),  Director  Ozep, 
Katherine  Frye,  star  Anna  Sten,  Mescal.  Standing,  left  to  right, 
Hank  Kessler,  assistant  director,  Archie  Lowrance,  grip,  Pliny  Good- 
friend,  operating  cameraman,  Jack  Kenny,  assistant  cameraman, 
Guy  Gilman,  electrician  and  Alexander  Granach,  who  plays  an 
important  role.  The  still  was  made  by  James  Doolittle. 


STAFF  PHOTOGRAPHER 
Pat  Clark 

• 

ARTIST 

Alice  Van  Norman 

• 

CIRCULATION 
Marguerite  Duerr 

• 

ADVISORY  EDITORIAL  BOARD 
Fred  W.  Jackman.  A.  S.  C. 

Victor  Milner,  A.  S.  C. 

James  Van  Trees,  A.  S.  C. 

Farciot  Edouart,  A.  S.  C. 

Fred  Gage.  A.  S.  C. 

Dr.  J.  S.  Watson.  A.  S.  C. 

Dr.  L.  A.  Jones,  A.  S.  C. 

Dr.  C.  E.  K.  Mees,  A.  S.  C. 

Dr.  W.  B.  Rayton,  A.  S.  C. 

Dr.  Herbert  Meyer,  A.  S.  C. 

Dr.  V.  B.  Sease,  A.  S.  C. 

• 

AUSTRALIAN  REPRESENTATIVE 
McGill's.  179  Elizabeth  Street,  Melbourne, 
Australian  and  New  Zealand  Agents 

• 

Published  monthly  by  A.  S.  C.  Agency,  Inc. 
Editorial  and  business  offices: 

1782  North  Orange  Drive 
Hollywood  (Los  Angeles,  28),  California 
Telephone:  GRanite  2135 
• 

Established  1920.  Advertising  rates  on  appli¬ 
cation.  Subscriptions:  United  States  and  Pan- 
American  Union,  $2.50  per  year ;  Canada.  $2.75 
per  year;  Foreign.  $3.50.  Single  copies,  25c: 
back  numbers,  30c :  foreign,  single  copies  35c. 
back  numbers  40c.  Copyright  1943  by  A.  S.  C. 
Agency,  Inc. 


Entered  as  second-class  matter  Nov.  18.  1937, 
at  the  postoffice  at  Los  Angeles,  California,  under 
the  act  of  March  3.  1879. 


284  August,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


©  UlrM-r  TksHEtf— — «*► 


FANTASY  OF  FACTS... 


|  DONALD  SAYS 
tt8UV  BONDS, 
DON'T 
DUCK 
YOUR  DUTY." 


Illustration 

from  Walt  Disney's  Feature, 
"VICTORY  THROUGH  AIR  POWER" 
Major 

Alexander  P.  de  Seversky's 
best-selling  book 


Hippity-Hippity-Hop  with  a  traveling  repair  shop!  In  1911  Calbraith  P.  Rodgers 
made  the  first  transcontinental  flight  in  59  days  with  69  stops,  15  crack-ups  and 
a  freight  train  escort.  In  1937,  Howard  Hughes  made  the  present  record  of  7 
hours,  28  minutes,  25  seconds. 

Just  about  as  radically  different  will  be  much  of  our  household  and  industrial 
equipment  in  the  ADEL-AGE  of  tomorrow.  Skills  now  100%  war-directed  to 
mass  production  of  electric,  hydraulic,  hydro-electric  and  mechanical  acces¬ 
sories  for  every  leading  American  and  Canadian  aircraft  will  be  turned  to  new 
products  with  similar  advantages  of  light  weight,  small  size  and  superior  per¬ 
formance.  Hasten  the  day  of  Victory  by  taking  Donald  Duck's  good  advice! 

*TPADC  MARK  COPYRIGHT  114)  ADEL  PRECISION  PRODUCTS  CORP. 


fV-X 

AML 

PRECISION  PRODUCTS  CORP. 


OFFICES:  Dallas,  Texas  .  Detroit,  Michigan 
Dayton,  Ohio  .  Huntington,  West  Virginia 
Hagerstown,  Maryland  •  Toronto,  Canada 


American  Cinematographer  •  August,  1943  285 


Fig.  I  f'9-  2 

Illumination  On  Walls 

By  KARL  FREUND,  A.  S.C. 


WALLS  of  one  type  or  another 
form  the  background  for  a  large 
majority  of  the  scenes  a  cine¬ 
matographer  is  called  upon  to  shoot. 
These  walls  may  range  in  tone  from 
something  very  dark  that  just  soaks  up 
the  light,  to  an  obtrusive  white  that  is 
very  hard  to  hold  down. 

The  wall,  forming  as  it  does  a  back¬ 
ground,  is  strictly  of  secondary  impor¬ 
tance  in  a  scene.  Nevertheless  its  influ¬ 
ence  on  the  effectiveness  of  the  scene  is 
quite  marked.  For  this  reason  the  illumi¬ 
nation  on  it  must  be  very  carefully  ar¬ 
ranged  by  the  cinematographer. 

I  have  found  it  advantageous  to  al¬ 
ways  consider  how  the  eye  will  adapt 
itself  to  any  combination  of  illumina¬ 
tion  levels  such  as  that  at  the  position 
of  the  principal  subject  and  that  on  the 
wall  behind  the  subject. 

For  example,  suppose  the  subject  is 
to  be  normally  lit.  The  background  is 
a  medium  tone  which  should  show  up 
darker  than  the  subject.  This  is  prob¬ 
ably  the  most  general  type  of  arrange¬ 
ment.  (See  Fig.  1.)  In  such  a  setting 
the  eye  is  naturally  directed  to  the 
principal  subject.  In  this  case,  the  eye 
adapts  itself  to  the  level  of  illumina¬ 
tion  prevailing  on  the  subject.  The 
background  in  this  case  being  relatively 
neutral  in  tone  does  not  act  to  modify 
the  eye  adaptation. 


For  such  a  scene  I  use  my  Norwood 
meter  in  the  normal  manner,  at  the  posi¬ 
tion  of  the  subject.  If  I  want  to  use  a 
lens  aperture  of  /: 2.3,  then  I  bi'ing  up 
the  lights  on  the  subject  until  the  meter 
indicates  /: 2.3.  This  takes  care  of  the 
principal  subject.  Then  I  stand  back 
and  note  visually  the  relatively  bright¬ 
nesses  of  the  subject  and  the  back¬ 
ground.  When  it  looks  right  visually, 
then  we  are  ready  to  shoot,  because  the 
camera  will  see  the  scene  in  the  same 
balance  the  eye  sees  it. 

Another  type  of  scene  is  one  in  which 
the  walls  are  to  appear  lighter  than  the 
subject.  (See  Fig.  2.)  This  sort  of  a 
scene  is  more  in  the  nature  of  an  effect¬ 
lighting.  It  is  not  encountered  as  often 
as  the  first  type  of  scene  described 
above.  However  it  can  be  very  effective 
photographically,  but  great  care  must 
be  used  in  the  illumination  arrangement. 

In  such  a  scene  the  eye  is  again  nat¬ 
urally  directed  to  the  principal  subject. 
The  eye  starts  to  adapt  itself  to  the 
illumination  level  of  this  subject,  but 
is  now  considerably  influenced  by  the 
greater  brightness  of  the  background 
obtruding  itself.  When  the  eye  has  be¬ 
come  adapted  to  the  illumination  level 
of  the  background  it  will  be  found  that 
the  subject  now  appears  somewhat 
darker  than  it  did  under  the  conditions 
described  for  the  previous  case.  It  is 
of  course  desirable  to  have  the  camera 


Fig.  3  (top),  Fig.  4  (bottom) 


record  this  changed  visual  appearance. 
So  a  modification  of  the  basic  practise 
with  the  Norwood  meter  is  followed. 

In  this  case  the  meter  is  again  used 
at  the  position  of  the  principal  subject. 
In  order  to  give  the  subjective  impres¬ 
sion  of  a  darker  subject,  a  differential 
is  set  up  between  the  illumination-level 
on  the  subject  and  the  lens  aperture 
setting.  I  find  it  most  convenient  to 
accomplish  this  by  changing  the  “film- 
speed”  mattes  in  the  meter.  For  ex¬ 
ample,  suppose  the  background  wall  is 
to  be  moderately  brighter  than  the  sub¬ 
ject.  For  such  a  scene  I  estimate  that 
a  differential  of  about  one-half  an  /- 
stop  would  be  appropriate.  I  am  using 
film  with  a  speed  of  Weston  32  for  in¬ 
teriors.  So  for  this  scene,  in  order  to 
achieve  the  54-stop  differential,  I  take 
out  the  No.  32  matte  and  put  in  the  No. 
50  matte. 

Continued  on  Page  306) 


286 


August,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


Commentary -Writing  For 
Documentary  Films 

By  EDUARD  BUCKMAN 


HOWEVER  brilliant  may  be  the 
cinematography  in  a  color  docu¬ 
mentary,  however  natural  the 
“performances,”  or  however  clever  the 
cutting,  much  of  the  film’s  final  effect 
depends  on  the  commentary.  If  there  is 
one  thing  in  films  for  which  there  seems 
no  handbook  available,  that  thing  is  com¬ 
mentary.  It  is  more  than  important: 
not  because  it  can  save  a  film,  but  be¬ 
cause  it  can  so  easily  ruin  what  other¬ 
wise  would  be  a  clear  and  interesting 
one.  When  writing  commentary,  we  must 
constantly  remember  that  pictures,  if 
good,  themselves  register  far  more 
quickly  and  sharply  than  spoken  words. 
Words  accompanying  a  color  document¬ 
ary  require  the  most  careful  handling, 
for  color  invariably  reveals  even  more 
to  an  audience  than  does  black-and- 
white.  Color  film  commentaries  have  de¬ 
liberately  to  be  underplayed,  kept  as  a 
reinforcing  complement.  Further,  as  any 
good  color  film  is  built  on  color  sequences, 
each  with  its  own  rhythm,  the  narrative 
should  catch  this  rhythm  and  never  lose 
it,  changing,  easily  and  imperceptibly, 
whenever  the  sequences  do. 

Silence,  it  has  oft  been  said,  is  golden. 
I  believe  in  a  color  film  that  it  is  not  only 
gold  but  can  take  on  all  the  colors  pos¬ 
sible  in  Kodachrome  because  it  adds  im¬ 
measurably  to  each !  We  writers  love  to 
talk.  Most  of  us  once  thought  a  two- 
reeler  meant  twenty  minutes  for  us  to 
have  our  continuous  say.  We  always 
conveniently  forgot  that  a  film,  being 
pictures  after  all,  was  able  to  say  far 
more  than  we  ever  could.  Remembering 
this,  we  should  now  become  as  frugal 
in  our  remarks  and  as  simple  in  lan¬ 
guage  as  possible.  Our  sentences,  to 
have  fullest  effect,  should  be  divided  by 
periods  of  silence  when  the  scenes  can 
register  their  color  meaning  undiluted, 
intensified,  if  anything,  by  appropriate 
music. 

The  function  of  commentary,  as  I  see 
it,  is  to  provide  details  which  further 
a  complete  understanding  of  the  picture 
on  the  screen,  not  merely  reiterate  what 
it  already  shows.  Take,  as  an  instance, 
the  time  element.  Often  this  can  be  done 
filmically,  but  sometimes  it  is  not  prac¬ 
tical  and  the  hour  is  not  absolutely  set 
by  the  color  or  action  on  the  screen. 

When,  in  our  fishing  film,  we  faded  in 
on  the  men  working  over  their  lines  un¬ 
der  brilliant  sunlight,  our  commentary 
ran:  “It  is  almost  noon.  The  men  have 
been  working  since  three.  Now  they  are 
baiting  up  for  the  second  time.”  That 
told  what  the  men  were  doing,  when  and 


why,  things  which  the  average,  non¬ 
fishing  audience  would  not  be  able  to 
gather  from  the  scene. 

The  how  of  the  operation  was  self- 
evident,  and  the  commentary  did  not 
need  to  tell  how  the  lines  and  hooks 
were  attached,  how  the  bait  was  put  on, 
and  how  skillful  the  men  were  at  the 
work:  these,  the  picture  did.  The  com¬ 
mentary  continued:  “Each  two  men  have 
55  lines — over  3,000  hooks  to  bait  with 
substantial  hunks  of  frozen  mackerel 
from  the  15,000  lbs.  on  ice  in  the  vessel’s 
hold.”  This,  as  I  see  it,  is  the  function 
of  the  commentary:  to  supply  any  data 
the  film  can’t  itself  fluently  project.  In¬ 
dicating  55  lines,  3,000  hooks  and  15,000 
lbs.  of  bait  lying  on  ice  in  the  hold,  would 
have  been  filmically  uninteresting  and, 
in  the  case  of  the  bait,  photographically 
difficult. 

One  of  the  most  effective  ways  to  use 
commentary  is  in  counterpoint.  I  can’t 
word  it  better,  though  I  know  it  sounds 
a  bit  highbrow  that  way.  What  I  mean 
is  that  often  we  want  to  emphasize  some¬ 
thing  which  the  picture  implies  but 
doesn’t  show,  or  else  we  want  to  divert 
the  audience’s  attention,  in  part,  away 
from  the  picture  and  so  soften  the  effect 
on  the  screen. 

In  our  fishing  film  I  think  a  perfect 
example  of  the  first  type  is  where  the 
fishermen  are  in  the  dories.  We  were 
shooting  in  what  obviously  was  summer 
weather,  and  the  men  were  apparently 
hauling  up  fish  effortlessly.  But  the 
work  actually  was  hard  and  back-break¬ 
ing.  There  are  three  miles  of  line  to 
pull  aboard.  Further,  what  gives  the 
scene  point  is  that  the  men  do  it  the 
year  round,  all  through  the  winter 
months  when  the  Atlantic  is  chill  and 
cold.  To  give  the  work  its  fullest  docu¬ 
mentary  meaning,  this  had  somehow  to 
be  indicated.  And  so  while  the  film  flows 
on  in  its  obvious  summer  colors — fisher¬ 
men  hauling  fish  over  wheel,  close-up; 
fisherman’s  face,  close-up;  fisherman 
hauling  fish  into  dory,  medium-shot;  bot¬ 
tom  of  dory  piled  with  fish — the  commen¬ 
tary  (and  in  this  particular  sequence 
commentary  is  imperative  because  the 
scenes  have  an  inherent  similarity)  was 
made  to  say:  “To  haul  steadily,  over 
the  wheel,  with  bare  hands,  the  three 
miles  of  fish-filled  lines,  is  hard,  hard 
work.  Though  it  is  not  so  bad  in 
summer.  It  is  in  winter,  in  piercing 
cold,  in  sleety  squall,  in  ‘thicka-fog,’  that 
the  fisherman’s  hours  in  the  dory  are 
most  cruel.” 

I  can  think  of  one  particular  spot  in 


WILLIAM  STULL 

T  IS  with  deep  regret  that  we 
inform  the  readers  of  this 
magazine  that  William  Stull, 
its  editor  for  the  past  two  years, 
died  on  July  10th,  after  a  five-day 
siege  of  pneumonia. 

To  this  writer,  Bill  meant  some¬ 
thing  more  than  just  a  friend  and 
a  brilliant  editor  and  technical 
writer.  He  seemed  almost  like  a 
son,  for  it  was  I  who  discovered 
Bill  and  started  him  on  his  career. 
It  was  back  in  May,  1929,  that  I 
met  Bill.  I  was  then  editor  of  this 
magazine.  Bill  was  a  shy,  retiring, 
young  chap  with  a  vast  amount  of 
technical  knowledge.  I  asked  him 
why  he  didn’t  write  a  piece  for  the 
magazine.  He  said  he  didn’t  believe 
he  could  write  well  enough.  I  finally 
persuaded  him  to  try.  From  the 
start,  he  showed  brilliance,  and  he 
went  on  from  there  to  become  per¬ 
haps  the  outstanding  writer  of 
technical  articles  in  Hollywood. 

It  was  only  logical  that,  after 
writing  for  the  American  Cinema¬ 
tographer  for  many  years,  he  even¬ 
tually  became  its  editor.  And  he 
won  countless  friends  in  that  posi¬ 
tion.  The  world  of  cinematog¬ 
raphy  has  lost  a  truly  magnificent 
reporter  of  its  achievements  in  the 
passing  of  Bill,  the  magazine  lost 
a  great  editor,  the  cameramen 
have  lost  a  real  friend  who  was 
the  first  to  give  them  recognition, 
his  wife  and  two  children  have  lost 
a  wonderful  husband  and  father, 
and  his  mother  a  devoted  son. 

One  of  the  peculiar  twists  of  life 
is  the  fact  that  I,  who  started  Bill 
on  his  writing  career,  should  have 
the  honor  of  jumping  in  and  com¬ 
pleting  his  work  in  presenting 
this  issue  of  the  magazine  to  its 
readers.  If  the  contents  of  this 
issue  do  not  measure  up  to  those 
of  the  issues  of  the  past,  you  will 
know  it  is  because  Bill  is  gone. 

—HAL  HALL. 


the  fishing  film  where  we  wished  to  take 
the  audience’s  mind  off  of  just  what 
was  happening  on  the  screen,  and  com¬ 
mentary  had  to  be  used  to  do  it.  This 
was  in  the  shark  sequence.  The  men 
had  lassoed  the  killer  fish  and  hauled 
it  up.  Then  they  proceed  to  cut  it  in 
two.  They  hate  these  sharks  which  rav¬ 
age  the  cod,  continually  cut  the  baited 
lines.  And  so  the  men  savagely  kill  the 
shark  by  severing  head  from  body.  In 
the  film,  the  colors  of  the  guts  as  ex¬ 
posed  by  the  knife  are  superb.  It  is 
paradoxical  that  such  a  brutal  dissection 
should  have  had  such  breath-taking  pic¬ 
torial  beauty. 

That  was  why  we  felt  the  film  would 
lose  if  it  were  not  included;  but  once 
we  included  it,  we  had  to  use  commen¬ 
tary  to  soften  its  reality,  and  we  decided 

(Continued  on  Page  310 


American  Cinematographer  •  August,  1943  287 


~fke  6?uJJiah  J/htf/uehce 
%  HoU^uood 

By  PETER  FURST 


THE  amount  of  Russian  stories  in 
production  or  preparation  in  Holly¬ 
wood  today  may  seem  staggering 
to  outsiders  and  may  even  prompt  some 
to  mutter  dark  things  about  “Hollywood 
plots”  and  “destructive  propaganda.” 
Indeed,  there  are  some  who  would  have 
Hollywood  make  only  anti-Russian  films, 
but  that  is  neither  here  nor  there. 

It  is  true  that  there  are  many  Russian 
stories  in  the  making.  But,  then  of 
course,  there  are  a  good  many  dramati¬ 
cally  inspiring  things  happening  on  the 
2000-mile  Russian  front  every  day,  and 
there  are  few  movie  makers  who  cannot 
recognize  good  melodrama  when  they  see 
it.  Besides,  Hollywood  has  made  a  good 
many  screen  epics  around  fronts  that  are 
not  half  as  vital  to  the  Allied  cause  as 
is  the  bitter  Soviet-Nazi  struggle  from 
Leningrad  to  the  Black  Sea.  Remember 


the  many  commando  stories  and  the  flood 
of  Norwegian  films  which  hit  the  nation’s 
screens  not  so  long  ago? 

Actually,  when  you  examine  things 
carefully,  there  aren’t  so  many  Russian 
films  in  Hollywood  at  all.  In  addition  to 
“Mission  to  Moscow,”  there  is  the  more 
recent  “Boy  from  Stalingrad,”  which  has 
been  shown  in  New  York  and  has 
aroused  a  good  deal  of  comment  there 
although  it  did  not  hit  the  first-run 
houses  on  Broadway  but  only  some  small 
out-of-the-way  theaters.  Samuel  Gold- 
wyn’s  production  of  Lillian  Heilman’s 
“North  Star,”  with  Anne  Baxter  and 
Dana  Andrews,  is  now  completed.  The 
film  will  be  unusual  insofar  as  the  only 
accents  in  the  film  are  those  of  German 
soldiers,  while  most  other  Hollywood  ver¬ 
sions  of  Russian  stories  have  utilized  as 
many  foreign-accented  actors  as  possible. 


Miss  Heilman  explains  that  she  wanted 
to  make  her  story  not  only  to  be  com¬ 
pletely  authentic  down  to  the  smallest 
detail,  but  at  the  same  time  applicable 
to  the  American  scene.  She  wanted 
American  audiences  to  be  able  to  identify 
themselves  easily  with  the  Russian  peas¬ 
ants  and  fighters  on  the  screen  and 
thought  that  if  these  peasants  had  for¬ 
eign  accents,  the  average  theatergoer 
would  not  be  able  to  feel  himself  at  one 
with  his  Russian  ally  on  the  screen. 
Therefore,  only  men  and  women  with 
American  accents  were  cast  in  the  film 
and  those  with  accents  who  had  hoped 
that  this  film  would  give  them  their  big 
chance  were  bitterly  disappointed.  Almost 
everyone  connected  with  the  picture  is 
American :  Anne  Baxter,  as  a  young 
Russian  peasant  girl;  Dana  Andrews  as 
a  Red  aviator;  Jane  Withers  as  a  mis¬ 
understood  young  village  girl;  Walter 
Brennan  as  a  farmer;  Walter  Huston  as 
a  Soviet  scientist;  Lewis  Milestone,  the 
director  and  James  Wong  Howe,  A.S.C., 
the  cameraman.  Even  the  Germanic-look- 
ing  Eric  Von  Stroheim  is  an  American 
citizen.  Stroheim,  incidentally,  has  the 
curious  role  of  a  German  doctor  who 
despises  the  Hitler  gang,  yet  does  their 
dirty  work  in  Russia  and  who  is  shot  by 
the  Russian  scientist  Walter  Huston,  be¬ 
cause,  as  Huston  says,  “those  who  do 
the  work  of  Fascists  and  yet  despise 
them,  they  are  the  real  danger.” 

The  really  memorable  lines,  however, 
are  spoken  by  Anne  Baxter  at  the  end 
of  the  film:  “Wars  do  not  leave  people 
the  same.  All  people  will  learn  that,  and 
come  to  see  that  wars  do  not  have  to  be. 
They  will  make  this  the  last  one,  a  free 
world  for  all  men.  The  earth  belongs  to 
us,  the  people,  if  we  fight  for  it.  And 
we  will  fight  for  it.” 

M.G.M.  has  completed  “Song  of  Rus¬ 
sia,”  R.K.O.  is  producing  “Revenge,” 
and  a  new  outfit,  R.  &  F.  Productions, 
releasing  through  United  Artists,  is 
working  on  the  American  version  of  Art- 
kino’s  “Girl  from  Leningrad.”  The  latter, 
too,  differs  from  the  usual  run  of  Rus¬ 
sian  stories  though  for  different  reasons 
than  Goldwyn’s  “North  Star.”  “Girl 
from  Leningrad”  is  not  a  story  of  gueril¬ 
las  or  soldiers  but  of  women  at  war  with 
the  enemy;  Soviet  nurses  in  a  field  hos¬ 
pital  on  the  Leningrad  front.  Both  the 
director,  Fedor  Ozep,  and  the  star,  Anna 
Sten,  have  had  ample  experience  with 
Soviet  movie  technique  since  both  have 
worked  on  Russian  films  before  coming 
to  the  United  States. 

These,  and  the  other  war  pictures 
completed  or  in  production,  have  of 
course,  left  their  indelible  mark  on 
American  cinema  production,  and  this 
certainly  is  not  meant  politically  as  some 
of  the  isolationist  senators  and  the  critics 
of  Hollywood  in  the  editorial  offices  of 
certain  newspapers  would  have  people 
believe. 

Perhaps  one  of  the  most  important 
aspects  of  this  influence  is  that  the  pro¬ 
ducers  have  to  compete  with  Soviet  films 
in  portraying  Russian  life  under  battle 


288  August,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


conditions.  Since  Russian  films  have 
always — ever  since  the  revolutionary 
“Potemkin” — been  famous  for  their  real¬ 
ism,  producers  of  the  American  versions 
of  Soviet  life  are  forced  to  take  on  some 
of  that  realism.  One  has  only  to  go  and 
see  a  fairly  good  Russian  movie  such  as 
“Diary  of  a  Nazi”  to  realize  immediately 
where  it  is  that  Hollywood  has  always 
fallen  short  in  its  presentation  of  the 
more  violent  phases  of  life.  What  has 
been  overlooked  in  even  the  most  recent 
of  our  war  films  is  certainly  not  tech¬ 
nique — Heaven  only  knows  that  ours  is 
the  most  perfected  in  international  film 
history — but  the  irrevocable  fact  that  the 
American  cinema-going  public,  long  used 
to  the  often  brutal  realism  of  the  news¬ 
reel  coverage  of  this  war,  cannot  react 
sharply  any  more  to  death,  not  when  it 
is  presented  in  a  beautiful  studio  sound 
stage  setting,  with  soft  lighting  and 
camera  work  and  makeup  which  tend  to 
flatter  the  actor’s  physiognomy  even  in 
death.  It  isn’t  that  the  American  movie¬ 
going  public  has  become  calloused  and 
brutalized,  but  simply  that  we  have  be¬ 
come  war-conditioned.  We  know  now 
what  war  and  death  look  like,  and  we 
know  that  it  is  not  like  their  movie  ver¬ 
sions. 

We  are  used  by  now  to  realism  in  its 
extremest  forms.  We  have  seen  what  a 
fire  can  do  to  an  entire  city  and  what  a 
sailor  looks  like  after  he  has  spent  sixty 
days  on  an  open  raft.  We  know  now  that 
a  man  who  has  been  hit  by  a  fifty-caliber 
machine-gun  slug  or  a  piece  of  shrapnel 
does  not  die  quietly,  sinking  slowly  to 
the  ground  and  whispering  last  messages 
into  the  ear  of  the  nurse  he  loves  or  his 
comrade.  We  know  that  he  bleeds  and 
that  he  screams.  We  don’t  have  to  see 
that  on  the  screen  of  course — as  a  matter 
of  fact,  we  won’t.  The  Hays  Office  takes 
care  of  that. 

But  we  don’t  have  to  see  that.  All  that 
is  really  necessary  is  that  the  movie 
soldiers  look  like  real  soldiers,  that  the 
movie  workers  look  like  real  workers, 
that  the  movie  towns  and  the  movie 
battlefields  look  like  real  towns  and  real 
battlefields. 

The  Soviets  never  had  to  worry  about 
that  sort  of  thing.  They  are  used  over 
there  to  a  hard  eventful  life.  And  despite 
that  they  have  never  looked  for  “escape” 
from  their  daily  troubles.  On  the  con¬ 
trary,  the  Russians  asked  that  their 
struggle  be  portrayed  faithfully  in  the 
Soviet  pictures.  And  let  no  one  mutter 
“dictatorship”  and  “they  were  forced  to 
see  that  sort  of  stuff.”  People  usually 
find  a  way  to  express  their  feelings  about 
movies — mostly  by  staying  away  from 
them  in  droves,  regardless  of  high  pres¬ 
sure  publicity  campaigns,  or  government 
appeals. 

Hollywood,  to  a  great  extent,  has 
caught  on  to  that.  The  moviemakers  re¬ 
alize  that  despite  the  urge  to  seek  escape, 
workers  and  soldiers  don’t  want  to  go  to 
a  movie  theater  and  sit  through  the 
antics  of  the  idle,  the  sophisticated,  the 
carefree.  They  want  to  see  something  of 
their  struggle  portrayed  on  the  screen 


Top  is  a  scene  from  "The  Girl  From  Leningrad" 
showing  Anna  Sten  reading  to  a  group  of  wounded 
soldiers  in  a  field  hospital.  Second  picture  on  this 
page  is  another  scene  from  "The  Girl  From  Lenin¬ 
grad"  showing  Miss  Sten  as  a  Russian  nurse  at¬ 
tending  Kent  Smith,  who  plays  the  role  of  an  Amer¬ 
ican  aviator.  Bottom  picture  is  Irish  Mary  Lou  Har¬ 
rington  as  she  appeared  in  the  role  of  a  Russian 
girl  in  "The  Boy  From  Stalingrad."  On  opposite 
page  is  a  scene  from  "North  Star."  Samuel  Gold- 
wyn  is  producing  "North  Star."  "The  Girl  From 
Leningrad  is  a  Gregor  Rabinovitch  production,  with 
Eugene  Frenke  as  associate  producer. 


and  be  spurred  on  by  their  own  efforts. 
They  want  to  be  able  to  look  at  a  picture 
and  come  out  of  it,  feeling:  “Gee,  we 
guys  are  certainly  doing  a  great  job,  let’s 
go  and  get  on  with  it!”  There  is  nothing 
like  a  little  applause  to  spur  on  the 
actor.  The  Russians  realized  that  and 
gave  him  that  applause. 

It  is  interesting  to  note  that  while 
Russian  stories,  producers  and  directors 
invade  the  Hollywood  scene,  they  turn  to 
the  Hollywood  cinematographers  to  put 
the  stories  on  the  screen.  Russian  techni¬ 
cians  and  cameramen  are  not  brought 
here  by  the  Russian  producers.  Our 
American  cameramen  have  the  happy 
faculty  of  being  able  to  thoroughly  un¬ 
derstand  the  wants  of  any  type  of  pro¬ 
ducers,  and  can  photograph  the  mood  of 
the  Russian  story  just  as  readily  as  the 
American.  Right  now  John  Mescall, 
A.S.C.,  is  handling  the  photography  on 
“The  Girl  from  Leningrad,”  which  has 
Russians  producing,  directing  and  act¬ 
ing  in  the  film.  Director  Fedor  Ozep  is 
enthusiastic  about  Mescall.  “No  camera¬ 
man  in  Russia  ever  grasped  my  ideas 
any  better  than  Johnny,”  he  told  this 
writer. 


American  Cinematographer  •  August,  1943  289 


Barbara  Sanwyck  !n  scene  from  "Lady  of  Burlesque.' 


290  August,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


SutleAque 

%  Mutiny 


WITH  98  per  cent  of  the  scenes  for 
Hunt  Stromberg’s  “Lady  of  Bur¬ 
lesque”  interior  shots  within  a 
theater,  and  most  of  the  principal  play¬ 
ers  working  in  most  of  the  scenes,  John 
LeRoy  Johnston,  Stromberg  publicist, 
watched  still  photography  with  an  eagle 
eye. 

Since  most  of  the  backgrounds  were 
static,  Johnston  insisted  that  still  pho¬ 
tographers  James  Doolittle  and  Fred 
Parrish  keep  production  stills  active,  un¬ 
posed  and  full  of  swing.  As  a  result  the 
final  set  of  production  stills  contained 
more  4x5  grab  shots  than  8x10  posed 
ones.  Even  a  few  Ikon  2x2%  negatives 
made  their  way  into  the  set  of  action 
“selling”  stills.  Nearly  all  the  stills  used 
in  the  advertisements  for  this  motion 
pictude  were  the  action  shots. 

Johnston  for  years  has  contended  that 
still  photographers  should  shoot  more 
action  shots  of  the  outmoded  posed  va¬ 
riety.  An  advertising  artist  himself,  be¬ 
fore  he  entered  the  film  studio  publicity 
field,  Johnston  knows  what  is  needed 
for  good  selling  art.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
he  maintains  that  among  the  amateurs 


the  best  pictures  they  make  are  also  ac¬ 
tion. 

The  five  photographs  shown  on  these 
two  pages  were  shot  by  Doolittle  and 
Parrish  during  the  filming  of  “Lady  of 
Burlesque,”  and  all  are  action.  All  have 
life  and  sparkle  which  could  not  be  ob¬ 
tained  in  posed  shots. 

Upper  left  on  this  page  is  shot  of 
Pinky  Lee,  Michael  O’Shea  and  Barbara 
Stanwyck  doing  a  snappy  dance  routine. 
It  was  a  Parrish  shot  from  floor  line. 

Lower  right  is  shot  of  Miss  Stanwyck 
fighting  with  a  policewoman.  It  was 
made  by  Doolittle. 

Center  right,  Miss  Stanwyck  concludes 
a  comedy  blackout  called  the  “pickle  per¬ 
suader,”  with  a  slap  that  took  O’Shea 
off  his  feet.  It  was  made  by  Doolittle. 

Upper  right  shows  Gerald  Mohr  in 
the  midst  of  a  little  fistic  action  that 
could  not  be  obtained  by  a  pose.  Doo¬ 
little  made  it. 

On  page  290  is  Miss  Stanwyck  danc¬ 
ing  to  the  tune  of  “Take  It  Off  the  E 
String,  Play  It  on  the  G  String,”  a  high¬ 
light  of  the  film. 


American  Cinematographer  •  August,  1943  291 


% 

\  ^ 

90*-%:  WjSall* 

& 

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Jr  1 

l  '^4 

The  New  Fastax 

High  Speed  Camera 

By  C.  L.  STRONG 


OUT  of  a  desire  to  obtain  better 
performance  of  telephone  equip¬ 
ment  has  come  a  new  high-speed 
motion  picture  camera,  capable  of  speeds 
up  to  8,000  frames  per  second.  Designed 
by  Bell  Telephone  Laboratories  in  New 
York  and  manufactured  by  Western 
Electric,  the  new  camera  has  already 
found  a  number  of  applications  among 
war  contractors  whose  engineering  prob¬ 
lems  include  the  design  of  fast  moving 
parts  or  the  analysis  of  high  speed 
action. 

The  camera,  which  has  been  given  the 
name  “Fastax,”  is  the  result  of  many 
years’  search  for  a  high  speed  analytic 
tool  for  the  engineer.  Early  attempts 
with  non-intermittent  films  drives  (the 
intermittent  movement  is  limited  to 
speeds  of  about  250  frames  per  second) 
resulted  in  the  well-known  Eastman- 
ERPI  camera,  capable  of  recording  about 
2,500  frames  per  second.  Simply  de¬ 
signed,  the  camera  was  well  suited  for 
the  detailed  study  of  mechanical  cycles. 
Timing  of  motion  in  the  subject  could  be 
determined  to  the  thousandth  part  of  a 
second  from  the  picture  of  the  special 
Western  Electric  split-second  clock 


photographed  on  the  edge  of  each  frame. 

The  top  speed  of  the  Eastman-ERPI 
camera,  however,  was  still  too  slow  for 
many  studies  the  telephone  engineers 
wished  to  undertake.  For  example,  they 
wished  to  find  out  why  a  certain  type  of 
electrical  relay  used  in  telephone  circuits 
developed  poor  contact  conditions  result¬ 
ing  in  improper  circuit  operation.  Again, 
there  were  such  fast  moving  operations 
as  the  dial  central  office  switching  de¬ 
vices,  movements  so  rapid  that  it  is  next 
to  impossible  to  see  by  visual  examina¬ 
tion  just  what  is  happening  during  the 
switching  cycle. 

The  result  of  the  search  of  these  engi¬ 
neers  for  a  camera  capable  of  suffi¬ 
ciently  high  speeds  to  study  these  and 
similar  problems  is  the  Fastax.  Rugged, 
small  and  compact,  complete  in  a  single 
case,  the  Fastax  has  proved  itself  in¬ 
valuable  as  an  aid  to  telephone  research. 

The  camera  does  not  look  too  dissimi¬ 
lar  to  a  conventional  motion  picture 
camera.  Two  models  are  available  which 
make  pictures  respectively  of  the  stand¬ 
ard  8mm  and  16mm  sizes.  In  each  model 
either  16mm  or  the  so-called  “double¬ 
eight”  film  may  be  used.  The  film  comes 


Left,  camera  in  operation. 
Above,  Fig.  4. 


Fig.  3. 


EIGHT  SlOCO  COMPENSATING  PRISM  ro«  8  MU  CAMERA 
FOUR  5‘0C0  COMPENSATING  PRISM  FOR  I*  MM  CAMERA 


off  the  100-foot  supply  reel  at  the  top 
(Fig.  4),  under  an  idler,  around  the 
20-tooth  driving  sprocket,  and  on  to  the 
take-up  reel.  The  lens  is  a  standard  2", 
F/2.0  cine  lens  in  screw  mount.  Fram¬ 
ing  and  focusing  are  accomplished  by  a 
prismatic  finder,  eliminating  parallax  by 
picking  up  the  image  at  the  focal  plane 
through  a  hole  in  the  sprocket;  the  image 
is  seen  erect  and  correct  from  left  to 
right  on  a  ground  glass  screen  at  the 
rear  of  the  camera. 

The  rotary  shutter  of  the  conventional 
motion  picture  camera  is  missing  in  the 
Fastax.  In  its  place,  between  the  lens 
and  the  film  plane,  is  a  four  or  eight¬ 
sided  glass  prism,  with  opposing  faces 
parallel;  an  exposure  slit  is  provided 
ahead  of  and  behind  the  prism.  The 
prism  rotates  at  a  high  rate  of  speed 
(60,000  r.p.m.  while  taking  pictures  at 
top  speed)  and  acts  both  to  provide  a 
steady  image  on  the  fast  moving  film 
and  to  perform  the  functions  of  a 
shutter.  Figure  5  illustrates  how  this 
is  done:  the  light  rays  picked  up  by  the 
lens  are  focused  on  the  film  surface  as 
it  rests  on  the  face  of  the  sprocket ;  when 


292 


August,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


Fig.  2.  The  Fastax  camera  set  up  for  photographing  the  vocal  cords.  The  light  beam  is  directed  by  the 
large  mirror  into  the  mouth,  and  then  directed  down  the  throat  to  the  larynx  by  a  small  laryngeal  mirror 
held  near  the  soft  palate.  The  camera  shoots  through  the  hole  in  he  center  of  the  large  mirror  and  down 
onto  the  vocal  cords  by  means  of  the  laryngeal  mirror. 


the  prism  is  at  rest  the  image  is  pro¬ 
jected  along  the  dotted  lines.  However, 
as  the  prism  rotates  in  synchronism 
with  the  film  sprocket  the  image  is  dis¬ 
placed  by  the  refraction  and  rotation  of 
the  prism  so  that  it  travels  in  step  with 
the  film  across  the  exposure  slit.  As  soon 
as  the  prism  has  rotated  to  the  point 
where  the  light  rays  might  strike  two 
adjoining  prism  faces,  the  prism  housing 
performs  the  functions  of  a  barrel 
shutter,  blocking  the  light  from  the  film 
and  so  forming  the  frame  line. 

The  view  finder  is  attached  to  the  door 
of  the  camera  as  seen  in  Fig.  3.  One  of 
the  two  prisms  of  this  finder  (Fig.  4) 
fits  inside  the  sprocket  behind  the  view¬ 
ing  hole  in  the  sprocket’s  rim.  A  micro¬ 
scope  objective  in  the  finder  tube  is 
focused  through  the  two  prisms  directly 
on  to  the  film  plane.  A  light  trap,  oper¬ 
ated  by  an  external  lever,  prevents  light 
from  the  finder  from  fogging  the  film 
while  the  camera  is  in  operation. 

Film  travel  in  the  Fastax  reaches  the 
amazing  speed  of  seventy  miles  per  hour 
while  the  camera  is  running  at  its  high¬ 
est  taking  rate.  The  speed  of  the  camera 
is  governed  by  the  voltage  applied  to  the 
two  motors  and  ranges  to  as  slow  as  150 
frames  per  second;  the  one  hundred  foot 
load  of  film  lasts  from  one-and-a-half 
seconds  to  twenty-five  seconds,  depend¬ 
ing  on  the  camera  speed.  To  more 
evenly  distribute  the  strain  on  the 
sprocket  holes,  double-perforated  film  is 
used.  In  the  16mm  camera,  which  is 
equipped  with  a  four-sided  prism  the 
frames  are  of  the  standard  16  millimeter 
size.  In  the  8mm  camera,  which  has  an 


eight-sided  prism,  the  frame  size  is  cut 
to  one-quarter  the  larger  size;  a  strip  is 
exposed  down  one  side  of  the  film,  and 
the  film  is  reversed  and  exposed  down 
the  other  side,  exactly  as  in  standard 
double-eight  millimeter  amateur  cameras. 
Film  travel  and  prism  rotation  speeds 
are  identical  for  16  millimeter  images  at 
4,000  frames  per  second  and  for  Double- 
Eight  images  at  8,000  frames  per  second, 
the  increase  in  frame  speed  in  the 
smaller  picture  being  supplied  by  the 
larger  number  of  prism  faces.  The  dif¬ 
ference  in  size  of  the  faces  of  the  two 
prisms  also  causes  a  change  in  exposure ; 
duration  of  exposure  at  maximum 
camera  speed  with  the  four-sided  (16mm) 
prism  is  about  83  millionths  of  a  sec¬ 
ond,  while  the  eight-sided  (8mm)  prism 
is  about  33  millionths  of  a  second. 

In  order  to  take  fully  illuminated  pic¬ 
tures  with  available  lenses  and  Super 
XX  film  when  exposures  are  measured  in 
such  minute  fractions  of  a  second,  it  is 
necessary  that  light  of  extreme  intensity 
be  employed.  However,  by  keeping  the 
photographed  area  to  a  small  size  the 
focused,  overvolted  filaments  of  a  few 
150-watt  show  window  spotlights,  hav¬ 
ing  the  sealed-beam  reflector,  are  suffi¬ 
cient  for  full  exposure  at  8,000  picture- 
per-second  speeds.  It  is  interesting  to 
note  that  natural  outdoor  lighting  is  too 
weak  for  speeds  above  2,000  frames  per 
second. 

The  versatility  of  the  Fastax  has  en¬ 
abled  it  to  be  used  in  many  unusual 
applications.  Since  it  does  not  depend 
upon  the  gaseous  discharge  lamp  for 


Fig.  f>.  A  knowledge  of  the  fundamentals  of  speech 
and  hearing  is  important  to  designers  of  telephone 
apparatus.  These  pictures  show  the  vocal  cords 
vibrating  at  low  frequency. 

★ 

illumination  Kodachrome  has  been  used 
successfully;  notable  are  the  natural 
color  high  speed  pictures  of  the  produc¬ 
tion  of  speech  by  the  vocal  cords.  Also, 
polarized  light  has  been  used  in  some 
(Continued  on  Page  297) 


American  Cinematographer  •  August,  1943  293 


tyAiny  £tn(fc-£ifhc 

By  EDWARD  J.  KINGSBURY,  Jr. 


WHEN  amateurs  accompany  their 
films  with  music  on  records,  it  is 
generally  stressed  that  each  se¬ 
quence  be  accompanied  by  music  that 
matches  its  mood  and  is  consistent  with 
the  type  of  film  and  other  selections.  Less 
is  said  about  timing  them  so  that  a  selec¬ 
tion  will  begin  and  end  with  the  fade-in 
and  fade-out  of  the  sequence,  although 
the  music  fits  the  picture  far  more  effec¬ 
tively  in  this  way.  When  music  is  faded 
out  at  random  without  reaching  a  climax, 
a  good  effect  is  lost,  to  say  nothing  of 
the  injustice  to  the  composer. 

One  method  of  matching  the  running 
time  of  a  sequence  to  the  playing  time 
of  its  accompanying  selection  is  to  vary 
the  speed  of  the  projector.  Suppose  that 
a  particular  selection  is  a  few  seconds 
longer  than  the  sequence  it  accompanies. 
By  a  slight  reduction  of  the  speed  of  the 
projector  the  sequence  can  be  stretched 
so  that  it  fades  out  at  the  same  moment 
that  the  last  chord  of  the  music  is  played. 

Likewise  if  the  selection  is  too  short, 
the  speed  can  be  increased  to  reduce  the 
running  time  of  the  film  and  thus  avoid 
having  several  seconds  of  silence.  These 
different  speeds  can  be  synchronized  with 
the  music  by  an  adaptation  of  the 
“strobo-sync”  method  discussed  in  recent 
issues  of  The  American  Cinematog¬ 
rapher.  Althought  this  method  was  de¬ 
signed  originally  to  synchronize  special 
sound-on-disc  accompaniment,  the  set-up, 
illustrated  in  Figure  1,  is  the  same  in 
both  cases. 


With  sound-on-film  the  only  way  to 
match  a  sequence  to  a  given  recording 
is  to  add  or  remove  film  before  it  is  com¬ 
bined  with  the  sound  track.  Amateurs 
can  use  this  method  with  their  silent 
films,  but  generally  it  is  difficult  to  add 
footage  and  often  undesirable  to  remove 
it  from  an  edited  film.  If  the  film  were 
edited  to  fit  a  particular  selection,  it 
would  probably  have  to  be  re-edited  if  a 
better  selection  were  substituted.  This 
method  of  varying  the  speed  of  silent 
projectors  is  especially  valuable  with 
purchased  subjects  and  with  dramatic 
films,  which  are  usually  difficult  to 
re-edit. 

This  method  is  actually  less  difficult 
than  the  use  of  one  speed,  because  each 
cue  comes  from  the  end  of  the  preceding 
selection  and  not  from  a  particular  point 
on  the  film  that  must  be  noted.  Likewise 
experience  has  shown  that  with  a  fairly 
good  library  of  records  from  which  to 
choose,  the  necessary  variations  in  pro¬ 
jector  speed  are  so  slight  that  they  are 
seldom,  if  ever,  perceptible  to  the  audi¬ 
ence.  Extreme  variations  from  the  nor¬ 
mal  speed  are  undesirable. 

Two  formulas  are  quite  useful  in  fig¬ 
uring  the  required  number  of  dots  (or 
bands  or  sectors  as  the  case  may  be)  on 
the  stroboscopic  disc.  To  synchronize  a 
particular  film  at  the  approximate  speed 
desired,  we  must  know  the  relationship 
between  the  number  of  dots  and  the 
speed  of  the  projector.  Then  when  we 


have  the  running  time  of  the  sequence 
at  this  speed  and  the  playing  time  of 
the  music,  we  must  figure  the  number 
of  dots  for  the  speed  which  will  make 
them  equal. 

The  following  symbols  will  be  used: 

B  Number  of  blades  on  the 

shutter 

D  Number  of  dots  on  the  disc 

t  Time  of  sequence  (seconds) 

v  Projector  speed  (frames/ 

second) 

m  subscript  With  music 
s  subscript  Silent 

The  relationship  between  the  number 
of  dots  and  the  projector  speed  is  based 
on  the  fact  that  if  the  dots  are  to  appear 
to  stand  still,  the  number  of  dots  must 
equal  the  number  of  light  flashes  during 
one  revolution  of  the  disc,  or 
light  flashes 

D= - 

revolutions 

Using  a  time  of  one  minute  for  ease  in 
figuring, 

light  flashes  per  minute 

D=r - 

revolutions  per  minute 

The  number  of  light  flashes  per  second 
is,  of  course,  the  product  of  the  speed 
of  projector  in  frames  per  second  and 
the  number  of  blades  on  the  shutter.  The 
speed  of  the  turntable  on  which  the  disc 
is  placed  is  78  rpm,  so 

60  Bv  10 

D  = - =  —  Bv 

78  13 

D 

or  v  =  1.3  — 

B 

The  relationship  between  the  time  and 
the  number  of  dots  is  fairly  obvious — 
their  product  is  a  constant.  The  proof 
is  based  on  this  elemental  formula: 

Length 

Speed  = - 

Time 

Since  the  length  of  sequence  is  constant, 
Length  =  vt  =  constant 
But  from  the  first  formula, 

D  r=  v  x  constant 
So  jDt  =  constant 

or  DA  =  Dmtm 

The  figures  for  the  first  formula  are 
tabulated  in  Figure  2 ;  but  no  tabulation 
is  made  for  the  second  formula,  since  it 
is  easier  to  use  a  slide  rule  for  each 
individual  case. 

A  stroboscopic  disc  for  each  speed  can 
be  made  by  tracing  on  a  blank  card  the 
outline  of  a  gear  with  the  proper  num¬ 
ber  of  teeth  and  then  making  large  dots 
in  this  outline.  For  general  use,  how¬ 
ever,  it  is  easier  if  several  consecutive 
dots  are  combined  on  one  disc,  the  dots 
being  of  contrasting  colors  or  types 
(clear,  solid,  shaded,  or  with  sectors  of 
different  sizes).  For  quick  identification 
the  key  can  be  entered  on  the  music  cue 
sheet  as  well  as  on  the  center  of  the 
disc  itself. 

(Continued  on  Page  308) 


294  August,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


Aces  of  the  Camera 
XXX: 

Lee  Garmes,  A.S.C. 


IT  might  well  be  said  that  Lee 
Garmes,  A.S.C.,  is  a  man  who  refuses 
to  be  satisfied  with  success.  He  be¬ 
lieves  you  are  going  backward  if  you 
are  not  moving  forward.  To  him  there 
is  no  such  thing  as  standing  still.  That, 
undoubtedly,  is  why  he  has  become  one 
of  the  greatest  directors  of  photography 
in  the  business. 

Garmes  was  born  in  Peoria,  Ill.,  in 
1893.  His  was  an  uneventful  life  until 
his  parents  moved  to  Oakland,  Cali¬ 
fornia,  in  1906,  just  in  time  to  land 
them  in  the  midst  of  the  disastrous  San 
Francisco  earthquake  and  fire.  The 
family  immediately  moved  right  out  of 
the  state,  going  to  Denver,  Colorado. 

Garmes  was  always  intensely  inter¬ 
ested  in  motion  pictures,  attending  every 
possible  picture  and  reading  everything 
available  on  the  subject.  His  interest 
was  so  intense  that  in  1915,  when  he  had 
finished  school  in  Denver,  he  persuaded 
his  family  to  move  with  him  to  Holly¬ 
wood,  so  he  could  try  for  a  job  in  films. 

Shortly  after  arriving  in  Hollywood 
young  Garmes  learned  through  a  friend 
that  a  job  was  open  at  the  Thomas  Ince 
Studios.  He  dashed  out,  and  after  being 
stalled  along  for  a  time,  finally  got  into 
the  studio  and  talked  himself  into  the 
job  as  property-boy  and  all-round  handy¬ 
man.  Garmes  was  quick  to  make  friends, 
and  soon  caught  the  eye  of  Cameraman 
John  Leezer  who  started  teaching  him 
the  art  of  photography.  When  Leezer 
later  moved  to  another  lot  to  photograph 
Dorothy  Gish  and  Richard  Barthelmess 
he  took  Garmes  along  as  his  assistant. 

Here  Director  Elmer  Clifton  spotted 
him  as  directorial  material  and  tried  to 
persuade  him  to  become  an  assistant  di¬ 
rector.  Garmes  finally  decided  to  stick 
to  the  camera,  and  after  several  years 
as  an  assistant  cameraman  was  given 
the  job  of  first  cameraman  on  a  series  of 
Gale  Henry  2-reel  comedies.  Following 
these  he  photographed  a  full  length  pic¬ 
ture  with  moderate  success. 

Then  came  the  turn  that  led  Garmes 
to  cinematographic  fame ;  and  also 
brought  fame  to  Director  Mai  St.  Clair 
and  to  Adolph  Menjou.  He  was  assigned 
to  photograph  a  film  called  “The  Grand 
Duchess  and  the  Waiter.”  The  story  was 
considered  more  or  less  of  a  lemon,  and 
Menjou  was  considered  a  second-rate 
actor  because  he  had  “bags”  under  his 


eyes.  Young  Garmes 
started  experiment¬ 
ing  on  eliminating 
those  “bags”  with 
lights,  and  in  so  do¬ 
ing  became  the  first 
cameramen  in  pic¬ 
tures  to  use  mazda 
bulbs  instead  of  car- 
bans.  He  used  two 
mazda  bulbs  with 
empty  tomato  cans 
for  reflectors,  and  to 
the  amazement  of 
everybody,  he  wiped 
out  the  dark 
splotches  the  bags 
had  always  made  on 
Menjou’s  face.  When 
he  saw  that  this 
worked  he  rigged  up 
a  lot  more  mazda  bulbs,  hanging  them 
about  on  the  set.  The  result  was  that  he 
succeeded  in  making  a  picture  with  a 
wide  range  of  tone  values  instead  of  the 
sharp  blacks  and  whites  of  arc-lighted 
pictures.  It  can  truthfully  be  said  that 
by  introducing  the  mazda  lights  in  this 
film  Garmes  made  one  of  the  most  im¬ 
portant  contributions  ever  developed  in 
the  field  of  motion  picture  photography. 

When  “The  Grand  Duchess  and  the 
Waiter”  was  finished  studio  executives 
thought  the  lighting  too  radical,  and 
twice  almost  shelved  the  picture.  Finally 
they  released  it  during  Christmas  week 
when  business  was  usually  slack,  and — 
to  their  surprise,  the  film  drew  capacity 
crowds  and  became  one  of  the  box  office 
sensations  of  the  year.  Garmes,  Menjou 
and  St.  Clair  became  famous  overnight. 

From  then  on  Garmes  had  the  pick  of 
the  pictures.  He  went  to  France  and 
later  to  Algiers  for  Rex  Ingram  to  make 
the  first  “Garden  of  Allah.”  He  followed 
this  with  picture  after  picture  in  rapid 
succession,  and  continued  experimenting 
with  mazda  lights.  In  one  picture  on 
which  the  budget  for  lighting  was  set  at 
$12,000  Garmes  cut  the  cost  to  only 
$3,000  by  his  home-made  mazda  light 
contraptions.  When  the  Academy  of  Mo¬ 
tion  Picture  Arts  and  Sciences  was 
formed  in  1927  one  of  the  first  things  the 
technical  division  of  the  Academy  did 
was  to  advise  all  cameraman  to  visit 
Garmes  on  the  set  in  order  to  study  his 
methods  of  using  mazda  lights. 

Besides  pioneering  in  lighting,  Garmes 


was  likewise  one  of  the  first  cameramen 
to  use  panchromatic  film.  Despite  the 
objections  of  his  directors,  Garmes  man¬ 
aged  to  “sneak”  a  lot  of  shots  in  on  the 
new  panchromatic  film,  and  then  when 
the  directors  commented  upon  the  fine 
quality  of  those  scenes  he  would  tell 
them  the  truth,  and  they  would  then  ac¬ 
cept  panchromatic  film. 

In  1932  Garmes  reached  absolute  tops 
in  his  photographic  profession  by  being 
given  the  Academy  Award  for  his 
photography  on  “Shanghai  Express.” 
Besides  this  distinction,  Garmes  by  then 
was  considered  one  of  the  highest  paid 
cameramen  in  the  industry,  with  a 
weekly  salary  reported  in  the  four-figure 
class. 

But  this  man  from  Peoria  wasn’t  sat¬ 
isfied.  He  would  not  rest  on  his  photo¬ 
graphic  laurels.  He  wanted  to  direct 
pictures,  so  in  1933  officials  at  the  Fox 
Studios  gave  him  a  contract  as  a  di¬ 
rector.  This  almost  turned  out  to  be  the 
ruination  of  Garmes’  career,  for  on  the 
very  day  he  started  his  contract  the  fa¬ 
mous  cameramen’s  strike  broke  in  Holly¬ 
wood.  The  studio  officials  suggested  that 
Garmes  photograph  his  own  pictures. 
This  he  firmly  refused  to  do.  For  months 
Garmes  came  to  the  studio  daily,  read 
story  after  story,  received  his  weekly 
check  but — was  given  no  directing  assign¬ 
ment.  Finally  Garmes’  sincerity  and  the 
fact  he  was  in  the  right  was  recognized 
by  the  studio  and  he  was  again  back  in 
favor. 

(Continued  on  Page  296) 


American  Cinematographer  •  August,  1943  295 


A.S.C.  on  Parade 


THE  other  night  at  an  A.S.C.  meet¬ 
ing  two  directors  of  photography 
were  talking.  “This  last  year,”  said 
one  of  them,  “I  made  sixteen  pictures 
— twelve  of  them  features  ranging  all 
the  way  from  top-budget  ‘specials’  to 
ten-day  quickies.”  Said  the  other  one, 
“Last  year  I  made  about  three  and  a 
half  features,  and  put  in  just  as  much 
work  and  worry  as  I  want  to — maybe 
a  little  more.” 

It  seems  to  us  that  there  would  be 
a  lot  gained  if  a  happy  medium  could 
be  found  between  these  two  extremes. 
Three  or  four  really  big  pictures  prob¬ 
ably  represent  as  much  in  earning-time, 
work  and  worry  for  a  director  of  pho¬ 
tography  as  do  half-a-dozen  smaller 
“quickies”  .  .  .  and  we’ve  never  seen 
any  logic  in  assigning  a  major-studio 
feature  cameraman  to  a  short  merely 
to  get  a  few  days’  extra  work  out  of 
him  while  he’s  on  payroll. 

Despite  the  increasing  number  of 
cinematographers  going  into  the  Armed 
Forces,  the  industry  still  has  a  generous 
over-supply  of  trained  directors  of  pho¬ 
tography.  Why  not,  therefore,  spread 
the  industry’s  production  out  more  equi¬ 
tably  between  them?  Cinematographers 
should  support  a  move  in  this  direction, 
if  only  for  the  selfish  aim  of  being 
able  to  give  their  pictures  better  (and 
therefore  potentially  higher-priced)  pho¬ 
tography  because  they  come  to  each  pic¬ 
ture  physically  and  mentally  fresher. 
Producers  should  support  it  for  this 
reason,  and  because  it  would  enable 
them  to  conserve  their  trained  manpower 
not  only  against  the  ceaseless  drain  by 
the  Armed  Forces,  but  against  the  over¬ 
work  which  has  killed  off  so  many  in¬ 
valuable  cinematographers  of  late. 

• 

The  following  members  of  the  A.  S. 
C.  are  directing  photography  on  the  fol¬ 
lowing  pictures. 

At  Columbia  Studios:  Rudolph  Mate, 
“Cover  Girl;”  Philip  Tannura,  “There’s 
Something  About  a  Soldier;”  Franz 
Planer,  “Tropicana;”  L.  W.  O’Connell, 
“Doughboys  in  Ireland;”  Ernest  Miller, 
“Is  Everybody  Happy?” 

At  Metro  -  Goldwyn  -  Mayer  Studios : 
Karl  Freund,  “A  Guy  Named  Joe;”  Hal 
Rosson,  “America;”  William  Daniels, 
“The  Heavenly  Body;”  George  Folsey, 
“The  White  Cliffs  of  Dover;”  Robert 
Surtees,  “Meet  the  People;”  Len  Smith, 
“Broadway  Rhythm;”  Charles  Lawton, 
“See  Here,  Private  Hargrove;”  Les 
White,  “Andy  Hardy’s  Blonde  Trouble.” 

At  Paramount  Studios:  George 
Barnes,  “Frenchman’s  Creek;”  John 
Seitz,  “Hail  the  Conquering  Hero;”  Vic¬ 
tor  Milner,  “The  Story  of  Dr.  Wassell;” 
Henry  Sharpe,  “Ministry  of  Fear;” 
Charles  Lang,  “Standing  Room  Only;” 
Fred  Jackman,  Jr.,  “Timber  Queen.” 

At  RKO  Studios:  Tony  Guadio,  “Re¬ 
venge;”  Jack  McKenzie,  “Gildersleeve  on 


Broadway;”  Nick  Musuraca,  “An  Amer¬ 
ican  Story;”  Frank  Redman,  “Govern¬ 
ment  Girl;”  Russell  Metty,  “Around  the 
World.” 

At  Samuel  Goldwyn  Studios:  James 
Wong  Howe,  “The  North  Star;”  Ray 
Rennahan,  “Up  in  Arms.” 

United  Artists:  John  Mescal,  “The 
Girl  From  Leningrad;”  Lee  Garmes, 
“Jack  London;”  Russell  Harlan,  “Texas 
Masquerader.” 

At  20th  Century-Fox  Studios:  Charles 
Clarke,  “Guadalcanal  Diary;”  Joseph 
LaShelle,  “Happy  Land;”  Ernest  Pal¬ 
mer,  “Pin-Up  Girl;”  Leon  Shamroy, 
Buffalo  Bill.” 

At  Universal  Studios:  Charles  Van 
Enger,  “Crazy  House;”  George  Robin¬ 
son,  “Ali  Baba  and  the  Forty  Thieves;” 
Elwood  Bredell,  “His  Butler’s  Sister;” 
Hal  Mohr,  “Man  of  the  Family;”  Wil¬ 
liam  Alton,  “The  Professor  Goes  Wild.” 

At  Warner  Bros.  Studios:  Carl  Guth¬ 
rie,  “In  Our  Time;”  Merritt  Gerstead, 
“Conflict;”  Arthur  Edeson,  “Shine  on 
Harvest  Moon.” 

• 

Lucky  Karl  Struss,  A.S.C.,  is  an  in¬ 
ternationally  famed  still  photopictorial- 
ist.  Preparing  for  Paramount’s  “And 
The  Angels  Sing,”  he  and  stillman 
“Whitey”  Schaefer  shot  all  the  costume 
and  make-up  tests  in  stills,  rather  than 
movies. 

• 

John  F.  Seitz,  A.S.C.,  and  his  assist¬ 
ant,  Harlowe  Stengel,  double  in  brass 
as  technical  advisers.  Seems  Erich  von 
Stroheim,  playing  Field-Marshal  Rommel 
in  “Five  Graves  to  Cairo,”  learned  the 
real  Rommel  was  an  enthusiastic  mini- 
camerist,  so  “Von”  added  a  Leica  to 
his  uniform  accessories.  And  of  course 
he  had  to  have  expert  advice  on  how 
to  handle  it  authentically! 

• 

Stanley  Cortez,  A.S.C.,  after  more 
than  a  year  on  loan,  at  last  gets  a 
chance  to  work  for  his  own  boss,  D.  0. 
Selznick,  directing  the  photography  of 
Shirley  Temple’s  “Since  You  Went 
Away.”  And  thanks,  Stan,  for  that  high¬ 
ly  complimentary  letter  about  the  May 
issue.  We  appreciate  it  sincerely. 

• 

Leon  Shamroy,  A.S.C.,  with  “Claudia” 
successfully  finished,  slipping  off  to  his 
ranch  for  a  well-earned  rest. 

• 

Could  anybody  identify  the  well- 
known  cinematographer  who,  so  rumor 
has  it,  always  gets  too  seasick  to  go  on 
any  floating  locations,  yet  spends  his 
week-ends  a-yachting — charmingly  ac¬ 
companied —  ? 

• 

Johnny  Arnold,  A.S.C.,  and  Emery 
Huse,  A.S.C.,  busy  teaching  a  class  of 
Leatherneck  cameramen,  with  Capt. 
Henry  Freulich,  A.S.C.,  U^.M.C.,  help¬ 
ing  keep  the  situation  well  in  hand. 


Aces  of  the  Camera 

(Continued  from  Page  395) 

However,  at  this  point  Ben  Hecht  and 
Charles  McArthur  decided  to  make  pic¬ 
tures  in  New  York.  They  asked  David 
0.  Selznick  to  find  them  a  man  who 
would  be  both  a  good  cameraman  and  a 
director.  Selznick,  who  had  never  met 
Garmes,  recommended  him.  Garmes  se¬ 
cured  his  release  from  Fox  and  went  to 
New  York.  There  Garmes  photographed, 
directed,  edited  and  turned  out  three 
films,  two  of  which  were  big  box  office 
successes — “Crime  Without  Passion”  and 
“The  Scoundrel.” 

Meanwhile  Garmes  had  met  Alexander 
Korda  and  had  told  him  of  all  the  origi¬ 
nal  things  he  wanted  to  do  in  films,  but 
which  the  studio  heads  were  afraid  of. 
So,  just  as  Garmes  finished  his  third 
picture  for  Hecht  and  McArthur,  Korda 
cabled  him  from  England  to  go  over 
with  him  and  do  all  the  things  he  had 
talked  about.  He  accepted! 

For  three  and  a  half  years  he  worked 
in  England  as  cameraman  and  director. 
During  this  period  he  helped  advance 
British  films  by  introducing  various 
American  techniques.  But  all  was  not  a 
bed  of  roses  for  ambitious  Mr.  Garmes. 
He  had  an  opportunity  in  England  to  do 
“Wings  of  the  Morning,”  one  of  the  big¬ 
gest  technicolor  pictures  ever  made  in 
England,  but  had  to  give  it  up  because 
of  his  contract  with  Hecht  and  Mc¬ 
Arthur.  They  called  him  back  to  New 
York  to  make  a  picture.  He  sat  in  New 
York  and  drew  salary  but  the  picture 
never  was  made. 

And  then  came  a  bitter  disappoint¬ 
ment.  Garmes  was  signed  to  direct 
“Pygmalion.”  At  the  last  minute  George 
Bernard  Shaw  learned  he  was  not  a 
British  subject  and  refused  to  let  him 
work  on  the  picture.  Garmes  drew  his 
salary  for  directing  the  film,  but  spent 
the  time  touring  Italy  and  Southern 
France. 

The  final  act  in  the  British  interlude 
came  when  Garmes  formed  his  own  pro¬ 
ducing  company  in  England.  He  had 
everything  lined  up  when  the  bottom 
dropped  out  of  the  British  financial 
market  and  his  prospective  backers  had 
to  withdraw. 

Although  Garmes  hoped  to  remain  in 
England  permanently,  had  even  bought 
a  home  there,  he  was  lured  back  to 
Hollywood  by  an  offer  to  photograph 
“Gone  With  the  Wind.”  He  returned, 
lensed  the  picture  for  several  weeks  until 
a  studio  shakeup  took  place  which  saw 
a  new  director,  new  cameraman  and 
practically  entire  new  technical  crew  on 
the  film. 

Unattached  again,  he  began  toying 
with  the  idea  of  becoming  an  independ¬ 
ent  producer.  With  screen  writer  Adele 
Comandini  as  his  partner,  he  made  a  pic¬ 
ture  for  release  through  RKO.  The  ven¬ 
ture  was  not  a  financial  success,  so 

(Continued  on  Page  306) 


296  August,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


Among  The 

L.  A.  8  mm.  Club 

JULY  meeting  of  the  Los  Angeles 
8  mm.  Club  was  held  the  evening  of 
July  13  at  the  Bell  &  Howell  audi¬ 
torium.  It  was  “Contest  Night,”  and 
brought  forth  some  excellent  entries. 

Prize  winners  were:  first  prize,  “Billy’s 
Big  Adventure,”  an  amazing  film  b£ 
Fred  Evans,  based  on  his  young  son’s 
first  hair  cut;  second  prize,  “Studio  Pro¬ 
grams  and  Camera  Cruises,”  by  Irwin 
Dietze;  third  prize,  “Nitwit  News,”  by 
W.  D.  Garlock. 

Rating  honorable  mention  were  “Ice 
Capades,”  by  Stanley  Clemens;  “The 
Mischa  Auer  Radio  Hour,”  hy  C.  W. 
Wade,  Jr.;  and  “Los  Angeles  Floods,” 
by  Dr.  R.  S.  Petter.  The  program  con¬ 
cluded  with  screening  of  two  guest’s 
films,  “Life  in  the  Ozarks,”  by  Bruce 
Barnhill,  and  “A  Victory  Garden  or 
Where’s  the  Sloan’s  Liniment,”  by  Mr. 
and  Mrs.  Earl  Holbrook. 

Utah  Cine  Arts  Club 

HE  Utah  Cine  Arts  Club  sponsored 
a  special  showing,  on  the  south 
steps  of  the  State  Capitol  Building 
in  Salt  Lake  City,  of  club  films  on  the 
night  of  July  14. 

Purpose  of  the  showing  was  to  ac¬ 
quaint  the  public,  especially  newcomers 
to  the  State  and  men  in  uniform,  with 
the  scenic  and  other  attractions  the  State 
of  Utah  has  to  offer.  All  films  shown 
were  made  by  members  of  the  club.  The 
program  lasted  one  hour  and  forty-five 
minutes  and  was  acclaimed  a  real  suc¬ 
cess. 

Featuring  the  showing  were  the  fol¬ 
lowing  8  mm.  pictures: 

“Cheating  the  Dentist,”  by  A1  Lon- 
dema;  “Mesa  Verde,”  by  Virginia  Smith; 
“Roamin’  Holiday,”  by  Dr.  C.  Elmer 
Barrett;  “Rodger,”  by  F.  K.  Fullmer; 
“Some  Western  Color,”  by  Elmo  H. 
Lund;  “Dog  Daze,”  by  George  Brignand; 
“Canyon  Trails,”  by  Bishop  C.  E. 
Schank;  and  “The  Utah  Trail,”  by  Mr. 
and  Mrs.  A1  Morton. 


Frisco  Cinema  Club 

NTERESTING  indeed  was  the  July 
meeting  of  the  Cinema  Club  of  San 
Francisco,  which  was  held  the  eve¬ 
ning  of  July  20.  The  meeting  was  held 
in  the  Women’s  City  Club,  and  was  pre¬ 
ceded  by  a  pre-meeting  dinner. 

Dr.  J.  Allyn  Thatcher,  chairman  of 
the  Club’s  education  program,  gave  an 
interesting  demonstration  of  making  disc 
recordings  which  combine  narrative  and 
musical  backgrounds. 

Mr.  A.  0.  Olson  thrilled  the  gathering 
with  a  demonstration  of  his  apparatus 
for  recording  sound  on  wire,  which  also 
synchronizes  the  sound  to  8  mm.  film. 
He  then  presented  an  excellent  8  mm. 
Kodachrome  film,  “Mountain  To  Sea¬ 
shore.” 


M  ovie  Clubs 

Southern  Cinema  Club 

TARTING  with  the  July  meeting, 
the  Southern  Cinema  Club  insti¬ 
tuted  a  policy  of  holding  meetings 
at  members’  homes.  First  of  these  was 
on  Sunday,  July  25,  at  the  home  of  Ben 
Gale. 

The  meeting  was  divided  into  two  ses¬ 
sions,  afternoon  and  evening.  Members 
brought  their  lunches.  Afternoon  was  a 
technical  session,  with  some  picture  film¬ 
ing.  In  the  evening  uncut  films  were  dis¬ 
played  in  a  special  contest  being  con¬ 
ducted  by  the  club. 


PLEASE  NOTE 

E  are  always  pleased  to  print 
news  about  the  activities  of  the 
various  Amateur  Cinema  Clubs, 
and  from  letters  that  have  come  to  the 
editor’s  desk,  we  know  that  amateurs 
throughout  the  country  like  to  read 

about  what  the  other  clubs  are  doing.  So, 
you  publicity  directors  of  the  many  clubs, 
why  not  get  busy  and  send  in  more  news 
to  this  magazine? 

We  can  use  pictures,  too,  of  your 

gatherings  and  activities.  If  you  are 

shooting  a  film,  send  us  photos  of  your 

group  in  action.  If  some  club  member 
develops  a  new  idea  send  that  along  for 
the  benefit  of  the  members  of  other 
clubs.  Many  times  some  particular  ac¬ 
tivity  of  a  club  is  worthy  of  a  special 
feature  story.  If  you  have  a  good  writer 
in  the  club,  have  him  do  a  feature  and 
send  it  to  us  with  photographs,  and  we 
will  be  happy  to  print  it.  Remember, 
this  is  your  magazine,  so  take  advantage 
of  it. 

The  Editor. 


The  New  Fastex 
High  Speed  Camera 

(Conti  nued  from  Page  293) 

tests,  particularly  in  studying  the  stress 
and  impact  conditions  in  transparent  ma¬ 
terials.  It  is  also  possible  to  take  high¬ 
speed  pictures  of  self-luminous  objects, 
such  as  the  filaments  of  incandescent 
lamps  under  test. 

Many  of  the  current  applications  of 
the  Fastax  are  on  highly  restricted 
projects  and  naturally  cannot  be  dis¬ 
cussed  at  this  time.  But  high  speed 
analysis  is  here  to  stay  and  its  applica¬ 
tion  to  tomorrow’s  research  will  play  a 
big  part  in  making  the  mechanical  serv¬ 
ants  of  the  post-war  civilian  more  effi¬ 
cient,  less  costly,  and  more  widely  dis¬ 
tributed. 


American  Cinematographer  •  August,  1943  297 


3?  IB  (DIFS 


fsiaip®®  wan* m  sus&a®^1 


” Hi-Hat 93  and  Shiftover  Alignment 

Gauge 

*  Illustrated  is  the  B  &  H  Eyemo  camera  mounted  on  the 
Shiftover  Alignment  Gauge  and  "Hi-Hat"  low-base  adaptor. 
The  "Hi-Hat"  low-base  adaptor  takes  the  "Professional  Junior"* 
tripod  head  for  setups  where  the  tripod  legs  cannot  be  used. 
The  Shiftover  device  (designed  by  Camera  Equipment  Co.  and 
patent  applied  for),  is  the  finest,  lightest  and  most  efficient 
available  for  parallax  correction  for  the  Eyemo  Spider  Turret 
prismatic  focusing  type  camera.  The  male  of  the  Shiftover 
attaches  to  the  camera  base  permanently  and  permits  using 
the  regular  camera  handle  if  desired.  Further  data  about  the 
Hi-Hat"  and  Shiftover  will  be  sent  upon  request. 


ABOVE,  LEFT — the  "Hi-Hat"  ready  for  the  friction  type  "Professional 
Junior"  tripod  head  to  be  affixed.  Under  it  is  the  finger-grip  head  fasten¬ 
ing  nut  that  firmly  holds  the  removable  tripod  head  onto  either  the  "Hi- 
Hat"  or  tripod  legs  base.  CENTER— the  new  friction  type  "Professional 
Junior"  removable  tripod  head  that  fits  both  the  "Hi-Hat"  and  Camera 
Equipment  Company  tripod.  RIGHT — the  tripod  legs  base  ready  for  the 
friction  type  head  to  be  affixed. 


FR/ 


f&SL  5I3Sta@gi"* 


BILH  IUIS&®  &lff®  "SHMa&IT" 


The  Netv  Removable  Head 
ef Professional  Junior 99 *  Tripod 

*  The  new  removable  head  feature  adds  great  flexibility  to  the 
versatile  "Professional  Junior"*  Tripod.  It  is  now  possible  to 
easily  remove  the  friction  type  head  from  the  tripod  legs  base 
by  simply  unscrewing  a  finger-grip  head  fastening  nut.  The  tripod 
head  can  then  be  mounted  on  a  "Hi-Hat"  low-base  adaptor  for 
low  setups. 

The  friction  type  head  gives  super-smooth  pan  and  tilt  action, — 
360°  pan  and  80°  tilt.  A  generous  sized  pin  and  trunnion  assures 
long,  dependable  service.  "Spread-leg"  design  affords  utmost 
rigidity  and  quick,  positive  height  adjustments.  A  "T"  level  is 
built  into  this  superfine  tripod.  The  top-plate  can  be  set  for 
16mm  E.K.  Cine  Special,  with  or  without  motor;  35mm  DeVry 
and  B  &  H  Eyemo  (with  motor),  and  with  or  without  alignment 
gauge.  The  tripod  head  is  unconditionally  guaranteed  5  years. 
More  data  about  the  "Professional  Junior"*  Tripod  With  Re¬ 
movable  Head  is  contained  in  literature  that  will  be  sent  upon 
reuqest. 

Tripod  Head  Unconditionallif 
Guaranteed  5  Years 

"Professional  Junior"*  Tripods,  Developing  Kits,  "Hi-Hats"  and  Shiftover 
Alignment  Gauges  made  by  Camera  Equipment  Co.  are  used  by  the  U.  S. 
Navy,  Army  Air  Bases,  Signal  Corps,  Office  of  Strategic  Services  and  other 
Government  Agencies — also  by  many  leading  Newsreel  companies  and 
16  mm  and  33  mmmotion  picture  producers. 

*  Patent  No.  2318910 

*  Patent  No.  2318910 


Above  —  Collapsible  and  adjustable 
telescoping  metal  triangle.  Extends  from 
M>Y2"  fo  26!/2".  tfas  wing  locking  nuts 
for  adjusting  leg  spread  and  stud  holes 
for  inserting  points  of  tripod  feet.  Tri¬ 
angles  prevent  damage,  insure  camera¬ 
men  that  their  equipment  remains  in  cor¬ 
rect  position  and  will  not  slip  on  or  mar 
any  type  of  surface.  Further  particulars 
on  request. 


~Tke  JUral  spectrum 

By  F.  M.  HIRST 


A  CAR  rambling  over  the  hard 
packed  dirt  roads  of  Cape  Breton 
came  slowly  to  a  stop.  It  seemed 
as  if  some  strange  power  had  prevented 
it  from  going  on.  As  two  people  stepped 
from  the  car,  they  paused  to  breathe  in 
the  heavily  scented  air,  for  they  had 
come  upon  one  of  nature’s  glorious 
flower  gardens.  Wild  flowers,  in  never 
ending  profusion,  covered  the  hillsides 
and  carpeted  the  fields  in  glowing  colors. 
Here,  indeed,  was  a  paradise  for  the 
wild  flower  lover  and  manna  for  the 
camera  enthusiast.  It  was  irresistible! 
Until  then  the  idea  of  taking  movies  of 
wild  flowers  was  far  from  our  thoughts, 
but  soon  we  had  enthusiastically  exposed 
two  rolls  of  film. 

That  was  six  years  ago,  and  since 
then  we  have  been  shooting  wild  flowers 
at  every  opportunity.  Each  new  trip 
brings  to  light  different  varieties  of 
flowers,  but  this  is  getting  ahead  of  our 
story. 

While  motoring  through  Cape  Breton, 
our  attention  was  attracted  to  deep  yel¬ 
low  flowers  lining  both  sides  of  the  road 
and  forming  a  golden  trail,  ever  leading 
us  onward.  At  first  we  thought  it  was 
goldenrod  but  it  was  too  early  in  the 
season  for  this  flower.  Upon  closer  ex¬ 
amination  we  found  the  plants  to  be 
about  two  feet  tall  and  the  flowers  about 
the  size  of  wild  asters,  growing  in  heavy 
clusters.  They  are  richer  in  hue  than 
the  goldenrod — more  of  an  orangey  yel¬ 
low.  There  was  no  one  to  ask  its  name 
as  Cape  Breton  is  very  thinly  populated, 
but  some  time  later  we  stopped  and  in¬ 
quired  of  a  farmer.  “It  is  known  only 
as  stinkin’  Willie.”  This  endearing  ap¬ 
pellation  did  not  satisfy  us  and  made 
us  more  determined  than  ever  to  know 
its  true  name.  Days  later  we  came  upon 
an  old  monastery,  founded  early  in  the 
17th  century  by  a  band  of  monks  from 
Europe.  It  was  abandoned  more  than 
a  century  ago  by  the  few  remaining 
monks  who  had  survived  the  hardships 
and  disease  which  had  wiped  out  most  of 
their  brave  brethren.  The  monks  who 
were  re-building  the  monastery  at  the 
time  of  our  visit  had  recently  arrived 
from  Germany.  The  Father  Friar  in 
charge  was  the  only  one  of  the  group 
who  could  speak  English,  and  it  was 
from  him  that  we  learned  the  name  of 
the  flower.  He  told  us  that  it  was  called 
senecio,  and  was  foreign  to  Cape  Bre¬ 
ton.  No  one  could  recall  how  it  came 
there.  It  seems  that  cattle  will  not  eat 
it  while  it  is  growing,  but  if  it  should 


be  accidentally  cut  with  the  hay,  then  it 
poisons  the  cattle.  However,  sheep  can 
eat  it  while  it  is  growing,  with  no  harm¬ 
ful  effects. 

It  was  these  yellow  flowers  that  sug¬ 
gested  “Golden  Trail”  as  a  title  for  our 
film  of  Cape  Breton.  Long  shots  of 
golden  fields  and  close-ups  against  the 
sky  and  the  blue  of  the  lakes  enhanced 
the  richness  of  this  golden  senecio. 

Another  flower  of  Cape  Breton  is  the 
thistle,  identical  to  that  which  we  saw 
in  Scotland.  Scotland  has  left  an  indel¬ 
ible  mark  in  this  new  land.  Most  of  the 
population  have  a  marked  Scottish  ac¬ 
cent,  and  I  suspect  that  it  was  they  who 
brought  the  thistle  as  a  gentle  reminder 
of  their  homeland.  It  has  a  large  fra¬ 
grant  flower,  rich  in  purple  hue,  with 
bold  prickly  leaves.  We  couldn’t  resist 
a  shot  of  this  for  the  flower  we  chose 
had  a  butterfly  resting  upon  it.  The  best 
angle  for  picturing  the  thistle  is  down¬ 
ward  in  order  to  bring  out  the  true 
color  against  its  green  background.  To 
shoot  such  a  flower  against  the  sky 
would  be  a  mistake,  for  the  blue  of  the 
sky  would  absorb  all  the  blue  out  of  the 
purple,  leaving  it  washy  in  tone.  A  bee 
on  another  thistle  next  claimed  our  at¬ 
tention.  The  camera  was  placed  in  an 
Eastman  titler  and  the  title  easel  placed 
over  the  flower  without  disturbing  the 
bee.  As  a  result,  one  thistle  and  a  busy 
bee,  sharp  in  every  detail,  fills  the 
screen.  Small  titlers  are  excellent  for 
such  close-up  work.  If  I  had  stopped  to 
use  a  telephoto  lense,  perhaps  I  would 
have  lost  the  bee  and  missed  centering 
the  flower,  due  to  paralax. 

Not  far  away  large  masses  of  bounc¬ 
ing  bet  were  dancing  in  the  breeze.  It 
is  easy  to  see  why  it  was  so  named,  for 
these  heavy  clusters  of  rose-pink  flowers 
literally  bounce  up  and  down.  They  are 
also  known  as  “soapwort.”  They  are 
spicy  fragrant  and  the  juice  in  the  stem 
is  sticky  and  suds  in  water.  Here  again 
we  took  a  medium  shot  and  used  the 
titler  for  a  close-up. 

At  our  feet  we  found  the  bell  flower. 
These  bell  shaped  purple  flowers  have 
five  lobes  and  grow  on  one  side  of  the 
stem.  They  are  small  flowers  and  re¬ 
quire  the  use  of  the  titler  in  photograph¬ 
ing  them. 

Our  first  impulse  on  seeing  a  field  of 
wild  roses  was  to  shoot  the  whole  field. 
The  result  is  very  disappointing,  for 
you  see  nothing  but  a  mass  of  green 
covered  by  pink  dots.  A  medium  shot  of 
one  bush  followed  by  a  close-up  is  far 


better.  To  have  one  full  blown  wild 
rose  with  its  yellow  center  fill  the  screen, 
will  bring  exclamations  of  delight  from 
your  audience. 

Bunch  berries  seemed  to  spread  a  scar¬ 
let  mantle  over  the  hillsides  of  Cape 
Breton.  These  bunches  of  vivid  scarlet 
remind  one  of  holly  at  Christmas  time. 
They  grow  in  heavy  clusters  close  to  the 
ground,  each  cluster  surrounded  by  its 
own  symmetrically  grouped  leaves.  If 
you  are  partial  to  scarlet,  here  is  some¬ 
thing  that  will  set  your  screen  aflame. 
Don’t  forget  to  use  your  small  titler. 

Another  showy  plant  is  the  fire  weed. 
In  some  sections  this  beautiful  orchid 
pink  hue  colors  the  landscape  as  far  as 
the  eye  can  see.  This  is  one  scene  that 
calls  for  a  long  shot,  but  don’t  neglect 
your  medium  shot  and  close-up  for  the 
final  punch. 

Most  people  would  pass  the  turtle 
head  by,  but  to  see  a  close-up  on  the 
screen  is  to  really  appreciate  its  beauty. 
It  is  of  the  figwort  family  and  has 
sharp-toothed  leaves  and  white  clustered 
flowers  which  open  in  stages,  starting  at 
the  bottom  with  white  and  gradually 
tapering  off  in  green  buds  at  the  top. 

As  we  were  driving  by  a  lake  a 
frightened  crane  rose  from  the  water. 
Hoping  for  a  shot  we  stopped  the  car 
and  walked  to  the  water’s  edge.  Our 
quarry  never  returned,  but  we  were  re¬ 
warded  by  shots  of  lovely  water  lilies. 
Close  by  we  discovered  an  orchid  grow¬ 
ing  in  a  secluded  nook,  and  our  camera 
soon  captured  the  delicate  orchid  tints 
of  this  graceful  flower.  I  had  heard 
that  there  were  orchids  in  Cape  Breton, 
but  I  couldn’t  picture  them  growing  so 
far  away  from  the  tropics. 

On  several  occasions  I  have  been  for¬ 
tunate  to  find  flowers  growing  by  a  still 
pool.  To  shoot  at  a  slightly  downward 
angle  from  the  opposite  side  of  the  pool 
gives  a  delightfully  mysterious  effct. 
Eliminate  the  sky  and  show  the  pool 
with  its  colorful  reflections.  The  simple 
procedure  of  dropping  a  pebble  in  the 
center  of  the  pool,  after  the  camera 
starts,  adds  the  needed  animation  and 
the  surprise  element. 

The  common  milk  weed  is  a  flower 
that  seems  to  be  passed  by  more  than 
any  other  flower.  I  suppose  that  it  is 
so  common  that  most  people  ignore  it. 
Its  flowers  are  more  like  berries  growing 
in  clusters  with  a  rosy  hue.  It  photo- 

(Continued  on  Page  302) 


300  August,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


WILLIAM  STULL,  a  sc 


THE  STAFF 

J.  E.  BRULATOUR,  INC. 


American  Cinematographer  •  August,  1943  301 


REMARKS  ON  CINE  SPEEDS 
FOR  AMATEURS 

By  G.  EVERETT  MARSH 


AFTER  the  cine  amateur  has  be¬ 
come  on  familiar  terms  with  his 
camera  and  can  operate  it  with 
much  the  same  ease  as  his  still  camera, 
he  may  aspire  to  shooting  races,  to  slow 
motion,  to  animation,  or  to  lapse  time 
photography.  An  understanding  of  the 
principles  underlying  these  adaptations 
is  essential  and  they  are  herewith  briefly 
presented. 

We  have  to  deal  with  three  cine  speeds, 
namely: — 

1.  Normal  speed,  16  frames  per  sec¬ 
ond,  (16  f.p.s.).  This  is  the  usual  ama¬ 
teur  camera  speed  and  it  is  the  amateur 
projector  speed  invariably.  In  this  case 
the  speed  of  action  on  the  screen  (screen- 
speed)  is  the  same  as  the  speed  of  the 
subject  or  object,  (object-speed). 

2.  Superspeed,  a  speed  greater  than 
16  f.p.s.  Since  the  projector  speed  is 
constant,  the  screen-speed  will  be  less 
than  the  object-speed,  and  we  have  what 
is  called  “slow-motion.” 

3.  Subspeed,  a  speed  less  than  16  f.p.s. 
The  screen  then  portrays  a  scene  taking 
place  at  a  rate  above  the  natural  or  nor¬ 
mal  one.  The  projector  speed,  designated 
by  SP,  will  be  assumed  to  be  constant  at 
all  times.  If  it  is  above  or  below  the  nor¬ 
mal  value  of  16  f.p.s.,  the  action  on  the 
screen  will  be  unnatural  and  when  it 
drops  a  point  or  two,  flicker  arises.  When 
the  camera  speed,  Sc  is  equal  to  the 
projector  speed,  SP,  the  screen  speed,  Ss, 
will  be  the  same  as  the  object  speed,  S„. 
That  is,  when  Sc  =  SP,  we  have  S*  =  S„, 
and  the  picture  correctly  presents  the 
scene  in  the  matter  of  rate  of  move¬ 
ment. 

In  the  case  of  a  rapidly  moving  scene, 
as  a  race  of  some  sort,  our  interest  is 
increased  if  the  action  is  slowed  down 
on  the  screen.  The  camera  is  operated 
at  a  speed  greater  than  16  f.p.s.  and  the 
screen  speed  is  equal  to  (S0xSP/Se),  or 
Ss  =  16S»/Sc.  Thus  if  the  camera  speed 
is  64  f.p.s.,  the  action  on  the  screen  will 
be  (168S0/64),  or  So/4,  or  hi  as  fast  as 
the  actual  scene.  The  added  interest  that 
the  shot  provides  is  secured  at  the  cost 
of  extra  film.  The  duration  of  transit 
of  the  film  through  the  camera  is  here 
one-fourth  of  the  usual  time,  and  100 
feet  of  our  beloved  pan  rushes  madly 
from  one  spool  to  the  other  in  a  minute 
and  a  couple  of  seconds!  By  reason  of 
this  decreased  time  of  camera  operation, 
the  need  of  accuracy  in  exposure  is  in¬ 
creased  and  a  keener  consideration  of  all 
photographic  factors  should  be  given. 


To  illustrate,  let  us  assume  that  we 
are  going  to  “slow  motion”  a  high  dive 
of  two  seconds  duration.  What  should  be 
the  camera  speed  if  the  screening  time 
is  to  be  six  seconds?  From  the  relation, 
Sc  =  16  Ts/To,  where  Ts,  T„  are  the  dura¬ 
tions  of  screening  and  performance  re¬ 
spectively,  we  have  Sc  =  16  x  6/2  =  48 ; 
that  is,  the  camera  speed  should  be  48 
f.p.s. 

If  the  camera  speed  is  subnormal  for 
slow  moving  events,  the  screen  speed  is 
equal  to  S0xS„/Sc.  As  an  example,  and 
using  the  slowest  speed  that  the  ordinary 
camera  has,  a  shot  was  made  of  a  turtle 
race  at  8  f.p.s.  The  screen  speed  is 
So  x  16/8,  or  2S0,  that  is,  twice  the  actual 
speed.  For  lower  speeds  special  methods 
of  camera  control  must  ordinarily  be 
used. 

This  last  relation  holds  for  lapse  time 
photography,  the  filming  of  events  that 
progress  so  slowly  that  they  require  long 
periods  of  time,  from  the  cine  stand¬ 
point,  for  their  completion.  The  name 
“tachygraphy”  (to  write  rapidly)  has 
been  suggested  and  used  for  this  pro¬ 
cedure,  the  opposite  of  slow  motion.  The 
following  is  an  illustration:  a  rosebud 
requires  24  hours  to  open,  let  us  assume, 
and  we  wish  to  show  it  on  the  screen  as 
occuring  in  one  minute.  The  number  of 
frames  comprising  the  shot  is  16  times 
the  duration  of  screening  in  seconds,  or 
16  x  60,  960.  Assuming  the  bud  unfolds 
at  a  uniform  rate  throughout  the  24 
hours,  the  rate  at  which  the  frames  are 
exposed  is  given  by  dividing  the  duration 
of  scene  in  seconds  by  the  number  of 
frames.  The  duration  is  24  x  60,  or  1,440 
minutes;  the  camera  speed  is  therefore 
1,440/960  =  1.5  minutes;  or  one  frame 
every  1V2  minutes.  Expressing  this  in 
general  symbols,  we  have,  since  T8, 
screen  time,  is  60,  and  T„,  object  time, 
24x60x60=84,400,  as  the  camera  speed, 
To/(16Ts),  or  86,400/960  =  90  seconds, 
as  before. 

In  a  problem  of  this  kind  the  screen¬ 
ing  time  is  the  controlling  quantity  and 
should  be  first  settled  on;  the  other 
variables  can  then  be  calculated.  As  is 
well-known,  there  is  a  particular  and 
proper  duration  for  the  screening  of  a 
particular  shot,  the  duration  that  evokes 
the  maximum  of  entertainment  value 
with  no  suggestion  of  tedium.  This  dura¬ 
tion  is  the  one  to  aim  at  and  attain  by 
adjusting  the  others  to  fit.  A  clear  un¬ 
derstanding  of  the  simple  principles  ex¬ 
pressed  above  will  contribute  to  the  suc¬ 
cess  of  your  cine  performances. 


The  Floral  Spectrum 

(Continued  from  Page  300) 

graphs  well  and  should  be  on  the  film  of 
all  who  seek  wild  flower  pictures.  Re¬ 
turn  to  it  in  the  fall  when  its  pod  has 
burst  open  and  you  will  be  surprised 
at  the  beauty  which  you  find  there.  Shoot 
it  through  your  titler  and  you  will  be 
charmed  with  the  result.  It  may  seem, 
by  this  time,  that  I  am  harping  unneces¬ 
sarily  about  the  use  of  a  titler,  but  un¬ 
til  you  have  used  this  instrument  for 
this  kind  of  work,  you  are  missing  a 
great  deal.  Try  it  on  violets  and  you 
will  see  a  richness  of  color  and  texture 
that  is  astonishing. 

High  on  the  slopes  of  Mt.  Rainier, 
about  5506  feet  above  sea  level,  is  a 
mountain  meadow  known  as  Paradise 
Valley,  and  covered  with  over  600  varie¬ 
ties  of  wild  flowers.  Here  we  find  the 
lovely  alpine  lily  with  its  white  bell  and 
yellow  center,  growing  in  profusion.  It 
is  about  ten  inches  tall,  and  the  best  way 
to  photograph  it  is  to  lie  flat  on  the 
ground.  A  long  shot  to  set  the  locale 
is  desirable,  but  close-ups  will  bring  out 
the  full  beauty  of  this  charming  flower. 

Close  by  one  will  find  the  purple 
heather,  the  same  variety  as  seen  in 
Scotland.  Here  and  there  a  little  white 
heather  mingles  with  the  purple.  Here, 
tco,  it  is  possible  to  photograph  great 
expanses  of  blue  lupine  which  is  preva¬ 
lent  throughout  the  west.  Use  care 
in  choosing  your  angle.  A  low  angle 
is  most  desirable,  shooting  just  over  the 
top  of  the  flowers.  If  you  shoot  it 
against  the  sky  it  will  lose  its  color. 

Indian  paint  brush  or  scarlet  painted 
cup  makes  a  fine  show  on  Mt.  Rainier.  If 
one  can  stand  the  climb  up  to  the  snow 
line,  this  brilliant  scarlet  flower  can  be 
photographed  growing  within  six  feet  of 
the  snow.  Choose  a  low  angle  and  shoot 
wilh  the  glacier  and  blue  sky  as  a  back¬ 
ground.  The  shot  that  seems  to  please 
most  audiences  is  one  that  shows  it 
actually  growing  close  to  the  snow. 

The  dainty  harebell,  more  commonly 
known  as  the  bluebell,  dances  merrily  on 
its  thin  stalk.  It  is  easy  to  photograph. 
The  Indian  pipe,  although  a  parasite, 
is  an  interesting  little  plant.  It  is  all 
white,  both  flower  and  stem,  and  has 
cdd  little  scales  instead  of  leaves.  The 
tiny  flowers  are  bell  shaped,  usually 
growing  singly  at  the  end  of  each  thick 
stem.  Of  course  one  need  not  go  all 
the  way  to  Mt.  Rainier  to  photograph 
the  wild  carrot  or  Queen  Anne’s  lace.  It 
seems  to  grow  everywhere.  Its  fine 
white  lacy  texture  is  brought  out  in  all 
its  delicate  beauty  when  shot  against  a 
blue  sky. 

Moving  eastward  to  Glacier  National 
Park,  one  can  photograph  bear  grass  at 
its  best.  It  is  not  generally  known  how 
it  received  its  name,  for  bears  will  not 
touch  it.  Its  stalks  are  sometimes  cut 
down  by  ground  squirrels  for  food  and 

(Continued  on  Page  304) 


302  August,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


JUST  RIGHT 


WITH  the  emphasis  on  getting  the  most 
out  of  every  foot  of  available  film,  it  is  a 
big  help  to  know  that  one  of  the  three 
Eastman  negative  films  is  just  right  for 
every  shot — in  the  studio  or  on  location, 
indoors  or  out.  Eastman  Kodak  Company, 
Rochester,  N.  Y. 

J.  E.  BRULATOUR,  INC.,  Distributors 

Fort  Lee  Chicago  Hollywood 


PLIJS-X  SUPER-XX 

for  general  studio  use  trlien  little  light  is  uvuilable 

BACKGROUXD-X 

for  buekgrouuds  und  general  exterior  work 

EASTMAN  NEGATIVE  FILMS 


American  Cinematographer  •  August,  1943  303 


The  Floral  Spectrum 

(Continued  from  Page  302) 

its  long  leaves  are  used  by  Indians  for 
making  baskets.  This  very  showy  flower 
is  a  delicate  creamy  yellow  and  grows 
five  feet  tall.  It  blooms  profusely  dur¬ 
ing  the  early  part  of  July  and  is  out¬ 
standing  in  any  setting.  It  photographs 
well  against  the  deep  forest  background 
or  the  distant  glaciers. 

At  the  end  of  June  or  the  beginning 
of  July,  the  alpine  meadows  on  Mt. 
Clements  are  golden  with  glacier  lilies. 
In  any  direction  that  one  may  look,  na¬ 
ture  has  provided  an  interesting  back¬ 
ground  for  the  photographer.  One  may 
shoot  freely  without  fear,  for  good  com¬ 
position  is  on  every  hand.  Don’t  hesi¬ 
tate  to  lie  down  amongst  these  fragrant 
flowers  for  close-ups.  It  is  a  spot  that 
makes  one  reluctant  to  leave. 

There  is  another  lovely  yellow  flower 
to  be  found  in  Glacier  Park,  growing 
amongst  rocks  or  in  gravel.  It  grows 
close  to  the  ground  in  heavy  clusters 
and  has  a  bluish  green  leaf.  There  was 
a  belief  among  early  prospectors  that 
its  presence  indicated  silver  deposits. 
That  is  why  it  came  to  be  known  as  the 
silver  plant. 

The  wild  geranium  is  plentiful  here. 
Its  flower  is  a  light  pinkish  purple, 
growing  singly  or  a  few  in  clusters.  It 
grows  about  as  tall  as  the  cultivated 
geranium  and  is  very  attractive.  Horse- 
mint  is  deeper  in  hue  than  the  wild 
geranium  and  has  a  strong  pleasant 
odor.  Its  flowers  are  very  hairy,  some¬ 
what  courser  than  the  thistle  and  more 
open.  The  heavy  clusters  make  a  very 
colorful  display.  It  grows  about  a  foot 
tall  and  photographing  at  a  slightly 
downward  angle  will  bring  out  its  full 
beauty. 

The  Blackfeet  Indians  use  the  cow 
parsnip  or  sacred  rhubarb  in  some  of 
their  ceremonials.  It  is  a  white  flower 
resembling  Queen  Anne’s  lace,  but  much 
bolder  in  appearance.  Growing  three  to 
six  feet  high,  its  massive  leaves  sup¬ 
port  a  heavy  stem.  It  is  very  striking 
when  photographed  against  a  blue  sky. 

Throughout  this  vast  area  the  brown¬ 
eyed  susan  grows  in  wild  profusion.  It 
is  similiar  in  appearance  to  its  sister, 
the  black-eyed  susan,  but  has  a  rich 
brown  center  instead  of  black. 

In  the  meadows  at  the  base  of  Grinnel 
Glacier  one  can  see  the  beautiful  pink 
spiraea.  Care  must  be  taken  not  to 
overexpose  this  lovely  flower,  or  it  will 
register  on  the  film  as  white.  In  the 
immediate  vicinity  the  dainty  moss  rose 
is  to  be  found  growing  close  to  the 
ground.  Its  brilliant  yellow  flower  will 
add  warmth  to  a  wild  flower  film.  Grow¬ 
ing  from  the  damp  woody  banks,  the 
rose  colored  monkey  flower  adds  cheer 
to  its  dark  surroundings.  A  fast  lense 
is  required  to  capture  the  color  of  this 
forest-bound  beauty. 

Traveling  further  to  the  south  we 
find  one  of  America’s  most  beautiful 


wild  flowers  growing  close  to  the  gey¬ 
sers.  It  is  the  fringed  gentian — official 
flower  of  Yellowstone  National  Park. 
This  lovely  violet  blue  flower  should  be 
shot  at  a  slightly  downward  angle  to 
bring  out  its  true  rich  coloring  and  form. 
The  sandy  soil  of  the  geyser  basin 
makes  an  excellent  color  contrast  as  a 
background.  It  is  claimed  that  there  are 
600  different  species  of  wild  flowers 
growing  in  Yellowstone  National  Park, 
enough  to  satisfy  the  desires  of  the  most 
ardent  wild  flower  lover. 

The  wild  iris  and  Indian  pink  grow 
in  marshy  spots.  One  may  get  their 
feet  wet  making  close-ups,  but  the  re¬ 
sult  is  worth  the  effort.  The  yellow 
stonecrop  makes  a  showy  picture.  It 
grows  in  small  clusters  and  has  a  rich 
orangey  yellow  hue. 

If  you  give  your  horse  his  head,  he 
is  sure  to  go  and  munch  on  an  elk 
thistle.  This  odd  looking  plant  is  en¬ 
tirely  different  from  purple  thistle.  It 
grows  on  a  straight  prickly  stem  and  the 
flower  is  mostly  green  in  color,  tipped 
with  a  very  pale  lavender,  nearly  white. 
Its  oddness  creates  a  place  for  it  in  any 
wild  flower  film. 

One  of  the  loveliest  pictures  that  I 
ever  saw  was  a  greatly  enlarged  photo¬ 
graph  of  the  oxeye  daisy.  It  was  not 
in  color  but  it  was  very  striking  in  its 
appeal.  The  angle  was  low,  slightly 
above  the  height  of  the  flower,  bringing 
the  full  plant  in  close-up.  It  may  have 
been  taken  on  slightly  sloping  ground 
for  the  daisies  extended  as  far  as  the 
eye  could  see.  In  the  distant  back¬ 
ground  a  mountain  rose  majestically 
into  a  sky  of  fluffy  clouds,  without  dis¬ 
tracting  from  the  close-up  o  fthe  daisy. 
Mother  nature  provides  many  interest¬ 
ing  backgrounds  for  her  lovely  flower 
gardens.  We  many  not  all  be  so  for¬ 
tunate  as  to  find  such  a  setting,  but 
with  a  little  care  in  the  choice  of  angles, 
all  our  flower  shots  can  be  enhanced. 

A  film  of  wild  flowers,  although  lovely 
in  itself,  requires  a  theme  to  lift  it  from 
the  monotony  of  one  flower  shot  after 
another.  There  are  several  methods  to 
be  pursued  in  order  to  give  interesting 
treatment  to  such  pictures.  One  might 
use  the  theme  of  the  seasons  as  a  mo¬ 
tive,  showing  winter  as  the  opening 
sequence,  and,  as  the  snows  gradually 
melt,  lead  into  the  first  greens  of  spring 
and  its  budding  flowers.  Continue 
through  the  summer  with  all  its  brilliant 
flowers  and  end  the  picture  with  the 
milk  weed  pods  and  falling  leaves. 

Then  there  is  the  personal  touch — 
children  wandering  down  lanes  and 
through  fields,  in  search  of  wild  ffowers. 
The  personal  theme  might  incorporate 
a  class  in  botany,  showing  the  teacher 
explaining  about  the  varieties  of  flowers, 
as  they  walk  through  the  fields  and 
woods. 

Flora  and  fauna  would  make  an  in¬ 
teresting  film.  Shots  of  bird  life  and  the 
smaller  wild  animals  will  add  zest  to 
wild  flower  pictures. 

If  one  were  really  ambitious  and 
cared  for  research,  an  interesting  story 


could  be  told  of  the  use  of  certain  wild 
flowers  in  the  field  of  medicine.  Our 
grandparents  depended  upon  the  roots 
of  flowers  and  herbs  to  cure  their  ills, 
so  why  not  revive  this  interesting  topic 
on  film? 

Poets  have  always  been  inspired  by 
the  beauty  of  the  wild  flowers.  What 
could  be  more  appropriate  than  the  use 
of  poems  as  titles  for  a  wild  flower 
film? 

It  is  never  too  late  in  the  season  to 
start  a  film  on  this  interesting  subject. 
Begin  collecting  your  shots  now — long 
shots,  medium  and  close-up,  particularly 
the  latter,  and  a  theme  for  uniting  them 
into  a  complete  whole  will  suggest  itself 
to  you. 

“Any  man  that  walks  the  mead, 

In  bud  or  blade,  or  bloom  may  find 
According  as  his  humours  lead, 

A  meaning  suited  to  his  mind.” 

— Tennyson 


304  August,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


NATIONAL  CARBON  COMPANY,  INC. 

Unit  of  Union  Carbide  and  Carbon  Corporation 

CARBON  SALES  DIVISION,  CLEVELAND,  OHIO 
General  Offices:  30  East  42nd  St.,  New  York,  N.  Y. 

Branch  Sales  Offices: 

NEW  YORK  .  PITTSBURGH  .  CHICAGO  •  ST.  LOUIS  •  SAN  FRANCISCO 


American  Cinematographer  •  August,  1943  305 


FOR  FILM  WESTON  32  SPEED  UNDER  ARTIFICIAL  LIGHT 


Type  of  Scene  Matte 

Normal — Background  slightly  darker  than  principal  subject . No.  32 

Effect — Background  slightly  lighter  than  principal  subject . No.  40 

Effect — Background  moderately  lighter  than  principal  subject . . . No.  50 

Effect — Background  much  lighter  than  principal  subject . No.  64 

Effect — Background  very  dark . No.  24 


Illumination  On  Walls 

(Continued  from  Page  286) 

I  want  the  lens  aperture  to  be  /: 2.3. 
So  I  use  the  meter  at  the  position  of 
the  subject  and  adjust  the  lighting  until 
the  meter  indicates  /: 2.3.  Then  I  step 
back  and  have  the  lights  on  the  wall 
adjusted  until  the  scene  balance  appears 
.just  right  visually,  with  the  background 
brighter  than  the  subject. 

We  are  now  ready  to  shoot,  and  have 
assurance  that  the  camera  will  record 
the  scene  so  as  to  give  exactly  the  right 
subjective  impression  in  the  finished 
picture. 

Sometimes  a  very  bright  background 
is  encountered.  One  that  will  appear 
much  brighter  than  the  subject.  (See 
Fig.  3.)  The  same  visual  reaction  de¬ 
scribed  above  will  occur,  only  to  a 
greater  degree. 

In  this  case  I  simply  follow  the 
same  procedure  previously  outlined,  only 
I  figure  on  a  greater  differential  being 
required.  So  I  arrange  a  full  /-stop 
differential  by  using,  for  example,  the 
No.  64  matte  when  32-speed  film  is 
being  used. 

This  procedure  gives  exactly  the  effect 
desired.  It  is  scientifically  correct  be¬ 
cause  it  causes  the  camera’s  eye,  the 
lens  aperture,  to  be  adapted  exactly  as 
the  human  eye  adapts  itself  for  each 
different  type  of  illumination  balance  on 
a  scene. 


Sometimes  I  encounter  a  scene  in 
which  an  unusually  dark  background  is 
supplied.  It  may  be  a  wall  made  up  of 
dark  wood  panels.  (See  Fig.  4.)  A  mean 
proposition — but  there  it  is,  and  I  have 
to  light  it. 

Well,  first  I  consider  how  the  eye 
adapts  to  the  scene.  The  eye,  in  this 
case,  although  adapting  primarily  to 
the  principal  subject,  still  influenced  to 
some  degree  by  the  very  dark  back¬ 
ground.  Such  a  background  causes  the 
eye  to  open  its  iris  a  little  more  than 
usual.  The  result  is  that  the  principal 
subject  will  appear  subjectively  brighter 
than  usual. 

Now  to  faithfully  record  this  appear¬ 
ance  with  the  camera  I  find  it  advisable 
to  set  up  a  differential  as  described 
above,  only  in  the  opposite  direction.  In 
this  case,  where  I  am  using  32-speed 
film  for  example,  I  select  a  No.  24 
matte  for  the  meter.  Then  I  measure 
the  illumination  at  the  position  of  the 
principal  subject.  If  I  want  to  use  an 
/:2.3  lens  aperture,  I  have  the  illumina¬ 
tion  on  the  subject  brought  up  until  the 


meter  indicates  /:  2.3.  Then  again  I 
step  back  and  have  the  illumination  on 
the  dark  wall  brought  up  until  it  gives 
visual  balance.  I  do  not  mean  by  this 
that  I  over-light  the  dark  wall  until 
it  appears  as  a  light  wall.  A  dark  wall 
was  desired  and  the  result  will  be  a 
dark  wall.  A  typical  case  of  effect¬ 
lighting.  However  the  result  in  the 
camera  will  be  an  exact  representation 
of  the  subjective  visual  effect  desired. 

Illumination  on  walls  can  be  one  of 
a  cinematographer’s  greatest  problems. 
However  I  have  found  that  I  can  an¬ 
alyze  each  scene  and  consider  how  the 
eye  will  automatically  adapt  itself  to 
the  scene.  Then  I  follow  the  indicated 
procedure  of  setting  up  a  differential 
and  selecting  the  appropriate  matte  for 
the  Norwood  meter. 

By  this  simple  method  of  using  a 
matte  for  a  higher  than  normal  film- 
speed  when  I  want  the  back-wall  to  ap¬ 
pear  brighter  than  the  subject,  or  one 
of  lower  than  normal  speed  when  I  want 
the  background  to  appear  darker,  and 
then  in  either  case  taking  my  meter¬ 
reading  in  the  normal  way,  from  sub¬ 
ject-position,  and  visually  balancing  the 
background-lighting  to  this  standard,  I 
do  not  have  to  give  any  more  attention 
to  lighting  the  background  to  produce 
the  differential  brightness-contrast  I 
want  between  subject  and  background. 
The  meter  does  that  for  me  automatic- 
ally,  with  no  further  thought  on  my 
part. 

The  accompanying  table,  set  up  for 
film  of  Weston  32  speed,  is  of  assistance 
in  selecting  the  correct  matte.  This 
system  causes  the  camera  lens  aperture, 
in  effect,  to  follow  the  action  of  the  hu¬ 
man  eye  which  is  always  automatically 
right  in  this  matter.  The  screen  re¬ 
sults  of  this  method  have  been  quite 
gratifying.  END. 

Aces  of  the  Camera 

(Continued  from  Page  296) 

Garmes  returned  to  photography.  He 
photographed  “Lydia”  and  “The  Jungle 
Book”  for  Alexander  Korda.  And  then 
did  a  number  of  films  for  20th  Century- 
Fox.  Now  he  is  under  contract  to  Hunt 
Stromberg  who  has  just  loaned  him  to 
Samuel  Bronston  Productions  to  photo¬ 
graph  “Jack  London,”  the  life  story  of 
that  famous  writer. 

When  the  war  is  over,  don’t  be  sur¬ 
prised  to  see  Garmes  back  in  the  pro¬ 
ducing  field.  It  is  this  writer’s  guess 
that  Garmes  will  never  be  satisfied  until 
he  gets  an  Academy  Award  for  produc¬ 
ing  the  best  picture  of  the  year  to  set 
alongside  his  photographic  “Oscar.” 


FOR  LIGHT  ON  EASTERN  PRODUCTION  -- 

C.  ROSS 

For  Lighting  Equipment 

As  sole  distributors  East  of  the  Mississippi  we  carry  the  full  and 
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manufactured  by 

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Phones:  Circle  6-5470-1 


306  August,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


•  War  tolerates  failures  of  neither 
man  nor  machine.  DeVRY  equip¬ 
ment  stands  up!  Takes  War’s  most 
grueling  punishment,  say  the  men 
who  use  it.  Today  this  equipment 
is  serving  the  Armed  Forces.  Project¬ 
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Nations  High  Commands  the  most 
minute  details  of  battle  action — 
caught  by  durable  DeVRY  cameras 
on  the  fighting  fronts.  Giving  24- 
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American  Cinematographer  •  August,  1943  307 


Using  Strobo-Sync 

(Continued  from  Page  294) 

Since  it  is  possible  to  use  discs  with 
a  multiple  of  the  required  number  of 
dots,  those  made  for  a  four-bladed  shut¬ 
ter  can  also  be  used  for  one  with  two 
blades.  For  the  same  reason  the  disc 
shown  on  page  402  of  the  September, 
1942  American  Ciematographer  which 
has  60,  90,  and  120  bands  can  be  used 
for  30,  40,  and  45  bands  as  well.  Large 
phonograph  supply  houses  can  furnish 
stroboscopic  speed  checkers  for  turn¬ 
tables  with  77,92,180,  and  216  bands  that 
can  be  used  for  several  different  projec¬ 
tor  speeds.  Generally  these  are  less  sat¬ 
isfactory,  but  they  can  be  used  for  expe¬ 
rimental  work  or  for  work  to  a  fine 
degree,  such  as  using  77  as  an  interme¬ 
diary  between  38  and  39. 


Figure  2. 

Relationship  between  number  of  dots  and  projector  speed 

Dots 

Speed  (fps) 

Dots 

Speed  (fps) 

3-bladed  shutter 

4-bladed  shutter 

30 

13.0 

40 

13.0 

31 

13.4 

41 

13.3 

32 

13.9 

42 

13.7 

33 

14.3 

43 

14.0 

34 

14.7 

44 

14.3 

35 

15.2 

45 

14.6 

36 

15.6 

46 

15.0 

37 

16.0 

47 

15.3 

38 

16.5 

48 

15.6 

39 

16.9 

49 

15.9 

50 

16.3 

51 

16.6 

52 

16.9 

Figure  3.  Music  Cue  Sheet 


D^  r=  49  dots 

Music  Cue  Sheet 

“THE  WHITE  MOUNTAINS” 

Din  =  D„ - 

1.  Clock 

2.  t. 

3.  Sequence 

tm 

4.  Record 

5.  St 

6-  Dm 

7.  tm 

Reading 

secs. 

Mark 

dots 

secs. 

13-18 

181 

Airplane  view 

Oxford  Street 

48 

185 

16-19 

387 

Mount  Washington 

Nutcracker  Suite  March 

36 

50 

o77(  122 

611  \255 

Merrymakers 

50 

22-46 

169 

Aerial  Tramway 

Tambourin 

49 

165 

214  ^5-35 

^  28-37 

J  182 
l  52 

Flume 

The  Old  Man  and  Sunset 

|  Mayfair 

47 

225 

28-39 

(End) 

16-11  971 

4-  60  = 

16-11 

A  music  cue  sheet  like  the  one  shown 
in  Figure  3  on  which  all  information 
can  be  entered  provides  the  most  orderly 
method  of  matching  the  sequences  to  the 
records.  While  there  are  several  differ¬ 
ent  procedures,  the  following  steps  which 
are  taken  with  this  cue  sheet  may  serve 
as  a  guide: 

1.  Select  the  proper  stroboscopic  disc 
from  the  table  in  Figure  2  for  the  ap¬ 
proximate  speed  desired,  and  enter  the 
number  of  dots  (Ds)  in  the  upper  left 
corner  of  the  cue  sheet. 

2.  Using  a  set-up  like  that  shown  in 
Figure  1,  project  the  film  at  the  proper 
speed  so  that  the  dots  appear  to  stand 
still.  Note  in  column  1  the  clock  reading 
in  minutes  and  seconds  that  each  se¬ 
quence  begins  (and  also  the  end),  and 
in  column  3  a  brief  identification  of  the 
sequence. 

3.  Figure  and  enter  in  column  2  the 
running  time  in  seconds  (ts)  of  each 
sequence.  For  accuracy  check  the  total 
with  the  difference  between  the  last  and 
first  clock  readings  in  column  1. 

4.  For  each  sequence  select  a  suitable 
record  that  requires  approximately  the 
same  time  to  play.  Enter  the  name  in 
column  3  and  the  time  in  seconds  (tm) 
in  column  7. 

This  is  often  difficult;  but  with  a  little 
luck  and  a  lot  of  ingenuity  it  can  usually 
be  done  so  that  the  speed  change  at  any 
one  point  does  not  exceed  one  frame  per 
second.  Here  are  some  suggestions: 

(a)  To  find  appropriate  selections  more 


quickly,  list  suitable  records  in  your 
library  according  to  playing  time,  per¬ 
haps  in  groups  of  ten  seconds  (such  as 
100  to  110,  110  to  120  seconds,  etc.) 

(b)  In  addition  to  the  regular  sources 
of  records  such  as  Victor  and  Colum¬ 
bia,  special  records  of  mood  and  back¬ 
ground  music  are  available.  One  distrib¬ 
utor  is  Thomas  J.  Valentino,  Inc.,  1600 
Broadway,  New  York  City,  who  can  fur¬ 
nish  a  catalog  of  selections  with  actual 
playing  time  and  mood  classification. 
(The  BC  series  in  this  catalog  is  not 
available  for  the  duration,  but  the  BH 
series  can  be  obtained  now.) 

(c)  Use  more  than  one  record  for  a 
long  sequence,  or  use  one  record  for 
two  or  more  related  short  sequences. 
(Sometimes  an  entire  short  sequence  can 
be  moved  to  combine  it  properly  with 
another.) 

(d)  Use  only  a  portion  of  a  record, 
if  it  is  fairly  complete  in  itself.  (Of 
course  when  music  serves  as  a  sound 
effect,  it  can  be  faded  in  at  any  point, 
perhaps  so  that  it  will  end  with  the 
sequence.)  A  mark  can  be  made  in  soft 
chalk  on  the  record  to  indicate  where 
to  start.  A  safer  way  is  to  use  a  num¬ 
bered  strip  like  that  in  Figure  4,  in 


which  case  the  proper  starting  mark  is 
entered  in  column  5  of  the  cue  sheet. 

5.  Using  the  second  formula, 


figure  the  number  of  dots  for  the  speed 
that  will  match  sequence  and  music,  and 
enter  in  column  6  the  number  and,  if 
necessary,  the  proper  dot  identification. 

6.  Project  the  film  with  the  music, 
using  the  speeds  given  in  column  6.  If 
the  music  is  too  short,  increase  the  figure 
for  Dm,  and  if  too  long,  decrease  it. 

7.  With  the  corrections  made  in  step  6, 
project  the  film  with  the  music  again. 
The  music  should  now  fit  perfectly,  but 
if  not,  repeat  the  procedure.  (Columns 
1,  2,  and  7  can  now  be  cut  off  the  cue 
sheet  if  desired.) 

Now  that  it  is  more  diffcult  to  make 
new  films,  these  suggestions  may  keep 
one  busy  for  several  evenings  on  the  old 
ones.  There  is  quite  a  thrill  in  projecting 
a  film  when  the  accompaniment  fits  so 
perfectly  that  it  seems  to  have  been 
composed  especially  for  it.  If  the  audi¬ 
ence  does  not  seem  especially  aware  of 
the  music,  then  one  can  be  sure  that  it 
is  a  good  score. 


Figure  4.  Starting  Indicator 

lllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllHH 

09876543210987654321098765432109876543210987654321098765432109876543210 
#  —Sixty— /—Fifty— /—Forty— /-Thirty -/-Twenty-/—  Ten  — /—  One  — / 


308  August,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


Working  within  a  few  feet  of  the  enemy's  guns  during  a  recent  maneuvers,  Signal  Laboratory  technicians 
develop  a  set  of  combat  pictures.  Problem  was  to  develop  pictures  without  a  generator  and  using  only  a 
small  bulb  for  printer  lights.  Technicians  shown  are  Sgt.  Malcolm  C.  Bulloch,  Sgt.  William  Claridge  and 
Sgt.  William  Robertson. 


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THROWN  on  their  “own”  during 
night  maneuvers,  the  4th  Signal 
Photographic  Laboratory  Unit  re¬ 
cently  found  itself  faced  with  the  prob¬ 
lem  of  developing  and  printing  film — 
both  motion  and  still — without  disclosing 
position  by  use  of  a  noisy  generator. 

This  called  for  a  bit  of  improvising. 
The  problem  had  them  right  under  the 
enemy  guns  and  the  pictures  had  to  be 
ready  for  study  by  the  high  command 
before  dawn. 

Unable  to  use  a  generator,  the  lads 
were  forced  to  substitute  automobile 
headlight  bulbs  for  the  regular  printer 
lights.  This  was  necessary  because  they 
were  using  a  storage  battery  in  place  of 
the  generator  and  the  automobile  lamps 
consumed  less  voltage.  A  standard 
printer  was  used  and  a  small  watch¬ 
man’s  electric  lantern  placed  inside  a 
cardboard  box  provided  a  satisfactory 
safelight. 

The  enemy  would  have  had  to  walk 
right  into  the  Army  truck  which  housed 
the  improvised  laboratory  in  order  to 
discover  it.  No  light  showed  and  there 
was  no  noise. 

Throughout  the  night  film  was  devel¬ 
oped  without  interruption  and  the  pic¬ 
tures  were  ready  on  time,  completed 
within  easy  pistol  range  of  theoretical 
enemy  positions. 

Improvision  of  the  mobile  labora¬ 
tory  also  gave  the  men  an  opportunity 
to  practice  for  an  emergency.  Basically, 
the  same  system  would  be  used  in  the 
event  regular  laboratory  equipment  was 
destroyed  in  battle. 

Many  of  the  members  of  this  Signal 


Photographic  Unit  are  Hollywood  tech¬ 
nicians,  formerly  in  the  Signal  Corps 
Enlisted  Reserve. 

Officers  of  the  Unit  include  Captain 
Gordon  S.  Mitchell,  for  many  years 
manager  of  the  Research  Council  of  the 
Academy  of  Motion  Picture  Arts  and 
Sciences,  Lt.  Raymond  R.  Windmiller  of 
the  Williams  Laboratory  and  Lt.  Au¬ 
gust  W.  Klein  of  the  Bell  and  Howell 
Company. 

Enlisted  men  include  many  of  Holly¬ 
wood's  top  technicians  in  every  branch 
of  the  motion  picture  industry. 


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★  Kodachrome  or  black  and  white  pictures 
with  Auricon  sound  track  will  reproduce 
on  any  sound-film  projector. 

★  Can  be  operated  in  the  field  from  an 
Auricon  Portable  Power  Supply. 

★  Auricon  Camera  with  type  "C"  lens  mount 
(but  without  lens)  and  Amplifier  complete 
with  microphone,  instructions,  and  cases 

$880.00 


MANUFACTURERS  OF  SOUND-ON-FILM 
RECORDING  EQUIPMENT  SINCE  1931 


American  Cinematographer  •  August,  1943  309 


Commentary  Writing 
For  Documentary  Films 

(Continued  from  Page  287) 

that  the  story  of  the  pilot-fish  would  do 
this:  “The  shark  hanging  in  air  means 
that,  unseen,  in  the  sea,  one  small  fish 
now  swims  alone.  A  little  white-blue  fish 
with  stripes  on  its  back  like  peppermint 
candy.  It  is  hardly  over  a  foot  in  length. 
It  is  the  pilot-fish  which  has  always  ac¬ 
companied  the  shark  ...” 

I  made  a  statement  in  brackets  when 
I  detailed  the  first  instance  above.  Here, 
1  think,  I’ve  condensed  something  which 
any  commentary  writer  for  documentary 
or  non-fiction  films  should  constantly 
bear  in  mind.  When  our  scenes  show  a 
particular,  detailed  operation,  then  com¬ 
mentary  can  usually  be  full  because  it 
will  increase  the  audience’s  understand¬ 
ing  of  what  is  on  the  screen.  It  should 
never,  however,  be  self-obviously  banal 


(“This  is  the  fisherman  at  work  in  the 
dory.  Watch  him  pull  up  his  lines.  Every 
hook  has  caught  a  fish.  Boy,  there’s  a 
beauty!”)  On  the  other  hand,  when 
our  scenes  have  a  broader  character, 
when  they  show,  for  instance,  a  ship 
sailing  on  the  high  seas  or  give  a  close- 
up  to  concentrate  on  the  character  in  a 
face,  then  rarely  is  there  need  for  spoken 
comment.  Music  (for  the  ship,  a  sea 
chanty)  will  effectively  heighten  the  pic¬ 
ture  as  no  word  ever  could. 

And  while  on  the  subject  of  when  to 
use  words,  there  is  always  a  point  in  a 
given  sequence  where  commentary  should 
commence.  This  is  something  which  can’t 
be  taught.  To  some  people  it  comes  in¬ 
tuitively;  others  acquire  it  through  prac¬ 
tice  and  performance;  some  never  seem 
to  learn  it.  It’s  not  unlike  knowing  how 
to  “time”  a  speech  on  the  stage.  Usually 
it  does  not  come  the  moment  a  sequence 
begins.  An  audience  likes  to  have  the 
chance  to  grasp  the  scene  before  a  voice 
blares  out  at  them  what  it  is ;  but  after  a 
little  time  most  audiences  begin  to  feel 
that  there  is  somehing  they  want  ex¬ 
plained,  and  here  is  the  psychological 
moment  when  the  commentary  must 
start. 

All  this  seems  to  have  brought  me 
right  back  to  the  first  and  most  impor¬ 
tant  point  I  made  about  commentary. 
The  best  effect  is  obtained  not  through 
how  much  but  through  how  little  com¬ 
mentary  we  use,  and  how  we  can  most 
tellingly  space  and  place  that  little.  Only 
by  so  doing,  will  we  find  our  words 
worthy  of  the  best  in  cinematography. 

If  a  documentary-maker  could  become 
the  invisible  man  he  could  make  a  docu¬ 
mentary  of  the  making  of  a  documentary 
that  would  really  be  a  documentary.  It 
is  when  the  documentary  film-maker  is 
working  with  people  his  film  will  fea¬ 
ture — I  don’t  mean  when  he  is  shooting 
them;  I  mean  when  he  is  living  with 
them,  getting  to  know  them — that  they 
usually  show  their  most  human  side.  It’s 
generally  something  that  can’t  be  put 
into  the  finished  film,  especially  if  it’s  to 
be  a  straight  documentary  in  the  fac¬ 
tual  propagandists  mold.  I  think  both 
Douglas  Sinclair  and  myself  carried 
away  certain  scenes  from  the  North  and 
from  Lunenburg  that,  in  memory,  are 
far  more  vivid  than  much  we  recorded 


B&H-THC  LENSES 


Exceeding  current  technical  de¬ 
mands  and  anticipating  future 
requirements,  these  cine  lenses 
are  truly  long-term  investments. 
Write  for  literature. 

BELL  &  HOWELL  COMPANY 

Exclusive  world  distributors 

1848  Larchmont  Avenue, Chicago 

New  York:  30  Rockefeller  Plaza 
Hollywood:  716  N.  La  Brea  Ave. 
Washington,  D.  C.:  1221  G.  S».,  N.  W. 
London:  13-14  Great  Castle  St. 


on  film.  We  like  to  remember  that  noon 
we  set  sail  on  the  “Flora  Alberta.”  The 
captain  and  crew  had  been  wetly  cele¬ 
brating  the  fine,  dry  day.  The  captain 
kept  telling  us: 

“Now,  you,  you  can  snap  what  you 
like,  you.  You  see,  you  ...”  his  use  of 
“you”  as  a  name  was  a  Lunenburg 
colloquialism,  indicating  friendliness, 
however  hostile  it  sometimes  sounded. 
“  .  .  .  you  can  snap  what  you  like.  .  .  . 
Fired  on  one  of  our  vessels,  they  did, 
you!  By  God,  you,  if  a  submarine’s  any¬ 
where  near  me,  you,  I’ll  ram  the - 

- ,  you !  We’ve  a  gun  aboard.  Bring 

it  here,  Fred.” 

A  sailor  produced  a  rusty  shot-gun. 
“See,  you.  We’ll  ram  her,  you,  and  you 
can  snap  her,  you.  Hope  we  do,  you.” 

We  hoped  so  too.  We  were,  after  all, 
going  out  into  the  submarine  zone,  not 
far,  as  it  turned  out,  from  where  the 
steamer-ferry  “Caribou,”  from  the  main¬ 
land  to  Newfoundland,  was  sunk  a  few 
weeks  later.  The  captain,  incidentally, 
never  took  our  names  until  we  got  back 
to  Lunenburg.  If  we’d  sighted  a  sub¬ 
marine,  there  doubtless  would  have  been 
two  unknown  documentary  film-makers 
missing,  especially  as  cameras  are,  these 
day,  considered  virtually  as  tools  of  war. 

The  only  signs  of  war  we  saw,  how- 
everever,  were  the  destroyers  and  cor¬ 
vettes  accompanying  a  convoy,  through 
which  we  passed  late  one  afternoon.  “It’s 
a  hard  life,”  was  the  constant  refrain  of 
the  fishermen,  and  the  convoys  only  make 
it  that  much  harder.  On  foggy  nights, 
when  the  little  dories  are  at  their  lines, 
the  convoys  often  come  over  the  fishing 
grounds,  and  the  dories  are  decidedly 
vulnerable. 

But  the  hazards  of  war,  submarine  or 
convoy,  do  not  keep  the  Nova  Scotian 
fishermen  at  home.  While  the  vessels 
of  the  other  nations  which  formerly 
fished  there  are  kept  at  home  by  sub¬ 
marine  menace  or  Nazi  occupation,  the 
Lunenburg  schooners  like  the  “Flora 
Alberta”  still  go  out  to  the  Banks.  And 
the  attitude  of  the  men  is  that  of  the 
captain :  “By  God,  you,  if  a  submarine’s 

anywhere  near  me,  I’ll  ram  the - - 

- ,  you!” 

We  both  realized  we  were  witnessing 
something  that  did  belong  to  these  war¬ 
time  days,  heroic  in  its  own  way,  just  as 
it  was  heroic  even  in  peacetimes.  But 
we  could  not  foresee  the  course  of  war¬ 
time  events.  We  could  not  know  that  this 
vessel,  which  we  came  to  love  and  which 
we  hope  we  recorded  with  the  full  sin¬ 
cerity  of  our  feelings  for  her,  should 
herself  become  a  wartime  casualty. 

On  April  22nd,  1943,  the  Canadian 
press  carried  a  headline: 

Schooner  Sliced  in  Two 
20  Out  of  Crew  of  28  Trapped  Below 

And  the  story  below  the  headline  began: 

“Sliced  in  two  by  a  merchantman 
off  the  coast  of  Nova  Scotia,  the 
schooner  ‘Flora  Alberta,’  a  ‘  high- 
liner’  of  the  Lunenburg  fishing  fleet, 
has  been  lost.”  END. 


310  August,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


i  Mil  ■ 

trade  notes 

Western  Electric  Official  to 
Retire  in  September 

Harry  B.  Gilmore,  secretary  of  the 
Western  Electric  Company,  has  an¬ 
nounced  he  will  retire  from  business  Sep¬ 
tember  first,  after  41  years  of  service 
with  the  company.  Succeeding  Mr.  Gil¬ 
more  as  secretary  will  be  Norman  R. 
Frame,  who  has  served  as  assistant  sec¬ 
retary.  Mr.  Frame  has  been  with  the 
company  20  years. 


J.  Harold  Booth  Bell  and 
Howell  Executive 

Bell  &  Howell  Company,  manufactur¬ 
ers  of  motion  picture  equipment  and 
optical  devices,  has  just  announced  the 
appointment  of  J.  Harold  Booth  as  Vice- 
President  in  chai'ge  of  War  Negotia¬ 
tions,  War  Expediting,  Employee  Train¬ 
ing,  Subcontracting,  Personnel  and  Pub¬ 
lic  Relations,  Industrial  Relations,  Sales, 
Service  and  Advertising. 

Mr.  Booth  entered  the  service  of  Bell 
&  Howell  Company  in  1927,  and  since 
1938  has  been  General  Sales  Manager 
in  charge  of  service  and  advertising. 


Meter 


★  The  incident-light  exposure  meter  which 
automatically  compensates  for  the  photo¬ 
graphic  value  of  all  the  light  falling  on  the  sub¬ 
ject,  regardless  of  its  angle.  Used  extensively 
by  the  photographic  sections  of  the  U.  S.  and 
Allied  Armed  Services,  and  by  leading  direc¬ 
tors  of  photography  in  Hollywood's  major 
studios. 


Negro  Film  Completed 

Completion  of  the  feature  film,  “We’ve 
Come  a  Long,  Long  Way,”  was  an¬ 
nounced  this  month  by  Negro  Marches 
On,  Inc.,  producers  of  the  film.  This  pic¬ 
ture  is  a  cavalcade  of  the  Negro  race, 
and  was  directed  by  Jack  Goldberg,  for 
twenty  years  a  leader  in  the  production 
and  creation  of  all-Negro  films. 


★  We  regret  that  "for  the  duration"  civilian 
orders  for  NORWOOD  meters  can  only  be 
filled  on  a  priority  of  AA-3  or  better,  or  when  a 
Weston  "Master"  (Model  715),  or  Model  650, 
Universal,  Leicameter  or  819  Cinemeter  in 
good  condition  is  offered  in  part  exchange. 


This  Is  War 

Due  to  wartime  shortages  in  materials, 
various  and  sundry  devices  have  been  de¬ 
veloped  in  the  Hollywood  film  studios. 
One  of  the  most  interesting  is  a  contrap¬ 
tion  that  picks  up  bent  nails  and  straight¬ 
ens  them  for  use.  Before  the  war  count¬ 
less  pounds  of  nails  were  lost,  for  no  one 
thought  of  picking  up  a  dropped  or  bent 
nail.  But  today  it  is  different. 


PHOTO  RESEARCH  CORPORATION 


15024  Devonshire  St.,  San  Fernando,  California  •  Telephone  San  Fernando  3352 


ACME  PROFESSIONAL  16mm.  CAMERA 

The  RED  CROSS 

WITH  PILOT-PIN  MOVEMENT  and 

PROFESSIONAL  ERECT-IMAGE  FINDER 

Goes  Where 

•  • 

YOUR  BOY  Goes 

Available  on  Priority  or  Lend-Lease 

ACME  TOOL  &  MFG.  CO. 

GIVE! 

2815  W.  OLIVE  AVENUE  BURBANK,  CALIFORNIA 

American  Cinematographer  •  August,  1943  311 


GOERZ 


‘"&OSVI&.  Chnsthiami' 

CRAFTSMEN 

■x 

*  ahSL  dainty. 

ihsuA.  AkahSL— 


-x 

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★ 


C  P  GOERZ  AMERICAN  OPTICAL  CO 


Office  and  Factory 

★  317  East  34th  Street,  New  York,  16,  N.  Y.  ★ 

“^osJi^  Cbmhiam!' 

PRECISION  OPTICS 

*  MMJL  1899 


fill r’/ orict/hj  ^jieaLuuj 


^he  production  line  of  "GOERZ  AMER¬ 
ICAN"  is  formed  by  skilled  men,  who 
through  painstaking  work  create  high- 
grade  photo-lenses  and  optical  units  for 
military  instruments  used  by  our  armed 
forces, 

on  Land — 

on  the  Sea — 
in  the  Air — 

Y  hese  precise  optical  units  are  of  the 
greatest  importance  to  our  armed 
forces,  for  without  accurate  military  in¬ 
struments  for  sighting,  fire  control  and 
photographic  aerial  reconnaissance  their 
fighting  machinery  would  be  of  little 
value  to  them. 

^ptical  science  together  with  our  crafts¬ 
men,  doing  their  duty  on  the  job  in 
the  production  line,  will  hasten  victory. 

Qw  production  is  keyed  to  fill  the  re¬ 
quirements  of  our  Government.  Within 
limitations  we  may  still  be  able  to  supply 
"GOERZ  AMERICAN"  lenses  of  certain 
types  and  sixes  for  civilian  use.  We  sug¬ 
gest  your  inquiries  through  your  dealer 
or  direct. 


Address  Dept.  AC-8 


★  ★★★★★★★★★★★★★ 


FATE  plays  peculiar  tricks  on  us.  A 
few  days  ago  I  had  no  idea  of  ever 
editing  this  magazine  again.  I  lunched 
with  Bill  Stull,  the  editor,  and  promised 
him  I  would  write  a  piece  for  the  Au¬ 
gust  issue.  And  now,  here  I  am  sitting 
at  Bill’s  desk  getting  the  magazine  out, 
and  Bill  has  passed  on.  Such  is  life. 

I  say  “Bill’s  desk.”  Actually,  this 
desk  was  bought  for  me  away  back  in 
1929  when  I  became  editor  of  the  Cine¬ 
matographer  for  two  and  a  half  years. 
To  those  subscribers  who  read  the  maga¬ 
zine  then  I  send  greetings;  to  those  who 
do  not  know  me  I  say  “Hello.” 

It  has  always  been  my  contention  that 
a  magazine  should  contain  the  material 
and  stories  that  the  readers  desire.  It 
is  my  contention,  also,  that  unless  the 
readers  tell  us  what  they  want,  we  just 
have  to  go  on  guessing.  Sometimes  we 
are  lucky  and  please  them;  sometimes  we 
miss  the  mark.  Here  and  now,  the 
readers  of  the  Cinematographer  are  re¬ 
quested  to  send  in  suggestions  as  to 
story  material  you  would  like  to  see. 
We  will  try  to  give  you  what  you  want, 
if  you  ask  for  it. 


LATELY  we’ve  been  reading  in  the 
trade-papers,  and  even  to  some  ex¬ 
tent  in  the  daily  newspapers,  of  how  es¬ 
sential  motion  picture  entertainment  is 
proving  to  our  soldiers  at  the  fighting 
fronts.  This  is  a  fact  in  which  the  mo¬ 
tion  picture  industry  can  rightfully  take 
great  pride,  and  one  which  should  by  all 
means  be  brought  home  to  the  American 
people  and  to  the  Nation’s  policy  and 
law  makers  in  Washington.  We  can’t 
help  wondering,  therefore,  why  the  mo¬ 
tion  picture  industry  as  a  whole  doesn’t 
arrange  to  send  camera-crews  out  with 
light,  portable,  single-system  sound-and- 
picture  cameras  (they  could  even  be 
16mm.,  if  the  utmost  portability  be 
needed)  to  the  fighting  fronts,  to  bring 
back  a  genuinely  documentary  record 
— unembellished  by  any  “Hollywood 
touches” — of  what  motion  pictures  are 
actually  doing  for  Johnny  Doughboy 
at  the  front,  and  to  record  the  actual, 
un-scripted  comments  of  servicemen 


CAMERA  SUPPLY  COMPANY 

ART  REEVES 


HOLLYWOOD 


1515  North  Cahuenga  Boulevard 
Cable  Address — Cameras 


CALIFORNIA 


Efficient-Courteous  Service  New  and  Used  Equipmnt 

Bought — Sold — Rented 

Everything  Photographic  Professional  and  Amateur 


THE  other  day  I  heard  an  amateur 
complaining  quite  bitterly  over  the 
fact  that  he  couldn’t  buy  equipment  he 
desired  to  take  on  his  vacation.  That 
man  doesn’t  yet  realize  that  we  are 
fighting  a  global  war  and  that  the  man¬ 
ufacturers  of  camera  equipment  are  in 
there  pitching  to  provide  equipment  for 
the  fighting  men  who  are  out  there  in 
the  thick  of  the  battle  to  save  this  world 
so  that  in  future  years  amateurs  will 
again  be  able  to  make  all  the  pictures 
they  wish.  Our  hats  are  off  to  the 
photographic  manufacturers  for  the 
magnificent  way  they  have  done  their 
bit.  So,  let’s  stop  complaining — and  buy 
more  bonds. 

• 

WONDER  what  has  become  of  the 
one-time  overworked  term,  “cam¬ 
era  angles.”  You  never  hear  it  any 
more,  and  with  its  passing  motion  pic¬ 
ture  photography  has  reached  heights  of 
perfection  once  never  dreamed  of.  Where¬ 
as  at  one  time  good  photography  was 
the  type  that  made  audiences  gasp  with 
sheer  amazement,  today  the  finest  pho¬ 
tography  on  the  screen  is  that  which 
makes  an  audience  forget  they  are  look¬ 
ing  at  a  picture.  Directors  of  Photog¬ 
raphy  have  developed  their  art  to  a 
point  where  the  picture  becomes  a  real¬ 
ity.  That  is  photographic  art. 


WHAT  are  you  doing  to  help  win 
the  war?  Have  you  ever  stopped 
to  ask  yourself  that  question? 
Just  because  you  are  paying  your  taxes 
uncomplainingly  and  are  investing  ten 
per  cent  of  your  pay  check  in  war  bonds 
doesn’t  mean  that  you  are  doing  enough. 
When  making  that  deposit  in  your  sav¬ 
ings  account  have  you  ever  thought  of 
those  boys  of  ours  wallowing  in  the  mud 
and  slime  of  the  islands  of  the  South 
Pacific,  burrowing  like  wild  animals  in 
the  mud  to  escape  the  bullet  of  a  Jap 
sniper?  Or  have  you  visualized  other 
boys  over  in  Europe  riding  out  through 
the  darkness  of  the  night  in  bombers, 
wondering  which  of  them  will  come  back 
and  which  will  go  down  in  flames  ? 

The  next  time  you  take  a  hundred  dol¬ 
lars  to  the  bank  to  put  away  in  your 
savings  account  take  half  of  it  and  buy 
an  extra  war  bond.  Then  maybe  our  boys 
will  be  able  to  come  back  sooner  and  in 
greater  numbers.  They  aren’t  asking  for 
pay  increases  or  for  luxuries.  They  are 
only  asking  for  more  guns  and  tanks  and 
planes  and  bullets.  Let’s  give  them  those 
things. 


BUY  MORE  WAR  BONDS 


312  August,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


TELEFILM 

|  I  N  C  Q~~  R  P~Q  RATE  o| 

direct  16  MM 

SOUND 

VISED  BY: 

►  Douglas  Aircraft 

►  General  Elec.  (Welding  Series) 

►  Boeing  Aircraft 

►  North  American  Aviation 

►  U.  S.  Dept,  of  Interior 

►  U.  S.  Dept,  of  Agriculture 

►  Santa  Fe  Railroad 

►  Washington  State  Apple 

Commission 

►  Standard  Oil  of  Calif. 

►  Salvation  Army 

and  Many  Othert 
A  BETTER  JOB  FASTER — 

MORE  ECONOMICAL! 

TELEFILM 

INCORPORATED 

403?  Hollywood  Blvd.,  HOLLYWOOD.  CALIF. 
Gladstone  5748 


RUBY  CAMERA  EXCHANGE 

Rents  . . .  Sells  .  . .  Exchanges 

Everything  You  Need  for  the 

PRODUCTION  &  PROJECTION 

of  Motion  Pictures  Provided 
by  a  Veteran  Organization 
of  Specialists 

35  mm . 16  mm. 


IN  BUSINESS  SINCE  1910 

729  Seventh  Ave.,  New  York  City 
Cable  Address:  RUBYCAM 


Club  Would  Exploit  Film 
Source-Books,  Pix 
Simultaneously 

George  Macy,  New  York  book  pub¬ 
lisher  and  head  of  the  Limited  Editions 
Club,  the  Heritage  Club  and  the  Readers 
Club,  is  in  Hollywood  for  the  purpose  of 
forming  a  revolutionary  new  type  of  book 
club  in  which  he  plans  to  publish  only 
books  that  have  been  used  in  motion 
pictures. 

Macy’s  idea  is  to  bring  his  books  off 
the  press  simultaneously  with  the  release 
of  the  pictures  that  have  been  made  from 
the  books,  thus  bringing  about  an  ex¬ 
ploitation  tieup  for  both  the  pictures  and 
books  that  will  publicize  the  pictures  in 
thousands  of  spots  that  are  not-  ordi¬ 
narily  reached  in  picture  campaigns. 

“My  new  club  will  not  cost  the  picture 
producers  a  single  penny,”  explains 
Macy.  “I  have  nothing  to  sell  them,  but 
those  who  cooperate  will  have  the  ad¬ 
vantage  of  the  announcement  that  the 
book  they  are  filming  has  been  selected 
as  one  to  be  published  for  the  members 
of  ‘The  Modem  Masterpieces  Book  Club,’ 
and  will  have  club  members  all  over 
America  reading  the  book  at  the  time 
when  it  will  suggest  to  them  that  they 
ought  to  see  the  picture.” 

Macy  points  out  that  he  has  177,500 
members  in  his  Readers  Club,  and  ex¬ 
pects  at  least  100,000  to  enroll  in  the 
new  club. 


Sings  to  Millions 

Estimated  that  Frances  Langford  has 
sung  before  a  total  of  five  million  serv¬ 
icemen  durig  her  costat  roud  of  army 
shows  as  Bob  Hope’s  chanteuse. 


Argentine  Raw  Film  Situation 
Serious 

Buenos  Aires. — Argentina,  which  asked 
for  42,000,000  feet  of  raw  film  stock  and 
received  limited  allotment  of  7,200,000 
feet  for  1943,  figures  that  reversal  of 
governmental  policies  from  original  stand 
of  pro-Axis  will  gain  consideration  for  a 
substantial  increase  in  footage  available. 

Local  film  industry,  in  lodging  strong 
complaints  against  inequitable  division  of 
film  between  various  producers  and  dis¬ 
tributors — with  charges  that  many  new¬ 
comers  and  opportunists  were  horning  in 
to  use  quota  of  raw  stock  as  basis  for 
promoting  new  companies — has  been  able 
to  secure  governmental  consideration  for 
a  complete  re-shuffle.  Unless  new  govern¬ 
ment  can  secure  concession  from  the 
United  States  for  substantial  increase  of 
film  footage  for  the  year,  local  industry 
will  be  in  hai-d  straits. 


Wallace  Snaps  Sicily 

Sergeant  Bob  Wallace,  former  Holly¬ 
wood  magazine  photographer,  directed 
one  of  the  three  crews  credited  with  the 
successful  ‘photographic’  invasion  of 
Sicily  for  American  newspapers. 


Studio  Cuts  Truck  Mileage 
By  20  Pet. 

RKO,  by  utilizing  locations  a  short  dis¬ 
tance  from  the  studio  and  building  ex¬ 
teriors  on  the  stages  at  Pathe  instead  of 
at  the  ranch,  has  cut  its  truck  mileage  20 
per  cent  for  the  first  six  months  of  1943, 
as  compared  to  the  mileage  of  the  same 
period  during  the  previous  year. 

In  1942,  RKO’s  trucks  traveled  80,526 
miles  in  the  period  from  Jan.  1  to  June 
30,  while  in  1943  this  figure  dropped  to 
59,654  for  the  corresponding  period. 


BUY  WAR  BONDS  TODAY 
focus  and  flash 
with  KALART  tomorrow! 

Writ#  for  literature 

THE  KALART  COMPANY  INC. 

114  Manhattan  St.  Stamford,  Conn. 


g  Enlarged  16  ReTOed  8 
Geo.  W.  Colburn  Laboratory 

Special  Motion  Picture  Printing 
995  MERCHANDISE  MART 
CHICAGO 


MOVIOLA 

FILM  EDITING  EpUIPMENT 
Used  in  Every  Maior  Studio 
Illustrated  Literature  on  Request 
Manufactured  by 

H.  W.  HOUSTON  &  COMPANY 

(A  Division  of  General  Service  Corp.) 

1 1801  W.  Olympic  Blvd.,  West  Los  Angeles,  Calif. 


FAXON  DEAN 

INC. 


CAMERAS 


BLIMPS-DOLLYS 
FOR  RENT 

Day,  NOrmandie  22184 
Night,  SUnset  2-1271 

4516  Sunset  Boulevard 


American  Cinematographer  •  August,  1943  313 


A  boy  and  his  dog  enjoy  summer 


t 


r 


So  does  a  girl  and  her  dog. 


CLASSIFIED  ADVERTISING 


FOR  SALE 


16  MM.  SOUND  PROJECTORS  for  immediate 
delivery.  We  have  a  few  Bell-Howell,  Ampro, 
Victor,  and  DeVry  16mm.  sound  machines,  fac¬ 
tory  re-conditioned,  available.  Write  for  de¬ 
scription  and  prices.  Also  available,  Bell- 
Howell  2000-foot  reels,  Royal  and  President  tri¬ 
pods,  Victor  Model  4  cameras,  focusing  finder 
for  Eastman  Magazine  Eight,  Bell-Howell  pro¬ 
jection  lenses,  projection  lamps  for  all  slide  and 
motion  picture  machines,  Bell-Howell  Turret  8 
cameras.  Revere  8mm.  cameras,  as  well  as 
screens.  CAMERAS :  8  mm.  Bolex,  new,  with 
Laack  1.3  lens,  $250.00 ;  Bell-Howell  Model  70 
16mm.  with  Cooke  3.5  and  case,  very  fine, 
$59.50 ;  16mm.  Agfa,  variable  speeds,  3.5  lens, 
very  fine,  $39.50 ;  8mm.  Bolex,  new,  with  1.9 
lens,  and  1%-inch  f  :3.5  lens,  $285.00  ;  Bell- 
Howell  Companion  with  wind-bak,  3.5  lens,  very 
fine,  $55.00 ;  LENSES :  1-inch  Dallmeyer  .099, 
like  new,  $79.50 ;  15mm.  Hugo  Meyer  Plasmat 
1.5,  like  new,  $89.50;  1%-inch  Cooke  for  8mm., 
$75.75 ;  l^-inch  Dallmeyer  1.9,  new,  $75.00 ; 
1^4-inch  Eastman  4.5  for  Model  60,  $39.50;  2- 
inch  3.5  Hugo  Meyer,  like  new,  $49.50.  PRO¬ 
JECTORS:  16mm.  Bell-Howell  Diplomat,  new, 
$229.50 ;  16mm.  Bell-Howell  Showmaster,  like 
new,  $199.50 ;  Bell-Howell  Model  57,  500-watt, 
very  fine,  $59.50.  WE  ALSO  HAVE  A  FINE 
STOCK  OF  ROLL  FILM  AND  PLATE  CAM¬ 
ERAS,  MINIATURES.  AND  GRAPHICS.  NA¬ 
TIONAL  CAMERA  EXCHANGE,  Established 
1914,  86  So.  Sixth  St.,  Minneapolis,  Minnesota. 


WE  BUY,  SELL  AND  RENT  PROFESSIONAL 
AND  16mm  EQUIPMENT,  NEW  AND  USED. 
WE  ARE  DISTRIBUTORS  FOR  ALL  LEAD¬ 
ING  MANUFACTURERS.  RUBY  CAMERA 
EXCHANGE,  729  Seventh  Ave.,  New  York  City. 
Established  since  1910. 


RCA  GALVANOMETER  STRING  VIBRATORS. 
$5.00;  16mm  FILM  PHONOGRAPH.  SIMILAR 
TO  MAURER,  $995.00;  CANNON  FOUR 
PRONG  PLUGS,  65c;  3-PHASE  1/12  H.P. 
SYNCHRONOUS  MOTORS.  $14.35;  with  gear¬ 
box,  $19.50;  RCA  MITCHELL  OR  BELL  AND 
HOWELL  3-phase  CAMERA  MOTORS,  $135.- 
00;  RCA  R-2  STUDIO  RECORDER,  $275.00  ; 
TWO-ELEMENT  GLOWLAMPS,  $9.50;  DU¬ 
PLEX  35MM  STEP  PRINTER,  $425.00.  S.O.S 
CINEMA  SUPPLY  CORPORATION,  NEW 
YORK. 


IMPROVED  DUPLEX  35MM  PRINTER,  with 
two  Bell-Howell  Cams  and  Shuttles.  Perfect 
Registration  for  Color  or  Black  and  White,  and 
process  plates.  Also  Bell-Howell  Step  Printer 
with  Registration  Pins  ideal  for  duplication. 
35  MM  HOLMES  AND  DEVRY  Portable  Sound 
Projectors.  Hollywood  Camera  Exchange,  1600 
Cahuenga,  Hollywood. 


TRADING  OFFERS 


TARGET  PISTOLS,  revolvers,  automatics,  ac¬ 
cepted  in  trade  on  all  types  of  photographic 
equipment.  NATIONAL  CAMERA  EXCHANGE, 
Established  in  1914,  86  South  Sixth  St.,  Minne¬ 
apolis,  Minnesota. 


WANTED 


WANTED  TO  BUY  FOR  CASH 
CAMERAS  AND  ACCESSORIES 
MITCHELL,  B  &  H,  EYEMO,  DEBRIE,  AKELEY 
ALSO  LABORATORY  AND  CUTTING  ROOM 
EQUIPMENT 

CAMERA  EQUIPMENT  COMPANY 
1600  BROADWAY,  NEW  YORK  CITY 
CABLE:  CINEQUIP 


WE  PAY  CASH  FOR  EVERYTHING  PHOTO¬ 
GRAPHIC.  Write  us  today.  Hollywood  Camera 
Exchange.  1600  Cahuenga  Blvd.,  Hollywood. 


16mm  SOUND  PROJECTORS,  ANY  MAKE. 
CAMERAS,  35mm  PROJECTORS,  RECORD¬ 
ERS  or  WHAT  HAVE  YOU?  S.O.S.  CINEMA 
SUPPLY  CORPORATION,  NEW  YORK  18. 

WE  BUY— SELL— TRADE  ALL  MOTION  PIC¬ 
TURE  EQUIPMENT,  SOUND  AND  SILENT. 
SEND  YOUR  LIST.  THE  CAMERA  MART, 
70  WEST  45TH  ST.,  NEW  YORK  CITY. 


HAVE  YOU  BOUGHT 
THAT  EXTRA  BOND 
TO  TRAP  A  JAP? 


314 


August,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


EASTMAN 

FILMS 


More  than  ever  the  main¬ 
stay  of  the  motion  picture 
industry,  with  every  foot 
contributing  its  full  share 
of  exceptional  quality. 


EASTMAN  KODAK  COMPANY 

J.  E.  BRULATOUR,  INC.,  DISTRIBUTORS 
Fort  Lee  Chicago  Hollywood 


American  Cinematographer  •  August,  1943  315 


FILMO  SPORTSTER— Popular  FILMO  AUTO  MASTER-16mm. 

8mm.  camera  with  F2.5  lens,  magazine  loader  with  3-lens 
Four  speeds,  including  slow  turret  head  (which  mounts 
motion.  Single-frame  con-  finder  objectives,  too).  Its 
trol.  Film  footage  dial  resets  four  speeds  include  sound 
automatically.  Sportster  is  film  speed  and  slow  motion 
theeconomical  precision“8”.  — has  single-frame  control. 


These  war  weapons  will  be  yours 

...WHEN  PEACE  IS  WON 


APIS  CALLING,  Universal’s  timely 
filming  of  intrigue  and  high  adventure  in 
the  French  underground  movement,  has 
just  been  released  for  showing  at  ap¬ 
proved  non-theatrical  locations,  through 
the  Filmosound  Library!  It’s  a  great  war¬ 
time  thriller  that  will  keep  you  and  your 
friends  enthralled  from  start  to  finish. 

Get  Paris  Calling  for  your  next  feature 
.  .  .  and  then  for  fun  and  spice,  choose  a 
group  of  shorter  Filmosound  Library  films 
to  complete  your  program.  You’ll  find 
almost  any  sort  of  movie  you  can  think  of 
in  this  great  collection — cartoons,  sport 
shorts,  travel,  battle  films,  OCD  subjects, 
first  aid  training . . .  and  on  and  on  through 
thousands  of  titles. 

Plan  the  movie  program  you’ve  always 
wanted  to  see  .  .  .  Filmosound  Library  has 
the  very  films  you’ll  want. 

Put  Your  Projector  to  Work  for  Victory 

Your  projector  is  a  victory  weapon  .  .  . 
and  so  is  every  other  projector  in  your 


Qpf/\on/'c 

‘S 

|g]){22 

K 

▼ 

BELUHOWELL 

m 

Opti-onics  is  OPTIcs  .  .  . 
electrONics..  .mechanics. 
It  is  research  and  engi¬ 
neering  by  Bell  &  Howell 
in  these  three  related 
sciences  to  accomplish 
many  things  never  before 
obtainable.  Today,  Opti- 
onics  is  a  WEAPON.  To¬ 
morrow  it  will  be  a  SERV¬ 
ANT  ...  to  work,  protect, 
educate,  and  entertain. 


town  whether  owned  by  school,  club,  or 
industry.  For  these  projectors  can  help 
train  warworkers  and  teach  first  aiders 
and  Civilian  Defense  groups.  Seek  out 
these  idle  projectors.  Team  them  up  with 
Filmosound  Library’s  extensive  collection 
of  special-purpose  training  films.  Put  them 
to  work  for  Victory.  Projectors  are  not 
available  now  for  civilian  purchase,  yet 
there  need  be  no  shortage  if  all  civilian 
equipment  is  shared  when  the  need  is 
greatest. 

There9 s  No  Shortage  of  Expert  Servicing 

Don’t  be  satisfied  with  less  than  perfect 
projector  efficiency.  Bell  &  Howell  fac¬ 
tory  experts  inspect,  adjust,  repair,  and 
replace  until  your  Filmo  projector  is  again 
in  factory-perfect  working  order.  Your 
dealer  can  tell  you  the  standard  costs  of 
repairs  your  Filmo  may  need  and  will  help 
you  pack  it  for  safe  shipment  to  the 
factory. 

The  peerless  Vap-O-rate  film  treatment 
protects  your  irreplaceable  home  movies 
.  .  .  makes  them  impervious  to  oil  and 
moisture  .  .  .  resistant  to  scratches,  heat 
and  finger  marks  which  mar  so  many  good 
films.  The  coupon  below  will  bring  you  in¬ 
formation  on  this  proved  professional 
process.  Bell  &  Howell  Company,  Chi¬ 
cago;  New  York;  Hollywood;  Washing¬ 
ton,  D.  C.;  London.  Established  1907 . 


F1LMOARC  PROJECTOR— En¬ 
gineered  throughout  as  an 
arc  projector,  this  16mm. 
model  has  ample  light  for 
large  auditoriums.  High  out¬ 
put  amplifier  and  dynamic 
twin  speakers  are  included. 
Shows  sound  or  silent  film. 


EYEMO  CAMERA  — The 

“tailor-made”  35mm.  cam¬ 
era.  Seven  standard  models 
plus  a  complete  set  of  pre¬ 
cision-engineered  accesso¬ 
ries  fit  Eyemo  to  any  task 
from  quick  field  work  to  com¬ 
plex  studio  projects. 


FILMO  70E  CAMERA— Has 

many  features  of  more  ex¬ 
pensive  Filmo  models. 
Single-lens  seat  provides  for 
quick  changes  from  standard 
to  special-purpose  lenses. 
Accurate  spyglass  viewfinder. 
Four  speeds,  including 
sound  and  slow  motion,  with 
accurate  speed  governor. 


FILMO  DIPLOMAT  PROJECTOR 

— This  fine  750- watt  machine 
takes  up  to  400  feet  of  16mm. 
film.  Famous  B&H  all-gear 
drive  and  power  rewind.  FI. 6 
lensand  magnilite  condenser 
which  steps  up  screen  bril¬ 
liance.  Shows  sound  or  silent 
film — though  the  sound  is 
not  heard. 


BURNED -OUT  PROJECTOR  LAMPS  must 
be  returned  when  you  order  new  ones. 

“E”  FOR  EXCELLENCE.  How  the  Army- 
Navy  "E”  award  is  won  and  presented  is 
shown  by  this  one-reel  sound  film.  Serv¬ 
ice  charge  50c. 


• 

J  Bell  &  Howell  Company 

•  1848  Larchmont  Ave.,  Chicago,  Ill. 

Please  send  catalog  and  supplements  of  Filmosound 

•  Library  titles  (  ). 


♦Trade-mark  registered 


MOTION  PICTURE  CAMERAS  AND  PROJECTORS 


I’d  like  information  on  the  “Vap-O-rate”  Film  Treat- 
•  ment  (  ). 


PRECISION- 
MADE  BY 


?  ~3  m? 


Precision  in  a  blackout 


'"T"'HE  LIGHTS  were  turned  on 
to  illustrate  this  story,  but 
actually  both  the  Du  Pont  Re¬ 
search  and  Control  Laboratory 
assistant  and  the  machine  she 
controls  work  in  a  darkroom. 

The  operation  is  one  of  con¬ 
trolling  a  precision  apparatus  that 
coats  test  batches  of  emulsion  on 
the  base  used  in  making  Du  Pont 
motion  picture  film.  While  this 
is  an  experimental  coating  ma¬ 


chine,  it  exactly  duplicates  full- 
scale  coating  procedure. 

The  film  so  produced  is  sub¬ 
jected  to  laboratory  tests  in  order 
to  determine  the  speed,  contrast 
and  other  characteristics  of  the 
emulsion.  In  this  manner  the 
emulsions  used  in  coating 
Du  Pont  “Superior”  Negatives 
are  first  approved  by  laboratory 
control  methods  before  large-scale 
production  of  the  film  takes  place. 


E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  &  Co. 
(Inc.),  Photo  Products  Department, 
Wilmington,  Delaware. 

In  New  York:  Empire  State  Bldg. 
In  Hollywood :  Smith  &  Aller,  Ltd. 


MOTION  PICTURE 
FILM 


BETTER  THINGS  FOR  BETTER  l  I  V  I  N  O  .  .  .  T  H  R  O  U  G  H  C  H  E  M  I  S  T  R  T 


318  September,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


When  your  camera  is  an  Eyemo,  it’s  always  ready  to  go  into 
instant  action  on  any  type  of  assignment  .  .  .  anywhere. 

Because  of  the  versatility  and  dependability  of  Eyemo 
Cameras,  mechanically  and  as  to  picture  quality,  they’re  first 
choice  with  most  cameramen  on  news  fronts  the  world  over. 

Resolve  now  to  get  an  Eyemo  for  yourself  when  the  war  is 
over  and  Eyemos  are  again  available. 


EYEMO  MODELS  L  AND  M 

These  models  have  the  compact 
type  of  three-lens  turret.  View¬ 
finder  is  matched  to  six  lens  focal 
lengths  by  turning  a  drum;  shows 
"sound”  field  to  match  camera’s 
"sound”  aperture  plate.  Operating 
speeds:  Model  L — 4  to  32  frames 
per  second;  Model  M — 8  to  48. 


EYEMO  MODELS  P  AND  Q 

Most  complete  of  the  seven  stand¬ 
ard  models.  Have  three-arm  offset 
turret,  prismatic  focuser  with  mag¬ 
nifier,  and  provisions  for  electric 
motor  and  external  film  magazines. 
Speeds:  Model  P — 4,  8,  12,  16,  24, 
and  32  f.p.s.;  Model  Q — 8,  12,  16, 
24,  32,  and  48  f.p.s. 


Pathe  Cameraman,  Howard  Winner 

with  his  Eyemo  “ somewhere  in  Africa.”  At  right  is 
Capt.  John  D.  LeVien,  who  distinguished  himself 
in  Algeria  by  leading  the  90  troops  who  captured 
the  Italian  Armistice  Commission. 


BUY  MORE  WAR  BONDS 
EYEMOS  WANTED  FOR  WAR  SERVICE 


BELL  &  HOWELL  COMPANY 

1848  Larchmont  Avenue  Date . 

Chicago,  Illinois 
Gentlemen : 

For  the  purpose  of  aiding  the  war  effort,  I  am  willing  to  sell  my 
EYEMO  Camera,  Model . Serial  No . 


It  has  been  modified  as  follows: 


*Opti-onics  is  OPTIcs  .  .  .  electrONics  .  .  . 
mechanics.  It  is  research  and  engineering  by 
Bell  &  Howell  in  these  three  related  sciences 
to  accomplish  many  things  never  before  ob¬ 
tainable.  Today,  Opti-onics  is  a  WEAPON. 
Tomorrow,  i  t  will  be  a  SERVANT  ...  to  work, 
protect,  educate,  and  entertain. 

*  .lace-mark  registered 


I  will  sell  this  camera  for  $ . and  will  pay 

transportation  and  insurance  to  Chicago. 

This  camera  is: 

. In  good  operating  condition 

. Inoperative  or  damaged  (give  details) : . 


Bell  &  Howell  Company,  Chicago;  New  York;  Holly¬ 
wood;  Washington,  D.  C.;  London.  Established  1907 


PRECISION-MADE  BY 


Price  above  includes  these  lenses: . 

I  offer  the  following  additional  lenses  at  the  prices  shown 

here:  . 

Name . Address .  . 

City  &  State . AC9-43 

Do  Not  Chip  Until  You  Receive  Instructions  from  Factory 


American  Cinematographer  •  September,  1943  319 


VOL.  24  SEPTEMBER.  1943  NO  9 


CONTENTS 

© 


Nude  But  Not  Lewd . By  Hilda  Black  323 

Fighting  With  Film . By  Hal  Hall  324 

Hollywood  and  Minorities . By  Peter  Furst  326 

Iowa’s  Health  in  16  mm . By  D.  H.  Bonnie  and 

W.  H.  Schultz  328 


The  Staff 

• 

EDITOR 

Hal  Hall 

• 

TECHNICAL  EDITOR 
Emery  Huse,  A.S.C. 

• 

ASSOCIATE  EDITOR 
lames  Pyle,  Jr. 

• 

WASHINGTON  STAFF  CORRESPONDENT 
Reed  N.  Haylhorne,  A.S.C. 

• 

MILITARY  ADVISOR 
Col.  Nathan  Levinson 


Mitchell  35  mm.  Single  System  Sound  Camera . By  E.  J.  Tiffany  330 

On  With  the  Show . By  Edward  Pyle,  Jr.  331 

Post-War  “Dream  Camera” . By  James  R.  Oswald  332 

Filming  an  “Incident” . By  LaNelle  Fosholdt  334 

Home  Movie  Previews .  336 

Among  the  Movie  Clubs .  340 

© 


The  Front  Cover 

This  month’s  cover  is  a  shot  of  glamorous  Rita  Hayworth, 
Director  of  Photography,  Rudy  Mate,  and  camera  crew 
making  Columbia  Pictures  “Cover  Girl”.  In  the  picture 
from  left  to  right  are:  Miss  Hayworth,  Rudy  Mate,  A.S.C., 
Allen  Davey,  assistant  cameraman,  Julian  Hilson  and  Ken¬ 
neth  Hunter,  of  the  Technicolor  staff,  and  Burney  Guffey, 
operative  cameraman.  Cover  photograph  made  by  Ned  Scott. 


STAFF  PHOTOGRAPHER 
Pal  Clark 

• 

ARTIST 

Alice  Van  Norman 

• 

CIRCULATION 
Marguerite  Duerr 

• 

ADVISORY  EDITORIAL  BOARD 
Fred  W.  Jackman.  A.  S.  C. 

Victor  Milner,  A.  S.  C. 

James  Van  Trees,  A.  S.  C. 

Farciot  Edouart.  A.  S.  C. 

Fred  Gage,  A.S.C. 

Dr.  J.  S.  Watson,  A.  S.  C. 

Dr.  L.  A.  Jones.  A.  S.  C. 

Dr.  C.  E.  K.  Mees.  A.  S.  C. 

Dr.  W.  B.  Rayton.  A.  S.  C. 

Dr.  Herbert  Meyer,  A.  S.  C. 

Dr.  V.  B.  Sease,  A.  S.  C. 

• 

AUSTRALIAN  REPRESENTATIVE 
McGill's,  179  Elizabeth  Street.  Melbourne. 
Australian  and  New  Zealand  Agents 

• 

Published  monthly  by  A.  S.  C.  Agency.  Inc. 
Editorial  and  business  offices: 

1782  North  Orange  Drive 
Hollywood  (Los  Angeles,  28),  California 
Telephone:  GRanite  2135 
• 

Established  1920.  Advertising  rates  on  appli¬ 
cation.  Subscriptions:  United  States  and  Pan- 
American  Union,  $2.50  per  year ;  Canada,  $2.75 
per  year;  Foreign.  $3.50.  Single  copies,  26c: 
back  numbers,  30c ;  foreign,  single  copies  35c. 
back  numbere  40c.  Copyright  1943  by  A.  S.  C. 
Agency,  Inc. 

• 

Entered  as  second-class  matter  Nov.  18.  1937. 
at  the  postoflice  at  Los  Angeles,  California,  under 
the  act  of  March  3.  1879. 


320  September,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


Illustration  from  Walt  Disney's  Feature, 
"VICTORY  THROUGH  AIR  POWE R," Major 
Alexander  P.  de  Seversky's  best-selling  book. 


FANTASY  OF  FACTS . . . 

World  War  1  -  a  25-pound  bomb  was  news!  Tossed  by  hand  from  an  open  plane,  if 
raised  its  liffle  cloud  of  debris  -  and  spoke  of  things  to  come,  today's  huge  blockbusters, 
which  are  precision-released  from  giant  bombers  with  devastating  effect.  ADEL  assists  in 
their  delivery  with  highly -efficient  hydraulic,  electric  and  hydro-electric  equipment. 
ADEL  equipment  on  leading  United  Nation's  planes  was  an  evolution  of  original  plans 
for  making  cinematographic  equipment.  From  a  unique  lens  focusing  device  came  a 
carburetor  dual  control  mechanism  which,  in  turn,  led  to  the  development  of  other  air¬ 
craft  products.  ADEL'S  peacetime  plans  include  advanced  cinematographic  equipment, 
made  with  the  engineering  skills  that  created  ADEL'S  international  acceptance  in  avia¬ 
tion.  Hasten  the  day  of  Victory  by  taking  Pluto's  good  advice. 


PLUTO  SAYS : 

SIC  'EM. 

LICK  'EM, 

GUY  MORE  BONDS  l 


DUCTS  CORP. 


PRECISION  P 

7(V.  /V<Z. 


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322  September,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


t(u<te  Sut  Wet  £w4 

By  HILDA  BLACK 


TAKE  it  from  pretty-red-haired, 
glamorous  -  looking  Maurine, 
there’s  more  to  photographing 
nudes  than  appears  on  the  surface.  As 
a  matter  of  straight  fact,  what  appears 
on  the  surface  is  usually  where  all  the 
trouble  begins. 

Ask  any  photographer  who  has  made 
a  study  of  nudes  and  he’ll  agree  with 
you. 

To  begin  with,  says  Maurine,  they 
are  the  most  difficult  of  any  camera 
studies  to  photograph.  That  would  be 
true  even  were  it  not  for  the  strict  rules 
of  what  is  “proper”  and  what  “improp¬ 
er”  in  nude  photography. 

“Nudes,  I  suppose,”  continued  Mau¬ 
rine,  have  fallen  into  disrepute  because 
there  have  been  so  many  bad  ones.  Badly 
posed,  badly  executed.  The  reason  for 


that  is  simple:  every  avid  16mm.  fan 
thinks  he  is  going  to  be  a  great  camera¬ 
man.  And  he  starts  thinking  in  terms 
of  nudes. 

“Why  does  every  photographer’s 
thoughts  turn  that  way?  I  don’t  know, 
unless  it’s  because  intuitively  we  all 
know  that  there  is  nothing  more  beau¬ 
tiful  than  the  human  body.  We  just 
naturally  turn  to  the  most  beautiful 
thing  we  can  think  of  to  photograph. 

“But  does  the  new  camera  addict  think 
of  the  difficulties  ahead  ?  He  does  not. 
‘Nothing  to  it,’  is  usually  his  attitude. 
And  so,  with  only  the  sketchiest  knowl¬ 
edge  of  his  subject,  the  novice  sets  out 
to  photograph  the  most  intriguing — 
and  most  difficult — of  all  subjects — 
nudes. 

(Continued  on  Page  338) 


Nude  study  on  opposite  page  took  7  hours  to  light. 
Maurine,  who  made  it  says  it  is  best  she  ever  did. 
Top  of  this  page  is  another  Maurine  study.  And  here 
is  picture  of  Maurine  herself.  She  is  one  of  Holly¬ 
wood's  top  portrait  photographers. 


American  Cinematographer  •  September,  1943  323 


Jifktiny  With  Jilin 

By  HAL  HALL 


THE  business  of  fighting  our  ene¬ 
mies  in  the  current  global  war  is 
not  being  done  entirely  with  guns 
and  bombs  and  bayonets.  Playing  an  im¬ 
portant  part  on  every  battle  front  and 
in  every  bombing  mission,  motion  picture 
cameramen,  many  from  Hollywood,  are 
marching  and  flying  side  by  side  with 
fighting  men,  shooting  with  film  instead 
of  bullets. 

Specially  trained  to  carry  out  their 
work  from  the  air,  one  of  the  most  im¬ 
portant  groups  of  combat  cameramen 
are  those  attached  to  the  Army  Air 
Forces.  These  cameramen  have  a  real 
job  cut  out  for  them,  for  their’s  is  the 
job  to  record  on  film  any  and  all  things 
that  will: 

(1)  Aid  in  saving  the  lives  of  our  men. 

(2)  Expose  any  and  all  weaknesses 
in  our  planes  and  machines  so  that  they 
may  be  made  better. 

(3)  Photographing  the  enemy’s  war 
machines  so  that  we  may  learn  their 
secrets,  tactics  and  modes  of  operation. 
It  is  not  necessary  to  state  how  much 
aid  this  will  give  our  fliers  in  combat¬ 
ing  them. 


Training  the  cameramen  for  this  job 
is  in  the  hands  of  a  magnificent  organi¬ 
zation  called  the  Army  Air  Forces’  First 
Motion  Picture  Unit,  with  headquarters 
at  the  Hal  Roach  Studios  in  Culver  City, 
California.  There  units  of  from  20  to  25 
cameramen  are  carefully  trained,  not 
only  in  the  mechanics  of  their  job,  but 
undergo  a  rigid  and  thorough  physical 
training,  to  insure  their  being  in  peak 
condition.  Their  lives  will  often  depend 
upon  their  individual  stamina  and  pro¬ 
ficiency  in  the  use  of  small  arms.  These 
men  must  and  do  possess  a  high  degree 
of  skill  and  courage. 

The  Officer  in  Charge  of  Aerial  Cine¬ 
matography  of  the  Army  Air  Forces’ 
First  Motion  Picture  Unit  is  Major  El¬ 
mer  G.  Dyer,  long  a  member  of  the 
American  Society  of  Cinematographers 
and  for  years  one  of  Hollywood’s  out¬ 
standing  cameramen.  Some  of  the  most 
spectacular  aerial  cinematography  that 
has  come  to  the  motion  picture  screen 
in  the  past  years  has  come  from  Major 
Dyer’s  camera.  So,  when  Major  Dyer 
trains  a  cameraman  for  aerial  work,  that 
man  is  learning  the  tricks  that  it  has 


Upper  left,  Major  Elmer  Dyer,  Officer  in  Charge  of 
Aerial  Cinematography,  Army  Air  Forces  First  Motion 
Picture  Unit,  in  ship  ready  for  flight  with  camera. 
Top,  Lt.-Col.  Paul  Mantz,  Commanding  Officer  of 
the  Unit.  Bottom,  Lt.-Col.  Owen  Crump,  in  charge 
of  production. 


taken  Major  Dyer  many  years  to  ac¬ 
quire. 

Perhaps  a  clarification  of  the  three 
important  jobs  of  the  aerial  cameraman 
mentioned  above  might  be  in  order.  So 
we  quote  from  information  furnished  by 
the  Public  Relations  Officer  of  the  unit. 

“In  analyzing  these  three  operations 
it  is  better  to  explain  them  singly.  In 
the  work  of  saving  lives,  our  men  fly 
in  combat  planes  in  the  thick  of  the 
fighting,  busy  photographing  not  only 
the  enemy,  but  our  own  men  and  planes 
as  they  fight.  They  photograph  our 
planes  as  they  are  hit;  they  learn  the 
weaknesses,  however  small  they  may  be. 
Emphasis  is  specially  placed  on  these 
weaknesses,  particularly  as  they  affect 
our  combat  crews.  In  one  short  fight  they 
can  learn  that  more  armor  plate  is  need¬ 
ed  to  protect  the  crews  on  certain  vul¬ 
nerable  parts  of  the  planes  from  the 


324  September,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


number  of  wounds,  if  any,  that  the 
crews  receive.  If  they  show  that  more 
are  receiving  leg  wounds,  then  armor 
can  he  added  to  prevent  this;  if  body  or 
head  wounds,  the  same  thing  applies. 
Films  will  show  just  how  long  pilots 
can  fly  at  peak  effort  before  too  much 
nervous  tension  sets  in,  or  he  becomes 
too  tired  to  do  his  best.  The  figures 
showing  that  we  lose  but  one  plane  to 
five  or  more  of  the  enemy’s  losses  bear 
out  the  facts  of  our  superioi’ity.  We 
mean  to  keep  it  thus. 

“In  exposing  the  operations  of  the 
enemy  we  further  aid  in  defeating  them. 
As  an  example,  it  might  take  one  pilot 
or  gunner  from  ten  to  twenty  bursts 
of  fire  to  bring  down  one  plane,  while 
another  plane  goes  down  from  one  burst. 
In  the  thick  of  the  fight  the  gunner 
hasn’t  time  to  notice  just  what  vulner¬ 
able  spot  he  hit  to  bring  the  plane  down. 
All  he  knows  is  that  he  hit  it.  But  when 
recorded  on  film,  our  men  can  easily 
see  what  happened  and  the  next  time  will 
know  a  particularly  vulnerable  spot  to 
aim  for.  This  has  happened  more  than 
once  and  will  happen  again.  And  when 
this  applies  in  reverse  to  our  own  planes, 
we  take  steps  to  prevent  it  happening 
again.  And  not  only  do  our  units  fight 
in  the  air,  but  also  on  the  ground,  doing 
the  same  thing  for  the  ground  forces. 

“Some  people  may  think  that  being 
in  the  Motion  Picture  Unit  of  the  Air 
Forces  is  just  a  soft  berth  for  the  du¬ 
ration.  Such  is  not  the  case.  The  men 
in  this  unit  realize  that  as  soon  as  they 
are  ready  for  it  they  will  see  overseas 
action.  For  they  are  needed  badly.  And 
as  training  goes,  they  undergo  a  great 
deal  more  than  the  average,  for  they 
have  to  double  in  brass.  They  are  thor¬ 
oughly  trained  in  the  firearms  they  will 
come  in  contact  with.  Rifles,  revolvers, 
sub-machine  guns  and  anti-aircraft  guns. 
They  can  take  them  apart  and  put  them 
together  again,  in  addition  to  being  ex¬ 
perts  at  firing  them,  and  feel  equally 
at  home  in  their  gas  masks.  Each  man 
is  also  given  a  thorough  course  in  Judo. 

“In  addition,  these  men  are  equally 
proficient  behind  the  camera  and  with 
(Continued  on  Page  346) 


Upper  left,  Major  Dyer 
and  technical  staff.  L.  to 
R.,  Lieut.  F.  H.  Nolta, 
Pfc.  D.  B.  Dickerson,  CpI. 
A.  B.  Canfield,  Captain 
O.  S.  Lovering,  Director, 
andn  Major  Dyer,  pre¬ 
paring  for  ground  aerial 
shots.  Upper  right,  Major 
F.  L.  Clarke,  pilot,  dis¬ 
cusses  problems  with  Ma¬ 
jor  Dyer.  Center  right, 
Capt.  Gilbert  Warrenton 
supervising  photograph¬ 
ing  of  aerial  machine  gun 
in  action.  Stadning  be¬ 
low  him  is  Captain  Rich¬ 
ard  Mayberry.  Bottom, 
Lieut.  T.  E.  Tutwilder, 
cameraman,  and  Lieut. 
Russ  Saunders,  director, 
await  take-off  orders.  All 
photos  from  Army  Air 
Forces. 


American  Cinematographer  •  September,  1943  325 


HoUijuood  and  tflinwitieA 

By  PETER  FURST 


THE  movie  industry  has  come  in 
for  plenty  of  kicking  around, 
slander,  hitting  below  the  belt  and 
distorted  accusations,  all  undeserved, 
from  such  sources  as  the  Chicago 
Tribune,  the  New  York  Daily  News,  iso¬ 
lationists  in  Congress,  some  movie  col¬ 
umnists  and  a  very  few  disgruntled  mem¬ 
bers  of  the  industry  itself.  Usually  their 
reasons  were  Hollywood’s  alleged  “in¬ 
terventionist  propaganda,”  and  general 
liberal  policies.  Only  recently,  Hollywood 
was  visited  by  a  young  lady  reporter 
from  a  Chicago  paper.  She  may  not  have 
found  much  evidence  of  “communism” 
among  our  producers,  but  she  must  have 
been  supplied  with  plenty  of  dirt  by  the 
wrong  people,  because  the  series  of  “ex¬ 
poses”  she  wrote  were  among  the  nastiest 
pieces  of  mud-slinging  this  writer  has 
seen  in  a  long,  long  time.  Reading  those 
pieces,  one  would  think  that  none  of  us 
correspondents  have  a  nose  for  real  news, 
because  none  of  us  somehow  seem  to  be 
able  to  get  on  any  of  those  wild  things 
the  Chicago  paper  and  its  hirelings  would 
have  us  believe  go  on  in  the  world’s 
movie  capital. 

Judging  from  all  these  violent  out¬ 
bursts  on  the  part  of  these  groups,  one 
would  think  that  Hollywood  is  a  liberal’s 


paradise.  To  tell  the  truth,  Hollywood, 
at  least  since  the  beginning  of  this  war, 
has  not  given  liberals  too  much  cause  for 
complaint.  Our  movies  may  not  have  said 
all  they  might  have  or  could  have  said, 
but  at  least  they  didn’t  play  ball  with 
“the  wrong  side”  either.  On  the  contrary, 
in  a  good  many  cases,  Hollywood  has 
tried  to  show  the  way,  only  to  be  frus¬ 
trated  in  its  attempts  by  official  or  un¬ 
official  censorship,  such  as  the  State  De¬ 
partment  or  religious  groups,  to  which 
Hollywood  is  still  very  susceptible. 

The  one  legitimate  complaint  liberals 
have  had  against  the  movie  industry, 
however,  is  the  question  of  the  treatment 
of  minorities  in  films.  This  article  is 
not  written  with  the  intent  to  criticize 
without  giving  a  fair  trial  to  everyone. 
It  is  not  written  as  a  pure  condemnation 
of  those  who  have  not  seen  fit  to  recog¬ 
nize  the  Negro  on  the  screen  as  what  he 
really  is,  an  American  who  is  working 
for  victory.  Neither,  however,  is  it  in¬ 
tended  to  be  a  defense  of  the  appease¬ 
ment  policy,  nor  does  this  writer  neces¬ 
sarily  endorse  all  of  the  methods  used 
by  those  who  want  to  see  the  Negro  get 
a  new  deal  on  the  screen. 

Because,  while  there  has  been  much  too 
much  delay,  there  has  also  been  action. 


There  have  been  many  set  backs,  but 
also  there  have  been  advances.  There 
have  been  disappointments,  yes,  but  we 
have  also  found  much  cause  for  rejoicing. 
We  have  come  a  long,  long  way  since 
D.  W.  Griffith’s  “Birth  of  a  Nation,”  in 
1914,  which  caused  riots  and  disturbances 
all  over  the  nation  because  it  showed  the 
Negro  as  a  terrorist.  We’ve  had  a  “Gone 
with  the  Wind”  which  showed  the  Negro 
as  a  dull,  plodding  servant  without  am¬ 
bitions  or  desires  of  his  own,  but  then 
again,  we  have  had  Warners’  “In  This 
Our  Life,”  with  its  beautiful  portrayal 
of  a  young  Negro  who  wanted  to  become 
a  lawyer  because  that  is  the  best  way  for 
him  to  fight  discrimination.  And  only 
recently  we  have  had  pictures  like  “The 
Ox-Bow  Incident”  with  its  indictment  of 
lynching  and  its  portrayal  of  a  colored 
preacher,  and  Columbia’s  “Sahara,” 
with  Humphry  Bogart  and  Rex  Ingram, 
the  colored  actor,  but  more  about  this 
later. 

Of  course,  there  are  other  minorities 
who  have  raised  their  heads  in  protest 
against  their  screen  treatment.  The  Rus¬ 
sians,  the  Latin  Americans,  the  Chinese, 
the  Filipinos,  all  have  come  in  for  their 
share  of  cinematic  slurring.  Today’s 
problem,  however,  is  the  Negro.  There 
are  thirteen  million  Negroes  in  the 
United  States,  hundreds  of  thousands  in 
the  armed  forces  and  behind  the  work 
benches  of  the  war  factories.  Lena 
Horne,  the  colored  singer  and  actress, 
star  of  “Stormy  Weather,”  has  this  to 
say  about  the  problem  of  the  portrayal 
of  the  colored  man  on  the  screen  as  prac¬ 
ticed  by  most  of  our  studios: 

“We  are  not  asking  for  any  special 
favors  for  the  Negro  performers.  But 
why  always  cast  them  as  superstitious, 


326  September,  1943  ®  American  Cinematographer 


cringing,  singing,  dancing,  carefree,  crap¬ 
shooting  characters?  That  is  both  dis¬ 
tasteful  and  untrue  and  helps  further 
anti-Negro  propaganda. 

“All  we  ask  is  that  the  Negro  is  por¬ 
trayed  as  a  normal  person,  with  normal 
emotions,  ambitions,  and  desires.  Let’s 
see  the  Negro  as  a  worker  at  a  union 
meeting,  a  voter  at  the  polls,  as  a  civil 
service  worker  or  an  elected  official.  Per¬ 
haps  I  am  being  naive  when  I  voice  such 
desires.  Perhaps  these  things  will  never 
be  straightened  out  on  the  screen  itself 
but  will  have  to  wait  until  these  prob¬ 
lems  are  solved  in  real  life.” 

Some  people  don’t  think  Miss  Horne 
is  so  very  naive  when  she  voices  these 
opinions.  There’s  one  group  in  Holly¬ 
wood  that  looks  toward  the  all-Negro 
film  for  salvation.  There  you  show  the 
great  talents  of  the  colored  entertainers, 
you  accustom  people  to  seeing  Negroes 
on  the  screen.  A  person  who  has  seen 
“Stormy  Weather”  or  “Cabin  in  the  Sky” 
might  conceivably  more  readily  accept 
a  colored  person  when  he  appears  among 
white  people  on  the  screen  other  than  as 
a  servant.  That  may  be  true  and  this 
group  has  many  followers  even  among 
the  colored  screen  actors. 

No  story  on  Hollywood’s  treatment  of 
the  Negro  would  be  complete,  however, 
without  some  praise  where  praise  is  due. 
And  praise  is  certainly  due  in  the  case  of 
Columbia’s  “Sahara.”  This  picture  is 
Hollywood’s  worthiest  effort  to  date  so 
far  as  the  Negro  on  the  screen  is  con¬ 
cerned.  This  is  at  last  a  picture  that 
comes  up  to  all  expectations  and  has 
already  been  duly  recognized  in  such 
liberal  publications  as  the  newspaper 
PM  in  New  York  and  in  Negro  news¬ 
papers  all  over  the  country. 

“Sahara”  is  the  story  of  an  American 
tank  commanded  by  Humphry  Bogart 
in  the  North  African  desert  during  the 


battle  against  the  Nazi  Afrika  Corps. 
Rex  Ingram,  the  distinguished  Negro 
character  actor,  plays  the  part  of  a  Brit¬ 
ish  Sudanese  sergeant  who  is  picked  up 
by  the  tank,  together  with  his  Italian 
prisoner  of  war,  portrayed  by  J.  Carrol 
Naish  who  has  played  more  nationalities 
on  the  screen  than  anyone  else  in  Holly¬ 
wood.  Ingram,  who  knows  the  desert  and 
its  treachery  is  made  a  full-fledged  mem¬ 
ber  of  the  crew,  already  composed  of 
Americans,  Australians  and  Englishmen. 
Even  the  Italian  is  taken  along,  despite 
the  lack  of  water.  Ingram,  the  Negro, 
is  accepted  as  a  complete  equal  by  every¬ 
one  including  an  American  Southerner, 
played  by  Bruce  Bennett.  During  the 
tank’s  wanderings  across  the  desert  there 
is  an  attack  by  a  Nazi  Messerschmitt 
which  is  shot  down  by  the  tank’s  guns. 
The  pilot  is  saved  and  taken  prisoner  by 
Bogart  who  orders  Ingram  to  search 
him.  The  Nazi  protests  vehemently. 

“No  Negro  is  good  enough  to  touch  an 
Aryan,”  he  explodes.  But  Sergeant 
Bogart  knows  a  truly  democratic  answer 
to  that  one: 

“Search  him,”  he  says,  “your  fore¬ 
fathers  were  Pharaos  when  his  were  still 
roaming  the  jungles  of  Europe.  We  don’t 
believe  in  his  kind  of  racial  superiority.” 
When  the  tank  finally  reaches  a  lone 
Berber  well  in  the  desert,  Bennett  the 
Texan,  and  Ingram  the  Negro,  climb 
down  in  search  of  water.  In  the  depth 
of  the  well,  surrounded  by  the  Fascist 
enemy,  they  discover  they  can  be  friends. 
“I  guess  we  have  a  lot  to  learn  from 
each  other,”  says  Bennett.  Ingram  is 
later  killed  in  an  attempt  to  get  water 
for  the  others  during  a  Nazi  attack. 

Those  are  the  kind  of  pictures  all  those 
interested  in  real  unity  want  to  see  on 
the  screen  today.  What  is  needed  on  the 
screen  is  a  much  clearer  understanding 
(Continued  on  Page  347) 


Top  opposite  page,  scene  from  "Somewhere  in 
Sahara."  Upper  left  this  page,  Rex  Ingram  and  J. 
Carroll  Naish  in  a  scene  from  the  same  picture. 
Top,  right,  Humphrey  Bogart,  as  a  Yankee  tank  com¬ 
mander,  and  Pat  O'Moore  wait  for  the  oncoming 
Nazis.  Center,  Naish  watches  disappearing  tank  that 
failed  to  take  him  to  safety.  Bottom,  Naish  becomes 
Ingram's  pack  mule. 


American  Cinematographer  •  September,  1943  327 


Dou?a  \&  Health  jfn  16mm. 

By  D.  H.  BONNIE*  and  W.  H.  SCHULTZ ** 


TIME  was  when  borrowers  of  the 
Iowa  state  health  department’s 
16mm.  library  were  satisfied  to 
show  whatever  pictures  were  included 
on  the  film  list.  But  not  now. 

These  days,  if  they  don’t  see  what 
they  want,  they  ask  the  department  to 
produce  a  picture  on  the  specific  sub¬ 
ject  in  which  they  are  interested. 

A  case  in  point  is  that  of  the  woman 
who  telephoned  this  spring  and  asked 
for  a  film  on  smallpox  to  be  shown  on 
an  undetermined  but  approximate  date 
next  winter.  Undaunted  when  informed 
that  the  department  does  not  have  such 
a  pictui'e,  she  said: 

“I  know,  but  I’ve  heard  that  you  make 
your  own  pictures.  Can’t  you  make  one 
on  smallpox?” 

She  was  told  that  the  film  could  and 
would  be  made  (it’s  needed  anyway), 
but  her  picture  will  have  to  wait  until 
previous  requests  are  met.  Ahead  of  it 
on  the  production  schedule  are  a  pic¬ 
ture  on  cancer,  now  nearing  completion, 
and  a  story  about  emergency  medical 
care  in  flood  disasters.  Fighting  for  po¬ 
sition  are  two  additional  requests,  one 
one  home  sanitation  and  housing,  the 
other  on  restaurant  sanitation. 

What  started  out  modestly  enough 
three  years  ago  with  a  magazine  Cine 
Kodak  and  a  theory  that  Iowa  faces  and 
places  would  increase  the  demand  for 
health  films  has  become  one  of  the  de¬ 
partment’s  leading  educational  activi¬ 
ties.  The  only  casualty  has  been  the 


*  Photographer. 

**  Public  Relations  Director,  Iowa  State  Depart¬ 
ment  of  Health. 


magazine  Kodak,  but  in  its  stead  has 
come  a  Cine  Kodak  Special  and  with  it 
the  equipment  to  make  sound  pictures 
from  raw  film  to  release  prints. 

In  the  toddling  period,  when  the  mag¬ 
azine  camera  was  in  use,  the  depart¬ 
ment’s  part  in  the  film  was  limited  to 
writing,  shooting  and  editing.  Record¬ 
ing  and  printing  were  done  outside. 
Those  were  the  “proving”  days  and  the 
first  film  was  the  experiment  which  had 
to  justify  the  entire  program. 

The  picture,  which  was  a  story  of  the 
place  of  milk  in  nutrition,  took  hold  (in 
spite  of  its  imperfections)  with  the  char¬ 
acteristically  strong  grip  of  a  healthy 
infant.  Entitled  “Modem  Magic”  and 
made  in  color,  the  film  since  has  had 
wide  distribution  in  Iowa  and  various 
other  states  have  been  sold  copies  at 
cost. 

That  was  the  beginning  and  it  came 
quite  easily.  From  then  on  the  program 
sprouted  upwards  like  a  growing  boy, 
but  it  was  not  without  growing  pains. 
First  of  these  was  the  demand  for  films 
themselves.  After  the  original  picture, 
not  a  few  of  the  department’s  division 
heads  decided  they  would  like  to  have 
their  own  films,  too.  Requests  came  so 
quickly  and  were  so  many  and  varied 
that  a  compromise  had  to  be  reached. 

The  following  picture,  which  by  chance 
had  been  suggested  at  about  the  same 
time  by  someone  outside  the  office,  filled 
the  breach.  It  was  a  motion  picture  de¬ 
scription  of  the  purposes  and  work  of 
the  health  department,  including  thumb¬ 
nail  moving  portraits  of  each  division. 

At  this  stage  the  Cine  Kodak  Special 
came  along.  The  solutions  it  provided 


to  problems  which  arose  with  its  prede¬ 
cessor  are  obvious.  Varying  frame  lines 
were  eliminated;  dissolves,  fades  and 
other  trick  effects  made  possible  with 
the  new  camera  gave  rise  to  smoother 
transitions  and  more  cohesive  stories. 

The  camera,  however,  was  the  least 
of  the  problems,  though  probably  the 
first.  Sound  was  the  big  thing  on  the 
limited  budget  available  and  was  the 
largest  single  expenditure  on  the  milk 
film.  It  was  apparent  that  the  budget 
wouldn’t  stand  many  blasts  such  as  it 
took  for  the  35mm.  reduction  which  was 
used.  With  the  advance  demand  for  pic¬ 
tures  already  laid  down,  it  was  decided 
that  if  the  money  could  be  raised  it 
would  be  cheaper  in  the  long  run  to  pur¬ 
chase  a  16mm.  recorder  than  to  go  on 
with  reductions. 

The  money  was  provided  with  less  ar¬ 
gument  than  was  anticipated,  indicat¬ 
ing  how  well  the  first  film  had  proved 
itself.  An  Auricon  recorder  with  syn¬ 
chronous  camera  motor  was  purchased 
but  it  was  to  be  some  time  before  lip 
synchronized  sound  would  be  attempted. 

As  no  projector  with  a  synchronous 
motor  was  available,  some  way  had  to 
be  developed  to  synchronize  offstage  nar¬ 
ration  with  the  picture.  This  was  solved 
by  making  a  new  face  for  an  electric 
clock  and  dividing  it  into  36  places  to 
coincide  with  the  sound  speed  of  film. 
The  scenes  are  measured  and  the  nar¬ 
rator’s  script  is  marked  with  the  cor¬ 
responding  numbers  on  the  clock.  The 
narrator,  usually  obtained  from  local 
radio  stations,  either  reads  on  cue  from 
someone  else,  according  to  the  clock  num¬ 
bers  on  the  recording  script,  or  by  watch¬ 
ing  the  clock  himself.  Before  recording 
the  narrator  sees  the  film  several  times 
to  familiarize  himself  with  the  action. 

After  recording  the  sound  negative  is 
checked  by  running  through  a  sound  pro¬ 
jector  but  without  going  through  the 
picture  aperture.  Extreme  care  is  taken 
to  prevent  damage  to  the  sound  nega¬ 
tive,  further  reason  why  the  picture 
aperture  is  dodged.  As  the  film  goes  over 
the  sound  drum,  the  machine  is  stopped 
at  the  beginning  of  each  scene  and  the 
corresponding  clock  number  is  written 
with  ink  on  the  film. 

Previously,  of  course,  the  entire  pic¬ 
ture  has  been  edited  and  the  scenes  cut 
to  the  required  footage.  Then  comes  the 
final  synchronizing  of  the  sound  against 
the  picture.  With  the  two  spools  taped 


328 


September,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


together  on  the  rewind  to  insure  even 
takeup  of  both  films,  the  sound  track 
and  pictures  are  run  together  over  the 
sprockets  of  the  measuring  device.  This 
locks  the  films  together  and  the  num¬ 
bers  marked  on  the  sound  track  are 
checked  against  the  scenes.  If  further 
cutting  is  necessary,  it  is  quite  simple 
to  know  where  it  should  come. 

The  Iowa  health  department  has  its 
main  offices  in  a  house  which  once  was 
the  governor’s  mansion.  About  the  only 
space  left  for  a  sound  room  after  this 
program  was  started  was  in  the  attic. 
Two  rooms,  a  recording  room,  8x10,  and 
a  control  room,  6x10,  were  built.  Enough 
space  was  allowed  in  the  control  room 
for  two  dual  turntables  for  music,  one 
disc  recorder,  a  niche  in  the  walls  for  a 
projector  to  show  films  through  the  di¬ 
viding  glass  window  into  the  recording 
room  which  is  also  used  for  previews, 
and  a  bench  for  the  film  recording  equip¬ 
ment. 

The  sound  room,  because  of  its  small 
size,  is  far  from  ideal  acoustically  but  it 
is  serviceable.  Though  it  was  deadened 
with  Celotex,  rock  wool  and  an  air  space, 
there  were  echoes  at  first.  This  was 
overcome  by  draping  monk’s  cloth  over 
two  of  the  walls. 

At  the  outset  of  the  program  and  un¬ 
til  war  came,  reversal  film  was  used  for 
the  original  photography.  When  the  war 
hit  it  was  next  to  impossible  to  buy  re¬ 
versal  stock,  tests  were  run  on  negative 
film.  It  was  found  that  the  results  were 
better  than  had  been  earlier  obtained 
by  reversal  process  and  even  more  grati¬ 
fying  was  the  fact  that  it  was  cheaper 
and  possible  to  do  the  developing  and 
printing  in  the  department.  A  further 
savings  was  made  in  turn,  as  a  result 
of  this  change,  because  work  prints  could 
be  made  from  odds  and  ends  of  film  edit¬ 


ing,  thus  protecting  the  negative  from 
undue  handling. 

Past  experience  with  negative  film  in 
days  long  gone  by  was  discouraging,  but 
with  the  recent  developments  in  film 
emulsions  and  developing  agents  sur¬ 
prisingly  good  results  are  obtainable 
now.  Diamine  glycin  developer  is  used 
and  while  this  developer  requires  more 
exposure,  it  has  been  found  that  an  in¬ 
crease  in  exposure  of  one  lens  stop  com¬ 
pensates  for  the  difference.  The  grain 
is  just  as  fine  as  reversal  film  of  the 
same  speed.  When  prints  are  made  on 
fine  grain  release  positive,  there  is  little 
loss  of  quality. 

Two  printers  are  used — for  the  pic¬ 
tures  a  step  printer  converted  from  a 
Model  A  Eastman  proiector  and  for  the 
sound  a  printing  head  of  an  old  con¬ 
tinuous  printer  mounted  on  the  frame 
of  an  obsolete  35mm.  projector.  The  35- 
mm.  sprockets  have  been  replaced  by 
16mm.  sprockets  with  an  extra  takeup 
added. 

Esthetically  the  sound  printer  doesn’t 
have  much  in  its  favor,  but  the  impor¬ 
tant  thing  is  that  it  does  the  work  and 
has  taken  the  film  program  a  long  dis¬ 
tance.  Offstage  narration  was  employed 
exclusively  on  the  second  film  complet¬ 
ed — the  one  which  describes  the  depart¬ 
ment — and  also  was  sued  on  the  next 
four  films  produced. 

Following  the  second  effort,  which  was 
entitled  “For  Iowa’s  Health,”  came  in 
relatively  quick  succession,  “Eyes  for 
Safety,”  a  color  film  on  supervised  safe¬ 
ty  and  health  in  swimming;  “Wells, 
Health  and  Wealth,”  a  color  film  on  san¬ 
itation  of  private  wells  which  in  six 
months  moved  to  the  top  of  the  list  in 

(Continued  on  Page  334) 


Opposite  page,  left,  is  scene  from  the  Iowa  health 
film.  Right  is  illustration  showing  "bomb"  used 
for  safe  storage  of  radium  capsules.  Upper  left,  this 
page,  Iowa  Health  Commissioner,  Walter  L.  Bierring, 
M.D.,  demonstrates  method  used  to  record  his  voice 
for  the  health  film.  D.  H.  Bonine  operates  recording 
controls.  Top  right,  W.  H.  Schultz  registers  Kodaloid 
drawing  for  animated  scene  in  Iowa  cancer  film. 
Right,  center,  synchronization  marks  for  Iowa  healtir 
film  are  marked  with  ink  on  film.  Sync  number  h 
written  in  before  next  scene  is  run.  Bottom,  in  final 
synchronization  sound  track  and  picture  are  run  to¬ 
gether  and  checked. 


American  Cinematographer  •  September,  1943  329 


35329-p 


35323-E 


Two  views  of  the  new  Mitchell  camera. 


Mitchell  35  mm  Single 
System  Sound  Camera 

By  E.  J. 


ONE  of  the  revolutionary  new 
photographic  developments  which 
will  be  available  to  the  motion  pic¬ 
ture  industry  at  the  close  of  the  present 
global  war  has  just  been  announced  by 
the  Mitchell  Camera  Corporation.  It  is 
a  new  35mm.  single  system  sound  mo¬ 
tion  picture  camera,  now  available  only 
to  the  needs  of  war. 

This  outstanding  single  system  camera 
was  developed  two  years  ago  with  the 
sole  purpose  in  mind  of  producing  a 
camera  of  the  highest  quality,  containing 
both  sound  and  pictures  for  newsreels, 
travelogues,  commercial  advertising  and 
educational  purposes. 

Since  the  entry  of  the  United  States 
into  the  war  this  camera  has  been  in 
great  demand  by  various  departments  of 
the  Government.  With  it,  it  is  now  pos¬ 
sible  with  one  compact  unit  to  photo¬ 
graph  the  record  high  quality  sound  all 
in  one  complete  unit.  The  entire  unit, 
with  camera,  camera  case,  friction  head 
and  case,  and  tripod  is  extremely  light 
weight. 

The  camera  in  addition  to  the  stand- 


♦Mitchell  Camera  Corporation  Engineer. 


TIFFANY 


ard  focus  tube,  filter  slide,  veeder  counter, 
buckle  trip,  revolving  four-lens  turret 
and  shutter  opening  of  175°,  has  the 
silent  Mitchell  compensating  link  move¬ 
ment  and  a  recording  impedence  drum. 
The  film  threading  is  comparable  to  any 
sound  camera  or  recorder.  A  24-volt  or 
12-volt  motor  can  be  mounted  on  the  side 
of  the  camera.  These  are  controlled  by 
a  rheostat  to  take  care  of  any  variation 
in  battery  voltage. 

The  standard  110-volt  variable  speed 
Mitchell  motor  can  also  be  used  on  the 
camera.  A  tachometer  is  mounted  on  the 
rear  of  the  camera.  The  combination 
matte  box  and  sunshade  with  pola  screen 
holder,  bellows,  three-inch  filter  gauze 
holder,  is  capable  of  handling  a  24mm. 
lens.  An  opening  on  the  side  of  the  sun¬ 
shade  permits  the  finder  to  be  installed 
close  to  the  lens  to  reduce  the  parallax 
of  the  finder  and  to  permit  a  close  object 
as  well  as  a  distant  object  to  remain  in 
the  field  of  the  finder  mattes  without 
making  any  adjustments.  The  standard 
Mitchell  magazines,  friction  head,  and 
tripod  can  be  used  with  the  camera. 

An  erect  image  view  finder  with  ad¬ 
justable  built-in  mattes  is  mounted  on  the 


upper  left-hand  corner  of  the  camera  on 
a  support  bracket,  and  is  equipped  with 
an  adjustable  screw  to  permit  the  finder 
to  be  set  in  any  position.  A  new  feature 
of  this  finder  is  the  type  of  mounting 
which  permits  the  finder  to  be  quickly 
lifted  upward  to  permit  the  door  to  be 
opened  for  threading  the  camera.  After 
threading,  the  finder  is  returned  to  the 
photographing  position  without  any  ad¬ 
justments.  This  is  done  by  releasing  the 
lock  lever  which  enables  the  finder  to  be 
swung  in  an  upward  position  and  auto¬ 
matically  locked.  By  releasing  the  lock 
lever  the  finder  automatically  returns  to 
its  normal  photographing  position. 

Another  new  feature  of  the  Mitchell 
single  system  sound  camera  is  the  new 
rack-over  installed  on  the  side  of  the 
camera.  By  forward  motion  the  camera 
is  racked  over  to  permit  viewing  through 
the  door  finder  the  object  to  be  photo¬ 
graphed.  It  is  pulled  backward  to  permit 
photographing  of  the  scene  on  the  film. 

The  single  system  sound  camera  is  con¬ 
structed  to  handle  either  one  thousand 
foot  capacity  or  four  hundred  foot  ca¬ 
pacity  standard  Mitchell  magazines  with 
wind  guards  to  prevent  the  belt  from 
being  blown  off  the  pulley  by  excessive 
pressure  while  flying  in  an  airplane  and 
to  protect  it  in  stormy  weather. 

The  camera  is  constructed  so  that 
either  RCA  or  Western  Electric  sound 
systems  can  be  mounted  on  it  without 
alteration.  An  RCA  galvonometer  is 
mounted  on  the  first  of  these  cameras. 
The  galvonometer  is  installed  at  the  rear 
of  the  camera  and  is  operated  from  a 

(Continued  on  Page  343) 


330 


September,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


On  With  The  Show 

By  EDWARD  PYLE,  Jr 

VISUAL  AIDS  SPECIALIST 


THE  EVER  increasing  use  of 
16mm.  so-called  “non-theatrical” 
motion  pictures,  emphasizes  the 
import?  nee  of  applying  showmanship 
and  skill  in  their  presentation.  These 
16mm.  sound  films  can  be  broadly  clas¬ 
sified  within  three  groups — Educational, 
Advertising  and  Entertainment. 

Knowledge  of  some  of  the  fundamen¬ 
tals  and  limitations  of  16mm.  film  and 
presentation  equipment,  and  taking  ad¬ 
vantage  of  every  opportunity  to  control 
the  mechanical  variables  encountered, 
will  assure  that  the  audiences  view  the 
films,  without  too  obvious  comparisons 
with  35mm.  theater  showings. 

The  16mm.  film  size,  less  than  one 
fourth  the  area  of  regular  theater  film, 
in  itself  means  terrific  enlargement  in 
order  to  cover  even  a  six-foot  wide  por¬ 
table  screen.  This  indicates  that,  to 
avoid  distortion  and  assure  clear  and 
brilliant  projection,  the  operator  should 
keep  projector  lenses  perfectly  clean. 
Accurate  focusing  is  most  important, 
and,  as  16mm.  projectors  warm  up  con¬ 
siderably  during  projection,  the  focus 
will  occasionally  vary,  necessitating  fo 
cus  adjustment  during  the  showing. 

The  cooling  system  on  most  16mm. 
projectors  limits  the  lamp  size  to  750 
or  1000  watts.  This  means  that  the  max¬ 
imum  screen  size  consistent  with  a  good 
clear  reflected  screen  image,  is  about 
eight  feet  wide,  however,  the  conven 
tionable  six  foot  portable  tripod  screen  is 
large  enough  for  most  gatherings.  The 
screen  brilliance  and  picture  sharpness 
on  such  a  screen,  illuminated  with  a 
1000  watt  lamp  compares  favorably 
with  35mm.  theater  projection  from  arc 
projectors.  Although  16mm.  arc  projec¬ 
tors  have  successfully  equaled  the  35mm. 
projection  in  many  cases,  they  are  not 
considered  “portable,”  so  will  not  be 
discussed  here. 

The  above  mentioned  favorable  com¬ 
parison  is  only  favorable  to  that  small 
portion  of  the  audience  who  can  sit  close 
to  the  line  of  projection.  This  limitation 
of  view  position  is  due  to  the  nat¬ 
ural  characteristics  of  the  glass-beaded 
screen  reflective  quality,  to  compensate 
glass  crystals  are  applied  to  the  flat- 
white  screen  surface,  to  increase  the 
screen  reflective  quality  ,to  compensate 
in  part  for  the  comparative  weakness 
of  the  16mm.  projector  lamp.  The  glass 
beads  function  similarly  to  a  mirror, 
hence  reflect  the  projected  light,  direct¬ 
ly  back  from  the  screen  surface.  One 
only  needs  to  stand,  first  directly  be¬ 
hind  the  projector  and  look  at  the 
screen,  and  then  move  to  either  side,  to 
become  well  aware  of  the  terrific  “fall- 
off”  in  light  reflection  towards  the  sides 


of  the  audience.  Consequently,  if  pos¬ 
sible,  arrange  the  audience  in  a  long 
narrow  group,  projecting  down  the 
length,  so  that  the  majority  can  view 
the  films  to  the  best  advantage.  A  help¬ 
ful  expedient  in  a  crowded  banquet 
room  is  to  project  diagonally  across  the 
room  to  afford  a  favorable  viewing  an¬ 
gle  for  everyone. 

The  actual  placing  of  screen,  speak¬ 
ers  and  projetcor  are  most  important. 
Anticipate  the  size  of  the  audience,  and 
use  a  screen  size  to  fit  the  audience.  A 
52-inch  screen  is  wide  enough  for  groups 
up  to  about  fifty  in  number,  whereas 
a  six-foot  screen  is  suitable  for  larger 
meetings.  This  latter  size  is  the  largest 
that  is  easily  portable,  based  on  a  tri¬ 
pod.  Place  the  screen  at  the  narrowest 
end  of  the  room,  or  diagonally  in  a  cor¬ 
ner.  In  most  cases  it  is  not  wise  or  safe 
to  leave  the  screen  elevated  during  pre¬ 
liminaries,  so  mark  the  tested  position 
of  the  tripod  legs  on  the  floor,  with 
thumbtacks  or  white  chalk.  The  bottom 
of  the  screen  should  always  be  a  little 
higher  than  the  tops  of  the  heads  of 
the  seated  audience.  Better  visibility 
can  often  be  provided  by  mounting  the 
screen  tripod  on  three  chairs. 

Next  in  importance  is  the  position 
of  the  projector.  Have  a  choice  of  sev¬ 
eral  lenses,  for  instance,  a  2-inch,  3- 
inch  and  4-inch.  This  flexible  selection 
will  permit  projection  over  the  heads 
of  the  audience  so  that  no  one’s  view 
of  the  screen  is  obstructed  by  the  pro¬ 
jector  or  operator,  and  also  there  will 
be  less  distraction  by  the  noise  of  the 
projector  in  operation.  Of  course,  move 
the  projector  back  or  forth  until  the 
projected  light  exactly  fills  that  screen. 
If  the  only  available  table  is  not  high 
enough  to  permit  projection  over  the 
heads  of  the  audience,  put  a  chair  un¬ 
der  each  leg  of  the  table  or  projection 
stand.  Try  to  avoid  the  use  of  a  center 
aisle,  as  this  space  is  the  best  possible 
viewing  position  for  maximum  screen 
reflection,  and  should  be  used  by  the 
audience.  Keep  in  mind  that  the  prin¬ 
ciple  of  screen  reflection  diminishing 
towards  the  sides  of  a  room  also  applies 
to  the  vertical  plane.  If  the  screen  is 
placed  as  high  as  it  should  be  for  best 
visibility,  then  the  projector  should 
likewise  be  placed  as  high  as  possible, 
to  allow  the  maximum  reflection  from 
the  screen  to  the  majority  of  the  audi¬ 
ence.  This  principle  is  usually  over¬ 
looked,  and  it  is  common  to  see  a  screen 
placed  too  high,  and  the  projector  sit¬ 
ting  on  a  low  table,  shooting  up  at  the 
screen,  providing  ideal  viewing  from  the 
balcony,  if  there  was  a  balcony.  Remem¬ 
ber,  the  beaded  screen  necessary  to  boost 


the  brilliance  of  16mm.  projection,  is 
like  a  mirror,  and  set  up  the  equipment 
accordingly. 

Placing  the  speakers  (note  the  plural) 
efficiently  requires  an  understanding  of 
a  little  acoustical  engineering.  There  are 
two  positive  “don’ts.”  Never  set  the 
speaker  or  speakers  on  the  floor,  or  on 
a  nearby  piano.  The  floor  is  too  low, 
and  a  piano  often  picks  up  reverbera¬ 
tions  from  the  speaker  and  distorts 
the  sound.  For  groups  of  overy  fifty, 
two  speakers  are  advisable,  one  on  each 
side  of  the  screen.  It  is  simple  to  mount 
a  jack  in  the  back  of  the  first  speaker 
to  permit  use  of  a  second,  and  some 
makes  of  projectors  come  with  the 
speaker  attachment  provided.  This  per¬ 
mits  a  better  spread  of  the  sound,  and 
helps  to  make  up  for  the  usual  miser¬ 
able  acoustics  of  the  average  meeting 
place.  Speakers  should  be  mounted  about 
as  high  as  the  middle  of  the  screen.  If 
no  portable  speaker  stand  is  carried, 
mount  the  speakers  on  a  chair  on  top 
of  a  table,  or  find  a  hat  rack  or  clothes 
tree  to  hang  from.  Sometimes  a  small 
chain  and  strong  picture  hook  can  be 
used  to  bang  them  against  the  wall. 
While  on  the  subject  of  speakers,  let’s 
mention  that  most  places  where  “non¬ 
theatrical”  films  are  shown,  have  no 
acoustical  qualities  whatever.  As  men¬ 
tioned  above,  two  speakers  will  help. 
But,  also,  in  a  bare  room  of  excessive 
echo  tendencies,  it’s  best  to  adjust  the 
(Continued  on  Page  343) 


American  Cinematographer  •  September,  1943  331 


POST-WAR  “DREAM  CAMERA” 


By  JAMES 


MOST  movie  makers  have  probably 
at  one  time  or  another  visualized 
in  their  own  mind  what  they  feel 
constitutes  the  ideal  camera  and  pro¬ 
jector,  and  many  have  voiced  their  opin¬ 
ion  on  the  subject.  Manufacturers  of  mo¬ 
tion  picture  equipment  are  already  plan¬ 
ning  their  post-war  products,  so  now  is 
the  time  for  the  amateur  cine  fan  to 
make  known  his  views  in  the  matter. 
John  Jones,  for  instance,  with  whom 
movie  making  is  just  a  newly  acquired 
hobby,  says:  “I  like  the  compactness  and 
simplicity  of  operation  found  in  my 
magazine  loading  camera.  There  is  no 
chance  of  the  film  becoming  jammed  be¬ 
cause  of  improper  threading,  and  all  ad¬ 
justments  and  “gadgets”  are  kept  at  a 
minimum  to  insure  good  results.  That 
means  a  lot  to  me!” 

His  advanced  amateur  friend,  Bill 
Brown,  who  has  been  taking  it  all  in 
with  a  grin,  finally  says:  “All  well  and 
good,  but  wait  until  you  REALLY  get 
wrapped  up  in  this  fascinating  pastime! 
Only  then  will  you  know  the  value  of  a 
turret  front,  single  frame  device,  and 
back  winding  feature.  Yes,  simplicity  is 
alright  in  its  place,  but  if  you  care  to  go 
at  this  thing  seriously,  if  you  demand 
those  truly  professional  results,  you  need 
a  camera  that  is  versatile.  Whether  or 
not  this  versatility  necessitates  “gad¬ 
gets,”  depends  upon  how  you  define  the 
word  “gadget,”  but  a  certain  amount  of 
accessories  ARE  essential,  of  course.” 

And  so  it  goes  down  the  line  .  .  .  each 
cine  fan  having  his  own  personal  likes 
and  dislikes  .  .  .  each  forming  his  own 
viewpoint  of  the  ideal,  post-war  “dream” 
camera.  From  the  typical  comments  of 
John  Jones  and  Bill  Brown,  it  isn’t  diffi¬ 
cult  to  surmise  that  there  is  no  such 
thing  as  a  real,  all-around,  ideal,  “dream” 
camera.  While  you  might  give  your  right 
eye  for  a  6  inch  telephoto  lens  that  I 
have  no  use  for,  I,  on  the  other  hand, 
might  give  my  right  arm  for  that  certain 
wide-angle  lens  which  would  be  of  so 
much  value  to  me.  Things  that  one  per¬ 
son  consider  important  to  his  movie  mak¬ 
ing  endeavors,  are  frowned  upon  as  a 
handicap  or  a  nuisance  by  another.  The 
needs  of  each  individual  cinematographer 
are  so  different,  the  uses  to  which  a  cine 
camera  can  be  put  so  varied,  that  a 
tailor-made  job  would  almost  be  neces¬ 
sary  to  construct  what  each  one  con¬ 
siders  as  the  “ideal”  outfit. 

Although  I  have  pointed  out  that  you 
can  argue  pro  and  con  any  make  or 
model,  there  nevertheless  ARE  certain 
features  which,  I  am  sure,  EVERYONE 
desires  in  a  movie  camera.  Economy  is 
always  a  big  item  .  .  .  but  not  at  the  sac¬ 
rifice  of  quality  ...  we  ALL  like  a  de¬ 
pendable,  precision  instrument.  When  I 


.  OSWALD 


speak  of  economy,  I  mean  not  only  in 
the  original  cost  of  the  product,  but  more 
so  in  the  cost  of  the  many  attachments 
and  accessories  that  usually  augment 
our  equipment  from  time  to  time. 

Having  discussed  the  importance  of 
economy  and  quality,  let’s  turn  now  to¬ 
wards  weight,  size,  and  shape.  We  all 
like  our  cine  cameras  as  durable  and  light 
as  possible,  which  probably  suggests 
their  construction  of  some  sort  of  alumi¬ 
num  alloy,  as  in  many  models  of  the 
past.  Weight,  to  a  large  extent,  is  de¬ 
termined  by  the  number  of  features  built 
into  the  instrument,  and  of  course  is 
much  greater  in  16mm.  models  than  in 
8mm.  Since  there  is  so  much  room  for 
variance  here,  all  we  can  do  is  sum  up 
our  requirements  as  LIGHTNESS  with 
STRENGTH. 

In  size,  as  in  weight,  we  don’t  like  to 
lug  around  any  unessential,  cumbersome 
apparatus  just  to  give  the  impression 
that  we  are  carrying  something.  It  goes 
without  saying  that  when  weight  is  kept 
to  a  minimum,  size  must  be  also,  so 
nothing  more  need  be  said  in  this  respect. 
Here  again,  however,  8mm.  always  takes 
the  lead  over  16mm.  in  compactness. 

There  are  two  or  three  basic  shapes 
which  have  always  been  prominent  in 
amateur  motion  picture  cameras  before 
the  war,  and  very  likely  will  be  in  the 
post-war  cameras  to  come.  The  familiar 
rectangular,  box-shaped  design,  the  favo¬ 
rite  of  one  manufacturer  in  particular, 
has  proved  popular  over  a  period  of 
many  years.  The  main  advantage  of  this 
type  is  the  fact  that  it  will  rest  flat  on  a 
table  or  other  smooth  surface,  without 
benefit  of  a  tripod.  Most  magazine  load¬ 
ing  cameras  belong  in  this  group.  These 
“box”  varieties  usually  have  “waist-level” 
viewfinders  in  addition  to  the  regular 
“eye-level”  type,  a  distinct  aid  in  making 
angle  shots  with  the  camera  placed  on 
the  ground,  aimed  skyward. 

Another  basic  shape  which  has  been 
equally  as  popular  as  the  aforementioned 
“box”  variety,  is  the  oblong  type  camera. 
Among  different  manufacturers  there 
have  been  many  modifications  of  this 
basic  oblong  pattern,  but  the  general 
shape  has  remained  the  same  throughout 
the  years.  This  design  also  has  its  good 
points,  one  of  which  is  its  “straight  line” 
threading  feature,  enabling  both  reels  to 
be  placed  on  the  same  plane,  without 
sacrificing  maximum  footage  capacity. 

Lest  we  become  like  John  Jones  and 
Bill  Brown  in  discussing  the  ideal,  post¬ 
war  “dream”  camera,  from  here  on  you’re 
on  your  own.  Film  capacity  .  .  .  speed 
range  .  .  .  lens  types,  etc.,  are  purely  a 
matter  of  personal  preferences,  which 
are  different  in  each  case,  and  the  best  I 
could  do  would  be  to  voice  my  own  per¬ 


sonal  views  on  the  subject.  I’ve  had  the 
upper  hand  so  far,  however,  and  since 
there  have  been  no  complaints,  might  as 
well  stick  my  neck  out  a  little  further. 
Should  you  be  inclined  to  disagree  with 
me,  though,  remember  these  thoughts  I 
express  are  just  MINE  .  .  .  towards  MY 
ideal,  post-war  camera. 

Because  I’m  an  average  home  movie 
enthusiast,  this  perfect  “dream”  camera 
of  the  future  will  be  designed  something 
like  this:  In  addition  to  the  features 
which  we  covered  earlier,  it  will  have  a 
capacity  of  100  feet  (I  use  16mm.),  be 
easily  adapted  to  400  foot  magazines, 
and  run  at  least  25  feet  with  one  wind¬ 
ing.  It  will  have  a  range  of  about  4 
speeds,  including  24  frames  per  second, 
for  synchronizing  sound.  Provision  will 
be  made  for  back-winding  the  film  in  lap- 
dissolves  and  double  exposures,  with  an 
accurate  frame  counter  for  this  work.  A 
“single  frame”  device  might  be  included, 
but  would  only  be  used  occasionally. 
More  important  is  a  timing  device  or  de¬ 
layed  action  release,  permitting  the 
cameraman  to  get  into  the  picture  him¬ 
self.  As  to  lenses,  I  rather  prefer  to 
select  my  own,  but  since  indoor  movies 
fascinate  me  so  much,  an  fl.5  or  f  1.9,  in 
focusing  mount,  would  be  my  start.  For 
the  same  reason  I  would  select  a  wide- 
angle  lens  before  a  telephoto.  Were  great 
depth  of  field  required,  an  additional  f3.5, 
fixed  focus  lens  would  be  of  value  for 
more  limited  work,  where  a  slower  lens 
speed  would  fill  the  bill.  A  turret  front 
on  the  camera  to  accommodate  these 
lenses  is  a  great  convenience,  I’ll  admit, 
but  would  seldom  be  used  in  my  work. 

This  then,  is  my  conception  of  a 
“dream”  camera  which  I  hope  some  day 
will  be  a  reality.  But  what  about  the 
projector?  So  far  nothing  has  been  said 
about  this  important  piece  of  equipment 
which,  after  all,  puts  the  finishing  touch 
(Continued  on  Page  349) 


332  September,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


When  it’s  impossible  to  get 
what  you  want 

When  it’s  difficult  to  find 
what  you  need  — 

JUST  REMEMBER 

that  in  spite  of  everything  — 

YOU  CAN  STILL  HAVE 

EASTMAN 

NEGATIVES 

NOT 

“JUST  AS  GOOD 
AS 

BEFORE  THE  WAR” 

Actually  — 

EASTMAN  NEGATIVES 

are 

BETTER  THAN  EVER! 


J.  E.  BRUIATOUR,  Inc. 
DISTRIBUTORS 


Filming  an  Incident 

By  LaNELLE  FOSHOLDT 


TRY  shooting  a  “war”  on  a  foot¬ 
ball  field.  Shooting  “wild”  is  too 
mild  a  name  for  it.  Incendiary 
bombs  dropping — fire  engines  missing 
you  by  inches,  the  noise  of  the  gas 
alarms  and  the  scream  of  the  sirens  are 
just  some  of  the  things  that  made  up  a 
day  of  “wild”  shooting  for  us  when  we 
filmed  an  air  raid  incidents  drill  recent¬ 
ly.  Not  until  the  rushes  came  back  did 
any  of  us  have  a  complete  idea  of  what 
actually  went  on. 

The  Administrator  of  the  Emergency 
Services  of  the  0.  C.  D.,  Mrs.  Vella  Finne, 
asked  the  vice  president  of  the  Long 
Beach  Cinema  Club,  Midge  Caldwell,  if 
some  of  the  club  members  would  help 
solve  one  of  their  major  problems— show¬ 
ing  people  their  own  mistakes. 

The  next  Sunday  an  “Incident  Drill” 
was  to  be  staged  on  a  football  field. 
They  would  furnish  the  film  if  we  would 
furnish  the  cameramen.  The  Civilian 
Defense  group  had  put  on  several  prac¬ 
tice  “Incident  Drills”  in  the  past,  where 
conditions  in  time  of  bombing  were  sim¬ 
ulated  and  the  different  units  such  as 
fire,  police,  medical,  gas  squads,  air  raid 
warden,  messengers  and  a  control  cen¬ 
ter  went  into  action  to  combat  them. 
The  only  trouble  afterward  when  mis¬ 
takes  were  mentioned  everyone  was  sure 
they  hadn’t  made  any  or  it  must  have 
been  someone  else. 

Mrs.  Finne  called  a  meeting  and  Midge 
Caldwell  took  charge  of  the  photograph¬ 
ic  plans.  Charts  were  studied  where  the 
control,  police  and  medical  centers  were 
mapped  out  on  them.  Five  cameramen 
were  placed  in  strategic  spots  to  photo¬ 
graph  all  action  in  their  location,  with 
Midge  Caldwell  and  Vella  Finne  direct¬ 


ing  their  attention  to  errors.  They  kept 
one  cameraman  near  them  to  cover  any¬ 
thing  extra  and  assigned  two  still  cam¬ 
eramen  to  cover  the  entire  territory. 

Sunday  arrived  with  not  too  favor¬ 
able  weather.  Cine-cameramen  called  in 
were  Clarence  N.  Aldrich,  Ray  Fosholdt, 
Frank  Tallant,  Pat  Rafferty  and  Cliff 
Lothrop.  Bombs  fell.  Wardens,  auxiliary 
police,  firemen,  ambulance  crews  and  de¬ 
contamination  squads  went  into  action. 
Department  heads  looked  on  critically  for 
mistakes  but  the  fast  shooting  camera¬ 
men  actually  recorded  them. 

Some  excellent  work  was  filmed,  a  lot 
of  minor  mistakes  revealed  and  a  good 
many  laughs  were  had  over  some  un¬ 
usual  circumstances.  The  air  raid  ward¬ 
ens  took  such  good  care  of  the  casual¬ 
ties  in  one  instance  that  when  the  first 
raiders  arrived  there  was  nothing  but 
transportation  left  for  them.  None  of 
the  drills  were  rehearsed  in  any  part, 
so  the  film  is  an  actual  recording  of  the 
action. 

Sightseers  who  were  actually  on  the 
program  and  supposed  to  cause  confu¬ 
sion  by  picking  up  bomb  fragments  and 
poking  around  collapsed  buildings  where 
people  were  trapped,  put  on  such  a  good 
act  that  they  created  lots  of  amusement 
for  the  onlookers  and  comedy  for  the 
film. 

The  cameramen  had  been  warned  to 
stay  away  from  gas  areas  but  one  over- 
zealous  chap  moved  in  for  a  close-up  and 
was  last  seen  being  hauled  away  by  the 
decontamination  squad,  who  took  their 
practice  seriously.  Luckily  it  was  near 
the  end  of  the  incident  and  he  had  all 
his  pictures. 

(Continued  on  Page  348) 


Iowa's  Health  in  16mm. 

(Continued  from  Page  329) 

demand;  “A  Challenge  to  Infection,”  a 
color  film  on  sanitation  in  barbering 
which  has  been  referred  to  by  a  national 
barber’s  organization  as  marking  an 
epoch  in  barber  education,  and  “Open 
This  Door,”  a  short  supplementary  film 
to  the  latter. 

Then — the  first  go  at  synchronized  lip 
narration.  It  was  the  early  winter  of 
1942  and  the  chairman  of  the  Iowa  In¬ 
fantile  Paralysis  Committee  was  ready¬ 
ing  plans  for  the  annual  infantile  paral¬ 
ysis  campaign.  He  asked  the  department 
if  a  16mm.  sound  trailer  could  be  made 
to  personalize  meetings  throughout  the 
state. 

The  scenes  he  wanted  offei'ed  little  dif¬ 
ficulty  but  the  matter  of  lip  synchroni¬ 
zation  with  the  short  talk  he  hoped  to 
give  was  something  else.  How  to  deaden 
the  sound  of  the  camera  was  the  large 
item  as  funds  had  not  permitted  pur¬ 
chase  of  a  blimp  to  go  with  the  synchron¬ 
ous  motor. 

There  was  one  thing  to  do.  The  aid 
of  the  state  carpenter  was  enlisted  and 
in  short  order  a  satisfactory  blimp  was 
at  hand.  A  plywood  box  was  constructed 
with  a  layer  of  rock  wool  both  on  the 
inside  and  out.  It  was  held  in  place  by 
cloth  covering.  A  removable  glass  frame 
in  front  gives  access  to  the  lens.  A  sim¬ 
ilar  frame  on  top  provides  for  focusing. 
One  side  of  the  box  is  removable  to  al¬ 
low  entrance  of  the  camera. 

The  trailer  was  completed  in  three 
weeks  and  got  in  just  under  the  dead¬ 
line  for  the  beginning  of  the  campaign. 
However,  when  the  campaign  was  over 
the  latter  part  of  January,  the  trailer 
was  only  getting  started.  As  a  matter 
of  fact  it  is  still  being  shown  now  and 
then,  campaign  or  not. 

With  this  success  came  the  courage  to 
try  direct  synchronization  on  a  location. 
At  this  time  a  script  was  being  written 
for  a  film  on  rural  school  nutrition  which 
was  to  be  called  “Lunch  for  Johnny.” 
Short  speeches  for  Johnny  and  his  teach¬ 
er  were  written  into  the  copy  and  later 
successfully  filmed  in  the  school  room. 

Lacking  a  mike  boom,  it  was  necessary 
to  hide  the  microphone  in  some  other 
way.  For  the  scene  in  which  Johnny 
talks  the  microphone  was  placed  in  the 
ink  well  in  his  desk  and  hidden  from 
sight  by  the  student  who  sat  in  front  of 
him.  His  teacher  talked  at  her  desk  and 
the  microphone  was  simply  placed  behind 
her  books  when  she  spoke. 

A  mike  boom  would  have  made  shoot¬ 
ing  much  easier,  so  now  a  projector  stand 
has  been  converted  with  the  use  of  elec¬ 
trical  conduit  pipes  to  serve  as  a  boom. 
The  change  was  made  by  removing  the 
center  pipe  of  the  stand  and  replacing 
it  by  a  seven-foot  section  of  the  same¬ 
sized  conduit.  A  12  foot  section  of  three- 
quarter  inch  conduit  divided  into  two  six- 
foot  lengths  is  used  for  the  arm.  It  is 
(Continued  on  Page  342) 


334  September,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


FOR  ALL  TO  SEE 


The  outstanding  beauty  of 
modern  screen  productions 
demonstrates  effectively  the 
high  quality  of  Eastman  nega¬ 
tive  films,  the  favorites  of  the 
industry.  Eastman  Kodak 
Company,  Rochester,  N.  Y. 

J.  E.  BRULATOUR,  INC.,  DISTRIBUTORS 

Fort  Lee  Chicago  Hollywood 


EASTMAN  NEGATIVE  FILMS 


American  Cinematographer  •  September,  1943  335 


16 

MM 

Home  M 

ovie  1 

Previews 

8 

MM 

WE  ARE  pleased  to  announce  that 
Edward  Pyle,  Jr.,  Visual  Aid  Spe¬ 
cialist,  has  joined  the  staff  of  this  pub¬ 
lication  as  an  Associate  Editor.  Mr.  Pyle 
will  supervise  the  reviewing  of  commer¬ 
cial,  educational  and  amateur  motion 
pictures  sent  in  for  comment.  Mr.  Pyle’s 
background  in  the  field  of  Visual  Edu¬ 
cation,  technical  experience,  and  active 
avocation  of  many  years  as  a  leader  in 
various  filming  groups,  offers  much  to 
constructive  analysis  of  films  submitted 
by  our  readers.  We  consider  it  a  pleas¬ 
ure  to  offer  this  service  at  no  charge  to 
our  readers,  and  trust  you  will  continue 
to  take  advantage  of  it. 


“ACME  OIL  CASE,”  500-foot  black 
and  white  scenario  film. 

This  is  apparently  a  group  produc¬ 
tion  of  the  Indianapolis  Movie  Club,  al¬ 
though  no  such  credit  is  given.  Direc¬ 
tion  by  Dean  Smith,  and  the  rest  of  the 
crew  and  cast  is  too  numerous  to  men¬ 
tion. 

The  story  is  a  genuine  Sherlock 
Holmes  double-murder  mystery,  with 
“Holmes  and  stooge  Watson”  cleverly 
solving  “who  done  it.”  A  good  deal  of 
credit  is  due  for  the  titling  job.  Excel¬ 
lent  opening  titles,  with  the  large  cast 
introduced  on  several  flip  over  cards. 
Clean,  good  sized  white  hand  letters  are 
used,  on  a  pleasing  neutral  dark  back¬ 
ground,  affording  good  contrast  and  per¬ 
fect  legibility.  Titles  are  a  conspicuous 
weakness  in  many  scenario  films,  par¬ 
ticularly  when  a  lot  of  dialogue  is  at¬ 
tempted.  However,  the  “ACME  OIL 
CASE”  is  decidedly  an  exception  to  the 
average.  Sub-titles  for  the  dialogue  were 
frequent  and  very  well  cut  in,  indicat¬ 
ing  that  the  editors  were  thoroughly 
familiar  with  the  titling  of  the  old-time 
silent  movies. 

Several  scenes  called  for  night-time 
effect  exteriors.  These  were  especially 
well  handled,  probably  with  the  use  of 
a  chemical  fade  on  a  regularly  exposed 
daylight  scene.  Some  nearly  perfect 
chemical  fade-ins  and  fade-outs  separat¬ 
ed  various  sequences  appropriately. 

The  film  really  has  only  two  minor 
imperfections.  First,  the  500-foot,  8mm. 
length  could  probably  be  effectively  re¬ 
duced.  And  secondly,  the  illumination  on 
many  of  the  light  colored  interior  walls 
was  excessively  “hot.”  The  actors  were 
usually  lit  O.  K.,  but  too  brilliant  walls 
detracted  from  the  action.  The  all-im¬ 
portant  subject  of  wall  illumination  is 
too  thoroughly  explained  and  illustrated 
in  the  August  issue  of  the  American 
Cinematographer  to  be  repeated  here. 
Aside  from  these  two  points  the  “ACME 
OIL  CASE”  is  one  of  the  best  amateur 
scenario  films  viewed  for  some  time,  and 


the  makers  can  well  be  proud  of  such  a 
finished  product. 


“CRADLE  OF  LIBERTY.”  Docu¬ 
mentary  film,  400-foot  black  and  white. 
Home-processed  on  Dupont  sound  re¬ 
cording  positive.  Filmed  by  G.  B.  Burn- 
wood. 

The  outstanding  feature  of  this  reel 
is  the  excellent  quality  of  Mr.  Burn- 
wood’s  home-processing,  which  is  equal 
to  the  best  laboratory  work.  Clear  pho¬ 
tography,  good  composition  and  camera 
angles,  well  edited  throughout;  however, 
the  use  of  very  inferior  titles  definitely 
detracts  from  the  good  points  of  the 
reel.  There  are  plenty  of  titles,  all  of 
which  are  well  worded  and  of  about  the 
right  number  of  words,  BUT  the  size 
of  the  letters  is  so  small  that  they  are 
most  difficult  to  read.  The  camera  could 
easily  have  been  moved  in  closer  to  the 
title  board,  to  thus  provide  larger  and 
legible  letters.  Apparently  bad  luck  in 
processing,  or  else  underexposure  made 
most  of  the  titles  barely  discernible  on 
the  screen;  this  combined  with  too  small 
letters  defeated  the  purpose  of  the  titles. 

Of  historical  interest  are  the  many 
views  of  homes,  buildings,  etc.,  in  and 
around  the  city  of  Philadelphia.  These 
scenes  are  all  well  exposed,  with  the 
possible  exception  of  some  of  the  close- 
ups  of  inscriptions  on  statues  and  build¬ 
ings,  which  had  an  overexposure  tend¬ 
ency.  In  filming  such  histoi'ical  edifices 
we  sometimes  forget  our  medium,  name¬ 
ly,  that  we  are  using  MOTION  pictures. 
Like  most  such  films,  this  one  includes 
many  static,  motionless  “postcard”  shots. 
This  effect  can  usually  be  avoided  by 
having  people,  cars,  etc.,  in  some  or  most 
of  the  scenes.  Of  course,  he  may  have 
intentionally  avoided  such  action  if  he 
thought  the  costumes  or  cars  would 
“date”  the  film.  Even  so,  this  reviewer 
would  prefer  fewer  “postcard”  scenes. 

Aside  from  the  misfortune  of  inferior 
titles,  this  film  is  generally  well  handled. 


“HUBBY  FINDS  A  HOBBY.”  Sce¬ 
nario  film,  300-foot,  16mm.  black-white. 
Filmed  by  C.  H.  Benjamin. 

This  is  a  good  example  of  planning 
a  film,  following  the  plan  with  gener¬ 
ally  good  results.  The  story  starts  with 
hubby  and  wife,  in  the  living  room,  dis¬ 
cussing  the  bare  wall  space  over  the  ra¬ 
dio.  She  notices  an  ad  for  an  art  ex¬ 
hibit.  She  goes  downtown  to  Greenwhich 
Village  to  look  over  various  sidewalk 
displays  of  paintings.  Hubby  is  seen  at 
home,  unwrapping  a  large  box  of  oil 
paints,  brushes,  easel,  etc.,  and  proceeds 
to  engage  in  his  new  hobby  and  applies 
paint  to  a  canvass  on  an  easel.  Wife 
comes  home,  rather  abruptly,  carrying 
apparently  a  painting  she  had  pur¬ 
chased.  She  sets  it  down  and  then  pro¬ 


ceeds  to  hold  up  against  the  wall  sev¬ 
eral  paintings,  one  after  another.  These 
are  no  doubt  the  ones  hubby  was  sup¬ 
posed  to  have  painted  during  the  time 
she  was  downtown.  The  film  abruptly 
ends. 

As  for  treatment,  Mr.  Benjamin  skill¬ 
fully  uses  some  double  exposed  titles, 
and  lap  dissolves.  An  effective  filming 
of  the  wife,  in  closeup,  within  a  picture 
frame,  and  again,  himself  in  the  same 
frame.  These  closeups  are  well  photo- 
graphed,  with  a  jet-black  background, 
and  he  cai’efully  fades  in  good  white 
letters  across  the  bottom  of  each  intro- 
duction  the  names  “Hubby”  and  “Wife.” 

Let’s  hope  hubby  has  not  forsaken 
his  home-movie  hobby,  for  that  of  paint¬ 
ing,  and  can  find  time  for  both. 


“SUMMERTIME.”  Travelogue,  250- 
foot,  16mm.  Kodachrome.  Filmed  by  C. 
H.  Benjamin. 

This  l'eel  shows  some  views  about  a 
lake,  and  scenes  of  flowers  gi’owing  in 
the  fields.  In  general  the  photography 
is  good,  with  exposure  a  little  on  the 
“under”  side.  This  effect,  however,  is 
decidedly  offset  by  this  filmer’s  use  of 
excellent  double-exposed  titles.  He  fre¬ 
quently  applies  smooth  lap  dissolves  ef¬ 
fectively.  Although  he  has  his  wife  ap¬ 
pear  in  some  of  the  scenes,  the  reel  would 
have  moi'e  interest  if  it  had  more  genu¬ 
ine  closeups,  which  handicaps  many 
films. 


“RAILS  ACROSS  THE  COUNTRY.” 
Documentary  film,  400-foot  black  and 
white.  By  C.  H.  Benjamin. 

This  l'eel  is  just  a  sei'ies  of  views  of 
trains  passing,  some  shots  of  a  round- 
house  and  switching  yard,  and  numer¬ 
ous  sky  and  cloud  shots.  General  pho¬ 
tography  is  consistent,  all  too  dark,  in¬ 
dicating  under-exposure  or  excessive  use 
of  dark  filters  while  not  allowing  for 
same  by  opening  up  the  lens.  The  title 
does  not  seem  to  be  too  appi-opriate,  as 
most  of  the  views  of  trains  seem  to  be 
in  what  appeal's  to  be  one  location.  This 
filmer  appai'ently  was  fascinated  by 
trains,  but  needs  a  little  more  vai'iety 
of  locations  and  camera  angles  to  make 
his  l’eel  interesting  to  others. 

Consistent  with  other  films  he  has 
made,  Mr.  Benjamin  is  a  past  master 
in  the  making  of  titles,  with  a  splendid 
opening  title  and  excellent  sub-titles, 
using  clear  white  letters  double-exposed 
on  a  good  neutral  dark  scenic  back¬ 
ground  without  too  much  detail.  He 
avoids  the  weakness  of  many  title  mak¬ 
ers,  of  using  too  elaborate  backgrounds 
for  sub-titles.  His  fine  titles  largely 
make  up  for  the  dark  monotone  of  his 
subject. 

(Continued  on  Page  340) 


336  September,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


For 

outstanding 

performance 

with 

production 

economy 

SUPREME 

NEGATIVE  FILM 

AGFA  ANSCO 

BINGHAMTON  •  HOLLYWOOD  •  NEW  YORK 
MADE  IN  U.S.A. 

Keeja  yout  eye  on  -£)nico - *Tit5t  with  the  *Tineit 


American  Cinematographer  •  September,  1943  337 


Nude  But  Not  Lewd 

(Continued  from  Page  323) 

“The  strict  taboos  that  have  been 
placed  on  commercial  photographers  re¬ 
garding  the  subject  is  largely  due  to 
these  amateurs  whose  efforts  too  often 
result  in  a  picture  anything  but  lovely.” 

But  if  Maui'ine  has  little  patience 
with  these  amateurs,  she  has  even  less 
for  the  nasty-minded  little  people  who 
insist  the  only  reason  for  wishing  to 
photograph  nudes  is  to  see  a  “beautiful 
young  girl  with  her  clothes  off.” 

“It’s  too  ridiculous,”  she  says.  “Pho¬ 
tographers  do  not  feel  that  way  about 
it  at  all.” 

“Faces  speak  to  you.  So  should  bodies. 
They  should  express  moods,  tempera¬ 
ment,  animation.  Many  of  them  do  not 
because  the  person  has,  for  any  number 
of  reasons,  various  inhibitions,  frustra¬ 
tions,  complexes.  .  .  .  Many  people  have 
been  trained  from  childhood  to  regard 
the  body  as  something  to  hide,  some¬ 
thing  of  which  they  should  be  ashamed 

“In  reality,  the  body  should  be  some¬ 
thing  beautiful,  like  the  fluid,  graceful 
lines  of  a  beautiful  painting,  or  the 
lines  of  music,  poetry  or  any  of  the 
arts. 


“Nudes  are  not  easy  to  light,  and  are 
difficult  mainly  because  the  desire  is 
to  capture  the  charm  of  the  figure  as 
an  entirety.  Limiting  it  to  one  angle 
usually  fails  to  convey  the  beauty  of  the 
whole. 

“Occasionally  the  beauty  of  pleasing 
lines  is  sufficient  in  itself.'  But  not  al¬ 
ways.  I  strive  for  a  pleasing  composi¬ 
tion  of  the  figure,  and  then  try  to  ex¬ 
press  through  it  a  feeling  of  life  and 
animation. 

“There  is  a  finely  drawn  line  between 
warm,  stirring  beauty  and  suggestive¬ 
ness  of  an  unpleasant  nature.  It  is  the 
photographer’s  business  to  sense  this 
difference,  and  the  slightest  change  of 
pose  can  easily  alter  what  would  be 
truly  beautiful  to  something  unsavory, 
even  ludicrous. 

“I  particularly  like  the  body  to  as¬ 
sume  an  attitude  of  naturalness.  These 
wierd  positions,  with  neck  drawn  out  of 
line,  body  apparently  resting  on  noth¬ 
ing  more  substantial  than  thin  air,  are 
silly  to  me.  It  isn’t  a  pose  one  would 
naturally  adopt  sans  benefit  of  camera, 
then  it  shouldn’t  be  in  the  picture.  Nat¬ 
ural  lines  and  feeling  are  best.  Doing 
things  you  would  not  naturally  do  make 
an  awkward  picture. 


The  above  nude  is  also  by  Maurine,  who  says  it  is 
exotic  but  not  well  lighted,  because  it  was  made  from 
the  red  negative  of  a  color  shot. 


“I  have  no  preference  as  to  beauty,” 
she  says.  “If  it’s  beautiful — that’s  good 
enough  for  me.  However,  I  do  think 
that,  for  photographic  purposes,  the 
dusky,  deep  -  toned  skins  are  best. 
Blondes  with  strikingly  fair  skin  are 
lovely  to  look  at,  but  less  photogenic. 
At  least,  that’s  my  personal  opinion. 
That’s  why  many  of  my  studies  are  of 
the  native,  or  island,  type. 

“Photographing  nudes  is  really  a 
challenge  to  one’s  ability.  It’s  a  game 
to  see  if  you  can  get  the  proper  light¬ 
ing  and  pose. 

“Frankly,  nudes  are  not  commercial. 
Where  can  you  sell  them  ?  For  calen¬ 
dars,  posters?  Very  few  places,  really. 
And  then  there  are  such  strict  regula¬ 
tions  as  to  just  how  the  anatomy  may  be 
exposed,  and  what  portion  of  it  must  be 
in  light  and  which  in  shadow.  It  really 
doesn’t  pay  for  all  the  effort  involved 
— if  you  consider  it  from  a  dollars-and- 
cents  viewpoint. 

(Continued  on  Page  344) 


338  September,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


THE  NEW 


!C< 


1?® 


WITH 

REMOVABLE 
HEAD 


The  B  &  H  Eyemo  camera  show] 
here  mounted  on  the  “Professiona 
Jr.”  Tripod  and  Shiftover  has  beei 
especially  adapted  for  aerial  us 
by  the  Office  of  Strategic  Services 
Field  Photographic  Branch,  Wash 
D.  C. 


Patent  JVo.  2318910 


Unsurpassed  in  Quality,  Versatility  and  Rigidity 

■fa  The  friction  type  head  gives  super-smooth  pan  and  tilt  action, — 
360°  pan  and  80°  tilt.  A  generous  sized  pin  and  trunnion  assures  long, 
dependable  service.  "Spread-leg'1  design  affords  utmost  rigidity  and 
quick,  positive  height  adjustments.  A  T  level  is  built  into  this  14  lb. 
superfine  tripod.  The  top-plate  can  be  set  for  16mm.  E.K.  Cine  Special, 
with  or  without  motor;  35mm.  DeVry  and  B  &  H  Eyemo  (with  motor), 
and  with  or  without  alignment  gauge. 

Tripod  Head  Unconditionally  Guaranteed  5  Years 

"Professional  Jr.”  Tripods  and  Cameraquip  Shiftover  Alignment  Gauges  are  used 
by  the  U.  S.  Navy,  U,  S.  Army  Air  Bases,  Signal  Corps,  the  Office  of  Strategic 
Services  and  other  Gov't  Agencies — also  by  many  leading  Newsreel  companies 
and  16mm  and  35mm  motion  picture  producers — for  important  work. 


I 

!  SHIFTOVER  ALIGNMENT  GAUGE 


I  if  This  Shiftover  device  is  the  finest,  lightest  and 
most  efficient  available  for  the  Eyemo  Spider  Turret 
prismatic  focusing  type  camera. 


if  The  male  of  the  Shiftover  attaches  to  the  cam- 
I  era  base  permanently  and  permits  using  the  regular 
I  camera  holding  handle  if  desired.  The  male  dovetail 
mates  with  the  female  dovetail  base  and  permits  the 
camera  to  slide  from  focusing  to  photographing 
I  positions  for  parallax  adjustment.  The  camera  con 
|  be  locked  in  desired  position  by  a  positive  locking- 
®  device. 

• 

if  The  Shiftover  has  a  "stop-bracket"  which  pre- 
^  vents  the  camera  from  sliding  off  the  dove- 


I 

I 

I 

r 


\  tail  base  —  and  is  provided  with  dowel  pins  4 
which  position  it  to  top-plates  of  tri-  f 
pods  having  %  or  '/t-20  camera  ^ 

^  fastening  screw.  # 


Home  Movie  Previews 


Among  The  Movie  Clubs 


Frisco  Cinema  Club 

TWO  interesting  films  were  shown 
at  the  August  meeting  of  the  Cin¬ 
ema  Club  of  San  Francisco.  They 
were  “King’s  River  Canyon — on  the  Sky¬ 
line  Trail,”  16mm.  Kodachrome,  and 
“Listen  to  Britain,”  16mm.  black  and 
white. 

The  Kodachrome  feature  was  loaned  to 
the  club  by  the  Sierra  Club,  and  proved 
to  be  a  color  sensation.  Most  of  the  mem¬ 
bers  declared,  after  seeing  it,  they  will 
never  be  happy  until  they  have  a  chance 
to  film  the  beautiful  and  awe-inspiring 
Sierra  scenery. 

“Listen  to  Britain”  is  a  film  made  by 
the  British  Information  Service,  and 
highlights  the  sights  and  sounds  of  the 
British  people  working,  playing  and 
fighting  in  a  country  at  war.  It  made 
a  tremendous  impression  on  the  club 
members. 

The  meeting,  well  attended,  was  held 
at  the  National  Defenders’  Room  of  the 
Women’s  City  Club  on  August  17.  On 
August  24  the  club’s  technical  group  met 
for  a  discussion  on  “Composition.” 


Syracuse  Movie  Makers 

MEMBERS  of  this  club  were  very 
active  during  August,  holding 
three  meetings.  One  at  which 
they  reviewed  member  films,  another 
for  election  of  officers  and  the  third  a 
special  lawn  party  showing  at  the  home 
of  member  Arthur  E.  Tucker. 


Long  Beach  Cinema  Club 

N  AUGUST  18th  members  of  the 
club  met  at  Quality  Laboratories 
of  Sam  E.  Tate.  Tate  took  them 
on  a  tour  through  the  processing  plant 
and  explained  in  detail  each  evolution 
in  the  processing  of  a  motion  picture  the 
club  members  had  filmed  at  their  Au¬ 
gust  4th  meeting.  It  is  believed  this  is 
the  first  time  any  amateur  club  has  tak¬ 
en  its  members  into  a  plant  to  actually 
watch  the  development  of  its  picture. 
The  affair  proved  extremely  interesting. 


Utah  Cine  Arts  Club  . 

OUR  interesting  films  were  shown 
at  the  August  meeting  of  the  Utah 
Cine  Arts  Club,  held  on  August 
18th  at  Jordan  Park,  Salt  Lake  City. 

The  films  were:  “A  Trip  Through 
Yellowstone,”  Kodachrome,  by  G.  Van 
Tussenbroek;  “The  Sea  Gulls,”  Koda¬ 
chrome,  by  Raymond  B.  Hollbrook;  “In 
the  Beginning,”  by  Fred  C.  Ells,  and 
“Early  Summer,”  by  (don’t  gasp)  Tat- 
suichi  Okamoto,  of  Japan  (of  all  places). 

Outstanding  of  the  group  was  “In 
the  Beginning,”  a  reverent  account  of 
creation,  with  titles  from  Genesis.  This 
picture  was  a  Grand  Prize  winner  in  a 
competition  sponsored  by  the  American 
Society  of  Cinematographers. 

Following  the  showing  of  the  films, 
the  members  participated  in  an  interest¬ 
ing  open  forum. 


(Continued  from  Page  336) 

“SPIKE  BECOMES  A  SCOUT,” 
1000-foot  Kodachrome,  silent,  with  ac¬ 
companying  narration  synchronized  on 
three  33  1-3  speed  records. 

It  was  supervised  by  Mr.  Conway, 
and  was  intended  as  an  enlistment  film 
to  encourage  boys  to  join  the  Boy  Scouts. 
The  members  of  Troup  5,  Onondaga 
Council,  Boy  Scouts  of  Syracuse,  New 
York,  contributed  their  splendid  acting 
ability  and  other  assistance. 

Briefly,  the  story  shows  “Spike,”  a 
city  tough  kid,  being  taken  along  on  a 
summer  camping  trip  with  the  Scouts. 
Spike  is  skeptical  of  the  benefits  of 
Scouting,  but  after  various  demonstra¬ 
tions  by  the  Scouts  is  finally  convinced 
and  joins  up. 

The  film  is  an  excellent  culmination 
of  a  worth  while  project.  Photographic 
treatment,  direction,  acting,  story  and 
narration  are  each  indicative  of  the 
skill  and  a  lot  of  hard  work  of  the 
Scouts,  leaders  and  others  contributing 
their  efforts.  Synchronizing  the  descrip¬ 
tive  narration,  on  three  recordings,  in 
itself  presented  many  complications,  but 
the  results  are  exceptionally  good.  Mr. 
Conway  supplied  a  specially  prepared 
stroboscopic  disc  about  four  inches  in 
dimater,  to  enable  16mm.  projectors  to 
be  run  at  the  normal  speed  used  when 
the  recordings  were  made.  Another 
“strobe”  was  supplied  to  set  the  record 
speed  to  exactly  33  1-3  rpm. 

The  plan  was  to  charge  a  fee  of  $7.50 
per  showing  before  various  civic  groups, 
to  attempt  to  reimburse  the  sponsoring 
group  for  the  cost  of  production.  A  good 
sum  was  taken  from  the  first  local 

(Continued  on  Page  345) 


Vacation  Days 


340  September,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


Off  on  a  Great  Adventure  . . . 


This  little  man  is  having  a  new  experience.  He’s  going  to 
discover  things  he  never  knew  before.  You’ll  have  a  new  and 
enlightening  experience,  too,  the  first  time  you  try  Ansco  Hypan 
Reversible  Film. 

Whether  it’s  fast-moving  outdoor  action,  or  Junior  playing 
with  blocks  indoors,  you  can  depend  on  Ansco  Hypan  Rever¬ 
sible  for  brilliant,  sparkling,  life-like  projection. 

Hypan  Reversible’s  high  speed,  fine  grain  and  fully  pan¬ 
chromatic  emulsion  provide  everything  you  want  in  a  movie 
film.  Its  high  resolving  power  and  really  effective  anti-halation 
coating  are  added  insurance  of  best  results. 

Next  time,  load  your  movie  camera  with  Ansco  Hypan 


Reversible.  This  16mm  film  comes  in  50  ft.  and  100  ft.  rolls. 
“Twin  Eight”  Hypan  Reversible  is  available  in  25  ft.  (double¬ 
width)  rolls.  Agfa  Ansco,  Binghamton,  New  York. 


Agfa  Ansco 

8mm  and  16mm 
HYPAN  REVERSIBLE  FILM 


KEEP  YOUR  EYE  ON  ANSCO  — FIRST  WITH  THE  FINEST 


American  Cinematographer  •  September,  1943  341 


RCA-Equipped  Land  Cruisers  Help  Navy  Recruit  Waves 


Iowa's  Health  in  16mm. 

(Continued  from  Page  334) 

fastened  to  the  upright  with  a  metal 
sleeve  bolted  to  an  old  Simplex  idler 
wheel.  The  wheel  turns  to  raise  the  arm 
and  it  can  be  swung  in  any  direction.  By 
simply  pulling  out  the  main  upright  and 
replacing  the  original  pipe,  the  stand 
can  be  reconverted  at  will  to  its  intended 
purpose. 

The  mike  boom  will  be  used  for  the 
first  time  on  an  outside  semi-long  garden 
shot  in  the  cancer  picture  currently  being 
filmed.  This  won’t  be  the  only  innova¬ 
tion,  however,  in  this  picture.  In  it,  for 
the  first  time,  animated  drawings  also 
will  be  included. 

The  script  calls  for  animation  to  show 
the  growth  of  both  normal  and  malignant 
cells  as  well  as  spread  of  the  latter 
throughout  the  body.  For  these  scenes  a 
solid  rack  has  been  built  with  pins  to 
register  up  the  drawings.  Kodaloid  was 
used  to  make  the  drawings. 

Scripts  for  the  department’s  films  are 
written  by  a  layman  but  for  technical 
accuracy  an  outline  of  the  central  facts 
desired  is  first  drawn  up  by  the  doctor, 
nurse,  engineer  or  other  professional  per¬ 
son  for  whom  the  picture  is  being  pro¬ 
duced.  The  major  difficulty  in  this  re¬ 
gard  is  in  reconciling  the  natural  differ¬ 
ences  of  treatment  between  the  lay  writer 
and  the  professional  personnel. 

Before  the  outline  is  prepared  a  con¬ 
ference  is  held  and  agreement  reached  on 
the  nature  of  the  precise  type  of  audience 
before  which  the  film  will  be  shown.  The 
nutrition  film,  “Lunch  for  Johnny,”  illus¬ 
trates  the  process. 

It  was  quickly  conceded  by  both  the 
nutritionist  and  the  lay  writer  that  the 
film  had  to  be  given  a  rural  slant  but 
further  breakdown  was  necessary.  The 
film  was  to  serve  one  purpose,  that  of 
stimulating  school  lunch  programs.  The 
strongest  impetus  for  good  lunches  comes 
from  rural  women,  students  and  the 
teachers,  so  the  final  decision  was  to  re¬ 
gard  them  as  the  central  audience. 

From  her  experience  in  the  field,  the 
nutritionist  understands  the  varying  re¬ 
actions,  pro  and  con,  of  these  groups  to 
lunch  programs.  She  was  asked  then  to 
prepare  her  outline  with  them  in  mind 
and  to  aim  her  points  according  to  their 
mode  of  thinking.  In  this  way  she  was 
able  to  start  her  outline  with  and  weave 
it  around  preconceived  attitudes  familiar 
in  themselves  to  the  selected  audience 
and  thus  provide  a  solid  base  for  the 
script. 

Similar  selection  of  audience  and  di¬ 
rection  of  outline  are  practiced  with  all 
the  pictures.  The  script  is  written  from 
the  outline  which  is  only  of  points  and 
not  of  continuity  and  after  the  first  draft, 
successive  drafts  are  worked  out  jointly 
by  the  lay  writer  and  division  head  in¬ 
volved. 

Briefly  stated  the  policy  for  both  out¬ 
line  and  script  is: — begin  with  what  the 
audience  already  knows  to  put  them  in 
agreement  with  the  film,  to  nod  their 


t  '  && — ■ ■  - i - ■■ ■ 

THREE-WAY  sound  reproduction 
equipment  specially  designed  and 
produced  by  the  RCA  Victor  Di¬ 
vision  of  the  Radio  Corporation  of 
America  for  use  in  Navy  Recruiting 
Cruisers  of  the  truck-and-trailer  type 
has  proved  highly  successful  in  a  year’s 
operation  of  eight  such  land  cruisers  in 
various  parts  of  the  country. 

Adapted  for  broadcasting  phonograph 
recordings,  radio  pickups  and  live  talent 
and  speakers  at  a  microphone,  either 


heads  and  say,  “Yes,  that’s  the  way  it 
is”;  superimpose  the  new  ideas  the  film 
is  to  relay  to  them  with  the  hope  that  the 
positive  “yes”  will  continue. 

This  cooperation  has  ironed  out  much 
of  the  grief  which  certainly  would  arise 
if  both  parties  were  to  go  their  own 
blythe  ways.  It  also  makes  it  easier  to 
hold  to  the  original  purpose  of  the  film 
which  is  thoroughly  discussed  before 
everything  else  in  order  to  stick  to  one 
or  at  most  two  lines  of  thought. 

Acting  talent  is  readily  available.  A 
doctor,  nurse,  or  public  health  engineer 
is  needed.  The  department  has  all  three. 
A  farm  woman,  school  teacher,  lifeguard 
or  pharmacist  is  wanted.  They’re  not 
hard  to  find.  Most  people  still  like  to  see 
themselves  in  pictures  and  when  there  is 
sound,  too,  that  makes  it  a  double  feature. 

It’s  true  that  to  date  neither  a  Spencer 
Tracy  nor  a  Bette  Davis  has  been  dis¬ 
covered,  and  it’s  also  true  that  Holly¬ 
wood  isn’t  passing  out  any  Academy 
Awards  for  these  pictures,  but  Iowa  ex¬ 
hibitors  are  holding  out  their  hands  for 
bookings  and  coming  back  the  second 
time.  That’s  all  the  state  health  depart¬ 
ment  wants. 


separately  or  mixed,  the  installation  in 
each  cruiser  includes  four  loud  speakers 
driven  by  two  15-watt  amplifiers. 

To  meet  power  requirements  under  all 
conditions,  each  unit  is  equipped  with  a 
gasoline  driven  generator  producing  110- 
volt  AC  current,  cables  to  run  to  stand¬ 
ard  local  power  service  where  outlets 
are  available,  and  storage  batteries  for 
emergency  use. 

Telephones,  operating  on  low-voltage 
current,  self-generated  by  the  action  of 
the  speaker’s  voice  on  the  diaphragm, 
provide  means  of  communications  be¬ 
tween  cab  and  trailer,  whether  parked 
or  in  motion. 


Stoll  Anniversary 

ITH  the  week  ending  August  7th, 
1943,  Clarence  G.  Stoll,  presi¬ 
dent  of  the  Western  Electric 
Company,  reached  his  fortieth  anniver¬ 
sary  with  that  organization. 

Mr.  Stoll  joined  Western  Electric  as 
a  student  apprentice  in  its  Clinton  Street 
Shop  in  Chicago,  after  graduating  from 
Pennsylvania  State  College  in  1903. 
After  a  succession  of  promotions  in  the 
manufacturing  department,  he  became 
vice  president  in  1926  and  was  elected 
to  the  presidency  in  1940. 

He  was  in  charge  of  the  Company’s 
factory  at  Antwerp,  Belgium,  in  the 
World  War  year  of  1914.  Today,  after 
more  than  25  years  of  executive  respon¬ 
sibility  in  operating  in  peacetime  the 
world’s  largest  telephone  equipment 
business,  he  is  once  again  directing  in 
wartime  a  great  establishment  commit¬ 
ted  to  the  job  of  furnishing  more  than 
a  third  of  America’s  production  of  mil¬ 
itary  communications  for  the  Allied  Na¬ 
tions. 


342  September,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


On  With  the  Show 

(Continued  from  Page  331) 

tone  control  on  the  high  side.  Most  of 
the  normal  “highs”  are  lost  on  16mm 
sound  tracks,  particularly  on  reductions 
from  35mm.,  hence  the  excess  low  tone 
must  be  compensated  for  by  proper  pro¬ 
jector  tone  control. 

It  is  a  good  plan  to  tie  all  cables  at 
each  end  to  the  leg  of  a  table  to  pre¬ 
vent  the  audience  from  tripping  over 
the  equipment. 

To  conclude  this  treatise,  I  will  list 
the  accessories  I  have  found  necessary 
and  frequently  useful.  The  normal  fifty 
foot  speaker  cord  is  often  too  short,  if 
you  want  to  make  it  inconspicuous  by 
running  along  the  sides  of  a  room,  so 
I  carry  a  spare  seventy-five  foot  cord. 
Three  25-foot  electrical  extension  cords, 
heavy  enough  to  carry  the  load  of  a 
1000  watt  lamp,  enable  you  to  reach 
any  outlet  with  the  shortest  possible 
length  of  cord.  Several  different  types 
of  double  plugs  and  adapters  come  in 
handy.  A  couple  of  extra  30  amp  house 
fuses,  and,  of  course,  extra  projector 
fuses,  exciter  lamps  and  projector  lamps 
are  needed.  Two  pieces  of  small  link 
chain  enable  the  speakers  to  be  hung 
from  a  clothes  tree,  or  from  some  strong 
picture  wall  hooks  also  carried.  A  roll 
of  ordinary  picture  wire  has  many  uses, 
such  as  tieing  the  speaker  cord  to  a 
pillar  in  case  of  stretching  it  overhead, 
or  wiring  the  cables  to  chair  legs  to 
prevent  tripping  damage.  Very  useful 
gadgets  are  four  ordinary  dime  store 
rubber  door  wedges.  These  can  be  used 
under  the  projector  table  to  level  it  up, 
or  under  the  projector  itself  to  provide 
greater  tilt.  A  pencil  flashlight  in  the 
pants  is  handy  for  emergencies. 

For  daytime  shows,  try  in  every  way 
to  darken  the  meeting  room.  If  this  is 
not  entirely  possible,  project  a  smaller 
image  on  the  screen  so  that  the  picture 
brilliance  can  be  normal.  Arrange  with 
an  audience  member  to  turn  the  lights 
off  and  on  at  a  signal. 

So  that  the  “non-theatrical”  audience 
can  fully  absorb  the  visual  message 
without  being  aware  of  the  technical 
limitations  of  the  film  and  equipment, 
the  exhibitor  must  apply  sufficient  me¬ 
chanical  aptitude  and  showmanship  to 
assure  an  efficient  presentation  —  on 
with  the  show.  END. 


Mitchell  35mm  Single 
System  Sound  Camera 

(Continued  from  Page  330) 

portable  amplifier  which  has  two  micro¬ 
phone  connections  with  two  mixing  pads 
and  one  main  gain  pad  which  feeds  the 
galvonometer.  The  amplifier  used  with 
the  RCA  galvonometer  is  a  push  pull 
type,  Class  B  amplification  which  results 
in  automatic  noise  reduction.  The  sound 
track  is  positioned  a  standard  distance 
ahead  of  the  picture  aperture. 

The  Mitchell  single  system  sound 
camera  is  a  compact  portable  unit  which 
can  be  used  in  the  field  of  action  by  our 
fighting  forces,  making  an  instant  record 


...SAID  THE  MAN  WHO 


Colonel  MacDonald  and 
Friend — a  35mm.  Model  A 
DeVry 


Directed  Its  Filming 
"For  field  service  our  cameras  had  to 
be  light  and  rugged.  I  would  estimate 
that  around  95%  of  'DESERT  VIC¬ 
TORY'  was  ground  through  DeVrys, 
whose  performance  and  ability  to 
stand  up  under  gruelling  desert  pun¬ 
ishment  constantly  surprised  us!" 
(From  "FILMING  DESERT  VICTORY" 
by  Lt.  Col.  David  MacDonald  Hon. 
A.S.C.,  as  told  to  the  late  Wm. 
Stull,  A.S.C.) 


Sona«  Equipmt 


AN  OUTSTANDING  NAME  IN  THE  CINEMATIC  WORLD 


FOR  LIGHT  ON  EASTERN  PRODUCTION -- 

C.  ROSS 

For  Lighting  Equipment 

As  sole  distributors  East  of  the  Mississippi  we  carry  the  full  and 
complete  line  of  latest-type  Inkie  and  H.I.-Arc  equipment 
manufactured  by 

MOLE-RICHARDSON.  Inc. 

Hollywood  -  California 

Your  requirements  for  interior  or  exterior  locations  taken  care 
of  to  the  last  minute  detail  anywhere 

☆ 

MOTOR  GENERATOR  TRUCKS 
RENTALS  SALES  SERVICE 

☆ 

CHARLES  ROSS,  Inc. 

333  West  52nd  St.,  New  York,  N.  Y.  Phones:  Circle  6-5470-1 


of  both  picture  and  personal  reaction  in 
sound  of  the  action  that  has  taken  place 
before  time  has  had  an  opportunity  to 
dim  the  memory.  The  camera  is  also  suit¬ 
able  for  photographing  from  airplanes 
explaining  the  tactics  used  by  the  enemy. 

This  camera  has  a  great  post-war 
future  which  will  enable  the  studios, 
newsreel  photographers,  and  commercial 
advertising  men  to  go  on  extremely  diffi¬ 
cult  locations  without  being  burdened 
with  excess  amount  of  equipment  and 
still  maintain  the  high  quality  picture 
and  sound. 


BUY 

MORE 

BONDS 


American  Cinematographer  •  September,  1943  343 


Nude  But  Not  Lewd 

(Continued  from  Paqe  338) 

“Then,  too,  every  prospective  buyer 
knows  exactly  what  he  wants — or  thinks 
he  does.  He  has  his  own  individual  con¬ 
cept  of  beauty,  and  you  can’t  swerve 
him  from  it.  Now,  add  to  the  regula¬ 
tion  difficulties  of  nudes,  the  whims  of 
a  buyer,  and  you  can  plainly  see  that 
our  problems  are  multiplied  a  thou¬ 
sandfold. 

“To  begin  with,  there  are  very  few 
perfect  bodies.  And,  of  course,  we  seek 
perfection,  even  though  we  seldom 
find  it. 

“It’s  often  amusing  to  see  how  a 
model  looking  for  a  job  will  try  to  hide 
her  defects.  If  she  has  a  tummy — and 
most  otherwise  beautiful  girls  do — she 
doesn’t  want  you  to  suspect. 

“So  she  ‘lifts’  the  body,  as  we  say. 
Draws  the  abdomen  in,  raises  the 
breasts,  takes  a  deep  breath  and  holds 
it.  Then  calls  your  attention  to  it — 
‘See,  I  have  no  stomach  at  all — I’m 
perfectly  flat.’  She  is,  too,  until  she 
forgets  for  a  moment  and  relaxes.  And 
then  that  tell-tale  tummy  heaves  into 
unsightly  view. 


“To  correct  this  flaw,  the  photogra¬ 
pher  must  be  extra  careful  of  pose  and 
lighting.  He  will  usually  have  the  model 
reach  heavenward — that  pull  draws  the 
stomach  muscles  up  and  in.  But  it’s 
only  a  camouflage,  and  we  know  it. 

“It’s  really  amazing  what  things  you 
discover  when  you  look  into  the  ground 
glass  and  note  with  desperation  things 
you  hadn’t  noted  till  then. 

“What  appeared  perfection  at  a  cas¬ 
ual,  appreciative  glance,  on  closer  an¬ 
alysis  discloses  a  little  knob  on  each 
hip,  and  abi'upt,  unpleasant  dip  above 
the  thigh,  one  bust  distractingly  smaller 
— or  larger — than  its  mate,  protruding, 
knobby  ankle  bones. 

“Then  there’s  always  that  abdomen 
we  mentioned  a  moment  ago,  and  that 
must  be  kept  trim  by  stretching  the 
torso  up,  and  holding  the  breath  as  long 
as  possible. 

“Elbows  have  their  own  unique  man¬ 
ner  of  acquiring  sharp  points  when 
viewed  through  the  ground  glass.  And 
hands  and  feet,  too,  often  look  like 
something  the  model  forget  to  remove 
with  the  rest  of  her  clothing. 

“If  you  can  manage  to  forgive  these 
failings  and  convince  the  model  that 
you  are  thoroughly  pleased  with  her, 


then  you’re  off  to  a  good  start.  You’ve 
created  a  spirit  of  confidence  and  co¬ 
operation.  And  that’s  really  important. 
The  model  must  be  relaxed  and  capture 
your  own  enthusiasm  to  create  a  ‘thing 
of  beauty.’  That  is  not  possible  if  there 
is  friction  between  model  and  photog¬ 
rapher;  if  there  is  strain  it  will  show. 

“It  is  fatal  if  you  are  critical  and 
the  model  knows  it.  She  will  never  be 
relaxed,  and  gone  are  your  chances  for 
getting  a  good  picture. 

“My  favorite  nude  took  me  seven 
hours  to  get.  (See  why  I  insist  nudes 
are  not  commercial?)  I  was  determined 
to  have  it  right.  And  so  was  my  model. 
Luckily,  she  has  an  almost  perfect  body, 
so  there  were  no  weighty  problems  of 
camouflaging  to  consider. 

“However,  the  lighting  was  difficult. 
What  I  desired  to  achieve  was  just  the 
suggestion  of  feminine  line  and  con¬ 
tour,  without  exposing  any  part  of  her 
anatomy  to  full  view.  Therefore,  every 
line  has  to  be  just  so.  If  she  moved  even 
a  fraction  of  an  inch  the  ensemble  was 
thrown  out  of  line,  the  beauty  of  the 
unit  was  broken. 

“We  posed  and  we  changed  lights, 
and  we  worried  and  we  worked.  Several 
times,  just  as  I  thought  I  had  it,  the 
model  tired  and  had  to  rest.  But  we  per¬ 
severed,  and  eventually  got  what  wre 
wanted. 

“The  result  was  all  that  I  had  hoped 
for.  Every  line,  from  head  to  foot  is 
perfect.  There  is  just  the  suggestion 
of  feminine  face,  neck,  arm,  breast,  ab¬ 
domen,  well-round  hip,  thigh,  calf,  foot. 
In  its  simplicity  of  line  and  tonal  quali¬ 
ty  it  resembles  a  woodcut.  I  consider  it 
my  best  nude. 

“Did  you  know  that  I  do  all  the  make¬ 
up  for  my  subjects?  That’s  a  little  art 
I  learned  when  I  was  ‘standing  in’  for 
Jeanette  MacDonald  a  few  years  ago, 
before  I  became  interested  in  photog¬ 
raphy.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  that’s  where 
I  first  became  interested  in  photog¬ 
raphy. 

“I  pestered  the  cameraman  to  explain 
certain  shots  to  me.  Got  them  to  tell 
me  why  and  how  they  did  thus-and-so 
until  they  nearly  went  mad.  And  when 
I  told  them  that  in  five  years  I  would 
be  the  best  photographer  in  Hollywood 
they  howled  and  brushed  me  aside.  But 
they  did  teach  me  all  their  tricks,  for 
which  I’m  grateful. 

“Another  thing — I  show  my  subjects 
what  I  want  them  to  do,  what  I’m  try¬ 
ing  to  achieve.  I’m  not  an  actress,  the 
Lord  knows,  so  when  I  go  into  one  of 
my  poses  to  get  the  idea  over,  they 
probably  think,  ‘Well,  if  she  doesn’t 
mind  making  herself  ridiculous,  why 
should  I?’  That’s  one  reason  that  most 
of  my  studies  seem  relaxed  and  at  ease 

“So  when  I  make  them  up  and  pose 
them  exactly  as  though  they  were  go¬ 
ing  before  the  critical  eye  of  the  mo¬ 
tion  picture  camera,  the  result  is  that 
each  finished  photo  is  like  a  little’ 
frame.’ 

(Continued  on  Page  350) 


On  the  Spot 
in  the 

NATION’S 

CAPITAL 


TtYRObJ  S 


INCORPORATED 


1712  CONNECTICUT  AVE. 
WASHINGTON,  D.  C. 

The  Most  Complete  16mm 
Sound  Motion  Picture  Studios  in  the  East 

FROM  SCRIPT  TO  SCREEN 


344  September,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


DeVry  Asks  Amateur  Aid 
For  New  Camera  Design 


JUST  as  the  radio  industry  turned  to 
the  world’s  “HAMS”  on  certain  tel¬ 
evision  problems  which  had  “stumped 
the  experts,”  so  one  of  the  world’s  lead¬ 
ing  manufacturers  of  motion  picture 
equipment  is  giving  the  amateur  and 
professional  “movie  maker”  an  oppor¬ 
tunity  to  contribute  to  the  redesigning 
and  mechanical  refinement  of  the  8mm. 
motion  picture  camera  and  projector, 
which  it  is  believed  will  be  tomorrow’s 
home  movie  unit. 

Invitation  to  take  part  in  a  general 
8mm.  motion  picture  camera  and  pro¬ 
jector  design  competition  has  been  is¬ 
sued  by  Wm.  C.  DeVry,  president,  De¬ 
Vry  Corporation,  son  of  the  late  Dr. 
Herman  A.  DeVry,  inventor  and  manu¬ 
facturer  of  the  first  portable  motion 
picture  projector.  This  invention  brought 
motion  pictures  to  the  classrooms  and 
crossroads  of  the  world. 

The  design  competition  starts  Sep¬ 
tember  1  and  closes  December  31,  1943. 
Awards  of  $1500  in  U.  S.  War  Bonds 
will  be  made  for  camera  design  and  me¬ 
chanical  ideas,  including  over-all  rede¬ 
signing  of  both  camera  and  projector 
and  suggestions  as  to  the  mechanical 
refinement  of  both  units — ideas  that 
make  filming  and  projecting  simpler, 
easier — ideas  that  may  reduce  the  cost 
of  manufacturing  this  equipment,  there¬ 
by  increasing  the  size  of  its  market. 

Of  the  competition,  Mr.  DeVry  says 
that  it  is  launched  in  response  to  scores 
of  letters  he  has  received  from  movie 
makers  asking  what  mechanical  devel¬ 
opments  in  motion  picture  equipment 
can  be  expected  out  of  the  war.  Many 
of  the  letters,  Mr.  DeVry  adds,  contain 
voluntary  suggestions,  developed  out  of 
the  writer’s  experience. 

“What  8mm.  development  needs,”  Mr. 
DeVry  explains,  “may  be  a  complete  re¬ 
designing  of  both  camera  and  projector 
to  fit  them  to  the  needs,  desires  and  uses 
of  the  average  amateur  motion  picture 
enthusiast.  We  hope  the  amateur  will 
give  us  for  his  equipment  the  kind  of 
cooperation  we  had  from  Hollywood  cam¬ 
eramen  and  theater  projectionists  in  de¬ 
veloping  our  professional  line.” 

In  regard  to  mechanical  improve¬ 
ments,  Mr.  DeVry  points  specifically  to 
fundamental  camera  and  projector  re¬ 
quirements,  such  as  shutter,  view  finder, 
film  safety  devices,  lamp  house  ventilat¬ 
ing  systems,  focusing  and  framing  de¬ 
vices,  etc.  “Maybe  we’ve  taken  the  effi¬ 
ciency  of  these  for  granted,  as  other, 
manufacturers  have  taken  baby  car¬ 
riages,  kitchen  furniture,  washing  ma¬ 
chines,  and  so  on.  Suddenly  some  user 


leaps  the  barriers  and  gets  the  ear  of 
a  manufacturer  with  an  idea  that  revo¬ 
lutionizes  the  industry.  We’re  inviting 
that  kind  of  idea.” 

The  8mm.  camera  and  design  compe¬ 
tition  is  being  given  wide  publicity  by 
DeVry,  its  distributors  and  its  dealers. 
It  is  anticipated  that  awards  can  be  an¬ 
nounced  by  February  1,  1944.  Any  new 
models  developed  out  of  the  competition, 
however,  will  have  to  wait  till  war’s 
end,  since  DeVry’s  facilities  are  now  de¬ 
voted  100  per  cent  to  vital  war  mate¬ 
rial.  For  excellence  in  the  production  of 
motion  picture  sound  equipment  DeVry 
has  been  awarded  the  Army-Navy  “E.” 


Home  Movie  Previews 

(Continued  from  Page  340) 

showing,  but  subsequent  bookings  were 
almost  nil.  Mr.  Conway  particularly 
asked  for  suggestions  as  to  how  the 
film  could  be  exploited,  so  the  makers 
could  get  back  their  cost,  plus  a  little 
income  for  Troup  5.  He  had  already 
shown  it  locally,  and  had  largely  ex¬ 
hausted  its  commercial  value  there. 

As  to  its  potential  use  in  other  dis¬ 
tricts,  the  technical  difficulties  in  pre¬ 
senting  the  film,  limit  its  use  to  the 
very  few  projectionists  (amateurs)  who 
might  have  a  33  1-3  record  player,  and 
be  interested  enough  in  the  Scouting 
movement  to  attempt  to  properly  pre¬ 
sent  the  film,  and  try  to  keep  the  rec¬ 
ords  synchronized.  This  reviewer  found 
the  problem  more  difficult  than  antici¬ 
pated. 

In  the  first  place,  33  1-3  rpm.  record 
players  are  hard  to  find.  And  the  aver¬ 
age  amateur’s  16mm.  projector  will  not 
take  the  1600-foot  reel  on  which  the  film 
is  mounted.  Sound  projectors  will  take 
the  large  reels,  of  course,  but  only  a 
few  of  the  older  models  have  the  vari¬ 
able  speed  control  needed  to  synchronize 
the  projector  speed  with  the  record 
player.  The  stroboscopic  disc  supplied 
for  attaching  to  a  projector  would  not 
fit  either  of  two  projectors  available 
for  this  reviewing,  hence  the  synchro¬ 
nizing  had  to  be  done  by  guesswork,  and 
I  do  mean  work — constantly  adjusting 
the  projector  speed  to  attempt  exact 
synchronization.  This  strobe  disc  prob¬ 
ably  only  is  readily  attachable  to  the 
particular  make  and  model  of  the  pro¬ 
ducer’s  machine. 

(Continued  on  Page  350) 


Auricon 

SOUND 

CAMERA 

for  16  mm  sound  -  on  -  film 


★  High  Fidelity  Sound 

★  Self-contained  in  sound  proof  "blimp." 

★  Minimum  equipment;  maximum  portabil¬ 
ity.  Camera  and  Amplifier,  complete, 
weigh  only  thirty-seven  pounds. 

★  Kodachrome  or  black  and  white  pictures 
with  Auricon  sound  track  will  reproduce 
on  any  sound-film  projector. 

★  Can  be  operated  in  the  field  from  an 
Auricon  Portable  Power  Supply. 

★  Auricon  Camera  with  type  "C"  lens  mount 
(but  without  lens)  and  Amplifier  complete 
with  microphone,  instructions,  and  cases 

$880.00 


AURICON  16  mm  RECORDER 

★  Variable-area  sound  on  film,  lor  double 
system  recording  with  a  synchronous  motor 
driven  16  mm.  camera.  Amplifier  has  back¬ 
ground-noise  reduction  and  mixers  for  com¬ 
bining  speech  and  music.  With  dynamic 
microphone,  instructions  and  cases  for  Re¬ 
corder,  Amplifier,  Accessories  ....  $695.00 

★  Auricon  16mm.  sound-on-film  recorders 
and  cameras  are  serving  the  Nation  s 
War  effort  with  Military  and  Govern¬ 
ment  Film  Units,  and  with  civilian  or¬ 
ganizations  producing  essential  morale 
and  industrial  training  films.  If  your 
work  in  such  fields  makes  you  eligible 
to  purchase  new  equipment,  we  invite 
you  to  let  our  engineers  show  you  how 
Auricon  portability  and  professional  per¬ 
formance  will  simplify  your  recording 
problems. 

AURICON  jbuu4io*t, 

E.  M.  BERNDT  CORP. 

5515  SUNSET  BLVD.,  HOLLYWOOD,  CALIF. 


MANUFACTURERS  OF  SOUND-ON-FILM 
RECORDING  EQUIPMENT  SINCE  1931 


American  Cinematographer  •  September,  1943  345 


Fighting  With  Film 

(Continued  from  Page  325) 


sound  equipment.  If  one  man  is  killed, 
another  takes  his  place  immediately, 
each  man  being  trained  to  operate  any 
of  the  cameras  in  use.  He  can  load  the 
camera  and  operate  it  himself,  and  also 
operate  the  sound  apparatus  if  he  has 
to  as  there  must  be  no  waste  or  loss  of 
time  in  recording  on  film  all  that  can  be 
of  use.  And  they  will  do  more  and  more 
in  each  succeeding  month.  Just  recently 
a  throat  microphone  was  developed  that 
will  enable  the  wearer  to  be  right  in  the 
thick  of  combat,  his  voice  recording  all 
that  is  going  on  about  him,  unaffected 
by  the  sounds  of  guns,  motors  or  explo¬ 
sions.  That  this  will  be  put  to  good  and 
expert  use  will  shortly  be  seen.  But  it 
will  probably  not  be  known  to  the  gen¬ 
eral  public  until  after  the  war,  just  what 


THIS  JJnL” SEES  INTO 
THE  FUTURE 

B&H  Taylor-Hobson-Cooke 
Cine  Lenses  do  more  than  meet 
current  technical  demands.  They 
exceed  them — and  their  design 
anticipates  future  improvements  in 
film  emulsions.  They  are  THE 
long-term  investment  lenses. 
Write  for  literature. 

BELL  &  HOWELL  COMPANY 

Exclusive  world  distributors 

1848  Larchmont  Avenue, Chicago 

New  York:  30  Rockefeller  Plaza 
Hollywood:  716  N.  LaBrea  Ave. 
Washington,  D.  C.:  1221  G  St.,  N.  W. 
London:  13-14  Great  Castle  St. 


BUY 

WAR 

BONDS 


purposes  our  units  are 
being  put  to.  But  they 
are  fighters,  all  of 
them,  not  only  with 
film  but  with  guns 
and  brains.” 

Another  vitally  im¬ 
portant  job  being  per¬ 
formed  by  the  Air 
Forces’  First  Motion 
Picture  Unit  is  the 
making  of  training 
filmsforthe  A  ir 
Forces  to  use  in  train¬ 
ing  its  flying  cadets. 

These  films  must  be 
precise  and  accurate, 
so  great  care  is  exer¬ 
cised  in  the  selection 
of  the  personnel  to 
make  them.  The  lead¬ 
ers  and  most  of  the 
men  helping  them 
have  been  recruited 
directly  from  the  stu¬ 
dios  in  Hollywood.  Lt. 

Colonel  Owen  Crump 
is  in  charge  of  pro- 
tion. 

Thus  it  may  be  seen  that  Hollywood’s 
Aces  of  the  Camera  and  Hollywood’s 
production  geniuses  are  playing  an  im¬ 
portant  part  in  the  world  struggle. 


Captain  Clark  Gable,  left,  and  Major  R.  W. 
Seawright  discuss  camera  angles  during  filming  of 
"Wings  Up." 


Princeton  Additions 

Recent  additions  to  the  editorial,  pro¬ 
duction  and  executive  personnel  of  the 
Princeton  Film  Center,  Princeton,  New 
Jersey,  include  A.  E.  Milford  and  Le¬ 
roy  G.  Phelps,  formerly  with  the  do¬ 
mestic  film  production  unit  of  OWI,  and 
Gates  Ferguson,  recently  a  member  of 
the  public  relations  staff  of  N.  W.  Ayer 
&  Son,  Inc.,  and  former  advertising 
manager  of  B.  F.  Goodrich  and  Inter¬ 
national  Telephone  and  Telegraph  Cor¬ 
poration. 


Filming  Rainbows 

THERE’S  nothing  quite  so  breath¬ 
taking  in  a  color  film  as  a  gor¬ 
geous  rainbow  glowing  either  in 
the  sky  or  shining  in  the  spray  of  a  wa¬ 
terfall.  The  colored  band  seems  to  be 
completely  polarized  as  evidenced  by  the 
fact  that  it  will  appear  and  disappear 
when  viewed  through  a  rotating  polariz¬ 
ing  filter. 

This  curious  fact  becomes  very  use¬ 
ful  when  it  is  noticed  that  the  back¬ 
ground  of  sky  is  actually  suppressed  in 
tone  when  the  rainbow  appears  at  its 
brightest.  This  points  to  a  way  of  mak¬ 
ing  a  rainbow  actually  photograph  more 
brilliantly  than  it  would  under  natural 
conditions.  Just  shoot  the  rainbow  with 
the  handle  of  the  polarizing  filter  paral¬ 
lel  to  the  middle  of  the  bow  and  it  will 
record  with  dazzling  intensity.  Be  sure 
to  allow  a  filter  factor  of  about  a  stop 
or  so  because  of  the  absorption  of  light 
in  such  a  filter. 

Because  the  spectrum  band  is  rendered 
apparently  brighter  through  a  properly 
orientated  polarizing  filter,  it  is  possi¬ 
ble  to  see  secondary  rainbows  with  the 
greatest  of  ease  even  though  they  are 
invisible  to  the  unaided  eye.  This  fact 
may  prove  of  value  to  meteorologists. 

I  have  actually  filmed  rainbows  in 
color  with  a  polarazing  filter  and  this 
method  really  works  extremely  well.  Try 
it  next  time  you  see  one. 

CHARLES  H.  COLES. 
2nd  Lt.,  Sig.  Corps. 


346  September,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


Hollywood  and  Minorities 

(Continued  from  Page  327) 

of  the  issues  involved  in  this  war  and 
our  common  aim  in  destroying  Fascism 
with  all  of  its  theories,  including  that  of 
racial  superiority.  Pictures  like  “Gungha 
Din”  and  “The  Lives  of  a  Bengal 
Lancer”  contributed  much  to  the  friction 
between  whites  and  colored  in  India. 
“Four  Feathers”  vilified  African  natives. 
“Down  Argentine  Way”  and  certain 
Westerns  in  which  the  villains  were 
Mexicans  antagonized  our  Latin-Amer- 
ican  neighbors.  Films  showing  only 
Negro  servants  or  crap  shooting  come¬ 
dians  certainly  do  nothing  to  contribute 
to  unity  at  home  between  the  white  and 
black  man  who  is  fighting  side  by  side. 
We  must  never  lose  sight  of  the  fact  that 
there  are  hundreds  of  millions  of  people 
on  our  side  who  are  colored,  and  Fascist 
bullets  aimed  at  the  fighters  for  democ¬ 
racy  are  not  marked  “white”  and 
“colored.”  Fascism  is  against  all  people, 
white  or  black  or  red  or  yellow. 

Of  course,  an  article  of  this  sort  would 
not  be  quite  fair  if  it  did  not  give  due 
recognition  to  the  fact  that  Hollywood 
as  such  is  not  the  deciding  factor  in  these 
matters,  that  on  the  contrary,  the  studios 
have  done  a  great  deal  toward  eliminat¬ 
ing  racial  discrimination  and  prejudice. 
But  more  often  than  not  their  honest 
efforts  are  stymied  by  censorship.  The 
finest  example  of  Hollywood’s  attitude  on 
racial  questions  was  exemplified  several 
years  ago  when  at  the  Academy  Awards 
Dinner,  Hattie  McDaniel  was  acclaimed 
for  the  greatest  supporting  performance 
of  the  year  for  her  work  in  “Gone  With 
the  Wind.”  More  than  10,000  members 
of  the  creative  personnel  of  Hollywood 
voted  her  that  honor  over  all  the  white 
actresses,  and  never  in  the  history  of  the 
Awards  has  such  an  ovation  been  given 
a  player  as  was  given  that  splendid 
colored  actress  that  night. 


Fortress  in  the  Sky 

APPOINTMENT  of  the  Princeton 
Film  Center  of  Princeton,  New 
Jersey,  as  distributors  of  FORT¬ 
RESS  IN  THE  SKY,  a  three-reel  Kod- 
achrome  film  documenting  the  Boeing 
Flying  Fortress,  has  just  been  announced 
by  Harold  J.  Mansfield,  Boeing’s  Direc¬ 
tor  of  Public  Relations. 


DeVRY  CORPORATION  WILL  AWARD 
$1500.00  IN  U.  S.  WAR  BONDS  TO  YOU 
WHO  HELP  DESIGN  THE  8  MM  MOTION 
PICTURE  CAMERA  &  PROJECTOR 
OF  TOMORROW 

You’ve  thought  a  lot  about  the  perfect 
8  MM  MOTION  PICTURE  CAMERA 
&  PROJECTOR  .  .  .  how  they  should 
look  .  .  .  how  their  operation  might  be 
perfected,  simplified. 

DeVRY  will  pay  $1500.00  in  U.  S. 
War  Bonds  (maturity  value)  for  your 
over-all  design  ideas  .  .  .  for  your  sug¬ 
gestions  as  to  how  camera  &  projector 
mechanism  can  be  improved. 

DESIGN:  Submit  your  Ideas — in  rough  or finished  drawing — 
as  to  how  you  think  the  new  8  MM  MOTION  PICTURE 
CAMERA  or  PROJECTOR  should  look.  Supplement 
your  drawing  with  brief  comments,  if  you  desire.  Enter 
as  many  drawings  as  you  wish.  MECHANICAL  OPERATION: 
You  may  submit  working  models,  mechanical  drawings, 
rough  sketches.  The  idea  is  the  thing  —  how  to  simplify, 
improve,  perfect  either  camera  or  projector  operation. 
For  instance,  PROJECTOR:  ventilating  system  (lamp 
house);  optical  system;  film  movement;  reel  arms;  tilting 
device;  film  safety  devices;  take-up,  framing,  focusing 
and  shutter  mechanisms,  etc.  Can  you  suggest  particular 
developments  of  these  features.  CAMERA:  (single  or 
turret  lens  mount)  view  finder;  shutter,  footage  indicator; 
loading  mechanism;  winding  key;  exposure  guide;  lens 
mount;  focusing;  single  frame  release  mechanism,  etc. 

Design  ideas  must  be  original,  prac¬ 
tical.  Mechanical  suggestions  must  be 
original  and  contribute  to  the  over-all 
simplicity  and  effectiveness  of  operation 
of  either  camera  or  projector  mechanism. 
Art  or  design  ability  not  essential!  You 
don’t  have  to  be  an  artist  to  enter  this 
competition.  You  may  supplement  your 
designs,  drawings,  or  models  with  writ¬ 
ten  explanations.  You  may  get  an  artist, 
or  designer  to  help  you. 


FOR  FULL  PARTICULARS  &  OFFICIAL 
ENTRY  BLANK— MAIL  COUPON  TODAY 


HERE  ARE  THE  26  AWARDS 

FOR  CAMERA  DESIGN  FOR  PROJECTOR  DESIGN 

lit  Prize  . .  $200.00  in  War  Bonds*  1st  Prize . .  $200.00  in  War  Bonds 

2nd  Prize . .  100.00  in  War  Bonds  2nd  Prize. .  100.00  in  War  Bondi 

3rd  Prize  . .  S0.00  in  War  Bonds  3rd  Prize . .  S0.00  in  War  Bonds 

For  Mechanical  Refinements 

CAMERA:  PROJECTOR: 

6  $50.00  U.  S.  War  Bonds  6  $50.00  U.  S.  War  Bonds 

for  tho  six  best  individual  for  fho  six  best  individual 

mochanical  ideas.  mechanical  Ideas. 

4  $25.00  bonds  for  the  4  $25.00  bonds  far  the 

four  best  supplemental  four  best  supplemental 

designs,  or  mechanical  designs,  or  mechanical 

to  the  over-all  Camera  do-  to  the  over«all  Projector 

sign  and  operation.  design  and  operation. 

Contest  closet  at  Midnight  December  31st,  1943.  Award* 
will  be  announced  on  or  before  February  1st,  1944. 

Do  net  contribute  anything  until  you  have  rood  full  par¬ 
ticulars  of  the  competition  and  signed  end  returned 

OfTiciol  Entry  Blank.  $ee  coupon  below. 

•All  War  Bond  amounts  ore  ot  maturity  value. 

In  case  at  ties,  duplicate  awards  will  be  paid. 

Do  not  send  us  your  design  sugges¬ 
tions  or  your  mechanical  ideas  until  you 
have  carefully  read  the  conditions  of  this 
competition.  Simply  send  your  name  and 
address  and  we  will  see  to  it  that  com¬ 
plete  information,  Official  Entry  Blank 
and  certain  suggestions  from  our  Engi¬ 
neering  Department  are  sent  you  by 
return  mail  without  any  obligation 
whatever,  FREE. 


AN  OUTSTANDING  NAME  IN  THE  CINEMATIC  WORLD 


Wm.  C.  D.Vry,  Pr.sid.nl  DeVRY  CORPORATION 
1111  Armitage  Av»,,  Dept.  A C  Chicago  14,  ll.S.  A. 

Without  obligation  pleose  send  me  complete  details  concerning  your 
8MM  MOTION  PICTURE  CAMERA  A  PROJECTOR  COMPETITION. 


Nam* _ Age. 


WHILE  DEVRY  GIVES  'EM— LET'S  YOU  KEEP  ON 
BUYING  THOSE  U.  S.  WAR  BONDS  AND  STAMPS! 


ACME  FOR  RENT 

The  RED  CROSS 

ANIMATED  CARTOON  EQUIPMENT 

Goes  Where 

35MM.  SUCCESSIVE  FRAME  THREE-COLOR  CAMERAS 

•  • 

YOUR  BOY  IS 

ACME  TOOL  &  MFG.  CO. 

GIVE! 

2815  W.  OLIVE  AVENUE  BURBANK,  CALIFORNIA 

American  Cinematographer  •  September,  1943  347 


GOEPZ 


“ljo£/i£.  Chnsthkari’ 


CRAFTSMEN 


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aJxSL  doinq. 
ihsuA.  aJuUisl— 

The  production  line  of  "GOERZ  AMER- 
'  ICAN"  is  formed  by  skilled  men,  who 
through  painstaking  work  create  high- 
grade  photo-lenses  and  optical  units  for 
military  instruments  used  by  our  armed 
forces, 

on  Land — 

on  the  Sea — 
in  the  Air — 

f  hese  precise  optical  units  are  of  the 
greatest  importance  to  our  armed 
forces,  for  without  accurate  military  in¬ 
struments  for  sighting,  fire  control  and 
photographic  aerial  reconnaissance  their 
fighting  machinery  would  be  of  little 
value  to  them. 

^ptical  science  together  with  our  crafts¬ 
men,  doing  their  duty  on  the  job  in 
the  production  line,  will  hasten  victory. 

Q  ur  production  is  keyed  to  fill  the  re¬ 
quirements  of  our  Government,  and 
of  others  on  orders  with  priority  certifi¬ 
cates.  "GOERZ  AMERICAN"  lenses  for 
civilian  use  will  again  be  available  after 
Victory. 


To  hasten  Victory  — 

•  INVEST  IN  WAR  BONDS  • 


C.P. GOERZ  AMERICAN  OPTICAL  CO. 


Office  and  Factory 

★  317  East  34th  Street,  New  York,  14,  N.  Y.  k 

"^ostk^,  CbmhkatC 

PRECISION  OPTICS 

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Filming  an  Incident 

(Continued  from  Page  334) 

Several  others  were  chased  out  of 
bomb  zones  by  air  raid  wardens  who 
weren’t  used  to  having  photographers 
in  the  way.  Finally  the  officer  in  charge 
announced  over  the  loud  speaker  that 
the  photographers  were  part  of  the  drill. 
One  interesting  part  of  the  film  shows 
a  bomb  crater  situation  with  hydrants 
and  water  mains  out  and  the  fire  de¬ 
partment  utilizing  its  suction  hose  to 
drain  the  crater  and  put  out  fires. 

The  gas  incident  was  well  photo¬ 
graphed.  The  air  raid  wardens  reported 
to  the  gas  reconnaissance  officers  who 
came  and  made  a  test  with  their  sniff- 
kit  and  pronounced  it  mustard  gas.  This 
brough  out  the  area  decontamination 
squad  dressed  in  rubber  suits  and  look¬ 
ing  like  men  from  Mars,  followed  by 
the  human  decontamination  squad  who 
came  and  took  care  of  the  victims.  We 
wondered  why  one  scene  of  first  aiders 
putting  an  injured  victim  into  an  am¬ 
bulance  feet  first  always  brought  a 
laugh.  We  were  informed  that  was  the 
way  dead  victims  were  transported. 

Of  course,  there  is  always  one  cam¬ 
era  pest  in  every  location  and  we  had 
one  that  day  who  tried  to  be  in  every 
picture  and  mug  the  camera  as  much 
as  possible. 

Fast  film  was  used  and  the  photo¬ 
graphic  perfection  of  the  picture  was 
sacrificed  for  speed  in  catching  the  ac¬ 
tion. 

After  the  film  was  edited  and  titled, 
it  was  shown  to  various  heads  of  the 
different  departments  in  Civilian  De¬ 
fense  and  was  considered  excellent  as 
an  educational  picture.  The  mistakes 
were  pointed  out  to  each  group  so  they 
could  be  prevented  from  making  the 
same  error. 

All  those  who  worked  on  the  picture 
enjoyed  it  and  felt  they  were  helping  in 
a  small  way  towards  the  war  effort.  We 
know  Cine  fans  all  over  the  United 
States  have  been  very  eager  to  do  some¬ 
thing  for  their  country  and  we  hope  this 
may  suggest  to  others  an  interesting- 
way  of  contributing  their  photographic 
ability  to  our  “Home  Army.” 


CAMERA  SUPPLY  COMPANY 

ART  REEVES 

1515  North  Cahuenga  Boulevard 

HOLLYWOOD  Cable  Address — Cameras  CALIFORNIA 

Efficient-Courteous  Service  New  and  Used  Equipmnt 

Bought — Sold — Rented 

Everything  Photographic  Professional  and  Amateur 


New  Non-Metal  Screen 

A  new  full  line  of  projection  screens 
designed  to  supply  all  civilian  supply, 
educational  and  visual  training  needs, 
yet  made  of  non-critical  material,  has 
just  been  announced  by  Radiant  Manu¬ 
facturing  Corp.  of  Chicago,  the  major 
part  of  whose  production  is  now  going 
to  the  Armed  Forces. 

Portable,  table,  wall  and  ceiling 
screens  in  a  variety  of  sizes,  all  with  the 
famous  Radiant  “Hy-Flect,”  glass-bead¬ 
ed  screen  surface,  will  be  available  for 
immediate  delivery.  Many  outstanding 
features  of  former  Radiant  lines  have 
been  incorporated  again  in  the  new  line. 
All  new  models  are  available  without 
priorities. 


S.V.E.  Projectors  Available 
For  Pre-Induction  Training 

THE  Society  of  Visual  Education, 
Inc.,  manufacturers  of  S.  V.  E. 
projectors,  has  been  granted  per¬ 
mission  by  the  WPB  to  release  a  limited 
quantity  of  the  Model  DD  Tri-Purpose 
projectors  to  schools  giving  pre-induc¬ 
tion  training  courses. 

The  Model  DD  shows  both  single  and 
double  slide  films  and  2x2-inch  minia¬ 
ture  slides  in  black  and  white  or  Koda- 
chrome.  It  is  a  Tri-Purpose  projector 
of  high  quality,  being  equipped  with  a 
150-watt  lamp,  Anastigmat  lens,  S.  V.  E. 
rewind  take-up,  and  is  especially  suited 
for  use  in  classrooms  or  small  audito¬ 
riums. 

For  prompt  delivery,  S.V.E.  requests 
that  schools  submit  orders  with  a  prior¬ 
ity  rating.  The  automatic  rating  pro¬ 
cedure  under  CMP-Regulation  5A  may 
be  used  on  orders  for  less  than  $100 
worth  of  equipment.  Orders  must  be  ac¬ 
companied  by  a  certification  stating  that 
the  school  has  pre-induction  training 
courses,  signed  by  the  officer  in  charge 
of  the  courses.  Further  information  may 
be  secured  from  any  S.  V.  E.  dealer  or 
from  the  Society  for  Visual  Education, 
Inc.,  100  East  Ohio  Street,  Chicago 
(11),  Illinois. 


348  September,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


P.S.A.  Salon 

The  P.S.A.  International  Salon  of 
Photography  has  been  announced  for 
October  25  to  November  13  in  the  de¬ 
Young  Museum,  Golden  Gate  Park,  San 
Francisco,  California.  Closing  date  for 
entries  is  September  30.  C.  Stanton 
Loeber,  of  San  Francisco,  is  Salon  Di¬ 
rector.  Judges  are:  Floyd  Evans,  of 
Pasadena,  California;  Shirley  Hall,  of 
San  Marino,  California;  Fred  Herring¬ 
ton,  of  San  Francisco,  California;  Jack 
Wright,  of  San  Jose,  California,  and 
William  E.  Dassonville,  of  San  Fran¬ 
cisco,  California. 


RUBY  CAMERA  EXCHANGE 

Rents  . . .  Sells  .  . .  Exchanges 

Everything  You  Need  for  the 

PRODUCTION  &  PROJECTION 

of  Motion  Pictures  Provided 
by  a  Veteran  Organization 
of  Specialists 

35  mm . 16  mm. 


IN  BUSINESS  SINCE  I?I0 


729  Seventh  Ave.,  New  York  City 

Cable  Address:  RUBYCAM 


TELEFILM 

[incorporated! 

Direct  16  MM 

SOUND 

USED  BY: 

►  Douglas  Aircraft 

►  General  Elec.  (Welding  Series) 

►  Boeing  Aircraft 

►  North  American  Aviation 

►  U.  S.  Dept,  of  Interior 

►  U.  S.  Dept,  of  Agriculture 

►  Santa  Fe  Railroad 

►  Washington  State  Apple 

Commission 

►  Standard  Oil  of  Calif. 

►  Salvation  Army 

and  Many  Others 
A  BETTER  JOB  FASTER- 

MORE  ECONOMICAL! 

TELEFILM 

INCORPORATED 
403?  Hollywood  Blvd.,  HOLLYWOOD,  CALIF. 
GLodstone  5748 


Carlsen  Promoted 


MR.  J.  H.  McNABB,  President  of 
the  Bell  &  Howell  Company, 
makers  of  motion  picture  equip¬ 
ment  and  optical  devices,  announces  the 
delegation  of  T.  C.  Carlsen  to  the  posi¬ 
tion  of  Superintendent  of  Parts  Manu¬ 
facturing.  Carlsen  holds  this  position  at 
the  Rockwell  Plant  in  Chicago,  Illinois. 
He  started  with  the  company  in  1927  as 
a  tool  and  die  apprentice,  and  went  to 
assistant  to  the  Plant  Engineer,  then  to 
Chief  Methods  Engineer,  and  while  in 
these  responsible  positions  acquired  the 
necessary  directive  ability  to  fill  his 
present  post. 

Also  announced  is  the  promotion  of 
Knute  Petersen  to  post  of  Assistant  Pro¬ 
duction  Manager.  He  is  also  Wage  Co¬ 
ordinator,  Assistant  Secretary  to  the 
Company,  and  Secretary  of  the  Central 
Control  Planning  Committee. 

Still  another  promotion  is  that  of 
Harold  J.  Peterson  to  post  of  Chief  Tool 
Engineer. 


Post-War  Dream  Camera 

(Continued  from  Page  332) 

to  our  movies,  by  proper  exhibition.  What 
then  is  the  ideal  projector  like? 

I  don’t  think  it’s  necessary  to  go  into 
much  detail  here,  as  most  movie  makers 
aren’t  as  finicky  about  projecting  their 
movies  as  they  are  about  filming  them. 
Nearly  everyone  will  agree,  as  in  the 
case  of  the  camera,  that  economy  coupled 
with  dependability,  are  the  main  items 
looked  for.  A  precision  machine  with  a 
lamp  of  proper  brilliance  to  suit  indi¬ 
vidual  needs  is  a  valuable  asset,  as  is  a 
projection  lens  of  the  correct  focal  length 
to  fill  the  entire  screen  surface.  Pre-war 
projectors  were  well  on  the  road  to  per¬ 
fection,  and  there  is  little  criticism  to 
offer,  and  few  suggestions  to  make,  on 
that  score,  for  the  post-war  product. 

Well,  I  guess  that  about  covers  my 
subject  of  “dream”  cameras  and  projec¬ 
tors.  Whether  your  name  is  “John  Jones” 
or  “Bill  Brown,”  I  happen  to  be  Jim 
Oswald,  and  if  our  views  coincide  ...  all 
well  and  good.  If  not  .  .  .  each  one  is  en¬ 
titled  to  his  own  opinion.  Whether  or  not 
the  manufacturers  will  lend  ANY  of  us 
an  ear  in  designing  their  future  cameras 
and  projectors,  remains  to  be  seen.  At 
any  rate,  we  can  DREAM,  can’t  we? 


DeVry  "Movie  News" 

No.  1  of  Volume  XV,  DeVry  “Movie 
News”  is  just  off  the  press.  Its  12  pages 
are  packed  with  interesting  pictures, 
comments  and  data  pertinent  to  Audio- 
Visual  Education. 

For  a  free  copy  address  your  request 
to  DeVry  Corporation,  1111  Armitage 
Avenue,  Chicago  14,  Ill. 


New  Precision  Products  from 

KALART 

available  on  suitable  priorities 

NEW  Model  "E-l"  Range  Finder  with 
war-time  improvements.  New  FOCUSPOT 
for  automatic  focusing  in  the  dark.  And 
improved  Master  Automatic  Speed  Flash. 
Write  for  full  information.  The  Kalart 
Company,  Inc.,  Dept.  19,  Stamford,  Conn. 


8  Enlarged  1  Reduced  O 
TO  J-O  TO  O 

Geo.  W.  Colburn  Laboratory 

Special  Motion  Picture  Printing 
995  MERCHANDISE  MART 
CHICAGO 


MOVIOLA 

FILM  EDITING  E9UIPMENT 

Used  in  Every  Major  Studio 
Illustrated  Literature  on  Request 
Manufactured  by 

GENERAL  SERVICE  CORPORATION 
Moviola  Division 

1449-51  Gordon  Street  Hollywood  28,  Calif. 


FAXON  DEAN 

INC. 


CAMERAS 

BLIMPS-DOLLYS 
FOR  RENT 

Day,  NOrmandie  22184 
Night,  SUnset  2-1271 

4516  Sunset  Boulevard 


American  Cinematographer  •  September,  1943  349 


Nude  But  Not  Lewd 

(Continued  from  Page  344) 

Maurine,  who  looks  a  great  deal  like 
Greer  Garson,  and  has  the  same  strik¬ 
ing  coloring  of  red  hair,  green  eyes  and 
fair  skin,  has  very  definite  ideas  of 
what  she  wants  to  do. 

“I'd  rather  do  nudes  than  anything 
else,”  she  says.  “Of  course,  as  I've  al 
ready  told  you,  they're  not  commercial. 
But  I've  an  idea — call  it  my  ambition, 
if  you  will.” 

Maurine's  ambition,  if  she  ever  has 
enough  money  to  do  exactly  as  she 
pleases — and  she  promises  herself  that 
one  day  she  will — is  to  do  books  of 
nudes.  Of  all  things,  she  wants  to  do 
the  mythologies  of  the  world. 

For  years  she  has  longed  to  do  them. 
The  Greek  mythology,  the  story  of 
Adam  and  Eve,  the  Icelandic  sagas, 
folklore  of  all  nations. 

“Wouldn't  it  be  wonderful,”  she  asks, 
her  green  eyes  alight,  “to  see  those 
things  really  take  form  and  come  to 
life?  Nobody  has  ever  done  just  that. 
It  would  be  a  thing  of  rare  beauty,  and, 
I  believe,  be  a  definite  contribution  to 
the  culture  of  the  world. 

“Of  course,  it  wouldn’t  be  easy  find¬ 
ing  just  the  right  type.  What  an  under¬ 
taking!  But,  big  as  the  task  is,  I  mean 
to  try  it  some  day.  Meantime,  I  jot 
down  notes  and  catalogue  as  I  go  along 
— so  I'll  be  ready  for  the  opportunity 
when  it  comes.” 

We  certainly  hope  for  Maurine's  sake 
— and  our  own — that  those  promised 
mythologies  and  fables  see  the  light  of 
day,  via  her  trained  camera.  I've  already 
got  some  of  my  favorite  stories  to  sug¬ 
gest.  And  I  can  see  myself  now  walk¬ 
ing  down  Hollywood  Boulevard  scan¬ 
ning  faces — and  forms — of  all  passers- 
by  for  a  possible  Apollo,  Passas  Athena 
or  Aphrodite.  To  say  nothing  of  Sieg¬ 
fried,  Thor  and  Brunnhilde! 

Life,  after  chatting  with  Maurine, 
will  never  be  the  same. 


New  Slides  For  Plane 
Identification  Kit 

SUPPLEMENTARY  unit  of  15 
new  aircraft  silhouettes  in  2x2- 
inch  miniature  slides  for  FLY¬ 
ING  magazine's  Aircraft  Identification 
Kit,  recently  announced  by  the  Society 
for  Visual  Education,  Inc.,  is  now  ready 
for  distribution  to  the  hundreds  of  users 
of  this  kit. 

The  aircraft  and  the  numbers  assigned 
to  them  in  the  kit  are:  113.  Hawker  Ty¬ 
phoon  IB.  114.  DeHavilland  Mosquito. 
115.  Boeing  Clipper  (“314”).  116.  Lock- 
heed-Vega  Ventura.  117.  Lockheed  Con¬ 
stellation.  Three  individual  silhouettes 
on  separate  slides  show  side,  bottom  and 
front  views  of  each  type  of  aircraft. 


Home  Movie  Previews 

(Continued  from  Page  345) 

In  other  words,  the  complications  in¬ 
volved  in  trying  to  keep  projector  in 
perfect  synchronization  are  beyond  the 
average  projectionist  who  might  be 
called  upon  to  use  the  film.  This  limits 
its  use  to  the  few  amateurs  who  might 
have  the  proper  equipment  and  who 
would  be  willing  to  spend  the  time  nec¬ 
essary  to  experiment  and  rehearse  the 
synchronization.  Hence,  in  the  opinion 
of  this  reviewer,  the  film  has  little  ac¬ 
tual  commercial  value. 

Sound-on-film  is  the  only  practical 
way  to  present  this  kind  of  a  subject, 
and  the  extra  cost  of  recording  and 
printing  the  projection  dupe  would  be 
offset  by  wider  possibilities  in  distribu¬ 
tion.  Incidentally,  the  central  Boy  Scout 
organization  now  has  a  good  commer¬ 
cial  16mm.  Kodachrome  film,  made  for 


FOR  SALE 


16  MM.  SOUND  PROJECTORS  for  immediate 
delivery.  We  have  a  few  Bell-Howell,  Ampro, 
Victor,  and  DeVry  16mm.  sound  machines,  fac¬ 
tory  re-conditioned,  available.  Write  for  de¬ 
scription  and  prices.  Also  available,  Bell- 
Howell  2000-foot  reels.  Royal  and  President  tri¬ 
pods.  Victor  Model  4  cameras.  Bell-Howell  pro¬ 
jection  lenses,  projection  lamps  for  all  slide  and 
motion  picture  machines,  Bell-Howell  Turret  8 
cameras,  Revere  8mm.  cameras,  as  well  as 
screens.  CAMERAS :  8  mm.  Bolex,  new,  with 
Laack  1.3  lens,  $250.00  ;  16mm.  Agfa,  variable 
speeds,  3.5  lens,  very  fine,  $39.50  ;  8mm.  Bolex, 
new,  with  1.9  lens,  and  l^-inch  f  :3.5  lens, 
$285.00  ;  Bell-Howell  Companion  with  wind-bak, 
3.5  iens,  very  fine,  $55.00;  LENSES:  l^-inch 
Cooke  for  8mm. .  $75.75  ;  1^4-inch  Dallmeyer  1.9, 
new,  $75.00  ;  1^4-inch  Eastman  4.5  for  Model  60, 
$39.50  ;  2-inch  3.5  Hugo  Meyer,  like  new,  $49.50. 
PROJECTORS:  16mm.  Bell-Howell  Diplomat, 
new,  229.50;  16mm.  Bell-Howell  Showmaster, 

like  new,  $199.50  ;  Bell-Howell  Model  57,  500- 
watt,  very  fine,  $59.50.  WE  ALSO  HAVE  A 
FINE  STOCK  OF  ROLL  FILM  AND  PLATE 
CAMERAS.  MINIATURES,  AND  GRAPHICS. 
NATIONAL  CAMERA  EXCHANGE.  Estab¬ 
lished  1914,  86  So.  Sixth  St.,  Minneapolis,  Minn. 


WE  BUY,  SELL  AND  RENT  PROFESSIONAL 
AND  16mm  EQUIPMENT.  NEW  AND  USED. 
WE  ARE  DISTRIBUTORS  FOR  ALL  LEAD¬ 
ING  MANUFACTURERS.  RUBY  CAMERA 
EXCHANGE,  729  Seventh  Ave.,  New  York  City. 
Established  since  1910. 


RCA  GALVANOMETER  STRING  VIBRATORS. 
$5.00;  16mm  FILM  PHONOGRAPH.  SIMILAR 
TO  MAURER.  $995.00;  CANNON  FOUR 
PRONG  PLUGS,  65c;  3-PHASE  1/12  H.P. 
SYNCHRONOUS  MOTORS,  $14.35;  with  gear¬ 
box,  $19.50;  RCA  MITCHELL  OR  BELL  AND 
HOWELL  3-phase  CAMERA  MOTORS.  $135.- 
00;  RCA  R-2  STUDIO  RECORDER,  $275.00  ; 
TWO-ELEMENT  GLOWLAMPS,  $9.50;  DU¬ 
PLEX  35MM  STEP  PRINTER,  $425.00.  S.O.S 
CINEMA  SUPPLY  CORPORATION,  NEW 
YORK. 


IMPROVED  DUPLEX  35MM  PRINTER,  with 
two  Bell-Howell  Cams  and  Shuttles.  Perfect 
Registration  for  Color  or  Black  and  White,  and 
process  plates.  Also  Bell-Howell  Step  Printer 
with  Registration  Pins  ideal  for  duplication. 
35  MM  HOLMES  AND  DEVRY  Portable  Sound 
Projectors.  Hollywood  Camera  Exchange,  1600 
Cahuenga,  Hollywood. 


FORD  1^4  ton  Sound  Truck  equipped  with  latest 
Blue  Seal  noiseless  variable  area  recording  equip¬ 
ment,  220  volt,  3  phase  generator  for  motors, 
battery  charger,  RCA  and  W.E.  microphones. 
Complete,  ready  for  operation.  Also  stock  of 
synchronous  and  Selsyn  motors.  BLUE  SEAL 
SOUND  DEVICES.  305  East  63rd  Street.  New 
York,  N.  Y. 


the  same  purpose,  and  is  sent  anywhere 
for  FREE  use.  This  reel  is  along  the 
same  lines  as  “SPIKE”  and  presents  a 
lot  of  competition. 

The  above  sounds  discouraging,  but 
this  film  could  have  wider  use  if  the 
makers  would  re-cut  it  as  a  silent,  and 
insert  appropriate  titles.  In  such  case 
it  would  be  best  to  shorten  the  several 
long  scenes  showing  the  Scout  leaders 
talking. 

Most  groups  or  organizations  before 
which  such  films  could  be  shown  can  get 
any  number  of  industrially  sponsored 
entertainment  films  free  of  charge. 
Hence,  they  are  seldom  interested  in  pay¬ 
ing  a  fee  for  viewing  a  film.  Such  spon¬ 
sors  send  out  films  and  paid  profession¬ 
al  projectionists.  A  film  on  the  Boy  Scout 
movement,  either  sound  or  silent,  would 
have  little  income  possibilities,  and 
should  necessarily  be  sponsored  by  head¬ 
quarters,  who  could  distribute  it  na¬ 
tionally. 


WILLARD  DeLuxe  35mm.  Camera,  4  lens  turret 
front,  special  finder,  Goertz  wide-angle,  2-inch 
and  3-inch  lens,  Zeiss  Tessar  6-inch  telephoto 
lenses.  Regular  and  trick  crank;  automatic  dis¬ 
solving  shutter,  200-foot,  400-foot  magazines, 
pan  tripod,  masks,  outfit  case.  New  condition, 
price  $585.00.  BELL-HOWELL,  35mm.  pro¬ 
fessional  Camera,  special  No.  341,  Goertz  f  :3.5, 
35mm.,  50mm..  75mm.,  125mm.,  three  400-foot 
magazines,  B-H  pan  tripod,  32  volt  motor,  in¬ 
verted  finder,  4  cases,  outfit  in  perfect  condition 
$2,965.00.  8-10-35mm.  Equipment  bought,  sold, 

exchanged.  MOGULL’S,  57  West  48th  (Radio 
City),  New  York  19. 


TRADING  OFFERS 

TARGET  PISTOLS,  revolvers,  automatics,  ac¬ 
cepted  in  trade  on  all  types  of  photographic 
equipment.  NATIONAL  CAMERA  EXCHANGE, 
Established  in  1914,  86  South  Sixth  St.,  Minne¬ 
apolis,  Minnesota. 


WANTED 


WANTED  TO  BUY  FOR  CASH 
CAMERAS  AND  ACCESSORIES 
MITCHELL,  B  &  H,  EYEMO,  DEBRIE,  AKELEY 
ALSO  LABORATORY  AND  CUTTING  ROOM 
EQUIPMENT 

CAMERA  EQUIPMENT  COMPANY 
1600  BROADWAY,  NEW  YORK  CITY 
CABLE:  CINEQUIP 


WE  PAY  CASH  FOR  EVERYTHING  PHOTO¬ 
GRAPHIC.  Write  us  today.  Hollywood  Camera 
Exchange.  1600  Cahuenga  Blvd.,  Hollywood. 


16mm  SOUND  PROJECTORS,  ANY  MAKE. 
CAMERAS,  35mm  PROJECTORS,  RECORD¬ 
ERS  or  WHAT  HAVE  YOU?  S.O.S.  CINEMA 
SUPPLY  CORPORATION,  NEW  YORK  18. 


WE  BUY— SELL— TRADE  ALL  MOTION  PIC¬ 
TURE  EQUIPMENT,  SOUND  AND  SILENT. 
SEND  YOUR  LIST.  THE  CAMERA  MART, 
70  WEST  45TH  ST.,  NEW  YORK  CITY. 


16MM.  FILMS.  Projector  Bolex  16mm.  camera. 
Eymo  Camera  with  turret  front.  16mm.  sound 
projector.  No  dealers.  SAM’S  ELECTRIC 
SHOP,  35  Monroe  Street,  Passaic,  N.  J. 


CLASSIFIED  ADVERTISING 


350  September,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


With  time-saving,  lite -saving  movies. . . .  outgrowth 
of  pioneer  Teaching  Films. ....  the  Army 

and  Navy  are  giving  millions  the  know  how  of  war 


historical  note — Back  in  1923,  having  per¬ 
fected  “safety”  film  —  making  classroom 
projection  practical — Kodak  made  available 
16-mm.  movie  cameras  and  projectors  .  .  . 
and  shortly  afterwards  pioneered  a  pro¬ 
gram  of  teaching  films  for  schools. 


Put  yourself  in  the  boots  of  one  of 
these  young  men.  You’ve  been  ac¬ 
cepted  for  the  Army  or  Navy.  What  do 
you  know  about  this  war  of  2,000- 
horsepower  aircraft  motors  .  .  .  Ba¬ 
zookas  .  .  .  submarine  detectors? 

Our  Army  and  Navy  Commands 
realize  this  lack  of  experience.  They 
know  that  you  may  go  up  against  bat¬ 
tle-wise  troops  or  ship  crews  or  flyers. 

They  have  done  the  worryingfor  you. 
They  will  turn  you  out  a  better  man — 


more  competent  in  the  use  of  your 
weapons,  abler  to  take  care  of  yourself 
— than  any  “trainee”  who  ever  went 
before  you. 

Training  Films  are  a  great  and 
growing  part  of  their  system.  The 
Army  and  Navy  have  made  thousands. 

Don’t  get  the  idea  that  you’re  just 
“going  to  the  movies,”  though.  These 
movies  are  different.  Each  teaches  you 
to  do  a  part  of  your  job  in  the  Service 
— do  it  exactly  right. 

Maybe  it’s  how  to  dig  a  foxhole.  Or 
inflate  a  rubber  life  raft.  Or  take  down 
and  reassemble  a  50-calibre  machine 
gun.  Or — bake  a  batch  of  bread  .  .  . 

In  an  Army  and  Navy  made  up 


largely  of  “specialists,”  thousands  of 
films  are  not  too  many.  (Kodak  is  a 
major  supplier  of  film  for  these  pic¬ 
tures — one  big  reason  civilians  are 
not  getting  all  the  film  they  want.) 

You’ll  see  battle,  in  these  training 
movies.  You’ll  hear  it — to  make  your 
new  life  and  work  “second  nature” 
under  all  conditions.  You’ll  be  hardened 
.  .  .  ready  to  “ dish  it  out  and  take  it”  .  .  . 
up  to  40%  sooner  because  of  Training  Films. 
*  *  * 

After  this  war  is  won,  you — and  mil¬ 
lions  like  you  who  have  learned  so 
much,  so  easily,  through  training  films 
— will  want  your  children  to  learn  the 
Arts  of  Peace  this  way. 

Teaching  through  motion  pictures 
and  slide  film — steadily  growing  in 
importance  during  the  twenty  years 
since  Kodak  made  its  first  teaching 
films  available — will  really  come  into 
its  own  .  .  .  Eastman  Kodak  Co., 
Rochester,  N.  Y. 


Serving  human  progress  through  Photography 


American  Cinematographer  •  September,  1943  351 


the 

ostwar  camera  ? 

a  iM 


You  will ... 


Filmosound  Library 
Presents  “Bombay  Clipper’ 


in  fact, 


Universal’s  stirring  tale  of  Axis 
espionage  aboard  the  "Bombay 
Clipper”  will  hold  you  on  the 
edge  of  your  seat.  Approved 
non-theatrical  locations  should 
team  this  full  length  feature 
with  a  selection  of  "shorts” 
from  the  Filmosound  Library’s 
collection  of  thousands  of  pro¬ 
fessionally  made  films.  The 
coupon  below  will  bring  com¬ 
plete  catalog  and  recent  sup¬ 
plements. 


OLD  PROJECTOR  LAMPS 
must  be  returned  with  your 
order  for  new  lamps.  The  bases 
are  made  of  critical  material 
and  have  real  value. 


GUIDEPOST5  TO  FINER  MOVIE  EQUIPMENT  AFTER  VICTORY 


Filmosound  V... —  16mm.  Projector 


Filmo  Auto  Load  16mm.  Camera 


Filmo  Companion  8  Camera 


Filmo  Master  "400”  8mm.  Projector 


Filmoarc  16mm.  Projector 


Filmo  Master  16mm.  Projector 


you’re  designing  it  today  .  .  .  you  have  been 
ever  since  you  shot  your  first  movie  scene! 
You  wished  for  a  better  viewfinder,  perhaps 
...  or  wanted  an  ”8”  with  a  turret  head  .  .  . 
or  a  speedier  camera  that  would  get  a  scene 
before  it  was  gone  forever  ...  or  an  easier- 
loading  camera  .  .  .  or  .  .  .  the  list  is  endless. 

These  hopes,  multiplied  by  thousands,  be¬ 
came  realities  in  Filmo  Cameras  .  .  .famous 
realities  like  the  "Positive”  viewfinder, 
drop-in  loading,  built-in  exposure  calcu¬ 
lator,  turret  models  with  interchangeable 
lenses  and  matched  finders,  the  unique  film 
speed  governor,  and  a  host  of  other  practical 
operating  refinements.  Thus,  your  needs  .  .  . 
your  increasing  skill  .  .  .  have  long  been  a 
vital  force  in  Filmo  Design. 

And  during  all  these  months  while  our 
entire  production  has  been  helping  win  a 
war,  you  haven’t  stopped  thinking  about 
the  new  things  you  want  in  your  next  camera 
.  .  .  and  B&H  Research  hasn’t  stopped  inter¬ 
preting  your  hopes  in  logical,  workable, 
necessary  improvements. 

Those  improvements  will  be  a  part  of  the 
BEST  postwar  camera  .  .  .  the  camera  yon 
are  designing  now. 

It  will  be  a  Filmo  Camera  . . .  made  by  Bell 
&  Howell  Co.,  Chicago;  New  York;  Holly¬ 
wood;  Washington,  D.  C.;  London.  Est.  1907. 


*Opti-onics  is  OPTIcs  .  .  .  electrONics  .  .  .  mechanics.  It  is 
research  and  engineering  by  Bell  &  Howell  in  these  three 
related  sciences  to  accomplish  many  things  never  before  ob¬ 
tainable.  Today  Opti-onics  is  a  WEAPON.  Tomorrow,  it  will 
be  a  SERVANT ...  to  work,  protect,  educate,  and  entertain. 


■Jt Trade-mark  registered 


Products  combining  the  sciences  of  OPTIcs  •  electrON  ics  •  mechanICS 


BELL  &  HOWELL  COMPANY 
1848  Larchmont  Ave.,  Chicago,  Illinois 


Please  send  me  complete  Filmosound  Library 
Catalog  and  recent  supplements. 


Same. 


PRECISION- 
MADE  BY 


Cameramen  in  Uniform 


Artistic  Pictures 


October 

1943 


^CT  -9  ^ 


Honest  Weight— .000,000,000,001  of  a  gram 


The  chemist  pictured  here 
is  measuring  the  quanti¬ 
ties  of  silver  ion  concentration 
in  Du  Pont  “Superior”  Nega¬ 
tive  emulsion. 

Variations  of  silver  ion 
amounting  to  only  a  millionth 
of  a  millionth  of  a  gram  per 
liter  have  a  profound  effect 
upon  the  characteristics  of  film 
emulsions.  Even  these  infinites¬ 


imal  weights  must  be  accu¬ 
rately  determined. 

This  is  another  precision 
study  conducted  at  the  Du  Pont 
Research  and  Control  Labora¬ 
tories.  It  is  a  routine  operation 
important  in  the  manufacture 
of  all  Du  Pont  Motion  Picture 
Film,  to  assure  you  of  depend¬ 
able  quality  and  uniform  re¬ 
sults  at  all  times. 


E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  & 
Co.  (Inc.),  Photo  Products  De¬ 
partment,  Wilmington  98,  Del. 
In  New  York:  Empire  State 
Bldg.  In  Hollywood:  Smith 
&  Aller,  Ltd. 


MOTION  PICTURE 
FILM 


Better  Things  for  Better  Living  .  .  . 

THROUGH  CHEMISTRY 


BACK  THE  ATTACK  WITH  WAR  BONDS 


354  October,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


;*£sfooW 

tfo  Jbpa»**'s' 


That’s  why  there 
are  no  Eyemos 
for  civilian  use 
for  the  duration 


Eyemos  have  always  been  famous  for  their  unfailing 
performance  under  conditions  that  put  both  men  and 
machines  to  the  supreme  test.  Good  going  or  tough — 
Eyemo  gets  the  picture.  That  is  why  our  armed  forces 
need  every  Eyemo  we  have  or  can  build.  The  need  is  so 
acute,  in  fact,  that  all  Eyemos  must  go  to  the  armed 
services.  That’s  why  we  can’t  supply  civilian  demands 
for  this  famous  35mm.  camera. 

But  this  war  won’t  last  forever.  When  the  boys  come 
marching  home,  you’ll  again  be  able  to  get  any  one  of 
the  seven  Eyemo  models  that  best  suits  your  needs  .  .  . 
and  then,  as  in  the  past,  if  your  particular  requirements 


call  for  a  special  Eyemo— we  will  modify  any  model 
to  suit  you.  You’ll  never  have  to  accept  a  compromise 
in  an  Eyemo  Camera. 

Bell  &  Howell  Company,  Chicago;  New  York;  Hollywood; 
Washington,  D.  C.;  London.  Established  1907. 


♦  Opti-onics  is  OPTIcs  . . .  elec- 
trONics  .  .  .  mechanics.  It  is 

research  and  engineering  by 
Bell  &  Howell  in  these  three 
related  sciences  to  accomplish 
many  things  never  before  ob¬ 
tainable.  Today  Opti-onics  is  a 
WEAPON.  Tomorrow,  it  will 
be  a  SERVANT ...  to  work,  pro¬ 
tect,  educate,  and  entertain. 

*  Trade-mark  registered 


EYEMO  MODELS  P  AND  Q 

most  complete  of  the  seven  stand¬ 
ard  models,  have  three-arm  offset 
turret,  prismatic  focuser  with 
magnifier,  and  provisions  for 
electric  motor  and  external  film 
magazines.  Speeds:  Model  P — 

4,  8,  12,  1 6,  24,  and  32  f.p.s.; 

Model  Q— 8,  12,  1 6,  24,  32,  and 
48  f.p.s. 

WILL  YOU  MAIL  THIS  TO  US  NOW? 

Special  arrangements  are  being  made  in  our  service  department  to 
recondition  for  Government  use  all  of  the  Eyemo  Cameras  we  can 
obtain.  You  may  have  exactly  the  lenses  needed  for  important 
military  service.  If  you  will  sell — fill  out  the  information  blank  in 
this  advertisement. 


Products  combining  the  sciences  of  OPTIcs  •  eledrONics  •  mechanics 


PRECISION-MADE  BY 


BUY  MORE  WAR  BONDS 


EYEMOS  WANTED  FOR  WAR  SERVICE 

BELL  &  HOWELL  COMPANY 

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Chicago,  Illinois 
Gentlemen: 

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transportation  and  insurance  to  Chicago. 

This  camera  is: 

. In  good  operating  condition 

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Do  Not  Ship  Until  You  Receive  Instructions  from  Factory  I 


American  Cinematographer  •  October,  1943  355 


VOL.  24 


OCTOBER,  1943 


NO.  10 


CONTENTS 


The  Evolution  of  Transparency  Process  Photography . 

. By  Farciot  Edouart,  ASC 

The  Sixth  Sense  in  Film  Mechanics . By  Hal  Hall 

Cameramen  in  Uniform . By  Lieut.  Arthur  E.  Arling,  USNR 

The  New  Mitchell  Background  Projector . By  E.  J.  Tiffany 

Marines  Learn  Photography  in  Hollywood . 

Hands  Are  Nice  to  Hold — That’s  All . By  James  N.  Doolittle 

Third  Dimensional  Films  in  Soviet  Union... By  Michael  Kalatozov 

Keep  on  Filming — Economically . By  James  R.  Oswald 

Artistic  Pictures . By  F.  W.  Pratt 

Saving  Film  in  Wartime . 

Among  the  Movie  Clubs . 

Railroad  Ramblings . By  F.  M.  Hirst 


359 

361 

362 

363 

364 

365 

366 

367 

368 
370 

376 

377 


The  Front  Cover 

This  month’s  cover  takes  us  somewhere  in  the  South 
Pacific  with  combat  cameramen.  It  shows  a  camera  crew 
in  action,  photographing  whatever  is  going  on  right  then 
up  in  the  skies.  Behind  the  camera  is  Lieut.  Arthur  E. 
Arling,  USNR,  member  of  the  American  Society  of  Cine¬ 
matographers,  who  has  an  article  in  this  issue.  At  his  left 
is  Keith  Wheeler,  Chicago  Times  war  correspondent. 


The  Staff 

• 

EDITOR 

Hal  Hall 

• 

TECHNICAL  EDITOR 
Emery  Huse,  A.S.C. 

• 

ASSOCIATE  EDITOR 
Edward  Pyle,  Jr. 

• 

WASHINGTON  STAFF  CORRESPONDENT 
Reed  N.  Haythome,  A.S.C. 

• 

MILITARY  ADVISOR 
Col.  Nathan  Levinson 

• 

STAFF  PHOTOGRAPHER 
Pat  Clark 


ARTIST 

Alice  Van  Norman 

• 

CIRCULATION 
Marguerite  Duerr 

• 

ADVISORY  EDITORIAL  BOARD 
Fred  W.  Jackman,  A-  S.  C. 

Victor  Milner,  A.  S.  C. 

James  Van  Trees,  A.  S.  C. 

Farciot  Edouart,  A.  S.  C. 

Fred  Gage,  A.  S.  C. 

Dr.  J.  S.  Watson,  A.  S.  C. 

Dr.  L.  A.  Jones,  A.  S.  C. 

Dr.  C.  E.  K.  Mees,  A.  S.  C. 

Dr.  W.  B.  Rayton,  A.  S.  C. 

Dr.  Herbert  Meyer,  A.  S.  C. 

Dr.  V.  B.  Sease.  A.  S.  C. 

• 

AUSTRALIAN  REPRESENTATIVE 
McGill's,  179  Elizabeth  Street,  Melbourne, 
Australian  and  New  Zealand  Agents 

• 

Published  monthly  by  A.  S.  C.  Agency,  Inc. 
Editorial  and  business  offices: 

1782  North  Orange  Drive 
Hollywood  (Los  Angeles,  28),  California 
Telephone:  GRanite  2135 
• 

Established  1920.  Advertising  rates  on  appli¬ 
cation.  Subscriptions:  United  States  and  Pan- 
American  Union,  *2.50  per  year ;  Canada,  $2.75 
per  year;  Foreign.  *3.50.  Single  copies,  26c; 
back  numbers.  30c ;  foreign,  single  copies  35c, 
back  numbers  40c.  Copyright  1943  by  A.  S.  C. 
Agency,  Inc. 


Entered  as  second-class  matter  Nov.  18,  1937, 
at  the  postoffice  at  Los  Angeles,  California,  under 
the  act  of  March  3.  1879. 


356  October,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


*FANTASY  OF  FACTS... 


Fritz  had  bad  luck  with  the  first  aerial  machine  gun  in  World  War  I  because  it 
shot  off  his  propeller!  Then  a  synchronizing  device  was  developed  that  sent  bullets 
between  the  blades.  25  years  later,  turret  gunners  were  damaging  their  tail  as¬ 
semblies  so  ADEL  engineers  developed  a  reversing  hydraulic  valve  which  auto¬ 
matically  swings  turret  guns  beyond  danger  points  in  l-20th  of  a  second.  ADEL 
equipment  on  leading  United  Nations'  planes  was  an  evolution  of  original  plans 
for  making  cinematographic  equipment.  From  a  unique  lens  focusing  device  came  a 
carburetor  dual  control  mechanism  which,  in  turn,  led  to  the  development  of  other 
aircraft  products.  After  Victory  look  to  ADEL  for  new  and  superior  cinemato¬ 
graphic  equipment,  made  with  the  engineering  skills  that  gave  ADEL  international 
acceptance  in  aviation.  Harken  to  Mickey  and  hasten  that  Victory! 

VICTORY...  -£At>  A  D  E  L  -  A  G  E 

*TRADE  MARK  COPYRIGHT  1943  ADEL  PRECISION  PRODUCTS  CORP. 


Engineering  Offices:  Dallas,  Texas  •  Detroit, 
Michigan  •  Dayton,  Ohio  •  Hagerstown,  Mary¬ 
land  •  Seattle, Washington  •  Toronto,  Canada 


American  Cinematographer  •  October,  1943  357 


VENDOR 


BY  MAURINE 


358 


October,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


The  Evolution  of 
Transparency  Process 
Photography 

By  FARCIOT  EDOUART,  A.  S.  C. 


IT’S  like  Topsy,  it  just  grew,  and  from 
an  engineering  viewpoint,  the  Trans¬ 
parency  or  projected-background  pro¬ 
cess  of  special-effects  cinematography, 
got  off  to  a  most  unfortunate  start.  It 
was  never  invented,  in  the  strict  sense 
of  the  word — much  less  engineered.  It 
just  simply  happened.  And  from  its 
earliest  beginnings,  it  had  to  take  off  its 
coat  and  go  to  work,  with  no  opportunity 
for  being  engineered  into  a  technologic¬ 
ally  streamlined  coordination  of  methods 
and  equipment. 

For  quite  a  number  of  years  before 
the  process  became  a  reality,  many  of 
us  throughout  the  industry  who  had  been 
specializing  on  what  used  to  be  called 
‘trick  photography”  had  been  thinking 
how  valuable  it  would  be  if  we  could  pro¬ 
ject  a  moving  picture  onto  a  translucent 
screen  behind  our  set  and  actors,  and 
rephotograph  these  two  elements  in  such 
a  way  as  to  produce  the  illusion  that 
the  projected  background  was  as  real 
and  as  much  a  part  of  the  composite 
scene  as  the  actual  foreground  and  ac¬ 
tors.  But  we  could  only  dream  of  it. 
Three  key  factors  were  lacking  to  make 
the  dream  into  reality.  We  needed  a 
simple,  non-mechanical  method  of  syn¬ 
chronizing  the  background  projector  and 
the  foreground  camera.  We  needed 
negative  emulsions  of  sufficient  sensi¬ 
tivity  to  enable  us  to  record  the  back- 
projected  picture.  And  we  needed  optics 
and  light  sources  of  increased  power  to 
enable  us  to  get  a  brighter  image 
through  our  background  screens. 

Then,  some  twelve  or  fourteen  years 
ago,  all  of  these  things  were,  in  rela¬ 
tively  quick  succession,  thrown  into  our 
laps.  The  advent  of  sound  gave  us  a 
variety  of  simple  electrical  hook-ups  for 
interlocking  camera  and  projector.  The 
first  “super-sensitive”  panchromatic 
emulsions  gave  us  the  increased  film- 
speed  we  needed.  The  projection  re¬ 
quirements  of  increasingly  large  theatres 
improved  the  optics  and  light  sources 
available  for  projection,  and  the  still 
greater  projection  requirements  of  the 
wide  film  flurry  of  eleven  years  ago 
completed  the  development. 

We  had  what  we  wanted! 

Inevitably,  individuals  in  several  dif¬ 
ferent  studios  threw  these  various  units 
together  as  best  they  could,  and  started 


making  back  -  projec¬ 
tion  shots.  That  the 
results  were  success¬ 
ful  is  probably  more 
to  the  credit  of  the 
skillful  craftsmen  who 
operated  this  pioneer 
equipment  than  to  any 
enduring  merit  of  the 
equipment  itself. 

Still,  the  many- 
fathered  idea  worked. 

It  worked  so  well,  in 
fact  that  the  trans¬ 
parency  or  back  pro¬ 
jection  process  imme- 
mediately  became  a  very  vital  adjunct 
to  production.  To  a  very  great  extent 
it  eliminated  long  location-trips,  with 
all  the  increased  costs  and  hazardous 
delays  such  trips  involve.  It  minimized 
the  need  for  hiring  a  full-sized  ship  and, 
with  technicians  and  cast  aboard,  cruis¬ 
ing  expensively  up  and  down  the  seas 
in  search  of  the  right  combination  of 
backgrounds  and  weather.  It  completely 
eliminated  the  technical  difficulties  and 
not  infrequent  dangers  involved  in  mak¬ 
ing  by  straightforward  methods  scenes 
showing  our  actors  riding  horses,  autos, 
airplanes,  speedboats,  and  the  like.  It 
afforded  complete  control  of  lighting  on 
all  of  these  scenes. 

In  a  word,  it  conformed  ideally  to  the 
industry’s  ever-present  ideal  of  getting 
the  best  possible  picture  under  the  most 
completely  controllable  conditions,  and 
with  a  minimum  of  time,  expense  and 
danger. 

No  wonder,  then,  that  ever  since,  the 
industry’s  use  of  this  process  has  con¬ 
stantly  increased.  In  1930  —  the  last 
year  before  the  introduction  of  this 
process,  my  own  department  made  146 
composite  process  shots.  The  following 
year,  using  the  projection  process,  this 
figure  was  more  than  doubled,  while  the 
cost  per  scene  was  reduced.  Within  two 
years,  this  figure  was  itself  doubled, 
while  economy  and  effectiveness  ad¬ 
vanced.  And  every  year  since  then,  we 
have  had  to  make  more  and  more  trans¬ 
parency  shots.  Today,  hardly  a  picture 
goes  out  without  some  of  these  scenes 
in  it. 


Moreover,  producers  and  directors 
constantly  pressed  us  to  give  them 
greater  scope,  through  the  use  of  larger 
and  yet  larger  screens.  When  the  process 
was  first  used,  a  scene  inside  a  closed 
car,  with  a  screen  six  or  eight  feet  wide 
was  something  to  be  happy  about.  But 
before  long,  demand  had  forced  us  to 
find  ways  of  using  screens  12,  15,  18 
and  20  feet  across.  But  still  came  the 
cry  for  greater  and  yet  greater  scope. 
When  we  succeeded  in  using  a  24-foot 
screen,  we  had  already  demands  for 
shots  that  would  call  for  a  36-foot 
screen.  My  most  recent  scenes  made 
use  of  twin  screens  totalling  48  feet  in 
width — and  the  end  is  not  yet! 

From  an  engineering  viewpoint,  this 
was  decidedly  all  wrong.  Our  equipment 
was  not  engineered  to  do  this  work,  and 
certainly  the  different  components  were 
not  engineered  to  work  together  as  a 
unit.  All  of  us  in  this  field  necessarily 
had  had  to  build  our  own  equipment.  We 
would  usually  take  the  best  projector- 
head  we  could  get  and  equip  it  with  a 
camera-type  pilot-pin  movement.  Some 
of  us  used  Bell  &  Howell  movements, 
some  used  Mitchells;  all  were  readapted 
to  this  service  as  best  we  could. 

It  was  the  same  way  with  projection 
lenses — projector  lamphouses — electrical 
control  systems,  and  everything.  Though 
finely  made,  the  best  equipment  in  any 
studio  was  an  engineering  makeshift.  It 
is  an  everlasting  miracle  that  they  per¬ 
formed  as  well  as  they  did. 

The  manufacturers  of  the  various  com- 
( Continued  on  Page  380) 


American  Cinematographer  •  October,  1943 


359 


360  October,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


The  Sixth  Sente 

%  Jiltn  ftteckanicJ 

By  HAL  HALL 


WE  px-esent  here  the  news  about 
an  invention  that  may  revolu¬ 
tionize  film  music  and  open  thus 
far  unexplored  l'ealms  of  dormant  or¬ 
ganic  beauty. 

The  greatest  artists  such  as  Lionardo 
da  Vinci,  Michaelangelo,  Durer  and 
others,  were  unanimous  in  realizing  that 
all  forms  of  art  spring  from  the  same 
purpose  and  are  subject  to  a  common 
law.  The  knowledge  of  this  law  permits 
the  establishing  of  a  link  between  di¬ 
verse  manifestations  of  art.  Savants 
such  as  Helmholtz  for  example,  be¬ 
lieved  that  it  would  be  possible  to  es¬ 
tablish  rules  analogous  to  those  of 
counterpoint  in  drawings  and  architec- 
tui'al  structures. 

With  the  scientific  attempts  of  Fisch- 
inger  to  interpret  music  by  forms,  we 
now  associate  a  new  effort  by  Dr. 
Dmitri  Marianoff,  former  son-in-law  of 
Professor  Albert  Einstein,  and  his  col¬ 
laborator,  Engineer  A.  van  Hulm,  to 
capture  music  from  visible  forms. 

“Like  musical  hai’mony,  architectui’e, 
paintings  and  sculpture  are  also  subject 
to  the  laws  of  counterpoint,”  Dr.  Mai’i- 
anoff  explains.  “The  transformation  of 
complicated  ai'chitectural  designs  into 
film  registration  would  necessitate  a 
synthetisation  of  sound  waves  and  the 
music  obtained  would  be  but  a  synthesis 
of  the  real  music  inherent  in  the  work 
of  art  it  represents.  Although  this 
would  leave  the  composer  a  certain  free¬ 
dom  for  creation,  he  would,  however,  al¬ 
ways  have  as  a  point  of  departure  the 
given  form.  Thus,  his  music  would  al¬ 
ways  retain  the  inspiration  of  the  work 
of  art  it  represents. 

“Helmholtz  already  had  the  idea  of 
‘sonore  ornament’;  he  had  discovei-ed  it 
mathematically  but  had  no  means  at 
his  disposal  of  repi’esenting  sound 
graphically.  He  was  able  to  make  the 
connection  between  architecture  and  the 
fundamental  bass,  but  was  unable  to 
base  this  on  physical  facts. 

“Today,  by  the  use  of  the  new  inven¬ 
tion,  music  can  be  produced  fi-om  orna¬ 
ments  and  forms. 

“The  mystery  of  relationship  of  music 
and  architecture,  music  and  paintings, 
has  been  sensed  throughout  the  ages. 
Now  we  can  have  the  proof  on  film  of 
these  ancient  affirmations.  The  mystery 
of  ‘geometrical  music’  in  the  works  of 
Lionardo  da  Vinci,  Durer,  Rembrandt, 
can  now  be  explained.  The  way  in  which 


Pythagoras  used  to  establish  his  theoi'y 
of  harmony  proves  that  even  the  an¬ 
cients  showed  like  tendencies,  which 
manifested  themselves  by  repetition  of 
certain  proportions. 

“During  the  Renaissance  the  ‘Treaty 
of  Painting’  by  Lionardo  or  the  work  of 
Durer  on  the  art  of  measurements  and 
proportions  of  the  body,  were  the  ob¬ 
ject  of  theoretical  studies.” 

Dr.  Marianoff  and  Hulm  plan  to  make 
a  series  of  films  in  which  they  will  show 
how  music  can  be  captured  from  forms. 
They  intend  to  illustrate  the  composi¬ 
tion  of  Raphael’s  masterpiece,  “Sixtinic 
Madonna”,  which  rests  on  the  principle 
of  the  pentagram  and  other  perfect  pro¬ 
portions.  Along  with  the  graphic  de¬ 
velopment,  or  rather  grapho-tectonic  de¬ 
velopment,  one  would  cause  the  corre¬ 
sponding  sounds  to  ring  out  while  the 
geometrical  figures  were  being  built  up. 
The  first  film  planned  by  the  inventors 
will  be  called  “The  Song  of  the  Mod¬ 
ern  City”. 

“Film  music  as  it  is  today  is  not 
ox-ganically  tied  with  the  collective  film 
arts,”  explains  Dr.  Marianoff. 

“An  arranger,  led  by  the  mood  of 
single  scenes  and  the  general  theme  of 
a  picture,  usually  takes  ‘freely’  from 
the  library  of  world  music  that,  which 
in  his  imagination  is  associated  with  the 
plot  or  scenery  of  the  picture.  Ignoring 
the  logical  unity  with  which  the  orig¬ 
inal  composer  has  built  his  creation,  the 
arranger  takes  a  part  of  such  a  com¬ 
position,  blends  it  with  parts  of  works 
of  other  composers  and  makes  the  musi¬ 
cal  background  for  the  film.  This  pro¬ 
fessionally  well-prepared  and  pleasant 
accompanying  music  does  not  disturb 
the  spectator’s  ear  and  helps  him  digest 
the  pictorial  food.  Lai'ge  studios,  when 
making  an  expensive  picture,  often  put 
into  the  hands  of  a  notable  composer 
the  writing  of  his  own  music.  In  most 
cases  this  is  only  a  finer  ‘illustration’ 
of  the  plot.  It  happens  rarely,  as  in  the 
case  of  George  Gershwin  and  a  few 
other  composers,  that  a  composition  is  of 
cinematic  nature;  but  thx-ough  its  own 
dominating  value,  this  music  comes  to 
the  foi'eground  as  an  independent  fac¬ 
tor.  Instead,  music  should  be  an  or¬ 
ganic  part  of  the  motion  picture  in 
‘natural’  unison  with  acting,  sound, 
color,  photography,  etc. 

“Just  as  thoughts  are  voiced  through 
the  spoken  word,  so  the  silent  forms  of 


Top  of  page,  Raphael’s  famous  painting, 
"Sixtinic  Madonna." 


Opposite  page,  this  drawing  shows  the  graphic  de¬ 
lineation  of  geometric  figures  symbolizing  Raphael's 
philosophy,  and  is  the  first  step  toward  the  musical 
transposition  of  the  master's  eternal  creation. 

Above,  Tchurlanis'  painting — "Sonata  of  Pyramids." 
Here  the  noted  artist  painted  music  on  canvas. 

nature,  architectui'e,  painting  and  all 
the  visible  lines  of  the  universe  that  lie 
before  our  eyes — can  be  heard. 

“  .  .  .  the  marble  blocks  of  a  Greek 
Temple,  its  ornaments,  dancing  priest¬ 
esses,  Egyptian  pyramids,  landscapes, 
the  colonnades  of  Rameseum — all  this 
can  be  heard.  Music,  dormant  in  the 
architecture  of  Islam,  India  and  China 
.  .  .  in  the  Gothic  domes  and  windows 
and  facades  —  can  be  awakened  to 
sound.  .  .  . 

“The  noted  Lithuanian  artist,  Tchur¬ 
lanis,  believed  that  the  painted  music  on 
canvas.  .  .  .  How  good  it  would  be  to 

(Continue  don  Page  384) 


American  Cinematographer  •  October,  1943 


361 


Cameramen  9n  Uniform 

By  LIEUT.  ARTHUR  E.  ARLING,  U.S.N.R. 

Member  American  Society  of  Cinematographers 


THIS  is  not  to  be  an  eye-witness 
account  of  the  Battle  of  the  Coral 
Sea  or  the  Battle  of  Midway,  as 
those  battles  have  been  covered  by  more 
able  writers  than  myself  and  at  a  time 
when  they  were  headline  news.  Rather, 
I  shall  endeavor  to  pass  along  for  what 
interest  and  value  they  may  be  my  ex¬ 
periences  with  the  photographic  equip¬ 
ment  used  in  covering  these  battles. 

While  engaged  in  making  a  factual 
photographic  report  for  the  Navy  De¬ 
partment  on  the  damage  inflicted  on  our 
Hawaiian  military  and  naval  establish¬ 
ments  by  the  Japanese  attack  of  De¬ 
cember  7,  1941,  I  received  orders  from 
my  commanding  officer,  Comdr.  John 
Ford,  to  board  a  heavy  cruiser  which 
was  bound  for  the  Coral  Sea  area  in 
the  South  Pacific,  where  the  Japs  were 
still  making  unchecked  progress  in  their 
invasion  of  the  Solomons  and  other 
South  Sea  Islands. 

I  reported  aboard  with  one  photo¬ 
graphic  specialist,  Stephen  M.  Newmark, 
Splc(P),  USNR,  to  assist  me.  Our  cam¬ 
era  gear  consisted  of  one  Mitchell  cam¬ 
era,  one  Eyemo  and  two  16mm.  maga¬ 
zine-loading  Cine-Kodaks,  with  acces¬ 
sories  and  film. 


As  soon  as  we  were  quartered,  I  be¬ 
gan  a  tour  of  the  ship  seeking  suitable 
camera  positions.  It  was  at  once  ap¬ 
parent  that  a  modern  battle  cruiser, 
bristling  as  it  is  with  anti-aircraft  bat¬ 
teries,  provides  little  space  for  possible 
camera  setups.  After  trying  several 
crowded  places  I  finally  decided  to  place 
the  Mitchell  on  a  machine  gun  platform 
high  on  the  mainmast  above  the  flying 
bridge  and  just  below  the  sky  lookout. 
Here  in  a  space  where  four  50  cal. 
machine  guns  had  been  replaced  by  two 
of  the  new  20mms.,  I  found  just  room 
to  set  my  tripod  and  command  an  angle 
of  view  of  about  220°. 

To  be  ever  ready  for  that  call  to 
general  quarters  that  came  when  we 
were  in  enemy  waters  several  times  a 
day,  we  kept  the  Mitchell  threaded  at 
all  times,  merely  removing  it  intact 
from  the  tripod,  which  was  left  stand¬ 
ing,  and  stowing  it  as  a  unit  in  a 
ready  ammunition  box  which  being  of 
double  compartment  construction,  pro¬ 
vided  protection  from  the  tropical  heat 
as  well  as  the  tropical  showers.  To 
cover  action  as  it  might  occur  at  other 
parts  of  the  ship,  I  relied  on  the  Eyemo 
and  the  two  Cine-Kodaks.  One  Cine  and 


the  Eyemo  I  kept  in  the  chart  room  on 
the  bridge,  and  the  other  Cine  I  kept 
in  my  quarters,  the  object,  always  to 
have  a  camera  at  hand. 

The  Navigation  Officer  was  kind 
enough  to  give  us  space  to  stow  our 
film  in  the  chart  room  which  was  heav¬ 
ily  insulated  and  remained  quite  cool 
even  when  other  parts  of  the  ship  were 
sweltering  hot.  I  preferred  the  even 
temperature  of  this  room  to  the  ex¬ 
treme  cold  of  the  only  available  re¬ 
frigerators.  We  dehydrated  both  our 
35mm.  plus  X  and  our  16mm.  Koda- 
chrome,  and  experienced  no  trouble,  al¬ 
though  our  film  was  not  developed  until 
several  weeks  later.  We  found  that  an 
empty  powder  bag  container  from  the 
8  inch  guns  made  an  ideal  dehydration 
chamber.  It  was  just  the  right  size 
to  take  the  400  ft.  roll  and  could  be 
sealed  airtight.  Incidentally,  the  ship 
used  these  containers  to  stow  emergency 
rations  aboard  the  life  rafts. 

My  selection  of  lenses  proved  ade¬ 
quate,  the  wide  angle  25mm.  and  35mm. 
being  invaluable  when  shots  involving 
men  in  action  aboard  our  own  ship  were 
desired.  The  long  focal  18  inch  lens 
when  reaching  for  action  far  away.  The 
Akeley  head  proved  its  worth  particu¬ 
larly  when  under  fire.  When  the  5  inch 
ack-ack  batteries  let  go,  supplemented 
by  the  1.1  pompoms  and  the  20  mms., 
you  think  all  hell  has  broken  loose.  The 
camera  does  a  dance  (incidentally  don’t 
tie  your  camera  down  tight  or  the  con¬ 
cussions  will  splinter  the  tripod),  the 
noise  penetrating  the  cotton  stuffed  in 
your  ears  rises  to  a  deafening  cres¬ 
cendo,  and  the  concussions  seem  to  hit 
you  in  the  chin  with  such  rapidity  that 
you  feel  as  though  you  were  a  punch¬ 
ing  bag  being  pummeled  by  an  expert. 
At  such  times  the  good  old  Akeley  gyro 
head  pays  off  as  a  stabilizer. 

The  16mm.  Cine-Kodaks  proved  best 
for  following  dive  bombing  because  the 
planes  coming  as  they  do  from  right 
over  head  and  usually  directly  out  of 
the  sun  are  out  of  reach  with  a  camera 
on  a  tripod.  Hand-held  and  using  lenses 
up  to  a  4  inch,  usable  film  wras  secured. 
Shooting  Kodachrome  in  the  16’s  and 
later  blowing  the  shots  up  to  35mm.  gave 
image  size  equal  to  a  10  inch  lens. 

Much  good  can  be  said  for  the  use 
of  the  16mm.  equipment  for  combat 
photography.  Namely,  its  compact  size 
and  light  weight.  The  2%  to  1  ratio 
between  16mm.  and  35mm.  film  means 
less  weight  and  bulk  so  that  a  greater 
supply  can  be  carried.  This  same  21/6 
to  1  ratio  also  applies  to  the  focal 
length  of  lenses  resulting  not  only  in 
the  reduced  size  and  weight  but  making 
possible  shots  with  hand  held  cameras 
that  would  be  impossible  with  35mm. 
cameras  direct. 

In  spite  of  the  customary  news  story 
in  which  the  news  correspondent  describes 
battle  action  with  planes  crashing  and 
ships  sinking  right  under  their  very 
noses,  it  has  been  my  experience  that 
a  sea  battle  may  be  scattered  over  sev¬ 
eral  hundred  square  miles  of  ocean  with 

(Continued  on  Page  385) 


362 


October,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


JhsL  Tlmv  yfUickclL 

{BackqAawuL  (pAojjichA. 

By  E.  J.  Tl  FFAN Y* 


THE  Mitchell  Camera  Corporation 
has  just  completed  its  first  com¬ 
plete  portable  background  project¬ 
or  and  has  delivered  it  to  the  U.  S.  Naval 
Science  Laboratory,  Anacostia,  D.  C.; 
another  is  under  construction  for  the 
Russian  Government.  One  of  the  out¬ 
standing  features  of  the  Mitchell  back¬ 
ground  projector  is  the  silent  operation 
which  eliminates  the  use  of  a  booth  or 
a  blimp.  Another  one  of  the  many  ad¬ 
vantages  of  the  Mitchell  background 
projector  is  the  compensating  link  move¬ 
ment.  When  the  projector  is  operated 
at  a  normal  distance  from  the  back¬ 
ground  screen,  no  noise  is  picked  up  by 
the  sound  system. 

The  projector  head  consists  of  a  film 
moving  mechanism,  upper  and  lower  one 
thousand  foot  magazines,  and  interlock¬ 
ing  motor  drive  system,  all  mounted  on 
the  base  plate  of  the  stand.  The  pro¬ 
jector  head  can  be  rotated  180°  from 
the  vertical  position  while  in  operation 

*  Mitchell  Camera  Corporation  Engineer. 


thousand  foot  roll  of  film. 

In  front  of  the  film  mechanism  a 
by  releasing  the  locking  lever.  The  pro¬ 
jector  head  is  equipped  with  Bausch  and 
Lomb  new  series  f/2  super  cinephore 
lenses.  The  lens  can  be  focused  by  re¬ 
mote  control  by  the  cameraman;  this  is 
accomplished  by  means  of  a  Selsyn  mo¬ 
tor.  It  can  be  manually  focused  by  the 
projector  operator.  The  shutters  of  the 
projector  and  camera  are  synchronized 
by  releasing  the  lock  lever  at  the  base 
of  the  projector  and  rotating  the  ERPI 
220-volt  interlocking  motor.  The  thread¬ 
ing  of  the  projector  head  is  comparable 
to  the  threading  of  any  Mitchell  sound 
camera.  The  movement  can  be  released 
by  two  levers,  removed  and  replaced  by 
an  auxiliary  aperture  plate  for  lining 
up  the  arc  and  size  of  the  picture  to  be 
produced  on  the  screen. 

The  magazines  are  equipped  with  a 
reverse  clutch  which  allows  the  pro¬ 
jector  to  be  operated  both  backwards  and 
forwards.  The  clutch  can  be  adjusted 
to  the  proper  tension  to  take  up  a 


Above,  four  views  of  the  new  Mitchell 
background  projector. 


condenser-water-cooled  cell  is  construct¬ 
ed  to  eliminate  excessive  heat  on  the 
film.  There  is  a  four-way  matte  which 
(Continued  on  Page  370) 


American  Cinematographer  •  October,  1943 


363 


Marines  Learn  Photography 
in  Hollywood 

UNDER  the  sponsorship  of  the  Research  Council  of 
the  Academy  of  Motion  Picture  Arts  and  Sciences, 
Hollywood’s  ace  cameramen  have  trained  combat 
cameramen  for  the  Signal  Corps  and  the  Marine  Corps. 
Specially  selected  men  of  the  service  are  sent  to  Holly¬ 
wood  and  receive  a  thorough  course  of  instruction  and 
then  go  back  to  the  battle  fronts  on  their  assignments. 

Recently  a  class  of  Marine  cameramen  were  graduated 
from  this  school,  and  here  are  some  photographs  of  their 
school  activities:  At  top  left  Technical  Sergeant  Alfred 
W.  Rohde,  Jr.,  is  being  congratulated  by  John  Arnold, 
A.S.C.,  head  of  the  MGM  Camera  Department.  Left  cen¬ 
ter  a  studio  technician  shows  class  how  lenses  should  be 
cleaned.  Bottom  left,  John  Arnold  instructs  a  class  in  use 
of  35mm.  professional  camera.  Top  right,  John  Arnold 
and  Alvin  Wyckoff,  A.S.C.,  give  class  instructions  for  the 
day’s  shooting.  Bottom  right,  Mr.  Wyckoff  gives  instruc¬ 
tion  with  the  aid  of  a  slide  projector. 

Cameramen  of  our  armed  services  who  have  been  trained 
in  the  Hollywood  studios  by  Hollywood  cameramen,  under 
the  sponsorship  of  the  Academy,  are  now  seeing  action  at 
every  fighting  front.  And  reports  show  that  they  are 
doing  a  magnificent  job. 


364  October,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


HANDS  ARE  NICE 
TO  HOLD-THAT  S  ALL 

By  JAMES  N.  DOOLITTLE 


THROUGH  a  couple  of  decades  of 
association  with  what  we  faceti¬ 
ously  refer  to  as  “the  Industry,”  I 
have  probably  photographed  most  of  the 
great  names.  If  you  want  a  brief  bio¬ 
graphical  note,  I  was  by  diligent  appli¬ 
cation,  inducted  about  the  time  Gail 
Henry  was  a  popular  commedienne  and 
Larchmont  Boulevard  furnished  the  locale 
for  systematic  wrecking  of  automobiles. 
They  hadn’t  yet  torn  down  the  “Intoler¬ 
ance”  sets  at  Sunset  and  Santa  Monica. 
C.  B.  DeMille  was  still  wearing  his  Lasky 
Guard  uniform  and  was  signing  edicts  on 
the  Otto  K.  Olson  lot  as  “by  order  of  the 
Director  General.” 

So,  you  see,  I  go  ’way  back.  But  who 
cares! 

Those  were  the  good  old  days  when  we 
worked  only  fifteen  or  twenty  hours,  and 
were  usually  laid  off  around  Christmas, 
and  the  Collector  of  Internal  Revenue 
stamped  our  returns  “No  Sale.” 

The  “great  names”  have  either  grim¬ 
aced,  grinned  or  glowered  at  my  lens. 
Each  has  reflected  the  weight  of  some 
thousands — even  millions — of  dollars.  I 
have  known  many  of  them  in  pre,  pro 
and  post  glamour  days,  and  their  secrets 
are  as  secure  in  the  archives  of  my 
memory  as  in  the  columns  of  Winchell  or 
Fidler. 

Each  individual  has  had  some  very 
good  reason  for  taking  up  my  time — 
most  have  had  several  good  reasons, 
chiefly  facial  and  ambulatory! 


We  mustn’t  work  this  into  a  clinical 
dissertation,  but  for  the  moment  let’s 
dissect  the  feminine  assembly.  Easily  and 
quickly  done — face,  legs  and  Hays  office. 

All  right,  the  girl  has  a  face.  This  is 
an  area  devoted  to  the  application  of 
nearly  everything  advertised  in  the  way 
of  unguents,  salves,  balms  or  facial 
cocktails.  Up  on  top  there’s  a  growth 
which  supports  an  industry,  and  often  a 
loose  interpretation  of  the  noun,  “hat.” 

Just  south  of  the  chin  is  the  neck — 
noun,  not  verb. 

Continuing  southward  we  encounter  the 
International  Hays  Line.  This  is  dis¬ 
tributed  in  an  easterly  and  westerly  di¬ 
rection  in  two  parts.  Manufacturers  of 
sweaters  have,  we  suspect,  a  mercenary 
interest  in  the  circumstance. 

Continuing  in  the  geographical  analysis 
— “Approaching  the  tropics  is  the  lower 
torso, 

The  gals  wear  girdles 

So  it  won’t  be  more  so!”  Anon. 

From  it  sprouts  a  couple  of  appen¬ 
dages  which  are  used  to  encase  Rayon, 
Nylon  or  Duco,  depending  upon  priorities, 
seniorities  or  just  “orities.”  We  call 
them  legs  for  want  of  a  more  poetic 
nomenclature. 

Then,  way  down  beyond  the  tropic  of 
CapriCORN  comes  feet.  Feet  are  terri¬ 
bly  necessary.  They  are  used  to  put 
shoes  on.  They  are  also  used  to  take 
shoes  off’n.  Ladies  shoes  defy  certain 
fundamental  laws,  dealing  with  the  State¬ 


Upper  left,  an  artistic  photograph  of  hands.  Upper 
right,  Loretta  Young's  hands  form  a  graceful  part 
of  the  picture.  And  next,  a  pair  of  hands  artistically 
used  as  an  illustration  for  a  nationally  advertised 
lotion.  All  photos  by  the  author. 

ment  that  no  two  masses  can  occupy 
the  same  space  at  the  same  time. 

I  forgot  to  mention  that  outward  from 
just  below  the  chin  extend  two  tentacles 
terminating  in  certain  digital  appurten¬ 
ances  known  as  hands.  As  a  photog¬ 
rapher,  I  wish  I  could  forget  them.  Hands 
are  nice  to  have  and  to  hold — but  not  to 
photograph! 

Mr.  Editor,  you  personally  have  stood 
behind  my  camera,  have  seen  light  poured 
upon  a  lovely  subject.  But  have  you  suf¬ 
fered  with  me  while,  often  in  vain,  I’ve 

(Continued  on  Page  379) 


American  Cinematographer  •  October,  1943 


365 


7W  h'menAional  Jilin  A 
Jht  £c0iet  'Union 


By  MICHAEL 


AMERICA  is  the  birthplace  of  the 
greatest  art  of  all  times — cine- 
*  matography. 

In  its  “infancy”  it  possessed  the  sci¬ 
ence  of  vision,  but  was  deaf;  it  had  a 
plastic  tongue,  but  had  no  sound.  In 
due  time  the  child  grew  up  and  started 
to  speak,  being  still  anaemic  and  pale; 
but  when  it  reached  the  next  phase  of 
development,  the  child  acquired  color  in 
which  the  best  things  on  earth  are  ap¬ 
pearing  now. 

This  magnificent  creation  became  in¬ 
strumental  in  greater  knowledge  of  sci¬ 
ence  and  upbringing.  Now  this  art  can 
afford  to  be  wise  and  silly,  gay  and 
tragic,  and  it  has  absorbed  all  that  is 
good  and  bad  in  all  arts  inspired  by 
mankind.  One  factor,  however,  is  not 
overcome.  That  is — space.  It  still  has 
its  forms  in  two  dimensions  and  wants 
to  be  liberated  from  these  chains. 

This  problem  of  space  has  long  per¬ 
turbed  the  peace  of  inventors.  But  that 
is  now  solved.  Soviet  inventors  have  de¬ 
veloped  third-dimensional  films.  Today 
without  aid  of  optical  help,  stereoptic 
movies  without  the  aid  of  eye  glasses  is 
practically  developed  for  the  mass  audi¬ 
ence  in  the  Soviet  Union. 

While  in  the  rest  of  the  world  re¬ 
search  in  the  sphere  of  stereoscopic 
movies  was  going  on  in  connection  with 
the  aid  of  eye  glasses,  the  Soviet  inven¬ 
tors  were  holding  out  that  the  most  pro¬ 
gressive  road  would  be  in  liberating  the 
spectator  from  use  of  any  kind  of  op¬ 
tical  aid.  Therefore  the  leaders  of  the 
Soviet  movies  were  supporting  the  in¬ 
ventor,  Semen  Ivanov,  who  discovered 
a  screen  with  a  curve  of  special  geo¬ 
metrical  form.  The  special  feature  of 
this  screen  is  that  its  elements,  in  the 
size,  are  located  beyond  the  “solving 
abilities”  of  the  human  eye.  On  this 
screen  we  show  stereoscopic  film,  which 
are  photographed  by  a  special  method 
for  unlimited  numbers  of  spectators. 

Semen  Ivanov  solved  the  problem  in 
its  principals  as  early  as  1930,  but  the 
first  stereo  screen  which  was  seven  me¬ 
ters  square  was  built  in  1938  when 
Ivanov  demonstrated  it  in  front  of  a 
large  audience,  showing  separate  short 
experimental  films. 

From  this  time  on,  the  stereo-movie  in 
the  Soviet  Union  went  beyond  the  limits 
of  laboratory  experiments.  In  1940,  in 
Moscow,  a  special  movie  house  was 
opened  where  on  a  large  screen  (ap¬ 
proximately  20  meters  square)  was 
shown  the  first  full  length  stereo-film, 


KALATOZOV 


photographed  by  the  director,  Alexan¬ 
der  Andrievsky.  This  film  was  success¬ 
fully  shown  for  six  consecutive  months. 
Hundreds  of  thousands  of  spectators 
witnessed  the  unusual  sight:  birds  fly¬ 
ing  in  space  all  around  the  auditorium; 
the  juggler’s  tricks  with  playballs, 
bunches  of  flowers  flying  over  heads  of 
the  orchestra  and  over  the  aisles  and 
disappearing  in  the  depths  of  the 
screen.  The  flatness  of  the  screen  had 
gone  out  of  existence. 

The  “first  night”  audience  consisted 
of  the  consulate  staff  and  the  diplomatic 
corps.  The  unanimous  feeling  at  this 
presentation  was  the  recognition  of  the 
fact  that  this  was  the  beginning  of  a 
new  epoch  in  the  art  of  cinematography. 
The  Soviet  Government  in  recognition 
of  this  achievement  awarded  to  Semen 
Ivanov  an  honorable  title  of  Laureate 
of  Stalin’s  Award. 

The  brutal  attack  of  Germany  on  the 
Soviet  Union,  in  June  1941,  prevented 
the  Soviet  Industry  from  continuing  the 
work  of  building  special  movie  houses 
in  the  large  cities  throughout  the  Soviet 
Union  and  handicapped  the  director, 
Andrievsky,  in  shooting  new  stereofilms. 
In  spite  of  these  factors,  however,  the 
work  on  technical  developments  and  im¬ 
provements  is  continuing  during  the 
war. 

In  October  1942,  Mr.  Semen  Ivanov 
and  Alexander  Andrievsky  completed 
the  work  on  a  new  “illuminated  stereo¬ 
screen”  which  intensified  the  brightness 
of  images  as  much  as  nine  times.  Com¬ 
paring  it  with  the  previous  type  screen, 
it  eliminated  all  the  shortcomings  of  the 
screen.  The  new  invention  not  only 
improved  the  projected  images,  but  gave 
also  the  possibility  of  mass  production 
of  this  new  kind  of  screen  at  a  compara¬ 
tively  low  cost  and  which  requires  rea¬ 
sonable  technological  process. 

Like  the  original  invention  of  Ivanov, 
the  new  “light  powerful”  screen  of 
Ivanov- Andrievsky  was  highly  praised 
and  was  evaluated  by  many  scientific 
institutions.  The  outstanding  academi¬ 
cian,  Kopitza,  praised  it  highly. 

An  important  work  was  going  on  in 
the  field  of  “shooting”  for  stereo-screen. 
People  familiar  with  the  difficulties  of 
stereo-screen  know  that  in  the  pub¬ 
lished  works  on  this  subject,  they  meet 
the  complaint  that  stresses  the  fact  that 
space  cannot  be  controlled.  As  an  in¬ 
stance:  the  objects  which  are  intended 
to  project  behind  the  screen  are  sud¬ 
denly  visible  in  the  auditorium  and  vice 


NOTE:  Mr.  Michael  Kalatozov,  author  of  the 
article  on  this  page  dealing  with  the  development 
of  third-dimensional  films  in  the  Soviet  Union,  is 
in  America  as  the  representative  of  his  govern¬ 
ment  to  establish  greater  cooperative  relations  be¬ 
tween  the  film  industries  of  his  country  and  all 
of  the  Americas. 

Mr.  Kalotozov  is  one  of  the  Soviet’s  noted  film 
directors.  He  has  directed  many  films  of  artistic 
and  documentary  merit.  Best  remembered  of  his 
films  in  America  is  the  one  about  the  famous 
Soviet  flyer,  V.  Chkalov,  who  first  flew  over  the 
North  Pole  to  the  United  States.  That  film  was 
titled.  “Wings  of  Victory.” 

Due  to  his  varied  abilities  and  engineering 
knowledge,  Mr.  Kalatozov  has  participated  in 
practically  every  phase  of  motion  pictures,  from 
cinematography  to  directing  and  producing.  For 
the  last  few  years  he  has  been  the  supervising 
director  of  the  Leningrad  Studios.  During  the 
siege  of  Leningrad  he,  along  with  all  the  citizens, 
took  part  in  the  defense  of  the  city.  His  greatest 
ambition  is  to  bring  about  one  hundred  per  cent 
cooperation  between  our  film  industry  and  that 
of  his  country. — The  Editor. 


versa.  The  object  which  the  producer 
would  like  to  see  appearing  in  the  audi¬ 
torium  projects  on  the  screen  against 
his  will.  Separate  reels  distort  space 
and  cause  a  fatigue  for  the  eyes.  But 
these  enigmas  are  common  complaints. 

Without  any  exaggeration  I  state 
that  the  Soviet  Union  has  now  an  entire 
science  about  stereoscopic  filming.  In 
order  to  have  an  idea  how  fully  this  sci¬ 
ence  has  been  developed,  one  can  judge 
from  the  fact  that  Director  Andrievsky 
had  to  shoot  the  first  full  length  film 
actually  without  seeing  it!  He  was 
guided  solely  by  his  calculations  which 
he  had  no  opportunity  to  verify  during 
the  process  of  work  by  projecting  it  on 
the  stereo-screen,  as  this  work  was  com¬ 
pleted  a  few  days  before  the  “first 
night.”  Nevertheless,  it  proved  to  have 
no  mistakes  in  it. 

Using  the  clever  constructipn  of  a 
new  invention  of  Mr.  Schwartzman,  Di¬ 
rector  Andrievsky  developed  a  new 
method  of  drawing  multiple  films.  This 
by  itself  allows  the  use  of  it  as  a  weapon 
for  service  of  multiple  cinematography 
and  gives  the  new  effects  in  this  sphere. 
Without  a  doubt  this  successful  begin¬ 
ning  of  a  new  development  will  progress 
in  the  future  and  will  result  in  new 
achievements. 

Ivanov  and  Andrievsky  are  waiting 
only  for  the  appropriate  moment  when, 
with  the  end  of  the  war,  conditions  will 
permit  them  to  construct  the  stereo¬ 
scopic  movie  houses,  and  to  produce 
pictures  for  these  theatres.  Their  ex¬ 
periences  will  be  helpful  to  the  inven¬ 
tors  in  this  field. 

Here  in  the  United  States  there  has 
been  achieved  brilliant  results  in  space- 
sound.  We  in  the  Soviet  Union  follow 
up  the  success  of  American  technical 
workers  and  musicians  who  also  work 
in  this  field  on  similar  problems. 

It  is  highly  desirable  that  the  combi¬ 
nation  of  achievements  of  the  Soviet 
pioneers  of  stereoptic  movies  and  the 
achievements  of  American  specialists  in 
space-sound  will  mutually  contribute 
and  mature  this  field  and  combine  their 
factors  into  one  unit  which  will  forecast 
a  new  era  in  cinematography.  It  is 
probable  that  these  new  steps  in  cine¬ 
matography  will  lay  the  foundations  for 
a  lasting  friendship  between  the  two 
workers  in  cinematography — the  Soviets 
and  the  Americans. 


366 


October,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


Keep  On  Filming . . .  Economically 

By  JAMES  R.  OSWALD 


THERE  is  a  vast  army  of  home 
movie  enthusiasts,  particularly 
users  of  16mm.  equipment,  who 
still  contend  that  theirs  is  an  expensive 
hobby,  indeed.  An  even  greater  number 
of  persons,  “would  be”  movie  makers, 
admittedly  find  the  utmost  enjoyment 
in  their  friends’  home  movies,  but  re¬ 
frain  from  the  pleasures  of  making 
their  own,  because  they  believe  so  doing 
far  more  costly  a  proposition  than  they 
can  afford.  “It  isn’t  so  much  the  origi¬ 
nal  cost,”  they  argue,  “it’s  the  upkeep.” 

Economy  of  operation  always  an  im¬ 
portant  item  to  be  considered  in  the 
use  of  any  mechanical  apparatus,  but 
today  there  is  still  a  greater  problem 
that  confronts  many  home  movie  fans, 
who  are  determined  to  keep  their  cine 
cameras  grinding  for  the  duration.  Yes, 
even  money  won’t  always  produce,  for 
the  average  individual,  a  supply  of  those 
standard  reversal  films  which  have 
proved  most  popular  throughout  the 
years,  and  are  now  so  rapidly  disap¬ 
pearing  from  the  civilian  market.  How, 
then,  can  the  ordinary  cine  fan  like  you 
or  I,  who  have  no  priority  ratings  what¬ 
soever,  hope  to  keep  supplied  with 
enough  film  to  keep  our  cinematographic 
interests  aroused,  on  the  home  front, 
and  at  the  same  time  do  so  more  eco¬ 
nomically  than  ever  before  believed  pos¬ 
sible?  Providing  the  camera  isn’t  of  the 
magazine  loading  type,  I  think  I  have 
the  solution  to  this  problem,  at  least 
for  the  present  time,  for  those  who  can 
content  themselves  with  black-and-white 
filming  only.  Are  you  with  me? 


Fortunately  there  is  one  type  film  on 
the  market  with  which  few  home  movie 
makers  are  acquainted.  This  film  doesn’t 
come  in  the  customary  brightly  colored 
carton;  it  isn’t  processed  free  of  charge. 
Consequently,  because  of  this  lack  of 
familiarity,  there  is  little  demand  for  it 
by  the  amateur,  and  a  plentiful  supply 
still  remains  available  on  most  dealers' 
shelves.  This  film  is  nothing  new.  Mo¬ 
tion  picture  laboratories,  for  whom  it 
was  really  designed,  have  used  it  for 
years.  It  is  well  known  in  professional 
circles.  The  film  to  which  I  refer  is  put 
out  by  all  manufacturers  of  the  familiar 
reversal  types,  such  as  Eastman,  Agfa, 
and  Du  Pont,  and  is  called  POSITIVE 
film,  the  name  being  derived  from  the 
fact  that  its  chief  laboratory  use  is  in 
making  POSITIVE  prints  for  projection 
from  NEGATIVE  movie  films  (compara¬ 
ble  to  ordinary  snapshot  negatives). 

Because  of  its  low  cost  of  less  than 
one  cent  per  foot  in  either  16  or  double 
8  millimeter  size,  positive  film  has  been 
the  cause  of  much  experimentation  on 
my  part.  I  have  been  intrigued  for 
years  with  the  possibilities  of  this  type 
film,  during  which  time  I  have  gone 
deeply  into  its  characteristics  .  .  .  stud¬ 
ied  its  advantages  and  disadvantages 
.  .  .  its  practicability  for  home  use.  In 
my  opinion,  positive  film  has  remained 
out  of  the  limelight  entirely  too  long. 
Through  the  medium  of  this  article, 
therefore,  I  hope  to  pass  on  some  of  my 
findings  to  you  interested  readers  who 
would  like  to  follow  through  with  a 
little  experimenting  of  your  own. 


Four  photos  above  are  enlargements  from  frames 
shot  on  positive  stock  by  Mr.  Oswald. 


Since  positive  film  is  intended  for  lab¬ 
oratory  use,  it  isn’t  spooled,  and  hence 
the  user  must  resort  to  spooling  his  own. 
But  just  as  a  person  puts  up  with  the 
inconvenience  of  a  street  car  or  bus  to 
save  cab  fare,  so  also  must  the  movie 
maker  be  willing  to  sacrifice  the  con¬ 
venience  of  the  regular  daylight  loading 
film  to  cut  his  shooting  expenses  in  half. 
It  really  isn’t  much  trouble  at  all, 
though,  to  take  the  projector  in  a  dark¬ 
ened  room,  slip  a  discarded  reel  on  the 
rewind  shaft,  and  spool  the  entire  bulk, 
positive  film,  EMULSION  SIDE  IN.  A 
red  safe-light,  if  available,  may  be  used 
-to  facilitate  handling,  without  affecting 
the  film. 

The  camera,  too,  must  always  be 
loaded  in  the  darkroom  if  the  film  is 
wound  on  a  projection  reel.  If  wound 
on  a  SOLID  type  CAMERA  reel,  how¬ 
ever  loading  MAY  be  carried  on  in  day¬ 
light,  if  preferred,  although  the  first  few 
feet  of  film  which  ordinarily  serve  as  a 
protective  leader,  will  naturally  become 
fogged. 

(Continued  on  Page  372) 


American  Cinematographer  •  October,  1943  367 


Artistic  Pictures 


By  F.  W 


A  MAN  with  a  camera,  cine  or 
otherwise,  covers  very  wide  inter¬ 
ests.  He  observes  ocean  surges, 
forest  paths,  blossoming  Spring,  brilliant 
Autumn,  sheep  pastures  and  farm  life 
generally.  Out  of  doors  he  can  only  select 
or  reject.  His  field  is  far  more  limited 
than  that  of  the  artist  who,  painting  the 
self  same  subject  may  omit  something  of 
which  he  disapproves  or  include  some 
effect  seen  elsewhere,  but  not  in  the 
scene  before  him. 

Notwithstanding  this  drawback,  the 
proper  grouping  of  materials  in  photo¬ 
graphic  or  screen  reproduction  is  one  of 
the  many  factors  that  must  be  consid¬ 
ered  by  every  serious  cameraman.  For 
without  an  understanding  of  the  prin¬ 
ciples  of  composition  his  filming  must  fail 
from  the  artistic  standpoint. 

The  word  “composition”  was  origi¬ 
nally  used  in  reference  to  the  manner 
painters  “composed"  pictures  by  bring¬ 
ing  together  natural  objects — architec¬ 
ture,  figures,  etc. — to  produce  a  subject. 
The  result  was  a  good  “composition”  or 
otherwise. 

As  a  result  of  this  practice,  photog¬ 
raphers  are  often  advised  to  get  their 
ideas  of  “composition”  by  studying  work 
of  painters.  This  must  be  done  with  dis¬ 
cretion.  The  best  pictures  by  any  medium 
do  not  advertise  the  fact  that  they  have 
been  carefully  composed. 


PRATT 


Now,  if  we  study  carefully  and  com¬ 
pare  photographs  that  please  and  satisfy 
us,  we  begin  to  recognize  certain  common 
factors.  In  other  words  it  becomes  evi¬ 
dent  that  there  are  definite  means  of 
securing  such  things  as  centre  of  inter¬ 
est,  harmony,  balance,  mood,  and  so  on. 
These  are  the  common  laws  of  composi¬ 
tion,  and  professional  painters  study 
them  very  carefully,  and  the  result  is 
“every  prospect  pleases.” 

Now  take  centre  of  interest  for  in¬ 
stance.  First  of  all  we  must  understand 
the  aim  of  a  picture  or  photograph.  Take 
a  landscape  with  a  single  figure.  The 
landscape  may  be  beautiful,  interesting, 
well  arranged,  and  the  figure  well  placed 
is  definitely  subordinated  to  the  land¬ 
scape. 

Thus  the  picture  is  a  landscape  with 
an  incidental  figure.  Make  the  figure 
larger  and  dominate  the  landscape  and 
you  make  it  a  figure  subject  in  a  land¬ 
scape  setting.  It  is  neither  a  landscape 
with  a  figure  nor  a  figure  with  landscape. 
Result  is  mental  irritation  and  you  con¬ 
demn  the  composition.  Similarly  we 
mentally  resent  compositions  that  are 
lop-sided,  top  heavy,  over-crowded,  con¬ 
fused,  vague,  empty,  formal  and  so  on. 

What  are  the  laws  of  composition — 
they  are  simply  the  foundation  on  which 
you  build  up  your  picture  to  make  it 
pleasing  and  symetrical,  just  as  an  archi- 


5 


tect  builds  his  artistic  home  on  a  strong 
framework  and  solid  foundation. 

These  laws  of  composition  embrace 
different  forms  according  to  the  type  of 
picture  we  wish  to  construct  and  its  gen¬ 
eral  characteristics.  For  instance,  there 
is  the  circular,  triangular,  pyramid,  di¬ 
agonal,  horizontal,  vertical,  and  so  on. 

An  no  matter  whether  the  picture 
moves  or  is  a  still — one  or  other  of  these 
forms  is  essential  in  the  construction  of 
various  types  of  artistic  pictures.  To  my 
way  of  thinking,  artistic  grouping  in 
movie  work  can  be  most  effectively  ar¬ 
ranged  and  greatly  enhances  the  quality 
of  the  film.  The  professionals  are  adepts 
in  this  direction. 

Now  let  us  look  at  the  construction  of 
various  pictures. 

Scenic  pictures  are  probably  of  most 
importance  to  the  average  movie-goer. 
Fig.  1  shows  the  picture-space  divided 
into  nine  equal  rectangles;  the  dividing 
lines  have  four  points  of  intersection, 
and  it  is  generally  found  that  the  main 
object  or  mass  is  best  placed  about  one 
of  these  points  while  a  secondary  bal¬ 
ancing  mass  may  fall  on  one  of  the  op¬ 
posite  points.  The  horizontal  “thirds” 
suggest  approximate  positions  for  the 
horizon  line,  visible  or  imaginary.  The 
horizon  line  should  not  bisect  the  pic¬ 
ture. 

Many  a  landscape  subject  which  looks 
attractive  to  the  eye  is  a  failure  on  the 
screen.  It  lacks  main  intei'est.  Interest 
in  a  picture  depends  largely  on  the  lines 
of  the  subject  matter  and  if  interest  is 
to  be  held,  which  is  essential,  the  lines 
should  guide  the  eye  into  the  picture 
gradually  up  to  the  main  point  of  inter¬ 
est.  The  “lead  in”  is  usually  to  the  ex¬ 
treme  right  or  left  of  the  bottom  third 
spaces.  The  “lead  in”  may  be  cleverly 
disguised,  but  is  generally  a  track,  a 

(Continued  on  Page  372) 


368  October,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


If  you  think 
TWICE 

about  Negative  films 

You’ll  think 
EASTMAN 
both  times 

Because — 
EASTMAN 
is  the  best 
by  test, 
by  practice 
and 

by  performance — 


J.  E.  BRULATOUR,  Inc. 
DISTRIBUTORS 


SAVING 


FILM  IN  WARTIME 


The  above  two  pictures  of  film  newcomer  Early  Cantrell  serve  as  excellent  example  of  how  to  save  film  in  wartime, 
when  everyone  is  worried  over  negative  shortage.  The  two  photographs  are  from  ONE  negative.  Seigfried  Levi,  Hollywood 
still  photographer,  shot  the  full  length  portrait  of  Miss  Cantrell.  Then,  instead  of  using  another  negative  to  make  the  close-up, 
he  simply  cropped  it  out  of  the  other  negative  with  his  enlarger,  thus  producing  two  excellent  pictures  with  but  one  preci 
ous  negative. 


New  Mitchell  Projector 

(Continued  from  Page  363) 

is  controlled  by  a  lever  on  the  side  to 
cut  down  the  size  of  the  projected  arc 
light  to  the  desired  size  of  the  pro¬ 
jector  aperture.  A  fire  shutter  is  in¬ 
stalled  in  this  same  mechanism  which 
operates  when  the  projector  machine 
is  turned  off  and  on.  A  threading  light 
is  installed  between  the  water  cell  and 
matting  device  for  lining  up  the  film 
in  frame  in  the  aperture. 

The  Mitchell  projector  is  equipped 
with  a  Peerless  high  candescent  lamp 
house,  120-180  amperes.  The  lamp  house 
is  equipped  with  two  condensers  and 
is  controlled  by  a  switch  on  the  side 
of  the  base,  an  ammeter  to  control  and 
stabilize  the  desired  amperage;  an  auxil¬ 
iary  resistor  control  panel  is  supplied 
with  this  unit. 


The  projector  head  and  lamp  house  is 
mounted  on  a  base  plate  which  can  be 
rotated  360°  and  tilted  10°  up  or  dowrn 
and  is  operated  by  two  control  wheels. 
The  lens  height  when  in  the  low  position 
is  fifty-eight  inches.  It  can  be  raised 
to  seventy-two  inches  from  the  floor  by 
the  control  wheel.  On  the  base  plate  is 
mounted  a  control  panel  which  permits 
the  projector  to  be  operated  forwards 
and  backwards  independent  of  the  dis¬ 
tributor  and  also  to  interlock  with  dis¬ 
tributor.  The  speed  of  the  projector  can 
be  controlled  by  a  rheostat  while  out 
of  interlock. 

The  complete  projector  is  mounted  on 
a  sturdy  base  which  is  mounted  on  four 
casters  to  permit  the  unit  to  be  moved 
about  for  different  projection  distances. 
The  base  is  equipped  with  a  telescope 
handle  to  permit  the  unit  to  be  readily 
moved  about.  When  not  in  use  this 


handle  is  concealed  under  the  base.  When 
the  desired  projection  distance  is  ob¬ 
tained,  the  casters  can  be  jacked  up  and 
the  entire  unit  rests  on  sturdy  screw 
jacks. 

The  base  of  the  projector  is  approxi¬ 
mately  6Y2'x4y2'.  The  height  of  this  unit 
is  7%  feet  and  weighs  approximately 
two  thousand  pounds. 

This  Mitchell  background  projector  is 
constructed  of  the  same  high  grade 
workmanship  as  all  other  Mitchell  prod¬ 
ucts  embodying  the  latest  in  engineer¬ 
ing  development. 


Congressional  Library  Helps 

Rare  film  prints  from  the  archives  of 
the  Library  of  Congress  in  Washington 
have  been  made  available  to  20th  Cen¬ 
tury-Fox  Studios  for  use  in  the  motion 
picture,  “Woodrow  Wilson.” 


370  October,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


With  Removable  Head* 


SHIFTOVER  ALIGNMENT  GAUGE 

fa  This  Shift-over  device  is  the  finest,  lightest  and 
most  efficient  available  for  the  Eyemo  Spider  Turret 
prismatic  focusing  type  camera. 

fa  The  male  of  the  Shiftover  attaches  to  the  cam¬ 
era  base  permanently  and  permits  using  the  regular 
camera  holding  handle  if  desired.  The  male  dovetail 
mates  with  the  female  dovetail  base  and  permits  the 
camera  to  slide  from  focusing  to  photographing 
positions  for  parallax  adjustment.  The  camera  can 
be  locked  in  desired  position  by  a  positive  locking- 
device. 

fa  The  Shiftover  has  a  "stop-bracket"  which  pre¬ 
vents  the  camera  from  sliding  off  the  dovetail  base 
— and  is  provided  with  dowel  pins  which  position  it 
to  top-plates  of  tripods  having  3/g  or  f/4- 20  camera 
fastening  screw. 


Unsurpassed  in  Quality  9 
Versatility  and  Kiyidity 


The  IS  etc  Removable  Head  “Professional  Junior ”*  Tripod 

fa  The  new  removable  head  feature  adds  great  flexibility  to  the  versatile 
"Professional  Junior"*  Tripod.  It  is  now  possible  to  easily  remove  the  friction 
type  head  from  the  tripod  legs  base  by  simple  unscrewing  a  finger-grip  head 
fastening  nut.  The  tripod  head  can  then  be  mounted  on  a  "Hi-Hat"  low-base 
adaptor  for  low  setups. 

The  friction  type  head  gives  super-smooth  pan  and  tilt  action, — 360°  pan 
and  80°  tilt.  A  generous  sized  pin  and  trunnion  assures  long,  dependable 
service.  "Spread-leg"  design  affords  utmost  rigidity  and  quick,  positive  height 
adjustments.  A  "T"  level  is  built  into  this  superfine  tripod.  The  top-plate  can 
be  set  for  16mm  E.K.  Cine  Special,  with  or  without  motor;  35mm  DeVry  and 
B  &  H  Eyemo  (with  motor),  and  with  or  without  alignment  gauge.  The  tripod 
head  is  unconditionally  guaranteed  5  years.  Literature  sent  upon  request. 

*  Patent  No.  231891 0. 


"Professional  Junior"*  Tripods,  Developnig  Kits,  "Hi-Hats”  and  Shiftover 
Alignment  Gauges  made  by  Camera  Equipment  Co.  are  used  by  the  U.  S. 
Navy,  Army  Air  Bases,  Signal  Corps,  Office  of  Strategic  Services  and  other 
Government  Agencies — also  by  many  leading  Newsreel  companies  and  16mm 
and  35mm  motion  picture  producers. 


OUTDOOR  EXPOSURE  GUIDE  FOR  USE  WITH  POSITIVE  MOVIE  FILM 


Lighting  Conditions 


Subject 

Bright 

Hazy 

Cloudy 

Dull 

Distant  landscapes,  water. 

mountain,  and  snow 

scenes. 

...  f  .8 

16.3 

f5.6 

f3.5 

Open  landscapes,  groups. 

sporting  events,  etc. 

,  with 

no 

heavy  shadows  . 

f  5.6 

f3.5 

f2.7 

Picnics,  games,  back-yards 

scenes,  etc.,  in  light 

shade. . 

.  .  f5.6 

f3.5 

12.7 

fl.9 

Miscellaneous  scenes  in  deep  shade . 

12.1 

fl.9 

fl.9 

8  frames 
per  second 

Figures  given  are  for  normal  speed  filming,  16  frames  per  second,  unless  otherwise  stated. 

This  exposure  chart  is  for  the  period  from  2  hours  after  sunrise  until  2  hours  before  sunset,  using 
flat  lighting. 

For  side-lighting,  increase  lens  opening  1  stop. 

For  back-lighting,  increase  lens  opening  2  stops. 


Keep  on  Filming 

(Continued  from  Page  367) 

Although  positive  film  is  intended  to 
be  developed  “straight,”  and  not  to  be 
processed  by  the  usual  reversal  method, 
I  have  found  that  it  CAN  be  success¬ 
fully  reversed,  just  as  in  the  case  of  the 
regular  type  film  the  average  movie 
maker  has  been  accustomed  to  using. 
I  have  noticed  on  several  occasions  a 
third-dimensional  quality  in  positive 
film  which  is  not  duplicated  in  any  of 
my  other  black-and-white  films.  Certain 
scenes  take  on  depth  just  as  did  the 
old  stereoscope  view  cards,  which  were 
a  familiar  part  of  every  living  room,  in 
years  gone  by.  How  to  account  for  this 
strange  phenomenon  in  movie  shots,  I 
have  been  unable  to  find  out,  unless  it 
can  be  attributed  to  the  high  contrast 
and  fine  grain  of  the  positive  emulsion. 
(The  benefits  of  this  contrasty,  fine 
grained  emulsion  in  making  titles,  copy¬ 
ing  maps,  line  drawings,  etc.,  are  well 
known  to  motion  picture  laboratories 
everywhere.) 

In  comparison  to  the  regular  reversal 
type,  positive  film  has  its  limitations, 
of  course,  but  generally  speaking,  for 
outdoor  use  it  rates  favorably  with  the 
regular  orthochromatic  type  films.  Be¬ 
cause  its  speed  is  somewhat  slower,  how¬ 
ever,  the  use  of  positive  film  requires 
opening  the  lens  a  trifle  wider  than  nor¬ 
mally.  As  a  general  rule,  a  difference 
of  about  one  stop  will  be  sufficient,  over 
that  necessary  when  using  an  average, 
medium  speed  film.  The  following  ex¬ 
posure  chart  may  prove  helpful  in  serv¬ 
ing  as  a  guide,  although  the  figures  are 
only  intended  to  be  approximate: 

When  it  comes  time  for  processing, 
there  are  many  independent  laborato¬ 
ries  who  will  undertake  to  reverse  the 
positive  film,  usually  at  a  very  nominal 
fee.  The  charge  for  such  service  is 
often  less  than  the  original  film  cost 
of  one  cent  per  foot.  The  Superior  Bulk 
Film  Co.,  188  W.  Randolph  St.,  Chicago, 
Ill.,  and  the  Fromader  Genera  Co., 
Davenport,  Iowa,  are  but  two  concerns 
which  operate  laboratories  equipped  for 
reversal  processing.  Those  desiring  to 
slash  expenses  still  further,  and  who 
have  ample  time  and  patience  to  do  so, 
may  be  interested  in  carrying  out  this 
procedure  themselves.  Many  fine  home¬ 
processing  outfits  are  available,  several 
of  which  may  be  obtained  from  the 
above  mentioned  companies,  who  can 
also  supply  the  necessary  chemicals  and 
instructions.  When  a  reasonable  amount 
of  care  is  exercised,  the  work  really 
isn’t  very  difficult  at  all,  especially  to 
anyone  already  familiar  with  dark  room 
methods. 

Considering  that  100  feet  of  16  or 
double  8  millimeter  positive  film  can  be 
shot  at  a  total  cost  of  less  than  two 
dollars,  I  think  it  will  be  agreed  that 
home  movies  need  not  be  so  expensive, 
after  all.  In  no  other  type  film,  how¬ 
ever,  have  I  found  the  same  combination 
of  economy  coupled  with  quality,  bar 
none.  Everyone  knows  how  movies  far 


surpass  ordinary  snapshots,  so  far  as 
entertainment  value  is  concerned.  By 
using  positive  film,  cinematography  can 
compete  with  still  photography  from  an 
economy  standpoint. 

To  be  sure,  movie  making  CAN  be  an 
expensive  hobby;  it  NEED  NOT  be. 


Artistic  Pictures 

(Continued  from  Page  368) 

road,  river,  log  and  so  on.  So  “lead  in” 
at  the  side  and  do  not  center  your  main 
object,  but  place  it  about  one  of  the  in¬ 
tercepting  points  according  to  require¬ 
ments.  To  digress  very  often  we  are 
dragged  to  mountain  tops  for  famous 
views.  Mostly  very  disappointing.  The 
part  is  more  interesting  than  the  whole, 
concreteness,  nearness — a  picture  about 
a  particular  thing.  These  are  the  ele¬ 
ments  of  good  shots.  In  distant  views 
there  should  be  somebody  or  something 
in  the  foreground. 

If  you  look  at  a  possible  subject  for 
a  photograph  you  should  form  the  habit 
of  framing  it  with  your  eyes.  You  will 
soon  find  yourself  marking  out  thou¬ 
sands  of  artistic  scenes.  If  there  is  any 
action  about  you  may  as  well  have  an 
artistic  setting  for  it. 

Scenic  pictures  are  mostly  based  on 
elliptical  or  circular  construction.  Many 
of  the  world’s  greatest  pictures  are  on 
the  same  pleasing  lines.  The  elliptical 
arrangement  is  a  safeguard  against  the 
eye  wandering  out  of  the  picture  as  can 
easily  happen  with  other  more  rigid  con¬ 
struction.  This  is  the  reason  why  we 
frame  views  with  trees  and  branches — 
they  help  to  keep  the  eye  about  the  main 
interest.  Look  around  at  good  pictures, 
paintings  and  drawings,  etc.,  and  see 
how  often  these  points  occur.  The  draw¬ 
ings  reproduced  with  this  article  will 
give  readers  a  good  idea  of  what  to  do 
and  what  to  avoid  in  making  artistic 
pictures,  and  acknowledgment  is  made 
for  using  them  to  Mr.  W.  L.  F.  Wastell, 
Past  President,  R.P.S.  (England),  whose 
authoritative  contributions  and  drawings 
on  “Composition”  to  “Amateur  Photog¬ 
rapher”  are  widely  known. 

In  Fig.  4  we  have  the  vanishing  point 
of  the  street  in  the  center  of  the  pic¬ 
ture.  This  allows  divided  interest.  There 
must  be  only  one  main  subject  and  that 


New  Filmosound  Library 
Releases 

Riders  of  Death  Valley  (Universal). 
15  episodes,  30  reels,  $3  per  episode. 

Vigilantes  battle  claim-jumpers  in 
search  for  the  fabled  lost  Aztec  mine. 
After  it  is  found  there  is  a  thrilling  see¬ 
saw  battle  to  hold  it.  Every  type  of 
action  thrill  known  to  the  chapter-play 
is  lavished  on  this  super-serial.  The 
cast  alone  is  guarantee  of  its  extra¬ 
ordinary  quality:  Dick  Foran,  Leo  Ca- 
rillo,  Buck  Jones,  “Big  Boy”  Williams, 
Charles  Bickford,  Jeanne  Kelly.  Avail¬ 
able  for  approved  non-theatrical  audi¬ 
ences. 

Butch  Minds  the  Baby  (Universal).  8 
reels,  $17.50.  Virginia  Bruce,  Brod 
Crawford,  Dick  Foran. 

The  story  centers  around  Crawford. 
One  more  conviction  will  send  him  back 
to  Sing-Sing  for  life.  Crawford  decides 
to  give  up  his  “profession”  of  safe¬ 
cracking,  and  works  as  a  janitor.  The 
baby  and  he  become  great  pals;  then  his 
old  mob  moves  in  and  attempts  to  force 
him  to  pull  one  “last”  job.  How  he  gets 
away  with  it  provides  suspense,  laughs 
and  more  than  a  few  moments  of  genu¬ 
ine  pathos.  Virginia  Bruce  as  the  wid¬ 
owed  mother  of  the  baby,  and  Dick 
Foran  as  the  police  parole  officer  con¬ 
tribute  a  love  interest.  Available  for 
approved  non-theatrical  audiences  after 
September  20,  1943. 


should  be  in  the  vicinity  of  one  of  the 
converging  lines  of  Fig  1. 

Fig.  5  shows  the  corrected  view  of 
Fig.  4.  The  vanishing  point  is  well  to 
the  side  and  a  little  lower.  There  is  va¬ 
riety  and  shape  in  the  picture,  and  it  be¬ 
comes  more  pleasing.  A  human  figure 
increases  the  interest  and  leads  towards 
the  vanishing  point. 

In  Fig.  2  we  find  straight  lines  across 
the  picture,  and  while  the  house  may 
have  some  architectural  interest,  it  is 
not  pictorial,  and  has  no  suggestion  of 
good  composition. 

A  change  of  viewpoint,  as  in  Fig.  3, 
is  far  more  satisfactory.  The  road  “leads 
in  from  the  side,  and  carries  a  sugges¬ 
tion  not  of  one  particular  cottage,  but 
of  many  similar  buildings. 

Note :  The  above  article  is  reprinted  from  Movie 
News. 


October,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


FC^ICrOR’ 


m 


p  n^- 


NATIONAL  CARBON  COMPANY,  INC. 

Unit  of  Union  Carbide  and  Carbon  Corporation 


CARBON  SALES  DIVISION,  CLEVELAND,  OHIO 
General  Offices:  30  East  42nd  St,,  New  York,  N.  Y. 

Branch  Sales  Offices: 

NEW  YORK  •  PITTSBURGH  .  CHICAGO  •  ST.  LOUIS  •  SAN  FRANCISCO 


American  Cinematographer  •  October,  1943 


373 


A.S.A.  Prepares  First 

Standards  For  Roll  Film 


THE  American  Standards  Associa¬ 
tion  has  just  completed  the  first 
standards  ever  prepared  for  the 
ten  sizes  of  amateur  roll  film  in  most 
common  use  for  snap  shots. 

Eighteen  dimensional  standards  with 
appropriate  working  tolerances  cover 
the  ten  sizes,  since  one  of  the  spool 
standards  applies  to  2  sizes  of  film  and 
one  of  the  film  standards  is  used  with 
2  different  spools.  Nine  of  these  apply 
to  film  spools  and  nine  apply  to  the  film 
itself  and  its  backing  paper.  Two  other 
photographic  standards  approved  at  the 
same  time  apply  to  the  dimension  of 
photographic  paper  —  centimeter-size 
sheets  and  rolls,  and  inch-width  rolls. 

Amateur  roll  film  consists  of  a  length 
of  sensitized  photographic  film  attached 
to  a  continuous  strip  of  backing  paper 
which  is  substantially  longer  than  the 
film,  as  anyone  who  has  ever  developed 
his  own  film  knows.  The  film  and  the 
backing  paper  are  wound  on  a  flanged 
spool  to  provide  a  unit  which  can  be 
loaded  into  a  camera  and  removed,  after 
exposure,  in  daylight. 

This  familiar  article  of  commerce  and 
sentiment  and  art  is  used,  in  a  camera, 
to  produce  on  the  film  strip  a  series  of 
negatives,  the  position  of  each  of  which 
is  governed  by  centering  a  series  of  num¬ 
bers — printed  on  the  backing  paper — 
within  a  small  window  in  the  back  of 
the  camera. 

The  first  daylight-loading  roll  film  was 
introduced  to  the  photographic  world  as 
early  as  1895.  It  represented  a  major 
step  in  the  field  of  amateur  photography. 
The  growth  of  film  photography  has 
progressed  to  a  point  at  which  substan¬ 
tially  more  than  a  hundred  million  rolls 
of  film  were  being  produced  annually  by 
the  American  manufacturers  before  war¬ 
time  necessities  compelled  a  reduction. 

Some  of  the  film  sizes  included  in  these 
standards  date  back  almost  to  1895,  al¬ 
though  many  minor  dimensional  changes 
have  been  made  in  them  as  production 
methods  have  improved  and  as  camera 
designs  have  dictated  more  rigid  toler¬ 
ances.  In  some  cases,  moreover,  film 
lengths  have  been  increased  to  permit 
more  pictures  to  appear  on  a  roll. 

No  published  data  have  been  available 
throughout  the  years  on  the  dimensions 
used  by  any  manufacturer.  Camera-mak¬ 
ers,  consequently— and  particularly  those 
who  were  not  also  film-producers — had  to 
rely,  in  designing  new  cameras,  on  their 
own  measurements  of  spools  and  film 
purchased  on  the  market.  It  is  little 
wonder,  therefore,  that  some  cameras  did 
not  function  properly,  or  that  they  per¬ 


formed  satisfactorily  with  the  film  of  one 
manufacturer  and  not  with  that  of 
another — because  of  slight  differences  in 
the  tolerances  used  by  the  manufactur¬ 
ers.  Dimensional  limits,  minimum  and 
maximum,  had  to  be  set  up  for  the  vari¬ 
ous  spools  in  order  to  insure  interchange- 
ability  in  cameras  and  also  to  provide 
adequate  protection  for  the  film  against 
unwanted  light. 

The  films  covered  by  the  standards  are 
those  which  give  pictures  of  the  sizes 


listed  below  and  are  designated 
manufacturer  as  follows: 

by  each 

Nominal 

Picture  Size 

Agfa 

Eastman 

(in  Inches) 

1%  x  2% 

Ansco 

Kodak 

1%  x  1% 

30  x  40mm 

A-8 

127 

2%  x  2% 

2y4x3  y4 

B-l 

117 

2V*  x  2Y4 

1%x  2V4 

B-2 

120 

2V4  x  3V4 

214x2% 

I%x2% 

PB-20 

620 

2%x4  % 

2%  x  2% 

2%x2% 

D-6 

116 

2%  x  4% 

2%  x  2% 

2%x2% 

PD-16 

616 

3%  x  4% 

E-6 

118 

3%  x  4y4 

F-6 

124 

2%  x  4% 

M— 6 

130 

2%  x  5% 

G— 6 

122 

These  standards,  as  finally  approved, 
give  the  film  manufacturers  the  assur¬ 
ance  that,  if  the  film  conforms  to  the 
standards,  it  will  function  satisfactorily 
in  cameras  now  in  use.  They  also  point 
the  way  for  designers  of  new  cameras 
and  new  accessories — and  they  will  serve 
as  a  basis  for  other  standards  under  con¬ 
sideration  by  other  ASA  subcommittees. 

The  two  standards  approved  for  the 
dimensions  of  photographic  papers  cover 
centimeter-size  sheets  and  rolls  and  inch- 
width  rolls.  The  centimeter  sizes  are  of 
relatively  little  interest  to  consumers  in 
this  country,  but  they  are  of  substantial 
importance  to  the  manufacturers  doing 
export  business  to  countries  using  the 
metric  system.  The  standard  covering 
dimensions  of  inch-width  rolls  gives  spe¬ 
cifications  for  width,  length,  and  splice 
allowance.  This  should  be  of  definite 
importance  to  designers  of  the  recording 
equipment  and  other  apparatus  employ¬ 
ing  photographic  paper  in  roll  form. 

All  of  these  standards  are  available 
from  the  American  Standards  Associa¬ 
tion,  29  West  39th  Street,  New  York  18, 
N.  Y.  The  18  standards  for  dimensions 
of  roll  films  and  backing  paper  are  pub¬ 
lished  together  in  a  single  document  en- 


New  P.S.A.  Index 

Helpful  reference  use  of  photographic 
magazines  has  been  made  possible 
through  publication  by  the  Photographic 
Society  of  America  of  a  “Photographic 
Index.” 

Work  of  Jayne  0.  Quellmalz,  of  450 
Madison  Avenue,  York,  Pa.,  the  “Index,” 
to  be  published  in  September,  December, 
March,  and  June  issues  of  the  “P.S.A. 
Journal,”  enables  the  amateur  and  pro¬ 
fessional  photographer  to  locate  out¬ 
standing  articles  in  camera  magazines. 

The  “Index”  presents  50  subject  head¬ 
ings  and  authors’  names  related  to  ar¬ 
ticles  published  in  still  and  motion  pic¬ 
ture  camera  magazines,  professional 
journals,  and  trade  papers.  Many  of 
the  references  are  to  the  “Journal  of 
the  Royal  Photographic  Society,”  a 
British  publication.  In  many  cases,  im¬ 
portant  articles  are  listed  both  by  au¬ 
thor’s  name  and  subject. 


Gevaert 

R.  H. 

Macy 
&  Co. 

Sears- 

Roebuck 

G— 27 

27 

S-27 

G— 20 

20 

S— 20 

G-6-20 

620 

S-620 

G— 16 

16 

S-16 

G— 6— 1 6 

616 

S— 616 

G-18 

18 

S-18 

G-24 

24 

G — 30 

30 

S-30 

G— 22 

22 

S— 22 

titled  American 

Standard 

Dimensions 

for  Amateur  Roll  Film  Spools,  Film,  and 
Backing  Paper  (Z38.1.7-1943  through 
Z38. 1.24-1943)  for  50  cents.  The  two 
standards  for  photographic  papers: 
American  Standard  Dimensions  of  Photo¬ 
graphic  Papers— Inch-Width  Rolls  (Z38.- 
1.5-1943) ;  and  American  Standard  Di¬ 
mensions  of  Photographic  Papers — Cen¬ 
timeter-Size  Sheets  and  Rolls  (Z38.1.6- 
1943)  are  available  at  10  cents  each. 

The 

Red  Cross 
Needs  Your 
Help  — 

GIVE! 


374  October,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


FOR  ALL  TO  SEE 


The  outstanding  beauty  of 
modern  screen  productions 
demonstrates  effectively  the 
high  quality  of  Eastman  nega¬ 
tive  films,  the  favorites  of  the 
industry.  Eastman  Kodak 
Company,  Rochester,  N.  Y. 

J.  E.  BRULATOUR,  INC.,  DISTRIBUTORS 

Fort  Lee  Chicago  Hollywood 


EASTMAN  NEGATIVE  FILMS 


American  Cinematographer  •  October,  1943  375 


AMONG  THE  MOVIE  CLUBS 


Westwood  Gadget  Exposition 

Last  year  several  hundred  avid  movie 
makers  flocked  to  the  Gadget  Exposi¬ 
tion  of  the  Westwood  Movie  Club  of 
San  Francisco.  Those  who  attended 
were  more  than  pleased  with  both  the 
educational  and  entertainment  features 
of  the  program.  For  obvious  reasons  it 
will  be  impractical  to  duplicate  the  Ex¬ 
position  this  year  on  the  same  scale. 

However,  for  the  real  gadget  lover 
the  program  this  year  will  be  even  more 
intriguing  than  last  year’s,  as  more  time 
will  be  available  for  detailed  operation 
and  explanation  of  a  variety  of  movie 
gadgets  which  the  committee  in  charge 
is  gathering  together.  Prize  winning 
picture  will  also  be  shown. 

All  interested  movie  makers  are  cor¬ 
dially  invited  to  attend  this  open  meet¬ 
ing,  to  be  held  in  the  Westwood  Movie 
Club’s  room  at  San  Fernando  Way  and 
Ocean  Avenue,  San  Francisco,  Califor¬ 
nia,  Friday  night,  October  29th. 


Utah  Cine  Arts  Club 

The  first  meeting  of  the  fall  season 
of  the  Utah  Cine  Arts  Club  was  held 
the  evening  of  September  15th  at  the 
Salt  Lake  City  Art  Center. 

Highlighting  the  meeting  were  a  talk 
by  Dr.  C.  Elmer  Barrett  on  “What  To 
Do  With  Summer  Footage”,  and  a  dem¬ 
onstration  by  F.  K.  Fullmer  on  “Step 
By  Step  Editing”.  Dr.  Barrett  had  many 
helpful  suggestions  to  offer  the  mem¬ 
bers  who  are  planning  to  use  their  sum¬ 
mer  footage  in  the  coming  award  com¬ 
petition. 

A  bit  unusual  was  the  talk  by  Mr. 
Fullmer  on  editing,  for  an  uncut  8mm. 
film  by  Jack  Andrews  was  shown  and 
discussed.  This  same  film  will  now  be 
edited  in  time  for  the  October  meet¬ 
ing  along  the  lines  suggested  by  Mr. 
Fullmer. 


Syracuse  Movie  Makers 

Following  are  the  new  officers  of  the 
Syracuse  Movie  Makers  chosen  at  the 
dub’s  recent  election:  Nedford  S.  Olney, 
President;  Robert  F.  Kimber,  Vice- 
President;  Walter  Kellogg,  Secretary; 
Seymour  C.  Ratter,  Treasurer;  Roy 
Pannenborg,  Sound  Technician;  D.  Lisle 
Conway,  Corresponding  Secretary.  The 
following  were  named  to  a  newly  created 
Advisory  Board:  Archibald  D.  Rodger, 
Maurice  H.  Schwartzberg  and  Earl  Ab¬ 
bott. 

At  the  club  meeting  on  September  7th 
and  21st  plans  were  discussed  for  the 
production  of  another  club  picture. 


Metropolitan  Motion  Picture 
Club 

Three  outstanding  films  were  on  the 
program  of  the  September  meeting  of 
the  Metropolitan  Motion  Picture  Club, 
held  in  the  Victoria  Room  of  the  Vic¬ 
toria  Hotel,  New  York  City. 

Pictures  shown  were,  “New  Hampshire 
On  Parade,”  by  Fred  Ells,  “The  Ani¬ 
mals’  Country”  by  Frank  E.  Gummell, 
and  “Ether  Bound  Spirit”  by  Leo  Hef- 
fernan.  Eleven  new  members  were  added 
to  the  club  rolls  in  the  past  month.  They 
were  Alfred  J.  Colombo,  Mrs.  Hazel 
Colvil,  Arthur  J.  Devine,  Edwin  A. 
Ehlers,  Lt.  Col.  Frank  J.  McLaren,  Jr., 
Carol  Pansky,  W.  T.  Petersen,  Arthur 
H.  Schwartz,  M.  S.  Cashman  and  Charles 
S.  Licht.  Alice  Burnett  was  elected  Sec¬ 
retary  of  the  club,  replacing  Bob  Coles, 
who  is  in  the  armed  service. 


L.  A.  8mm.  Club 

THE  Los  Angeles  8mm.  Club  held  its 
regular  meeting  on  Tuesday,  Sept. 
14th  in  the  Bell  and  Howell  Auditorium. 

It  was  “Gadget  Night”  and  the  mem¬ 
bers  displayed  their  various  and  sundry 
devices.  Included  were  titlers,  spot  light, 
iris  fading  arm,  focusing  tube  and  align¬ 
ment  guage,  cable  release,  editing  stand, 
dual  turn  tables  and  sound  equipment 
and  lastly,  a  “Dream  Camera”  complete 
with  all  the  fixings  including  motor 
drive  and  brake  for  slow  down  to  1 
frame  per  second. 

The  film  fare  included  “Caught  Short,” 
a  contest  winning  film  by  Mrs.  Merle 
Williams,  a  vacation  film  by  J.  G.  Hogue, 
and  “Seeing  is  Believing,”  a  reverse 
motion  film  by  Fred  Evans. 


Long  Beach  Cinema  Club 

Two  interesting  meetings  were  held 
by  the  Long  Beach  Cinema  Club  during 
September.  At  the  first  meeting,  on 
September  1,  1200  feet  of  films  were 
shown.  They  included  five  100-foot  reels 
from  Val  Pope,  a  400-foot  8mm.  black 
and  white,  “The  Quadrangle”,  by  Mr. 
and  Mrs.  Frank  Kallenburg,  and  a  300- 
foot  8mm.  Kodachrome,  “Super  Women”, 
also  by  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Kallenburg. 

Hal  Hall,  editor  of  the  American 
Cinematographer,  was  the  guest  of  the 
club  at  its  meeting  on  September  15th. 
He  spoke  on  the  part  that  cinema  clubs 
can  and  should  play  in  the  war  effort 
and  in  the  post-war  reconstruction 
period. 


San  Francisco  Cinema  Club 

MEMBERS  of  the  Westwood  Movie 
Club  were  guests  of  the  San 
Francisco  Cinema  Club  at  its 
meeting  the  evening  of  September  21st. 
After  a  joint  dinner  at  the  Women’s 
City  Club,  seven  films  were  shown. 

The  program  consisted  of  “Visiting 
Nurse,”  by  Dr.  J.  Allyn  Thatcher  and 
Jesse  Richardson;  “My  Garden,”  by  Ed. 
Franke;  “Fantastic  Formations,”  by  R. 
Arfsten;  “The  Artist  and  the  Model,”  by 
Ed.  Sargent;  “Kodachrome  Slides,”  by 
Leon  Gagne,  Henry  Swanson  and  Eric 
Unmack;  “Apartment  Victory  Garden,” 
by  Clyde  Wortman;  “San  Francisco — 
the  Story  Book  City,”  by  Lt.  Russell 
Hanlon. 


Saint  Louis  Club 

1 

Following  are  the  newly  elected  officers 
of  the  Amateur  Motion  Picture  Club  of 
St.  Louis:  Paul  G.  Scholz,  President; 
Warren  R.  Becker,  Vice-president;  Ver¬ 
non  L.  Rasmussen,  Vice-president;  Lee 
Wheeling,  Treasurer;  Neil  W.  Butteiger 
Secretary;  Ben  E.  Betts,  Director,  Wal¬ 
ter  L.  Michener,  Director. 


Tri-City  Cinema  Club 

PREPARING  for  an  active  fall  and 
winter  season,  President  Georgia  T. 
First  of  the  Tri-City  Cinema  Club  has 
appointed  the  following  to  the  program 
and  membership  committees:  Program, 
Tom  Griberg,  chairman;  C.  F.  Smick, 
Robert  Spitznas  and  A.  R.  Bruns.  Mem- 
beiship,  Jesse  W.  Nutting,  chairman; 
Birger  Swenson,  Elmer  Jansen,  W.  w'. 
Walker,  Peter  De  Vos  and  John  E. 
Hoffman. 


Color  Slide  Salon 

Of  interest  to  the  many  movie  makers 
who  also  make  color  slides  is  the  an¬ 
nouncement  of  the  First  Annual  Ameri¬ 
can  Color  Slide  Salon,  which  is  spon¬ 
sored  by  the  Photographic  Society  of 
America. 

This  salon  is  the  first  ever  held  for 
color  slides  and  will  give  the  public  an 
opportunity  to  see  the  best  work  being 
done  in  this  field.  Slides  will  be  ex¬ 
hibited  by  panel  and  by  projection,  at 
the  Art  Center  Chicago  from  Dec.  6 
through  Dec.  18.  Deadline  for  entries  is 
Nov.  29,  1943.  Entry  forms  may  be 
obtained  from  Blanche  Kolarik,  2824  S. 
Central  Park  Ave.,  Chicago,  Ill. 


376  October,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


(Zailrca4  tfatitblingA 


By  F.  M.  HIRST 


REMEMBER  the  days  when  the 
cry  of  “All  Aboard!”  sent  a  rip¬ 
ple  of  joyous  excitement  surging 
through  your  veins?  When  the  clicking 
rails  sang  their  song  of  adventure — of 
far-off  mountains  and  tumbling  water¬ 
falls  and  torrential  streams,  of  sunny 
days  on  the  beaches  and  visits  to  the 
folks  back  on  the  farm? 

Since  early  childhood  we  have  been 
fascinated  by  the  sights  and  sounds  of 
these-  fiery  steeds.  Our  imagination  has 
kept  pace  with  the  mad  rush  of  the  en¬ 
gine,  and  our  thoughts  have  wandered 
off  like  the  graceful  streams  of  smoke 
in  its  wake.  To  hear  a  distant  train 
whistle  on  a  rainy  night  quickens  the 
pulse  and  causes  a  restlessness  and  a 
longing  to  be  on  the  move.  It  conjures 
up  fond  recollections  of  the  trips  we 
used  to  take  before  the  war.  Though 
trips  are  “out”  for  the  duration,  we  can 
re-live  our  adventures  with  projector 
and  screen,  and  hope  for  the  day  when 
we  can  again  make  movies  of  trains. 

We  have  a  penchant  for  shooting 
train  movies.  The  old  adage  “Once  bit¬ 
ten,  twice  shy”  does  not  apply  to  rail¬ 
way  movies,  for  the  bite  of  this  bug  is 
infectious.  If  the  first  bite  takes  (and 
it  generally  does),  endless  hours  will  be 
spent  making  movies  of  trains.  The 
desire  to  shoot  more  of  these  “behe¬ 
moths  of  the  rails”  is  insatiable,  and 
before  long,  another  addict  has  joined 
the  already  long  list  of  railroad  movie 
makers. 

Ten  years  have  passed  since  we  first 
shot  movies  of  trains  and  we  can  well 
recall  our  first  scene.  From  the  crest 
of  a  hill  a  peaceful  landscape  spread 
below  us — gently  rolling  farmlands  and 
wooded  slopes,  with  a  stream  in  the 
lowlands.  The  shadow  of  a  cloud  moved 
across  the  face  of  a  distant  hill,  adding 
just  enough  movement  for  pictorial  in¬ 
terest.  Then  it  happened!  A  train  raced 
into  our  scene  and  was  gone  as  quickly 
as  it  came.  From  that  day  on  we  have 
been  lured  into  waiting  in  strange  places 
hoping  for  trains  to  appear.  Like  fish¬ 
ing,  the  best  ones  always  get  away. 
Many  times  we  have  waited,  camera  in 
hand,  longing  for  action,  and  when  no 
action  occurred,  put  the  camera  away 
just  at  the  psychological  moment.  Isn’t 
it  exasperating! 

Moving  trains  add  immeasurably  to 
landscapes  but  such  shots  eventually 
get  monotonous  by  their  repetition.  The 
problem  which  faces  us  from  now  on 
is  how  to  utilize  such  scenes  to  the 
best  advantage.  Should  we  scatter  them 
throughout  a  scenic  film  to  add  anima¬ 
tion,  or  should  we  build  them  up  and 


make  a  railway  film,  packed  full  of  ac¬ 
tion?  Personally,  we  have  used  both 
methods  but  prefer  the  latter.  A  film 
containing  action  which  progresses  from 
scene  to  scene  should  be  the  goal  of  all 
movie  makers,  and  railroading  is  made 
to  order  for  such  a  film.  It  contains  no 
plot  (and  plots  seem  to  be  a  stumbling 
block  for  most  amateurs),  but  its  action 
can  be  continuous  and  satisfying.  Its 
actors  are  the  numerous  and  ever-pres¬ 
ent  railroad  employees,  passengers  and 
spectators.  It  abounds  in  human  inter¬ 
est  and  thrilling  action.  This  action 
which  takes  place  on  a  station  platform 
seems  to  be  so  commonplace  that  it  is 
ignored  by  most  people.  By  observing 
the  sequence  of  events  which  happen 
when  a  train  enters  a  station,  or  the 
preparations  which  take  place  just  be¬ 
fore  it  enters,  one  is  able  to  plan  a 
method  of  registering  such  action  on 
film.  It  is  chock  full  of  human  interest 
and  has  good  entertainment  value  when 
shown  on  the  screen.  It  can  readily 
be  seen  that  here  is  the  material  for 
a  good  film.  It  has  been  used  time  and 
again  by  news  photographers  and  ama¬ 
teur  movie  makers;  we  have  seen  it  in 
illustrated  magazines,  in  travelogues,  in 
advertisements.  Anyone  who  aspires  to 
make  a  complete  film  (and  who  doesn’t) 
will  find  railroading  to  be  a  fitting  sub¬ 
ject  with  universal  appeal. 

To  add  a  touch  of  realism,  sound  ef¬ 
fects  records  of  all  kinds  of  train  noises 
may  be  obtained  to  augment  the  pic¬ 
tures.  The  choice  of  film  is  of  course 
optional,  but  our  preference  is  Koda- 
chrome.  One  may  think  that  it  is  a 
waste  of  money  to  use  color  on  a  black 
engine,  but  this  shiny  monster  will  re¬ 
flect  the  blue  of  the  sky  in  its  high 
lights  and  polished  surfaces.  Then  there 
is  the  brass  bell  glinting  in  the  sun¬ 
light,  and  the  blue  overalls  of  the  train 
crew  as  they  work  on  the  engine.  A 
casual  glance  fails  to  reveal  the  seem¬ 
ingly  hidden  colors  that  will  be  brought 
to  light  by  the  use  of  color  film.  So  for 
natural  beauty  and  fuller  enjoyment  of 
railway  pictures,  by  all  means  use  color 
film. 

In  the  past,  movie  makers  who  trav¬ 
eled  on  transcontinental  trains  had  won¬ 
derful  opportunities  for  shooting  this 
subject.  These  trains  are  serviced  ap¬ 
proximately  every  250  miles.  It  is  in¬ 
teresting  to  watch  mechanics  wield  enor¬ 
mous  grease  guns.  While  this  is  going 
on,  other  crew  members  are  climbing 
over  the  engine,  each  doing  a  specific 
job.  There  is  so  much  to  shoot  that 
one  should  take  his  movie  camera  up 
front  at  each  service  stop  in  order  to 


photograph  the  action  for  a  complete 
sequence. 

After  the  sequence  of  servicing  the 
engine  is  completed,  there  are  many 
other  interesting  activities  to  be  filmed. 
Blocks  of  ice  on  trucks  are  ready  to  be 
loaded  into  the  cooling  systems  of  the 
various  cars.  On  a  sunny  day,  with  a 
blue  sky  overhead,  ice  reflects  blue 
tinged  with  green,  and  along  the  broken 
edges  can  be  seen  the  colors  of  the  solar 
spectrum  as  the  light  rays  are  decom¬ 
posed  or  dispursed  by  refraction  through 
these  prisms  of  ice.  On  the  top  of  the 
car,  the  crew  is  busily  lowering  these 
blocks  into  place,  while  on  the  platform 
pullman  porters  chop  the  ice  for  cooling 
the  drinking  water.  Don’t  miss  the  op¬ 
portunity  of  shooting  a  pullman  porter 
as  he  pauses  on  the  step  to  give  a  big 
smile.  A  rich  chocolate  colored  skin 
and  a  smile  is  a  happy  combination  that 
will  bring  cheerful  reaction  from  any 
audience. 

Further  along  the  platform  we  find 
window  washers  flooding  away  the  dust 
of  the  recent  journey;  baggage  being 

(Continued  on  Page  378) 


American  Cinematographer  •  October,  1943  377 


Railroad  Ramblings 

(Continued  from  Page  377) 

loaded  and  unloaded  and  cars  being 
added  to  the  train.  Passengers  climb 
aboard  and  a  congenial  conductor  will 
pose  as  if  giving  the  signal  to  start. 
Try  for  shots  of  other  trains  while  at 
these  various  stops  and  use  them  to  fill 
in  the  gaps  for  continuity — for  instance, 
a  shot  of  an  engineer  as  he  pulls  the 
whistle  cord  prior  to  starting,  the  first 
puffs  of  exhaust  from  the  stack  as  the 
engine  starts,  the  bell  ringing,  steam 
spurting  from  the  piston  and  the  driv¬ 
ing  wheels  beginning  to  turn.  Then 
take  shots  of  the  train  moving  past  the 
camera,  a  view  of  the  back  end  of  the 
train  as  it  pulls  out  of  the  station  and 
recedes.  Edit  these  shots  in  their  proper 
order  and  a  thrilling  cinema  journey 
has  begun  to  unfold. 

Good  train  shots  (especially  those 
taken  from  a  moving  train )  can  be  made 
only  with  the  aid  of  a  tripod.  Before 
the  train  leaves  the  station,  place  the 
camera  and  tripod  on  the  observation 
platform.  Be  sure  that  the  camera  is 
level  and  the  horizon  straight,  then  lock 
the  tilt  and  pan  head  securely.  As  the 
train  is  pulling  out  of  the  station  start 
the  camera  running.  The  filmer  will 
find  that  it  is  impossible  to  look  through 
the  finder  while  the  train  is  in  motion, 
due  to  the  vibration  and  movement.  This 
vibration  does  not  seem  to  register  on 
the  film,  although  some  filmers  prefer 


to  run  the  camera  at  a  higher  speed  as 
an  added  precaution.  Personally,  we 
prefer  normal  speed,  for  it  gives  a  more 
natural  effect  on  the  screen. 

The  fact  that  the  camera  has  been 
centered  on  the  track  will  insure  the 
correct  perspective.  As  the  train  gains 
momentum,  brace  yourself  and  keep  the 
tripod  pressed  firmly  to  the  floor  of  the 
car.  When  interesting  scenery  passes 
by,  press  the  lever  for  a  normal  length 
shot — you  need  not  bother  with  the  view 
finder  once  the  camera  is  set,  but  do  not 
neglect  your  exposure.  I  find  that  the 
best  meter  reading  is  obtained  by  tilting 
the  meter  slightly  downward  and  avoid¬ 
ing  too  much  sky  light.  In  this  way  the 
browns  of  the  earth  and  the  greens  of 
the  trees  and  fields  will  be  properly 
exposed.  You  may  find  that  your  sky 
may  not  be  as  blue  as  you  like  it,  but 
the  scenery  which  you  enjoy  will  reg¬ 
ister  correctly. 

Should  you  be  as  fortunate  as  we 
were,  to  be  on  the  observation  platform 
of  a  26-car  train,  it  is  simple  to  vary 
your  shots.  Each  time  the  engine  made 
a  turn  it  was  possible  to  photograph 
nearly  the  whole  train  as  it  rounded 
curves  and  crossed  bridges.  Allegoric¬ 
ally,  it  was  a  slow-moving  red  serpent 
twisting  its  way  in  an  S  turn  to  enter 
a  hole  in  the  side  of  the  mountain.  From 
the  tunnel  on  the  other  side  it  emerged 
to  follow  its  tortuous  route  through  the 
Fraser  and  Kicking  Horse  canyons, 
till  the  mountains  were  rosy-tipped  by 
the  setting  sun.  A  sequence  of  sunset 


colored  mountains  growing  progressively 
darker  until  the  rails  disappeared  in 
golden  ribbons  ended  the  picture.  In 
this  manner  we  photographed  the  Cana¬ 
dian  Rockies  from  Vancouver  to  Banff. 

After  the  war,  when  military  re¬ 
strictions  are  lifted,  we  hope  to  be  able 
to  continue  our  railroad  movie  making. 
When  that  time  comes,  do  not  misunder¬ 
stand  and  think  that  one  has  to  take  a 
transcontinental  trip  in  order  to  make 
a  good  railroad  movie.  Nothing  is  fur¬ 
ther  from  the  truth.  All  that  is  re¬ 
quired  is  a  movie  camera  and  a  rail¬ 
road,  and  a  little  imagination.  Why  not 
go  to  a  local  station  and  photograph 
several  trains  as  previously  described? 
This  will  be  your  start  to  which  more 
shots  can  be  added  from  time  to  time. 
It  would  be  a  mistake  and  very  dis¬ 
appointing  to  try  and  complete  such  a 
film  with  one  try.  The  next  step  would 
be  to  board  a  train,  even  though  it  is 
only  to  the  next  station  stop,  and  shoot 
your  scene  of  the  station  receding  in 
the  distance.  Also  try  a  few  shots  along 
the  way  to  be  cut  in  later. 

Carry  your  camera  with  you  when 
out  for  a  ride  in  the  car.  Shoot  head-on 
views  of  trains  from  low  angles,  trains 
crossing  bridges  over  streams,  through 
scenic  stretches,  passing  grade  cross¬ 
ings.  Shoot  from  bridges  looking  down 
on  the  train,  trains  rounding  curves. 
The  possibilities  of  views  and  angles 
are  too  numerous  to  mention.  Finally, 
bring  your  train  back  into  the  station, 
showing  it  coming  in  from  a  distance 
to  a  full  stop. 

Some  time  ago  a  movie  contest  was 
held  in  which  each  contestant  was  to 
produce  a  complete  picture  on  25  feet 
of  8mm.  or  50  feet  of  16mm.  film.  The 
subject  matter  was  left  to  the  choice  of 
the  individual.  A  new  blue  and  silver 
streamlined  train  had  just  started  to 
run.  Here  was  just  the  right  subject  for 
a  film.  We  planned  a  short  scenario  and 
then  proceeded  to  get  the  necessary 
shots.  We  had  two  opportunities  each 
day  to  make  our  shots  as  this  train 
passed  through  early  in  the  morning 
and  again  at  noon.  Work  canceled  the 
noontime  shots,  so  a  number  of  early 
trips  into  the  countryside  were  required. 
It  may  have  seemed  like  a  hardship  but 
the  results  were  worth  the  effort. 

When  a  sufficient  number  of  railroad 
shots  had  been  acquired,  all  that  was 
needed  to  finish  the  picture  was  a  few 
actors.  We  asked  our  maid  if  she  could 
press  into  service  a  few  colored  chil¬ 
dren  to  play  the  parts.  The  next  day  we 
received  an  answer:  “Lawsee,”  she  said, 
“you’d  hafta  hire  a  bus  to  hold  all  the 
chillun  that  wants  to  ack  in  yo’  movies.” 
At  the  appointed  time,  when  we  arrived 
to  pick  up  the  chidren,  we  noticed  dark 
faces  and  the  whites  of  inquisitive  eyes 
peering  from  windows  and  doorways. 
Our  destination  was  a  railroad  track 
that  was  very  seldom  used. 

The  film  was  titled  “Perils  of  Paul.” 
The  story  opened  with  two  colored  boys 
thumbing  a  ride  on  the  roadside.  All 

(Continued  on  Page  381) 


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378  October,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


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Manufacturers  of  the  Norwood  Exposure  Meter 


l^lorivood 


Hands  Are  Nice 

(Continued  from  Page  365) 

tried  to  get  her  to  either  do  something 
with  her  hands  or  hide  them  plausibly  ? 

Simple  portraiture  is  the  matter  of 
studying  one’s  subject — then  shoving 
lights  around  until  the  general  effect  ac¬ 
complishes  a  result  which  pleases  the 
photographer  at  the  moment,  and  stimu¬ 
lates  the  hope  that  he  will  be  accorded 
some  agreement  when  she  looks  at  the 
proofs. 

Up  to  this  point  the  problem  is  not  too 
complicated.  Of  course,  one  meets  vary¬ 
ing  interpretations  of  the  term  cooper¬ 
ation,  depending  upon  whether  the  sit¬ 
ting  takes  place  off  stage  between  takes, 
or  in  the  gallery  after  a  long  day  on  the 
sets.  Amazingly,  most  of  our  film  girls 
take  punishment  under  certain  of  these 
circumstances  that  would  tax  the  physi¬ 
cal,  if  not  the  temperamental,  stamina 
of  more  robust  males. 

But  portraiture  is  not  always  simple, 
even  with  most  of  the  elements  in  one’s 
favor.  Photography  of  the  human  form 
divine  discloses  the  distressing  fact  that 
divinity  represents  an  ideal  which  is  but 
loosely  interpreted  in  substance! 

A  young  girl,  who  has  survived  a 
screen  test,  is  known  to  possess  most  of 
the  physical  attributes  which  correspond 
to  the  current  appraisal  of  “pulchritude.” 
The  less  tangible  but  more  important 
quality,  charm,  is  one  that  cannot  be 
cultivated  consciously,  nor  can  any  di¬ 
rector  in  the  world  wheedle,  cajole  or 
shout  it  into  existence.  The  amazing 
thing  is  that  even  when  these  girls  do 
possess  charm  as  well  as  the  other  quali¬ 
ties  of  beauty,  most  of  them  do  not  know 
what  to  do  with  their  hands  when  they 
get  before  a  still  camera. 

In  actual  operative  practice,  lighting 
of  the  face  takes  priority.  Posing  the 
subject  is  a  cross  between  what  the 
photographer  wants  and  what  he  gets. 
Results  are  a  compromise,  and  limited  to 
only  three  considerations — time,  disposi¬ 
tion  and  the  boundaries  of  eight  by  ten. 

Disposal  of  hands  is  therefore  a  prob¬ 
lem  of  either  not  showing  them  at  all  or 
including  them  in  such  a  way  that  they 
shall  appear  either  expressive  or  attrac¬ 
tively  functional.  Expressive  hands  need 
not  be  actually  beautiful  from  a  purely 
physiological  view.  They  can  reflect 
character;  and  they  must,  if  the  indi¬ 
vidual  has  any  character  to  reflect. 

I’ve  experienced  the  least  difficulty 
in  the  photography  of  girls  who  have  had 
the  advantage  of  dance  training.  Not 
“rug  cutters,”  but  the  real  disciples  of 
Terpsichore.  They  have  learned  that 
“every  little  movement  has  a  meaning, 
etc.”  One  has  only  to  think  of  Ruth  St. 
Denis  to  know  what  I  mean. 

When  a  hand  must  appear  as  acces¬ 
sory  my  effort  is  to  minimize  it’s  breadth. 
This  is  done  by  never  allowing  it  to  be 
shown  “full  face.”  It  is  usually  comfort¬ 
ably  or  naturally  dropped,  palm  upper¬ 
most,  in  the  lap.  Or  it  can  be  draped  at 
the  waist,  with  most  of  the  fingers  back 
stage,  or  so  placed  as  to  show  it  “on 
edge.” 


Like  condiments  in  a  culinary  triumph, 
hands  should  never  insinuate  themselves 
into  a  picture  beyond  the  point  of  offer¬ 
ing  the  consciousness  that  they  are  a 
complement — indeed,  a  compliment  to  the 
ensemble. 

I  cannot  ignore  the  circumstance  that 
the  Hays  censorship  office  has  never 
deleted  pictures  of  seductive  hands. 


Buy  More  Bonds 


New  Afga  Plant 

AGFA  ANSCO  recently  announced 
War  Production  Board  approval 
of  the  erection  of  a  new  $1,000,000 
addition  to  its  film  plant  in  Binghamton, 
N.  Y.  Construction  has  already  begun 
and  schedules  call  for  the  new  plant  to 
be  in  production  late  next  spring. 

The  addition,  25  x  450  feet,  in  three 
and  four  story  sections,  will  house  a  new 
film  coating  unit  which  will  materially 
increase  coated  production  and  enable 
the  company  to  supply  still  larger  quan¬ 
tities  of  film  to  the  Army  and  Navy. 


American  Cinematographer  •  October,  1943  379 


Evolution  of  Transparency 

(Continued  from  Page  359) 

ponent  units  could  hardly  be  blamed  that 
they  did  not  pi'oduce  the  specialized 
equipment  we  so  urgently  wanted.  The 
market  was  far  too  small,  and  the  cus¬ 
tomers  for  too  individualized  to  permit 
even  the  pseudo  volume  production 
known  in  the  manufacture  of  ordinary 
professional  cameras  and  projectors.  One 
studio  might  prefer  Bell  &  Howell  type 
movements  for  their  projectors;  their 
neighbor  across  the  fence  might  demand 
Mitchell-type  registration.  What  one 
expert  liked  in  a  lamphouse  or  lens,  the 
next  man  might  condemn.  The  poor  man¬ 
ufacturer  simply  could  not  afford  to  as¬ 
sume  the  expense  of  engineering  a  prod¬ 
uct  of  which  he  might  sell  but  two  or 
three  single  units. 

Realizing  this,  a  group  of  us,  under 
the  general  sponsorship  of  the  Research 
Council  of  the  Academy  of  Motion  Pic¬ 
ture  Arts  and  Sciences  decided  to  at¬ 
tempt  to  get  the  industry’s  process  spe¬ 
cialists  and  the  various  manufacturers 
and  engineers  involved  together,  to  the 


end  that  we  might  at  least  try  to  set 
up  industry-wide  standards  and  specifi¬ 
cations  for  such  equipment,  from  which 
the  several  manufacturers  involved  could 
build  equipment  which  would  stand  a 
chance  of  suiting  the  majority  of  the 
industry’s  transparency-shot  specialists. 

It  was  not  an  easy  task  to  do  this. 
An  infinite  number  of  personalities,  pro¬ 
fessional  suspicion  and  “trade  secrets” 
were  involved.  But  finally  we  managed 
to  get  together  all  of  the  industry’s  lead¬ 
ing  process-shot  specialists,  and  with 
them  the  best  engineering  brains  of  the 
firms  manufacturing  cameras,  project¬ 
ors,  lenses,  arc  and  incandescent  lamp- 
houses,  and  so  on.  At  first,  I  must  ad¬ 
mit,  the  sessions  of  this  committee  were 
something  like  a  gathering  of  rival — and 
highly  suspicious  —  tomcats.  Nobody 
wanted  to  make  the  first  move,  and  no¬ 
body  wanted  to  be  the  first  to  withdraw, 
either. 

But  finally,  as  one  or  two  of  us  began 
to  make  completely  frank  statements 
about  our  methods,  plans  and  problems, 
the  others  saw  the  advantages  of  whole¬ 
hearted  cooperation,  and  the  committee 


became  a  fully  cooperative  unit.  We 
threshed  each  problem  out  extensively, 
from  every  angle.  Finally,  as  I  reported 
to  a  previous  convention  some  two  years 
ago,  we  set  up  a  series  of  specifications 
for  equipment,  including  basic  specifi¬ 
cations,  which  represented  definite  re¬ 
quirements;  auxiliary  specifications, 
which  were  desirable  methods  of  meet¬ 
ing  these  requirements;  and  accessory 
specifications,  which  indicated  features 
that  were  desirable,  but  not  indispen¬ 
sable.  Up  to  this  point,  the  project  rep¬ 
resented  well  over  2,000  man-hours  of 
technical  effort,  and  combined  the  views 
of  approximately  50  experts  in  the  field 
of  process  projection  cinematography. 
The  specifications  set  up  were  so  much 
beyond  our  immediate  requirements  that 
it  seemed  almost  over-optimistic  that 
they  could  ever  be  completely  realized. 

The  start  of  this  project  was  in  1938. 
The  specifications  were  approved  in 
1939.  During  this  past  year,  the  first 
complete  equipments  built  to  these  speci¬ 
fications  have  been  delivered  and  placed 
in  service.  The  details  of  that  equip¬ 
ment  will  be  presented  at  another  time: 
but  I  would  like  to  go  on  record  here 
as  stating  that  in  all  respects  the  manu¬ 
facturers  have  met  the  specifications, 
and  in  some  instances,  actually  exceeded 
them. 

At  the  Paramount  Studio  we  now  have 
four  of  these  Academy  Standard  equip¬ 
ments  in  operation.  Several  more  are  on 
order,  but  it  is  likely  that  their  delivery 
will  be  held  up  “for  duration.”  Each 
equipment  forms  in  itself  a  complete  unit 
for  conventional  single-head  transpar¬ 
ency  projection,  affording  illuminating 
power  and  convenience  of  operation  ab¬ 
solutely  unknown  hitherto.  Any  one  of 
these  “singles”  will  permit  us  to  make 
shots — either  in  black-and-white  or  in 
Technicolor  —  which  would  previously 
have  demanded  double-or  triple-head 
projection  only  a  short  time  ago. 

For  scenes  which  demand  even  greater 
scope,  any  three  of  the  new  heads  and 
any  three  of  the  new  lamphouses  can  be 
assembled  into  an  extraordinarily  effi¬ 
cient  triple-head  equipment  by  simply 
removing  them  from  their  usual  bases 
and  attaching  them  to  our  new  standard 
triple-head  base. 

In  this  triple-head  work,  as  I  believe 
has  been  explained  in  papers  presented 
at  previous  conventions,  three  complete 
projection  mechanisms  are  used.  The 
center  one  faces  directly  toward  the 
screen;  the  two  outer  ones  face  inward, 
and  their  images  are  reflected  to  the 
screen  by  means  of  front-surface  mir¬ 
rors.  The  three  images  are  accurately 
superimposed  on  the  screen,  effectively 
tripling  the  intensity  of  illumination  on 
the  screen.  By  manipulating  the  re¬ 
spective  intensities  of  the  three  light- 
sources,  or  the  densities  of  the  three 
background  prints,  a  very  considerable 
degree  of  control  of  the  intensity  of  the 
projected  composite  image  is  possible. 
The  superimposition  of  the  three  images 
also  tends  to  eliminate  the  problem  of 

(Continued  from  Page  382) 


On  the  Spot 
in  the 

NATION'S 

CAPITAL 


- 


TVyro^s 


INCORPORATED 


1712  CONNECTICUT  AVE. 
WASHINGTON,  D.  C. 

The  Most  Complete  16mm 
Sound  Motion  Picture  Studios  in  the  East 

FROM  SCRIPT  TO  SCREEN 


380  October,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


Academy  Still  Show 

THE  third  annual  Still  Photography- 
Show  of  the  Academy  of  Motion 
Picture  Arts  and  Sciences  will  be 
held  Nov.  26,  27,  28.  As  in  the  past  two 
shows,  only  lensers  within  the  film  in¬ 
dustry  will  be  qualified  to  enter  pictures. 

At  a  meeting  of  the  still  photographers 
and  Academy  and  union  officials,  the  fol¬ 
lowing  classifications  were  agreed  upon: 

Best  portrait,  male  (closeup),  female 
(closeup),  of  more  than  one  person 
(closeup),  best  character  study,  male, 
female,  best  posed  production  still,  in  a 
studio,  with  studio  control  of  conditions 
and  lighting,  out-of-doors,  predominant¬ 
ly  natural  light.  Best  action  production 
Still:  posed  in  studio  with  studio  light¬ 
ing;  unposed  in  studio,  with  studio  light¬ 
ing,  posed  out-of-doors,  unposed  out-of- 
doors;  best  glamour  picture,  best  candid 
shot,  best  poster  art,  best  fashion  study, 
best  pin-up  art  of  the  year,  best  picture 
in  relation  to  the  War  effort. 

All  still  pictures  photographed  between 
June  1,  1942,  and  Sept.  1,  1943,  will  be 
eligible  for  consideration.  Announcement 
of  various  committees,  prizes  and  loca¬ 
tion  of  the  exhibit  will  be  announced 
later. 


New  B.  &  H.  Superintendent 

The  Bell  &  Howell  Company  announces 
the  appointment  of  a  new  General  Super¬ 
intendent  for  their  Larchmont  Avenue 
Plant  in  Chicago.  He  is  Mr.  I.  G.  Wil¬ 
cox,  recently  the  Superintendent  of  Parts 
Manufacture  at  the  Rockwell  Plant,  for¬ 
merly  engaged  in  time  study,  fixture 
sketching,  inspection  and  production 
work.  Mr.  Wilcox  has  been  with  Bell  & 
Howell  continuously  since  1926. 


Railroad  Ramblings 

(Continued  from  Page  378) 

cars  passed  them  by  so  they  wandered 
off  to  the  railroad  and  started  to  walk 
the  rails.  The  larger  of  the  two  made 
the  best  progress  and  was  soon  leaving 
the  smaller  boy  behind.  The  small  boy 
stumbled  and  caught  his  foot  in  a 
switch  and  the  trouble  started.  While 
he  was  pulling  frantically  and  calling 
to  his  companion  the  scene  changed.  We 
see  the  new  streamliner  starting  from 
the  station  and  gaining  momentum  as 
it  travels  through  each  scene.  Cutting 
back,  we  find  the  larger  boy  racing  to 
the  aid  of  his  companion.  The  train  is 
roaring  through  successive  scenes  as  we 
cut  back  and  forth  between  the  strug¬ 
gling  boys  and  the  train.  Finally  the 
larger  boy,  unable  to  free  his  compan¬ 
ion,  put  his  arm  around  the  smaller 
boy  and  raises  his  other  arm  to  cover 
his  eyes.  In  the  next  scene  we  see  the 
train  rushing  headon  toward  the  cam¬ 
era,  and,  as  it  comes  upon  us,  a  title 
flashes  on  the  screen,  “Will  he  get 
free?” — then  the  next  title  “Continued 
next  contest.” 

Well!  What  did  you  expect  on  25  feet 
of  8mm.  film — a  full  length  thriller? 


lor 

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asi 


lor 

.  To'"""' 


THIS  HANDY  COUPON  BRINGS  YOU 
FULL  PARTICULARS  W^m  YOUR  ENTRY  BLANK 


$  ideas 


tD**S 


$1500.00  FORI 


IDEAS 


8MM  MOTION  PICTURE  CAMERA  & 
PROJECTOR  DESIGN  COMPETITION 

You  who  know  what  YOU  want  in  the  next  motion 
picture  camera  you  buy — what  YOU  think  will 
simplify  and  perfect  the  operation  of  your  next 
motion  picture  projector — this  is  YOUR  OPPOR¬ 
TUNITY  to  share  $1500.00  in  U.  S.  War  Bonds 
(maturity  value)  that  DeVry  Corporation  will  award 
those  who  contribute  the  best  and  most  practical 
ideas  for  TOMORROWS  8MM  MOTION  PIC¬ 
TURE  CAMERA  &  PROJECTOR. 

What  should  this  camera  look  like?  How  should  it 
be  equipped?  What  style  projector  do  you  prefer? 
How  may  its  operation  be  simplified,  perfected? 


PROJECTOR:  ventilating  system  (lamp  house); 
optical  system;  film  movement;  reel  arms;  tilting 
device;  film  safety  devices;  take-up  framing,  focus¬ 
ing  and  shutter  mechanisms,  etc.  Can  you  suggest 
particular  developments  of  these  features? 
CAMERA:  (single  or  turret  lens  mount)  view 
finder;  shutter,  footage  indicator;  loading  mech¬ 
anism;  winding  key;  exposure  guide;  lens  mount; 
focusing;  single  frame  release  mechanism,  etc. 


Submit  YOUR  IDEAS  in  rough  or  in  finished  draw¬ 
ing — with  brief  comments  if  you  desire.  You  may 
want  to  enter  working  model  of  a  part.  Drawing  or 
designing  skill  (or  workmanship  of  model)  is  sec¬ 
ondary  . . .  the  IDEA  is  what  counts.  But  mail  the  cou¬ 
pon  today  for  complete  details — award  amounts — 
Official  Entry  Blank.  There’s  no  obligation.  Com¬ 
petition  closes  midnight,  Dec.  31,  1943.  DeVRY 
CORPORATION,  1111  Armitage  Ave.,  Chicago. 


BUY  WAR  BONDS! 


Sound  Equipment 


AilViia 


FOR  30  YEARS  AN  OUTSTANDING  NAME  IN  THE  CINEMATIC  WORLD 


Wm.  C.  DeVry,  President  DeVRY  CORPORATION 
1111  Armitage  Ave.,  Dept.  AC  Chicago  14,  U.S.A. 

Without  obligation  please  send  me  complete  details  concerning 
your  8MM  MOTION  PICTURE  CAMERA  &  PROJECTOR  COM¬ 
PETITION. 


Name _ 

Address. 

Ci»v _ 


THE  BETTER  WE  BACK  THE  ATTACK  WITH  OUR 
BOND  BUYING  —  THE  SOONER  THE  VICTORY 


New  Radiant  Catalog 

The  Radiant  Manufacturing  Corpora¬ 
tion  have  caught  the  spirit  of  the  times 
with  the  illustration  on  the  front  cover 
of  their  new  catalog,  which  is  shown 
above.  The  company  announces  that  the 
WPB  has  permitted  them  to  release  a 
limited  number  of  metal  screens  for  es¬ 
sential  activities. 


BUY 

MORE 

BONDS 


American  Cinematographer  •  October,  1943  381 


BUY 

MORE 

BONDS 


A  LONG-TERM 
INVESTMENT 


B&H  Taylor- Hobson-Cooke 
Cine  Lenses  will  serve  you  for 
many  years,  because  they  antici¬ 
pate  future  improvements  in  film 
emulsions  and  exceed  current 
technical  demands.  Write  for 
literature.  BUY  WAR  BONDS 


BELL  &  HOWELL  COMPANY 

Exclusive  world  distributors 


1848  Larchmont  Avenue,  Chicago 

New  York:  30  Rockefeller  Plaza 
Hollywood:  716  N.  La  Brea  Ave. 
Washington,  D.  C.:  1221  G  St.,  N.W. 
London:  13-14  Great  Castle  St. 


Evolution  of  Transparency 

(Continued  from  Page  380) 

grain,  which  is  of  course  further  mini¬ 
mized  by  the  use  of  fine-grain  film  stocks 
in  making  these  prints. 

Some  idea  of  the  advantages  we  have 
gained  through  this  triple-head  technique 
and  the  more  recent  addition  thereto  of 
the  greatly  increased  efficiency  of  the 
Academy  Standard  units,  may  be  gained 
from  the  following  figures.  A  few  years 
ago,  when  we  first  had  need  for  ex¬ 
tremely  powerful  process-projection 
equipment  for  use  in  a  Technicolor  pic¬ 
ture,  we  used  what  was  then  the  most 
powerful  single  projection  unit  in  the 
industry,  the  very  fine  one  owned  by 
Selznick  Productions.  This  was  so  out¬ 
standing  that  it  had  received  an  Acad¬ 
emy  Award. 

By  actual  measurement,  this  outfit  en¬ 
abled  us  to  give  our  screen  an  illumina¬ 
tion  of  29,000  lumens. 

Later,  we  developed  our  own  first 
triple-head  equipment — an  assembly  of 
the  best  units  available  before  the  pres¬ 
ent  Academy  Standard  equipments  be¬ 
came  available.  This  enabled  us  to  work 
successfully  in  black-and-white  on  a 
24-foot  screen,  with  an  illumination  of 
some  50,000  lumens. 

Today,  with  the  Academy  Standard 
triple-head  equipment,  we  have  worked 
successfully  on  a  36-foot  screen  in  black- 
and-white,  and  on  a  24-foot  screen  in 
Technicolor,  with  a  screen-illumination 
of  105,000  lumens. 

It  would  seem  that  this  would  repre¬ 
sent  an  ideal  condition  in  transparency 
projection  process  work.  But  it  does  not. 
So  closely  does  the  demand  for  greater 
and  still  greater  scope  keep  crowding  on 
the  heels  of  technical  developments  that 
it  has  already  proved  inadequate  in  at 
least  one  instance.  In  making  several 
recent  productions  we  have  had  the  prob¬ 
lem  of  using  a  projected  background  in 
some  highly  important,  very  large-scale 
sequences  and  doing  them  in  Techni¬ 
color.  Due  to  the  requirements  of  stories, 
action  and  setting,  screens  of  24  feet  in 
width — or  even  36  feet,  the  largest  avail¬ 
able — would  have  been  completely  in¬ 
adequate. 


For  example  take  the  case  of  a  For¬ 
est  Fire  picture  we  were  making  in 
color.  We  finally  compromised  on  a 
total  spread  of  48  feet  of  background- 
screen  width !  Even  more  would  have 
been  desirable,  could  we  have  obtained  it. 

To  achieve  this,  which  I  believe  to  be 
one  of  the  largest  projected  process- 
shots  thus  far  attempted,  in  either  mono¬ 
chrome  or  color,  we  used  two  triple-head 
equipments,  projecting  on  adjoining 
screens  each  24  feet  wide.  For  one  of 
these,  we  employed  our  own  Academy 
Standard  triple  unit.  Since  we  did  not 
have  enough  of  the  new  heads  to  as¬ 
semble  into  another  complete  triple,  we 
used  another  triple,  built  by  R.K.O., 
largely  to  the  new  standards.  With  these 
we  obtained  our  shot,  most  successfully. 
Yet  inevitably,  the  demands  being  made 
for  future  productions  are  already  urg¬ 
ing  us  to  surpass  these.  We  have  just 
completed  a  number  of  these  dual-triple 
color  shots. 

In  making  these  shots,  the  projectors 
are  never  less  than  70  feet  from  the 
screen,  and  often  100  to  150  feet  distant. 

This  fact  may  help  to  explain  to  those 
of  you  who  have  not  been  so  intimately 
associated  with  studio  transparency 
process-projection  work,  something  of 
the  need  for  extreme  precision  in  design¬ 
ing  equipment  for  this  service.  When 
you  magnify  a  single-frame  motion  pic¬ 
ture  image  1x1%  inches  in  size  to  fill  a 
screen  27x36  feet,  you  are  at  the  same 
time  magnifying  every  mechanical  and 
optical  imperfection  in  the  equipment 
that  projects  it.  Moreover,  when  you 
consider  that  in  effect  this  enormously- 
magnified  picture  is  at  the  long  end  of 
a  lever-arm  100  feet  or  more  in  length, 
you  will  see  that  any  irregularity  of 
film-registration,  and  the  like,  in  the 
original  film  or  its  passage  through  the 
projector  will  be  disproportionately  en¬ 
larged  on  the  screen.  It  will  show  up 
as  doubly  defective  in  comparison  with 
the  steadiness  of  the  actual  foreground 
action  as  photographed  by  a  modern 
studio  camera.  With  the  foreground 
steady,  and  the  projected  background 
portion  of  the  scene  badly  unsteady,  all 
illusion  of  reality  would  be  lost  in  the 
composite  scene. 

It  is  a  pleasure  to  report,  therefore, 
that  even  though  at  the  start  of  the 
project  some  of  our  specifications  and 
tolerances  seemed  almost  unattainably 
high  to  the  manufacturers  involved,  they 
have  in  every  case  been  equalled,  and 
in  some  instances  surpassed. 

The  convenience  and  precision  of  op¬ 
erating  these  new  units  should  not  be 
overlooked.  The  design  has  been  so 
developed  as  to  give  as  nearly  as  possible 
foolproof,  and  in  some  instances  auto¬ 
matic  operation  in  every  way  possible. 
Synchronizing  of  camera  and  projector, 
for  instance,  is  automatically  assured. 
Focusing  is  effected  from  camera  posi¬ 
tion,  by  remote  control.  The  projector 

(Continued  on  Page  386) 


382 


Octobex-,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


Letters  F rom  Our  Readers 


The  following  letter  was  received  from 
Mr.  J.  P.  J.  Chapman,  of  Bournemouth, 
England,  who  herewith  presents  his  ideas 
regarding  what  is  needed  in  an  ideal 
post-war  camera  and  projector.  We  sin¬ 
cerely  hope  other  readers  will  pass  along 
their  ideas,  too,  for  publication  in  this 
magazine. — The  Editor. 

Dear  Sir: — 

I  read  with  interest  your  remarks  in 
the  July  issue  on  post  war  cameras 
and  projectors,  so  perhaps  you  will 
be  interested  to  hear  from  this  side  of 
the  water.  My  remarks  are,  I  think, 
shared  by  other  serious  workers,  who 
are  ever  on  the  watch  for  something 
that  will  give  just  those  extra  results. 

Lens  Equipment: — Four  mounted  on 
a  revolving  head,  and  so  designed  that 
the  longest  will  not  shadow  any  other. 
They  must  be  quickly  demountable,  and 
the  optical  units  so  arranged  that  the 
lenses  can  be  cleaned  INSIDE. 

Spring  Run: — One  hundred  feet  at  the 
very  least. 

Direct  Image  Focussing:  —  A  better 
system  required,  with  provision  for 
cleaning  the  ground  glass  screen. 

“Gadgets”: — All  those  found  on  most 
good  cameras,  such  as  the  Kodak  Special. 

Gate: — Must  be  easy  of  access,  quickly 
demountable  for  cleaning. 

Film  Track: — Must  be  without  exces¬ 
sive  bends  and  twists. 

Finish: — A  good  serviceable  hard 
wearing  surface.  Chrome-Plating  is 
not  suitable  in  sea  atmospheres.  There 
are  plenty  of  other  metals,  and  a  dull 
finish  is  better. 

Tripods: — As  this  is  an  important 
extra,  it  can  well  be  included.  They  are 
usually  expensive  and  flimsy.  A  really 
good  one,  with  a  non-sticky  head  is 
greatly  to  be  desired. 

S.O.F.  This  would  appear  to  be  al¬ 
ready  well  catered  for. 

Projectors: — Nearly  all  sub-standard 
machines  have  many  faults. 

Frame  or  Body: — Generally  made  of 
Aluminum  or  Dow  metal,  frequent  de¬ 
mounting  wears  out  threads.  There 
should  be  hard  brass  inserts. 

Machine  Parts: — Could  be  of  more 
suitable  material,  and  where  steel  is 
concerned,  harder.  Too  great  an  effort 
has  been  made  to  produce  a  highly  com¬ 


pact  “pretty”  result,  with  consequent 
sacrifice  of  efficiency  and  quality.  De¬ 
sign  has  not  been  considered,  too  many 
parts  have  to  be  taken  adrift  to  replace 
a  faulty  unit. 

Film  Track: — Fed  in  and  out  should 
have  as  few  sharp  bends  and  twists  as 
possible. 

Take-up: — Slipping  belts  are  a  poor 
compromise.  A  clutch  which  can  be 
adjusted  while  running  should  be  in¬ 
corporated. 

Gate: — Rapid  demounting  and  re¬ 
assembly,  with  100%  accessibility  to  all 
parts.  Edge  grip  on  film. 

Picture  shift  mechanism,  the  remarks 
on  the  gate  cover  this  equally.  Single 
claw  is  not  sufficient;  I  favor  the  octa- 
cross. 

Volt  or  Ammeter: — Should  not  be  in 
lamp-house,  but  mounted  at  side  with 
pea  light.  Provision  should  be  made 
that  this  is  not  overloaded  if  lamp  blows, 
i.e.,  when  machine  is  fed  through  a 
resistance  from  a  high  voltage  line. 

Blower: — This  soon  dusts  up,  and 
cleaning  is  difficult.  It  should  .be  de¬ 
mountable  so  that  it  can  be  washed  in 
a  suitable  fluid. 

Controls : — N eed  individualization. 

General: — As  16mm.  has  passed  the 
stage  of  the  nursery,  it  follows  there 
will  be  a  revolution  in  design  incorporat¬ 
ing  many  35mm.  features.  The  8mm. 
can  hardly  be  incorporated  at  the  pres¬ 
ent  juncture.  Final  decision  rests  with 
demand  and  production  costs.  It  would 
seem  to  be  a  subject  for  the  Academy  of 
Research  Council  and  the  S.M.P.E. 

As  this  is  intended  to  be  a  letter  and 
not  an  article,  much  has  been  glossed 
over. 

Finally,  but  not  least,  there  is  much 
improvement  needed  in  16mm.  sound. 
Sound  Heads  and  Amplifiers  need  at¬ 
tention. 

With  best  wishes,  yours  faithfully. 

(Signed)  J.  P.  J.  CHAPMAN 


Opens  Syrian  Office 

A  new  branch  office  is  being  opened 
by  Warners  in  Beyrouth,  Syria,  with 
George  Mamri  as  manager.  Territory  is 
under  supervision  of  E.  De  Leon,  man¬ 
ager  of  Warners  Cairo  office. 


Auricon 

SOUND 

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weigh  only  thirty-seven  pounds. 

★  Kodachrome  or  black  and  white  pictures 
with  Auricon  sound  track  will  reproduce 
on  any  sound-film  projector. 

★  Can  be  operated  in  the  field  from  an 
Auricon  Portable  Power  Supply. 

★  Auricon  Camera  with  type  "C"  lens  mount 
(but  without  lens)  and  Amplifier  complete 
with  microphone,  instructions,  and  cases 

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★  Variable-area  sound  on  film,  for  double 
system  recording  with  a  synchronous  motor 
driven  16  mm.  camera.  Amplifier  has  back¬ 
ground-noise  reduction  and  mixers  for  com¬ 
bining  speech  and  music.  With  dynamic 
microphone,  instructions  and  cases  for  Re¬ 
corder,  Amplifier,  Accessories  ....  $695.00 

A  Auricon  16mm.  sound-on-film  recorders 
and  cameras  are  serving  the  Nation  s 
War  effort  with  Military  and  Govern¬ 
ment  Film  Units,  and  with  civilian  or¬ 
ganizations  producing  essential  morale 
and  industrial  training  films.  If  your 
work  in  such  fields  makes  you  eligible 
to  purchase  new  equipment,  we  invite 
you  to  let  our  engineers  show  you  how 
Auricon  portability  and  professional  per¬ 
formance  will  simplify  your  recording 
problems. 

AURICON  ^bionic*., 

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S515  SUNSET  BLVD.,  HOLLYWOOD,  CALIF. 


MANUFACTURERS  OF  SOUND-ON-FILM 
RECORDING  EQUIPMENT  SINCE  1931 


FOR  RENT 

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35MM.  SUCCESSIVE  FRAME  THREE-COLOR  CAMERAS 

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2815  W.  OLIVE  AVENUE  BURBANK,  CALIFORNIA 


American  Cinematographer  •  October,  1943  385 


Glamour  in  Industry 


“'*josih%,  dmsihkayC' 


CRAFTSMEN 

* 

*  cUisl  djoinq^ 

ih&iA.  a  JuVul— 

* 

T he  production  line  of  "GOERZ  AMER- 
¥  ICAN"  is  formed  by  skilled  men,  who 

^  through  painstaking  work  create  high- 

grade  photo-lenses  and  optical  units  for 

★  military  instruments  used  by  our  armed 

^  forces, 

on  Land — 

on  the  Sea — 

♦  in  the  Air — 

f  hese  precise  optical  units  are  of  the 

*  greatest  importance  to  our  armed 
+  forces,  for  without  accurate  military  in¬ 
struments  for  sighting,  fire  control  and 
photographic  aerial  reconnaissance  their 

-g  fighting  machinery  would  be  of  little 

value  to  them. 

* 

Optical  science  together  with  our  crafts- 
men,  doing  their  duty  on  the  job  in 
the  production  line,  will  hasten  victory. 

* 

^  ur  production  is  keyed  to  fill  the  re¬ 

quirements  of  our  Government,  and 
of  others  on  orders  with  priority  certifi- 

*  cates.  "GOERZ  AMERICAN”  lenses  for 
civilian  use  will  again  be  available  after 

¥  Victory. 

* 

To  hasten  Victory  — 

•  INVEST  IN  WAR  BONDS  • 

★ 


C.P.GOERZ  AMERICAN  OPTICAL  CO. 


Office  and  Factory 

★  317  East  34th  Street,  New  York,  14,  N.  Y.  ★ 

“~$osih£.  Cbmudam!’ 

PRECISION  OPTICS 

»  *• c  10  MnaL  1899 

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Sixth  Sense  in  Film  Mechanics 

(Continued  from  Page  361) 

hear  it!  Yes,  we  are  able  now  to  ‘hear’ 
the  sketch  of  a  landscape.  Musical  har¬ 
monies  are  based  upon  mathematical 
proportions  already  in  the  lines  of 
Michaelangelo’s  masterpieces.  Lionardo 
da  Vinci  and  all  the  great  masters  of 
the  Renaissance  used  to  express  their 
perception  of  the  inner  harmony  of  their 
works,  as  if  they  were  touching  the 
strings  of  some  unknown  musical  instru¬ 
ment.  .  .  .  The  creations  of  these  old  mas¬ 
ters  give  us  the  key  to  the  golden  door 
of  a  new  sound  world. 

“From  Egypt’s  pyramids,  obelisks, 
temples  and  statues  along  the  road  of 
the  centuries,  down  to  the  modern  struc¬ 
tures  of  Paris,  London,  Amsterdam  and 
New  York  .  .  .  sleeping  melodies,  sym¬ 
phonies,  reveal  the  secret  that  the  crea¬ 
tion  of  human  genius  can  not  only  be 
seen,  but  also  heard. 

“There  is  a  sacred  pastoral  melody  in 
the  mountain  ranges  of  California.  .  .  . 
There  is  a  song  .  .  .  not  as  the  composers 
envision  it  in  their  inspiration,  but  of 
the  music  that  the  architects,  engineers 
and  brick-layers,  so  unaware,  had  left  in 
the  lines  of  the  skyscrapers  of  Manhat¬ 
tan.  .  .  .  They  shall  be  heard.” 


Spencer  Announces  New  Test 
Chart 

Announcement  of  a  new  photographic 
test  chart  is  made  by  The  Spencer 
Company,  Mount  Vernon,  New  York. 

This  chart  measures  16x22  inches  and 
is  printed  in  the  full  color  scale  and  can 
be  used  anywhere  to  test  lenses  of  any 
type,  focal  length  or  speed,  for  any  of 
the  usual  faults.  The  chart  sets  up  tests 
for  determining  resolving  power,  color 
rendition  and  accuracy  of  speed  ratings. 
Tests  for  flatness  of  field,  linear  and 
spherical  distortion,  astigmatism  and 
other  lens  faults  can  be  made.  With 
this  chart  optimum  aperture  (best  open¬ 
ing  to  use)  may  be  found  for  each  lens; 
filter  factors  may  be  established  as  well 
as  filter  characteristics  determined.  Ef¬ 
fects  of  supplementary  lenses  can  also 
be  checked. 

A  monochrome  step-wedge  included 
on  the  chart  may  be  used  for  making 
grey  scales,  also  for  checking  exposure 
and  developers  and  for  measuring 
gamma  with  sufficient  accuracy  for 
practical  photography. 


CAMERA  SUPPLY  COMPANY 

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HOLLYWOOD  Cable  Address — Cameras  CALIFORNIA 

Efficient-Courteous  Service  New  and  Used  Equipmnt 

Bought — Sold — Rented 

Everything  Photographic  Professional  and  Amateur 


Hollywood  has  no  corner  on  beauty 
and  glamour — proof  of  that  statement 
is  contained  in  the  accompanying  picture 
of  Stella  Pecelj.  M-G-M  like  it  so  well, 
they’ve  asked  Stella  to  come  in  for  a 
screen  test! 

Stella’s  picture  inaugurated  a  new  fea¬ 
ture — the  Pin  Up  Girl — in  the  July  is¬ 
sue  of  the  Finder,  employee  magazine  of 
the  Bell  &  Howell  Co.,  makers  of  mo¬ 
tion  picture  equipment  and  optical  de¬ 
vices,  now  engaged  100  per  cent  in  war 
production.  The  magazine  is  mailed  reg¬ 
ularly  to  the  hundreds  of  Bell  &  Howell 
former  employees  who  are  now  members 
of  the  armed  forces. 

Stella  works  in  the  Purchasing  Depart¬ 
ment  at  Bell  &  Howell — one  of  the 
army  of  women  on  the  home  front,  fight¬ 
ing  the  battle  of  production — one  of  the 
women  behind  the  men  behind  the  guns. 


OUR  MEN  NEED 

*  BOOKS  * 


AU  YOU  CAN  SPARE 


October,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


Henriksen  Promoted 

Carl  Henriksen,  of  the  Bell  &  Howell 
Company,  Chicago,  Illinois,  has  been  ad¬ 
vanced  to  the  Chief  Production  Methods 
Engineer  post  at  their  Rockwell  Plant. 
Mr.  Henriksen  started  with  the  Bell  & 
Howell  Company  in  1922  as  a  toolmaker, 
in  which  capacity  he  served  for  six 
years.  A  transfer  to  the  tool  designing 
department  was  effected  in  1928,  and 
from  there  he  was  promoted  to  Chief 
Tool  Engineer  in  1932. 


RUBY  CAMERA  EXCHANGE 

Rents  . . .  Sells  .  .  .  Exchanges 

Everything  You  Need  for  the 

PRODUCTION  &  PROJECTION 

of  Motion  Pictures  Provided 
by  a  Veteran  Organization 
of  Specialists 

35  mm . 16  mm. 


IN  BUSINESS  SINCE  1910 


729  Seventh  Ave.,  New  York  City 

Cable  Address:  RUBYCAM 


TELEFILM 

I  I  N  C  □  R  P  D  RATEpj 

Direct  16  MM 

SOUND 

USED  BY: 

►  Douglas  Aircraft 

►  General  Elec.  (Welding  Series) 

►  Boeing  Aircraft 

►  North  American  Aviation 

►  U.  S.  Dept,  of  Interior 

►  U.  S.  Dept,  of  Agriculture 

►  Santa  Fe  Railroad 

►  Washington  State  Apple 

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►  Salvation  Army 

and  Many  Other s 
A  BETTER  JOB  FASTER- 

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TELEFILM 

INCORPORATED 
6039  Hollywood  Blvd.,  HOLLYWOOD,  CALIF. 
Gladstone  5748 


Cameramen  in  Uniform 

(Continued  from  Page  362) 

actual  contact  made  only  by  aircraft; 
such  was  the  case  in  the  Coral  Sea 
battle.  An  attack  is  sudden  and  short¬ 
lived,  especially  if  your  own  fighter 
planes  are  on  the  job.  An  exciting  dog¬ 
fight  is  out  of  camera  range  in  seconds. 
The  crash  of  a  Zero  is  just  a  plume 
of  smoke  on  the  horizon. 

Some  days  after  the  battle  of  the 
Coral  Sea,  the  Admiral  in  command  of 
our  Task  Force  ordered  my  ship  to  pro¬ 
ceed  to  an  Australian  port,  and  but  for 
a  bit  of  luck  I  would  have  ended  up 
there  instead  of  returning  to  Pearl  Har¬ 
bor  as  I  had  planned.  Our  ship  had  a 
badly  damaged  plane  and  a  replacement 
from  a  sister  cruiser  was  ordered.  Since 
a  boat  would  return  the  aviator  to  his 
ship  I  quickly  received  permission  to 
transfer  to  the  ship  which  would  return 
to  Pearl  Harbor,  so  with  but  minutes  to 
strike  the  cameras  and  pack,  I  found  my¬ 
self  bobbing  around  in  the  none  too  calm 
and  sub-infested  waters  of  the  South 
Pacific  in  a  boat  no  larger  than  a  cockle 
shell,  or  so  it  seemed,  loaded  to  the 
gunwales  with  the  returning  aviator,  a 
news  correspondent,  my  enlisted  man, 
the  boat  crew  and  all  our  camera  and 
personal  gear.  It  wasn’t  until  after  we 
had  been  hoisted  safely  aboard  that  I 
learned  that  just  a  few  weeks  before 
a  boat  from  this  same  ship  engaged  in 
a  similar  transfer  had  capsized,  spilling 
two  new  photographers  into  the  drink 
and  losing  their  equipment. 

On  my  return  to  Pearl  Harbor  I 
learned  that  Comdr.  John  Ford  had 
stolen  a  march  on  us  and  with  one 
photographic  specialist  had  personally 
photographed  the  Jap  bombing  raid  on 
Midway  Island.  With  his  film  and  more 
which  was  shot  by  Lieut.  Kenneth  Pier 
the  battle  of  Midway,  I  was  flown  via 
Clipper  to  Hollywood  to  prepare  for  the 
Navy  Department  a  blowup  to  35mm. 
Technicolor  of  the  16mm.  Kodachrome 
film. 

The  first  screening  of  the  16mm. 
revealed  a  very  disturbing  fault;  the 
violent  concussion  of  the  exploding 
bombs  had  caused  the  film  to  jump  out 
of  frame  in  the  camera  aperture,  but 
fortunately  it  regained  its  normal  frame 
after  a  few  feet.  At  first  the  film 
didn’t  seem  usable,  but  since  no  other 
film  of  the  explosions  were  to  be  had 
we  put  them  in  just  as  they  were  and 
the  result,  as  seen  in  the  public  release 
of  “The  Battle  of  Midway,”  caused  con¬ 
siderable  comment  by  several  Hollywood 
technicians  who  thought  we  had  done 
this  optically  just  to  produce  this  effect. 

Combat  photography  is  extremely  dif¬ 
ficult  and  trying.  The  cameraman  in 
uniform  must  be  patient,  yet  ever  alert, 
for  when  things  do  happen  they  happen 
fast  and  with  no  chance  of  a  second  take. 
You  risk  your  neck  and  at  best  the 
results  on  the  screen  are  not  likely  to 
be  as  spectacular  as  the  effects  pro¬ 
duced  every  day  in  Hollywood.  As  one 
old  time  Naval  Officer  put  it,  “You 
guys  must  be  braver  men  than  we,  or 


else  just  plain  nutz.”  I  am  sure  the 
latter  part  of  the  quotation  was  his 
opinion. 

But  photography  has  proved  its  stra¬ 
tegic  value  and  is  playing  an  ever  in¬ 
creasing  part  in  the  winning  of  the  war. 


Graflex  owners! 

.  .  .  now  you  can  enjoy  speed  flash 
photography! 

Kalart  engineers  have  perfected  a  meth¬ 
od  of  synchronizing  the  focal  plane  shut¬ 
ter  of  your  Graflex  camera  at  speeds 
above  I /500th  second.  Write  for  full 
information  and  costs. 

THE  KALART  COMPANY  INC. 

Dept.  110  Stamford,  Conn. 


8  Enlarged  T  /Z  Reduced  O 
TO  1 0  TO  O 

Geo.  W.  Colburn  Laboratory 

Special  Motion  Picture  Printing 
995  MERCHANDISE  MART 
CHICAGO 


MOVIOLA 

FILM  EDITING  E9UIPMENT 

Used  in  Every  Major  Studio 
Illustrated  Literature  on  Request 
Manufactured  by 

GENERAL  SERVICE  CORPORATION 

Moviola  Division 

1449-51  Gordon  Street  Hollywood  28,  Calif. 


FAXON  DEAN 

use. 


CAMERAS 

BLIMPS-DOIAYS 
FOR  RENT 

Day,  NOrmandie  22184 
Night,  SUnset  2-1271 

4516  Sunset  Boulevard 


American  Cinematographer  •  October,  1943  385 


Evolution  of  Transparency 

(Continued  from  Page  362) 

may  be  panned  and  tilted  with  the  free¬ 
dom  of  a  camera,  and  with  perfect  pre¬ 
cision. 

Where  hitherto  these  background  pro¬ 
jectors  have  been  at  least  as  noisy  as  the 
average  theatre  projector,  and  neces¬ 
sarily  had  to  be  operated  only  from 
within  a  bulky,  soundproof  booth  when 
shooting  sound,  the  new  Academy  Stan¬ 
dard  units  have  been  silenced  to  a  degree 
comparable  to  the  noise-output  of  a 
modern,  blimped  studio  camera.  Taking 
noise  measurements  at  the  usual  45- 
degree  positions  about  the  projector,  at 
a  distance  of  6  feet,  and  using  a  meter 
which  employs  a  40  db  ear  loudness 
weighing  characteristic,  and  calibrated 
with  respect  to  the  standard  reference 
noise  level  of  10-16  watts  per  square 
centimeter,  the  noise  level  of  one  of  these 
new  machines  is  below  34  db. 

These  are  not  mere  conveniences  in 
operation.  They  add  very  measurably 
to  the  productive  capacity  of  the  ma¬ 
chines.  With  less  convenient  types  of 
transparency  process  projectors,  with 
their  less  convenient  controls  and  the 
added  bulk  and  complication  necessitated 
by  the  big  soundproof  booths,  we  could 
not  work  particularly  fast;  two  or  three 
set-ups  of  “A-picture”  quality  were  a 
pretty  good  day’s  work.  Today,  with 
the  new  units,  we  find  we  can  work  our 
projectors  with  all  the  speed  and  facility 
of  any  camera!  Even  with  two  triple¬ 
head  projectors  and  in  Technicolor,  our 
production  record  shows  that  we  march 
along  making  from  five  to  a  dozen  or 
more  set-ups  per  day.  In  other  words, 
in  spite  of  the  added  complications  of 
triple-head  operation,  the  new  equipment 
has  enabled  us  to  turn  out  two  or  three 
times  as  many  shots  per  day  as  had 
been  previously  possible. 

Looking  toward  the  future,  I  feel  that 
the  fact  that  the  fifty  members  of  this 
committee  were  able  to  cooperate  in 
drawing  up  these  industry-wide  stand¬ 
ards,  and  that  the  executive  heads  of 
several  studios  (not  least  of  which  were 
the  officials  of  my  own  studio,  Para¬ 
mount)  had  sufficient  confidence  in  the 
judgment  of  their  technicians  to  back 
that  judgment  with  sufficiently  large  or¬ 
ders  for  the  actual  equipment  so  that  the 
manufacturer  could  find  it  economically 
possible  to  engineer  and  build  units  to 
these  high  new  standards,  is  bound  to 
prove  of  incalculable  value  to  the  in¬ 
dustry  during  the  years  that  lie  ahead. 
The  war  has  long  since  had  its  effect 
on  production.  Location  trips  are  be¬ 
coming  less  and  less  practicable.  All 
coastal  areas  are  in  restricted  combat 
zones,  and  photography — even  under 
strict  military  supervision — is  virtually 
impossible.  The  demands  of  the  military 
services  have  already  made  a  very 
noticeable  drain  on  our  trained  studio 
personnel,  and  that  drain  will  increase. 
Yet  we  must  make  pictures;  they  are 
vital  and  essential  to  the  preservation 
of  civilian  morale  in  wartime  . 


In  the  production  “For  Whom  the 
Bell  Tolls”  we  made  most  of  the  medium 
and  close-up  shots,  comprising  more 
than  286  set-ups,  most  of  which  are  in 
the  finished  release  print.  We  only  re¬ 
cently  had  five  out  of  eight  companies 
shooting  in  one  day  doing  transparen¬ 
cies,  and  utilized  altogether  eight  equip¬ 
ments,  including  two  triples. 

The  answer,  as  we  are  already  find¬ 
ing,  is  partly  to  be  found  in  constantly 
increased  use  of  transparency  process- 
shots,  and  of  a  constantly-increasing 
scope.  Speaking  with  the  utmost  con¬ 
servatism,  it  is  safe  to  say  that  the  fact 
that  we  now  have  this  perfected  equip¬ 
ment  available  in  at  least  some  studios 
has  proven  to  be  one  of  the  industry’s 
most  valuable  assets  in  continuing  pro¬ 
duction  during  the  difficult  days  we  are 
now  going  through  and  that  are  ahead 
of  us. 


CLASSIFIED  ADVERTISING 


FOR  SALE 


16  MM  SOUND  PROJECTORS:  Bell  Howell 
Model  130,  1200-watt  Auditorium,  very  fine, 
$775  :  RCA  two-case,  750-  or  1000-watt  model, 
very  fine,  $425 ;  several  other  Bell  &  Howell  and 
Ampro  machines,  write  for  literature  and 
prices.  CAMERAS :  16mm  Bolex  equipped  with 
Cooke  1"  f  :1.5,  $275.00:  8mm  Bell-Howell  Tur¬ 
ret  8,  new,  with  case,  $150.00 ;  8mm  Bell- 
Howell  Companion,  with  f  :1.9  lens  and  wind- 
bak  device,  $75.00  ;  8mm.  Bolex,  equipped  with 
Laack  f  :1.3  lens,  new,  $250.00 ;  Bell-Howell 
Model  70  with  Cooke  f  :3.5,  having  spider  tur¬ 
ret,  like  new,  $99.50.  LENSES :  6"  f  :4.5  Cooke, 
$135.00,  like  new;  3%"  f:3.3  Cooke,  like  new. 
$89.50;  %"  f  :1.24  Cooke  for  Bell-Howell  8,  new. 
$1$1.50 ;  Eastman  3"  f  :4.5  for  Cine  Special, 
$48.00  ;  Wide  Angle  lens  for  any  8mm  camera, 
with  view  finder,  $29.50;  new  1%"  f:3.5  Wol- 
lensak  with  adapter  for  all  8mm  cameras,  $45 ; 
1*4"  Dallmeyer  f:4,  new,  for  8mm  cameras, 
$42.50  ;  15mm  Dallmeyer  f  :2.9  for  16mm  cam¬ 
eras,  $65.00 ;  1"  f  :2.7  Cooke,  for  8mm  Bell- 
Howell,  $50.00.  We  have  Bell-Howell  2000'  reels, 
1600'  reels  and  other  makes  1200'  and  800'  reels 
for  immediate  delivery.  Also  a  few  view  finders 
for  8mm  and  166m6m  Bell-Howell  cameras. 
Complete  stock  of  Bell-Howell  filters,  Bell- 
Howell  3*4  and  4"  projection  lenses,  and  pro¬ 
jection  lamps  for  8mm  and  16mm  projectors 
and  slide  projectors.  Immediate  delivery  of  new 
314X4*4  Speed  Graphics,  and  many  other  fine 
still  cameras.  Write  today  for  what  you  need. 
NATIONAL  CAMERA  EXCHANGE.  Estab¬ 
lished  1914,  86  South  Sixth  Street,  Minneapolis, 
Minnesota. 


WE  BUY,  SELL  AND  RENT  PROFESSIONAL 
AND  16mm  EQUIPMENT,  NEW  AND  USED. 
WE  ARE  DISTRIBUTORS  FOR  ALL  LEAD¬ 
ING  MANUFACTURERS.  RUBY  CAMERA 
EXCHANGE,  729  Seventh  Ave.,  New  York  City. 
Established  since  1910. 


IMPROVED  DUPLEX  35MM  PRINTER,  with 
two  Bell-Howell  Cams  and  Shuttles.  Perfect 
Registration  for  Color  or  Black  and  White,  and 
process  plates.  Also  Bell-Howell  Step  Printer 
with  Registration  Pins  ideal  for  duplication. 
35  MM  HOLMES  AND  DEVRY  Portable  Sound 
Projectors.  Hollywood  Camera  Exchange,  1600 
Cahuenga,  Hollywood. 


FORD  1%  ton  Sound  Truck  equipped  with  latest 
Blue  Seal  noiseless  variable  area  recording  equip¬ 
ment,  220  volt,  3  phase  generator  for  motors, 
battery  charger,  RCA  and  W.E.  microphones. 
Complete,  ready  for  operation.  Also  stock  of 
synchronous  and  Selsyn  motors.  BLUE  SEAL 
SOUND  DEVICES,  305  East  63rd  Street,  New 
York,  N.  Y. 


FOR  SALE 


OPTICAL  SOUND  REDUCTION  PRINTER, 
COMPLETE,  $1075.00  ;  PICTURE  REDUCTION 
PRINTER,  COMPLETE,  $1250.00;  BELL- 
HOWELL  SINGLE  PHASE  SYNCHRONOUS 
CAMERA  MOTOR,  $100.00 ;  RCA  GALVA¬ 
NOMETER  STRING  VIBRATORS,  $5.00;  3 
PHASE  CAMERA  MOTORS ;  ANY  MAKE 
35  MM  OR  16  MM  SOUND  PROJECTORS, 
CAMERAS.  PRINTERS,  RECORDERS  OR 
WHAT  HAVE  YOU?:  RCA  MITCHELL, 
MENT  GLOWLAMPS,  $9.50;  DUPLEX  35MM 
STEP  PRINTER,  $425.00.  S.  O.  S.  CINEMA 
SUPPLY  CORPORATION,  NEW  YORK  18. 


DUPLEX  35MM  converted  sound  and  picture 
printer;  16mm  continuous  sound  and  picture 
printer ;  Holmes  Auditorium  16mm  sound  pro¬ 
jector  on  pedestal.  Trades  accepted.  CAMERA 
MART,  70  West  45  Street,  New  York  City. 


TRADING  OFFERS 


TARGET  PISTOLS,  revolvers,  automatics,  ac¬ 
cepted  in  trade  on  all  types  of  photographic 
equipment.  NATIONAL  CAMERA  EXCHANGE. 
Established  in  1914,  86  South  Sixth  St„  Minne¬ 
apolis,  Minnesota. 


WANTED 


WANTED  TO  BUY  FOR  CASH 
CAMERAS  AND  ACCESSORIES 
MITCHELL,  B  &  H,  EYEMO,  DEBRIE,  AKELEY 
ALSO  LABORATORY  AND  CUTTING  ROOM 
EQUIPMENT 


CAMERA  EQUIPMENT  COMPANY 
1600  BROADWAY,  NEW  YORK  CITY 
CABLE:  CINEQUIP 


WE  PAY  CASH  FOR  EVERYTHING  PHOTO¬ 
GRAPHIC.  Write  us  today.  Hollywood  Camera 
Exchange.  1600  Cahuenga  Blvd.,  Hollywood. 


WE  BUY— SELL — TRADE  ALL  MOTION  PIC¬ 
TURE  EQUIPMENT,  SOUND  AND  SILENT. 
SEND  YOUR  LIST.  THE  CAMERA  MART. 
70  WEST  45TH  ST.,  NEW  YORK  CITY. 


386  October,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


BETTER 
THAN  EVER 


The  high  quality  and  exceptional  uni¬ 
formity  of  Eastman  motion  picture 
films  not  only  have  been  maintained, 
but  have  been  improved  under  the 
tremendous  pressure  of  wartime 
production — a  real  triumph  of  preci¬ 
sion  manufacturing.  Eastman  Kodak 
Company,  Rochester,  N.  Y. 

J.  E.  BRULATOUR,  INC.,  Distributors 

Fort  Lee  Chicago  Hollywood 


EASTMAN  FILMS 


American  Cinematographer  •  October,  1943  387 


OPTIcs 

electrONics 

mechanics 


Opti-onics  is  .  .  .  optics  .  .  .  electronics  .  .  . 
mechanics!  It  is  the  employment  of  all  three  to 
accomplish  many  things  never  before  obtain¬ 
able.  It  is  the  combination  of  three  sciences  to 
bring  mankind  new  and  untold  extension  of 
the  senses  of  sight  and  hearing. 

Today,  Opti-onics  is  a  weapon  !  Tomorrow,  it 

will  he  a  servant _ to  work,  protect,  educate, 

and  entertain.  Opti-onics  at  Bell  &  Howell  is  a 
fitting  development  by  an  organization  which 


pioneered  in  the  design  and  manufacture  of 
precision  motion  picture  equipment — and  was 
the  first  to  give  fine  moving  picture  cameras  and 
projectors  to  the  amateur.  Today  Bell  &  Howell 
Filmosound  Projectors  are  used  in  training 
millions  of  fighting  men  and  Bell  &  Howell 
movie  cameras  are  preserving  the  record  of 
victory.  Bell  &  Howell  Company,  Chicago; 
New  York;  Hollywood;  Washington,  D.  C.; 
London.  Established  1907. 


What  Electronics  gets,  Bell  &  Howell  lets  you  see  .  .  .  that’s  OPTI-ONICS 


Opti-onics 

frann 


BEU  CHOWEll 


BONDS 


Copyright  1943.  Bell  &  Howell  Compitm\  Chicago 


^Trade-mark  Registered 


THE  mor/on  P/CTURE 


'cam  err  mGGRz/riE 


“7614,  *)44cte  . . . 


Films  Soldiers  Want 
Lapse-Time  for 
v£\.  the  Amateur 


November 

1943 


NOV  -9  igy 


II  wink  tells  the  story 


HOW  Du  Pont  raw  film  stands 
up  during  the  period  be¬ 
tween  manufacture  and  exposure 
is  determined  by  aging  tests  con¬ 
ducted  at  the  Du  Pont  Research 
and  Control  Laboratories. 

Here  we  see  laboratory  assist¬ 
ants  operating  a  Stroboscopic 
Photo-electric  Densitometer,  an 
apparatus  that  simplifies  and  au¬ 
tomatically  improves  the  accu¬ 
racy  of  density  measurements 
used  in  determining  speed  and 
contrast. 


An  electric  eye  controls  the 
winking  of  a  stroboscopic  lamp 
which  ic,  used  to  show  the  density 
readings  on  a  calibrated  disk  re¬ 
volving  at  high  speed.  The  disk 
appears  to  be  standing  still  be¬ 
cause  each  flash  of  the  lamp  lasts 
only  1/4, 000, 000th  of  a  second! 
Speed  of  the  procedure  is  limited 
only  by  the  operator’s  ability  to 
note  the  reading. 

In  this  manner,  the  sensito- 
metric  properties  of  Du  Pont 
“Superior”  Motion  Picture  Film 


are  constantly  checked  to  assure 
you  of  a  product  of  dependable 
uniformity. 

E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  &  Co. 
(Inc.),  Photo  Products  Department, 
Wilmington  98,  Delaware. 

In  New  York:  Empire  State  Bldg. 
In  Hollywood:  Smith  &  Aller,  Ltd. 

DU  PONT 
MOTION  PICTURE 
FILM 


(fliPDjg)  BETTER  THINGS  FOR  BETTER  LIVING  .  .  .  THROUGH  CHEMISTRY 


390  November,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


3.  The  man  and  his  weapon. 
He  fights  alongside  his  bud¬ 
dies  as  a  regular  soldier — 
and  does  the  extra  job  of 
filming  battle  actions.  Many 
of  these  men  have  long  civil¬ 
ian  experience  as  news  pho¬ 
tographers  or  in  British  and 
American  film  studios. 


YOUR  EYEMO  IS  NEEDED. ..FOR  OTHER  VICTORIES! 

Special  arrangements  are  being  made  in  our 
service  department  to  recondition  jor  Govern¬ 
ment  use  all  the  Eyemo  Cameras  we  can  obtain. 
You  may  have  exactly  the  lens  needed  for  an 
important  military  operation.  If  you  will  sell — 
fill  out  this  information  blank  and  send  it  to  us. 


1.  British  Army  cameraman  filming 
bombardment  in  Libyan  battle  zone — 
protected  from  surprise  attack  by  a 
Bren  gunner. 


MONTHS  before  Tunisia . . .  before  Casa¬ 
blanca  fell . . .  Eyemos  had  already  helped 
to  win  the  ’  DESERT  VICTORY.”  On 
earlier  battle  fronts,  Eyemos,  in  skilled 
hands,  had  filmed  the  strategies  and  tricks 
and  methods  of  the  enemy  .  .  .  had  re¬ 
corded  ways  to  meet  and  squelch  those 
tricks. 

And  in  military  camps  a  thousand  miles 
away,  grim  young  men  watched  those 
Eyemo  films,  studied  them  relentlessly 
. . .  and  learned  the  lessons  that  they  held 
. . .  and  later,  used  them  well ...  to  win  a 
vital  "DESERT  VICTORY.” 

Eyemos  filmed  "Desert  Victory,”  too 
...  in  preparation  for  future  victories  on 
other  battlefields  .  .  .  and  every  victory 
thus  will  plant  the  seeds  of  more  and 
more  .  .  .  until  the  enemy  is  finally  and 
completely  smashed.  Bell  &  Howell  Com¬ 
pany,  Chicago;  New  York;  Hollywood; 
Washington,  D.  C.;  London.  Est.  1907. 


2.  Eyemo  goes  aloft.  Camera¬ 
man  climbs  to  bird’s-eye  view 
on  observation  post  in 
Tobruk  and  hoists  his 
equipment  up  after  him.  — ^ 


All  pictures  courtesy  of  Official  British  War  Film  “Desert 
Victory,”  released  through  20th  Century- Fax. 


EYEMO  MODELS  P  AND  Q— Three-arm 
offset  turret  permits  broader  choice  of 
lenses.  Visual  prismatic  focuser  with  mag¬ 
nifier.  Equipped  for  optional  use  with 
electric  motor  and  external  film  maga¬ 
zines.  Finder  is  offset  to  avoid  interference. 
Speeds:  Model  P — 4,  8,  12,  16,  24,  and 
32  f.p.s.  Model  Q — 8,  12,  1 6,  24,  32,  and 
48  f.p.s. 


BUY  WAR  BONDS 


EYEMOS  WANTED  FOR  WAR  SERVICE 

BELL  &  HOWELL  COMPANY 

1848  Larchmont  Avenue  Date . 

Chicago,  Illinois 
Gentlemen: 

For  the  purpose  of  aiding  the  war  effort,  I  am  willing  to  sell  my 

EYEMO  Camera,  Model . Serial  No . 

It  has  been  modified  as  follows: . 


*Opti-onics  is  OPTIcs  .  .  .  electrONics  .  .  . 
mechanics.  It  is  research  and  engineering  by 
Bell  &  Howell  in  these  three  related  sciences 
to  accomplish  many  things  never  before  ob¬ 
tainable.  Today,  Opti-onics  is  a  WEAPON. 
Tomorrow,  it  will  be  a  SERVANT  ...  to  work, 
protect,  educate,  and  entertain. 

^Trade-mark  registered 


I  will  sell  this  camera  for  $ . . an  J  w!!I  pay 

transportation  and  insurance  to  Chicago. 

This  camera  is: 

. In  good  operating  condition 

. Inoperative  or  damaged  (give  details) : . 


Price  above  includes  these  lenses: 


MOTION  PICTURE  CAMERAS  AND  PROJECTORS 


PRECISION-MADE  BY 

and 


I  offer  the  following  additional  lenses  at  the  prices  shown 


here:  . 

Name . Address . . 

City  &  State . . . AC  11-43 


Do  Not  Ship  Until  You  Receive  Instructions  from  Factory 


American  Cinematographer  •  November,  1943  391 


VOL.  24 


NOVEMBER.  1943 


NO  11 


CONTENTS 

© 


Production  Still  of  the  Month . By  James  N.  Doolittle  394 

Films  Soldiers  Want . By  Pvt.  Peter  Furst  395 

Lapse-Time  for  the  Amateur . By  Cooper  Jenkins  396 

Cinematographers  Responsible  for 

Agent’s  Success . . . By  Leon  0.  Lance  398 

Invaders  Learn  to  Surrender . By  Dr.  Dimitri  Marianoff  400 

Matching  Lens  Diaphragm  Settings . 

. By  Charles  H.  Coles,  2nd  Lt.  A.C.  401 

Diary  of  a  10-Year  Movie  Maker . By  James  R.  Oswald  402 

Electronics  in  Photometry . By  G.  B.  Harrison,  Ph.D,  F.R.P.S.  404 

(Courtesy  of  Journal  of  the  British  Kinomatograph  Society) 

A.S.C.  On  Parade .  406 

Improving  Amateur  Projection  Technique . By  F.  C.  Moultrie  410 

Among  the  Movie  Clubs .  412 


© 


The  Front  Cover 

This  month’s  cover  shows  Cinematographer  Victor 
Milner,  A.S.C.,  and  Director  Cecil  B.  De  Mille  45  feet 
in  the  air  on  a  camera  boom  shooting  a  scene  for  “The 
Story  of  Dr.  Wassell."  The  scene  represents  a  section  of  the 
waterfront  at  Tjilatjap,  Java.  The  film  stars  Gary  Cooper. 


The  Staff 

• 

EDITOR 

Hal  Hall 

• 

TECHNICAL  EDITOR 
Emery  Huse.  A.S.C. 

• 

ASSOCIATE  EDITOR 
Edward  Pyle,  Jr. 

• 

WASHINGTON  STAFF  CORRESPONDENT 
Reed  N.  Haythorne.  A.S.C. 

• 

MILITARY  ADVISOR 
Col.  Nathan  Levinson 


STAFF  PHOTOGRAPHER 
Pat  Clark 

• 

ARTIST 

Alice  Van  Norman 

• 

CIRCULATION 
Marguerite  Duerr 

• 

ADVISORY  EDITORIAL  BOARD 
Fred  W.  Jackman,  A-  S.  C. 
Victor  Milner,  A.  S.  C. 

James  Van  Trees,  A.  S.  C. 
Farciot  Edouart,  A.  S.  C. 

Fred  Gage,  A.  S.  C. 

Dr.  J.  S.  Watson,  A.  S.  C. 

Dr.  L.  A.  Jones,  A.  S.  C. 

Dr.  C.  E.  K.  Mees,  A.  S.  C. 

Dr.  W.  B.  Rayton,  A.  S.  C. 

Dr.  Herbert  Meyer,  A.  S.  C. 
Dr.  V.  B.  Sease,  A.  S.  C. 


AUSTRALIAN  REPRESENTATIVE 
McGill's,  179  Elizabeth  Street,  Melbourne, 
Australian  and  New  Zealand  Agents 

• 

Published  monthly  by  A.  S.  C.  Agency,  Inc. 

Editorial  and  business  offices: 

17S2  North  Orange  Drive 
Hollywood  (Los  Angeles,  28),  California 
Telephone:  GRanite  2135 
• 

Established  1920.  Advertising  rates  on  appli¬ 
cation.  Subscriptions:  United  States  and  Pan 
American  Union,  $2.60  per  year ;  Canada,  $2.75 
per  year;  Foreign.  $3.50.  Single  copies,  25c: 
back  numbers.  30c :  foreign,  single  copies  S6e, 
back  numbers  40c.  Copyright  1943  by  A.  S.  C. 
Agency,  Inc. 

• 

Entered  as  second-class  matter  Nov.  18.  1937, 
at  the  postoffice  at  Los  Angeles.  California,  under 
the  act  of  March  3.  1879. 


392  November,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


66 


pronounced  4- del' 

THE  WORLD  OVER 

and  wherever  free  men  fly  to  victory 
ADEL  stands  for  Design  Simplicity 


4-del' 

peittM  Eenvoud  Van  Ontwcrp 


4-del' 

Seli  Banawat 


4-del' 

Khubsurat  Taswtr 


SINGAPORE 


DARWIN 


BAT AVI  A 


MAN  HA 


CALCUTTA 


4-del' 

JOHANNESBURG  '  / 

I  BOMBAY 

1  i  6 

1  cJrUv 

(\  1  V 

OELRI 


add' 

Prostota  Konstrukcsii 


MSBOURNg 


SHANGHAI 


Omsk 


SYDNEY 


CAP6TOWN 


CAIRO 


BRISBANE 


VLADIVOSTOK 


MOSCOW 


RaBAUL 


TOKYO 


4-del' 

Nugrook  Imalucktuk 

(n\  Einfeldni  Uppdratfarim 

t 


4-del' 

Designer  simple 


WEUINGTON 


WAKE  I 


4del' 


LONDON 


ACCRA 


KISKA  L 


4deF 

Hea-oa  lola  hikt  vale  no 


NOME 


:klano 


RHOENIX  t. 


FAIRBANKS 


HONOTULU 


WINNIPEG 


SAN  FRANCISCO 

A 

ADEL 

o 

tOS  ANGELES 


CHICAGO 


DALLAS 


REYKJAVIK 


FREDERIKSDAL 


BOTwOOD 

» 

HALIFAX 

o 

BOSTON 

o 

NEW  YORK  BERMUDA  |. 
9  a 

WASHINGTON 


LISBON 


AZORES  I 


CASABLANCA 


DAKAR 


4-del' 

Feito  sendlhamente 


NATAL 


BELEM 


MONTERREY 


MIAMI 

o 

HAVANA 


PORTO  RtCO  ». 


CARACAS 


w  1  1/  RIO  01  JANEIRO 

a-aei 

Hecho  senctUaraeme 


MEXICO  CITY 


PANAMA 


BOOOTA 


Design  Simplicity  sums  up  in  two  words  ADEUs 
policy  of  (l)  Reducing  to  simplest  terras  (2)  Stand¬ 
ardizing  (3)  Manufacturing  with  greatest  precision. 
The  result  of  this  policy  is  top  performance  of 
ADEL  equipment  under  every  conceivable  flying 
condition  throughout  the  globe* 


ouno 


LIMA 


BUENOS  AIRES 


SANTIAGO 


Skills  now  100%  war-directed  to  mass  production  of 
electric,  hydraulic,  hvdro-clectric  and  mechanical 
accessories  will,  after  Victory*  he  turned  to  new  and 
immeasurably  better  household,  cinematographic 
and  industrial  equipment  with  the  ADEL  Trademark. 

VICTORY.  tSAo  a  d  e  l  *  a  g  e 


i 

BUY  BONDS 
FOB  VICTORY 


'Su%6<xh6, 

'rtyuK&K- 


ENGINEERING  OfHCES  DALLAS.  TEXAS  •  DAYTON.  OHIO  •  DETROIT,  MICHIGAN  •  HAGERSTOWN.  MARYLAND  '  SEATTLE.  WASHINGTON  •  TORONTO.  CANADA 


American  Cinematographer  •  November,  1943 


PRODUCTION  STILL  OF  THE  MONTH  By  James  N.  Doolittle 

This  striking  photograph  is  a  scene  from  Three  Russian  Girls  ,  starring  Anna  Sten  and  Kent  Smith.  Miss  Sten  was  assisting  a  wounded  soldier 
(Jack  Gardner)  from  a  field  hospital  being  bombed  when  Mr.  Doolittle  got  the  shot.  "Three  Russian  Girls"  will  be  released  by  United 
Artists.  It  is  a  Gregor  Rabinovitch  production.  It  was  directed  by  Fedor  Ozep  and  Henry  Kessler.  Eugene  Frenke  was  associate  producer. 

and  John  Mescall,  A.S.C.,  photographed  it. 


394  November,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


"JilinA  £cl4ietA  Want 

By  PRIVATE  PETER  FURST,  U  S  A. 


AFOOT-WEARY  platoon  of  Medical 
Department  soldiers,  this  writer 
among  them,  was  pitching  tents 
under  the  burning  noon-day  sun  in  a 
Texas  bivouac  area.  The  men  were  carry¬ 
ing  full  field  equipment,  gas  masks,  pis¬ 
tol  belts,  water  canteens,  full  packs,  steel 
helmets.  They  had  marched  twelve  miles 
that  morning  through  dusty  terrain,  the 
sweat  from  their  bodies  forming  an  al¬ 
most  solid  cake  with  the  dirt  from  the 
road. 

Periodically,  when  the  going  got  too 
rough,  they  had  torn  off  their  helmets 
and  poured  the  warm  water  from  their 
canteens  over  their  heads.  They  hadn’t 
taken  much  of  this  water,  even  though 
they  were  thirsty,  because  before  they 
left  that  morning  at  six,  the  lieutenant 
had  put  two  salt  pills  into  their  can¬ 
teens.  Their  breakfast,  after  an  hour’s 
marching,  had  consisted  of  the  army’s 
celebrated  K  ration,  “dog  biscuits,”  a 
fruit  bar,  coffee  powder,  concentrated 
egg  yolk  and  pork,  and  the  men  weren’t 
used  to  that  kind  of  diet.  By  the  time 
they  had  finished  their  lunch,  also  K 
ration,  and  had  gone  through  an  after¬ 
noon  of  tear  gas  attacks,  litter  bearing, 
collecting  “wounded”  off  an  imaginary 
battle  field,  bandaging  “broken”  bones 
and  more  gas  attacks,  the  men  dropped 
where  they  stood  and  went  to  sleep. 
These  men,  mind  you,  weren’t  “old” 
soldiers.  They  were  green — rookies — and 
for  most  of  them  this  was  the  toughest 
day  they  had  ever  had  in  their  lives. 

But  when  someone  yelled,  “Mail,”  and 
the  truck  from  camp  drew  up  with  the 
men’s  letters  from  home,  these  soldiers 
came  alive  faster  than  on  a  Saturday 
afternoon  when  the  passes  are  given  out 
at  the  company  office  for  the  nearby 
town. 

Thus,  if  you  made  up  a  list  of  the 
things  that  go  toward  keeping  up  the 
morale  of  the  American  soldier  train¬ 
ing  for  battle,  his  mail  from  home 
would  be  way  up  at  the  top.  Second  in 
importance,  without  a  doubt,  as  a  morale 
factor,  is  entertainment.  Mail  is  the 
main  link  between  the  soldier  and  his 
home — his  family,  his  girl,  his  friends. 
Mail  and  entertainment  together  form 
the  soldier’s  link  with  the  life  he  will 
someday  return  to,  and  possibly  sooner 
than  he  expected  when  he  entered  the 
army. 

One  could  talk,  perhaps,  for  hours 
about  mail  and  what  it  means  to  the 
soldier,  how  he  feels  when  he  stands  in 
line  for  a  letter  from  home,  hearing 
everyone’s  name  called  except  his  own. 
But  this  is  a  magazine  mainly  con¬ 
cerned  with  the  motion  picture  business, 
and  therefore  this  article  will  concern 
itself  with  entertainment. 


Anyone  who  has  ever  been  to  a 
Saturday  afternoon  matinee  in  a  neigh¬ 
borhood  theater  can  easily  imagine  what 
goes  on  in  an  army  camp  theater.  The 
men  yell  and  whistle  and  laugh  like  a 
bunch  of  kids,  the  day’s  worries  and 
hard  work  forgotten  completely.  Be¬ 
cause,  on  the  screen,  before  their  eyes, 
they  see  the  things  they  dream  about. 
They  see  the  girls  they  used  to  go  out 
with — a  little  more  beautiful,  a  little 
more  sophisticated,  perhaps,  but  still 
their  girls — ,  they  see  their  home  towns 
and  themselves  walking  along  the  street. 
That  boy  on  the  bench  with  the  pretty 
blonde  in  his  arms,  that’s  you,  soldier. 
The  fellow  in  the  smart,  gray  flannels, 
that’s  you  too — or  will  be,  soon,  we  hope. 
And  in  a  war  film — that  guy  at  the  con¬ 
trols  of  a  Fortress,  that  might  have 
been  you,  soldier,  if  the  army  hadn’t 
decided  otherwise. 

Some  of  this  might  make  him,  the  in¬ 
dividual  soldier,  feel  a  little  homesick, 
but  that’s  really  the  way  he  wants  it.  He 
wants  to  be  reminded,  that’s  why  he 
talks  about  home  at  the  PX,  on  a  march, 
in  the  barracks.  That’s  why  listening 
to  some  song  on  the  radio,  or  the  men¬ 
tion  of  his  home  town,  or,  for  that 
matter,  even  of  his  home  state,  makes 
him  feel  a  little  sad  and  lonely.  Quite 
apart,  of  course,  from  all  that,  he  wants 
desperately  to  be  entertained.  He  wants, 
if  possible,  to  forget  about  the  dust 
and  dirt,  and  orders  and  reveille  and 
full  packs  on  his  aching  back. 

This  however,  should  not  be  taken  as 
an  indication  that  the  men  training  for 
the  battles  of  tomorrow  do  not  want 
to  see  a  good,  rip-roaring  war  film. 
Even  though  there  again  they  may  see 
the  dust  and  dirt  of  their  own  drill 
fields,  it  is  others  that  are  doing  the 
working  and  the  sweating,  and  it  makes 
them  feel  good.  The  civilian  movie 
makers  should  hear  the  howls  of  delight 
that  go  up  when  the  soldiers  in  the 
army  camps  see  other  soldiers  on  the 
screen  on  KP  or  drilling  on  a  dusty 
field  or  marching  along  a  road  with 
full  field  equipment. 

But  this  writer,  as  much  as  a  buck 
private  as  a  former  Hollywood  cor¬ 
respondent,  would  just  once  like  the 
movie  maker  who  put  out  those  com¬ 
edies  about  “army  life”  hear  the  yells 
and  hisses  and  cynical  laughter  in  the 
post  theaters  when  Hollywood’s  version 
of  life  in  Uncle  Sam’s  army  doesn’t 
auite  meet  with  the  men’s  approval. 
You  can’t  kid  a  soldier  about  army 
life.  Why,  he  will  ask,  doesn’t  that 
character  on  the  screen  get  a  hair  cut? 
Why,  on  this  post  he’d  be  on  KP  three 
days  straight  with  hair  like  that.  And 
how  about  that  fellow’s  sergeant’s 


stripes?  How’d  he  get  ’em  so  fast  when 
it  takes  us  GI’s  months  even  to  make 
Pfc?  And  how  is  it  they  get  furloughs 
and  passes  so  easily  and  their  girls  or 
someone  else’s  are  always  around,  and 
they  always  get  to  meet  a  pretty  skirt 
so  easily? 

And  why  the  devil  is  guard  house 
always  treated  as  a  joke  when  the  army 
authorities,  charged  with  the  job  of  mak¬ 
ing  disciplined  soldiers  out  of  easy-going 
civilians,  are  always  trying  to  impress 
us  with  the  extreme  seriousness  of 
breaking  army  rules  and  regulations?  A 
coui't-martial  isn’t  funny — it’s  darn  trag¬ 
ic,  and  might  mean  a  lot  more  than 
merely  a  few  days  or  weeks  in  the 
guard  house.  It  might  mean  a  dishon¬ 
orable  discharge,  a  ruined  life,  shame. 
There  have  been  films  in  which  every 
conceivable  army  regulation  was  broken; 
in  which  soldiers  went  AWOL;  dam¬ 
aged  government  property;  sang  and 
danced  and  generally  raised  hell  in  their 
barracks — in  other  words,  did  not  act 
like  soldiers  at  all,  but  like  a  bunch  of 
South  Sea  islanders  who  had  never 
heard  of  discipline  or  army  regulations. 

(Continued  on  Page  406) 


American  Cinematographer  •  November,  1943 


395 


Left,  the  16mm  camera,  with  extended  trigger, 
mounted  on  the  lapse-time  device,  ready  for  action. 


posure  results.  To  make  this  quick  action 
easier  a  two  inch  extension,  resembling 
a  trigger,  was  added  to  the  original 
starting  lever.  This  trigger  extends 
down  into  the  housing  that  contains  the 
timing  mechanism.  The  camera  is  se¬ 
cured  to  the  housing  with  a  tripod  screw. 
On  the  panel  of  the  housing  is  an  inex¬ 
pensive  self-starting  electric  clock  which 
governs  the  time-lapse  between  ex¬ 
posures.  This  is  done  by  a  simple  brush¬ 
ing  contact  between  the  second  hand  and 
a  contact  point  located  at  the  figure  six 
on  the  dial  of  the  clock.  Obviously,  this 
timing  arrangement  is  limited  to  action 
requiring  one  or  more  exposures  per  min¬ 
ute,  the  actual  time-lapse  being  deter¬ 
mined  by  the  number  of  contact  points 
around  the  dial. 


Lapse-Time  for  the  Amateur 

By  COOPER  JENKINS 


LAPSE-TIME  is  one  of  those  proc- 
esces  which  has  its  definite  place 
#  in  industry  but  its  counterpart  is 
sheer  enjoyment,  novelty  and  entertain¬ 
ment,  when  placed  in  the  hands  of  the 
amateur.  It  is  inexpensive  and  fascinat¬ 
ing. 

As  a  serious  amateur  interested  in 
movie  photography,  you  probably  have 
wondered  many  times  about  the  miracles 
of  lapse-time  movies  but  you  did  nothing 
about  it  because  you  thought  it  was  a 
realm  for  the  rich  guy.  That’s  where 
you  made  your  mistake. 

Sure,  there  are  several  “store-bought” 
ways  of  photographing  storm  clouds 
gathering  and  rose  buds  opening,  and 
you  are  right  in  thinking  most  of  these 
gadgets  are  for  the  higher  priced  cameras 
which  few  of  us  can  afford  .  .  .  but  there 
are  other  ways  of  shooting  lapse-time  that 
are  within  our  means. 

What  is  Lapse-Time  Photography? 
Briefly,  what  lapse-time  photography 
amounts  to  is  this  .  .  .  The  photographing 
of  an  action  which  requires  a  long  time 
to  complete,  with  a  time-lapse  between 
exposures.  Then,  when  projected  at  nor¬ 
mal  speed  the  action  will  be  stepped  up 
so  that  it  is  completed  in  a  matter  of 
seconds  on  the  screen.  It  is  the  oppo¬ 


site  of  slow  motion. 

The  length  of  this  time-interval  be¬ 
tween  exposures  is  determined  by  (1)  the 
length  of  time  required  for  the  action  lo 
be  completed,  and  (2)  the  speed  with 
which  the  action  should  take  place  when 
projected. 

To  accomplish  this,  a  lapse-time  device 
should  provide  a  mechanical  means  of 
operating  the  camera  in  such  a  way  as 
to  make  single-frame  exposure,  and  a 
method  of  pre-setting  the  time-interval 
between  exposures,  such  as  one  frame 
per  second,  one  frame  per  minute,  etc.  .  . . 
Another  feature  that  is  desirable  but 
not  entirely  necessary  is  an  electric 
switch  in  connection  with  a  photoflood 
to  provide  a  momentary  illumination  of 
the  subject  only  during  the  time  of  the 
exposure.  This  feature  is  a  life  saver  for 
photofloods  as  there  is  no  need  of  the 
light  burning  during  the  interval  be¬ 
tween  exposures. 

An  Experimental  Model  For  Shooting 
Lapse-time 

The  camera  used  by  the  author  m 
making  his  lapse-time  experiments  was 
an  Eastman,  Model  K,  which  does  not 
have  the  benefits  of  a  “single-frame  but¬ 
ton.”  However,  by  quickly  pressing  and 
releasing  the  starting  lever  a  single  ex- 


When  the  second  hand  touches  the  con¬ 
tact  point  a  small  source  of  electricity 
supplied  by  two  flashlight  batteries  closes 
a  relay  which  allows  110  volts  to  actuate 
the  solenoid.  This  relay  circuit  prevents 
the  contact  points  on  the  dial  of  the  clock 
from  burning  out. 

The  solenoid,  when  so  charged,  draws 
a  lever  past  the  long  trigger  fast  enough 
to  allow  just  one  frame  to  be  exposed. 
The  spring  motor  in  the  camera  is,  of 
course,  wound  tight  at  the  beginning  of 
each  experiment.  As  soon  as  the  lever 
leaves  its  resting  position  it  closes  a 
micro-switch  causing  a  No.  2  photoflood 
to  illuminate  the  subject  being  photo¬ 
graphed.  The  light  remains  on  only  for 
a  second  or  two  (till  the  lever  returns) 
during  which  time  the  actual  exposure 
takes  place.  (Consistant  illumination  for 
each  frame  is  extremely  important,  how¬ 
ever  when  outdoor  subjects  are  being 
shot  in  good  even  light,  there  is  no  need 
for  artificial  illumination.)  After  the  ex¬ 
posure  is  made  a  rachet  permits  the  lever 
to  slide  past  the  trigger,  back  to  its  nor¬ 
mal  position. 

Beside  the  clock  there  are  two  switches 
on  the  panel.  One  is  the  master  switch 
which  turns  on  the  entire  mechanism  in¬ 
cluding  the  clock.  The  other  switch  turns 
on  the  photoflood  only,  for  lining  up  the 
subject,  focusing  and  taking  light  read¬ 
ings.  On  the  back  of  the  housing  a  push 
button  manually  closes  the  armature  of 
the  relay  so  that  test  exposures  may  oe 
made  without  waiting  for  the  second 
hand  of  the  clock  to  get  around  to  the 
contact  position.  This  is  a  time  saver. 

The  lapse-time  model  shown  in  the 
photograph  is  capable  of  producing  many 
interesting  sequences,  but  it  is  strictly 
an  experimental  model.  A  great  im¬ 
provement  would  be  a  more  versatile 
timing  system  entirely  separate,  leaving 
only  the  actuating  mechanism  (remotely 
controlled),  connected  to  the  camera. 

Shooting  a  Typical  Lapse-time  Subject 

A  variety  of  intriging  subject  matter 
is  at  hand  for  the  lapse-time  enthusiast, 
and  most  of  these  subjects  are  outside 
the  forbidden  realm  of  restrictions  im¬ 
posed  by  wartime  regulations.  To  get  off 
to  a  good  start  let’s  photograph  the  un¬ 
folding  of  a  rose  bud  .  .  . 


396  November,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


First  thing  to  do  is  to  set  the  camera 
and  timing  device  on  a  firm  tripod,  table 
or  bench  and  secure  it  rigidly.  Line 
up  the  camera  and  focus  on  a  “stand-in” 
of  some  kind,  similar  in  size  to  the 
subject  you  will  later  set  before  the 
camera.  The  reason  for  the  “stand-in” 
is  that  when  a  fresh  bud  is  brought 
from  a  cold  refrigerator  into  a  warm 
room,  it  immediately  begins  to  unfold, 
and  if  it  is  used  to  focus  on  in  the  warm 
light  of  a  photoflood  there  is  likely  to 
be  some  action  in  that  first  minute  or 
two  that  the  camera  will  miss.  Don  t 
bring  the  bud  in  till  you  are  ready  to 
start  shooting.  The  bud  should  be  placed 
on  a  separate  table  or  stand  from  the 
camera  in  order  to  limit  its  vibration 
to  a  minimum. 

Now  comes  the  pencil  work.  You  have 
to  establish  the  amount  of  time  the 
rose  bud  will  require  to  fully  open,  and 
then  decide  how  long  you  want  this 
action  to  take  when  you  project  it  on 
the  screen  at  the  rate  of  sixteen,  (or 
twenty-four)  frames  per  second. 

For  example,  say  it  takes  a  tight  bud 
about  ten  hours  to  open.  If  you  shoot 
one  frame  per  minute  for  ten  hours  you 
will  expose  600  frames,  or  fifteen  feet 
of  film,  which  at  normal  silent  projection 
speed  can  be  screened  in  about  thirty- 
seven  seconds.  If  you  want  the  action 
faster  shoot  one  frame  every  two  min¬ 
utes  and  see  the  same  action  in  about 
eighteen  seconds.  A  flexible  timing  de¬ 
vice  provides  a  great  variety  of  pos¬ 
sibilities. 

Now  that  all  calculations  have  been 
made  and  the  time-interval  determined, 
bring  in  the  rose  bud  (in  water,  of 
course,)  and  place  it  in  the  exact  posi¬ 
tion  of  the  “stand-in,”  take  the  usual 
meter  reading  and  turn  on  the  switch 
for  the  mechanism  to  go  to  work.  That 
is  all  you  have  to  do  till  the  flower  has 
fin;shed  its  performance. 

Another  subject  inviting  to  the  lapse¬ 
time  photographer  is  the  formation  of 
storm  clouds,  and  best  among  these  are 
the  thunderheads.  With  the  naked  eye 


Upper  left,  "To  make  this  action  easier  a  two-inch 
extension,  resembling  a  trigger,  was  added  to  the 
original  starting  lever."  Upper  right,  interior  of 
experimental  lapse-time  model  showing  relative  posi¬ 
tion  of  solenoid,  lever,  trigger  and  clock.  Right, 
Fig.  I  shows  trigger,  lever  and  solenoid  armature  in 
resting  position  between  exposures.  Micro-switch  is 
in  "off"  position.  Fig.  2  shows  position  of  trigger  and 
lever  with  solenoid  armature  at  extreme  end  of  its 
pull.  Micro-switch  is  now  "on"  and  exposure  is 
being  made.  Fig.  3  shows  armature  and  lever  re¬ 
turning  to  normal  resting  position.  Micro-switch  is 
about  to  go  "off".  Note  ratchet  action  at  end  of 
lever  allowing  lever  to  slide  past  trigger. 

it  is  possible  to  observe  the  turbulent 
action  taking  place  within  the  cloud  but 
it  is  infinitely  more  impressive  when 
the  action  has  been  stepped  up  to  four 
times  its  normal  speed.  This  action  is 
much  faster  than  plant  growth  and  must 
be  photographed  with  considerably  less 
time-lapse  between  exposure.  Most  cloud 
formations  are  best  shot  at  from  one  to 
four  frames  per  second  .  .  .  and  will 
produce  amazing  i-esults  on  the  screen. 

Some  of  the  simplest  things  produce 
unexpected  but  welcome  results.  The 
writer  once  photographed  a  burning 
cigarette  that  was  supposedly  placed  on 
a  living-room  mantel  and  forgotten.  This 
action  took  about  eight  minutes  and  the 
time-lapse  between  frames  was  three  sec¬ 
onds.  Shot  in  Kodachrome,  it  produced 
some  unexpected  results  in  that  it  showed 
the  resin  melting  around  the  cigarette 
as  it  charred  its  way  along  the  pine 
board. 

An  easy  subject  on  which  to  test  your 
equipment  right  in  your  own  living  room 
or  work  shop  is  an  old  fashion  tallow 
candle.  Secure  the  base  of  it  into  the 
neck  of  a  bottle  and  light  the  candle 
allowing  the  tallow  to  drip  down  the 
sides  of  the  candle  and  bottle  till  the 
candle  is  expired.  When  this  film  is 
projected  it  will  show  the  candle  rapidly 
becoming  shorter  as  the  melted  tallow 
builds  its  shapeless  formations.  This  nat¬ 
ural  action  is  interesting  to  observe  in 
reality  but  when  stepped  up  by  the 
lapse-time  camera  it  becomes  extremely 
fascinating. 

(Continued  on  Page  415) 


Fig.  3 


American  Cinematographer  •  November,  1943  397 


At  left  is  Early  Cantrell,  discovered  by  the  author  while  doing  an 
outstanding  role  at  the  Pasadena  Playhouse.  She  has  dark  auburn 
hair,  and  will  soon  be  given  a  screen  test.  Lance  expects  her  to 
get  a  contract  for  he  says  he  knows  that  any  of  Hollywood's 
Cinematographers  will  successfully  transfer  her  ability,  beauty  and 
peronal  charm  to  the  screen.  Above  is  the  author. 


Cinematographer^  KeAponMe 
Jor  Agent*  £ucceAA 

By  LEON  0.  LANCE 


MY  business  is  finding  new  talent 
for  the  screen,  and  then  present¬ 
ing  that  talent  to  motion  pic¬ 
ture  producers.  I  also  represent  players 
who  are  already  recognized.  I’m  what 
Hollywood  calls  “an  agent.” 

There  are  a  lot  of  us  agents  in  Holly¬ 
wood,  because  it  is  practically  impos¬ 
sible  for  a  player  to  obtain  a  role  or  a 
contract  with  a  motion  picture  company 
unless  he  or  she  has  an  agent  to  speak 
for  him  or  her.  A  player  can’t  very  well 
walk  into  a  producer’s  office  and  brag 
about  himself;  tell  what  a  great  actor 
he  is.  Likewise,  a  new  player  who  has 
never  faced  a  camera  can’t  tell  a  pro¬ 
ducer  what  a  great  future  he  has,  and 
that  the  producer  is  missing  a  great  bet 
if  he  doesn’t  give  him  a  screen  test.  So, 
that’s  why  the  agents  are  necessary. 
And  speaking  of  screen  tests,  that’s 


why  I  am  writing  this  article  for  the 
Cinematographer.  I,  as  a  Hollywood 
agent,  want  to  tell  the  world  that  Holly¬ 
wood’s  top  cameramen  are  really  re¬ 
sponsible  for  ninety  per  cent  of  the  suc¬ 
cess  of  any  Hollywood  agent.  In  the 
hands  of  the  cinematographers  lies  the 
success  or  failure  of  any  agent  in  put¬ 
ting  a  new  face  on  the  screen,  for  it  is 
these  men  who  make  the  tests  which 
generally  decide  whether  or  not  the  new 
player  gets  a  conti-act  or  a  role  in  a 
picture. 

I  don’t  believe  that  agents  a  a  whole 
realize  what  they  owe  the  cameramen. 
Most  agents,  after  they  have  secured 
a  term  contract  for  a  new  discovery, 
go  back  to  their  offices  with  smiles  of 
self-satisfaction  on  their  faces  and  tell 
their  friends,  “Well,  I  put  over  a  big 
deal  today.  I  sold  a  brand  new  girl  to 


such  and  such  a  studio  on  a  seven-year 
contract.” 

What  the  agent  should  do  is  look  up 
the  cameraman  who  photographed  the 
test  of  his  discovery  and  say,  “Buddy, 
I  can’t  tell  you  how  much  I  appreciate 
the  great  work  you  did  in  testing  my 
client.  Your  work  got  that  young  girl 
a  seven-year  contract,  and  I’ll  get  ten 
per  cent  of  her  earnings  during  the  life 
of  that  contract.  But  you,  not  I,  are 
responsible  for  that  contract,  Buddy. 
Sure,  I  found  the  girl  and  had  faith  in 
her  ability,  but  if  you  hadn’t  put  her 
on  the  screen  in  the  way  you  did  she 
would  be  taking  a  train  back  to  Podunk 
tomorrow.” 

I,  in  particular,  am  extremely  grate¬ 
ful  to  the  Hollywood  cameramen,  for 
they  have  meant  a  great  deal  to  me 
inasmuch  as  I  am  constantly  seeking 
new  faces.  In  fact,  I  get  more  satis¬ 
faction  out  of  bringing  new  personali¬ 
ties  to  the  screen  than  I  do  out  of  just 
getting  more  jobs  for  established  play¬ 
ers.  Consequently,  I  therefore  lean  more 
heavily  on  the  art  of  the  cinematogra¬ 
phers  than  if  I  didn’t  bother  to  bring 
out  new  talent.  Let  me  say  here  and 
now  that  the  cameramen  have  never  let 
me  down.  Whenever  I  had  a  new  player 
whom  I  felt  had  ability  and  secured  her 
a  screen  test,  that  test  has  always  been 
beautiful. 


398  November,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


Testing  a  newcomer  who  has  never 
been  in  front  of  a  camera  before  is  a 
bit  more  difficult  than  photographing  a 
player  who  is  camera  wise.  The  new¬ 
comer  naturally  is  nervous,  doesn’t  know 
just  what  she  should  do  with  her  hands, 
how  she  should  walk  or  turn  her  head. 
She  has  heard  so  much  about  screen 
technique  that  she  is  sure  she  is  doing 
the  wrong  thing.  So,  if  he  wants  to  do 
a  good  job,  the  cameraman  has  to  be 
doubly  careful  in  lighting  and  other  de¬ 
tails.  In  other  words,  he  must  have  the 
desire  to  make  this  new  girl  look  her 
best.  I  find  that  cameramen  are  all 
anxious  to  see  a  newcomer  make  good, 
and  they  really  give  out  to  give  the 
newcomer  a  chance.  I  have  also  seen 
cameramen  take  a  new  player  aside  and 
quietly  talk  to  her  until  her  nervous¬ 
ness  disappeared. 

After  a  player  is  signed  to  a  con¬ 
tract  the  agent  still  depends  upon  the 
cameraman  for  her  continued  success. 
A  good  screen  test  will  get  a  new  player 
a  job,  but  it  is  still  the  cameraman  who 
has  a  great  deal  to  do  with  her  keeping 
that  job,  for  the  girl  must  continue  to 
look  glamorous  in  all  her  pictures.  It  is 
the  cameraman  who  attends  to  that 
while  the  agent  smiles  and  collects  his 
commissions  and  forgets  all  about  the 
man  whose  art  means  so  much  to  the 
player’s  and  the  agent’s  success. 

Many  have  been  the  women  who  can 
thank  the  cameramen  for  their  glamour. 
There  are  many  feminine  stars  who  in 
real  life  do  not  look  glamorous,  but  on 
the  screen  they  are  simply  gorgeous, 


due  to  the  ability  of  a  cam¬ 
eraman  to  devise  the  light¬ 
ing  that  will  hide  their  de¬ 
fects  and  bring  out  the 
charm  of  the  actress.  That 
is  why  some  actresses  insist 
on  having  the  same  camera¬ 
man  photograph  them  in 
every  picture  in  which  they 
appear.  Age  creeps  up  on 
actresses  just  the  same  as  on 
women  in  any  other  walk  of 
life,  but  Hollywood’s  cam¬ 
eramen  have  a  way  of  keep¬ 
ing  the  stars  looking  young. 

And  don’t  think  this  doesn’t 
mean  something  to  the 
agents.  If  an  agent  has  a  . 
star  getting  $5000  a  week 
that  means  $500  a  week 
income  for  that  agent. 

Shouldn’t  he  be  grateful  to' 
a  cameraman  who  by  his 
lighting  skill  can  prolong 
the  screen  life  of  tha 
client  by  many  years?  Whe 
a  double  chin  begins  to  be  visible  on  a 
leading  man,  and  the  cameraman  can 
continue  to  wipe  it  out  by  his  lighting, 
shouldn’t  that  agent  feel  that  his  suc¬ 
cess  lies  in  the  hands  of  the  cameraman? 

Only  recently  a  former  feminine  star 
came  back  to  films  after  many  years  ab- 

(Continued  on  Page  417) 


Upper  left  is  Laurie  Hayden,  another  Lance  discovery. 
She,  too,  will  soon  face  the  cameras  for  a  screen 
test,  and  Lance  says  he  has  faith  in  both  her  and  the 
cameramen,  so  expects  her  to  get  a  contract.  Upper 
right  is  red-headed  Peggy  O'Neill,  under  contract 
to  Charles  R.  Rogers.  Lance  discovered  her,  but 
Rogers  didn't  bother  with  a  test  for  he  said  he  has 
enough  faith  in  Hollywood's  Cinematographers  to 
know  they'll  keep  her  glamorous.  Lower  right  is 
Jeanne  Newport,  also  under  contract  to  Rogers.  She 
is  said  to  have  a  sensational  singing  voice,  but  not 
until  she  had  been  screen  tested  was  she  signed.  She 
is  grateful  to  the  cameraman  who  photographed  her. 


American  Cinematographer  •  November,  1943 


399 


HaforA  /earn  tc  ^urtender 

By  DR.  DIMITRI  MARIANOFF 


THE  enormous  power  of  the  Ameri¬ 
can  film  industry  has  been  al¬ 
most  entirely  unhampered  by  this 
war.  Entertainment  pictures  of  all  kinds, 
big  propaganda  features,  training  and 
documentary  films  are  a  part  of  the  war 
effort,  a  part  of  our  constructive  policy 
down  the  entire  line  of  our  national  cul¬ 
ture.  It  is  remarkable  how  at  this  time 
of  war,  which  takes  all  our  attention 
and  strength  in  the  struggle  against 
the  diabolic  aims  of  the  enemy  to  de¬ 
stroy  human  value,  we  hold  safe  our 
spiritual  Front  for  farther  development 
of  our  science,  technique  and  art. 

Although  the  European  countries  have 
always  worked  toward  the  development 
and  growth  of  their  own  film  produc¬ 
tions,  still  they  have  shown  enthusiasm 
and  respect  for  ours — the  pictures  from 
Hollywood.  True,  we  also  have  applauded 
many  European  motion  pictures,  and  al¬ 
ready  after  War  I  we  used  to  invite 
various  great  actors  and  directors  of 
Europe  to  our  film  capital. 

An  amazing  thing  happened  after  the 
war.  America,  master  of  a  great  tech¬ 
nical  event  was  praising  European  pic¬ 
tures;  good  natured  Americans  were  sin¬ 
cere  in  their  nearly  childish  enthusiasm 
for  things  that  appealed  to  them.  Euro¬ 
pean  producers  and  directors  quickly  re¬ 
sponded  to  this  American  sentiment,  and 
they,  as  many  people  believed,  “invaded” 
American  film  production.  But  only  the 
near-sighted  were  those  who  took  that 
for  granted.  The  fact  is  that  in  the 
Twenties,  German,  Russian,  Swedish, 
Austrian  and  other  producers  took  the 
lead  and  established  themselves  as  out¬ 
standing  and  successful  American  film¬ 
makers.  Yes,  American — not  European. 
They  have  lost  their  European  attitude 
and  have  “surrendered”  to  the  American 
way  of  life. 

We  witnessed  the  greatness  of  Ameri¬ 
can  spirit  that  generously  gave  place  to 
those  who  wanted  to  create  on  our  soil. 
Many  of  them  have  been  with  us  now 
for  years.  They  have  adopted  our  at¬ 
titude  toward  life,  creativeness,  ideals 
and  traditions,  and  we  have  gladly 
“naturalized”  them.  If  their  work  were 
an  example  of  foreign  culture  only,  they 
would  remain  strange  to  us  and  isolated, 
but  they  have  lost  their  foreign  color¬ 
ing  and  became  members  of  our  Ameri¬ 
can  family. 

German  pictures  made  up  the  ma¬ 
jority  of  the  European  films  that  came 
to  America  after  the  World  War.  Ger¬ 
many  tried  to  impress  all  the  countries 
with  her  “high”  culture,  to  break  tne 
cold-shoulder-feeling  of  their  former  en¬ 
emies,  and  sent  her  best  films  to  us. 
Seeing  the  pictures  of  Lubitsch,  Muraau, 
Dupont,  Von  Stroheim  and  others,  we 


were  enthusiastic  about  their  great 
artistic  and  technical  effect.  Those  pic¬ 
tures  made  the  eyes  of  our  American 
directors  turn  toward  reality,  reminded 
them  of  what  glorious  a  medium  they 
had  in  their  hands,  and  what  they  could 
do  with  it. 

Then  came  fine  French  pictures  such 
as  “J’accuse”  and  “Passion  of  Joan  of 
Arc.”  Russia  started  sending  her  pro¬ 
found  and  brilliant  productions.  From 
1919  to  1929  there  was  the  gigantic 
boom  in  American  life  and  American  mo¬ 
tion  pictures  reflected  it.  But  reason¬ 
able  voices  began  to  protest  to  the  con¬ 
tents  of  our  pictures.  Some  of  them 
succeeded  and  influenced  a  new  type  of 
film,  but  only  in  1929  with  stock  crash 
and  depression,  when  millions  of  people 
became  victims  of  closed  banks  came  a 
new  era.  People  awakened  to  their 
senses. 

After  an  era  of  fundamental  influ¬ 
ence  by  European  productions,  and  ad¬ 
miration  for  Continental  tendencies,  the 
American  industry  steadily  began  to 
search  for  its  new  way  back  to  common 
American  sense. 

Foreign  stimuli,  such  as  underlining  of 
lust,  greed  for  luxury,  adoration  of 
gangster  heroism  began  to  vanish  from 
the  American  screen.  This  nation’s  sound 
thinking  reared  up  against  very  obvious 
germs  of  poisonous  intoxication — a  most 
natural  result  of  its  overfeeding  with 
un-American  doctrines. 

Now  what  about  European  films  to¬ 
day?  They  have  lost  their  effect  upon 
Hollywood  movie  makers,  because  of  the 
great  difference  in  our  attitude,  meth¬ 
ods  and  principles. 

Technically,  we,  like  the  Russians,  un¬ 
derstand  that  cinema  must  be  absolutely 
independent  of  the  stage;  while  Euro¬ 
pean  films  to  this  day  still  are  influenced 
by  the  stage.  The  famous  actors  and 
directors  of  the  European  theatre  are 
also  creators  of  films.  They  seem  to 
think  that  cinema  must  borrow  from 
the  stage  its  basic  principle  of  acting. 
Here,  we  know  from  expexdence  that 
sometimes  the  best  stage  actors  are  help¬ 
less  before  the  camera,  and  most  suc¬ 
cessful  playwrights  are  of  no  use  in 
writing  a  film  story.  We  make  so  many 
pictures  that  in  search  for  a  new  film 
theme,  we  do  take  popular  plays  and 
novels  but  we  take  their  theme  and 
melt  and  mould  it  into  the  plot  of  a 
screenplay. 

It  is  generally  a  mistake  to  compare 
theatre  with  film  or  to  try  to  expose 
them  as  rivals.  The  evidence  that  the 
theatre  received  a  mortal  blow  with 
the  maturing  of  the  cinema,  is  not  a 
sufficient  reason  for  the  stage  to  die. 
These  two  arts  are  of  a  divergent  na¬ 
ture;  cinema  as  a  collective  art  includes 


the  actor  but  gives  him  a  new  form,  a 
new  meaning  of  expression.  Both  arts 
have  their  right  of  existence  without 
rivalry.  The  film  actor  must  be  truth¬ 
ful,  and  natural  before  the  lens  of  the 
camera,  whose  angles,  distance,  are  steps 
for  gradual  building  up  of  a  situation. 
For  the  actor  of  the  theatre  the  dif¬ 
ferent  angles  of  the  camera  are  only 
technical  moments. 

The  sudden  revolution  of  sound  film 
production,  its  amazing  effect  upon  mil¬ 
lions  of  movie-goers,  manifested  itself 
in  a  way  definitely  advantageous  to  cin¬ 
ema  art.  Theatre  again  tried  to  in¬ 
fluence  the  screen.  The  first  prevail¬ 
ing  opinion  was  that  after  the  birth  of 
film  sound  the  stage  would  encroach 
upon  movie  art  like  a  polyp  and  throt¬ 
tle  its  right  of  self-existence.  But  In 
Hollywood,  sound  film  proved  to  be  a 
phoenix  in  art.  It  demanded  new  cre¬ 
ators,  and — most  astounding — it  created 
them  by  itself.  American  movie  pro¬ 
duction  entered  a  very  definite  independ¬ 
ent  artistic  road. 

European  pictures  that  are  made  on 
a  high  artistic  standard,  even  too  much 
so,  often  bring  naked  realism  to  the 
screen;  sexual  feelings  are  demonstrated 
to  the  extreme.  In  their  mysteries  and 
dramas,  evil  wins  without  being  pun¬ 
ished.  These  things  are  strange  to  us. 
Though  we  have  no  specific  rules  about 
how  much  we  can  or  cannot  show  or 
express,  there  exists  an  unspoken  un¬ 
derstanding  between  our  cinema  industry 
and  our  audience.  We  also  have  an 
ideological  difference  in  our  conception 
of  themes  for  the  screen.  Our  phil¬ 
osophy  is  to  destroy  evil,  and  see  good 
triumph. 

The  most  outstanding,  strikingly  evi¬ 
dent  difference  between  European  and 
American  cinema  art  is  the  way  the 
screen  actor  manifests  his  performance. 
In  Europe  he  plays  his  roles  with  ail 

(Continued  on  Page  419) 


400 


November,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


MATCHING  LENS 
DIAPHRAGM  SETTINGS 

By  CHARLES  H.  COLES,  2nd  Lieut.,  A.C. 


EXPOSURE  is  defined  as  the  product 
of  the  intensity  and  time  that  light 
operates  upon  a  sensitive  surface. 
The  intensity  of  light  that  strikes  a  film 
is  affected  strongly  by  the  lens  through 
which  all  of  it  must  pass.  The  combina¬ 
tion  of  the  diaphragm,  focal  length,  and 
transparency  of  the  lens  controls  the 
total  amount  of  light  that  strikes  the 
film. 

The  diaphragm  is  usually  quite  accu¬ 
rately  set  at  the  factory;  so,  too,  is  the 
focal  length  which  is  built  into  the  lens 
during  manufacture. 

The  only  remaining  unknown  is  the 
transparency,  or,  as  it  is  more  accurately 
known,  the  transmission  of  the  lens.  This 
transmission  is  dependent  upon  the  num¬ 
ber  of  lens  elements  contained  in  an  ob¬ 
jective  and  the  degree  of  discoloration 
of  the  cement  and  lens  surfaces.  This 
discoloration  may  increase  with  age,  so  it 
is  a  factor  that  varies  gradually  with 
time.  A  lens  that  has  its  elements  treated 
with  the  anti-reflection  coating  may  have 
a  lens  transmission  as  high  as  95%.  An 
untreated  lens  may  drop  as  low  as  35% 
for  an  old,  multi-element,  discolored  ob¬ 
jective.  This  represents  a  range  of  over 
one  whole  stop  in  the  diaphragm  setting. 

Errors  in  marking  diaphragm  indexes 
are  very  infrequent  but  another  possible 
source  of  trouble.  All  in  all,  a  method 
of  testing  the  lens  transmissions  is  a 
valuable  one,  particularly  where  many 
lenses  are  being  used  in  one  organiza¬ 
tion  and  the  results  must  be  uniform. 

Theory 

If  a  lens  is  directed  at  a  uniformly 
illuminated  screen  whose  area  is  greater 
than  the  angular  field  covered  by  the 


objective,  the  light  will  be  fairly  evenly 
distributed  over  the  film  aperture.  The 
intensity  of  this  light  at  the  film  plane 
will  be  controlled  by  the  intensity  of  the 
source,  the  diaphragm,  and  the  lens 
transmission.  The  light  source,  once  a 
convenient  one  is  selected,  can  be  kept 
sufficiently  constant  for  our  purposes. 
The  lens  transmission  remains  constant 
over  a  considerable  period  of  time,  leav¬ 
ing  the  diaphragm  as  the  only  variable 
factor. 

Measuring  Apparatus 

To  aid  in  standardizing  the  diaphragm 
markings  of  a  group  of  lenses,  a  lens 
transmission  measuring  device  was  con¬ 
structed  as  shown  in  the  photographs. 
It  consists  of  a  tube  mounted  on  a 
pedestal.  Into  this  tube,  standard 
Mitchell  lenses  fit  snugly,  held  in  place 
with  a  set  screw.  At  the  focal  distance 
behind  the  lens,  an  aperture  is  placed 
to  restrict  the  field  of  the  lens  to  a 
given  solid  angle. 

In  the  first  model  of  this  device,  the 
aperture  was  rectangular,  the  size  of  a 
motion  picture  frame.  This  shape  proved 
impractical  because  of  the  falling  off 
of  light  near  the  edges  of  the  picture 
by  the  vignetting  action  of  the  lens 
under  test.  A  circular  aperture  %  inch 
in  diameter  was  substituted  for  the  rec¬ 
tangular  opening  to  produce  a  more  uni¬ 
form  response. 

For  use  with  wide-angle  lenses  where 
the  falling  off  of  light  at  the  edges  is 
more  severe,  a  smaller  diaphragm,  %  inch 
diameter,  was  made.  Being  one-half  the 
diameter  of  the  other  aperture,  it  is  one- 
quarter  of  the  area.  Readings  made  with 
this  diaphragm  in  place  must  be  multi- 


Upper  left,  the  author  using  tester.  Top  right,  the 
tester  in  operation.  Above,  the  lens,  tester  and  meter. 


plied  by  4  to  make  them  comparable 
with  observations  made  with  the  %  inch 
diaphragm. 

The  other  end  of  the  horizontal  tube 
has  a  clip  to  hold  a  Weston  Master  Expo¬ 
sure  Meter  with  the  low  reading  door 
open.  Any  exposure  meter  may  be  used 
with  equally  effective  results.  The  only 
reason  for  using  the  Weston  was  that  it 
was  on  hand  at  the  time  of  design. 

The  light  source  is  a  Dinky  Inky 
equipped  with  a  piece  of  flashed  opal 
glass  over  the  front  of  the  light.  The 
opal  glass  should  be  placed  fairly  close 
to  the  front  of  the  lens  under  test — 
about  two  or  three  inches  away. 

Balancing  Lenses 

The  first  requirement  of  any  measur¬ 
ing  system  is  a  standard  to  which  un¬ 
known  units  may  be  compared.  In  the 
case  of  lenses,  a  relatively  new  2  inch 
objective  should  be  selected  that  hasn’t 
had  a  chance  to  change  with  age  as  yet. 

The  lens  is  placed  in  the  tube,  and 
the  aperture  set  to  the  next  to  the  larg¬ 
est  diameter,  say  //2.8.  Make  this  the 
standard  aperture.  Now  adjust  the  Dinky 
Inky  focusing  lever  until  the  Weston 
Meter  reads  25.  Now  set  the  diaphragm 
of  the  lens  to  its  lowest  figure  and  read 
the  meter.  The  readings  will  be  directly 
proportional  to  the  light  passing  through 
the  lens.  Each  diaphragm  stop  down 

(Continued  on  Page  413) 


American  Cinematographer  •  November,  1943  401 


DIARY  OF  A 
10-YEAR  MOVIE  MAKER 

By  JAMES  R.  OSWOLD 


DEAR  DIARY :  This  is  my  tenth 
anniversary  .  .  .  tenth  anniver¬ 
sary  as  a  movie  maker,  I  mean. 
Many  things,  both  encouraging  and  dis¬ 
couraging,  have  happened  during  all 
this  time,  but  I  still  keep  grinding  away. 
What  on  earth  ever  possessed  me  to 
take  up  movie  making  in  the  first  place 
.  .  .  what’s  there  about  this  business 
that  continually  holds  my  attention  ? 
Let’s  turn  back  the  pages  of  time  and 
SEE  what  it’s  all  about  .  .  .  shall  we? 

1933 

I  can’t  resist  any  longer!  That  movie 
camera  advertised  in  the  newspaper  is 
SUCH  a  bargain,  even  if  it  isn’t  a  very 
elaborate  outfit.  Besides,  I’ve  always 
dreamed  of  taking  my  own  movies  and 
now  is  my  chance.  I’ll  try  my  luck! 

Anxious  to  see  just  what  this  camera 
will  do,  so  my  first  film  will  be  sort  of  a 
test  reel  to  acquaint  myself  with  its 
operation.  (Lucky  thing  the  Century  of 
Progress  Exposition  is  going  on  here 
in  Chicago  .  .  .  will  give  me  a  wonderful 
opportunity  to  take  some  historic  sou¬ 
venir  shots  later  on.)  Can’t  wait  to  see 
that  first  reel  now,  though. 

What’s  this?  Back  from  the  process¬ 
ing  laboratory  already?  Think  I’ll  take 
a  peek  at  those  opening  scenes  before 
I  set  up  the  projector  .  .  .  the  suspense 
is  terrible.  Hmmm,  not  bad;  not  bad  at 


all,  for  a  beginner!  Better  SHOW  the 
film  now  before  the  reel  is  all  unwound. 

Exposures  about  75  per  cent  perfect, 
thanks  to  careful  folio-wing  of  the  guide 
in  my  manual.  Must  remember,  though, 
to  use  a  tripod  for  ALL  scenes  and  to 
avoid  panning.  Think  I’m  going  to  like 
this  game! 

1934 

The  exposure  problem  is  pretty  well 
licked  now,  and  the  pictures  are  rock¬ 
steady  on  the  screen.  Any  motion  is 
furnished  by  the  “actors”  and  not  by 
the  camera.  I  must  try,  however,  to 
build  up  some  kind  of  a  story  telling 
sequence  in  the  future  .  .  .  the  pictures 
are  MUCH  more  enjoyable  that  way. 
More  frequent  use  of  closeups  is  advis¬ 
able  too,  because  everyone  likes  to  see 
things  at  close  range. 

My  400-foot  vacation  film  is  one  of 
the  most  painstaking  things  I’ve  yet 
attempted.  The  importance  of  changing 
camera  angles  often  is  brought  out 
here.  All  in  all,  it’s  a  good  reel.  With 
a  little  editing  here  and  there  and  per¬ 
haps  a  title  or  two,  it  can  be  made  into 
a  really  nice  movie.  At  any  rate  I’m 
steadily  improving.  It  takes  a  little 
experience  to  learn  just  how  long  each 
scene  should  appear  on  the  screen, 
though.  Filters  certainly  would  have 
helped  those  scenes  with  the  blank  sky! 


The  series  of  illustrations  on  this  and  opposite  page 
are  taken  from  film  shot  by  the  author  starting  in 
1933  and  up  to  now.  Above  is  from  a  1942  film.  Left 
is  from  one  of  his  films  of  this  year. 

1935 

The  Eastman  Kodak  Company  has 
just  introduced  a  new  color  film  to  the 
16mm.  field  which  they  call  Kodachrome. 
It’s  supposed  to  be  really  sensational 
...  no  special  filters  or  other  attach¬ 
ments  are  required  for  either  the  cam¬ 
era  or  projector.  I  want  to  be  among 
the  first  to  try  a  roll,  but  it  sure  will 
put  an  awful  hole  in  the  pocketbook  .  .  . 
costs  twice  as  much  as  the  black  and 
white  film  I’m  accustomed  to  using! 

It  seems  there’s  a  new  lighting  and 
exposure  problem  encountered  here.  Only 
flat  lighting  with  the  sun  directly  be¬ 
hind  the  camera  is  recommended  be¬ 
cause,  unlike  with  black  and  white  film, 
contrast  is  furnished  by  COLOR  rather 
than  by  lights  and  shadows.  A  some¬ 
what  larger  lens  stop  is  necessary,  too. 

I  guess  I  under-exposed  a  good  part 
of  this  reel.  But  the  naturalness  of  the 
colors  .  .  .  it’s  remarkable!  A  black  and 
white  film  looks  sick  by  comparison,  so 
without  a  doubt  there’s  a  whole  new 
broad  horizon  beginning  to  open  up  for 
the  movie  maker,  with  possibilities  un¬ 
limited  and  realness  undreamed  of. 

1936 

By  this  time  my  friends  and  relatives 
are  commencing  to  take  an  interest  in 
my  movies.  They  see  something  rather 
fascinating  about  this  hobby  of  mine, 
especially  now  that  I’ve  included  them  in 
some  of  my  scenes.  They  look  forward 
to  the  return  of  the  films  from  the  proc¬ 
essing  station,  almost  as  eagerly  as  I  do. 

Filming  is  going  on  as  usual,  the 
movie  camera  always  being  an  essen¬ 
tial  part  of  my  vacation  luggage,  of 
course.  Both  the  camera  and  myself  get 
our  biggest  work-out  on  our  trip  to  the 
North  Woods. 

Projection,  too,  is  becoming  quite  an 
art  with  me.  I’ve  learned  the  impor¬ 
tance  of  smooth  flowing  presentation, 
especially  when  guests  are  invited  .  .  . 
my  films  are  always  rewound,  ready  to 
go  .  .  .  the  best  reels  are  saved,  ’till  the 
last  .  .  .  and  threading  is  done  quickly 
and  accurately. 

Older  reels  are  more  valuable  than 
ever,  since  most  scenes  cannot  be  dupli¬ 
cated  at  any  cost.  It  certainly  is  great 
to  be  able  to  bring  back  those  fond 
memories. 


402 


November,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


1941 

1937 

My  latest  Kcdachrome  film  is  surely 
an  improvement  over  my  first  attempt 
at  color  photography.  That’s  because 
I’ve  adhered  more  closely  to  the  proper 
lighting  technique  and  learned  the  fal¬ 
lacy  of  side  lighting.  Then,  too,  the 
exposure  angle  has  been  fairly  well 
mastered  now  that  I  have  become  more 
accustomed  to  the  latitude  of  the  film. 
There’s  really  no  trick  at  all  to  this 
work,  if  only  good  judgment  is  exer¬ 
cised  before  shooting  ...  if  only  it  is 
remembered  that  COLOR  is  making  the 
picture  and  NOT  shadows.  Of  course 
this  doesn’t  mean  either  that  every  con¬ 
ceivable  color,  no  matter  how  gaudy, 
should  be  crammed  into  the  scene  just 
to  take  advantage  of  the  fact  that  it  IS 
color  film  .  .  .  that’s  defeating  the  whole 
purpose  of  the  thing.  True,  that  Koda- 
chrome  is  capable  of  recording  all  those 
colors  in  the  most  lifelike  manner  im¬ 
aginable,  but  certainly  good,  harmonious 
blending  of  the  hues  should  be  main¬ 
tained. 

So  much  for  my  accomplishments  with 
this  increasingly  more  popular  color 
film.  The  day  will  soon  come  when 
Kodachrome  will  out-sell  black  and 
white,  and  why  not? 

1938 

A  documentary  record  of  a  trip  to 
Canada  is  the  high-light  of  this  year’s 
cinematographic  endeavors.  This  film, 
in  the  form  of  a  travelogue,  offers  di¬ 
version  since  the  territory  covered  is 
all  new  and  unfamiliar  to  me.  For  that 
reason,  in  a  movie  of  this  sort,  there 
cannot  be  much  advance  planning,  be¬ 
cause  of  the  impossibility  of  knowing 
ahead  of  time  just  what  conditions  will 


1933 


i 


be  encountered.  All  shooting  is  rather 
on  the  spur-of-the-moment  and  the  most 
has  to  be  made  of  situations  as  they 
arise. 

One  thing  is  always  advisable,  how¬ 
ever,  on  a  journey  of  this  kind.  A  few 
intermittent  road  scenes  and  other  in¬ 
teresting  side  glances  taken  en  route 
are  wonderful  for  bridging  the  gap  be¬ 
tween  towns  and  main  points  of  interest 
visited.  It  is  preferable  in  such  shots 
to  include  views  of  the  car  driving 
through  the  camera  field  in  order  to 
furnish  a  little  action  to  the  scene,  as 
well  as  to  add  a  personal  touch  by  mak¬ 
ing  future  audiences  imagine  they  are 
also  making  the  trip. 

Incidentally,  pictures  of  road  signs 
showing  route  numbers  and  approaching 
town  limits  afford  a  very  excellent, 
clever  method  of  titling  on  location. 

1939 

Nothing  very  out  of  the  ordinary  hap¬ 
pening  in  the  way  of  movie  making  this 
year  .  .  .  just  routine  filming.  I  did 
start,  though,  what  is  to  be  a  portion  of 
a  400-foot  Kodachrome  “epic”  depicting 
the  elegance  of  nature’s  handiwork 
throughout  the  four  seasons.  Naturally, 
this  will  take  at  least  a  full  year  to 
complete  .  .  .  probably  longer  if  any  re¬ 
takes  are  necessary.  Don’t  know  if  it 
will  ever  get  finished  but  it’s  a  good 
idea,  and  in  any  event  each  portion  is 
complete  in  itself. 

A  new  projector  has  been  added  to  my 
paraphernalia  which  cut  a  deep  hole  in 
my  budget.  There  won’t  be  many  new 
“productions”  under  way  for  a  while, 
I’m  afraid,  for  obvious  reasons. 

(Continued  on  Page  414) 


1938 


1934 


1935 


American  Cinematographer  •  November,  1943  403 


fckdbwnkA  in  (phoionudAy 

By  G.  B.  HARRISON.  Ph.D.,  F.R.P.S. 


THE  subject  I  have  been  asked  to 
deal  with  may  be  described  as  the 
impact  of  electronics  in  photom¬ 
etry.  It  is  inevitable,  therefore,  that 
most  if  not  all  the  applications  involve 
a  photo-cell  of  one  kind  or  another  and 
any  attendant  electronic  devices  that  are 
necessary. 

The  human  eye  is  a  very  remarkable 
instrument,  but  it  was  not  developed  for 
making  photometric  measurements  and 
it  is  not,  therefore,  surprising  that  in 
certain  respects  the  photo-cell  has  ad¬ 
vantages.  Most  of  its  advantages  are, 
however,  of  convenience  only  and  its  only 
real  property  which  makes  it  capable  of 
performing  operations  of  which  the  hu¬ 
man  eye  is  quite  incapable  is  that  its 
sensitivity  may  extend  into  regions  in 
which  the  eye  is  totally  insensitive,  e.g., 
infra-red  and  ultra  violet.  Most  photo¬ 
metric  measurements  are  made  by  com¬ 
paring  brightness,  and  the  photo-cell  in 
certain  circumstances  has  an  apparent 
advantage  in  that  it  is  capable  of  mak¬ 
ing  absolute  measurements  in  the  absence 
of  a  direct  comparison. 

In  dealing  with  this  subject  in  such 
a  short  time,  it  is  quite  impossible  to 
cover  the  whole  field  as  I  have  had  to 
be  content  with  a  few  selected  applica¬ 
tions  which  seemed  to  me  to  be  of  most 
interest. 

Densitometry 

One  of  the  earliest  applications  of 
electronics,  apart  from  sound,  was  the 
use  of  the  photo-sensitive  element  for 
measuring  density.  The  early  visual  in¬ 
struments  were  tedious  and  slow  in  use 
and  it  was  natural  that  a  more  objective 
method  should  be  sought.  The  first 
photo-sensitive  element  to  be  used  was 
the  selenium  cell  which  changed  its  re¬ 
sistance  on  illumination,  but  these  were 
very  soon  replaced  by  the  photo-emissive 
cell.  The  photo-emissive  cell  had  many 
advantages  in  spite  of  its  requiring  a 
vacuum  tube  D.C.  amplifier,  and  many 
densitometers  differing  mainly  in  detail 
have  been  constructed,  some  of  which 
have  been  made  available  commercially. 
The  appearance  of  the  barrier-layer  type 
of  photo-cell  has  created  a  flood  of  new 
densitometers  employing  this  new  sensi¬ 
tive  element  which  has  both  advantages 
and  disadvantages  over  the  photo-emis¬ 
sive  cell.  I  do  not  believe,  however, 
that  the  barrier-layer  cell  will  entirely 
replace  the  photo-emissive  type;  its  main 
advantages  lie  in  simplicity  and  low 
cost. 

Nearly  all  densitometers  have  been 
made  to  operate  by  a  null  method,  the 
density  to  be  read  being  compared  with 
a  known  density,  the  cell  being  used  to 
detect  equality.  It  follows  that  the  op¬ 
erator  besides  inserting  the  density  has 
to  perform  the  operation  of  adjusting  the 


comparison  density  until  the  same  value 
is  inserted  in  its  light  beam.  This  takes 
time  and  to  a  smaller  extent  skill. 

One  of  the  reasons  for  this  method 
of  working  is  that  density  is  a  logarith¬ 
mic  function  of  the  fraction  of  the 
incident  light  transmitted  and  before  a 
uniform  direct  reading  density  scale  can 
be  obtained  it  is  necessary  to  introduce 
a  logarithmic  relation.  This  has  been 
done  in  a  variety  of  ways  none  of  which 
has  been  entirely  satisfactory  until  re¬ 
cently.  One  of  the  most  important  de¬ 
velopments  in  this  field  is  the  means  of 
producing  logarithmic  amplifiers  giving 
a  straight  line  relationship  between  log. 
input  and  output  over  a  considerable 
range. 

At  the  same  time  means  are  available 
today  of  producing  main  operated  D.C. 
amplifiers  of  much  greater  stability  than 
was  possible  some  years  ago.  Several 
densitometers  employing  this  principle 
have  been  described  in  the  literature, 
their  principal  feature  being  that  they 
are  direct  reading.  This  principle  con¬ 
siderably  simplifies  recording  densitom¬ 
eters  and  I  see  in  the  near  future 
small,  compact  instruments  into  which 
you  feed  a  sensitometric  strip,  exposed 
to  a  continuously  varying  exposure  in¬ 
stead  of  a  stepped  exposure,  and  accept 
a  characteristic  curve  in  a  few  seconds, 
not  only  plotted,  but  completely  drawn 
in  ink  on  printed  graph  paper. 

Screen  Brightness 

More  attention  is  being  paid  today  to 
screen  brightness,  no  doubt  due  to  the 
incidence  of  the  colour  film.  Instruments 
for  measuring  screen  brightness  are  usu¬ 
ally  based  on  the  barrier-layer  photo¬ 
cell.  Other  types  of  photo-cell  are  pri¬ 
marily  suitable  for  matching  and  their 
use  would  require  the  inclusion  of  a 
standard  comparison  source  in  the  equip¬ 
ment. 

The  accuracy  required  in  screen  bright¬ 
ness  measurement  is  not  high,  and  whilst 
average  brightness  only  is  required  the 
present  systems  are  adequate.  If  bright¬ 
ness  readings  are  required  in  different 
regions  of  the  screen,  difficulties  of  sen¬ 
sitivity  appear  if  a  robust  measuring  in¬ 
strument  is  to  be  used.  This  difficulty 
may  resolve  itself  in  the  future  by  an 
increase  in  cell  sensitivity  and  perhaps 
an  improvement  in  screen  brightness, 
thus  raising  the  limiting  brightness  it 
is  required  to  measure. 

Measurement  of  the  screen  illumina¬ 
tion  is,  of  course,  easier  but  to  obtain 
the  brightness  the  reflection  factor  must 
also  be  determined  and  this  presents  dif¬ 
ficulties  of  its  own. 

Exposure  Meters 

The  problem  of  estimating  the  camera 
exposure  and  of  estimating  the  printing 
exposure  required  for  a  given  negative 


are  very  similar.  This  is  only  to  be 
expected  because  the  negative  is  a  rec¬ 
ord  of  the  subject  with  tones  reversed. 
The  use  of  the  barrier-layer  cell  for 
camera  exposures  is  well  known  and 
any  defect  in  the  results  is  due  to  fail¬ 
ure  of  the  method  of  use  rather  than 
the  instrument. 

To  estimate  exposures  accurately  it  is 
necessary  to  know  the  maximum  and 
minimum  brightness  in  the  subject  so 
that  the  brightness  range  can  be  located 
as  desired  in  the  negative  characteristic. 
Exposure  meters  which  integrate  the 
light  reflected  from  the  subject  or  trans¬ 
mitted  by  the  negative,  or  give  the  value 
of  the  light  flux  falling  on  the  subject 
give  readings  which  are  proportional 
neither  to  the  maximum  nor  minimum 
brightness.  The  fact  that  the  readings 
are  of  any  use  at  all  is  due  to  the 
relatively  small  difference  in  subjects 
and  the  latitude  in  exposure  of  the  mod¬ 
ern  emulsion.  If  anyone  should  think 
it  worth  while,  an  exposure  meter  could 
be  made  which  scans  the  scene  and  gives 
an  indication  of  the  maximum  and  mini¬ 
mum  brightness  values. 

The  direct  control  of  aperture  by 
photo-electric  means  has  been  successful¬ 
ly  achieved,  but  all  systems  use  the 
integration  method.  This  is  inevitable  in 
a  simple  instrument  and  the  same  re¬ 
marks  apply  as  are  made  on  the  exposure 
meter.  The  difference  between  the  meter 
to  be  read  and  the  direct  meter  is  one 
of  mechanics  only. 

Film  Examination 

With  the  introduction  of  panchromatic 
film  and  its  rapid  increase  in  speed  the 
problem  of  handling  the  film  in  the  dark 
room  became  more  difficult.  It  was  no 
longer  possible  to  use  a  safelight  of 
such  a  colour  that  its  light  affected 
the  eye  but  did  not  affect  the  film  even 
with  prolonged  exposure.  It  was  neces¬ 
sary  to  use  a  small  amount  of  light  of 
the  colour  to  which  the  eye  is  most 
sensitive,  i.e.,  green,  but  panchromatic 
films  today  becomes  so  fast  that  the 
amount  of  light  that  can  be  used  with 
safety  is  so  small  that  it  is  barely  enough 
to  see  by.  In  ordinary  handling  of  such 
film  it  is  quite  practicable  to  operate  in 
total  darkness,  but  there  is  one  process 
in  the  manufacture  of  film  that  cannot 
be  so  easily  accomplished.  This  opera¬ 
tion  is  the  examination  of  the  film  for 
faults. 

It  is  obvious  from  the  enormous  foot¬ 
age  of  film  used  and  the  comparatively 
rare  appearance  of  a  fault  that  faults 
are  not  frequent,  but  faults  are  costly 
and  it  is  important  that  they  should  be 
“examined  out.”  The  speed  of  the  fast¬ 
est  panchromatic  film  today  is  such  that 
visual  examination  under  conditions  of 
illumination  that  just  do  not  produce 
perceptible  fog,  a  fault  has  to  be  ap¬ 
proximately  equivalent  to  a  black  circle 
several  mms.  in  diameter  before  it  can 
be  detected  with  certainty.  The  situation 
is  of  course  likely  to  get  worse  rather 
than  better,  but  the  difficulty  has  been 
solved  by  the  use  of  electronics. 

(Continued  on  Page  419) 


404  November,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


The 

Permanent  Charities  Committee 

of  the  Motion  Picture  Industry 
Urges 

ALL  CINEMATOGRAPHERS 

Directors  of  Photography 
Operative  Cameramen 
Assistant  Cameramen 
Special  Effects  Cameramen 

GIVE 

NOW 

To  The  Los  Angeles  War  Chest  Through 
The  1943-44  Motion  Picture  Campaign 

Y,  Frank  Freeman ,  Chairman 

Space  Contributed  by 

J.  E.  BRULATOUR,  Inc. 

DISTRIBUTORS 

EASTMAN  FILMS 


A.S.C.  on  Parade 


As  this  issue  of  the  Cinematographer 
goes  to  press,  ASC  members  are  photo¬ 
graphing  the  following  pictures: 

Columbia  Studios 

“None  Shall  Escape,”  Lee  Garmes. 

“Curly,”  Franz  Planer. 

“Ten  Per  Cent  Woman,”  Joseph 
Walker. 

“Swing  Out  the  Blues,”  Arthur  Mar- 
tinelli. 

MGM  Studios 

“The  Canterville  Ghost,”  Robert  Planck. 

“Gaslight,”  Joe  Ruttenburg. 

“Mr.  Co-Ed,”  Harry  Stradling. 

“Kismet,”  Charles  Rosher. 

“Two  Sisters  and  a  Sailor,”  Robert 
Surtees. 

“Dragon  Seed,”  Sidney  Wagner. 

Paramount  Studios 

“Frenchmans’  Creek,”  Charles  Lang. 

“Going  My  Way,”  Lionel  Lindon. 

“Our  Hearts  Were  Young  and  Gay,” 
Theodor  Sparkuhl. 

“The  Man  in  Half  Moon  Street,” 
Henry  Sharp. 

“Rainbow  Island,”  Karl  Struss. 

RKO  Studios 

“Tender  Comrade,”  Russell  Metty. 

“The  Falcon  in  Texas,”  Harry  Wild. 

Republic  Studios 

“Casanova  in  Burlesque,”  Reggie  Lan- 
ning. 


Films  Soldiers  Want 

(Continued  from  Page  395) 

Knowing  the  average  Hollywood  prod¬ 
uct  and  what  results  Hollywood,  with 
all  its  technical  skill  and  knowledge, 
could  so  easily  achieve  with  a  little 
bit  of  serious  thinking.  I  do  not  believe 
that  these  mistakes  are  unavoidable. 
Even  a  green  rookie,  who  has  been  m 
the  army  less  than  a  month,  could  pick 
out  a  dozen  obvious  deletions,  mistakes 
or  faults  in  practically  every  Holly¬ 
wood  portrayal  of  army  life. 

Those  soldiers  who  have  read  “See 
Here,  Private  Hargrove,”  that  excellent 
and  amusing  piece  of  G.I.  prose  about 
the  experiences  of  one  of  us,  are  look¬ 
ing  forward  with  a  great  deal  of  an¬ 
ticipation  to  MGM’s  film  of  Hargrove’s 
book.  They  are  hoping  that  for  once 
they  can  look  at  the  screen  and  see  a 
G.I.  haircut  where  there  should  be  one, 
and  army  life,  in  general,  treated  as  they 
are  expected  to  treat  it — with  a  sense 
of  humor,  yes,  but  with  a  great  deal  of 
attention  and  discipline.  What  is  more, 
they  do  not  want  army  life  portrayed 
correctly  for  themselves  alone.  They 
want  their  home  folks  to  be  able  to 
recognize  them  in  these  pictures,  and 


20th  Century-Fox  Studios 

“Home  in  Indiana,”  Edward  Cronjager. 

“The  Sullivans,”  Lucien  Andriot. 

“The  Eve  of  St.  Mark,”  Joseph  La 
Shelle. 

“Four  Jills  in  a  Jeep,”  Peverell  Marley. 

“The  Purple  Heart,”  Arthur  Miller. 

United  Artists 

“Since  You  Went  Away,”  George 
Barnes. 

“Knickerbocker  Holiday,”  Phil  Tan- 
nura. 

“Bridge  of  San  Luis  Rey,”  John  W. 
Boyle. 

“Timber,”  Russell  Harlan. 

“It  Happened  Tomorrow,”  Archie 
Stout. 

Universal  Studios 

“Gung  Ho!”  Milton  Krasner. 

“When  Ladies  Fly,”  Hal  Mohr. 

“The  Imposter,”  Paul  Ivano. 

“Three  Cheers  for  the  Boys,”  David 
Abel. 

“Phantom  Lady,”  Elwood  Brendell. 

“Gypsy  Wildcat,”  George  Robinson. 

“Her  Primitive  Man,”  Charles  Van 
Enger. 

“Patrick  the  Great,”  Frank  Redman. 

Warner  Bros.  Studios 

“Passage  to  Marseille,”  James  Wong 
Howe. 

“Uncertain  Glory,”  Sid  Hickox. 

“Outward  Bound,”  Carl  Guthrie. 

“Mr.  Skeffington,”  Ernest  Miller. 

“Animal  Kingdom,”  Bert  Glennon. 


realize  how  hard  a  job  they  have.  They 
do  not  want  their  “best  girls”  to  look 
at  an  army  comedy  and  then  write  to 
their  real  soldier-sweethearts,  “Bill,  the 
army  really  isn’t  tough  at  all — Why,  I 
saw  a  picture  last  night  and  .  .  .” 

Remember  RKO’s  “Private  Smith, 
USA,”  of  the  “This  Is  America,”  series? 
Or  “Stage  Door  Canteen.”  They  had 
what  it  takes  to  show  the  home  folks 
what  it’s  all  about. 

Of  course,  there  is  another  kind  of 
army  “entertainment.”  These  films,  how¬ 
ever,  are  not  shown  the  soldier  for 
relaxation  and  amusement.  They  are 
deadly  serious,  these  pictures,  and  they 
serve  as  part  of  the  soldier’s  training. 
These  information  films  are  perhaps 
what  some  of  our  senators  would  label 
as  “propaganda.” 

“Propaganda  they  are,  yes,  but  propa¬ 
ganda  for  that  very  rare  commodity 
known  as  truth.  They  are  produced  by 
the  war  department  with  the  help  of 
such  expert  Hollywood  directors  as  Lt. 
Col.  Frank  Capra  and  Lt.  Col.  Anatole 
Litvak.  The  “Why  We  Fight”  series  of 
seven  information  films  about  our  enemy, 
the  first  of  which  was  shown  in  civilian 
theaters  all  over  the  country  under  the 
title,  “Prelude  to  War,”  is  a  favorite 
topic  of  discussion  among  soldiers  who 
are  wide  awake  to  the  problems  of  the 


international  scene.  Films  such  as  “The 
Nazis_Strike,”  and  “Divide  and  Conquer,” 
both  of  the  “Why  We  Fight”  series,  are 
excellent  sources  of  information  to  the 
young  trainee  who  is  getting  ready  for 
the  final  battle  and  who  wants  to  know 
the  answers  to  some  questions  in  his 
mind  regarding  the  war  and  its  causes. 
Prof.  Max  Lerner,  in  an  editorial  in  the 
newspaper  PM,  said  recently: 

“Our  soldiers  .  .  .  are  moved  by  two 
primary  drives.  One  is  not  to  let  down 
the  folks  at  home,  to  do  them  proud. 
The  second  is  their  instinct  of  workman¬ 
ship.  They  have  a  job  to  get  over  with, 
and  they  want  to  do  it  quickly  and 
well. 

“But  they  will  need  more  before  they 
are  wholly  through,  these  youngsters. 
The  soldiers  in  a  great  army  must  have 
a  belief  in  themselves  and  their  world. 
They  need  a  knowledge  of  what  enemies 
threaten  their  world,  and  above  all,  they 
must  understand  what  the  enemy  prin¬ 
ciple  is.  They  need  a  belief  in  the  su¬ 
periority  of  their  world  to  others,  a 
confidence  about  its  chance's  for  growth 
and  about  their  own  opportunities  in  it.  ’ 

The  army  today  realizes  fully  that 
an  informed  soldier — a  man  who  knows 
how  to  use  the  weapons  issued  to  him, 
as  well  as  why  they  were  issued  to  him 
- — fights  better  than  a  soldier  who  sim¬ 
ply  goes  into  battle  because  someone 
ordered  him  to  go. 

The  army  of  today,  the  modern,  well- 
disciplined,  enlightened  army  of  the 
United  States,  is  getting  all  the  bene¬ 
fits  of  Hollywood’s  great  experience  in 
the  making  of  motion  pictures  in  the 
war  department’s  training  films.  The 
soldiers  can  well  do  without  cheap  little 
comedies  about  Hitler,  Hirohito  and  Mus¬ 
solini  being  captured  in  a  mystical  land 
by  shipwrecked  American  sailors  with 
the  help  of  native  magicians.  The  war 
is  much  too  serious,  much  too  deadly, 
for  these  things,  and  the  men  who  are 
directing  the  armies  that  are  firing  the 
bullets  and  grenades  at  our  comrades 
at  the  front  are  too  vicious  and  brutal  to 
be  used  as  leading  characters  in  low- 
budget  comedies.  Their  antics  may  have 
once  looked  funny  to  us  when  we  saw 
them  speak  in  the  newsreels,  but  we've 
grown  up  since  then. 

Why  not  take  a  tip  from  the  army’s 
training  films?  The  enemy  who  is  kill¬ 
ing  our  men  at  the  front  and  the  sol¬ 
diers  of  our  Allies  isn’t  a  comical  figure 
any  more.  He  is  cunning,  and  brutal, 
and  clever.  His  Lives  and  Loves  are  not 
important.  It  is  the  Lives  and  Loves 
of  the  men  he  kills  that  counts. 


Series  Pix  Continue 

MERICA’S  22  months  of  war  have 
changed  Hollywood  in  all  but  one 
respect:  series  pictures.  Unchanged  in 
number  and  content,  the  group  films  con¬ 
tinue  to  be  made,  and  basically  don’t 
flag  in  appeal.  Here  and  there  a  few 
of  the  interlockers  have  fallen  by  the 
wayside,  after  passing  their  peak.  But 
others  have  taken  their  place  as  studios 
find  characters  with  a  fresh  pull. 


406 


November,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


FRANK  C.  ZUCKER 


rrtcrr  €ouipmenT  (5. 

1600  BROflDUJfla  \  n€UJ  yORKCUa 


With  Removable 


Head 


"Professional  Junior"*  Tripods,  Developing  Kits,  "Hi-Hats"  and  Shiftover 
Alignment  Gauges  made  by  Camera  Equipment  Co.  are  used  by  the  U.  S. 
Navy,  Army  Air  Bases,  Signal  Corps,  Office  of  Strategic  Services  and  othei 
Government  Agencies — also  by  many  leading  Newsreel  companies  and 
16  mm  and  33  mm  motion  picture  producers. 

*  Patent  No.  2318910 


Above  —  Collapsible  and  adjustable 
telescoping  metal  triangle.  Extends  from 
l6'/2"  to  26'/2".  Has  wing  locking  nuts 
for  adjusting  leg  spread  and  stud  holes 
for  inserting  points  of  tripod  feet.  Tri¬ 
angles  prevent  damage,  insure  camera¬ 
men  that  their  equipment  remains  in  cor¬ 
rect  position  and  will  not  slip  on  or  mar 
any  type  of  surface.  Further  particulars 
on  request. 

Left — B.  &  H.  Eyemo  mounted  upon  the 
"Professional  Junior"*  Tripod. 


Tripod  Head  Unconditionally 
Guaranteed  5  Years 


The  New  Removable  Head 
99 Professional  Junior99*  Tripod 


*  The  new  removable  head  feature  adds  great  flexibility  to  the 
versatile  "Professional  Junior"*  Tripod.  It  is  now  possible  to 
easily  remove  the  friction  type  head  from  the  tripod  legs  base 
by  simply  unscrewing  a  finger-grip  head  fastening  nut.  The  tripod 
head  can  then  be  mounted  on  a  "Hi-Hat"  low-base  adaptor  for 
low  setups. 


The  friction  type  head  gives  super-smooth  pan  and  tilt  action, — 
360°  pan  and  80°  tilt.  A  generous  sized  pin  and  trunnion  assures 
long,  dependable  service.  "Spread-leg"  design  affords  utmost 
rigidity  and  quick,  positive  height  adjustments.  A  "T"  level  is 
built  into  this  superfine  tripod.  The  top-plate  can  be  set  for 
16mm  E.K.  Cine  Special,  with  or  without  motor;  35mm  DeVry 
and  B  &  H  Eyemo  (with  motor),  and  with  or  without  alignment 
gauge.  The  tripod  head  is  unconditionally  guaranteed  5  years. 
More  data  about  the  "Professional  Junion"*  Tripod 
With  Re-movable  Head  is  contained  in  literature, 
sent  upon  request. 


American  Cinematographer  •  November,  1943  407 


New  Television  Patents 

May  Broaden  Screen 

PERFECTION  of  new  television  pro¬ 
jection  apparatus  which  will  make 
large  screen  television  for  motion  pic¬ 
ture  theatres,  homes  and  churches,  both 
in  black  and  white  and  natural  color, 
available  commercially  soon  after  hos¬ 
tilities  cease,  was  announced  yesterday 
by  Arthur  Levy,  president  of  Scophony 
Corporation  of  America.  Latest  televi¬ 
sion  developments  are  incorporated  in 
two  U.  S.  patents,  issued  in  Washing¬ 
ton,  covering  the  Skiatron  system,  an 
expansion  of  Scophony’s  basic  methods. 
Scophony  is  associated  with  Television 
Productions,  Inc.,  a  subsidiary  of  Para¬ 
mount  Pictures,  and  General  Precision 
Equipment  Corp.,  which  is  associated 
with  Twentieth-Fox  and  Time  magazine. 

Levy  described  the  new  system  as  hav¬ 
ing  characteristic  features  in  common 
with  cinematography  by  which,  for  the 
first  time,  it  will  be  possible  to  project 
a  large  screen  television  picture  up  to 
full-size  theatre  screen  with  brilliance 
equal  to  motion  picture  standards.  The 
new  inventions,  the  work  of  Dr.  A.  H. 
Rosenthal,  director  of  research  and  de¬ 
velopment,  will  answer  the  need  for  high 
definition  television  pictures  in  any  de¬ 
sired  size  in  black  and  white  and  color, 
Levy  said.  Scophony’s  basic  large  screen 
methods  Supersonic  and  Skiatron,  hold 
vast  significance  for  the  motion  picture 
and  radio  industries  and  will  undoubt¬ 
edly  influence  the  future  of  television, 
he  declared.  The  system  is  similar  to 
motion  picture  projection  technique  and 
a  theatre  projectionist  can  learn  to 
operate  the  Scophony  projector  in  a  few 
hours.  The  home  set  is  said  to  be  no 
more  difficult  to  operate  than  a  radio 
receiver. 


Here  We  Go! 


Negro  Newsreel  Seen  By 

4,000,000 

ESTIMATING  a  weekly  attendance 
of  four  millions,  E.  M.  Glucksman, 
producer  of  the  All-American  Newsreel, 
said  yesterday  that  an  OWI  survey  re¬ 
veals  that  85  percent  of  the  negroes  in 
five  large  cities  get  most  of  their  news 
on  negro  affairs  from  the  newsreel.  Four 
million  weekly  attendance,  he  said,  is 
larger  than  the  combined  circulation  of 
the  nation’s  242  negro  newspapers. 

The  All-American  reel,  a  year  old  this 
week,  is  now  seen  regularly  in  365  of 
the  451  civilian  negro  theatres,  he  said. 
Many,  if  not  most,  of  these  theatres  use 
one  or  more  of  other  reels  also.  The 
negro  reel  appears  once  weekly,  and  is 
distributed  by  AMPS  to  70  military 
camps  in  this  countx-y,  some  of  them 
with  three  and  four  theatres  to  a  camp, 
and  is  shown  also  in  Africa.  About  ten 
percent  of  the  footage  for  the  first  year 
was  directly  on  military  subjects — either 
actual  combat  or  training — with  much 
of  the  rest  of  the  footage  concei'ning 
important  home  -  front  topics  such  as 
bond  sales,  collection  campaigns  and 
others. 


408  November,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


TWO 

ALL-TIME  1114. IIS 


WITH  millions  of  feet  required  by  our 
Armed  Forces  for  training  and  other  mili¬ 
tary  purposes,  the  total  production  of 
Eastman  motion  picture  films  has  pushed 
into  new  high  ground.  And  the  all-around 
quality  of  this  huge  output  has  never 
been  excelled.  Eastman  Kodak  Company, 
Rochester,  N.  Y. 

J.  E.  BRULATOUR,  INC.,  Distributors 

Fort  Lee  Chicago  Hollywood 


EASTMAN  FILMS 


American  Cinematographer  •  November,  1943  409 


Dmprctiinq  Amateur 
Projection  Technique 


By  F.C.  MOULTRIE 


WITH  wartime  restrictions  affect¬ 
ing  the  supply  of  raw  film  stock, 
it  may  be  that  many  amateurs 
will  feel  disposed  to  seek  means  of  “keep¬ 
ing  their  hands  in”  in  film  activities 
which  do  not  require  the  making  of  new 
films.  One  of  these  activities  could  con¬ 
sist  of  more  frequent  showings  of  films 
we  have  made  in  times  past,  and  this 
would  seem  to  be  an  appropriate  occa¬ 
sion  to  brush  up  on  our  projection  tech¬ 
nique  and  consider  the  factors  involved, 
so  that  when  peacetime  again  brings  us 
an  eagerly-awaited  abundance  of  sup¬ 
plies  we  may  have  found  this  “breath¬ 
ing  spell”  of  actual  benefit,  which  will 
be  reflected  in  our  future  movies. 

It  will  readily  be  admitted  that  the 
greater  percentage  of  us  carry  out  our 
film  showings  in  a  very  haphazard  man¬ 
ner,  and  while  we  do  not  possess  those 
conveniences  which  enable  us  to  duplicate 
the  ideal  conditions  obtained  in  a  thea¬ 
ter,  most  of  us  could,  nevertheless,  far 
more  nearly  approach  those  conditions 
than  we  do. 

There  are  three  prime  considerations, 
(a)  What  is  shown,  (b)  The  conditions 
under  which  the  showing  is  made,  (c) 
The  manner  in  which  it  is  carried  out. 
Of  course,  the  actual  preparation  of  the 
film  itself  is  of  utmost  importance  and 


requires  volumes  all  to  itself,  so  that  only 
a  word  may  be  said  here  to  remind  our¬ 
selves  that  we  should  not  exhibit  films 
to  our  friends  till  they  have  been  care¬ 
fully  edited,  cut,  titled,  etc.,  all  splices 
carefully  made,  damaged  portions  re¬ 
moved,  brittleness  and  shrinkage  guard¬ 
ed  against  by  suitable  humidification 
and  opaque  or  “end”  trailers  placed  at 
the  finishing  ends.  Lastly,  films  must 
be  kept  clean. 

Perhaps  a  good  way  in  which  to  ap¬ 
proach  the  matter  and  endeavor  to  ef¬ 
fect  improvements  would  be  to  ask  our¬ 
selves,  “What  have  I  usually  experi¬ 
enced  from  other  movie  makers,  and 
what  have  I  usually  offered  to  my 
friends  in  the  shape  of  movie  showings 
that  I  would  consider  much  in  need  of 
improvement?” 

Excluding  the  fortunate  minority  who 
possess  properly  fitted  out  recreation 
room  theaters,  most  of  us  have  given  a 
show  somewhat  along  the  following  lines. 
We  have  trotted  out  our  projection  ap¬ 
paratus  among  a  group  of  friends  vari¬ 
ously  “draped”  about  a  room  which 
has  grown  stuffy  with  cigarette  smoke, 
etc.  We  plant  our  screen  at  one  end  and 
mount  our  projector  at  the  other — very 
likely  upon  a  none-too-secure  founda¬ 
tion,  which  permits  the  machine  to  sway 


or  vibrate.  The  enlarged  frame  on  the 
screen  will  suffer  magnification  of  these 
motions  and  add  to  our  guests’  discom¬ 
fort.  Having  mounted  the  projector  in 
this  fashion,  we  begin  experimenting 
while  our  guests  are  present  in  the  room. 
When  we  announce  that  all  is  ready, 
they  group  around  on  anything  they  can 
find,  in  none-too-comfortable  positions, 
in  which,  perhaps,  neither  they  nor  you 
have  given  any  thought  to  “head  room.” 
Then  we  call  for  “lights  out” — since  we 
have  not  provided  a  ready  means  of 
snapping  lights  off  and  on  from  our  van¬ 
tage  point  at  the  projector.  Thereupon 
someone  rises,  snaps  off  the  room  lights, 
then,  with  our  film  already  started, 
gropes  his  way  back  to  his  seat,  stum¬ 
bling  over  legs  and  feet  and  getting  into 
the  projection  beam  en  route. 

He  is  “on  the  beam”  all  right — but 
the  wrong  beam!  Of  course,  we  have 
also  neglected  to  first  prepare  our  film, 
or  the  projector,  or  to  focus  on  to  the 
screen  ahead  of  time,  so  that  adjust¬ 
ments  of  focus,  framing,  etc.,  are  finally 
made  only  after  the  main  title  has  gone 
on  its  way  to  oblivion.  The  series  of 
stoppages  occasioned  by  lost  loops, 
breaks,  and  so  forth,  which  have  sadly 
come  to  be  an  expected  feature  of  many 
amateur  shows,  then  follows.  Frame 
lines  keep  appearing  at  top  or  bottom 
edges  of  the  picture.  This  may  be  caused 
by  film  shrinkage — in  which  case  the 
fault  may  be  our  own — unless  different 
makes  of  film  have  been  spliced  together. 
Also,  film  taken  in  different  makes  or 
models  of  cameras  and  spliced  together 
will  often  show  similar  characteristics 
in  respect  to  frame  line  troubles  and 
this  is  another  factor  for  which  we  can 
assume  no  responsibility.  But  it  is  at- 
tribuatable  to  us  if  we  are  not  “on  our 
toes”  to  adjust  the  framer  of  the  pro¬ 
jector  immediately  such  frame  lines  ap¬ 
pear. 

Another  very  prevalent  fault  of  our 
shows  may  be  that  of  nearly  blinding 
our  guests  at  the  end  of  each  reel  by 
running  right  through  on  to  a  glaring 
blank  screen.  Now  the  avoidance  of  the 
foregoing  and  a  great  many  other  an¬ 
noyances  can  easily  be  assured  by  a  lit¬ 
tle  forethought  and  preparation,  requir¬ 
ing  no  expensive  equipment.  We  men¬ 
tioned  earlier  in  this  article  THREE 
prime  factors,  the  first  of  which  was 
concerned  with  the  film  itself.  Do  not 
let  us  any  more  invite  our  friends  to 
see  our  films  unless  we  have  first  pre¬ 
pared  them  as  already  suggested. 

Our  next  prime  consideration  was  the 
matter  of  CONDITIONS  under  which  we 
display  our  films.  Let  us  make  our  au¬ 
dience  as  comfortable  as  possible.  Use 
only  a  beaded  or  aluminum  surface 
screen,  and  place  it  so  that  the  lower 
portion  of  the  picture  will  be  above  their 
heads  when  they  are  seated.  Try  and 
arrange  all  this  as  well  as  the  seating, 
the  focus  of  the  picture,  etc.,  beforehand, 
as  well  as  means  of  ventilation  of  the 
room  and  adequate  darkening  of  the 
same. 


410 


November,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


There  is  a  simple  piece  of  apparatus 
we  should  resolve  to  equip  ourselves 
with,  and  that  is  a  SOUND  and  LIGHT- 
proofing  BLIMP.  Have  we  ever  stopped 
to  consider  how  disconcerting  it  would 
be  to  witness  a  regular  theater  movie 
if  the  projection  machines  were  parked 
out  amongst  the  audience,  in  the  open? 
Enjoyment  of  the  film,  I  think  most  will 
agree,  would  be  practically  reduced  to 
nil.  Yet,  in  the  case  of  substandard 
movies,  this  is  invariably  done. 

To  say  nothing  of  the  noise  from  even 
the  quietest  of  machines,  they  univer¬ 
sally  leak  streaks  of  light  which  play 
on  walls  and  ceiling  and  are  reflected 
on  to  the  screen.  Hence  our  sound  and 
light-proof  BLIMP.  We  will  build  it 
of  wood,  and  line  it  with  the  best  sound- 
insulation  material  we  can  currently  se¬ 
cure.  Suitable  light-trapped  vents  will 
be  provided — a  large  one  at  the  top  rear 
for  the  exit  of  the  heated  air  flow  from 
the  lamp  house  and  a  row  of  intake 
vents  around  the  base.  In  front  there 
will  be  a  good  piece  of  plate  glass,  as 
a  window  through  which  to  project  the 
picture.  This  window  will  be  covered 
with  a  hinged  flap. 

Perhaps  we  may,  if  ambitious,  include 
a  holder  for  color  filters  with  which  to 
provide  special  effects,  such  a  blue  for 
night  scenes,  etc.;  red  for  fires  or  ex¬ 
plosions;  green  for  deep  pastoral  or 
river  scenes,  and  so  on.  If  we  are  me¬ 
chanically  inclined,  we  can  fit  extensions 
to  the  projector  controls,  which  may 
be  carried  to  the  exterior  of  the 
“BLIMP.”  If  we  cannot  do  this,  a  quick¬ 
ly  removable  panel  must  be  cut,  which 
will  enable  immediate  access  to  the  con¬ 
trols  and  which  can  be  instantly  replaced 
the  moment  adjustments  have  been  made. 

Mount  the  projector  inside  the  blimp 
on  sound-proof  material  which,  if  it  is 
of  non-rigid  nature,  like  rubber,  felt, 
etc.,  must  be  so  arranged  or  supported 
as  not  to  permit  the  projector  to  sway 
or  vibrate  excessively.  Then  be  sure  to 
pick  out  a  table  or  stand  which  is  rigid 
and  secure,  on  which  to  mount  the  “en¬ 
semble.”  If  the  little  woman  objects  to 
our  using  her  best  polished-topped  end 
table,  even  though  it  is  a  nice,  solid  one, 
we  had  better  save  up  our  pennies  and 
purchase  something  of  our  very  own. 
Here  again,  if  we  are  handy,  we  can 
construct  something  to  our  own  design. 
There  is  room  for  quite  a  degree  of  in¬ 
genuity  to  be  displayed  in  this.  For  ex¬ 
ample,  the  “blimp”  and  stand  could  be 
all  built  as  one  integral  unit.  One  other 
item  we  must  prepare.  If  we  cannot 
reach  existing  stand,  table  or  room  light 
switches  from  our  projection  vantage 
point,  let  us  provide  ourselves  with  an 
extension  line  and  switch  of  some  kind. 

Since  our  “blimp”  is  for  the  purpose 
of  both  sound  AND  light  suppression, 
our  aim  will  be  largely  defeated  if  fog 
marks  and  shadows  from  stray  light 
from  other  sources  than  the  projector 
are  reaching  the  screen.  It  would  be 
advantageous  to  set  up  our  screen  at 
some  convenient  time  and  carry  out  a 
test  to  discover  if  any  such  stray  light 


crosses  it.  From  street  lights,  perhaps, 
or  from  passing  vehicles,  or  there  may 
even  be  light  passing  through  cracks 
around  doors  from  other  lights  in  the 
house.  Such  stray  light  may  not  reach 
the  screen  direct,  but  may  be  reflected 
from  walls,  ceiling,  mirrors,  or  other 
shiny  surfaces.  Cheap  “needle”  paper 
(obtainable  from  Kodaks)  or  other 
opaque  material,  fitted  with  sticky  tape, 
may  be  used  to  cover  windows  or  shield 
the  screen  from  points  whence  such  stray 
light  is  being  transmitted.  These  pre¬ 
cautions  will  reward  us  many  times  over 
in  securing  unbelievably  improved  re¬ 
sults.  If  we  use  an  amplifier  to  provide 
musical  and/or  spoken  accompaniment 
in  the  presentation  of  our  films,  the  use 
of  a  “blimp”  will  be  doubly  appreciated, 
for  the  clatter  of  an  “open”  projector 
is  bad  enough  as  a  solo.  The  addition 
of  music — otherwise  emphatically  de¬ 
sirable — only  seems  to  add  to  the  con¬ 
fusion  when  the  projector  noise  is  in¬ 
termingled  with  it. 

While  we  are  on  the  subject  of  sound, 
we  may  as  well  remind  ourselves  that 
the  same  remarks  apply  here  regarding 
pre-care  to  have  everything  in  order  and 
all  experimentation  carried  out  in  ad¬ 
vance.  Also  let  us  arrange  our  selection 
of  recordings  in  their  correct  sequence 
and  have  our  script,  if  any,  covered  with 
a  hooded  light.  One  man  I  know  has  his 
script  typed  and  arranged  on  a  continu¬ 
ous  roll  (adding  machine  refills)  which 
he  winds  off  from  a  full  to  an  empty 
roller  by  means  of  a  hand  control  knob, 
as  he  reads.  The  script  has  the  “cues” 
for  music,  etc.,  tune-ins,  fades,  and  so 
on,  noted  in  the  margin  at  the  appropri¬ 
ate  point.  Such  a  script  can  be  covered 
by  the  very  smallest  of  miniature  lights. 
The  entire  arrangement  is  excellent. 
This  man  presents  his  films  so  well  and 
with  such  meticulous  care  that  he  is  in 
demand  everywhere.  Needless  to  say,  he 
exhibits  the  same  care  throughout — in 
his  choice  of  subject  material,  his  treat¬ 
ment,  planning,  editing,  cutting  and 
titling.  He  is  a  credit  to  all  amateurs. 


Yet,  when  analyzed,  his  work  is  only 
the  application  of  common  sense  and 
employs  that  which  everybody  knows  or 
should  know  if  they  take  an  interest  in 
their  hobby. 

The  cleaning  and  oiling  of  the  pro¬ 
jection  machine,  of  course,  takes  its  place 
with  the  other  pre-show  preparations. 
Particular  attention  should  be  given  to 
the  cleaning  of  the  gate  apertures,  to 
free  them  from  unsightly  accumulations 
of  dust  and  fluff,  which  will  be  much 
magnified  when  projected  on  to  the 
screen.  To  prevent  recurrence  of  this 
during  projection,  only  films  which  have 
been  periodically  cleaned  should  be  pro¬ 
jected.  (There  are  numerous  cleaning 
pads  and  preparations  on  the  market.) 

And  now  we  come  to  the  last  of  our 
“prime  consideration” — the  manner  in 
which  the  film  is  shown.  We  have  al¬ 
ready  dealt  with  much  of  the  material 
affecting  this  and  there  is  no  need  again 
to  review  what  we  have  said  about  be¬ 
ing  “on  our  toes”  to  immediately  correct 
misalignments  of  frame  lines,  focus,  con¬ 
trol  of  room  lights  and  smoothness  of 
presentation  of  music  and- speech  accom¬ 
paniment  (if  any).  One  thing  of  great 
importance,  however,  may  be  said  in 
connection  with  avoidance  of  “running 
off”  the  end  of  a  film  on  to  a  blank 
screen. 

It  will  be  recalled  that  we  included, 
in  the  recommendations  concerning  prep¬ 
aration  of  the  film  itself,  the  advice  to 
attach  opaque  or  “end”  trailers  to  the 
ends  of  all  films.  This  is  for  the  pur¬ 
pose  of  giving  time  to  lower  the  flap 
over  the  “blimp”  window  before  the  film 
runs  out.  A  far  smoother  way  to  finish, 
however,  is  by  a  kind  of  fade-out,  ac¬ 
complished  by  lowering  the  window  flap 
at  a  medium  rate  of  speed,  just  as  the 
“action”  part  of  the  film  is  drawing  to 
a  close.  One  or  two  frames  near  the  end 
of  the  film  are  pierced  with  a  few  pin 
pricks  or  minute  punch  holes.  Knowing 
they  are  somewhere  near  the  finish  of 
(Continued  on  Page  415) 


Grandeur 


American  Cinematographer  •  November,  1943 


411 


AMONG  THE  MOVIE  CLUBS 


Metropolitan  Club 

FOUR  films  were  shown  at  the  Octo¬ 
ber  meeting  of  the  Metropolitan  Mo¬ 
tion  Picture  Club,  held  at  the  Victoria 
Hotel,  New  York  City.  They  were  “Gaspe 
Peninsula,”  by  J.  0.  Van  Tassell;  “The 
South  Wind  Whispers,”  also  by  Van 
Tassell;  “White  Tail  Trails,”  by  Joe 
Harley,  and  “Broomstick  Gymnasium.” 
Arthur  Gale  wrote  the  scenario  for  the 
gymnasium  picture.  Leo  Heffernan  pho¬ 
tographed  it,  and  George  Ward  handled 
the  commentary. 

New  members  joining  the  club  were 
Thelma  Hensiek,  Ann  R.  Ahern,  Grace 
Bolman,  Otto  Heinemann,  Ann  Hol- 
zapfel,  Evelyn  Lawrence  and  Wilbur 
Krimpen. 


Philadelphia  Cinema  Club 

THE  showing  of  the  film,  “Filters 
and  Their  Use,”  completed  the  Har¬ 
mon  Foundation  series,  at  the  October 
meeting  of  the  Philadelphia  Cinema 
Club.  An  enlightening  talk  on  this  sub¬ 
ject  was  given  by  H.  E.  Moore,  adding 
emphasis  by  means  of  illustrations  on  a 
blackboard. 

A  new  principle  in  third  dimensional 
movies  was  demonstrated  by  its  inven¬ 
tor,  E.  H.  Bickley.  He  displayed  the  in¬ 
strument  called  a  swing  mount  and 
projected  a  film  showing  the  results. 
The  club  also  saw  a  travelogue  on  South 
America  by  Walt  Disney. 


Saint  Louis  Club 

THREE  films  highlighted  the  Octo¬ 
ber  meeting  of  the  Amateur  Motion 
Picture  Club  of  St.  Louis.  They  were 
“Yes  Sir,  That’s  My  Baby,”  by  Lon 
Wadman;  “Florida  In  1941,”  by  Joe 
Epstein,  and  “The  St.  Louis  Zoo,”  taken 
at  the  Annual  Picnic.  Helpful  to  many 
members  was  a  demonstration  of  vari¬ 
ous  types  of  film  splicers  and  splicing 
methods. 


San  Francisco  Cinema  Club 

IGHLIGHTING  the  October  meet¬ 
ing  of  the  Cinema  Club  of  San 
Francisco  was  the  screening  by  A.  O. 
Olson  of  one  of  his  motion  pictures  with 
sound  via  “magnetized  wire.”  It  was  a 
forty-minute  Kodachrome  film  “Come  to 
the  Fair."’'.- 

K.  A.  Meserole  showed  an  800-foot 
black  and  white  travel  film  titled 
“Travelogue  of  the  Philippines,”  which 
he  filmed  ten  years  ago. 


Minneapolis  Cine  Club 

THE  monthly  meeting  of  the  Min¬ 
neapolis  Cine  Club  was  held  at  the 
Covered  Wagon  on  Tuesday,  October 
19th.  Featuring  the  program  was  a 
Honeymoon  film  made  by  the  Club  Presi¬ 
dent,  Len  Martin,  while  on  his  honey¬ 
moon. 

New  members  just  announced  are 
Lawrence  T.  Anderson,  Warren  H.  Rey¬ 
nolds,  George  H.  Meyers,  C.  J.  Elison, 
Allan  H.  Pahr  and  Dr.  W.  E.  Proffitt. 


Utah  Cine  Arts  Club 

FOUR  films  featured  the  October 
meeting  of  the  Utah  Cine  Arts  Club, 
held  at  the  Art  Center  on  October  20th. 
They  were  “Vacation  Time,”  by  W.  L.  F. 
Samuelson;  “Dinner  Party,”  by  Mrs. 
Frank  Thomson;  “Rodeo  Thrills,”  by 
Jack  Andrews;  and  “Royal  Visit,”  by 
T.  J.  Courtney,  a  record  of  the  British 
King  and  Queen’s  visit  to  Canada  in 
1939. 


Washington  Society 

ARING  DOANE,  Hollywood  film 
producer,  spoke  before  the  Wash¬ 
ington  Society  of  Amateur  Cinematog¬ 
raphers  at  its  recent  meeting,  giving 
them  the  outline  of  the  many  details 
that  go  into  making  a  professional  pic¬ 
ture.  Following  Mr.  Doane’s  talk,  Wil¬ 
liam  Kneppel  screened  his  “Yellowstone 
Symphony”  in  Kodachrome. 


Long  Beach  Cinema  Club 

TWO  meetings  were  held  in  October 
by  the  Long  Beach  Cinema  Club, 
October  6th  and  20th.  At  the  first  meet¬ 
ing  Carl  Weldin  showed  400  feet  of 
16mm.  Kodachrome  showing  Easter  Sun¬ 
rise  Services  and  other  miscellaneous 
scenes.  Dr.  and  Mrs.  McCoy  showed  a 
Kodachrome  picture  of  Old  Mexico  and 
another  on  Sequoia  National  Park. 


Tri-City  Cinema  Club 

WALT  DISNEY  film,  “South  of 
the  Border,”  featured  the  October 
meeting  of  the  Tri-City  Cinema  Club. 
Tom  Severs,  of  Moline  Ill.,  showed  an 
8mm.  film  “National  Championship  Hill- 
climb”  which  was  extremely  interesting. 
Ray  Schmidt,  of  Davenport,  Iowa, 
screened  200  feet  of  unedited  film,  ask¬ 
ing  for  suggestions  from  the  members 
as  to  editing. 


Syracuse  Movie  Makers 

THE  Syracuse  Movie  Makers  held 
two  meetings  in  October.  A  Boy 
Scout  film  featured  the  meeting  on  Oc¬ 
tober  5th.  The  meeting  on  October  19th 
was  turned  into  an  evening  of  pro  and 
con  discussions  of  titles,  using  positive 
and  the  reversal  method. 

Club  members  have  started  a  series 
of  home  study  meetings,  with  the  home 
study  group  meeting  the  fourth  Tuesday 
of  each  month. 


412  November,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


Matching  Lens 
Diaphram  Setting 


(Continued  from  Page  401) 


should  cut  the  reading  in  two.  If  it 
does  not,  the  stops  are  not  accurate. 
Turn  the  diaphragm  ring  until  the  meter 
does  read  half  as  much  as  for  the  last 
diaphragm  stop.  The  reading  on  the  ring 
will  now  be  exactly  one  stop  from  the 
previous  setting. 

To  check  the  transmission  of  one  lens 
against  another,  set  the  standard  lens  to 
one  stop  below  maximum  aperture  and 
observe  the  reading  on  the  meter.  Now 
change  to  the  unknown  lens  and  rotate 
the  diaphragm  until  the  meter  returns 
to  the  same  reading  as  before.  This 
will  indicate  the  same  amount  of  light 
passing  through  the  lens  and  hence  the 
position  of  the  diaphragm  will  correspond 
to  the  setting  of  the  standard  lens.  If 
the  transmission  of  the  lens  is  identical 
to  the  standard,  the  diaphragm  should 
read  the  same  as  the  standard  lens.  Any 
variation  will  show  up  instantly. 

In  large  studios,  a  standard  lens  aper¬ 
ture  is  usually  used  in  connection  with 
a  standard  key  light  level.  With  the 
same  film  used  in  all  the  cameras,  a 
constant  exposure  is  assured  provided 
the  lenses  are  all  matched  for  trans¬ 
mission.  The  lens  transmission  tester  is 
invaluable  for  cases  such  as  these. 


Anglers 


Friedman  Joins  Agfa 

JOSEPH  S.  FRIEDMAN,  prominent 
photographic  chemist  of  Irvington, 
N.  J.,  has  joined  the  Research  staff 
of  Agfa  Ansco,  America’s  oldest  manu¬ 
facturer  of  photographic  products,  ac¬ 
cording  to  a  recent  announcement  made 
at  the  company’s  main  offices  in  Bing- 
hampton,  N.  Y. 

Dr.  Friedman,  who  received  his  Ph.D. 
degree  from  Harvard  University  in  1921, 
is  a  popular  writer  and  experimenter  in 
the  field  of  color  photography.  As  a 
member  of  the  Agfa  Ansco  Color  Re¬ 
search  Department  he  will  be  engaged 
in  the  further  development  of  Ansco 
Color  Film  and  Ansco  Color  Paper. 

A  member  of  the  American  Chemical 
Society  and  the  New  York  Academy  of 
Science  and  a  fellow  of  both  the  Ameri¬ 
can  Institute  of  Chemists  and  the  Amer¬ 
ican  Association  for  Advancement  of 
Science,  Dr.  Friedman  has  played  an 
important  role  in  the  development  of 
numerous  color  reproduction  processes 
and  has  made  important  contributions 
to  the  science  of  photographic  chemistry. 

In  1928  he  conducted,  with  Edwin 
Land,  the  fundamental  research  in  the 
field  of  polarized  light  which  was  the 
basis  for  patents  later  used  by  the 
Polaroid  Corporation. 


Sparkling  Waters 


American  Cinematographer  •  November,  1943 


Diary  of  a  10-Year 
Movie  Maker 

(Continued  from  Page  403) 

Movies  take  on  new  sparkle  with  this 
fine  precision  instrument.  Much  of  my 
time  now  will  be  devoted  to  re-editing 
odd  scenes  which  hadn’t  been  brilliant 
enough  with  the  old  outfit  .  .  .  lucky 
thing  I’ve  saved  those  old  films! 

1940 

Many  very  fine  professionally  made 
movie  subjects  are  now  on  the  market 
.  .  .  and  best  of  all,  at  reasonable  prices. 
They’re  just  the  thing  to  round  out  a 
home  movie  program,  and  the  quality 
is  excellent!  A  complete  variety  of  se¬ 
lections  are  available  in  8mm.,  16mm. 
silent  and  16mm.  sound  editions.  I  for 
one  am  glad  that  some  far-sighted  in¬ 
dividuals  have  awakened  to  the  fact  that 
there’s  a  demand  for  these  really  mod¬ 
ern  pictures  .  .  .  who  wants  to  look  at 
those  old  fashioned  reductions  made  from 
20-year-old  85mm.  releases,  heretofore 
available  ? 

Other  alert  individuals  are  forming 
rental  libraries  whereby  the  latest  prints 
can  be  rented  at  a  very  nominal  cost. 
Those  who  do  not  care  to  purchase  the 
subjects  outright  may  still  enjoy  them 
by  taking  of  one  of  these  libraries. 

Still  others  offer  an  exchange  service 
wherein  the  first  reel  is  purchased  out¬ 
right  at  the  regular  rates  and  may  be 


exchanged  later  at  any  time  for  a  com¬ 
pletely  different  one.  The  new  film,  in 
turn,  then  become  the  property  of  the 
customer  for  as  long  a  period  as  he  de¬ 
sires  to  keep  it.  In  this  manner  the 
movie  addict  always  has  possession  of 
a  choice  subject.  The  charge  for  this 
service  is,  likewise,  usually  very  rea¬ 
sonable. 

1941 

Strangely  enough,  I’m  making  my  first 
serious  attempt  at  indoor  movies  .  .  .  and 
after  all  this  time!  Can’t  understand 
why  I  haven’t  tried  this  before,  because 
it’s  simplicity  in  itself  .  .  .  supersensi¬ 
tive  film  .  .  .  two  or  three  photofloods 
in  reflectors  ...  a  10  cent  exposure 
guide  and  a  firm  determination.  Results 
are  surprising! 

I’ve  now  decided  to  venture  forth  and 
try  my  success  in  the  way  of  outdoor 
NIGHT  movies.  A  brightly  lit  central 
business  district  is  the  ideal  subject 
which,  in  my  case,  is  Chicago’s  Loop. 
Even  my  /: 3.5  lens  stop  proves  ample 
for  such  scenes.  Several  shots  filmed 
at  8  frames  per  second  are  even  better, 
but  action  is  speeded  up  ridiculously. 

Something  else  has  taken  my  fancy 
recently  .  .  .  the  processing  end  of  the 
game.  It’s  only  natural  that  a  real 
movie  fanatic  should  be  a  little  curious 
about  what  goes  on  after  his  films  are 
rushed  to  the  finishing  lab.  Of  course  I 
can’t  hope  to  compete  with  the  profes¬ 
sionals,  but  at  least  I  can  experiment  in 
developing  shorter  lengths  of  film  .  .  . 


that  pew  developing  rack  I  bought  is 
just  the  thing!  Besides,  I’m  already 
familiar  with  darkroom  work,  and  funda¬ 
mentally  the  principles  involved  are  the 
same  as  in  still  photography. 

This  certainly  looks  like  an  eventful 
year! 

1942 

I  think  last  year  more  was  accom¬ 
plished  than  in  any  previous  period.  I 
dabbled  in  just  about  everything  .  .  . 
took  more  Kodachrome  than  ever  before 
.  .  .  learned  many  new  tricks  of  the 
trade  and  gained  the  most  prized  reels 
of  all  my  movie  making  activities.  The 
importance  of  using  some  sort  of  a  script 
and  the  ability  of  organizing  one  hastily 
are  now  prime  requisites.  Sometimes 
conditions  are  such  that  a  previously 
prepared  script  is  impossible,  in  which 
event,  one  must  learn  to  recognize  good 
continuity  instantly  while  “on  location”. 
This  calls  for  fast  thinking  and  usually 
takes  considerable  training,  but  isn’t 
really  difficult. 

Much  of  my  time  is  now  being  spent 
making  “stills”  from  my  favorite  movie 
scenes.  The  addition  of  a  special  enlarger 
to  my  equipment  makes  this  possible. 
The  advantage  here  is  that  the  film 
doesn’t  have  to  be  cut  .  .  .  any  choice 
frame  may  be  enlarged,  and  there  cer¬ 
tainly  is  a  choice  on  a  movie  film!  With 
the  film  clamped  in  a  special  “gate”,  the 
enlarger,  which  resembles  a  folding  cam¬ 
era,  is  exposed  to  a  bright  lamp,  thereby 
forming  a  negative  image  of  the  movie 
frame  on  a  regular  roll  film.  This  en¬ 
larged  negative  can  then,  in  turn,  be 
used  to  make  a  photographic  print  either 
by  contact  or  further  enlargement. 

It’s  fascinating  work  .  .  .  and  it  IS 
nice  to  have  “stills”  from  favorite  movies 
to  pass  around! 

1943 

War  restrictions  on  photographic  sup¬ 
plies  are  playing  havoc  with  movie  mak¬ 
ing  aspirations  this  year.  With  more 
and  more  equipment  being  rationed  or 
production  being  drastically  reduced  for 
civilian  consumption,  the  cine  fan  has 
to  be  more  conservative  than  ever.  They 
say  that  money  talks,  but  there  are 
times  when  even  money  cannot  replace 
a  broken  lens,  a  defective  exposure  me¬ 
ter  or  a  burned-out  photoflood  lamp. 
Film,  though  sharply  curtailed,  is  still 
available  for  occasional  use.  Owners  of 
the  magazine  load  cameras  will  find 
their  film  type  unobtainable  most  of  the 
time,  however. 

This  all  means  that  each  foot  will 
have  to  go  further  than  ever  before. 
Every  expoure  should  be  checked  and  re¬ 
checked  before  it’s  too  late  .  .  .  every 
scene  should  REALLY  be  worth  the  foot¬ 
age  devoted  to  it.  Discretion  must  be 
used,  too,  in  war-time  filming  .  .  .  many 
good  subjects  are  taboo. 

Time  sure  flies!  It  seems  incredible 
that  so  MUCH  time  has  elapsed  since  I 
first  cast  an  eager  eye  towai'ds  a  cine 
camera,  anxiously  peered  through  the 
viewfinder,  and  hopefully  pressed  the 
(Continued  on  Page  421) 


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For  Lighting  Equipment 

As  sole  distributors  East  of  the  Mississippi  we  carry  the  full  and 
complete  line  of  latest-type  Inkie  and  H.I.-Arc  equipment 
manufactured  by 

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of  to  the  last  minute  detail  anywhere 

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RENTALS  SALES  SERVICE 

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333  West  52nd  St.,  New  York,  N.Y.  Phones:  Circle  6-5470-1 


414  November,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


Lapse-time  for 
the  Amateur 


IT’S  HERE! 

A  book  on  principle  of  exposure  that  establishes  new 
horizons  in  photography. 

A  NEW  APPROACH 
TO 

EXPOSURE  CONTROL 

A 

Cdantain  ^Jorivood 


★  Until  you  have  read  this  book  you  do  not  under¬ 
stand  exposure. 

★  The  first  book  that  shows  all  factors  concerned  in 
exposure  control. 

★  The  book  that  has  all  the  answers  regarding  prin¬ 
ciples  of  exposure. 

Now  on  sale 

Price  $1.50 

(including  postage) 


Send  your  order  to 

PHOTO  RESEARCH  CORP. 

15024  Devonshire  St.  San  Fernando,  Calif. 

Manufacturers  of  the  Norwood  Exposure  Meter 


(Continued  from  Page  397) 

A  Practical  Application 

If  you  are  prone  to  be  practical  try 
a  practical  experiment.  It  is  said  that 
photoflood  bulbs,  like  people,  become 
weak  in  their  old  age.  Here’s  an  experi¬ 
ment  that  will  tell  the  story  .  .  . 

Place  an  exposure  meter  in  front  of  a 
gray  card  that  is  directly  illuminated 
by  a  No.  1  photoflood  bulb.  Bring  the 
light  close  enough  to  the  card  to  allow 
the  meter  to  show  a  fairly  high  reading. 
Bring  a  small  clock  into  the  picture, 
placing  it  near  the  meter  and  set  its 
hands  at  twelve  o’clock.  Adjust  the 
lapse-time  camera  for  an  extreme  close- 
up  of  the  meter  and  clock,  and  set  the 
interval  timer  for  two  exposures  per 
minute.  After  taking  a  light  reading 
start  the  camera  on  its  first  exposure 
and  also  start  the  clock.  For  this  ex¬ 
periment  the  light  must  remain  on  con¬ 
stantly  as  it  supplies  the  necessary  il¬ 
lumination  as  well  as  being  the  guinea 
pig  for  experimental  purposes. 

Since  the  average  life  of  a  No.  1 
photoflood  is  approximately  two  hours, 
this  sequence  will  use  about  six  feet  of 
film.  Thus  the  life  span  of  the  bulb 
can  be  screened  in  about  fifteen  sec¬ 
onds,  its  exact  length  in  hours  and 
minutes  being  shown  by  the  clock  and 
the  intensity  of  its  illumination  all 
through  its  life,  will  be  indicated  by 
the  reading  shown  by  the  meter. 

A  newsreel  firm  made  a  practical  ap¬ 
plication  of  lapse-time  photography  in 
showing  the  progress  made  in  righting 
the  capsized  steamship  Normandie. 

Entomologists  and  nature  lovers  will 
find  enough  subject  matter  to  keep  their 
lapse-time  cameras  clicking  full  time. 
The  building  of  ant  hills,  cocoons  and 
other  insect  habitats  are  only  the  begin¬ 
ning.  Each  subject  presents  its  own 
lighting  and  time-lapse  problem,  but  is 
generous  in  its  reward  when  completed 
and  projected. 

The  results  obtained  by  the  amateur 
who  works  with  lapse-time  depend  en¬ 
tirely  on  the  extent  to  which  he  cares 
to  delve  into  its  possibilities.  This 
extent  need  not  be  limited  by  expensive 
equipment,  as  shown  in  the  foregoing 
paragraphs,  but  by  the  ingenuity  of  the 
individual  making  the  experiments.  When 
you  start  lapse-time  photography  there 
is  no  limit.  You  will  never  be  satisfied. 
Each  set-up  will  make  you  want  to  do 
the  next  one  a  little  different,  and  you 
will  consistently  make  improvements 
with  each  trial.  It  will  work  on  you 
like  a  drug  and  as  a  result  of  your  all 
out  effort  you  will  produce  movies  with 
an  allure  that  you  have  never  experi¬ 
enced  before. 


Don't  forget  to  visit 
your  nearest  Blood 
Bank.  A  pint  of  YOUR 
blood  may  save  a  Life 
—GIVE. 


Improving  Amateur 
Projection 

(Continued  from  Page  411) 

the  film,  you  are  keeping  a  watch  out 
for  them  on  the  screen.  When  they  ap¬ 
pear  they  serve  as  your  “cue”  to  com¬ 
mence  closing  off  the  lens.  Should  you 
accidentally  “miss  your  cue,”  however, 
the  opaque  trailer  at  the  film  end  will 
still  save  you  from  running  off  on  to  a 
clear  screen. 


American  Cinematographer  •  November,  1943 


415 


PHOTOS  AT  ONE-MILLIONTH 
SECOND  EXPOSURE  CLAIMED 


Photographs  with  an  exposure 

of  but  one-millionth  of  a  second, 
brief  enough  to  stop  a  rifle  bullet 
or  any  fast-moving  object,  can  now  be 
made  by  a  new  high  speed  electronic 
light  equipment  developed  by  engineers 
in  General  Electric’s  laboratory,  the 
company  has  announced. 

This  device,  using  a  small  mercury 
lamp  no  bigger  than  a  cigarette,  con¬ 
sists  of  a  small  portable  box,  10  inches 
square  and  weighing  less  than  20  pounds. 
On  the  front  is  the  light  source,  resem¬ 
bling  a  small  auto  headlight,  which  can 
be  operated  manually  by  means  of  a 
push  button,  or  automatically  by  elec¬ 
trical  contacts  or  a  phototube  and  pre¬ 
amplifier.  It  will  illuminate  20  square 
feet  of  area  with  sufficient  intensity  to 
photo  the  fastest  moving  objects,  in  fact 


in  tests  has  “stopped”  a  wheel  revolving 
at  70,000  revolutions  per  minute. 

Fastest  camera  shutters  of  the  usual 
type,  with  blades  moving  between  the 
lens  elements,  ordinarily  operate  at  a 
minimum  of  l/300th  second.  Focal  plane 
shutters,  consisting  of  slits  in  a  cur¬ 
tain  moving  immediately  in  front  of  the 
film,  cut  this  down  to  1/1200  second. 
Recently  published  high-speed  photo¬ 
graphs  of  athletes,  etc.,  have  been  made 
with  a  lamp  giving  exposures  of  1/30,000 
second,  but  1/33  as  fast  as  the  new  G-E 
unit. 

The  new  device  uses  standard  and 
easily  replaceable  electrical  parts  and  a 
s'ngle  electronic  tube,  with  a  100-watt 
Mazda  mercury  lamp  as  the  light  source. 
Such  a  lamp  is  now  used  as  a  high- 
intensity  light  for  illuminating  a’rports, 


YRONS 


INCORPORATED 


712  CONNECTICUT  AVE. 
WASHINGTON,  D.  C. 

The  Most  Complete  16mm 

Sound  Motion  Picture  Studios  in  the  East 

FROM  SCRIPT  TO  SCREEN 


On  the  Spot 
in  the 


NATION’S 

CAPITAL 


television  and  motion  picture  studios, 
and  for  other  purposes.  Its  brightness 
in  such  installations  is  one-fifth  of  that 
of  the  sun’s  brightness. 

The  ordinary  115-volt  a-c  household 
lighting  circuit  is  used  to  operate  the 
unit.  The  current  is  rectified  by  an 
electronic  tube  and  then  used  to  charge 
a  capacitor,  really  an  electrical  storage 
tank.  In  three  seconds  enough  power  is 
accumulated  to  operate  the  lamp  at  full 
flash  intensity. 

At  approximately  2000  volts  and  2000 
ampers,  it  reaches  a  maximum  of  some 
4,000,000  watts.  Since  current  flows  for 
only  about  a  millionth  of  a  second  the 
total  energy  in  each  flash  is  very  slight. 
It  is  only  enough  to  light  a  40-watt 
lamp  for  a  tenth  of  a  second. 

“Because  of  the  pressure  of  war  work, 
for  which  the  unit  was  made,  we  have 
not  been  able  to  experiment  fully  with 
many  fast-moving  objects,”  according  to 
S.  Lawrence  Bellinger,  who  was  active 
in  its  development.  “Rather  we  have 
confined  our  efforts  to  using  the  device 
for  studying  high-speed  machinery,  such 
as  turbine  and  supercharger  parts. 

“The  small  mercury  lamp  has  a  life¬ 
time  of  but  one  second,  but  despite  this 
brief  period  it  will  last  the  ordinary 
newspaper  photographer  500  years,  for 
it  is  good  for  1,000,000  exposures.” 

Mr.  Bellinger,  27  years  old,  was  born 
at  Glens  Falls,  N.  Y.,  and  attended  Cor¬ 
nell  University.  He  served  as  a  pho¬ 
tographer  for  the  War  Department  in 
the  Canal  Zone  before  he  joined  the 
G-E  General  Engineering  Laboratory  in 
December,  1941. 


New  Filmosound  Releases 

THE  Bell  &  Howell  Company  have 
announced  the  following  two  new 
releases  of  the  Filmosound  Li¬ 
brary. 

“Saboteur”  (Universal),  11  reels; 
Priscilla  Lane,  Robert  Cummings,  Otto 
Kruger. 

Alfred  Hitchcock’s  most  significant 
screen  achievement,  stars  Priscilla  Lane 
and  Robert  Cummings.  A  timely  story 
of  wartime  America  and  dramatized  in 
one  man’s  conflict  with  enemy  agents. 
A  young  aircraft  factory  worker,  false¬ 
ly  accused  of  sabotage,  tracks  down  the 
real  saboteurs.  Fast-moving  plot,  in  five 
days  its  characters  speed  across  thirteen 
states.  Available,  for  approved  non¬ 
theatrical  audiences. 

“Hell  Below  Zero,”  sound,  10  min. 

A  blinding  snowstorm  in  equatorial 
Africa  is  one  of  the  thrills  of  “Hell 
Below  Zero,”  a  one-reel  black-and-white 
film  photographed  and  narrated  by  Car- 
veth  Wells,  world-famed  traveler.  The 
little  known  “Mountains  of  the  Moon,” 
photographed  for  the  first  time. 


416 


November,  1943  •  American  Cinematocrapher 


Cinematographers 
Responsible  For  Agents' 
Success 

(Continued  from  Page  399) 


sence.  Hollywood  wondered  what  she 
would  look  like,  for  everybody  knew  she 
was  a  lot  older  than  when  she  last  was 
seen  as  a  perfact  example  of  glamour. 
Well,  she  is  still  beautiful  and  glamor¬ 
ous  on  the  screen,  but  it  was  the  art  of 
a  cinematographer  that  brought  it 
about.  I  wonder  if  the  star  and  her 
agent  realize  this.  I  wonder  if  they 
have  shaken  that  cameraman’s  hand  and 
thanked  him.  The  star  probably  has,  but 
I’ll  bet  the  agent  hasn’t.  Without  a 
doubt  he  thinks  that  it  was  his  own 
work  that  put  the  woman  back  on  the 
screen. 

Cameramen  have  meant  a  great  deal 
to  me  in  bringing  new  faces  to  the 
screen,  particularly  in  the  last  year  and 
a  half.  Through  their  artistry  in  mak¬ 
ing  screen  tests  I  have  signed  Kim 
Hunter  to  a  contract  with  David  0. 
Selznick;  Louise  La  Planche  to  Para¬ 
mount  Studios;  Rosemary  La  Planche 
to  RKO  Studios  and  Jeanne  Newport 
to  Charles  R.  Rogers.  Peggy  O’Neill, 
under  contract  to  Charles  R.  Rogers,  was 
one  of  the  few  newcomers  I  have  ever 
signed  without  a  screen  test.  I  was 
surprised  when  Mr.  Rogers  handed  me 
a  contract  without  giving  her  a  test,  but 
he  told  me  that  he  had  enough  faith  in 
Hollywood  cameramen  and  their  art  not 
to  bother  with  a  test  as  long  as  the  girl 
looked  photogenic  to  him.  “Don’t  worry 
about  how  she  will  look  on  the  screen,” 
Rogers  said,  “Our  cameramen  will  take 
good  care  of  that.” 

Very  shortly  now  I  will  be  depending 
upon  the  cameramen  again,  for  I  have 
two  more  new  girls  I  am  planning  to 
introduce  to  the  screen.  They  are  Early 
Cantrell  and  Laurie  Hayden.  Miss  Can¬ 
trell  has  dark  auburn  hair.  Miss  Hay¬ 
den  is  a  blonde.  I  discovered  Miss  Can¬ 
trell  at  the  Pasadena  Community  Play¬ 
house  where  she  was  giving  an  out¬ 
standing  performance.  Miss  Hayden  is 
playing  the  leading  feminine  role  in 
“One  in  Every  Family”  at  the  Pasadena 
Playhouse  laboratory  theatre  at  this 
writing.  I  am  certain  they  will  both  se¬ 
cure  contracts  in  films,  for  I  have  faith 
in  them  and  I  have  faith  in  the  camera¬ 
men  who  will  make  their  tests  that  are 
coming  shortly.  Cinematographers,  I 
thank  you. 


Santa  Fe  Films 

The  Princeton  Film  Center  has  been 
named  distributor  of  the  Santa  Fe 
Railway’s  two  new  16mm.  color  mo¬ 
tion  pictures,  “Loaded  For  War”  and 
“Tank  Destroyers.”  They  are  avail¬ 
able  by  writing  to  Princeton  Film 
Center,  Princeton,  N.  J. 


Neither  mechanical  genius,  industrial  designer, 
nor  professional  cameraman  or  projectionist  has 
any  priority  on  the  $1500.00  DeVRY  CORPO¬ 
RATION  will  pay  for  IDEAS  as  to  'Tomorrow’s 
8mm  Motion  Picture  Camera  and  Projector. 

From  these  experienced  groups  are  bound  to 
come  important,  practical  contributions  to  the 
over-all  design  and  mechanical  improvement  of 
postwar’s  8mm  equipment — but  the  amateur  and 
the  “home  tinkerer”  are  certain  to  have  IDEAS 
— ideas  that  may  revolutionize  an  industry! 

What  do  YOU  want  in  the  next  motion  picture  camera 
YOU  buy?  How  do  YOU  think  it  should  look? 
Load?  Operate? 

What  do  YOU  want  in  YOUR  postwar  motion  pic¬ 
ture  projector?  How  can  its  operation  be 
simplified ,  perjected?  Have  you  an  idea  as 
to  YOUR  projector’s  appearance  that  you 
believe  has  merit  and  appeal? 

It  is  YOUR  answers  to  these  questions, 
in  rough  sketch  or  finished  drawing — 
with  or  without  supplemental  explana¬ 
tion,  as  you  may  desire — that  DeVRY 
is  looking  for. 


It  is  the  USER’s  desires — whether  you  be  pro¬ 
fessional,  amateur,  or  just  a  “tinkerer  with  an 
idea”  that  will  share  these  $1500.00  War  Bond 
awards. 

Drawing,  designing  or  modelling  skill  is  second¬ 
ary.  It  is  the  IDEA  that  will  win. 

Write  today  for  Official  Entry  Blank  and  its 
suggestions  and  conditions. 

THESE  HINTS  MAY  HELP  YOU 

DESIGN:  Submit  your  Ideas — in  rough  or  finished  drawing — 
as  to  how  you  think  the  new  8mm  MOTION  PICTURE 
CAMERA  OR  PROJECTOR  should  look.  Supplement 
designs  with  brief  comments.  Enter  as  many  drawings 
as  you  wish. 

MECHANICAL  OPERATION:  You  may  submit  work¬ 
ing  models,  mechanical  drawings,  rough  sketches.  The  idea 
is  the  thing — how  to  simplify,  improve,  perfect  either  camera 
or  projector  operation — for  instance: 

PROJECTOR:  Ventilating  system  (lamp 
house);  optical  system;  film  movement;  reel 
arms;  tilting  device;  film  safety  devices;  take-up, 
framing,  focusing  and  shutter  mechanisms,  etc. 
Can  you  suggest  particular  developments  of 
these  features? 

CAMERA:  (single  or  turret  lens  mount)  view 
finder;  shutter,  footage  indicator;  loading  mecha¬ 
nism;  winding  key;  exposure  guide;  lens  mount; 
focusing;  single  frame  release  mechanism,  etc. 
How  do  you  think  these  can  be  simplified, 
perfected? 


ENTRIES 
MUST  BE 
MAILED  BY 
DEC.  31, 
1943 


WORLD’S  MOST  COMPLETE  LINE  OF  MOTION  PICTURE  SOUND  EQUIPMENT 


THE  BETTER  WE  BACK  THE  ATTACK  WITH  OUR 
BOND  BUYING  —  THE  SOONER  THE  VICTORY 


Griffis  Advises 
'Russia'  For  Public 

Stanton  Griffis,  new  chief  of  the  OWI 
motion  picture  bureau,  has  strongly  rec¬ 
ommended  to  the  WAC  that  the  Col. 
Frank  Capra  film,  “Battle  of  Russia,” 
be  released  for  public  showings,  and  it 
is  very  likely  that  his  advice  will  be 
followed. 


BUY 

MORE 

BONDS 


American  Cinematographer  •  November,  1943 


417 


tor  dlttlrmlt  thole  —  THE  ORIGINAL 

Scheibe  s  Monotone  Filter 

INDICATES  instantly  how  even-  color  and 
light  value  of  a  scene  or  object  will  be  ren¬ 
dered  in  the  finished  print  before  taking 
the  picture.  always  ready. 

GRADUATED  FILTERS 

and  NiqMEf feels 

FOG  SCENES,  DIFFUSED  FOCUS  AND  OTHER  EFFECTS 

®vk iti  roe  roLDee  TWmoih  2102 

Gcorqe  H.  Scheibo 

1  ORIGINATOR  OF  EFFECT  FILTERS 

1927  WEST  78th  ST  LOS  ANGELES.  CAL 


BUY 

WAR 

BONDS 


th/s"EYE"sees  into 

THE  FUTURE 

B&H  Taylor-Hobson-Cooke 
Cine  Lenses  do  more  than  meet 
current  technical  demands.  They 
exceed  them — and  their  design 
anticipatesfuture  improvements  in 
film  emulsions.  They  are  THE 
long-term  investment  lenses. 
Write  for  literature. 

BELL  &  HOWELL  COMPANY 

Exclusive  world  distributors 
1849  Larchmont  Avenue, Chicago 
New  York:  30  Rockefeller  Plaza 
Hollywood:  716  N.  LaBrea  Ave. 
Washington,  D.  C.:  1221  G  St.,  N.  W. 
London:  13-14  Great  Castle  St. 


Naval  Technicians  Supervise  Optical  Movies 

Motion  picture  on  "Fine  Grinding,"  third  of  series  under  production  at  Bell  &  Howell  Chicago  plant  for 
training  of  optical  craftsmen,  being  supervised  by  representatives  of  the  Navy  and  U.  S.  Office  of  Education. 
Standing,  left  to  right:  Lyle  F.  Stewart,  field  supervisor  for  U.  S.  Office  of  Education;  Lt.  Comdr.  W.  W. 
Williams,  Prof  Neil  F.  Beardsley,  Comdr.  E.  B.  Oliver,  Lt.  H.  E.  Carr,  Lt.  C.  C.  Pierce,  Lt.  J.  D  Cassidy. 
Seated:  Wm.  F.  Kruse,  writer  and  director  of  the  series. 


A  SERIES  of  visual  education  units, 
on  “Optical  Craftsmanship,”  each 
consisting  of  a  ten-  to  fifteen- 
minute  16mm.  sound  motion  picture,  a 
35mm.  film  strip  and  a  sixteen-page 
learner’s  manual,  has  just  gone  into 
production,  under  the  joint  auspices  of 
the  Navy  and  of  the  United  States  Office 
of  Education. 

Commander  E.  B.  Oliver,  of  the  Bu¬ 
reau  of  Ships,  Navy  Department,  with 
several  other  officers,  visited  the  new 
Bell  &  Howell  optical  plant  in  Chicago, 
to  consult  on  the  progress  of  the  films 
being  produced  by  the  company,  as  part 
of  this  project.  He  saw  the  third  of  the 
series,  “Fine  Grinding,”  under  the  cam¬ 
eras.  General  photography  on  two,  “Fin¬ 
ger  Grinding”  and  “Pin-Bar  Grinding,” 


RENTALS  SALES 


SERVICE 


MITCHELL 


Standard,  Silenced,  N.  C., 
Hi-Speed,  Process,  and 
Eyemo  Cameras. 


BELL  &  HOWELL 


Fearless  Blimps  and  Panoram  Dollys — Synchronizers — Moviolas 
35mm  Double  System  Recording  Equipment 


WE  SPECIALIZE  in  REPAIR  WORK  on  MITCHELL  and  BELL  &  HOWELL  CAMERAS 


1^  FRANK  ZUCKER  CABLE  ADDRESS  CINEQUIP 

*  AM  ERA  EQUIPMENT 

■iA  1600  BROADWAY  nyc  \  CIrcle  6-5080 


has  already  been  completed.  Other  units 
being  made  at  the  Bell  &  Howell  plant 
include  “Pitch  Buttoning  and  Blocking,” 
“Polishing”  and  “Centering  and  Cement¬ 
ing.”  The  films  dealing  with  spherical 
surfaces  will  be  made  at  the  Chicago 
plant,  those  on  flats  and  prisms  will  be 
made  in  New  York. 

In  answer  to  a  question  as  to  why  this 
field  was  being  fostered  so  extensively, 
Commander  Oliver  explained  that  out¬ 
break  of  the  war  has  made  imperative 
the  immediate  large-scale  expansion  of 
American  production  of  precision  optics. 
“Optics  are  the  ‘eyes  of  the  Navy,’  and 
you  can’t  fight  very  well  without  eyes,” 
he  said.  Every  manufacturer  he  had 
approached  to  take  on  the  production  of 
naval  optical  devices  complained  of  lack 
of  skilled  manpower.  There  was,  fur¬ 
thermore,  practically  no  material  avail¬ 
able  for  the  training  of  the  new  unskilled 
hands  that  had  to  be  drawn  by  the  thou¬ 
sands  into  the  infant  industry. 

“In  the  Navy  itself,  we  are  now  teach¬ 
ing  just  about  everything  by  means  of 
16mm.  motion  pictures,”  the  Commander 
continued,  “from  tying  knots  to  swim¬ 
ming,  so  why  not  teach  optical  crafts¬ 
manship  by  means  of  such  visual  aids?” 

The  U.  S.  Office  of  Education  reached 
the  same  conclusion.  After  consultation 
with  the  War  Manpower  Commission,  it 
was  decided  to  add  this  vital  new  field 
of  manpower  training  to  the  machine- 
shop,  shipbuilding,  welding  and  other 
crafts  in  which  the  USOE  films  have 
rendered  noteworthy  aid. 


BUY 

MORE 

BONDS 


418  November,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


Invaders  Learn  to 
Surrender 

(Continued  from  Page  400) 

the  paraphernalia  of  a  century-old  the¬ 
atrical  tradition — we  feel  that  he  plays. 
In  America  he  does  not  play,  he  acts 
most  naturally,  unencumbered,  unsophis¬ 
ticated — we  feel  that  he  is  himself. 

Life,  atmosphere  and  education  in  our 
country  inoculates  this  “natural”  art, 
obvious,  if  I  may  say  so,  already  in 
the  American  screen  child’s  performance. 

Another  striking  difference  of  film  con¬ 
ception  between  the  two  worlds  is  our 
sense  of  humor.  A  divine  gift  of  Amer¬ 
ica’s  people,  unparalleled  on  this  globe, 
deeply  wholesome  in  its  beneficiency, 
healing  wounds  like  the  soft  caressing 
hand  of  a  doctor  magician.  European 
humor  is  entirely  different — where  it 
springs  onto  the  surface  of  life  and  art, 
it  is  sharp,  whipping,  often  bitter  as 
acid,  full  of  sarcasm  and  ailing  irony. 
This  may  be  the  explanation  of  the  fact 
that  American  humor  has  swept  all  over 
the  world  like  a  torrential  flood. 

In  Europe,  educational  systems  are  ;n 
big  style.  We  have  less  of  them,  but 
we  know  that  our  movie  is  a  gigantic 
medium  of  expression  for  our  healthy 
American  spirit.  We  believe  that  we 
should  give  our  youth  the  courage  to 
meet  life’s  struggles,  with  the  assur¬ 
ance  that  honest  effort  is  not  futile,  and 
that  the  power  of  good  is  victorious  in 
the  end.  This  is  the  attitude  of  our 
democratic  nation.  We  are  loyal  and  tol¬ 
erant  to  the  opinions  and  actions  of 
others,  but  we  don’t  wish  that  defeatism 
of  life  dominate  our  films. 

European  films  paint  life  with  deep 
resignation.  In  our  nature,  optimism  is 
the  fundamental  view.  Things  don’t 
get  us  down  so  easily — chin  up — regard¬ 
less.,  And  that  is  what  will  help  us 
win  this  war,  too. 

And  it  will  be  our  American  films  that 
will  lighten  the  screens  of  Europe  on 
her  convalescent  but  peaceful  tomorrow! 


Electronics  In  Photometry 

(Continued  from  Page  404) 

The  method  is  to  pass  the  film  in  the 
roll  past  a  point  at  which  is  located 
means  for  scanning  the  film  in  a  direc¬ 
tion  at  right  angles  to  its  direction  of 
motion.  The  scanning  beam  consists  of 
infra-red  radiation  or  any  radiation  to 
which  the  emulsion  is  insensitive  and 
to  which  a  photo-cell  will  respond.  The 
radiation  from  the  scanning  beam  is 
picked  up  by  a  photo-emissive  cell,  with 
which  is  preferably  associated  an  elec¬ 
tron  multiplier,  and  is  further  amplified 
if  necessary.  In  regions  where  the  film 
has  no  faults  the  output  is  constant,  but 
should  a  fault  be  traversed  by  the  scan¬ 
ning  spot  the  small  change  in  illumina¬ 
tion  of  the  photo-cell  is  passed  on  as  a 
pulse  to  the  amplifier  which  finally  op¬ 
erates  a  thyratron  circuit  which  in  turn 
triggers  a  relay.  The  relay  may  then 
perform  anything  required,  e.g.,  stop  the 
machine,  punch  the  film  or  give  audible 
warning.  A  variety  of  electronic  cir¬ 
cuits  can  be  used  as  accessories,  for 
example  to  prevent  the  scanning  spot 
from  running  over  the  edge  of  the  film 
and  thus  recording  a  major  fault! 

In  practice  this  method  of  examining 
film  proves  greatly  superior  in  sensitivity 
to  the  human  eye.  The  eye  can  just 
detect  a  black  circle  stuck  on  a  piece  of 
film,  the  photo-electric  examining  ma¬ 
chine  will  detect  a  short,  faint  pencil 
line  drawn  on  the  emulsion  surface. 


Records  on  Microfilm 

VER  85  miles  of  microfilm  in  a 
fire  and  bombproof  vault  now  pre¬ 
serve  the  maps,  records  and  deeds 
accumulated  since  1852  in  the  Los  An¬ 
geles  County  recorder’s  office,  the  larg¬ 
est  of  its  kind  in  the  world.  The  reels 
of  microfilm  require  only  three  per  cent 
of  the  space  needed  for  the  original 
documents. 

Miss  M.  Beatty,  recorder  of  the  Los 
Angeles  County  office,  reports  that  the 
cameras  took  over  7,000,000  individual 
exposures.  In  all,  13,186,056  pages  of 
documented  material  —  including  25,000 
maps — were  microfilmed.  Over  450,000 
feet  of  Du  Pont  Safety  Micro-copy  film 
"was  used  on  the  project. 


A uncon 

SOUND 

CAMERA 


for  16  mm  sound  -  on  -  film 


★  High  Fidelity  Sound 

★  Self-contained  in  sound  proof  "blimp." 

★  Minimum  equipment;  maximum  portabil¬ 
ity.  Camera  and  Amplifier,  complete, 
weigh  only  thirty-seven  pounds. 

★  Kodachrome  or  black  and  white  pictures 
with  Auricon  sound  track  will  reproduce 
on  any  sound-film  projector. 

★  Can  be  operated  in  the  field  from  an 
Auricon  Portable  Power  Supply. 

★  Auricon  Camera  with  type  "C"  lens  mount 
(but  without  lens)  and  Amplifier  complete 
with  microphone,  instructions,  and  cases 

$880.00 


AURICON  16  mm  RECORDER 

★  Variable-area  sound  on  film,  for  double 
system  recording  with  a  synchronous  motor 
driven  16  mm.  camera.  Amplifier  has  back¬ 
ground-noise  reduction  and  mixers  for  com¬ 
bining  speech  and  music.  With  dynamic 
microphone,  instructions  and  cases  for  Re¬ 
corder,  Amplifier,  Accessories  ....  $695.00 

★  Auricon  16mm.  sound-on-film  recorders 
and  cameras  are  serving  the  Nation  s 
War  effort  with  Military  and  Govern¬ 
ment  Film  Units,  and  with  civilian  or¬ 
ganizations  producing  essential  morale 
and  industrial  training  films.  If  your 
work  in  such  fields  makes  you  eligible 
to  purchase  new  equipment,  we  invite 
you  to  let  our  engineers  show  you  how 
Auricon  portability  and  professional  per¬ 
formance  will  simplify  your  recording 
problems. 

AURICON  ^buuiio*t, 

E.  M.  BERNDT  CORP. 

S515  SUNSET  BLVD.,  HOLLYWOOD,  CALIF. 


MANUFACTURERS  OF  SOUND-ON-FILM 
RECORDING  EQUIPMENT  SINCE  1931 


FOR  RENT 

ANIMATED  CARTOON  EQUIPMENT 

35MM.  SUCCESSIVE  FRAME  THREE-COLOR  CAMERAS 

•  • 

ACME  TOOL  &  MFG.  CO. 

2815  W.  OLIVE  AVENUE  BURBANK,  CALIFORNIA 


American  Cinematographer  •  November,  1943 


419 


GOERZ 


Chmhkanl' 


CRAFTSMEN 


* 

* 

♦ 

* 

* 

* 

* 

* 

* 

¥ 

¥ 

¥ 

¥ 

¥ 

¥ 

¥ 

¥ 

¥ 

¥ 

¥ 

¥ 

¥ 

¥ 

¥ 

¥ 

¥ 

¥ 

★ 


oJisl  dowjq~ 
Jth&VL.  AhaJiSL— 


The  production  line  of  "GOERZ  AMER- 
'  ICAN"  is  formed  by  skilled  men,  who 
through  painstaking  work  create  high- 
grade  photo-lenses  and  optical  units  for 
military  instruments  used  by  our  armed 
forces, 

on  Land — 

on  the  Sea — 
in  the  Air — 


T  hese  precise  optical  units  are  of  the 
*  greatest  importance  to  our  armed 
forces,  for  without  accurate  military  in¬ 
struments  for  sighting,  fire  control  and 
photographic  aerial  reconnaissance  their 
fighting  machinery  would  be  of  little 
value  to  them. 


Q  ptical  science  together  with  our  crafts¬ 
men,  doing  their  duty  on  the  job  in 
the  production  line,  will  hasten  victory. 

Q\ir  production  is  keyed  to  fill  the  re¬ 
quirements  of  our  Government,  and 
of  others  on  orders  with  priority  certifi¬ 
cates.  "GOERZ  AMERICAN"  lenses  for 
civilian  use  will  again  be  available  after 
Victory. 


To  hasten  Victory  — 

\  INVEST  IN  WAR  BONDS  ^ 


C.P. GOERZ  AMERICAN  OPTICAL  CO. 


Office  and  Factory 

★  317  East  34th  Street,  New  York,  14,  N.  Y.  •¥ 

Omshkanl' 

PRECISION  OPTICS 

*  AinxjL  1899 


American  Television  Uses 
Canada  Pix  In  Programs 

FOR  the  first  time  in  American  tele¬ 
vision,  Canadian  documentary  films 
are  being  seriously  televised  on  a  large 
scale  by  radio  networks  in  the  United 
States,  the  National  Film  Board 
announced. 

CBS  has  recently  televised  “Peoples 
of  Canada.”  Canadian  documentaries 
selected  for  television  by  the  National 
Broadcasting  Company  are  “Road  to 


Tokyo,”  “Hot  Ice,”  “Forward  Comman¬ 
dos,”  “Mask  of  Nippon”  and  “Quebec, 
Path  of  Conquest.” 


OUR  MEN  NEED 

*  BOOKS  * 


ALL  YOU  CAN  SPARE 


★  ★**★★★★★★★★  AC-1 1 


CAMERA  SUPPLY  COMPANY 


HOLLYWOOD 


ART  REEVES 

1515  North  Cahuenga  Boulevard 
Cable  Address — Cameras 


CALIFORNIA 


Efficient-Courteous  Service  New  and  Used  Equipmnt 

Bought — Sold — Rented 

Everything  Photographic  Professional  and  Amateur 


420  November,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


Diary  of  a  10- Year 
Movie  Maker 

(Continued  from  Page  414) 

exposure  button.  Since  then,  many  fleet¬ 
ing  moments  of  pleasure  have  been  per¬ 
manently  recorded  ...  to  be  re-lived  at 
any  time  on  the  screen.  All  the  time 
and  effort  spent  in  making  these  movies 
is  well  repaid  in  viewing  once  again 
those  never-to-be-forgotten  scenes. 

Yes,  movie  making  is  one  of  those 
things  that  gets  in  your  blood.  It’s  a 
condition  that’s  difficult  to  remedy.  But 
after  all,  who  WANTS  a  remedy? 

RUBY  CAMERA  EXCHANGE 

Rents  . . .  Sells  . .  .  Exchanges 

Everything  You  Need  for  the 

PRODUCTION  &  PROJECTION 

of  Motion  Pictures  Provided 
by  a  Veteran  Organization 
of  Specialists 

35  mm . 16  mm. 


IN  BUSINESS  SINCE  1910 


729  Seventh  Ave.,  New  York  City 


Cable  Address:  RUBYCAM 


TELEFILM 

|inccT~rporated| 

Direct  16  MM 

SOUND 

USED  BY: 

►  Douglas  Aircraft 

►  General  Elec.  (Welding  Series) 

►  Boeing  Aircraft 

►  North  American  Aviation 

►  U.  S.  Dept,  of  Interior 

►  U.  S.  Dept,  of  Agriculture 

►  Santa  Fe  Railroad 

►  Washington  State  Apple 

Commission 

►  Standard  Oil  of  Calif. 

►  Salvation  Army 

and  Many  Others 
A  BETTER  JOB  FASTER- 

MORE  ECONOMICAL! 

TELEFILM 

INCORPORATED 
6039  Hollywood  Blvd.,  HOLLYWOOD.  CALIF. 

GL adstone  5748 


S.M.P.E.  Holds  54th 

Semi-Annual  Conference 

HE  54th  Semi-Annual  Conference 
of  the  Society  of  Motion  Picture 
Engineers  was  held  in  Hollywood  on  Oc¬ 
tober  18,  19,  20,  21  and  22.  Technical 
papers  were  presented  by  experts  on 
practically  every  phase  of  motion  pic¬ 
tures. 

Among  the  papers  presented  were : 
“The  Flat  Spiral  Reel  For  Processing 
50-foot  Lengths  of  35mm.  Film,”  by 
C.  E.  Ives  and  C.  J.  Kunz  of  the  East¬ 
man  Kodak  Company;  “The  New  Acme- 
Dunn  Optical  Printer,”  by  Linwood 
Dunn  of  RKO  Pictures;  “A  High  Speed 
Method  of  Controlling  Kelvin  and  Light 
Intensity  for  Motion  Picture  Printers,” 
by  Prof.  Irving  E.  Dyatt,  Oregon  State 
College;  “The  New  DuPont  Photo  Prod¬ 
ucts  Control  Laboratory,”  by  William 
P.  Hillman,  E.  I.  DuPont  de  Nemours 
&  Co.;  “Like  This,”  by  Lt.  Commander 
Patrick  Murphy,  Chief  of  Visual  Train¬ 
ing  Section,  U.  S.  Coast  Guard,  Wash¬ 
ington,  D.  C. ;  “A  New  Studio  and  Loca¬ 
tion  Recording  Unit,”  by  J.  L.  Fields, 
RCA-Victor  Division,  Radio  Corporation 
of  America,  Hollywood. 

Also  a  symposium  on  the  Paramount 
Color  Still  Background  Projection  Sys¬ 
tem  in  which  three  papers  were  pre¬ 
sented:  “Duplication  of  Kodachrome 
Original,  with  Enlargements,  Reduction 
and  Color  Correction,”  by  Earle  Morgan 
and  Roy  Peck  of  Paramount  Pictures; 
“Transfer  of  Kodachrome  Emulsion  to 
Lantern  Slide  Glass,”  by  Barton  H. 
Thompson  of  Paramount,  and  “High  Effi¬ 
ciency  Stereoptican  Projector  for  Color 
Background  Shots,”  by  Farciot  Edouart, 
A.S.C.,  of  Paramount. 

“What  To  Expect  of  Direct  16mm.,” 
by  Lloyd  Thompson,  vice-president  of  the 
Calvin  Company,  Kansas  City;  “16mm. 
Color  to  35mm.  Black  and  White,”  by 
Carroll  Dunning,  Dunningcolor  Corpo¬ 
ration,  Hollywood;  “Improvements  in 
16mm.  Equipment,”  by  Lt.  Commander 
Alfred  Gilks,  Office  of  Strategic  Sup¬ 
plies,  Field  Photographic  Branch,  Navy 
Department;  “Post-War  Television 
Planning  and  Requirements,”  by  Klaus 
Landsberg,  Television  Productions,  Inc., 
Hollywood;  “Cunningham  Combat  Cam¬ 
era,”  by  H.  G.  Cunningham;  “Monopack 
Processes,”  by  Joseph  S.  Friedman, 
American  Photography,  Binghamton, 
N.  Y. ;  and  many  other  papers  dealing 
with  sound  and  laboratory  and  problems 
of  the  armed  services. 


Pix  For  Better  Vision 

NGLISH  night  fighters  in  the  war 
zones  are  reported  to  have  been 
ordered  to  see  at  least  two  pix  weekly 
in  order  to  condition  their  eyes,  accord¬ 
ing  to  Capt.  Kuttenwascher  who  visited 
Warners  recently.  British  government 
optometrists  have  found  that  the  com¬ 
bination  of  darkness  and  intent  watch¬ 
ing  of  visual  images  is  ideal  for  the 
eyes  for  the  work  demanded  by  night 
bombing  expeditions. 


Remember  the 
Red  Cross 

GIVE  ! 


New  Precision  Products  from 

KALART 

available  on  suitable  priorities 

NEW  Model  "E-l"  Range  Finder  with 
war-time  improvements.  New  FOCUSPOT 
for  automatic  focusing  in  the  dark.  And 
improved  Master  Automatic  Speed  Flash. 
Write  for  full  information.  The  Kalart 
Company,  Inc.,  Dept.  19,  Stamford,  Conn. 


8  Enlarged  16  ReK)ced  8 

Geo.  W.  Colburn  Laboratory 

Special  Motion  Picture  Printing 
995  MERCHANDISE  MART 
CHICAGO 


MOVIOLA 

FILM  EDITING  E9UIPMENT 
Used  in  Every  Major  Studio 
Illustrated  Literature  on  Request 
Manufactured  by 

GENERAL  SERVICE  CORPORATION 
Moviola  Division 

1449-51  Gordon  Street  Hollywood  28,  Calif. 


FAXON  DEAN 

INC. 

CAMERAS 

RLIMPS-DOLLYS 
FOR  RENT 

Day,  NOrmandie  22184 
Night,  SUnset  2-1271 

4516  Sunset  Boulevard 


American  Cinematographer  •  November,  1943  421 


STATEMENT  OF  THE  OWNERSHIP,  MANAGE¬ 
MENT,  CIRCULATION,  ETC.,  REQUIRED  BY 
THE  ACTS  OF  CONGRESS  OF  AUGUST  24, 
1912,  AND  MARCH  3,  1933, 

Of  The  American  Cinematographer,  published 
monthly  at  Los  Angeles,  California,  for  October 
1st,  1943. 

State  of  California  ) 

County  of  Los  Angeles  f  ss- 

Before  me,  a  Notary  Public  in  and  for  the 
State  and  county  aforesaid,  personally  appeared 
Hal  Hall,  who,  having  been  duly  sworn  ac¬ 
cording  to  law,  deposes  and  says  that  he  is  the 
Editor  of  the  AMERICAN  CINEMATOGRAPHER 
and  that  the  following  is,  to  the  best  of  his  knowl¬ 
edge  and  belief,  a  true  statement  of  the  owner¬ 
ship,  management  (and  if  a  daily  paper,  the 
circulation),  etc.,  of  the  aforesaid  publication  for 
the  date  shown  in  the  above  caption,  required  by 
the  Act  of  August  24,  1912,  as  amended  by  the 
Act  of  March  3,  1933,  embodied  in  section  537, 
Postal  Laws  and  Regulations,  printed  on  the  re¬ 
verse  of  this  form,  to  wit : 

1.  That  the  names  and  addresses  of  the  pub¬ 
lisher,  editor,  managing  editor,  and  business 
manager  are:  Publisher,  A.S.C.  Agency,  Inc., 
1782  No.  Orange  Drive,  Hollywood  28,  Calif. ; 
Editor,  Hal  Hall,  1782  No.  Orange  Drive,  Holly¬ 
wood  28,  Calif. ;  Managing  Editor,  Hal  Hall,  1782 
No.  Orange  Drive,  Hollywood  28,  Calif. ;  Business 
Manager,  Marguerite  Duerr,  1782  No.  Orange 
Drive,  Hollywood  28,  Calif. 

2.  That  the  owner  is:  (If  owned  by  a  corpora¬ 
tion,  its  name  and  address  must  be  stated  and 
also  immediately  thereunder  the  names  and  ad¬ 
dresses  of  stockholders  owning  or  holding  one  per 
cent  or  more  of  total  amount  of  stock.  If  not 
owned  by  a  corporation,  the  names  and  addresses 
of  the  individual  owners  must  be  given.  If  owned 
by  a  firm,  company,  or  other  unincorporated  con¬ 
cern,  its  name  and  address,  as  well  as  those  of 
each  individual  member,  must  be  given.)  A.S.C. 
Agency,  Inc.,  1782  No.  Orange  Drive,  Hollywood 
28,  Calif.,  a  non-profit  corporation  wholly  owned 
by  the  American  Society  of  Cinematographers, 
Inc.,  1782  N.  Orange  Dr.,  Hollywood  28,  Calif. 
Officers  of  the  American  Society  of  Cinematog¬ 
raphers,  Inc.,  are:  President,  Leonard  Smith,  1782 
N.  Orange  Dr.,  Hollywood  28,  Calif. ;  First  Vice- 
President,  Charles  G.  Clarke,  1782  N.  Orange  Dr., 
Hollywood  28,  Calif. ;  Second  Vice-President,  Ar¬ 
thur  Edeson,  1782  N.  Orange  Dr.,  Hollywood  28, 
Calif.,  Third  Vice-President,  Joseph  Walker,  1782 
N.  Orange  Dr.,  Hollywood  28,  Calif.  ;  Secretary- 
Treasurer,  Byron  Haskin,  1782  N.  Orange  Dr., 
Hollywood  28,  Calif.,  Executive  Vice-President  and 
Business  Manager,  Fred  W.  Jackman,  1782  N. 
Orange  Dr.,  Hollywood  28,  Calif. 

3.  That  the  known  bondholders,  mortgagees,  and 
other  security  holders  owning  or  holding  1  per 
cent  or  more  of  total  amount  of  bonds,  mortgages, 
or  other  securities  are:  (If  there  are  none,  so 
state.)  None. 

4.  That  the  two  paragraphs  next  above,  giving 
the  names  of  the  owners,  stockholders,  and  se¬ 
curity  holders,  if  any,  contain  not  only  the  list 
of  stockholders  and  security  holders  as  they  ap¬ 
pear  upon  the  books  of  the  company  but  also, 
in  cases  where  the  stockholder  or  security  holder 
appears  upon  the  books  of  the  company  as  trustee 
or  in  any  other  fiduciary  relation,  the  name  of  the 
person  or  corporation  for  whom  such  trustee  is 
acting,  is  given  ;  also  that  the  said  two  paragraphs 
contain  statements  embracing  affiant's  full  knowl¬ 
edge  and  belief  as  to  the  circumstances  and  con¬ 
ditions  under  which  stockholders  and  security 
holders  who  do  not  appear  upon  the  books  of  the 
company  as  trustees,  hold  stock  and  securities  in 
a  capacity  other  than  that  of  a  bona  fide  owner ; 
and  this  affiant  has  no  reason  to  believe  that  any 
other  person,  association,  or  corporation  has  any 
interest  direct  or  indirect  in  the  said  stock,  bonds, 
or  other  securities  than  as  so  stated  by  him. 

5.  That  the  average  number  of  copies  of  each 

issue  of  this  publication  sold  or  distributed, 
through  the  mails  or  otherwise,  to  paid  subscrib¬ 
ers  during  the  twelve  month  preceding  the  date 
shown  above  is. .  (This  information  is  re¬ 

quired  from  daily  publications  only.) 

(Signed)  HAL  HALL,  Editor. 

Sworn  to  and  subscribed  before  me  this  8th 
day  of  October,  1943. 

(Seal)  OLIVE  M.  BERREAU, 

Notary  Public  in  and  for  the  County  of  Los 
Angeles,  State  of  California. 

(My  commission  expires  August  6,  1944. 


Many  Army  Bids  In 
For  "Disney"  Victory 

Impact  of  Walt  Disney’s  “Victory 
Through  Air  Power”  is  being  felt  in 
high  military  circles  throughout  the  globe, 
as  indicated  by  the  number  of  requests 
for  prints  being  made  to  the  Disney 
Studio.  Technicolor  today  is  rushing 
through  a  16  mm.  print  requested  by  the 
U.S.  Army  Pictorial  Service  overseas, 
“to  be  used  for  important  military  pur¬ 
poses.” 

Air  Marshall  Sir  Sholto-Douglas,  with 
headquarters  in  the  Middle  East,  will 
shortly  receive  a  print,  at  his  request, 
for  showing  to  Admirals  of  the  British 
Navy  and  top  military  leaders  in  the 
Middle  East  Theatre.  British  Air  Minis¬ 
try  wants  the  picture  for  its  historical 
records  and  to  show  it  at  the  Royal  Air 
Force  Staff  College,  where  courses  are 


FOR  SALE 


OPTICAL  SOUND  REDUCTION  PRINTER, 
COMPLETE,  $1250.00;  BELL-HOWELL 
SINGLE  PHASE  SYNCHRONOUS  CAMERA 
MOTOR,  $100.00;  RCA  GALVANOMETER 
STRING  VIBRATORS,  $5.00;  3-PHASE  CAM¬ 
ERA  MOTORS.  RCA  MITCHELL,  $47.50; 
BELL-HOWELL,  $77.50 ;  TWO  ELEMENT 
GLOWLAMPS.  $9.50;  DUPLEX  35MM  STEP 
PRINTER.  $425.00.  S.O.S.  CINEMA  SUPPLY 
CORPORATION,  NEW  YORK  18. 


WE  BUY.  SELL  AND  RENT  PROFESSIONAL 
AND  16mm  EQUIPMENT.  NEW  AND  USED. 
WE  ARE  DISTRIBUTORS  FOR  ALL  LEAD¬ 
ING  MANUFACTURERS.  RUBY  CAMERA 
EXCHANGE,  729  Seventh  Ave.,  New  York  City. 
Established  since  1910. 


IMPROVED  DUPLEX  35MM  PRINTER,  with 
two  Bell-Howell  Cams  and  Shuttles.  Perfect 
Registration  for  Color  or  Black  and  White,  and 
process  plates.  Also  Bell-Howell  Step  Printer 
with  Registration  Pins  ideal  for  duplication. 
35  MM  HOLMES  AND  DEVRY  Portable  Sound 
Projectors.  Hollywood  Camera  Exchange,  1600 
Cahuenga,  Hollywood. 


FORD  1*4  ton  Sound  Truck  equipped  with  latest 
Blue  Seal  noiseless  variable  area  recording  equip¬ 
ment,  220  volt,  3  phase  generator  for  motors, 
battery  charger,  RCA  and  W.E.  microphones. 
Complete,  ready  for  operation.  Also  stock  of 
synchronous  and  Selsyn  motors.  BLUE  SEAL 
SOUND  DEVICES,  305  East  63rd  Street,  New 
York.  N.  Y. 


FRIED  16mm  continuous  printer  sound  and  pic¬ 
ture  with  meters  for  color.  Fried  light  testing 
machine.  Complete  $1150.  FILM  ASSOCIATES 
CO.,  429  Ridgewood  Drive,  Dayton  9,  Ohio. 


FOR  BELL  &  HOWELL  CAMERA,  Synchronous 
Motor,  like  new  (Aluminum  Frame),  90'  minute, 
$115.00;  220  V.A.C.  3-phase  Synchronous  90' 
minute,  $125.00.  Bell  &  Howell,  Cooke,  Astro, 
Zeiss,  Goertz  Lenses,  Wide  Angle,  Telephoto 
FI. 4,  etc.,  16,  35  Sound  Projectors,  Cine  Spe¬ 
cials,  Accessories.  Bell  &  Howell.  Turrets, 
Eyemos.  Finest  Domestic  and  Imported  Candid, 
Reflex  Cameras,  Automatic  Rolleiflexes,  Leica, 
Contax,  Speed  Graphics — Studio  and  Copying 
Cameras.  Screens,  Recorders,  Playbacks,  Photo 
Cells,  Slide-Picture  Projectors,  Exposure  Meters. 
“Debrie  16mm  ARC  Sound  Projector  $895,  Two 
Speakers,  Rectifier,  Amplifier."  Trades  Accepted, 
Bought,  Get  Our  Prices  and  Offers.  We  Pay 
Highest  Prices  for  Professional  and  Amateur 
Equipment,  Film  and  Accessories.  Mogull’s, 
57  West  48th  Street,  New  York  19. 


RADIANT  DAYTIME  SHADOW  BOX 
PROJECTION  SCREEN  UNIT 


held  for  senior  officers.  Wherever  pos¬ 
sible,  the  Disney  Studio  is  cooperating 
with  the  armed  forces  of  the  Allies. 


FOR  SALE 

WESTERN  ELECTRIC  Double  System  35mm 
Sound  Editor;  Holmes  16mm  Sound  Projector, 
1000  -  watt  Booth  Auditorium  type;  Duplex 
35mm.  Printer  for  picture  and  sound  track ; 
16mm.  Continuous  Contact  Sound  and  Picture 
Printer;  Akeley  camera,  35-50-100-150-300- 
425mm.  lenses ;  5  magazine ;  motor,  tripod, 

many  attachments ;  DeBrie  camera,  Model  L, 
new  tachometer  ;  friction  and  crank  tripod  ;  110 
volt  motor;  Mitchell  type  mounts;  magazines. 
WE  BUY— TRADE— SEND  US  YOUR  LISTS. 

CAMERA  MART,  70  W.  45th  St.,  New  York  City 


WANTED 


WANTED  TO  BUY  FOR  CASH 
CAMERAS  AND  ACCESSORIES 
MITCHELL.  B  &  H,  EYEMO,  DEBRIE.  AKELEY 
ALSO  LABORATORY  AND  CUTTING  ROOM 
EQUIPMENT 

CAMERA  EQUIPMENT  COMPANY 
1600  BROADWAY,  NEW  YORK  CITY 
CABLE:  CINEQUIP 


WE  PAY  CASH  FOR  EVERYTHING  PHOTO¬ 
GRAPHIC.  Write  us  today.  Hollywood  Camera 
Exchange.  1600  Cahuenga  Blvd.,  Hollywood. 


WE  BUY— SELL— TRADE  ALL  MOTION  PIC¬ 
TURE  EQUIPMENT,  SOUND  AND  SILENT* 
SEND  YOUR  LIST.  THE  CAMERA  MART. 
70  WEST  45TH  ST.,  NEW  YORK  CITY. 


MOGULL’S  IS  ON  A 

BUYING  SPREE 

AND  PAYS  TOP  CASH 

FOR  PHOTOGRAPHIC,  CINEMATIC  ITEMS 

Cameras,  Projectors,  Public  Address  Systems* 
Enlargers,  Splicers,  Lenses,  Accessories,  Film, 
etc.  Complete  and  partial  units  considered ! 
Liberal  appraisals,  immediate  cash  Bring  or  write 
frankly,  describing  items  in  full  detail. 

MOGULL’S,  57  W.  48th  St.,  New  York  19,  N.  Y. 


CLASSIFIED  ADVERTISING 


422  November,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


BASIC  AERONAUTICAL  RESEARCH  in  the  laboratories  of  the  National  Advisory  and  fuel  combustion  in  aircraft  engine  cylinders.  These  movies,  showing 
Committee  for  Aeronautics  at  Langley  Field,  Va.,  uses  Cine-Kodak  to  study  air-  what  the  eye  can't  see,  lead  to  design  refinements — in  aircraft  and  engines — 
foils  and  air  currents — through  “smokeflow  movies"  made  in  wind  tunnels —  which  “pay  out"  when  the  guns  begin  to  chatter  or  the  bombs  find  their  mark. 


KEY  TO  SECRET  WEAPONS  y  •  •  •  a  mom  came  a zz— 

—w/iic/?  sfrefc/tes  sjo//f- seconds  /nfo  w/nufes 


1'VVORKING  BLIND”  •  •  •  trying  t0  im' 

*  »  prove  a  plane  or  gun  or  projectile 
which  moves  so  fast  you  can’t  see  it ...  is 
necessarily  a  slow,  fumbling  business.  In 
time  of  war,  not  good  enough  . .  . 

Fortunately,  back  in  1932,  Kodak  made 
available  to  our  best  engineering  and  sci¬ 
entific  brains  a  new  kind  of  eye  .  .  .  which 
could  see  what  goes  on  at  blinding  speed 
in  our  mechanized,  electrified  world. 

This  eye  was  a  movie  camera  for  taking 
thousands  of  pictures  a  second  —  which 
could  then  be  shown  at  normal  movie 
speed  of  16  pictures  a  second.  It  “mag¬ 
nified  time.”  In  the  resulting  movies,  ac¬ 
tion  which  had  actually  occurred  in  a  split- 
second  was  stretched  into  minutes. 

Research  scientists  used  these  cameras 
to  help  develop  faster  airplanes,  more 
powerful  motors.  And,  with  the  approach 
of  war,  to  find  out  why  a  machine  gun 
“jammed”— and  fix  it;  to  “take  the  bugs 
out”  of  the  recoil  mechanisms  of  bigger 
guns;  to  pack  a  more  effective  “train  of 


NOT  “OLD  FAITHFUL,”  but  “stills"  enlarged 
from  movies  made  at  2  500  pictures  a  second, 
showing  the  comparative  efficiency  of  two  de¬ 
signs  in  fuel  injection  jets.  The  superior  dis¬ 
tribution  of  fuel  from  the  jet  at  the  right- 
invisible  without  the  movies — is  the  type  of 
small  improvement  which  helps  our  men 
write  America's  fighting  record  in  the  air. 


fire”  into  a  contact  bomb  . . .  examples  are 
numbered  in  hundreds. 

Your  16-mm.  home  movie  Cine-Kodak 
was  the  “jumping-off  place”  in  designing 
Eastman’s  super-speed  movie  camera, 
which  takes  3,000  pictures  a  second— the 
film  streaking  through  at  over  50  miles 
an  hour.  The  “shutter”  is  a  spinning 
“prism”— speed  90,000  r.p.m. 

At  this  incredible  speed,  this  Cine-Kodak 
makes  good  movies  — with  standard  16- 
mm.  films,  Kodachrome  included,  and  has 
become  a  most  effective  military  tool  .  ,  . 
Eastman  Kodak  Co.,  Rochester,  N.  Y. 


REMEMBER  MAJOR  HENDERSON ?  .  .  .  how  Major 

Lofton  Henderson,  USMC,  flew  his  crippled 
bomber  right  down  onto  the  Jap  carrier’s 
deck ?  And  how  his  name  was  given  to  that 
bomb-scarred  field  on  Guadalcanal?  It  is  a 
stern  example  for  us  at  home. 

BUY  MORE  WAR  BONDS. 


Serving  human  progress  through  Photography 


American  Cinematographer  •  November,  1943 


423 


—Victory  will  bring  these  back  to  peacetime  fun  for  home  movie  fans 


"SAPS  AT  SEA"  starring  Laurel  &  Hardy  in  a  series  of  sidesplitting 
adventures.  It’s  a  Universal  Picture  now  available  from  the  Filmo- 
sound  Library  for  showing  at  approved  non-theatrical  locations. 


"RIDERS  OF  DEATH  VALLEY,”  another  Universal  hit,  features 
Dick  Foran  as  the  hard-riding  hero  and  Leo  Carillo  and  Big  Boy 
Williams  as  his  cronies.  A  15-chapter  serial— and  a  dozen  thrills 
per  chapter.  Kids  love  it! 


THEY’RE  signing  on  with  "Captain 
Caution.”  It’ll  be  a  dangerous  voyage, 
full  of  dark  intrigue  .  .  .  and  they’ll  love 
every  minute  of  it. 

That’s  the  grand  part  of  owning  a 
Filmosound  Projector  .  .  .  and  of  having 
the  B&H  Filmosound  Library  at  your 
command.  They’ll  turn  your  familiar  liv¬ 
ing  room  into  a  sea-lashed  pirate  ship  or 
a  musical  comedy  stage... a  concert  plat¬ 
form  or  a  football  gridiron... an  African 
jungle  or  a  Norwegian  fishing  village. 

For  among  the  thousands  of  films  wait¬ 
ing  for  you  in  the  Filmosound  Library 

Buy  MORE  War  Bonds 
Filmosound  V-*-— 

is  an  example  of  B&H  engi¬ 
neering  which  maintained  in 
this  great  projector  all  the 
refinements  of  B&H  per¬ 
formance  despite  shortages 
of  critical  materials.  Filmo¬ 
sound  V*-- —  is  now  pro¬ 
duced  exclusively  for  the 
Armed  Forces. 


*Opti-onics  is  OPTIcs  .  .  . 
electrONics  .  .  .  mechanics. 
It  is  research  and  engineer¬ 
ing  by  Bell  &  Howell  in  these 
three  related  sciences  to  ac¬ 
complish  many  things  never 
before  obtainable.  Today 
Opti-onics  is  a  WEAPON.  To¬ 
morrow,  it  will  be  a  SERV¬ 
ANT  ...  to  work,  protect, 
educate,  and  entertain. 

*Trade-mark  registered 


When  you  order  new  projector  lamps  be  sure 
to  return  your  old  projector  lamps. 


are  travel  movies  . . .  historical  films  . . . 
sport  shorts .  .  .  cartoon  comedies  .  . .  Holly¬ 
wood  features  like  "Captain  Caution,” 
"Saps  at  Sea”  starring  Laurel  and  Hardy, 
and  "Riders  of  Death  Valley,”  the  good 
old  hard-riding  "cliff-hanger”  (serial  to 
you)  that  everybody  enjoys. 

Send  for  the  Filmosound  Library  Cata¬ 
logs  and  make  the  most  of  your  Filmo¬ 
sound.  Home  Movies  are  great  for  the 
important  relaxation  that  helps  you  do 
your  daily  job  better.  Bell  &  Howell  Com¬ 
pany,  Chicago;  New  York;  Hollywood; 
Washington,  D.  C.;  London.  Est.  1907. 


Products  combining  the  sciences  of  OPTIcs  •  electrONics  •  mechanics 


BELL  &  HOWELL  COMPANY 
1848  Larchmont  Ave.,  Chicago  13,  Ill. 

Please  send  me  the  Filmosound  Library  Catalog  and 
recent  supplements. 


Name 


Decembei 


-  -  '*M 

f. 

FT  ' 

'  i .  yl 

DEC  14  1943 


MJ  FONT  MOTION  PICTURE  FIEM 

F,  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  &  Co.  (Inc.),  Wilmington  9ft.  Delaware 
In  New  York:  Empire  State  Building 
In  Hollywood:  Smith  &  Alter,  Ltd. 

-#PH> 

KEG.U.  *  *>AT.OFF. 

Film  Products  Division 
BETTER  THINGS  FOR  BETTER  LIVING  .  .  .  THROUGH  CHEMISTRY 

426  December,  1943  °  American  Cinematographer 


★  War  Correspondents  and  other  professional  cameramen  must  be 
ready  for  whatever  breaks— good  or  bad.  These  men  have  learned 
from  experience  that  when  their  camera  is  a  35mm.  EYEMO— 
they  never  fail.  EYEMO  gets  the  picture! 

Today  EYEMO  Cameras  have  gone  to  war.  The  armed 
forces  need  more  than  we  can  supply.  That  is  why 
EYEMOS  are  not  now  available  to  civilians.  The 
armed  forces  must  be  served  first — we  know  you 
agree  with  that.  When  Victory  is  won  EYEMO 
Cameras  will  be  back  in  civilian  clothes. 

Then,  as  formerly,  if  a  stock  model 
EYEMO  does  not  meet  your  requirements 
exactly,  we  will  modify  or  change  it  for 
you.  You  will  never  have  to  accept  a 
compromise  in  an  EYEMO. 


DECEMBER  7,  1941 — Jap  planes  bomb  Pearl 
Harbor.  Lett  H.  Roos,  A.  S.  C,  F.  R.  P.  S.,  Staff 
War  Correspondent  Patbe  News,  films  the  action 
with  his  EYEMO. 


A  PROMISE  TO  EVERYONE  WHO’S  WAITING 
TO  BUY  POSTWAR  FILM  EQUIPMENT 

The  new  cameras  and  projectors  that  Bell  &  Howell 
will  produce  after  Victory  will  not  be  hurriedly 
assembled  from  leftover  parts.  They’ll  be  improved 
by  the  discoveries  we  have  made  in  producing 
secret  devices  for  the  armed  forces.  You’ll  buy  them 
and  use  them  with  the  same  pleasure  and  confidence 
you’ve  always  had  in  Bell  &  Howell  equipment. 

\ 

CAN  OPTI-ONICS  OFFER  YOU  A  FUTURE? 


♦■EYEMO  MODELS  L  AND  M  .  . .  Three-lens  turret 
head;  "sound”  field  viewfinder  is  matched  to  six 
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EYEMO  MODELS  P  AND  Q  .  .  .  These  are  simi— >• 
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P  and  Q  are  equipped  for  alternate,  optional  use 
with  electric  motor  and  external  film  magazines. 
External  film  magazines  extend  maximum  scene 
length  from  5  5  to  400  feet.  Offset  finder  eyepiece 
prevents  interference. 


♦-EYEMO  MODELS  N  AND  O  .  . .  Three-arm  offset 
turret  permits  broader  choice  of  lenses.  Turret 
lock  is  particularly  appreciated  with  long,  heavy 
lenses.  Visual,  prismatic  focuser  with  magnifier. 
Model  N  has  speeds  of  4, 8, 12,16.  24,  and  32  f.p.s.; 
Model  O  has  speeds  of  8,  12,  16,  24,  32,  and  48 
f.p.s. 

BELL  &  HOWELL  COMPANY 

Chicago;  New  York;  Hollywood;  Washington,  D.  C.; 
London.  Established  1907 


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BUY  WAR  BONDS  ♦Trade-mark  registered 


American  Cinematographer  •  December,  1943 


427 


VOL.  24  DECEMBER,  1943  NO.  12 


CONTENTS 

© 


(Courtesy  of  Journal  of  British  Kinematograph  Society) 

Recent  Developments  In  Sound-Tracks . 

. By  E.  M.  Honan  and  C.  R.  Keith  440 

It’s  Fun  to  Develop  and  Print  Your  Movies. . .  .By  James  R.  Oswald  444 

Among  the  Movie  Clubs . .  448 

Index  to  Volume  XXIV — 1943 .  456 


as 


The  Stafi 

• 

EDITOR 

Hal  Hall 

• 

TECHNICAL  EDITOR 
Emery  Huse.  A.S.C. 


430 

• 

ASSOCIATE  EDITOR 

By  Alvin  Wyckoff,  D.Sc.,  A.S.C. 

432 

Edward  Pyle,  Jr. 

# 

o  Battle . 

435 

WASHINGTON  STAFF  CORRESPONDENT 

Reed  N.  Haythorne,  A.S.C. 

436 

• 

MILITARY  ADVISOR 

..By  Glenn  R.  Kershner,  A.S.C. 

437 

Col.  Nathan  Levinson 

• 

...By  T.  M.  C.  Lance,  A.M.I.R.E. 

438 

STAFF  PHOTOGRAPHER 

Pat  Clark 

• 

ARTIST 

Alice  Van  Norman 

• 

CIRCULATION 
Marguerite  Duerr 

• 

ADVISORY  EDITORIAL  BOARD 
Fred  W.  Jackman,  A.  S.  C. 
Victor  Milner,  A.  S.  C. 

James  Van  Trees.  A.  S.  C. 
Farciot  Edouart,  A.  S.  C. 

Fred  Gage,  A.  S.  C. 

Dr.  J.  S.  Watson,  A.S.C. 

Dr.  L.  A.  Jones,  A.  S.  C. 

Dr.  C.  E.  K.  Mees,  A.  S.  C. 

Dr.  W.  B.  Rayton,  A.  S.  C. 

Dr.  Herbert  Meyer,  A.  S.  C. 
Dr.  V.  B.  Sease.  A.  S.  C. 


The  Front  Cover 

On  this  month’s  cover  is  Stanley  Cortez,  A.S.C.,  Director  of  Cine¬ 
matography  on  David  O.  Selznick’s  production  of  “Since  You  Went 
Away.’  It  is  one  of  those  rare  shots  of  its  kind  that  you  get  when  no  one 
in  the  picture  knows  they  are  being  photographed.  The  actor  in  Naval 
uniform  is  Joseph  Cotten.  The  film  is  being  produced  for  United  Artists 
release. 


AUSTRALIAN  REPRESENTATIVE 
McGill's,  179  Elizabeth  Street,  Melbourne. 

Australian  and  New  Zealand  Agents 

• 

Published  monthly  by  A.  S.  C.  Agency,  Inc. 

Editorial  and  business  offices: 

lis2  North  Orange  Drive 
Hollywood  (Los  Angeles,  23),  California 
Telephone:  GRanite  2135 
• 

Established  1920.  Advertising  rates  on  appli¬ 
cation.  Subscriptions:  United  States  and  Pan- 
American  Union.  $2.50  per  year;  Canada,  $2.75 
per  year:  Foreign.  $3.50.  Single  copies.  25c; 
back  numbers.  30c :  foreign,  single  copies  36c, 
back  numbers  40c.  Copyright  1943  by  A.  S.  C. 
Agency.  Inc. 

• 

Entered  as  second-class  matter  Nnv.  18.  1937. 
at  the  postoffice  at  Los  Angeles,  California,  under 
the  act  of  March  3.  1879. 


December,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


Gross  Wl.  WingSpan  Horsepower  Speed  Useful  Load 
FLYING  FISH  800  1b.  30'  68  40  mph  157  1b. 

MARS  140,000  lb.  200'  8,000  (Restricted  Information) 


DONALD  SAYS 
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YOUR 
DUTY." 


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"VICTORY  THROUGH  AIR  POWER,"  Major 
Alexander  P.  de  Seversky's  best-selling  book 


This  picture  and  caption  show  how  far  aviation  has  progressed  in  the  three  short  decades 
which  separate  Glenn  H.  Curtiss'  FLYING  FISH  and  Glenn  L.  Martin's  MARS.  The  Navy's 
first  flying  boat  had  little  need  for  anti-icing  or  hydraulic  systems  but  today  the  MARS 
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Engineering  Offices:  Dallas,  Texas  *  Detroit, 
Michigan  •  Dayton,  Ohio  •  Hagerstown,  Mary¬ 
land  •  Seattle,  Washington  •  Toronto,  Canada 


American  Cinematographer  •  December,  1943  429 


Psychological  Photography 

By  STEVE  O'DONNELL 


PSYCHOLOGICAL  photography  — 
that  is  the  provocative  new  expres¬ 
sion  used  to  describe  the  strange 
and  subtle,  but  highly  effective,  manner 
in  which  gifted  Stanley  Cortez  is  playing 
upon  the  mind  and  the  emotions  with  his 
camera,  as  he  shoots  “Since  You  Went 
Away”  for  David  0.  Selznick. 

This  technique  is  something  new  and 
then  again  it  is  not.  It  combines  every¬ 
thing  that  is  good  in  that  which  is  old 
with  some  extremely  good  new  ideas. 

Cortez  has  always  been  known  as  a 
bold  adventurer  into  the  realm  of  a  new 
camera  technique.  Yet  he  has  never  been 
a  radical  thinker,  intent  simply  upon 
doing  something  in  a  new  way,  regard¬ 
less  of  whether  or  not  it  was  a  better 
way.  He  has  reverence  for  tradition,  for 
the  ways  of  doing  things  that  time  and 
the  experience  of  himself  and  other 
craftsmen  have  proven  to  be  sound.  So 
when  Cortez  says  he  has  something  new, 
you  may  be  sure  that  he  means  some¬ 
thing  better  than  we  had  yesterday. 

What,  then,  is  the  phychological  pho¬ 
tography  that  has  everyone  talking  about 
“Since  You  Went  Away.”  It  is  a  treat¬ 
ment  of  emotional  situations  that  uncon¬ 
sciously  takes  the  onlooker  through  the 
emotional  experience  of  the  actors,  as 
though  he  himself  were  living  the  part. 

To  understand  it,  you  should  first 
understand  Cortez.  He  is  a  man  to 
whom  moods  are  of  great  importance. 
For  example,  he  loves  music,  not  alone 


for  the  relaxation  he  finds  in  it,  but  be¬ 
cause  he  can  create,  intensify,  or  even 
change  his  own  mood,  with  enough  of 
the  right  kind  of  music.  Certain  combi¬ 
nations  of  sounds  effect  him,  as  they  do 
most  sensitive  people,  emotionally. 

Now  he  has  slowly  come  to  the  reali¬ 
zation  that  sound  and  light  are  but  dif¬ 
ferent  aspects  of  the  same  thing,  so  far 
as  the  effect  upon  human  emotions  is 
concerned.  We  have  long  been  familiar 
with  the  fact  that,  as  a  general  thing, 
allegro  passages  produce  sensations  of 
lightness  and  gayety;  largo  passages, 
sensations  of  depression  and  sadness. 

Cortez  has  long  thought  that  if  only 
cinematographers  could  come  to  regard 
the  use  of  light  as  musicians  regard  the 
use  of  sound,  motion  picture  photography 
would  take  a  long  step  forward  on  the 
road  to  artistic  maturity. 

In  the  past,  he  has  experimented  often, 
but  has  been  restrained  by  various  con¬ 
siderations  from  giving  his  dynamic  con¬ 
cept  of  cinematography  full  reign.  When 
he  was  first  assigned  by  Mr.  Selznick  to 
shoot  “Since  You  Went  Away”  Cortez 
determined  to  explain  his  newly  devel¬ 
oped  theory  in  detail. 

To  his  vast  delight,  Selznick  quickly 
sensed  the  tremendous  values  in  the 
Cortez  idea  of  psychological  photography. 
With  characteristic  daring,  the  man  who 
sunk  $4,500,000  in  “Gone  with  the  Wind,” 
while  critics  shook  their  heads,  and  who 
emerged  with  the  greatest  smash  hit  in 


motion  picture  history,  told  Stanley  to 
give  his  ideas  free  play. 

The  results,  seen  thus  far  only  by  a 
select  few  who  have  been  permitted  to 
view  the  rushes,  are  truly  astonishing. 
As  you  watch  scenes  from  “Since  You 
Went  Away”  on  the  screen,  you  are  un¬ 
able  to  understand  at  first  why  they 
effect  you  so  profoundly. 

In  fact,  the  entire  picture  is  a  slice  of 
life  today,  a  cross-section  of  America 
under  the  impact  of  total  war. 

The  sequences  are  dramatic,  surely,  but 
they  are  the  same  experiences  through 
which  most  of  us  are  living.  It  would  be 
natural  to  suppose  that  they  would  lose 
something  in  being  translated  from  real 
life  to  the  screen.  Instead,  they  gain 
something  and  they  strike  us  with  greater 
emotional  impact  than  the  things  that 
we  see  about  us  in  these  tense,  historic 
days  in  which  we  are  living. 

It  is  Stanley  Cortez,  at  work  with  his 
lights  and  his  lense,  at  work  finally  with 
a  producer  of  Selznick’s  boundless  imagi¬ 
nation.  Where  the  average  man  would 
lay  restraining  hands  upon  Cortez,  Selz¬ 
nick  is  urging  him  on,  or,  to  be  more 
exact,  leading  him  on,  for  Selznick  by 
now  has  grasped  the  implications  of  the 
psychological  technique  so  firmly  that 
he  frequently  makes  suggestions  on  the 
use  of  lights  and  lense  that  are  in  ad¬ 
vance  of  Cortez’s  own  thoughts. 

Of  course,  a  complete  telling  of  the 
story  of  this  development  in  cinema¬ 
tography  in  its  relation  to  the  story 
would  give  away  in  advance  much  of  the 
effective  material  in  “Since  You  Went 
Away.”  But  Selznick,  although  opposed 
on  grounds  of  principle  to  the  practice 
of  giving  away  story  angles,  or  the  de¬ 
tail  technical  effects,  has  graciously  con¬ 
sented  to  permit  description  of  one  scene 
in  “Since  You  Went  Away”  in  order  to 
illustrate  the  manner  in  which  psycholog¬ 
ical  photography  is  employed. 

There  is  a  scene  in  which  Claudette 
Colbert,  Jennifer  Jones,  and  Shirley  Tem¬ 
ple,  in  the  roles,  respectively,  of  Anne 
Hilton  and  her  two  ’teen  age  daughters, 
Jane  and  Brig,  enter  a  big  hotel  lobby, 
crowded,  as  all  such  lobbies  are  today. 
They  are  happy  and  gay,  in  anticipa¬ 
tion  of  a  long-awaited  reunion  with  the 
husband  and  father  of  the  family,  a  man 
who  has  waived  his  3-A  draft  status  to 
enlist. 

Cortez  makes  you  feel  the  gayety  of 
the  three  without  letting  you  know  how. 
There  is  plenty  of  light  on  this  scene 
and  plenty  of  motion.  This  brightness  is 
infectious  and  seems  to  enter  your  own 
spirit  as  you  watch  (or,  rather,  ex¬ 
perience)  the  scene. 

They  walk  up  to  the  desk  and  make 
inquiry.  A  telegram  is  handed  to  Claud¬ 
ette.  It  is  bad  news.  Tim  Hilton  will 
not  be  able  to  keep  the  rendezvous. 

You  next  see  the  three,  Claudette, 
Jennifer  and  Shirley,  slowly  retracting 
their  steps  down  a  long  hotel  corridor. 
In  place  of  the  scores  of  bright  lights 
which  he  used  in  the  lobby  scene,  Cortez 
now  uses  but  one  and  that  one  light 
casts  three  long  shadows,  sad  shadows, 


430 


December,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


shadows  that  seem  to  be  great  weights, 
each  weight  fastened  to  the  ankles  of 
its  owner.  All  the  sadness  usually  asso¬ 
ciated  with  dusk,  the  end  of  the  day,  the 
finish,  the  frustration,  is  in  those 
shadows. 

You  feel  the  emotional  drag  yourself 
and  the  scene  leaves  you  limp. 

That’s  just  one  small  trick  in  phycho- 
logical  photography. 

Here  is  another. 

This  one  has  to  do  with  the  Hilton 
home.  We  all  know  that  stage  sets  came 
first,  motion  picture  sets  afterwards.  Too 
often  the  pictures  followed  the  stage 
tradition  blindly,  doing  things  the  way 
they  had  to  be  done  on  the  stage,  with 
the  obvious  limitations  of  the  stage,  limi¬ 
tations  that  frequently  did  not  apply  to 
motion  pictures. 

Thus,  on  a  stage,  a  room  is  not  a 
room,  it  is  three  walls  of  a  room  with 
the  fourth  wall  left  off,  so  that  several 
hundred  people  can  look  in.  Thus,  on  the 
stage,  it  is  impossible  to  create  the 
effect  of  having  the  observer  in  the 
room.  The  best  he  can  hope  for  is  to 
get  the  effect  of  looking  into  a  room. 

When  he  planned  “Since  You  Went 
Away,”  David  O.  Selznick  decided  that 
much  of  the  effect  depended  upon  taking 
the  audience  into  the  Hilton  home.  So 
he  built  the  home,  on  two  adjoining 
stages.  He  built  a  house  so  substantial 
and  permanent  in  appearance  that  you 
are  tempted  to  move  right  in  when  you 
see  it.  The  fireplaces  are  practical,  so 
is  the  plumbing. 

But  that  isn’t  all. 

As  the  action  proceeds,  the  camera 
is  placed,  not  where  it  is  most  convenient 
to  place  a  camera,  but  where  the  maxi¬ 
mum  emotional  effect  can  be  created. 
And  one  of  the  prime  emotional  effects 
is  the  effect  that  you  are  in  this  house. 
You  aren’t  look:ng  into  it  as  you  would 
on  a  stage.  You  are  in  it. 

Thus  when  Monty  Woolley  and  Shirley 
Temple  play  a  comic  scene  with  a  re¬ 
luctant  turtle,  you  are  in  the  tiny  bath¬ 
room.  The  scene  is  hilarious — as  are 
many  of  the  scenes  between  this  pair 


in  the  picture— and  they  gain  much  of 
their  power  from  the  effect  mentioned. 
Any  cinematographer  will  appreciate 
readily  the  difficulties  involved  in  getting 
the  camera  into  some  of  the  cramped 
spaces  of  the  Hilton  home,  but  the  re¬ 
sults  are  well  worth  it. 

Additional  sense  of  reality  derives  from 
a  lense  treatment  by  which  Cortez  is 
creating  the  illusion  of  a  third  dimension 
on  the  screen.  Although  lay  observers 
are  not  fully  aware  of  it,  frequently 
when  one  person  is  in  focus  on  a  screen, 
others  in  the  same  scene  ai-e  not  sharply 
in  focus,  if  they  are  standing  in  different 
planes  of  depth  from  the  camera. 

In  “Since  You  Went  Away,”  by  artful 
use  of  lighting  and  by  unusual  lense 
treatment,  Cortez  overcomes  this  diffi¬ 
culty,  with  a  resultant  effect  of  depth  on 
the  screen. 

It  is  no  secret  in  the  trade  by  now 
that  Selznick  seems  well  on  his  way  over 
the  $2,000,000  mark  on  this  picture.  Many 
people  have  been  unable  to  understand 
the  reason  for  the  great  expense  involved 
in  his  latest  picture,  but  this  article  will 
go  a  long  way  toward  explaining  it,  to 
technical  minds,  at  least.  There  are  no 
mobs  of  extras  here  to  compare  with  the 
capture  of  Atlanta  (although  there  are 
some  big  scenes,  notably  the  hangar  dance 
sequence).  Moreover,  “Since  You  Went 
Away”  did  not  star’t  out  to  be  as  detailed 
a  story  as  “Gone  with  the  Wind.” 

What  is  making  it  expensive  is  the 
striving  for  perfection,  particularly  per¬ 
fection  in  the  delineation  of  moods.  Ef¬ 


fects  that  would  seem  trifling  to  many 
producers  are  being  nurtured  by  Selznick 
as  though  they  were  rare,  priceless  flow¬ 
ers.  Each  nuance  achieves  its  full  beauty 
and  power. 

As  for  Stanley  Cortez,  naturally  lie 
is  in  the  cinematographer’s  heaven.  For 
once  in  his  life,  he  is  being  permitted 
full  play  for  an  imagination  of  great 
range.  His  work  on  “The  Magnificent 
Ambersons”  made  cinematographic  his¬ 
tory. 

“It  was  good,”  says  Stanley,  “and 
I’m  proud  of  my  part  in  making  it  and 
grateful  for  the  opportunities  that  were 
offered  to  me  at  that  time  to  try  some 
of  these  ideas  experimentally.  But  this 
time  I  am  working  with  a  man  whose 
imagination  and  courage  seem  to  know 
no  bounds.  Believe  me  when  I  say  that 
in  Since  You  Went  Away,  the  motion 
picture  camera  will  take  its  place  as 
one  of  the  greatest  instruments  for 
artistic  creations  ever  invented  by  man.” 


Kirston  to  Film  Center 

OHN  K.  Kirston,  formerly  with  Para¬ 
mount  Pictures  and  Walter  Wanger 
Productions,  has  joined  The  Prince¬ 
ton  Film  Center,  Princeton,  New  Jersey, 
as  production  manager.  Kirston  has  had 
extensive  experience  in  the  production 
of  training  films,  having  completed  a 
lengthy  production  assignment  with  the 
U.  S.  Army  Signal  Corps,  as  civilian 
motion  picture  expert,  prior  to  joining 
the  Film  Center. 


Three  striking  examples 
of  lighting  effects 
achieved  by  Stanley 
Cortez,  A.S.C.,  in  pho¬ 
tographing  the  David 
O.  Selznick  production 
of  "You  Went  Away". 


American  Cinematographer  •  December,  1943 


431 


£nch>  phctcytapkif 

By  ALVIN  WYCKOFF,  D.  Sc.,  A.  S.  C. 

As  Related  By 
JACK  SMITH,  A.S.C. 


IT  HAD  been  one  of  those  hot  days, 
sultry  and  sticky,  that  commenced 
with  the  slow  rising  of  a  ccppery  sun 
in  the  morning.  What  a;r  circulated 
around  us  during  the  day  floated  in  off 
the  Gulf  to  settle  around  rank  vegetation 
in  the  back  country.  With  the  scantiest 
clothing  we  could  wear  we  had  panted 
and  puffed  around  all  day  with  it  sack¬ 
ing  to  us  like  an  uncomfortable  plaster. 
New,  we  sat  out  in  front  of  our  head¬ 
quarters  tent  at  the  far  edge  of  the  air¬ 
field  watching  that  coppery  sun  crawl 
down  under  the  horizon  of  the  Gulf,  fan¬ 
ning  ourselves  into  th’nking  the  action 
induced  a  cooling  effect  when  the  con¬ 
versation  turned  to  the  subject  of  “Snow.” 

Jack  Smith  had  been  up  in  the  air 
most  of  the  day  —  “twenty  thousand 
feet,”  he  said,  “where  it  was  really  cool” 
— and  now,  as  he  wiped  his  face  and  neck 
dry  he  remarked,  “I  could  be  cooler  in 
Africa  than  down  here  on  this  Florida 
Coast  of  the  Gulf  of  Mexico.” 

Somebody  snickered  and  exclaimed, 
“Africa! — don’t  be  silly — it’s  hot  in  Af¬ 
rica — any  place!” 

“Well,”  Jack  replied  as  he  wined  away 
at  the  gathering  perspiration,  “I*^e  been 


on  location  in  Afri'a  where  it  was  as  cold 
as  any  location  here  at  home — where 
there  was  snow,  deep  snow,  plenty  of  it,” 
and  then  ho  related. 

Comparing  locations  at  heme  and 
abroad  reminds  me  cf  some  of  my  ex¬ 
periences  in  the  snow,  any  of  them  as 
cold  and  shivery  as  the  atmosphere 
twenty  thousand  feet  un.  One  of  them 
I  ca'l  to  mind  was  in  Africa. 

Incre^ulourlv  the  group  stopped  fan¬ 
ning  and  looked  at  him.  What  was  the 
use?  Africa!  It  was  too  hot  to  argue. 

“It’s  a  fact,”  he  continued,  “I  know 
it  sounds  rather  odd  to  associate  snow 
with  Africa  but  nevertheless  there  is 
considerable  snow  up  in  the  Kabyle 
Mountains. 

Frequently  I  find  myself  comparing 
the  great  differences  in  personal  com¬ 
fort  and  the  mode  of  travel  to  and  from 
locations  here  in  our  own  country  as 
compared  to  the  discomforts  and  crude 
methods  I  have  had  to  contend  with  in 
foreign  travel.  Africa  has  only  meager 
transportation  facilities  for  expedition 
purposes.  In  fact  they  were  limited  to 
such  an  extent  that  my  personal  mode 
of  travel  in  the  Kabyle  Mountains  was 


by  the  slow  and  stubborn  acceleration  of 
a  streamlined  African  donkey,  belly  deep 
in  snow.  My  camera  equipment  was 
transported  on  the  heads  of  natives 
mushing  slowly  alorg  knee  deep  in  snow 
without  the  protective  covering  of  boots 
or  shoes — just  a  piece  of  automobile  cas¬ 
ing  cut  to  the  shape  of  a  sandal  and 
strapped  on  their  feet.  At  that,  they 
seemed  quite  happy  and  contented. 

Another  snow  location  where  I  en¬ 
countered  plenty  cf  trouble  was  in  cen¬ 
tral  China  enreute  to  Thibet  crossing  the 
famous  Lu  Pan  San  Pass  at  an  altitude 
of  17,000  feet.  At  one  crossing  of  a  rush¬ 
ing  stream  of  ice-cold  water  it  required 
the  combined  force  and  efforts  of  the 
motor  plus  forty  coolies  pulling  and 
pushing,  to  the  accompaniment  of  shriek¬ 
ing  shouts  cf  blasphemy,  before  we  could 
get  the  trucks  across,  and  there  were  ten 
of  them  in  the  caravan,  and  then  a  route 
cut  through  snow  frem  seven  to  ten  feet 
deep  before  the  caravan  could  arrive  at 
the  crest  of  the  pass.  The  deep  snow, 
the  high  altitude  and  practical’y  no  road 
other  than  a  trail  that  had  been  worn  by 
countless  camel  trains  consumed  a  full 
day  and  into  the  n;ght  getting  un  over 
the  summit.  Tough  going?  Yes!  But  such 
are  the  difficulties  to  be  overcome  follow¬ 
ing  trail-roads  to  location  in  that  part 
of  the  world. 

What  a  contrast  to  the  facilities  en¬ 
joyed  in  traveling  to  locations  here  at 
home.  For  instance,  compare  the  last 
two  winters  I  traveled  back  and  forth 
to  locations  in  Sun  Valley,  Idaho,  where 
I  enjoyed  just  ab~ut  every  comforting 
luxury  any  traveler  could  wish  for. 

Everyone  knows,  and  those  who  don’t 
have  read  about  it,  the  luxurious  winter 
comforts  of  Sun  Valley  Lodge.  When  we 


Above,  Jack  Smith,  A.S.C.  At  left,  result  of  3N5 
filter.  Shadows  net  blocked.  Detail  clear.  Glare  of 
sunlight  on  snow  held  back.  Sky  tones  almost  evenly 
with  shadows. 


432 


December,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


Upper  left,  result  of 
No.  5$  green  filter. 
Sky  overcorrected.  Up¬ 
per  right,  No.  21  Moh- 
cbrom  filter  used  with 
pleasing  results  of  dark 
water,  scft  snow  detail. 
Right,  used  No.  21 
Monobrom  filter,  en¬ 
hancing  murky  sky  and 
giving  transparent 
shadows. 


started  out  in  the  morning  we  loaded 
into  heated  motor  cars.  Even  the  trans¬ 
porting  trucks  had  heated  cabs  for  the 
drivers.  No  mushing,  no  shivering  por¬ 
ters,  no  barefooted  transport  carriers, 
no  noise,  no  straining  of  muscle,  cussing 
and  yelling;  just  lovely  smooth  going  in 
grand  easy  ccmfort. 

Our  location  was  at  Galena  Mountain, 
a  place  that  crystallized  in  a  temperature 
hovering  around  the  40  below  zero  mark 
most  cf  the  time  of  day,  and  at  night 
.  .  .  ?  Oh,  boy!  The  mercury  got  stiff! 
But  40  below  is  plenty  cold  for  anyone 
to  work  in  trying  to  get  snow  scenes. 
We  had  to  be  particularly  careful  with 
our  cameras  and  accessory  equipment. 
Before  going  into  this  locat;on  the  cam¬ 
eras  had  to  be  drained  of  every  drop  of 
oil,  otherwise  the  oil  would  have  con¬ 
gealed  and  adding  to  the  load  on  the 
motor,  slowed  up  the  normal  speed  of 
24  frames  per  second. 

Another  important  factor  that  had  to 
be  considered  was  the  use  cf  filters;  the 
intense  ccld  caused  the  jellies,  inside 
filters,  to  become  very  brittle  necessitat¬ 
ing  utmost  care  in  their  handling. 

Incidently,  filters  are  an  important  fac¬ 
tor  in  the  accomplishment  of  effective 
snow  photography.  At  high  altitudes  the 
sky  is  reflected  as. a  deep  blue  through 
the  crystal-clear  thin  air  and  without 
careful  judgment  the  use  of  filters  will 
have  a  tendency  to  cause  an  overcorrec¬ 
tion  as  compared  to  the  landscape  and 
ruin  the  realism  of  the  scene.  Generally, 
I  use  a  3N5  filter,  a  combmation  cf  the 
No.  1  plus  a  50  N.  D.  factor  4.  With  a 
general  overall  light  standing  constant 
at  a  Weston  reading  of  around  25  little 
effort  is  required  to  compute  the  correct 
P  value. 

Jf  at  times  the  sky  appears  murky  it 
might  be  advisable  to  use  a  Monobrom 
filter;  be  sure  to  compute  the  correct 
factor  for  the  film  it  is  to  be  used  with. 
Since  this  filter  is  less  dense  than  the 
3N5  it  is  possible  to  cut  the  shutter  to 
about  90  degrees  rather  than  stop  the 
diaphragm  too  far. 


There  are  many  other  conditions  that 
arise  from  time  to  time  that  will  re¬ 
quire  filters  of  other  combinations.  One 
particular  scene  recently  made  I  recall. 
It  was  a  movement  of  Ski  troops  travel¬ 
ing  over  the  snow  of  the  open  mountain 
side  and  disappearing  into  dense  wooded 
areas. 

Ski  troops  wear  reversible  outer 
clothing.  White  outside  when  travd'ng 
through  snow  country  to  eliminate  de¬ 
tection  from  the  air,  changing  to  olive- 
drab  when  approaching  and  entering 
wooded  areas,  b’ ending  with  the  very 
dark  greens  of  the  mountain  forests  and 
dark  shadows  on  the  snow.  Here  the  con¬ 
dition  becomes  one  of  careful  separa 
tion.  Naturally,  the  troops  are  the  essen¬ 
tial  factor  of  picture  interest  backed  up 
by  the  scenery  around  them.  It  is  my 
practice  in  such  a  condition  to  use  a 
green  filter  No.  56,  factor  3.  This  pro¬ 
cedure  calls  for  careful,  experienced, 
computing  to  arrive  at  the  correct  ex¬ 
posure  for  the  dark  greens  and  shadows 
of  the  overall  brilliances  from  being  in¬ 
fluenced  by  the  considerable  glare  and 
reflection  of  the  snow  that  seems  to 
dominate  the  area  to  prevent  under  ex¬ 


posure.  The  olive-drab  of  the  uniforms 
is  a  much  lighter  shade  of  green  than 
the  green  of  the  fol'age  and  shadows 
that  mingle  with  the  troops,  therefore, 
the  green  No.  56  filter  lightens  the  olive- 
drab  uniforms,  separating  the  troops 
from  the  darker  foliage  and  shadows  re¬ 
vealing  action  in  excellent  detail.  With 
characters  garbed'  in  such  colors  that 
blend  into  their  surround  ngs  it  is  better 
to  avoid  the  use  of  a  filter  of  the  red 
end  of  the  spectrum.  Such  a  filter  would 
entire’y  block  and  dull  the  action  cf  the 
troops.  The  effect  would  be  a  blending 
of  the  troops  with  the  foliage  and  sha¬ 
dows  with  an  increasing  contrast  of  the 
snow.  The  effect  of  a  brilliant  scene 
would  be  destroyed.  In  using  the  green 
No.  56  filter  in  snow  photography  bet¬ 
ter  results  will  be  obtained  by  avoiding 
the  sky  as  mu  h  as  possible,  otherwise 
the  scene  will  be  depressed  by  a  sky  out 
of  all  normal  relation  to  the  scene. 

Pola  Screens  must  be  used  with  cau¬ 
tion  too.  There  have  been  occasions  when 
I  have  had  to  overcome  the  terrific 
glare  of  back-light  resting  on  a  huge 
mound  of  snow  between  me  and  the 
(Cdntinued  on  Page  450) 


American  Cinematographer  •  December,  1943  433 


A  PLANE  lands  at  an  American  air 
base  in  North  Africa — a  Corporal 
runs  out,  takes  a  package  from  a 
crew  member  and  immediately  scurries 
to  a  nearby  shelter — in  a  few  minutes  he 
emerges  with  most  precious  military  in¬ 
formation,  battle  zone  pictures,  developed 
and  printed. 

“Pictures  for  the  General,”  shouts  the 
Corporal  as  he  hands  the  package  to  a 
waiting  messenger. 

That’s  the  early  stage  of  most  Ameri¬ 
can  drives  where  strategy  is  changed 
rapidly,  where  troops,  planes  and  me¬ 
chanized  units  make  no  major  moves 
without  first  photographing  the  potential 
battle  area,  the  placement  and  move¬ 
ment  of  the  enemy.  Prelude  to  attack  on 
all  battlefronts  is  a  complete  review  of 
these  aerial  photographs  by  the  strategy 
staff. 

The  prominent  role  of  aerial  photog¬ 
raphy  in  the  present  conflict  has  brought 
about  increased  interest  in  the  develop¬ 
ment  of  photographic  equipment,  includ¬ 
ing  cameras,  developing  processes,  and 
printing  methods. 

Center  for  development  of  Army  Air 
Forces  aerial  photographic  equipment  is 
the  Photographic  Laboratoi’y  of  the  Ma¬ 
terial  Command,  Wright  Field,  Ohio. 
Here,  the  increasing  war  needs  for 
greater  quantities  of  specialized  photo¬ 
graphic  equipment  are  being  reflected  in 
developments  which  may  revolutionize 
the  field  of  photography. 

One  of  the  outstanding  developments 
to  aerial  photography  by  the  Photo  Lab 
is  the  continuous  strip  printer.  By  this 
new  photographic  printing  mechanism  it 
is  possible  to  turn  out  1,000  prints  per 
hour.  This  development  was  made  in 
response  to  increasing  demands  from 
battle  areas  for  quick  aerial  reconnais¬ 
sance  prints. 

(Continued  on  Page  450) 


AERIAL  PHOTOGRAPHY 
FIRST  STEP  TO  BATTLE 


American  Cinematographer 


•  December,  1943  435 


Aces  of  the  Camera 

John  Boyle 

By  W.  C.  Campbell  Bosco 


BENEDICT  Bogeaus,  as  owner  of 
Genez-al  Service  Studios,  has  had  a 
better  opportunity  than  most  peo¬ 
ple  to  study  at  first  hand  the  complex 
business  of  picture  making.  Through  his 
portals  have  passed  some  of  the  most 
outstanding  talents  in  Hollywood  and 
some  of  the  screen’s  biggest  hits  were 
created  on  his  lot. 

It  is  not  surprising  then  that  Mr. 
Bogeaus,  having  decided  to  become  a  pro¬ 
ducer  in  his  own  right,  should  have  as¬ 
sembled  what  looks  like  a  sure-fire  com¬ 
bination  for  his  initial  effort.  The  story, 
“Bridge  of  San  Luis  Rey,”  a  tale  of  ro- 


mance  and  high  adventure  in  18th  cen¬ 
tury  Peru;  a  stellar  cast  which  includes 
Akim  Tamiroff,  Lynn  Bari,  Louis  Cal- 
hearn,  Francis  Lederer,  Nazimova,  etc.; 
Director  Rowland  E.  Lee,  and  Ace  Cam¬ 
eraman  John  W.  Boyle,  A.S.C. 

It  is  a  tribute  to  add  to  a  distinguished 
career,  as  well  as  an  indication  of  his 
own  sagacity,  that  Mr.  Bogeaus  should 
choose  to  trust  his  maiden  effort  to  the 
camera  of  John  Boyle.  Perhaps  he  took 
the  cue  from  Samuel  Bronston  who  made 
his  bow  as  a  producer  with  the  recently 
completed  “Jack  London”  on  which  Mr. 
Boyle  also  officiated.  A  producer  needs 


to  have  a  lot  of  confidence  in  his  cam¬ 
eraman.  John  Boyle  inspires  confidence. 
John  Boyle’s  career  as  a  cameraman 
started  in  his  home  town  of  New  Or¬ 
leans  where  he  owned  and  operated  a 
newsreel  known  as  the  “Item  Animated 
Weekly”  in  connection  with  the  New 
Orleans  Item.  That  was  in  1913. 

“I  was  everything  to  that  newsreel, 
besides  cameraman,”  John  told  us.  “The 
newspaper  would  tip  me  off  about  what 
was  happening  and  going  to  hapoen, 
and  I  would  dash  off  and  shoot  it.  Then 
I  came  back  and  did  the  lab  work,  shot 
titles  and  edited.  And,”  he  added  with 
pardonable  pride,  “all  the  news  up  to 
Sunday  evening  was  on  the  screen  by 
Monday  morning.  Thomas  Dixon  brought 
me  to  California  in  1915.  He  was  the 
man  who,  needing  a  place  to  work,  went 
out  into  the  country  and  bought  a  lemon 
grove  for  ten  thousand  dollars  and  built 
what  is  now  the  Fox  Studios  at  Sunset 
and  Western.” 

Working  for  Fox,  John  Boyle  trained 
his  lens  on  Theda  Bara  and  William 
Famum  and  helped  make  cinematic  his¬ 
tory.  It  was  during  the  filming  of  the 
“Queen  of  Sheba,”  starring  Betty  Blythe, 
that  Boyle  became  famous  for  his  chariot 
races  and  which  led  eventually  to  his 
assignment  to  film  “Ben  Hur.” 

It  was  during  the  filming  of  these 
chariot  races  that  Boyle  conceived  the 
idea  of  mounting  a  Bell  and  Howell 
camera  over  an  Akeley.  It  was  a  great 
idea  as  it  turned  out,  not  only  providing 
insurance,  and  eliminating  a  lot  of  re¬ 
takes  by  making  it  possible  for  the  cam¬ 
eraman  to  get  both  long  shots  and  close- 
ups  at  the  same  t:me,  but  it  permitted 
him  from  his  position  in  the  center  of 
the  oval  track  to  follow  the  entire  360  ft. 
course  of  the  action  without  having  his 
view  cut  off  by  another  camera. 

Hollywood  was  an  exciting  place  in 
those  days.  An  infant  industry  was  be¬ 
coming  a  lusty  adolescent.  About  its 
name  was  being  woven  the  legend  of 
glamor  and  on  its  streets  walked  the 
g -eat  names  of  the  entertainment  world. 
But  it  wasn’t  exciting  enough  for  John 
Boyle.  He  took  his  camera  and  joined  the 
first  production  unit  to  go  to  the  South 
Seas.  That  was  in  1921. 

They  discovered  Tahiti  cinematically 
speaking  anyway,  on  that  trip  and  pre¬ 
sented  it  to  an  admiring  world.  Which, 
we  suppose,  must  have  had  some  bear¬ 
ing  on  the  long  list  of  South  Sea  sagas 
that  have  followed. 

Perhaps  it  was  that  trip  that  influ¬ 
enced  Boyle’s  amazing  career.  There 
seerred  to  him  to  be  so  much  of  the 
world  and  what  he  had  seen  of  it  in¬ 
trigued  him  immensely.  So  he  decided  to 
see  all  of  it  that  opportunity  offered. 

The  next  year  he  went  out  to  the  Far 
East  spending  seven  months  in  the 
jungles  of  the  Dutch  East  Indies  making 
an  adventure  film  among  the  cannibals. 
Upon  his  return  Sam  Goldwyn  sent  him 
to  Italy  for  a  year  as  chief  cameraman 
on  “Ben  Hur.” 

Returning  from  Italy  he  spent  the 
(Continued  on  Page  452) 


436  December,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


CHRISTMAS,  the  one  great  univer¬ 
sal  day  to  you  and  me  and  to  the 
millions  on  this  big  world  is  but 
a  few  days  away,  and  I  am  wondering  if 
you  are  planning  as  much  fun  at  your 
house  as  we  are  at  ours.  When  the  holi¬ 
day  is  over  are  you  going  to  have  movies 
and  snap  shots — PHOTOGRAPHIC  REC¬ 
ORDS,  of  the  day’s  events,  of  the  family, 
the  tree,  lights,  decorations  and  above 
all,  the  youngsters?  Around  them 
Christmas  revolves.  Their  smiles  are 
worth  millions  as  they  rush  to  the  tree, 
catching  up  packages  and  gifts,  flinging 
ribbons  and  wrapping  paper — then  the 
hugs  and  kisses. 

Strange  how  years  can  slip  by  before 
we  realize  it  .  .  .  children  can  grow  up 
to  become  men  and  women  .  .  .  get  mar¬ 
ried  and  bring  their  children  home  .  .  . 
many  will  have  gone  over  seas  .  .  .  then 
these  photographic  records,  if  you  have 
made  them  on  Christmas  day,  will  become 
your  most  prized  possessions.  They  have 
at  our  house. 

When  a  youngster  I  always  wondered 
why  Dad  and  Mother  and  the  grand¬ 
parents  sat  around  talking  and  trying 
to  remind  each  other  of  things  that  hap¬ 
pened  years  before.  Now  I  can  under¬ 
stand.  They  had  no  cameras,  they  could 
only  talk  of  memories.  Many  times  I 
have  watched  them  get  out  the  old 
family  album  of  faded  humorously  posed 
photos,  each  made  under  such  crude  con¬ 
ditions.  The  folks  had  to  leave  the  plow 
standing  idle  or  lay  aside  the  ax  and 
travel  many  miles  in  an  old  wagon  or 

(.Continued  on  Page  452) 


Making  Christmas  Movies 

By  GLENN  R.  KERSHNER,  A.S.C. 


American  Cinematographer  •  December,  1943  437 


Fig.  I.  Colour  Sensitivity  of  new  type  Photo-Cells. 


ELECTRONIC  TUBES 

By  T.  M.  C.  LANCE,  A.M.I.R.E* 


ONE  of  the  outcomes  of  this  war, 
and  particularly  as  a  result  of  our 
close  association  with  modem 
American  methods,  will  undoubtedly  be 
the  tremendous  stimulus  to  the  applica¬ 
tion  of  electronic  art  to  ordinary  indus¬ 
try  and  ways  of  life,  to  a  degree  not 
dreamt  of  by  even  the  most  imaginative 
engineer — and  electronic  engineers  are 
on  the  whole  the  most  imaginative  and 
optimistic  crowd. 

A  rough  definition  of  an  electronic  tube 
is  a  device  for  the  control  of  energy,  gen¬ 
erally  with  the  expenditure  of  a  minute 
amount  of  control  power.  Hence  the 
British  name  of  Valve.  In  addition,  the 
controlled  electrical  energy  can  be  direct¬ 
ly  converted  into  light  output  from  the 
tube. 

The  Thyratron 

The  most  astonishing  electronic  tube 
meeting  this  definition  is  the  Thyratron 
or  gas  control  tube,  in  some  models  of 
which  powers  of  several  hundreds  of 
horsepower  are  controlled  with  ease  and 
smoothness  by  the  expenditure  of  only  a 
few  watts  of  energy. 

Remote  control  and  gradation  of  light¬ 
ing  in  theatre  installations  has  been 
brought  to  a  fine  art  by  the  use  of 
Thyratron  circuits,  which  are  particu¬ 
larly  advantageous  as  all  the  controls 
can  be  brought  to  one  point,  and  the 
power  regulation  is  effected  without  the 
loss  of  power  as  heat  in  resistances. 

*  Cinema  Television,  Ltd.,  England. 


In  general  the  Thyratron  is  a  three 
electrode  valve  in  which  gas  or  mercury 
vapor  has  been  introduced  after  pump¬ 
ing,  the  characteristics  being  consider¬ 
ably  altered  thereby.  Very  much  higher 
currents  will  pass  in  the  tube  than  in  a 
vacuum  tube,  and  the  current  will  either 
pass  at  full  strength  or  not  at  all,  ac¬ 
cording  to  the  potential  on  the  control 
electrode.  The  current  is  only  limited 
by  the  impedance  of  the  output  circuit 
or  the  cathode  emission  and  can  be  of 
the  order  of  amperes  for  even  very  small 
tubes. 

Under  D.  C.  conditions  the  tube  acts  as 
a  switch.  If  a  negative  potential  is  ap¬ 
plied  to  the  control  grid,  emission  of 
electrons  from  the  cathode  is  suppressed 
and  nothing  happens,  but  when  the  con¬ 
trol  potential  is  reduced  so  that  the  tube 
starts  conducting  the  current  instan¬ 
taneously  jumps  to  its  maximum  value 
and  nothing  short  of  breaking  the  circuit 
can  stop  the  current.  This  effect  is  used 
in  alarm  circuits  with  thousands  of  appli¬ 
cations. 

With  A.  C.  conditions  the  tube  auto¬ 
matically  extinguishes  on  each  cycle,  and 
if  negative  D.  C.  is  applied  to  the  control 
electrode  conduction  will  take  place  when¬ 
ever  the  proper  relative  values  of  grid 
and  anode  voltage  occur.  Conduction 
takes  place  for  all  or  part  of  the  half¬ 
cycle  as  desired  by  slight  alteration  of 
the  control  potential.  The  point  is,  that 


Fig.  2.  RCA  Electron  Multiplier. 


the  amount  of  current,  and  hence  the 
energy  handled,  is  not  dependent  on  the 
input  control  power  but  solely  on  a  po¬ 
tential. 

I  can  picture  the  control  bridge  of  a 
large  electrically  driven  ship  of  say 
50,000  H.  P.,  in  which  the  captain  himself 
handles  the  whole  power  control  from 
any  one  of  a  number  of  small  control 
boxes,  and  in  addition  steers  the  vessel 
by  altering  the  ratio  of  power  supplied 
to  the  port  or  starboard  motors  by  turn¬ 
ing  small  radio  nobs,  one  for  each  motor. 

Photo-electric  Cells 

Turning  now  from  the  high-powered 
electronic  tubes  to  the  other  end  of  the 
scale,  we  have  the  photo-electric  cell  in 
which  the  current  output  never  exceeds  a 
few  millionth  of  an  ampere,  and  where 
the  controlling  energy  is  light. 

I  cannot  visualize  the  time  when  we 
shall  derive  our  electrical  power  by  the 
direct  conversion  of  light  energy  through 
the  medium  of  photo-electric  cells,  al¬ 
though  we  may  utilize  the  solar  radia¬ 
tion  to  heat  our  boilers  under  the  con¬ 
trol  of  photo-electric  focusing  devices  to 
keep  the  installation  directed  at  the  sun. 

There  seems  very  little  possibility  of 
increasing  by  a  large  factor  the  conver¬ 
sion  factor  of  light  energy  into  current 
of  the  photo-electric  cell,  which  is  about 
20%  efficiency,  but  considerable  develop¬ 
ment  has  recently  been  made  to  the  sen¬ 
sitivity  of  the  cells  to  various  color 
ranges  of  the  incident  light,  to  which  I 
will  shortly  refer.  This  efficiency  refers 
to  the  quantum  yield  which  for  a  caesium 
cell  is  %%,  but  for  the  new  antimony 
cells,  at  the  optimum  spectral  illumina¬ 
tion,  this  is  estimated  at  20%. 

Most  of  you  are  familiar  with  the 
caesium  photo-cell  which  has  for  a  long 
time  been  used  for  the  reproduction  of 
sound  on  film.  We  have  all  been  rather 
contemptuous  of  the  selenium  barrier 
type  cells,  which  although  extremely 
useful  in  photometry  and  exposure  met¬ 
ers  have,  in  spite  of  several  attempts, 
not  proved  really  satisfactory  for  sound 
film  reproduction  on  account  of  the  poor 
frequency  characteristic.  The  manufac¬ 
turing  technique  of  these  cells  has  re¬ 
cently  been  modified  so  that  small  cells 
can  now  be  made  having  very  reduced 
capacities,  and  it  is  reported  that  these 
are  being  made  in  the  U.  S.  A.  in  thous¬ 
ands  since  the  outbreak  of  the  war. 


438  December,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


< 


Fig.  3.  Baird  Projection  type  Cathode  Ray  Tube. 

The  size  found  satisfactory  is  6mm.  x 
4mm.  There  are  many  obvious  advan¬ 
tages  in  the  use  of  this  type  cell,  such  as 
the  low  impedence  of  its  output  which 
enables  long  lines  to  be  connected  direct¬ 
ly  to  the  cell  without  appreciable  loss  of 
characteristic  or  without  the  pick  up  of 
interference.  The  immediate  future  may 
see  the  development  of  sound  equipment 
without  a  head  amplifier  on  the  projector. 

Color  Sensitivity 

Returning  again  to  the  vacuum  types 
of  cells:  we  have  now  produced  cells 
of  three  different  types  with  respect  to 
spectral  or  color  sensitivity.  These  differ 
in  the  preparation  of  the  light-sensitive 
cathodes  in  an  interesting  manner  shown 
in  Fig.  1.  It  will  be  seen  that  for  the 
light  of  the  tungsten  lamp  the  new  sur¬ 
faces,  types  A  and  B  give  considerably 
increased  outputs  over  the  old  caesium 
cell  marked  S  on  the  diagram,  in  spite  of 
the  fact  that  the  peak  is  in  an  unfavor¬ 
able  position  with  regard  to  the  color 
output  of  the  lamp. 

For  daylight  application  the  new  A 
type  cells  are  10  to  20  times  as  sensitive 
as  the  S  because  the  peak  emission  of 
the  sun  is  much  nearer  the  blue  end  of 
the  spectrum  than  that  of  an  incandes¬ 
cent  lamp.  On  account  of  this  fact  alone 
these  cells  have  many  important  war 
time  applications. 

The  B  type  approximates  very  closely 
to  the  response  of  the  eye  and  can  be 
used  for  photometry  of  colored  light 
sources  and  for  measurements  of  the 
physiological  effect  of  various  illumina¬ 
tions  on  the  eye. 

Secondary  Multiplication 

The  sensitivity  of  the  photo-cell  can 
be  increased  by  what  I  regard  as  dodges, 
such  as  gas  filling  or  secondary  multipli¬ 
cation  of  the  photo-electric  current.  We 
had  a  good  exposition  of  this  latter  pro¬ 
cess  by  Dr.  Van  den  Bosch  at  a  recent 
B.K.S.  meeting,  and  the  Baird  Television 
Company  have  made  and  described  multi¬ 
plier  photo-cells  for  television  studio 
work  which  have  been  of  great  value  for 


Projection  screen  Sk/atron  tube-,  ^Crystal screen 

/  /  / 

*  D.  ,  /  /  r- Condenser 

*  Protection  lens  /  /  j 

JL^. 

-Light  source 

N — Cathode  ray 
beam 


Modulato / - _3 


Fig.  4.  Principle  of  Skiatron. 


color  discrimination  purposes.  More  re¬ 
cently  they  have  been  used  in  applications 
where  very  feeble  illuminations  have  to 
be  detected.  These  tubes  employed  the 
principle  of  having  several  stages  of 
secondary  multiplications  in  one  glass 
vessel,  the  stages  consisting  of  permeable 
grids  on  which  the  electrons  impinge,  the 
increased  number  of  secondary  electrons 
being  attracted  through  the  holes  in  the 
grid  in  a  manner  similar  to  that  de¬ 
scribed  by  Dr.  Van  den  Bosch. 

The  RCA  have  recently  produced  a  new 
design  of  multiplier  cell  which  is  shown 
in  Fig.  2.  Here  the  electrons  are  directed 
by  carefully  shaped  plates  at  different 
potentials  so  that  the  streams  pass  from 
stage  to  stage  in  ever  increasing  concen¬ 
trations.  These  cells  are  very  stable  in 
operation  and  appear  to  be  mass  pro¬ 
duced.  This  design  of  tube  is  of  particu¬ 
lar  interest  to  electronic  engineers  since 
the  shape  of  the  plates,  which  would  be 
quite  impossible  to  calculate,  was  deter¬ 
mined  experimentally  in  large  scale 
models  in  electrolytic  troughs. 

Thermionic  Valves 

This  method  of  basing  electrode  de¬ 
signs  on  large  scale  models  has  been 
used  in  the  production  of  beam  power 
valves. 

In  these  the  emission  of  electrons 
from  the  cathode,  instead  of  being  a  ran¬ 
dom  cloud,  is  directed  into  definite  beams 
between  the  control  grids  and  the  anode. 
Although  the  mutual  conductance  or 
slope,  stated  in  terms  of  milliamperes 
per  volt,  is  not  increased,  the  efficiency 
of  power  valves  has  been  considerably 
improved  by  these  new  designs.  The  net 
effect  has  been  to  reduce  the  tail  of  the 
characteristics,  thereby  enabling  a  longer 
load  line  or  power  output  to  be  used  for 
a  given  power  dissipation  in  the  valve. 

Very  little  has  been  disclosed  recently 
on  the  trend  of  valve  design  and  I  find 
myself  unable  to  indicate  future  trends. 

The  need  for  high  slope  amplifying 
valves  has  always  been  present,  particu¬ 
larly  for  television  receivers,  and  there 


are  three  general  lines  of  possible  devel¬ 
opment.  These  are:  The  space  charge 
tube,  which  is  very  critical  as  regards 
voltage  setting  on  the  electrodes  and  is 
variable  over  age,  needing  constant  ad¬ 
justment.  The  conventional  tetrode  de¬ 
sign  with  extremely  small  spacing  of 
electrodes  and  close  wound  grids,  which 
presents  considerable  manufacturing 
difficulties  and  is  usually  very  micro- 
phonic;  and  the  secondary  emission  tube 
such  as  the  EE.50  where  the  slope  of  the 
valve  section  of  the  tube  is  increased  by 
the  action  of  a  secondary  emitting  sur¬ 
face  probably  by  a  factor  of  3  to  5  times. 

Cathode  Ray  Tubes 

The  last  class  of  energy  convertors  I 
wish  to  refer  to  is  the  cathode  ray  tube, 
where  electrical  energy  is  converted  di¬ 
rectly  and  instantaneously  into  light. 

Unfortunately  the  dictates  of  war 
closed  the  development  of  television  and 
in  this  country  terminated  the  very  in¬ 
teresting  progress  being  made  with  high 
power  cathode  ray  tubes  for  kinema  tele¬ 
vision. 

The  Baird  Company  had  operated  in 
the  laboratory  a  glass-metal  projection 
tube  which  was  continuously  evacuated 
in  operation,  in  which  an  illumination 
was  obtained  giving  a  brightness  of  5 
foot  candles  on  a  screen  15  x  20  feet. 
This  tube  produced  an  image  by  the 
electron  bombardment  of  a  fluorescent 
screen  and  research  was  progressing 
along  lines  of  improving  the  fluorescent 
powder  to  control  its  color  and  increase 
the  brightness  over  several  hundred 
hour’s  life.  The  images  produced  on  the 
fluorescent  screen  were  directly  projected 
onto  the  screen  by  lenses  of  large  aper¬ 
ture. 

The  Diavisor  Principle 

It  was  always  felt  that  another  line  of 
attack  for  kinema  projected  pictures 
would  be  by  means  of  a  light  control  in 
which  the  electronic  device  acted  as  a 
variable  medium  interposed  in  a  beam  of 
light,  in  the  same  way  as  the  slide  or 

(Continued  on  Page  455) 


American  Cinematographer  •  December,  1943  439 


RECENT  DEVELOPMENTS 
IN  SOUND-TRACKS 

By  E.  M.  HONAN*  and  C.  R.  KEITH** 


THE  considerable  number  of  types  of  sound-tracks 
that  have  come  into  use  in  the  past  few  years  mane 
it  desirable  to  agree  upon  standard  dimensions  and 
nomenclature  in  order  to  avoid  confusion.  Steps  in  this 
direction  have  been  taken  with  the  publication  of  “Dimen¬ 
sional  Standards  for  Motion  Picture  Apparatus”  (S.M.P.E. 
Journal,  November,  1934),  and  in  a  Bulletin  of  the  Ke~earch 
Council  of  the  Academy  of  Motion  Picture  Arts  and  Sci¬ 
ences,  “Standard  Nomenclature  for  Release  Print  Sound- 
Tracks”  (November,  1937). 

However,  in  the  several  years  since  the  publication  of 
these  standards,  the  number  of  types  of  sound-tracks  in 
common  use  has  considerably  increased.  It  is,  therefore,  the 
purpose  of  this  paper  to  publish  illustrations  and  brief  de¬ 
scriptions  of  the  most  commonly  used  tracks  and  also  some 
experimental  tracks  in  order  that  suitable  dimensions  and 
nomenclature  may  be  agreed  upon  and  adopted  as  standards. 

The  accompanying  illustrations  show  twenty  types  of 
sound-tracks  and  combinations  of  tracks  used  on  35mm. 
film.  The  illustrations  are  grouped  according  to  the  type 
of  track  and  without  regard  to  the  relative  importance  or 
extent  of  use.  The  description  of  each  track  is  intended 
primarily  for  identification,  since  a  discussion  of  the  rela¬ 
tive  merits  of  the  various  types  would  require  a  very  exten¬ 
sive  papei\  However,  references  aie  given  to  previous  publi¬ 
cations  where  more  complete  descriptions  of  the  tracks  may 
be  found.  All  the  illustrations  show  positive  prints. 

The  first  group  of  tracks  are  of  100-mil  variable-density 
type.  It  will  be  noted  that  “100-mil”  and  “200-mil”  refer 
to  the  width  of  film  allotted  to  one  or  more  tracks.  Descrip¬ 
tions  of  the  “squeeze-track”  and  “push-pull”  features  will 
be  found  in  the  references  associated  with  tracks  of  these 
types.  The  use  of  noise-reduction  in  variable-density  record¬ 
ing  may  be  observed  on  the  film  as  an  increase  in  average 
density  in  those  portions  having  low  modulation,  although 
this  is  not  apparent  in  the  small  sections  shown  in  the  ac¬ 
companying  illustrations. 

(a)  Single  Variable-Density  (100-mil). — This  is  a  stand¬ 
ard  release  track  and  is  the  same  as  Fig.  1  of  the  Academy 
Bulletin.1.2.3 


(b)  Single  Variable-Density  Squeeze. — This  is  the  same 
as  track  a  except  that  the  width  is  varied  to  increase  the 
volume  range.  It  is  the  same  as  Fig.  2  of  the  Academy 
Bulletin.  The  width  may  be  varied  by  bringing  the  two 
outer  margins  closer  together,  as  shown;  by  keeping  the 
outer  margins  fixed  and  inserting  a  black  centerline  of  vary¬ 
ing  width,  or  by  a  combination  of  the  two  previous  methods. 
Since  the  maximum  track  width  is  76  mils,  the  amount  of 
squeeze  illustrated  represents  a  reduction  of  sound  level  of 
only  about  3  or  4  db.4-5 


(c)  Push-Pull  Variable  Density. — The  two  tracks  are 
similar  to  a  but  are  each  47.5  mils  w.de  and  180°  out  of  phase. 
This  is  the  same  as  figure  7  of  the  Academy  Bulletin.6 


(d)  Push-Pull  Variable-Density  Squeeze. — This  is  the 
application  of  squeeze-track  methods  to  the  push-pull  track,  c. 
It  is  the  same  as  Fig.  8  of  the  Academy  Bulletin.5 

The  next  group  are  of  the  100-mil  variable-area  type. 
Each  is  “Class  A”  unless  otherwise  noted.  (See  track  h.) 


(e)  Unilateral  Variable- Area. — Noise-reduction  is  indi¬ 
cated  by  the  change  in  width  of  the  right-hand  black  margin. 
It  is  the  same  as  Fig.  4  of  the  Academy  Bulletin.7.8.6.10.11 


(f)  Bilateral  Variable-Area. — Noise-reduction  is  indicated 
by  the  change  in  average  width  of  the  clear  center  portion 
of  the  track.  It  is  the  same  as  Fig.  5  of  the  Academy  Bul¬ 
letin.11.12 


(g)  Duplex-Variable- Area. — Noise-reduction  in  this  case 
is  indicated  by  a  variation  of  the  distance  between  the  two 
black  borders.  It  is  the  same  as  Fig.  6  of  the  Academy 
Bulletin.13 


(Continued  on  Page  442) 


440  December,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


TWO 

ALL-TIME  HIGHS 


WITH  millions  of  feet  required  by  our 
Armed  Forces  for  training  and  other  mili¬ 
tary  purposes,  the  total  production  of 
Eastman  motion  picture  films  has  pushed 
into  new  high  ground.  And  the  all-around 
quality  of  this  huge  output  has  never 
been  excelled.  Eastman  Kodak  Company, 
Rochester,  N.  Y. 

J.  E.  BRULATOUR,  INC.,  Distributors 

Fort  Lee  Chicago  Hollywood 


EASTMAN  FILMS 


Recent  Developments  In  Sound  Trucks 

(Continued  from  Page  440) 


(h)  Push-Pull  Variable- Area,  Class  A. — The  term  “Class 
A”  means  that  each  half  of  the  push-pull  record  is  complete 
and  may  be  separately  reproduced  with  comparatively  little 
distortion.  In  the  example  shown  each  half  is  a  unilateral 
track  and  the  out-of-phase  relation  is  shown  by  the  fact 
that  a  dark  projection  on  one  side  is  always  exactly  opposite 
a  white  indentation  on  the  other  side.  The  same  effect  is 
obtained  if  each  half  of  the  push-pull  track  is  recorded 
as  a  bilateral  variable-area  track.  Noise-reduction  is  indi¬ 
cated  by  a  variation  in  the  distance  between  the  two  black 
borders.  This  is  the  same  as  Fig.  9  of  the  Academy  Bulle¬ 
tin.13 


(i)  Push-Pull  Variable- Area,  Class  B. — In  this  case  one- 
half  of  the  push-pull  record  represents  only  the  positive  half 
of  the  original  wave  and  the  other  the  negative  half,  so  that  the 
two  halves  must  be  reproduced  with  equal  amplitudes  and  in 
opposite  phase  in  order  to  avoid  distortion.  Since  the  print 
is  opaque  except  where  modulated,  the  usual  bias  type  of 
noise-reduction  is  not  required.  The  individual  tracks  may 
be  bilateral,  as  shown  in  the  illustration,  or  they  may  be 
unilateral.11-12.13 


(j)  Push-Pull  Variable- Area,  Class  A-B. — In  this  type  of 
track  low  modulation  is  recorded  as  Class  A  (each  track 
records  both  halves  of  the  original  wave)  but  as  the  modu¬ 
lation  is  increased  it  is  changed  to  Class  B  by  recording  the 
additional  amplitude  with  the  positive  waves  on  one  track 
and  the  negative  waves  on  the  other.  Noise-reduction  is  not 
used  in  this  type  of  sound-track.14 


The  next  group  of  tracks  occupy  a  width  of  200  mils  and 
are  consequently  not  used  on  present  standard  combined 
sound  and  picture  prints. 

(k)  200-Mil  Variable-Density . — This  is  the  push-pull  com¬ 
bination  of  two  100-mil  variable-density  tracks.6 


(1)  200-Mil  V ariable'-Area  Center  Shutter. — This  consists 
of  two  100-mil  bilateral  Class  A  variable-area  tracks  in  push- 
pull  relation.  Noise-reduction  is  accomplished  by  blocking 
out  a  portion  in  the  center  of  each  track.15 


Each  of  the  remaining  combinations  of  tracks  includes  a 
“control-track”  together  with  one  or  more  sound-tracks.  The 
control-track  is  generally  used  to  vary  the  sound  level  in  the 
reproducing  system  in  such  a  manner  as  to  increase  the  vol¬ 
ume  range  or  the  signal-to-noise  ratio  or  both.  It  may  be 
either  amplitude-  or  frequency-modulated,  and  may  be  dis¬ 
tinguished  in  the  illustrations  by  its  resemblance  to  a  con¬ 
stant-frequency  record.  The  word  “comprex”  refers  to  a 
system  in  which  automatic  volume  compression  and  expan¬ 
sion  are  used. 


(m)  100-Mil  Variable-Density  Complex. — Both  sound 

and  control-tracks  are  50  mils  wide  and  occupy  the  space 
normally  used  for  a  standard  single  100-mil  track.  Track 
dimensions  are  the  same  as  for  track  e.10 


(n)  100-Mil  Unilateral  Variable- Area  Comprex. — This 
is  a  combination  of  two  half-width  variable-area  tracks 
which  may  be  scanned  by  the  same  equipment  as  is  used  for 
track  m.16 


( o)  200-Mil  Bilateral  Variable- Area  Comprex.  —  This 
track  is  intended  for  the  same  type  of  sound  system  as 
tracks  m  and  n  but  utilizes  a  width  of  200  mils.16 


442 


December,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


Fig.  o 

(Continued  on  Page  45 1 ) 


Removable  Head. _ 

!ipia® i?E§§a©ffii<&jL  mssaa®®09 

Trade  Mark 


he  friction  type  head  gives  super-smooth  360  pan  and  80 0  tilt  action, 
is  removable,  can  be  easily  mounted  on  our  "Hi-Hat"  low-base 
laptor.  The  large  pin  and  trunnion  assures  long,  dependable  service. 
"T"  level  is  attached.  The  top-plate  can  be  set  for  16  mm  E.K.  Cine 
Jecial,  with  or  without  motor;  35  mm  DeVry  and  B  &  H  Eyemo  (with 
otor),  and  with  or  without  alignment  gauge. 


The  tripod  base  is  sturdy.  "Spread-leg"  design  affords  utmost  rigidity 
and  quick,  positive  height  adjustments.  Complete  tripod  weighs  14  lbs. 
Low  height,  at  normal  leg  spread,  42".  Extended  height  72".  All  work¬ 
manship  and  materials  are  the  finest.  The  head  itself  is  unconditionally 
guaranteed  5  years.  Also  available  are  heavy  fibre  carrying  cases. 


Cable:  CinEQUIP 
Circle  6'5080 


(Jflm€Rfl€ouipm€iiT(o. 


FRANK  C.  ZUCKER 


1600  BRQHDLUHy  R€UJ  yORK  ciTa 


$) 


IT'S  FUN  TO  DEVELOP 

AND  PRINT  YOUR  MOVIES 

By  JAMES  R.  OSWALD 


THE  ardent  home  movie  maker  like 
h's  co-hobbyist,  the  still  photog¬ 
rapher,  should  not  consider  himself 
a  veteran  in  the  field  until  he  has  tried 
a  hand  at  developing  his  own  pictures.  A 
little  knowledge  of  what  goes  on  between 
the  time  the  exposed  film  leaves  the 
camera  and  is  threaded  into  the  pro¬ 
jector,  ready  to  show,  does  nobody  any 
harm. 

“But,”  you  say,  “Movie  film  is  much 
more  difficult  to  develop  than  ordinary 
roll  film,  isn’t  it?  Besides,  why  should 
an  amateur  take  the  time  and  trouble  and 
run  the  risk  of  doing  his  own  developing, 
when  the  processing  cost  is  included  in 
the  prce  of  the  film,  which  will  be  fin¬ 
ished  bv  the  laboratory  without  further 
charge  ? ” 

The  answer  to  the  first  question  is 
definitely,  no.  Fundamentally,  the  dark¬ 
room  procedure  for  handling  movies  is 
quite  the  same  as  with  still  pictures,  and 
anyone  already  acquainted  with  the  prin- 
c'ples  of  developing  will  have  little  diffi¬ 
culty  in  this  respect.  Because  movie 
film  is  necessarily  so  much  longer  than 
roll  film  it  is  not  advisable  to  try  to 
handle  long  lengths  though,  unless  a 
special  rack  is  made  or  purchased,  capa¬ 
ble  of  accommodating  more  film.  There 
are  many  such  fine  outfits  on  the  market 
at  reasonable  prices,  but  best  wait  until 
you  see  how  much  home  processing  ap¬ 
peals  to  you  before  investing  in  one  of 
these.  I  WILL  say  at  this  time  that  the 
job  requires  patience! 

As  for  the  reason  for  an  amateur  to 
take  the  t:me  and  trouble  and  run  the 
risk  of  doing  his  own  developing,  when 
the  processing  cost  is  included  in  the 
price  of  the  film,  which  will  be  finished 
by  the  laboratory  without  further  charge 
.  .  .  there  IS  a  point  there!  All  I  can 
say  in  answer  to  THIS  query  is  that 
home  processing  is  not  pract;cal  from 
such  a  viewpoint.  This  article  is  intended 
for  the  curious,  serious-minded  person, 
who  likes  to  learn  what  makes  things 
“tick,”  especially  so  far  as  his  movie 
making  hobby  is  concerned.  Other  read¬ 
ers,  not  so  inclined,  will  do  well  to  stop 
reading  right  here,  as  it  is  a  sheer  waste 
of  time  to  continue  any  farther.  There 
are  many  discouragements  and  disap¬ 
pointments  in  home  processing  and,  as 
stated  before,  it  requires  almost  unlimited 
patience,  to  do  the  work  successfully.  It 
is  a  job  preferably  for  the  advanced 
amateur,  bent  on  seeing  the  process 
through  successfully.  Any  one  taking  the 
time  and  effort  to  do  this  will  be  amply 
rewarded  by  the  pleasure  and  satisfaction 
derived  from  knowing  that  the  movies  he 
projected  are  the  result  of  his  own 
work,  ALL  THE  WAY  THROUGH. 


Now  to  continue  with  the  method  of 
procedure.  As  mentioned  in  the  preced¬ 
ing  paragraph,  it  is  false  economy  to 
home-process  the  regular  reversal  film 
which  is  handled  by  the  film  manufactur¬ 
er’s  laboratory.  As  most  everyone  knows, 
this  type  of  film  is  first  developed  to  a 
negative,  comparable  to  snapshot  nega¬ 
tive,  and  then  REVERSED  to  a  positive 
print  for  projection  .  .  .  hence  the  name 
REVERSAL  film.  This  method  is  the 
most  popular  for  the  home  movie  fan  be¬ 
cause  the  same  film  is  eventually  run 
through  the  projector  as  was  run  through 
the  camera.  Needless  to  say,  this  reduces 
the  cost  because  only  half  the  footage  ;s 
required  as  would  be  were  the  print  made 
on  a  different  film,  comparable  to  a  snap¬ 
shot  print  on  paper. 

If  many  duplicates  are  to  be  made, 
however,  the  negative-positive  (2  films) 
system  has  the  advantage.  In  this  method 
the  negative  is  run  through  a  printing 
machine  in  contact  with  an  unexposed 
positive  film,  thereby  making  a  print  for 
projection.  This  positive  film  is  very 
cheap,  compared  to  the  regular  type,  and 
is  extremely  fine  grained  and  has  high 
contrast.  For  these  reasons  it  is  ideally 
suited  for  home  experimenting,  using  a 
camera  or  projector  as  the  printer,  which 
we  shall  discuss  later.  All  theatrical  re¬ 
leases  are  prints  from  a  master  nega¬ 
tive,  as  many  copies  must  be  distributed 
throughout  the  country.  The  master  neg¬ 
ative  is  afterwards  safely  stored  away 
in  the  studio  for  future  use.  Because  of 
the  intensely  complicated  manner  in 
which  Kodachrome  must  be  processed,  it 
is  absolutely  out  of  the  question  to  even 
consider  carrying  on  this  procedure  at 
home,  even  if  one  has  the  ambition  to 
do  so. 

As  referred  to  a  short  while  ago,  your 
own  movie  camera,  or  projector,  will 
serve  as  a  printer  for  making  duplicate 
copies  of  favorite  scenes.  I  prefer  to  use 
the  CAMERA,  since  it  is  already  light¬ 
tight  and  hence  only  the  loading  oper¬ 
ation  need  be  carried  on  in  the  dark¬ 
room.  The  projector  has  the  advantage 
of  accommodating  longer  lengths  of  film, 
but  it  is  wiser  and  less  costly,  to  conduct 
experiments  on  a  smaller  scale  anyway, 
at  least  until  the  technique  is  mastered. 
Also  mentioned  before  was  the  fact  that 
POSITIVE  film  is  ideally  suited  for  home 
experimenting.  Although  there  are  many 
other  fine  types  of  moderately  priced 
films  on  the  market  equally  suitable  for 
home-processing,  which  includes  regular 
NEGATIVE  stock,  the  aforementioned 
POSITIVE  tvpe  film  remains  the  lowest 
in  price,  costing  approximately  one  cent 
(Continued  on  Page  446) 


Top,  a  flat  developing  rack  fils  in  standard  siie  tray, 
and  holds  25  feet  of  14  or  double  8mm.  film.  Next, 
the  film  is  wound  spirally  around  the  rack.  Adjoining 
film  loops  should  be  kept  from  overlapping  by  pins 
or  grooves.  Third  from  top:  a  contact  print  is  made 
by  threading  the  two  films  in  the  camera,  emulsion 
to  emulsion,  with  the  shiny  side  of  the  raw  film 
facing  back  of  camera.  Bottom,  making  titles  by 
straight  development. 


444 


December,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


Hit  it  right— the  first  time 


THESE  days,  when  you  don’t  want 
to  waste  a  single  frame — consider 
Agfa  Ansco  Triple  S  Pan  Film. 

It  has  great  speed. 

But  more  than  that — its  balanced  emul¬ 
sion  gives  you  brilliant  results  with  out¬ 
door  shooting,  yet  avoids  the  harsh  effects 
so  common  under  artificial  light. 


It  is  sensitive  to  all  colors. 

But  more  than  that — it  is  exceptionally 
fine-grained  for  a  film  with  its  phenom¬ 
enal  speed.  In  projection  you  get  depth 
and  clarity  down  to  the  smallest  details. 

Triple  S  Pan  is  sold  in  both  8  and  16mm 
sizes.  Agfa  Ansco,  Binghamton, 
New  York. 


Agfa  Ansco 

8  and  1 6mm. 

TRIPLE  S  PAN  FILM 

KEEP  YOUR  EYE  ON  ANSCO  — 
FIRST  WITH  THE  FINEST 


American  Cinematographer  •  December,  1943 


445 


It's  Fun  to  Develop  Movies 

(Continued  from  Page  444) 


per  foot  in  16mm.  or  double  8mm.  size. 
The  economy  angle  should  not  be  over¬ 
looked,  because  there  WILL  be  waste. 
Although  positive  film  is  intended  to  be 
developed  STRAIGHT,  is  may  be  re¬ 
versed,  the  practice  of  which  we  will  take 
up  later.  The  straight  developing  method 
is  the  simpler,  and  therefore  the  better 
to  begin  with. 

Assuming  then,  that  a  favorite  scene, 
but  one  not  TOO  valuable  to  be  used  in 
experimenting,  has  been  selected  for  du¬ 
plicating,  we  will  proceed  with  the  print¬ 
ing.  It  is  taken  for  granted  that  the 
original  film  to  be  duplicated  was  prop¬ 
erly  exposed  in  the  first  place,  thus  it 
will  act  as  a  sort  of  guide  for  our  future 
efforts  in  this  field.  In  fact  from  now  on 
it  will  be  found  very  wise,  indeed,  to 
keep  an  accurate  written  statistical  rec¬ 
ord  of  all  variables  .  .  .  film  type  .  .  . 
source  of  illumination  .  .  .  distance  from 
camera,  etc.  All  these  things  are  best 
determined  by  carefully  conducted  tests, 
since  conditions  vary  widely,  and  hence 
no  definite  rules  or  formulas  can  be 
given.  Once  this  set  of  standards  is  cor¬ 
rectly  established,  though,  it  will  serve  as 
a  measure  upon  which  to  base  new  trials 
in  time  to  come. 

The  first  operation  in  the  dark-room  is 
loading  the  film.  Bulk  film  is  not  day¬ 
light  loading  as  is  the  reversal  type,  and 
therefore  must  only  be  opened  in  the 
dark-room.  Since  it  is  not  spooled,  either, 
it  should  be  wound  on  an  empty  projec¬ 
tion  reel,  for  convenience  sake.  (Posi¬ 
tive  film  doesn’t  belong  to  the  panchro¬ 
matic  group,  which  means  it  can  be 
safely  handled  in  the  comfort  of  a  regu¬ 
lar  red  safe-light .  .  .  another  of  its  many 
advantages).  Wind  the  scene  to  be  dupli¬ 
cated,  together  with  the  unexposed  bulk 
film  on  a  reel,  emulsion  to  emulsion,  in 
such  a  way  that  the  shiny  side  of  the 
ORIGINAL  will  be  facing  the  camera 
lens,  leaving  the  shiny  side  of  the  RAW 
film  to  face  the  back  of  the  camera. 
The  next  step  which  is  threading,  is  done 
in  the  usual  manner,  making  doubly  cer¬ 
tain  that  the  sprocket  teeth  engage 
BOTH  films.  The  customary  loops,  be¬ 
fore  and  after  the  film  enters  the  aper¬ 
ture  gate,  should  be  a  trifle  larger  than 
normally.  The  exposure  button  is  then 
pressed  a  few  times  before  the  camera 
is  closed,  to  see  that  everything  is  run¬ 
ning  properly. 

It  is  safe  now  to  light  the  white  light, 
or  to  bring  the  camera  outside,  if  the  ex¬ 
posure  is  to  be  made  by  daylight.  Arti¬ 
ficial  light  is  preferred,  however,  as  it  is 
always  uniform,  which  simplifies  matters 
in  that  respect. 

In  order  to  have  at  least  some  idea  of 
how  to  start,  I  will  set  down  some 
figures  to  go  by,  based  on  my  own  per¬ 
sonal  experiences.  This  information, 
mind  you,  is  only  approximate  and  should 
merely  be  used  as  a  starting  point  from 
which  to  conduct  your  own  experiments. 


With  the  camera  running  at  normal 
speed,  and  held  6  to  8  inches  from  the 
light  source,  I  think  your  results  will  be 
quite  satisfactory.  For  illumination,  I 
use  a  7%  or  10  watt  bulb  placed  in  a 
lamphouse  removed  from  an  old  enlarger. 
In  front  of  the  bulb  is  an  opal  diffusing 
glass,  which  tends  to  spread  the  light 
more  evenly.  My  camera  has  a  remov¬ 
able  lens  which  I  take  off  before  making 
the  exposure.  Otherwise,  I  would  sug¬ 
gest  opening  the  lens  wide.  If  the  expo¬ 
sure  is  to  be  made  by  daylight,  point  the 
camera  towards  the  blank  sky,  not  direct¬ 
ly  into  the  sun. 

Should  you  desire  to  use  the  projector 
instead  of  the  camera  as  a  printer,  it  will 
be  necessary  to  employ  a  somewhat  dif¬ 
ferent  lighting  technique,  else  the  entire 
film  will  become  fogged.  Probably  the 
best  method  in  which  to  adapt  the  pro¬ 
jector  for  this  work  is  to  construct  some 
sort  of  a  small,  light-tight  box  in  which 
to  house  the  printing  bulb.  The  front 
side  of  this  box  should  be  funnel  shaped 
...  in  fact  a  regular  tin  funnel  can  be 
taped  on  with  Scotch  tape.  The  projection 
lens  is  then  removed,  and  the  narrow 
neck  of  the  “funnel  box”  inserted  in  its 
place.  This  neck  should  be  approximate¬ 
ly  the  same  diameter  as  the  projection 
lens,  if  possible.  Although  the  printing 
light  will  now  only  reach  the  portion  of 
the  film  running  through  the  aperture 
gate,  it  *must  be  remembered  that  the 
rest  of  the  film  is  not  enclosed,  as  in  the 
case  of  the  camera,  and  hence  the  entire 
operation  must  be  carried  on  in  the  dark¬ 
room.  The  same  precautions  in  threading 
should  be  taken  as  before  with  the 
camera. 

After  the  exposure  has  been  made,  the 
film  is  removed  and  immersed  in  a  tray 
containing  the  developing  solution.  Regu¬ 
lar  D-72  developer,  with  which  most  of 
us  are  already  familiar,  can  be  used  at 
the  manufacturer’s  prescribed  time  and 
temperature.  For  higher  contrast,  espec¬ 
ially  when  titles  are  to  be  reproduced, 
D-ll  is  advised.  The  film  is  then  rinsed 
in  a  plain  water  or  short-stop  bath  and 
thence  in  the  hypo  solution.  When  com¬ 
pletely  “fixed”  it  is  placed  in  the  final 
wash  water,  where  it  remains  until  all 
traces  of  hypo  have  been  removed.  It  is 
very  important  that  the  film  be  kept 
agitated  throughout  the  entire  process. 
The  final  wash  should  be  in  running 
water,  if  at  all  possible.  After  washing, 
the  film  is  hung  up  to  dry  in  the  usual 
manner,  or  if  exceedingly  long,  placed  on 
a  drying  rack,  which  we  shall  discuss 
shortly. 

When  totally  dry  the  film  should  re¬ 
semble  a  regular  snapshot  negative  of 
normal  density.  If  it  doesn’t,  there  is  no 
use  going  any  farther  until  it  is  remade. 
(An  exceedingly  dense  negative  indicates 
over-exposure  ...  a  light,  washed  out 
one,  under-exposure).  With  the  attain¬ 
ing  of  a  perfect  negative,  the  projection 
print  is  made  in  exactly  the  same  way, 
by  repeating  the  entire  process. 

The  reversal  method  does  away  with 
this  repeat  step,  since  the  same  film  that 
was  once  the  negative,  is  made  into  the 
positive  projection  print.  A  somewhat 


different  developing  procedure  must  be 
followed,  however,  which  is  considerably 
more  painstaking.  After  the  film  leaves 
the  developer,  instead  of  placing  it  into 
the  fixing  solution  as  is  customary,  it  is 
first  transferred  to  a  bleaching  bath 
which  leaves  a  positive  image  but  dis¬ 
solves  away  the  image  already  developed. 
This  latent  positive  image,  still  being 
light  sensitive,  is  re-exposed  to  the  light 
of  a  Mazda  bulb  and  then  put  back  into 
the  developer,  thereby  causing  the  latent 
positive  image  to  become  visible.  From 
here  the  film  is  placed  in  the  plain  water 
or  short-stop  bath  and  thence  in  the  hypo 
solution,  as  before. 

I  referred  earlier  to  developing  equip¬ 
ment  capable  of  handling  longer  lengths 
of  film.  For  doing  this,  some  sort  of  a 
rack  is  necessary  upon  which  the  film 
can  be  wound,  taking  up  a  minimum 
amount  of  space  and  providing  easier 
manipulation.  There  are  several  such 
racks  on  the  market  or,  if  you  wish,  you 
can  construct  one  of  your  own.  The  sim¬ 
plest  one  of  these  is  flat  and  rectangular 
in  shape,  around  which  the  film  is  wound 
spirally,  and  held  in  place  by  grooves  or 
guide  pins.  Resembling  a  picture  frame, 
it  can  be  made  of  wood,  to  any  desired 
dimensions.  A  rack  11  x  14  inches  will 
accommodate  up  to  25  feet  of  16  mm.  or 
double  8mm.  film,  and  is  convenient  in 
that  it  will  fit  a  standard  size  developing 
tray.  The  wood  must  be  given  a  protec¬ 
tive  coating  of  chemically  resistant 
lacquer. 

Another  type  rack  is  round  and  resem¬ 
bles  a  drum.  This  kind  may  also  be  con¬ 
structed  of  wood,  making  only  the  skele¬ 
ton  framework  of  a  drum,  and  a  support 
upon  which  it  can  revolve,  out  of  wood 
strips.  The  film,  as  before,  is  wound 
around  the  rack  in  spiral  fashion,  with 
guides  to  keep  the  adjoining  loops  from 
overlapping.  A  rack  of  this  sort,  be¬ 
cause  of  its  large  circumference,  will  ac¬ 
commodate  much  longer  lengths  of  film 
than  the  previously  described,  flat  type 
rack.  The  revolving  drum  rack  is  usually 
made  to  take  full  50  or  100  foot  rolls  of 
16  or  double  8mm.  film. 

Which  of  the  two  kinds  of  racks  is  the 
better,  is  a  subject  for  debate.  It  is 
argued  that  the  flat  type  uses  a  mini¬ 
mum  of  solutions,  and  the  film  being 
completely  submerged,  doesn’t  run  the 
risk  of  aerial  fog.  The  drum  rack  on  the 
other  hand,  in  addition  to  accommodating 
long  lengths  of  film,  provides  easy  agita¬ 
tion  because  of  its  rotating  feature.  For 
this  reason,  too,  it  is  much  to  be  pre¬ 
ferred  for  reversal  processing,  since  more 
uniform  exposure  is  possible  when  the 
film  is  subjected  to  the  light  for  the 
second  printing,  which  brings  out  the 
latent  positive  image. 

No  matter  which  type  rack  is  used,  the 
film  should  always  be  wound  EMULSION 
SIDE  OUT,  to  prevent  scratching  those 
parts  that  come  in  contact  with  the 
framework.  Because  film  expands  some¬ 
what  when  wet,  some  arrangement  ought 
also  be  made  to  prevent  its  slackening 

(Continued  on  Page  453) 


446 


December,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


"•58§£ 


i  m 1 


NATIONAL  CARBON  COMPANY,  INC. 

Unit  of  Union  Carbide  and  Carbon  Corporation 


CARBON  SALES  DIVISION,  CLEVELAND,  OHIO 
General  Offices:  30  East  42nd  St.,  New  York,  N.  Y. 

Branch  Sales  Offices: 

NEW  YORK  .  PITTSBURGH  .  CHICAGO  •  ST.  LOUIS  •  SAN  FRANCISCO 


K^VICTOR 


American  Cinematographer  •  December,  1943  447 


AMONG  THE  MOVIE  CLUBS 

Hirst  Talks  at  Philadelphia  Saint  Louis  Club  Sees  L.  A.  8  mm.  Elect  Officers 


FM.  HIRST,  who  contributes  many 
.  important  articles  to  the  Amer¬ 
ican  Cinematographer,  was  the  chief 
speaker  at  the  November  meeting  of  the 
Philadelphia  Cinema  Club.  He  spoke  on 
“In  Search  of  Beauty.” 

Mr.  Hirst  pointed  out  that  the  crea¬ 
tion  of  a  beautiful  picture  depends  chiefly 
on  the  selection  of  material,  the  use  of 
imagination  and  the  feeling  for  design, 
and  used  sketches  to  illustrate  the  prin¬ 
ciples  of  composition.  He  then  screened 
one  of  his  own  films,  “Gloucester.” 


Utah  Cine  Arts  Club 

TWO  8  mm.  Kodachrome  films  and 
two  16  mm.  Kodachromes  were  the 
features  of  the  November  meeting  of  the 
Utah  Cine  Arts  Club,  Salt  Lake  City. 
Outstanding  were  “Cougar  Hunt,”  by 
M.  W.  Robbins;  “Skiing,”  by  Norman 
Schultz,  and  “Snow  White  and  Rose 
Red,”  by  Theo.  M.  Merrill. 

Members  of  the  club  are  beginning  to 
get  excited  over  the  club’s  1943  Awards, 
and  members  have  been  urged  to  hurry 
their  entries. 


Long  Beach  Club 

<*TN  the  Beginning,”  noted  film  by 
A  Fred  C.  Ells,  featured  the  Novem¬ 
ber  3rd  meeting  of  the  Long  Beach 
Cinema  Club.  This  film  was  given  an 
award  by  Movie  Makers  as  one  of  the 
ten  best  pictures  of  1943.  Incidentally, 
burglars  broke  into  the  home  of  Mr.  Ells 
recently  and  stole  his  entire  movie  equip¬ 
ment,  amounting  to  something  l'ke  $1500 
worth  of  equipment  he  cannot  replace 
because  of  wartime  restrictions. 


Minneapolis  Cine  Club 

EMBERS  of  the  Minneapolis  Cine 
Club  are  concentrating  their  all 
on  the  annual  holiday  meeting  which 
will  be  held  at  the  Leamington  Hotel  on 
the  evening  of  December  14.  There  will 
be  a  turkey  dinner,  followed  by  show¬ 
ing  of  films  and  other  entertainment  in 
the  hotel  ballroom.  Sounds  like  a  good 
party  is  in  the  offing. 


Syracusers  Compare  Meters 

NTERESTING  idea  highlighted  the 
November  16th  meeting  of  the  Syra¬ 
cuse  Movie  Makers.  Members  all  brought 
their  light  meters  and  had  a  session  of 
comparing  meters,  data,  etc.  Program  of 
films  followed  the  meter  session. 


America 

NE  of  Joe  Epstein’s  “Seeing  Amer¬ 
ica”  films  highlighted  the  Novem¬ 
ber  meeting  of  the  Saint  Louis  Amateur 
Motion  Ciub.  It  was  a  picture  covering 
the  Black  Hills  in  South  Dakota,  Yellow¬ 
stone  National  Paik,  Estes  Park  and 
Seattle,  Washington.  The  film  is  on 
Kodachrome  and  made  a  decided  hit  with 
the  members. 

Abo  on  the  program  was  a  film,  “Let’s 
Go  Fishing,”  by  Gordon  R.  Rader,  which 
was  a  beautiful  example  of  Kodachrome 
photography  and  scenic  beauty.  Third 
picture  on  the  program  was  a  war  film 
showing  the  bombing  of  Pearl  Harbor, 
the  Battle  for  Egypt  and  many  other 
authentic  war  scenes. 


Metropolitan  Club 

FOUR  films  featured  the  November 
meeting  of  the  Metropolitan  Motion 
Picture  Club.  They  were:  “The  Pageant 
Bubble,”  by  Leo  Heffernan;  “Riches 
From  the  Sea,”  by  T.  J.  Courtney; 
“Food  For  All,”  by  Helen  Loeffler,  and 
“Desert  Life,”  by  Henry  Hird  of  Ridge¬ 
wood. 

Quality  of  the  films  was  exceptional. 
“Desert  Life”  was  classed  by  many  as 
one  of  the  best  16  mm.  films  of  1941. 
“The  Pageant  Bubble”  was  a  film  about 
the  Atlantic  City  bathing  beauties — but 
was  in  black  and  white. 


Brooklyn  Club  Sees  Four 

FOUR  films,  secured  through  the  film 
service  of  the  American  Cinema¬ 
tographer,  were  shown  at  the  two 
November  meetings  of  the  Brooklyn 
Amateur  Cine  Club.  They  were:  “New 
Horizons,”  “Garden  Life,”  “The  Brook,” 
and  “Santa  Visits  Elaine.”  Last  named 
picture  contained  much  trick  photog¬ 
raphy. 


Rations  Disturb  Frisco  Club 

DUE  to  ration  difficulties  the  monthly 
pre-meeting  dinners  of  the  Cinema 
Club  of  San  Francisco  have  had  to  be 
moved  from  the  Women’s  City  Club. 
The  November  dinner  was  held  at  the 
Stewart  Hotel.  Highlighting  the  after- 
dinner  program  were  two  pictures  of 
Mexico,  filmed  by  Rodgers  Peal.  One 
showed  Mexican  ruins,  the  other  a  bull 
fight  .  .  .  speaking  of  ration  troubles! 


FOLLOWING  officers  were  elected  at 
the  November  meeting  of  the  Los 
Angeles  8  mm.  Club:  M  lton  R.  Arm- 
stiong,  President;  John  N.  Elliott,  Vice- 
President;  W.  D.  Garlock,  Treasurer; 
Merwyn  Gill,  Secretary.  Five  films  were 
shown  at  the  conclusion  of  the  election. 


Film  Review 

Review  of  “The  Adventures  of  Light¬ 
ning  Zezall,  or  the  Dope  Wins  a  Con¬ 
test.”  400  ft.  Silent  with  narration  on 
records.  Kodachrome. 

This  was  an  attempt  by  the  Chicago 
Cinema  Club  memoers  to  make  a  group 
film.  The  story  and  continuity  was  of  the 
type  that  is  undoubtedly  of  interest  to 
the  particular  group  who  participated 
in  filming  it,  but  has  no  general  appeal 
to  outsiders.  Consequently,  we  will  only 
comment  on  the  photographic  treatment. 

The  credit  titles  indicate  that  several 
members  were  responsible  for  the  pho¬ 
tography  and  other  technicalities,  which 
in  general  were  well  handled.  Most  of 
the  scenes  were  interiors  in  which  the 
exposure  was  good,  and  surprisingly 
uniform,  considering  that  various  club 
cameramen  displayed  their  skill.  The 
opening  titles  were  hand  lettered,  legible 
and  well  centered.  Camera  angles  were 
carefully  chosen,  and  effective  use  was 
made  of  lap-dissolves  and  fades. 

Three  phonograph  records  were  sup¬ 
plied,  intended  to  accompany  the  film 
with  music,  and  narration.  The  usual 
difficulties  were  experienced  in  review¬ 
ing,  trying  to  synchronize  the  projector 
speed  with  the  turntable.  Playing  a  re¬ 
corded  narration  and  dialogue  in  syn¬ 
chronization  with  a  film  is  unsatisfac¬ 
tory,  unless  considerable  time  can  be 
spent  viewing  the  film  and  hearing  the 
records  repeatedly.  Probably  the  group 
making  such  a  production  can  obtain 
good  results,  after  frequent  rehearsals, 
but  someone  else  using  different  equip¬ 
ment  and  unfamiliar  wTith  the  records 
and  film,  finds  accurate  synchronization 
next  to  impossible. 

A  group  production  such  as  this  one, 
would  be  of  use  to  more  club  members, 
if  it  was  made  without  records,  and  well 
titled.  Probably,  only  a  few  members 
would  be  able  to  operate  the  records  in 
synchronization,  whereas  a  good  titled 
film  could  be  shown  by  anyone.  The 
process  of  wording,  making  and  cutting 
in  properly  plenty  of  titles  is  a  splendid 
group  undertaking,  from  which  experi¬ 
ence  any  member  participating  can  de¬ 
rive  considerable  benefit,  and  learn  how 
to  turn  out  well  titled  films  of  his  own. 

EDWARD  PYLE,  JR. 


448  December,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


Official  Photographs,  U  S.  Army  Air  Forces 


For  America’s  bombsights — which 
have  shown  our  enemies  the  bitter 
meaning  of  “high-altitude  precision 
bombing” —  most  of  “the  optics” 
are  made  by  Kodak. 

For  our  Army  and  Navy,  Kodak 
also  makes  29  of  the  most  complex 
types  of  optical  systems  for  lire 
control  —  the  sighting  of  guns  — 
including  the  famous  height  finder 
for  anti-aircraft. 

GERMANY  has  enjoyed  a 
reputation  for  world  lead¬ 
ership  in  lens  making.  But— as 
so  often  happens— reputation 
outlived  performance. 

Well  before  Pearl  Harbor, 
Kodak  optical  research  was  de¬ 
veloping  lenses  superior  to  any 
ever  made  by  anybody,  any¬ 
where.  A  major  advance  has 
been  the  perfecting  for  new, 
finer  cameras  of  a  revolution¬ 
ary  new  optical  glass  which 


gave  lenses  greater  speed  — 
definition  ...  or  could  more 
than  double  the  “field  of  view” 
of  a  fire  control  periscope. 

This  glass  was  immediately 
incorporated  in  instruments  for 
fire  control .  .  . 

Effective  fire  power  —  hits, 
not  “tries”  —  is  the  result  of 
sighting  through  a  series  of 
lenses  ...  an  optical  system 
.  .  .  which  locates,  magnifies, 
and  “ranges  on”  the  target. 

Armij  Ordnance  experts  now 
report:  “We  have  examined 
captured  German  sights  and 
periscopes  and,  element  for 
element,  we  are  turning  out 
better  material.” 

The  effectiveness  of  American 
fire  power  is  making  history 
.  .  .  Eastman  Kodak  Company, 
Rochester,  N.  Y. 


REMEMBER  CORREGIDOR?.  . .  and  the  last  words  over  their  radio 
—“Just  made  broadcast  to  arrange  for  surrender  . . .  everyone 
is  bawling  like  a  baby  ...  I  know  how  a  mouse  feels.  Caught 
in  a  trap  waiting  for  guys  to  come  along  to  finish  it  up.”  Cor- 
regidor  is  a  stern  example  to  us  at  home.  BUY  MORE  WAR  BONDS. 

Serving  human  progress  through  photography 


0X0 


optical  systems  for 
fire  control  destroy  the  legend  of 
"German  supremacy"  in  lens  making 


American  Cinematographer  •  December,  1943  449 


Snow  Photography 

(Continued  from  Page  433) 

scene  of  action.  The  only  filter  I  have 
been  able  to  neutralize  such  a  glare  is 
the  Pola  Screen  set  at  ninety  degrees 
to  the  sun.  Here  again,  the  sky!  It  will 
be  overcorrected.  It  is  best  to  include  as 
little  of  the  sky  as  the  composition  of 
the  scene  will  permit. 

There  are  many  combinations  of  filters 
that  can  be  used  very  successfully  by  the 
photographer  of  experience  working  in 
the  snow  country.  The  combinations  are 
almost  endless.  Like  artists  who  paint 
pictures,  the  instinct,  the  intuition,  the 
inspiration  and,  the  knowledge  and  ex¬ 
perience  of  one  man  is  not  that  of  any 
other.  For  example:  In  snow  where  there 
is  high  contrast,  beautiful  results  can  be 
obtained  with  several  filters,  depending 
upon  the  effect  desired.  If  the  desire  is 
to  soften  the  contrast  of  white  snow  and 
dark  shadows,  it  can  be  effected  with 
a  combination  of  the  light  red  23A  in 
combination  with  the  56  green,  comput¬ 
ing  and  combination  factor  of  7.  If  the 
effect  is  to  be  that  of  a  night  scene, 
stop  down  an  additional  IY2  stops.  For 
contrast,  the  29F  of  the  dark  red  end  of 
the  spectrum  with  its  overall  daylight 
transmission  of  7  percent,  factor  10, 
stopped  down  another  1M:  stops  will 
render  a  beautiful  night  effect. 

Snow  is  so  very  deceptive  at  times.  I 
do  most  of  the  aerial  photography  re¬ 
quired  by  our  studio  and  I  recall  one 
time  when  I  was  covering  an  assignment 


to  get  some  scenes  of  flying  through 
clouds.  I  was  sitting  beside  the  pilot  and 
suggested  that  “Just  over  there  floated 
a  beautiful  cloud  formation.”  The  pilot 
smiled  and  asked  if  I’d  like  to  get  a 
closeup,  and  I  nodded  “yes.”  Upon  get¬ 
ting  closer  to  what  had  appeared  as  a 
beautiful  cloud  bank  I  found  it  to  be  a 
snow  covered  mountain.  Snow  covered 
mountains  that  project  up  through  a  sea 
of  clouds  have  a  very  close  resemblance 
to  the  white  clouds  they  are  engulfed  in 
when  viewed  from  a  distance  at  high 
altitude. 

There  are  moments  during  the  short¬ 
est  winter  days  in  the  snow  latitudes 
when  beautiful  effects  can  be  obtained 
with  various  filters  during  the  morning 
and  afternoon  half  hour  period  of  cross 
light  with  its  long  shadows  resting  over 
smooth  and  rough  snow  or  casting  shad¬ 
ows  on  the  surface  of  quiet  pools  with 
ice-fringed  edges.  Here  a  K3  filter  will 
render  water  of  a  dark  texture  with 
transparent  shadows  crossing  the  snow. 
A  yellow-red  filter  will  render  darker 
water  and  soft  shadows  of  the  snow 
contours.  Beautiful  effects  can  be  ob¬ 
tained  via  this  method  where  frozen- 
crested  snow  has  a  broken  surface  glint¬ 
ing  the  sunlight. 

This  matter  of  filterage  when  working 
in  the  snow  latitudes  is  strictly  a  tech¬ 
nique  whereby  an  individual  endeavors 
to  manifest  his  own  interpretation  of  the 
scene  spread  out  before  him,  to  express 
his  personal  impression  and,  is  not  a 
rule  to  be  followed  hard  and  fast. 


Whatever  the  result  obtained  depends 
upon  the  knowledge  applied  to  the  in¬ 
dividual  filter  selection  for  the  effect  he 
is  trying  to  put  into  the  photographic 
quality  of  his  interpretation. 

The  rule  of  filterage  is  not  one  of 
“thumb”  but  one  of  expression  depend¬ 
ent  upon  the  artistic  imaginative  sense 
of  the  individual  photographer,  the  crea¬ 
tiveness  of  his  mental  ability,  achieved 
through  a  long  experience  of  observation 
and  extensive  study  of  the  problems  per¬ 
taining  to  his  profession. 

Many  times,  filters  can  be  dispensed 
with.  The  color  corrective  quality  of  the 
film  emulsion  of  the  standard  brands 
will  compensate  adequately  for  the  non¬ 
use  of  filters  by  rendering  a  truer  ex¬ 
pression  than  could  have  been  obtained 
through  the  use  of  any  filter.  This  re¬ 
sult  has  been  manifested  many  times 
when  working  in  wet,  thawing,  slush- 
snow  that  is  not  so  glaring  white  be¬ 
cause  it  is  old  snow  that  has  accumulated 
a  dust  covering  since  its  formation; 
delicate  reflections  of  sparkling  light  is 
glinted  from  the  many  little  trickles  of 
water  given  off  by  the  melting  snow  and 
the  darker  patches  of  wet  earth. 

For  me,  the  winter  season  in  the  snow 
country  offers  more  opportunities  for 
“mood”  pictures  than  any  other  time  of 
the  year.  Low  hanging  snow  clouds  can 
add  a  subtle  mystery  to  a  landscape,  or 
seascape,  that  will  help  lift  the  dramatic 
effect  of  the  story  into  better  suspense. 
Ground  fog,  early  morning  fog,  low-fly¬ 
ing  scud-mists  are  wonderful  creators  of 
“chills”  and  dramatic  effect. 

The  snickery  voice  yawned  an  interrup¬ 
tion.  “It’s  a  good  story  Jack,  but  it’s 
time  to  eat.  After  all,  I  guess  Africa 
isn’t  so  hot.” 

NOTE:  As  one  of  the  ace  directors  of  photog¬ 
raphy  and  chief  ariel  cinematographer  with  the 
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer  Studios,  Jack  Smith  has 
made  scenes  for  feature  productions  in  almost 
every  country  around  the  earth  besides  adding 
to  his  credit  nearly  20,000  hours  of  service  in 
the  air.  Editor. 


Aerial  Photography 
First  Step  To  Battle 

(Continued  from  Page  435) 

Two  of  the  major  projects  now  under 
development  at  the  Photo  Laboratory  are 
night  photography  and  color  photog¬ 
raphy.  By  use  of  specialized  night  equip¬ 
ment  including  “canned  daylight”  Army 
Air  Forces  now  take  aerial  photographs 
from  30,000  feet  at  night.  Increasing  de¬ 
mands  for  color  photographs  useful  in 
camouflage  detection  have  resulted  in  a 
concentrated  development  of  color  photo¬ 
graphic  equipment.  One  of  the  latest 
projects  developed  by  photographic 
manufacturers  in  collaboration  with  the 
Photo  Laboratory  makes  possible  color 
aerial  photographs  taken  at  night. 

Through  the  work  at  the  Wright  Field 
Aerial  Photographic  Laboratory  the 
enemy  is  finding  it  increasingly  difficult 
to  keep  secrets  from  the  Army  Air 
Forces  aerial  photographers  whose  pic¬ 
tures  may  frequently  save  lives  and 
mean  the  difference  between  victory  and 
defeat  on  many  battle  fronts. 


FOR  LIGHT  ON  EASTERN  PRODUCTION -- 

C.  ROSS 

For  Lighting  Equipment 

As  sole  distributors  East  of  the  Mississippi  we  carry  the  full  and 
complete  line  of  latest-type  Inkie  and  H.I.-Arc  equipment 
manufactured  by 

MOLE-RICHARDSON.  Inc. 

Hollywood  -  California 

Your  requirements  for  interior  or  exterior  locations  taken  care 
of  to  the  last  minute  detail  anywhere 

☆ 

MOTOR  GENERATOR  TRUCKS 
RENTALS  SALES  SERVICE 

☆ 

CHARLES  ROSS,  Inc 


333  West  52nd  St..  New  York.  N.Y. 


Phones:  Circle  6-5470-1 


450  December,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


Recent  Developments  In  Sound  Trucks 

(Continued  from  Page  442) 

( p)  Three-Channel  Stereophonic  Comprex. —  This  ar¬ 
rangement  consists  of  three  100-mil  bilateral  variable-area 
sound-tracks,  one  for  each  of  the  three  stereophonic  chan¬ 
nels,  and  a  fourth  100-mil  bilateral  variable-area  track  on 
which  are  recorded  the  compression  and  expansion  controls 
for  all  three  channels.16. 17. 18 


Fig.  P 


(q)  100-Mil  Variable-Density,  5-Mil  Control. — This  con¬ 

sists  of  a  single  variable-density  track  having  the  dimen¬ 
sions  of  a  standard  100-mil  release  print  track,  with  the 
addition  of  a  5-mil-wide  control-track  located  in  the  black 
region  between  sound-track  and  picture.  In  practice  the 
control-track  is  variable-density,  frequency-modulated.  The 
control-track  does  not  interfere  with  the  playing  of  a  film 
of  this  type  on  a  reproducer  not  equipped  for  control-track 
reproduction.19 


(r)  100-Mil  Variable- Area,  Sprocket-Hole  Control-Track .■ — 
This  consists  of  a  standard  100-mil  variable-area  track  plus 
a  variable-area  control-track  approximately  100  mils  wide, 
located  in  the  sprocket-hole  area.  The  width  of  the  control- 
track  determines  the  volume  change  and  may  also  be  used 
for  switching  loud  speakers.20 


Fig.  R 


nals  for  each  of  the  three  sound-tracks.  The  sound-tracks 
and  control-track  are  all  variable-density,  the  control-track 
being  frequency-modulated. 


Fig.  s 


(t)  Three-Channel,  “Fantasound".  —  This  arrangement 
employs  four  200-mil  variable-area  push-pull  tracks,  three 
being  used  for  sound,  while  the  fourth  carries  signals  for 
controlling  the  sound  volume  in  various  loud  speakers.21 


Fig.  T 


REFERENCES 

(All  references  are  to  Journal  of  the  Society  of  Motion  Picture 
Engineers,  except  the  first.) 

(1)  Technical  Bulletin,  Academy  Research  Council,  “Standard  Nomen¬ 
clature  for  Release-Print  Sound-Tracks”  (Nov.  24,  1937). 

(2)  DeForest,  L.,  (May,  1923)  p.  61. 

(3)  MacKenzie,  D.,  XII  (Sept.,  1928),  p.  730. 

(4)  Miller,  W.  C.,  XV  (July,  1930),  p.  53. 

(5)  Crane,  G.  R.,  XXXI  (Nov.,  1938),  p.  531. 

(6)  Frayne,  J.  G.,  and  Silent,  H.  C.,  XXXI  (July,  1938),  p.  46. 

(7)  Wente,  E.  C.,  XII  (Sept.,  1928),  p.  657. 

(8)  Marvin,  H.  B.,  XII  (Apr,,  1928),  p.  86. 

(9)  Maurer,  J.  A.,  XIV  (June,  1930),  p.  636. 

(10)  Kreuzer,  B.,  XIV  (June,  1931),  p.  671. 

(11)  Dimmick,  G.  L.,  and  Belar,  H.,  XXIII  (July,  1934),  p.  48. 

(12)  Sachtleben,  L.  T.,  XXV  (Aug.,  1935),  p.  175. 

(13)  Dimmick,  G.  L.,  XXIX  (Sept.,  1937),  p.  258. 

(14)  Cartwright,  C.  H.,  and  Thompson,  W.  S.,  XXXIII  (Sept.,  1939),. 
p.  289. 

(15)  Lorance,  G.  T.,  and  Benfer,  R.  W.,  XXXVI  (Apr.,  1941),  p.  331. 

(16)  Snow,  W.  B.,  and  Soffel,  A.  R„  XXXVII  (Oct.,  1941),  p.  380. 

(17)  Fletcher,  H.,  XXXVII  (Oct.,  1941),  p.  331. 

(18)  Wente,  E.  C„  Biddulph,  R.,  Elmer,  L.  A.,  and  Anderson,  A.  B.. 
XXXVII  (Oct.,  1941),  p.  353. 

(19)  Frayne,  J.  G.,  and  Herrnfeld,  F.  P.,  XXXVIII  (Feb.,  1942),  p.  111. 

(20)  Levinson,  N.,  and  Goldsmith,  L.  T.,  XXXVII  (Aug.,  1941),  p.  147. 

(21)  Garity,  W.  E.,  and  Hawkins,  J.  N.  A.,  XXXVII  (Aug.,  1941),  p.  127. 


(s)  Three-Channel  Stereophonic  Control-Track. — In  this 
case  three  22-mil  stereophonic  sound  tracks  occupy  the  space 
normally  required  for  a  single  100-mil  track.  A  5-mil  control- 
track  in  the  same  position  as  in  track  q  records  control  sig- 


*  Electrical  Research  Products  Division,  Western  Electric  Company,  Inc., 
Hollywood,  Calif. 

**  Electrical  Research  Products  Division,  Western  Electric  Company,  Inc., 
New  York,  N.  Y. 

This  article  reprinted  from  August  issue  of  the  S.M.P.E.  Journal. 


American  Cinematographer  •  December,  1943 


451 


Making  Christmas  Movies 

(Continued  from  Page  437) 


hundreds  of  miles  on  horseback  to  a 
photographer  with  his  slow  wet  plates, 
long  exposures  and  torturous  iron  head 
braces.  Surely  a  picture  was  a  rare  and 
great  event  in  their  lives.  But  for  you 
and  me  with  all  the  fast  films  and 
modern  photographic  equipment  right  at 
our  finger  tips  we  have  no  excuse  for 
not  making  pictures  on  this  great  day. 

We  have  made  stills  and  motion  pic¬ 
tures  for  over  a  period  of  some  thirty 
years  and  the  other  night  while  Mrs. 
Kershner  and  I  were  making  our 
Christmas  plans,  we  projected  these  films 
.  .  .  for  a  few  hours,  time  was  swept 
away  and  we  wei-e  whisked  back  to  the 
cradle  days  of  Robert  ...  we  saw  Tom 
on  his  first  sled  riding  in  a  blizzard.  We 
laughed  again  when  Norbert  upset  the 
turkey  gravy  all  over  his  first  suit  and 
three  Christmases  later  we  watched 
Beverly  with  her  candy  sticky  hands 
hugging  the  little  kitten  and  wondei’ing 
why  pieces  of  tissue  paper  stuck  to  its 
fur  and  feet.  These  and  hundreds  of 
other  enjoyable  incidents  photographed 
at  various  places  over  America  came  to 
life  again  on  the  screen  and  refreshed 
fond  memories.  All  are  the  visable 
records  of  the  children  from  birth  to 
maturity  to  be  looked  at  again  and  again 
and  who  knows,  someday  perhaps  the 
children  will  be  showing  them  over  and 
over  to  their  own  children. 

Leafing  through  the  albums  of  snap 
shots  and  photos  we  saw  many  funny 
ones  because  we  had  nothing  better  than 
flashlight  powder.  Into  this  we  would 
place  a  long  fuse,  light  it  and  run  for 
our  pos'tion  hoping  to  get  there  before  it 
flashed  but  generally  we  were  but  a  blur 
and  moved  all  the  others  around  us.  If 
not  this  we  had  our  eyes  closed  as  tight 
as  blind  people.  But  not  today.  Now  we 
have  photo  bulbs  of  high  intensity  for 
quick  exposure  or  flash  bulbs  whose 
peak  of  light  is  so  brilliant  we  can  stop 
down  the  lens  for  greater  depth  of  focus 
and  so  instantaneous  the  slightest  move 
will  not  be  seen,  all  without  the  old  time 
results  of  blackening  the  ceiling  or  of 
burning  holes  in  the  rugs  or  carpet. 

In  preparing  for  our  Christmas  day  we 
have  made  plans  just  where  we  will  set 
the  tree  with  the  miniature  winter  scene 
around  it  right  next  to  the  fireplace 
where  all  the  stockings  will  hang.  By 
pushing  the  table  over  aways  out  in  the 
dining  room  we  can  set  up  the  camera, 
and  shoot  through  the  arch  and  get  the 
children  running  to  the  tree  and  finding 
their  stockings  all  in  one  scene.  Then 
when  we  have  dinner  we  take  the  camera 
into  the  living  room  and  shoot  through 
the  arch  again  giving  us  a  good  picture 
of  the  folks  at  the  table  with  plenty  of 
head  room.  The  chairs  and  tables  in  both 
rooms  that  prevent  us  from  shifting  our 
lights  will  be  taken  out  of  the  room 
ahead  of  time  to  prevent  confusion.  We 
have  set  up  the  camera  already  and  know 
just  what  will  have  to  be  moved  and 


where  we  will  have  to  place  it  and  how 
much  of  the  back  walls  we  will  get  in  the 
picture.  Colorful  shawls  and  tapestries 
will  be  hung  at  just  the  right  places  to 
make  a  good  color  balance.  Green 
branches  will  be  broken  off  the  garden 
shrubs,  stuck  in  cans  of  sand  and  set  at 
places  to  cover  up  bare  spots  or  to  help 
in  the  compositions. 

Next  we  make  sure  all  the  light  exten¬ 
sions  are  in  shape  and  that  the  main  one 
is  long  enough  to  reach  the  ironing  plug 
and  then  we  bring  in  the  lights  and  try 
them  out  for  reflections.  We  will  need 
some  cardboards  nailed  on  sticks  to  keep 
the  lights  from  shining  into  the  lens. 
We  nail  these  on  sticks  and  stand  them 
in  cans  of  sand.  We  find  the  photo¬ 
floods  from  last  Christmas  are  all  right 
and  repack  them  in  a  box  and  set  all  <:f 
it  in  the  closet  ready  for  use.  In  the 
meantime  we  have  had  a  lot  of  fun  de¬ 
ciding  on  what  colored  dresses,  shirts 
and  neckties  we  will  wear  and  the  color 
of  flowers,  candles,  favors  and  dishes  we 
will  use  to  make  a  color  balanced  picture 
when  the  turkey  is  carried  in  on  the  big 
platter. 

With  all  this  planned  ahead  of  time 
and  prepared,  confus:on  will  be  elimi¬ 
nated  and  you  will  get  good  pictures  as 
well  as  having  time  to  help  the  wife  in 
the  kitchen.  And  don’t  forget,  mak'ng 
a  few  shots  of  the  turkey  going  into  the 
oven  and  when  it  is  brought  out  all 
shiny  and  brown,  with  the  wife  smiling 
while  you  make  it.  There  are  two  sug¬ 
gestions  I  would  like  to  make.  One  is  be 
sui-e  to  place  the  tallest  folks  farthest 
away  from  the  camera  at  the  dinner 
table.  By  this  you  will  give  the  young¬ 
sters  a  chance  to  be  seen  and  after  all 
they  are  the  ones  we  are  mostly  inter¬ 
ested  in.  The  other,  do  not  foi'get  a 
group  picture  with  the  parents,  children 
and  grandparents  grouped  nicely  out¬ 
doors  in  a  prettv  sett-ng  for  the  family 
record.  If  ordinary  black  and  white, 
p'ace  the  group  in  the  shade  so  the  eyes 
will  be  natural  and  faces  not  all  squinted 
up,  but  if  color  is  used  plan  the  time  of 
day  so  that  the  sun  is  behird  the  camera 
and  place  the  gi-oup  so  that  the  sunlight 
falls  on  three  quarters  of  the  face  and 
you  wi'l  then  have  a  good  photographic 
record  of  the  family  on  this  Christmas 
day  of  1943.  If  they  are  worth  making 
at  all,  they  are  worth  planning  well 
ahead  of  time,  and  more  so  if  you  expect 
to  be  showing  them  to  your  children’s 
children  th:rty  years  hence. 

P.  S.  Better  shop  early  and  not  put  off 
too  long  the  buying  of  your  films  and 
photo  flood  lights. 


Lantz's  'Wally  Walrus' 

Walter  Lantz  will  introduce  a  new 
character  which  he  developed  in  his 
forthcoming  cartoon,  ‘Beach  Nut.’  New 
member  of  Woody  Woodpecker  family 
will  be  kncwn  as  Wally  Walrus.  Tuner 
which  Universal  releases  starts  shooting 
this  week. 


Aces  of  the  Camera 

(Continued  from  Page  436) 

next  few  years  in  Hollywood  making- 
pictures  for  M.G.M.,  who  during  his  stay 
in  Rome  had  taken  over  the  old  Gold- 
wyn  company,  and  First  National  Stu¬ 
dios.  Then  in  1931  the  travel-bug  got 
him  again.  This  time  he  headed  for  the 
Scandinavian  counti’ies. 

Taking  a  Mitchell  bi-pack  camera, 
with  Mrs.  Boyle  as  business  manager  and 
Ray  Fernstrom  as  his  assistant,  Boyle 
made  the  first  color  travel  pictures  in 
Scandinavia;  covering  Denmark,  Sweden 
and  Finland.  Discovering  for  the  cinema 
audiences  places  then  little  known,  like 
Lake  Ladoga,  which  have  since  become 
ti-ansformed  into  vital  links  with  the 
world’s  future. 

Back  in  Hollywood  again,  Boyle  broke 
the  monotony  of  the  next  few  years 
studio  routine  with  trips  to  Hawaii  and 
Alaska  before  being  called,  in  1935,  to 
England  for  a  year.  He  arrived  in  Eng¬ 
land  in  Jubilee  Year,  which  was  all  the 
more  to  his  liking,  to  take  over  the  cam¬ 
era  assignment  of  Carol  Reed’s  first  di¬ 
rectorial  effort,  “Mi\  Midshipman  Easy,” 
that  great  adventure  story  and  perennial 
favorite  by  Captain  Maryatt.  Down  at 
Weymouth  on  location  the  company  was 
fortunate  in  getting  the  permission  of 
the  Admiralty  for  the  use  of  the  lai-ge 
scale  model  of  Nelson’s  famous  flagxhip 
“Victory,”  which  was  on  display  there 
in  connection  with  the  jubilee  celebra¬ 
tions,  for  use  in  the  picture. 

“I  i-emember  one  very  amusing  inci¬ 
dent  l-egarding  that  sequence,”  John 
told  us.  “We  had  some  very  i-ealistic 
act:on,  with  men  hidden  inside  the  ship, 
shooting  Very  pistols  through  the  poi'ts 
to  simulate  cannon  fire  while  the  ship 
was  being  towed  on  a  coui-se  that  would 
not  bring  into  the  camei-a  field  the 
flotilla  of  modern  battlewagons  an¬ 
chored  in  the  bay.  But  thei-e  was  hardly 
a  place  on  the  horizon  that  didn’t  have 
a  modern  battleship  impeding  the  view. 
Then  someone  suggested  that  we  shoot 
against  land,  with  the  h'lls  as  a  back¬ 
ground.  That  sounded  like  a  good  idea 
till  I  locked  up.  And  I  decided  no  one 
would  believe  it.  The  hills  ai-ound  Wey¬ 
mouth  don’t  look  l:ke  England  at  all. 
They  look  just  like  California.” 

While  he  was  in  England  Boyle  re- 
ceived  a  rather  unusual  request  from  the 
Mitchell  Camera  Company.  It  seems  they 
had  sold  a  couple  of  their  cameras  to  the 
Misr  Studios  in  Caii-o,  Egypt’s  govern¬ 
ment  subsidized  film  studio,  but  when 
the  cameras  ai-rived  no  one  knew  how 
to  make  them  work.  So  the  call  went  out 
to  Beyle  who  flew  to  Cairo  and  showed 
them  how. 

“They  wei-e  very  nice  to  me  in  Egypt,” 
Boyle  recalled,  “and  they  made  me  many 
flattering  offers  to  stay.  The  Government 
officials  and  everyone  whom  I  met  were 
most  enthusiastic  about  the  future  of 
motion  pictui-es  in  the  Near  East.  But 
I  had  to  get  back  to  England.  Even 
though  the  Egyptians  held  out  the  lui-e 

(Continued  on  Page  454) 


452 


December,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


LAST 


CHANCE  TO 


COMPETITION  CLOSES 
MIDNIGHT  FRIDAY  DECEMBER  31st 
WHAT  DO  YOU  WANT  IN  YOUR  POSTWAR  MOVIE  EQUIPMENT? 


Neither  mechanical  genius,  industrial  designer, 
nor  professional  cameraman  or  projectionist  has 
any  priority  on  the  $1500.00  DeVRY  CORPO¬ 
RATION  will  pay  for  IDEAS  as  to  Tomorrow' s 
8mm  Motion  Picture  Camera  and  Projector. 

From  these  experienced  groups  are  bound  to 
come  important,  practical  contributions  to  the 
over-all  design  and  mechanical  improvement  of 
postwar’s  8mm  equipment — but  the  amateur  and 
the  “home  tinkerer”  are  certain  to  have  IDEAS 
— ideas  that  may  revolutionize  an  industry! 

What  do  YOU  want  in  the  next  motion  picture  camera 
YOU  buy?  How  do  YOU  think  it  should  look? 
Load?  Operate? 

What  do  YOU  want  in  YOUR  postwar  motion  pic¬ 
ture  projector?  How  can  its  operation  be 
simplified,  perjected?  Have  you  an  idea  as 
to  YOUR  projector's  appearance  that  you 
believe  has  merit  and  appeal? 


It  is  YOUR  answers  to  these  questions, 
in  rough  sketch  or  finished  drawing — 
with  or  without  supplemental  explana¬ 
tion,  as  you  may  desire — that  DeVRY 
is  looking  for. 


ENTRIES 
MUST  BE 
MAILED  BY 
DEC.  31, 
1943 


It  is  the  USER’s  desires — whether  you  be  pro¬ 
fessional,  amateur,  or  just  a  “tinkerer  with  an 
idea”  that  will  share  these  $1500.00  War  Bond 
awards. 

Drawing,  designing  or  modelling  skill  is  second¬ 
ary.  It  is  the  IDEA  that  will  win. 

Write  today  for  Official  Entry  Blank  and  its 
suggestions  and  conditions. 

THESE  HINTS  MAY  HELP  YOU 

DESIGN:  Submit  your  Ideas — in  rough  or  finished  drawing — 
as  to  how  you  think  the  new  8mm  MOTION  PICTURE 
CAMERA  OR  PROJECTOR  should  look.  Supplement 
designs  with  brief  comments.  Enter  as  many  drawings 
as  you  wish. 

MECHANICAL  OPERATION:  You  may  submit  work¬ 
ing  models,  mechanical  drawings,  rough  sketches.  The  idea 
is  the  thing — how  to  simplify,  improve,  perfect  either  camera 
or  projector  operation — for  instance: 

PROJECTOR:  Ventilating  system  (lamp 
house);  optical  system;  film  movement;  reel 
arms;  tilting  device;  film  safety  devices;  take-up, 
framing,  focusing  and  shutter  mechanisms,  etc. 
Can  you  suggest  particular  developments  of 


these  features? 

CAMERA:  (single  or  turret  lens  mount)  view 
finder;  shutter,  footage  indicator;  loading  mecha¬ 
nism;  winding  key;  exposure  guide;  lens  mount; 
focusing;  single  frame  release  mechanism,  etc. 
How  do  you  think  these  can  be  simplified, 
perfected? 


DEVRY  CORPORATION,  lilt  ARMITAGE  AVENUE,  CHICAGO  14,  ILLINOIS 


Star  awarded  for  contin¬ 
ued  excellence  in  the  pro¬ 
duction  of  motion  picture 
sound  equipment. 


\ 


Distributors  in  World’s  Principal  Cities 

WORLD’S  MOST  COMPLETE  LINE  OF  MOTION  PICTURE  SOUND  EQUIPMENT 

THE  BETTER  WE  BACK  THE  ATTACK  WITH  OUR 
BOND  BUYING  —  THE  SOONER  THE  VICTORY 


It's  Fun  to  Develop  Movies 

(Confirmed  from  Page  446) 

and  overlapping  the  guide  pins  or 
grooves.  This  problem  can  be  solved  sim¬ 
ply,  but  effectively,  by  looping  a  rubber 
band  through  itself,  over  the  starting 
point  on  the  rack,  attaching  the  film  to 
the  other  end  by  looping  it  through  the 
rubber  band  and  fastening  it  to  itself 
with  a  paper  clip  or  two.  The  tension  of 
the  stretched  rubber  band  will  keep  the 
film  taut  and  will  automatically  take 
care  of  any  expansion  or  slackening  later 
on.  The  other  end  of  the  film  should  be 
fastened  to  the  rack  in  the  same  manner. 
In  this  way  any  length  film  up  to  the 
maximum  capacity  of  the  rack  can  be 
handled,  with  the  assurance  that  it  will 
remain  tightly  in  place  throughout  the 
entire  process. 

In  drying  a  different  rack  is  usually 
used,  a’though  not  absolutely  necessary, 
especially  in  the  case  of  the  drum  type 
rack.  The  drying  rack  ordinarily  resem¬ 
bles  the  drum  type  quite  closely,  still 
holding  the  film  in  circular  or  squared- 
off  loops,  but  is  more  loosely  constructed 
than  the  developing  rack.  By  that  I 
mean  the  film  is  suported  in  not  more 
than  4  places  each  time  it  so’rals  around 
the  rack’s  circumference.  Probably  the 
main  reason  for  using  a  different  rack  in 
drying,  is  for  the  sake  of  c’eanliness  in 
this  final  operation.  At  this  stage  a 
fresh,  clean  rack  in  clean  surroundings  is 
good  assurance  for  a  spotless  fi'm.  When 
thoroughly  dry,  and  not  before,  the  film 
is  wound  on  a  reel,  ready  for  projection. 

It  goes  without  saying  that  fresh 
chemicals  give  best  results.  For  econ¬ 
omy’s  sake,  however,  the  solutions  may 
safely  be  used  more  than  o-’ce.  If  stored 
in  a  cool,  dark  place  in  well  corked  bot¬ 
tles,  they  will  keep  for  a  reasonable 
length  of  t’me.  particu’arly  tho  hvoo. 
The  Fromader  Genera  Company  of  Dav¬ 
enport,  Iowa,  is  one  concern  that  can 
supply  all  necessary  chemicals  for  rever¬ 
sal  processing,  as  well  as  the  developing 
and  drying  racks,  for  those  desiring  to 
purchase,  rather  than  construct,  their 
own  equipment. 

Developing  and  printing  your  own 
movies  opens  the  door  to  many  new 
tricks,  heretofore  thought  impossible. 
Your  own  pat:ence  and  ingenuity  is  the 
limit.  For  instance,  a  negative  scene  can 
be  run  through  the  camera  in  contact 
with  an  unexposed  positive  fi’m  to  pro¬ 
vide  a  motion  p;cture  background  for  a 
title,  photographed  in  the  usual  manner. 
This  also  enables  one  to  superimpose 
wording  over  previously  made  movie 
scenes,  by  first  making  a  negative  of 
them,  and  then  fol'owing  the  procedure 
outlined  above.  Similarly,  an  endless 
variety  of  trick  fades,  wipes,  and  dis¬ 
solves  are  possible,  limited  only  by  the 
cameraman’s  imagination  and  ability. 
These  transitions,  and  many  new  ones 
that  will  suggest  themselves,  may  also 
be  employed  in  scenes  where  they  are  not 
already  present,  by  clever  manipulations 
and  double  exposures. 

Those  who  for  one  reason  or  another 


do  not  care  for  the  printing  stage  of  the 
work,  may  still  find  enjoyment  in  the  de¬ 
veloping  end.  Titles,  especially,  are  fre¬ 
quently  made  on  economical  positive  film 
and  developed  “straight”  . .  .  that  is  with¬ 
out  reversing  the  film  and  without  mak¬ 
ing  a  contact  print  for  projection.  When 
used  for  this  purpose,  the  camera  is  loaded 
the  regular  way,  with  the  emulsion  side 
of  the  single  film  out  and  facing  the 
lens.  It  should  be  recalled  here  that  the 


film,  when  developed,  will  be  in  negative 
form.  Therefore,  all  title  cards  should 
also  have  their  color  values  reversed 
from  the  way  they  are  to  appear  on  the 
screen.  In  thife  way  the  result  will  be  a 
positive  projection  print,  the  same  as  in 
cne  case  of  the  other  methods.  Bear  in 
mind,  however,  that  this  system  only 
holds  true  for  titles.  Regular  filming 
cannot  be  carried  on  using  only  a  single 
film,  developed  “straight.” 


American  Cinematographer  •  December,  1943  453 


BUY 

MORE 

BONDS 


'  BUY 

WAR 


this"EYE"sefs  into 

THE  FUTURE 

B&H  Taylor-Hobson-Cooke 
Cine  Lenses  do  more  than  meet 
current  technical  demands.  They 
exceed  them — and  their  design 
anticipates  future  improvements  in 
film  emulsions.  They  are  THE 
long-term  investment  lenses. 
Write  for  literature. 

BELL  &  HOWELL  COMPANY 

Exclusive  world  distributors 

1849  Larchmont  Avenue, Chicago 
New  York:  30  Rockefeller  Plaza 
Hollywood:  716  N.  LaBrea  Ave. 
Washington,  D.  C.:  1221  G  St.,  N.  W. 
London:  13-14  Great  Castle  St. 


Aces  of  the  Camera 

(Continued  from  Page  452) 


of  living  tax-free  in  their  land  by  the 
Nile.  But  I  was  very  impressed  with  the 
country  and  told  them  I  would  be  back. 
At  the  time  I  had  no  idea  it  would  be  so 
soon. 

“In  England  I  found  myself  slated  to 
do  the  camera  work  on  Walter  Futter’s 
Capitol  Films  production  “Jericho,” 
starring  Paul  Robeson,  Henry  Wilcoxon 
and  Wallace  Ford  and  released  here 
under  the  title  “Dark  Sands.”  Part  of 
the  location  shots  had  been  planned  for 
the  company  in  Algeria.  But  when  we 
got  there  things  didn’t  pan  out  right,  so, 
remembering  my  Egyptian  connections, 
I  asked  for  help  which  was  graciously 
given  and  off  we  went  to  the  Egyptian 
Sudan.  Which  was  the  location  called 
for  in  the  story  anyway.” 

The  shooting  of  “Jericho,”  or  “Dark 
Sands,”  was  one  of  the  biggest  adven¬ 
tures  in  Boyle’s  colorful  career.  The 
story  concerned  itself  with  one  of  the 
most  fantastic  events  of  modern  times; 
the  annual  trek  made  by  the  natives  of 
Nigeria  across  two  thousand  miles  of 
Equatorial  Africa  to  obtain  their  year’s 
supply  of  salt.  Banding  together  as  a  de¬ 
fense  against  the  marauding  Taurogs, 
the  caravan  assumes  tremendous  pro¬ 
portions.  Fifteen  thousand  camels  were 
in  the  caravan  Boyle  photographed. 

“The  original  idea  was  that  we  would 
follow  them  in  motor  trucks,  equipped 
for  the  desert,”  Boyle  told  us  with  a 
grin.  “But  it  didn’t  work  out  that  way. 
After  only  a  few  hundred  miles  even  the 
specially  equipped  trucks  refused  to  go 
any  further.  So  we  followed  the  cara¬ 
van  the  rest  of  the  way  riding  camels 
ourselves.”  John  Boyle  took  it  all  as  part 
of  the  day’s  work.  But  nearly  2000  miles 
by  camel !  And  if  you  know  anything 
about  camels!  Incidentally,  even  the  re¬ 
viewers  who  usually  take  the  camera¬ 
man’s  work  for  granted  or  who  choose 
to  ignore  it  entirely,  wrote  paeans  of 
praise  about  Boyle’s  spectacular  desert 
sequences  so  brilliantly  photographed  in 
spite  of  the  primitive  conditions. 

Boyle’s  intended  year  in  England 
stretched  into  three.  He  worked  at 
Ealing,  Denham  and  Pine  Wood  before 


returning  once  more  to  Hollywood.  “One 
can’t  afford  to  stay  away  too  long.  They 
forget  you,”  he  observed.  But  he  wasn’t 
back  for  long.  In  1939  he  was  approached 
by  Mr.  Lawrence  Thaw,  a  New  York 
banker,  who  had  planned  a  most  preten¬ 
tious  motor  expedition  from  Paris  to 
India.  Preparations  for  the  trip  had 
been  going  on  for  two  years,  the  foreign 
governments  through  whose  territory 
the  expedition  must  pass  had  promised 
their  cooperation  and  the  prospect  of 
adventure  beckoned.  On  the  other  hand 
the  threat  of  war  was  becoming  increas¬ 
ingly  ominous.  But  the  temptations  of 
the  trip  were  too  tantalizing.  Boyle 
cast  all  other  considerations  aside  and 
went.  It  turned  out  to  be  one  of  the  most 
spectacular  assignments  ever  covered  by 
a  motion  picture  cameraman.  From  Paris 
to  Munich,  then  across  Europe  to  Vienna, 
Budapest,  Belgrade,  Sofia  and  thence  into 
Turkey,  then  to  Syria,  which  they 
reached  on  September  3rd,  the  day  war 
was  declared.  From  Beyreuth  they  went 
on  to  Bagdahd,  through  Persia,  into 
Afghanistan  and  entered  India  through 
the  storied  Khyber  Pass. 

During  the  course  of  the  trip  Boyle 
photographed  a  Bedouin  desert  feast,  the 
exquisite  mosaics  of  the  Pearl  Mosque, 
and  in  India,  where  the  party  was  enter¬ 
tained  by  nine  Maharajahs,  Boyle  re¬ 
corded  with  his  camera  the  exotic  splen¬ 
dors  of  Durbars,  palaces,  treasures  and 
silk-robed  courts  of  these  feudal  poten¬ 
tates  many  of  which  had  never  been 
photographed  before.  The  National  Geo¬ 
graphic  Magazine  carried  a  big  spread 
of  Camerman  Boyle’s  pictures  along  with 
the  story  of  the  expedition.  Life  Maga¬ 
zine  of  November  25,  1940,  devoted  seven 
pages  to  pictures  and  laudatory  comment 
of  the  film  John  Boyle  brought  back. 
“His  pictures,”  said  Life,  “not  only  make 
a  series  of  gorgeous  travelogs,  they  con¬ 
stitute  a  documentation  of  Oriental  civil¬ 
ization  that  may  never  again  be  dupli¬ 
cated.” 

We  asked  Boyle,  was  there  any  par¬ 
ticular  reason  he  liked  to  travel  so  much. 
“Well,”  he  said  after  a  moment’s 
thought,  “it’s  a  good  idea  to  get  a  fresh 
viewpoint.  If  you  keep  doing  the  same 
thing  you  get  in  a  rut.”  “Even  in  Holly¬ 
wood?”  we  asked.  “Especially  in  Holly¬ 
wood,”  he  countered.  “And  besides,  I 
think  it  most  important  that  we  learn, 
at  first  hand,  just  what  the  rest  of  the 
world  is  like.  Here  in  Hollywood  we 
make  pictures  with  story  locations  in  all 
parts  of  the  world.  It  stands  to  reason 
that  we  can  be  more  authentic,  thus 
adding  to  the  sincerity  of  the  story  as 
well  as  lessening  the  possibility  of  offend¬ 
ing  native  sensibilities,  if  we  have  a  per¬ 
sonal  knowledge  of  the  country  in  ques¬ 
tion.  The  influence  of  the  motion  picture 
is  so  great  that  I  feel  movie  makers 
should  feel  a  greater  responsibility  in 
presenting  factual  things  factually.  This 
will  be  particularly  true  in  the  post-war 
era  when  international  cooperation  will 
depend  on  international  understanding.” 


454 


December,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


Girl's  Idea  I 
Binocular 

FOR  keeping  her  bright  blue  eyes 
open,  and  her  mind  in  the  same  con¬ 
dition,  June  B.  Burhans,  461  Avenue  D, 
has  been  given  a  $430  check  by  the 
Bausch  &  Lomb  Optical  Co. 

Miss  Burhans,  a  slim  young  blonde,  is 
believed  to  have  won  one  of  the  largest 
awards  ever  given  to  a  woman  for  tech¬ 
nical  suggestions.  At  least  she  tops  any 
previous  woman  worker  with  the  com¬ 
pany.  She  took  advantage  of  the  com¬ 
pany’s  suggestion  system  to  submit  an 
idea  for  combining  operations  on  cer¬ 
tain  optical  parts  which  substantially 
increases  production. 

Objectives  and  eyepieces  for  binocu¬ 
lars  are  made  of  two  elements  cemented 
together  and  aligned  optically.  Ordina¬ 
rily  these  lenses  are  matched,  cemented, 
cleaned,  and  inspected,  then  trans¬ 
ferred  to  another  section  where  they 
are  reheated,  trued  on  an  optical  truing 
machine,  cleaned  and  inspected  again. 

Miss  Burhans  conceived  the  idea  that 
all  these  operations  could  be  done  at 
the  same  time  and  on  the  same  bench. 
One  girl  could  clean,  then  heat  the 
lenses,  cement  them  together  and  true 
them  while  still  warm.  A  small  plunger 
type  fixture  was  designed  and  built  in 
the  company’s  machine  shop  for  the 
truing  operation  and  the  basic  idea 
made  good.  In  practice,  a  team  of  two 
girls  working  as  a  unit  was  found  bet¬ 
ter  than  one,  but  the  basic  idea  re¬ 
mained — one  heating,  cementing,  and 
truing  on  the  same  bench. 

Slipped  into  a  little  plunger  lathe,  the 
cemented  elements  are  quickly  trued. 
Light  striking  the  surface  of  the  trued 
lens  quickly  discloses  a  reflected  image 
which  tells  whether  the  lens  elements 
are  optically  trued. 

The  new  system  raises  the  production 
of  binocular  eyepieces  and  objectives  to 
as  many  lenses  in  two-and-a-half  days 
as  were  formerly  produced  in  six. 


ncreases 

Lens  Output 


In  Memoriam . 

Andre  John  Raphael  Barlatier, 
A.S.C.  Bom  in  Paris,  France,  Au¬ 
gust  28,  1882.  Died  in  North  Holly¬ 
wood,  Calif.,  November  7,  1943.  A 
beloved  member  of  the  American 
Society  of  Cinematographers  for 
many  years.  His  widow  and  his 
daughter  are  extended  the  sym¬ 
pathy  of  each  member  of  the 
Society. 


Electronic  Tubes 

(Continued  from  Page  439) 

film  acts  as  a  variable  medium  between 
the  arc  lamp  and  the  screen  in  the 
kinema. 

This  principle  is  covered  by  the  title 
of  a  Diavisor,  and  many  proposals  have 
been  put  forward  to  give  the  desired 
results. 

The  cathode  ray,  for  example,  has  been 
used  to  operate  small  mechanical  shut¬ 
ters,  to  cause  the  orientation  of  small 
colloidal  particles,  and  to  produce  bi¬ 
refringence  in  suitable  substances. 

The  advantage  of  such  a  system  in 
comparison  with  direct  viewing  of  the 
fluorescent  screen  can  only  be  obtained 
efficiently  if  the  varying  transparency 
values  of  the  medium  can  be  maintained 
practically  unchanged  over  substantially 
the  picture  repetition  period. 

Such  a  tube  is  known  as  a  Skiatron, 
and  Fig.  4  shows  the  principle  of  oper¬ 
ation.  It  is  identical  with  a  cathode  ray 
tube,  with  the  exception  that  the  crystal 
screen  is  not  luminous  but  exhibits  an 
effect  of  electron  opacity,  that  is,  it  can 
be  rendered  opaque  by  being  scanned 
with  a  cathode  ray  beam.  The  opaque 
areas  become  transparent  again  after 
a  short  interval  of  time  under  the  in¬ 
fluence  of  heat.  Research  is  concentrated 
on  the  production  of  suitable  materials. 


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^*he  production  line  of  "GOERZ  AMER¬ 
ICAN"  is  formed  by  skilled  men,  who 
through  painstaking  work  create  high- 
grade  photo-lenses  and  optical  units  for 
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in  the  Air — 


T  hese  precise  optical  units  are  of  the 
greatest  importance  to  our  armed 
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Victory. 


To  hasten  Victory  — 

\  INVEST  IN  WAR  BONDS  \ 


Index  To  Volume  XXIV -1943 


A 

Abbott — “Putting  Sound-on-Film  On  a  16mm. 

Silent  Projector”:  181. 

Accent  on  Pantomime:  138. 

Accessories  :  37  ;  38. 

Aces  of  the  Camera: 

XXIV — George  Barnes,  A.S.C. :  14. 

XXV— Phil  Tannura,  A.S.C. :  62. 

XXVI — Robert  de  Grasse,  A.S.C.:  92. 
XXVII— Ray  June,  A.S.C.:  132. 

XXVIII— Milton  Krasner,  A.S.C.:  172. 

XXIX— Sol  Polito,  A.S.C.:  212. 

XXX— Virgil  Miller,  A.S.C.:  253. 

XXXI — Lee  Garmes,  A.S.C.:  295. 

XXXII— John  Boyle,  A.S.C.: 

Amateur  Movies  and  the  War  Effort:  62. 

Amateur  Photography:  18;  19;  137;  177;  179; 
334  *  377. 

A  ‘  Mod?  EE”  Grows  U :  96. 

Among  the  Movie  C’ubs:  23;  64;  104;  141;  183; 

224;  265;  297;  340;  376;  412. 

Anderson — “Vege-tab’.e-top  Follies”:  177. 

Anhalt — 

“The  Cameraman’s  Part  in  Television  Pro¬ 
duction”:  8. 

“Will  There  Be  Cameraman-Directors  in 
Television  Production  ?”  :  46. 

Aiding,  A.S.C. — “Cameramen  in  Uniform”:  362. 
Artistic  Pictures :  368. 

A.S.C.  on  Parade:  16;  54;  94;  134;  174;  214; 
216;  256;  296;  406. 

B 

Bean — 

“Accent  on  Pantomime” :  138. 
“Free-Wheeling”:  57. 

Better  Pictures  with  Less  Film:  219. 

Black — “Nude  But  Not  Lewd” :  323. 

Blaisdell,  George:  174. 

Blanchard:  14;  52;  92;  132;  172;  179;  210;  253; 
254. 

Bonnie — “Iowa’s  Health  in  16mm.”:  328. 

Books :  24. 

Borradai’e,  A.S.C. — “Shooting  Action  Movies  In 
the  African  Desert” :  86. 

Bosco — 

“A  Camera  on  Skiis”:  19. 

“Amateur  Movies  and  the  War  Effort” :  62. 
“Editing  for  Ba'ance” :  20. 

Boyle,  John,  A.S.C. — “Practical  Pointers  on  16mm. 
Sound  Projection”:  102. 

British  War  Camera  Ace  Wins  Honorary  Mem¬ 
bership  in  the  A.S.C.:  171. 

Buckman — 

“C^mmentary-W riting  for  Documentary  Films’* : 
287. 

“Making  a  Documentary  Film  at  Sea”:  246. 
Burlesque  in  Swing:  291. 


C 


D 

Diary  of  a  10-Year  Movie  Maker:  402. 
Direct-16mm.  vs.  35mm.  for  Training  Film  Pro¬ 
duction:  91. 

Do  Your  Mistakes  Teach  You  What  Not  to  Do?: 
262. 

Documentary  :  246  ;  250  ;  287  ;  328. 

Does  Your  Projector  Grow  Whiskers?:  22. 
Doolittle — 

“Hands  Are  Nice  to  Hold — That’s  All”:  365. 
“Production  Still  of  the  Month”:  394. 

Dyer,  A.S.C. — “Kodachroming  the  ‘P-38’  in  Ac¬ 
tion”:  48. 

E 

Editing  for  Balance:  20. 

Editorially  Speaking:  312. 

Edouart,  A.S.C. — “The  Evolution  of  Transpar¬ 
ency  Process  Photography”:  359. 

Electronics  in  Photometry:  404. 

Evolution  of  Transparency  Process  Photography: 
359. 

Exposure:  170;  263;  416. 

F 

Fastax  High  Speed  Camera,  The  New:  292. 
Fighting  With  Film:  324. 

Fi.m :  7;  180;  364;  370;  374. 

Filming  “Desert  Victory”:  167. 

Fi’ming  an  “Incident”:  334. 

Films  Soldiers  Want:  395. 

Floral  Spectrum,  The:  300. 

Forty-eight  Years  of  Home  Movies:  68. 

Fosho’dt — 

“16mm.  Movies  for  Our  Soldiers”:  258. 

“Fi  ming  an  Incident’”:  334. 

Free-Wheeling:  57. 

Freund,  A.S.C. — ‘Illumination  on  Walls”:  286. 
From  a  Nazi  Prison-Camp  to  a  Signal  Corps 
Camera:  51. 

Furst — 

‘Films  Soldiers  Want”:  395. 

“Hollywood  and  Minorities”:  326. 

“The  Russian  Influence  in  Hollywood” :  288. 

G 

German  Propaganda  Movies  in  Two  Wars :  10. 

H 

Hall,  Hal— 

“Aces  of  the  Camera — XXX :  Lee  Garmes, 
A.S.C.”:  295. 

“Better  Pictures  with  Less  Film”:  219. 
“Fighting  with  Film”:  324. 

“The  Sixth  Sense  in  Film  Mechanics”:  361. 
Hands  Are  Nice  to  Hod — That’s  All:  365. 

Harlan,  A.S.C. — “Hints  On  Outdoor  Camerawork 
for  Army  Combat  and  Training  Films” :  206. 
Harrison,  F.R.P.S. — “Electronics  in  Photometry*': 
404. 


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Camera  on  Skiis:  19. 

Cameras:  36:  56;  98;  140;  292;  330;  332;  383. 
Cameraman’s  Part  in  Television  Production  :  8. 
Cameramen  in  Uniform :  362. 

Camerawork  on  a  Convoy :  12. 

Care  and  Operation  of  16mm.  Sound  Projectors: 
218. 

Cheating  on  Camera-Angles:  217. 
Cinematographers  Responsible  for  Agent’s  Suc¬ 
cess  :  398. 

Clark,  Dan,  A.S.C. — “Consistency  in  Cinematogra¬ 
phy”:  128. 

Coles — “Matching  Lens  Diaphragm  Settings  s 
401. 

Co’or :  7;  13;  ^ . 

Commentary- Writing  for  Documentary  Films :  287. 
Consistency  in  Cinematography:  128. 

Conway — 

C^r0  Operation  of  16mm.  Sound  Projec¬ 
tors”:  218. 

“How  to  Care  for  16mm.  Sound  Films”:  180. 


Has^in,  A.S.C. — “  ‘Special  Effects’  and  Wartime 
Production” :  89. 

Here’s  How:  63;  142. 

Hints  on  Outdoor  Camerawork  for  Army  Combat 
and  Training  Films:  206. 

Hirst — 

“Planning  Club  Programs”:  216. 

“Railroad  Rimb’.ings” :  377. 

“The  Floral  Spectrum”:  300. 

Hollywood  and  Minorities:  326. 

Hollywood  Greets  Four  Soviet  War  Camera-Aces: 
168. 

Home  Mov’o  Previews:  25:  144;  266;  336. 

How  and  Why  of  Tit’es,  The:  182. 

How  to  Care  for  16mm.  Sound-Films:  180. 

I 

I  Made  a  16mm.  Sound-Camera:  56. 

Illumination  Contrast  Control :  126. 

Illumination  On  Walls:  286. 

Improving  Amateur  Projection  Technique:  410. 
Incident-iight  Readings  with  Your  Exposure- 
meter:  263. 

Invaders  Learn  to  Surrender:  400. 

Iowa’s  Health  in  16mm.:  328. 

J 

Jacobsen — “A  ‘Model  EE’  Grows  Up”:  96. 

Jenkins — “Lapse-Time  for  the  Amateur”:  396. 
Jepson — 

“More  About  ‘Strobo-Sync’ ” :  222. 
“Strobo-Sync  Sound  Quiz” :  264. 

K 

Kalatozov — “Third  Dimensional  Films  in  Soviet 
Union”:  366. 

Karmen — 

‘  Russia’s  Newsreel  Cameramen  at  the  Front”  : 

208. 

“With  the  Advancing  Army”:  248. 

Keep  On  F  i  ming — Economically:  367. 

Keeping  Kodachrome  Color  Rendition  Under  Con¬ 
trol:  13. 


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456  December,  1943  •  American  Cinematographer 


Kingsbury — “Using  ‘Strobo-Sync’  ”  :  294. 

Kirchner: — “Tempo  in  Industrial  Films” :  90. 
Kodachroming  the  “P-38”  in  Action :  48. 

L 

Lance — “Cinematographers  Responsible  for  Agent’s 
Success”  :  398. 

Landis — “There’s  a  Job  Overseas  for  Your  16mm. 

Sound  Projector”:  139. 

Lapse-Time  for  the  Amateur:  396. 

Lens:  37  ;  61  ;  384;  401. 

Lighting  :  36  :  286. 

M 

MacDonald,  Hon.  A.  S.  C. — “Filming  ‘Desert 
Victory’”:  167. 

Madden — “Shooting  the  War  in  New  Guinea”  an 
Interview:  209. 

Ma^e  a  Prize-Winning  Film  from  Vacation  “Left- 
Overs”:  18. 

Make  Your  Old  Films  New  by  Making  New  Titles: 

21. 

Maker — “I  Made  a  16mm.  Sound-Camera”:  56. 
Making  a  Documentary  Film  at  Sea:  246. 

Making  16mm.  “Horse  Operas”  in  New  Jersey: 
137. 


RUBY  CAMERA  EXCHANGE 


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March — “Remarks  on  Cine  Speeds  for  Amateurs”: 
302. 

Marianoff — “Invaders  Learn  to  Surrender” :  400. 
Marines  Learn  Photography  in  Hollywood:  364. 
Matching  Lens  Diaphragm  Settings:  401. 

Mate,  A.S.C. — “  ‘Cheating*  on  Camera-Angles” : 
217. 

McMahon — Making  16mm.  “Horse  Operas”  in  New 
Jersey:  137. 

Meters:  126;  263  ;  286. 

Military:  86;  167;  168;  206;  208;  209;  248;  324  ; 
362;  364. 

Mi’ner,  A.S.C. — “Preparation  Pays  a  Profit”:  211. 
Miniatures:  130. 

Mitchell :  330  ;  363. 

Mitchell  35mm.  Single  System  Sound  Camera: 
330. 

More  About  “Strobo-Sync”:  222. 

Moultrie — “Improving  Amateur  Projection  Tech¬ 
nique”:  410. 

N 

New  Mitchell  Background  Projector,  The:  363. 
Norwood — 

“Exposure  Control  in  Aerial  Photography” : 
170. 

“Illumination  Contrast  Control”:  126. 

Nude  But  Not  Lewd:  323. 

O 

On  with  the  Show:  331. 

Oswald — 

“Diary  of  a  10-Year  Movie  Maker”:  402. 
“Keep  On  Filming — Economically”  :  367. 
“Post-War  ‘Dream  Camera’”:  332. 

“Props — The  Secret  of  Really  Natural  Home 
Movies”:  259. 

“Take  Care  of  Your  Camera  and  Projector — 
They’re  Price’ess” :  140. 

“The  How  and  Why  of  Titles” :  182. 


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P 

Palmer — “Direct-16mm.  vs.  35mm.  for  Training 
Fi'm  Pr^d”ction” :  91. 

Perry,  A.S.C. :  “Camerawork  on  a  Convoy” :  li,. 
Photography  of  the  Month:  17;  55;  95;  135;  175; 
2^5;  257. 

P’anning  Club  Programs:  216. 

Pointers  on  Using  Telephoto  Lenses:  61. 
P^st-War  Dream  Camera”:  332. 

Practcial  Pointers  on  16mm.  Sound  Projection: 

102. 

Pratt,  A.A.C.S. — 

“Artistic  Pictures” :  368. 

“Does  Yorr  Projector  Grow  Whiskers — ?”  :  22. 
Preparation  Pays  a  Profit:  211. 

Prist — “Shooting  the  War  in  New  Guinea”,  an 
Interview:  209. 

Production  Still  of  the  Month :  394. 
Professiona'iring  the  Bolex :  98. 

Projection:  22;  38;  96;  102;  140;  181;  218;  363  ; 
410. 

Props  —  The  Secret  of  Really  Natural  Home 
Movies :  259. 

Putting  Sound-On-Film  On  a  16mm.  Silent  Projec¬ 
tor:  181. 

Putting  Sound  On  the  Screen  :  179. 

Pyle — ‘On  With  the  Show”:  331. 


R 

Railroad  Ramblings:  377. 

Remarks  on  Cine  Speeds  for  Amateurs:  302. 
Rhapsodic  Technique,  The:  250. 

RKO  Bui’ds  Biggest  Boom  for  Shooting  Aerial 
Miniatures:  130. 

Roberts — “The  Rhapsodic  Technique”  :  259. 

Rogers — “Screen  Tests  Aren’t  Necessary” :  249. 
R-hde — “German  Propaganda  Movies  in  Two 
Wars”:  10. 

Russian  Influence  in  Hollywood,  The:  288. 
R-ssia’s  Newsreel  Cameraman  at  the  Front:  208. 
Ruttenberg  and  Shamroy  Win  Academy  Awards: 
131. 

S 

Saving  Film  in  Wartime:  370. 

Scenarios:  18. 

Schultz — “Iowa’s  Hea'th  in  16mm.”:  328. 

Screen  Tests  Aren’t  Necessary:  249. 

Shafitz — ‘Why  I  Want  to  Make  Movies”:  50. 
Shooting  Action  Movies  in  the  African  Desert: 
86. 

Shooting  the  War  in  New  Guinea:  209. 

16mm.:  19;  36;  56;  98;  102;  137;  180;  181; 

218;  258;  328. 

16mm.  Business  Movies:  24;  90;  106. 

16mm.  Movies  for  Our  Soldiers:  253. 

Sixth  Sense  in  Film  Mechanics,  The:  361. 

Smith,  Jack,  A.S.C. — “Pointers  on  Using  Tele¬ 
photo  Lenses”:  61. 

Smith,  Leonard,  A.S.C.,  Elected  President  of  the 
A.S.C.:  169. 

Sound:  38;  56;  102;  218;  222;  264;  294;  330. 
Special  Eflects :  37  ;  89  ;  359. 

“Special  Effects”  and  Wartime  Production:  89. 
Stensvold,  S.S.C. — “Keeping  Kodachrome  Color 
Rendition  Under  Control” :  13. 

Strobo-Sync  Sound  Quiz:  264. 

Strong — “The  New  Fastax  High  Speed  Camera”: 
292. 

Stull,*  William,  A.S.C.:  287. 


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American  Cinematographer  •  December,  1943  457 


Stull,  A.S.C. — 

“Forty-eight  Years  of  Home  Movies” :  58. 
“Hollywood  Greets  Four  Soviet  War  Camera- 
Aces”:  168. 

“Hollywood’s  Own  War  Plants”:  252. 
“Incident-light  Readings  with  Your  Exposure- 
meter”  :  263. 

“Professionalizing  the  Bolex” :  98. 

“RKO  Builds  Biggest  Boom  for  Shooting 
Aerial  Miniatures”:  130. 

Sweeny — “From  a  Nazi  Prison-Camp  to  a  Signal 
Corps  Camera”:  51. 


T 

Take  Care  of  Your  Camera  and  Projector — 
They’re  Priceless:  140. 

Tannura,  A.S.C. — 

“Do  Your  Mistakes  Teach  You  What  Not 
to  Do?”:  262. 

“Make  Your  Old  Films  New  by  Making  New 
Titles”:  21. 

Technical  Progress  in  1942:  6. 

Television  :  8  ;  46  ;  408. 

Tempo  in  Industrial  Films:  90. 

There’s  a  Job  Overseas  for  Your  16mm.  Sound 
Projector:  139. 

Third  Dimensional  Films  in  Soviet  Union  :  366. 
Through  the  Editor’s  Finder:  15;  53;  93;  133; 

173;  213;  255. 

Tiffany — 

“Mitchell  35mm.  Single  System  Sound  Cam¬ 
era”:  330. 

“New  Mitchell  Background  Projector,  The”: 
363. 

Titling:  21  ;  90;  182. 


U 


Unseen  Camera- Aces — 

I:  Maximilian  Fabian,  A.S.C.:  210. 

II :  Linwood  Dunn,  A.S.C. :  254. 

Useful  Hyperfocal :  100. 

Using  “Strobo-Sync” :  294. 

V 

Vege-table-top  Follies:  177. 

Visual  Education:  38,  91;  418. 

W 

Walker,  Joseph,  A.S.C. — “The  Useful  Hyperfocal”: 

100. 

Walter — “Make  a  Prize-Winning  Film  from  Va¬ 
cation  ‘Left-Overs’”:  18. 

Why  I  Want  to  Make  Movies:  50. 

Will  There  Be  Cameraman-Directors  in  Television 
Production  ? :  46. 

With  the  Advancing  Army:  248. 


Pictures  to  Teach  Spanish 
to  Troops 

AMERICAN  troops  stationed  in  the 
r\  Antilles  will  see  Hollywood  motion 
*  pictures  with  super-imposed  Span¬ 
ish  titles  to  assist  them  in  learning  the 
Spanish  language,  Colonel  Smathers,  in 
charge  of  special  services  for  that  area, 
told  foreign  managers  at  a  luncheon 
meeting  at  the  Harvard  Club  yesterday. 

At  the  request  of  the  Colonel  all  the 
majors  agreed  to  supply  a  special  An¬ 
tilles  Dept,  of  the  Army’s  special  serv¬ 
ice,  with  three  prints  of  all  pictures  di¬ 
rectly  from  New  York.  Antilles  depart¬ 
ment  covers  Puerto  Rico,  Cuba,  the  Dutch 
Island  of  Aruba  and  Curacao,  and  other 
spots.  U.  S.  bases  in  the  area  were  for¬ 
merly  serviced  direct  from  company  ex¬ 
changes  in  San  Juan,  P.R. 

Servicing  of  prints  from  here  will  be 
on  the  same  paid  basis  as  previously,  but 
will  expedite  showings  and  insure  earlier 
screenings  for  the  troops.  A  film  man, 
likely  George  Barnett,  will  be  appointed 
to  handle  the  Army’s  Antilles  depart¬ 
ment  from  New  York. 


Disney  Museum  Trustee 

Walt  Disney  was  elected  a  trustee  of 
the  Museum  of  Modern  Art  at  the  annual 
meeting  of  board  of  trustees.  Disney  was 
one  of  the  first  sponsors  of  the  Museum 
Film  Library  and  one  of  the  first  to 
donate  his  films  to  it. 


Photography  War  Committee 

THE  American  Standards  Association 
has  made  public  a  request  from  the 
War  Production  Board  on  behalf  of  the 
armed  services  that  it  set  up  a  War 
Committee  on  Photography  to  develop 
specifications  for  the  various  types  of 
photographic  and  cinematographic  equip¬ 
ment  used  by  the  armed  forces.  This 
followed  action  taken  by  a  committee  in 
New  York  at  which  representatives  of 
the  armed  services  and  of  manufacturers 
of  photographic  and  cinematographic 
equipment  thoroughly  discussed  the  ad¬ 
visability  of  undertaking  such  a  job. 

This  committee  recommended:  (1)  that 
a  War  Committee  on  Photography  be  set 
up  at  once;  and  (2)  that  a  subcommittee 
of  representatives  of  the  armed  forces 
outline  the  order  of  the  work  so  that  the 
most  important  jobs  can  be  undertaken 
first. 


CLASSIFIED  ADVERTISING 


FOR  SALE 


OPTICAL  SOUND  REDUCTION  PRINTER, 
COMPLETE,  $1250.00;  BELL-HOWELL 
SINGLE  PHASE  SYNCHRONOUS  CAMERA 
MOTOR.  $100.00;  RCA  GALVANOMETER 
STRING  VIBRATORS,  $5.00;  3-PHASE  CAM¬ 
ERA  MOTORS,  RCA  MITCHELL,  $47.60; 
BELL-HOWELL,  $77.60 ;  TWO  ELEMENT 
GLOWLAMPS,  $9.50;  DUPLEX  35MM  STEP 
PRINTER,  $425.00.  S.O.S.  CINEMA  SUPPLY 
CORPORATION,  NEW  YORK  18. _ 

WE  BUY,  SELL  AND  RENT  PROFESSIONAL 
AND  16mm  EQUIPMENT,  NEW  AND  USED. 
WE  ARE  DISTRIBUTORS  FOR  ALL  LEAD¬ 
ING  MANUFACTURERS.  RUBY  CAMERA 
EXCHANGE,  729  Seventh  Ave.,  New  York  City. 
Established  since  1910. 

IMPROVED  DUPLEX  35MM  PRINTER,  with 
two  Bell-Howell  Cams  and  Shuttles.  Perfect 
Registration  for  Color  or  Black  and  White,  and 
process  plates.  Also  Bell-Howell  Step  Printer 
with  Registration  Pins  ideal  for  duplication. 
35  MM  HOLMES  AND  DEVRY  Portable  Sound 
Projectors.  Hollywood  Camera  Exchange,  1600 
Cahuenga,  Hollywood. 

FORD  1%  ton  Sound  Truck  equipped  with  latest 
Blue  Seal  noiseless  variable  area  recording  equip¬ 
ment,  220  volt,  3  phase  generator  for  motors, 
battery  charger,  RCA  and  W.E.  microphones. 
Complete,  ready  for  operation.  Also  stock  of 
synchronous  and  Selsyn  motors.  BLUE  SEAL 
SOUND  DEVICES.  305  East  63rd  Street,  New 
York.  N.  Y. 

LIGHTS— SUPER  KLIEGEL  SUN  5000  watt. 
Clear  Beam  Super  Spots  2000  watt.  2000  watt 
CP  and  3200  K  Bi-Post  Bulbs.  5000  watt  CP 
Bi-Post  Bulbs.  Film  Associates,  Dayton  9,  Ohio. 


MOLE-RICHARDSON  Microphone  Boom,  Model 
No.  103B,  Serial  No.  37.  Excellent  condition, 
cannot  be  told  from  new.  $1425.00  f.o.b.  Glen¬ 
view,  Ill.  Coronet  Productions,  Glenview,  Ill. 


FRIED  LITE  TESTER 
In  like  new  condition 
CAMERA  EQUIPMENT  COMPANY 
1600  Broadway  New  York  19,  N.  Y. 


BERNDT-MAUER  PROJECTOR,  16mm.  camera, 
portable  recorder,  main  channel,  2  film  phono¬ 
graphs,  RCA  70-B  turntable  and  other  equip¬ 
ment.  Irving  B.  Dyatt,  Corvallis.  Oregon. 

35mm.  PARVO  MODEL  L  DeBRIE  all  metal, 
motor  driven  camera.  Complete  with  motor 
and  five  lenses,  gyro  tripod  and  other  extras, 
$1,500.00.  Len  Galezio,  5914  Melrose  Ave., 
Hollywood,  Calif.  Phone:  HO-1767. 

SALE— EYEMOS  SINGLE,  AND  TURRET  cam¬ 
eras,  B  &  H  Standard  Complete  Camera  outfits ; 
12,  32,  110  volt  motors,  tripods;  16mm.  high 
speed  printer  $750.00.  Lots  hard  to  get  equip¬ 
ment  in  stock.  Try  us.  Trades  accepted,  bought. 
MOGULL’S,  57  West  48th  Street,  New  York  19. 


FOR  SALE 


WESTERN  ELECTRIC  Double  System  35mm 
Sound  Editor;  Holmes  16mm  Sound  Projector, 
1000  -  watt  Booth  Auditorium  type;  Duplex 
35mm.  Printer  for  picture  and  sound  track ; 
16mm.  Continuous  Contact  Sound  and  Picture 
Printer;  Akeley  camera,  36-50-100-150-300- 
425mm.  lenses ;  5  magazine ;  motor,  tripod, 

many  attachments ;  DeBrie  camera.  Model  L, 
new  tachometer;  friction  and  crank  tripod;  110 
volt  motor;  Mitchell  type  mounts;  magazines. 
WE  BUY— TRADE— SEND  US  YOUR  LISTS. 

CAMERA  MART,  70  W.  45th  St.,  New  York  City 

STOLEN! 


1  BELL  &  HOWELL  Utility  Model  SOF  Pro¬ 
jector  and  Loudspeaker,  No.  304071. 

1  3"  projector  lens,  extra  equipment. 

1  1,000  watt  lamp,  extra  equipment. 

50'  rubber-covered  leader.  ' 

1  Eastman  Cine  Special  Camera,  has  my  name, 
Fred  C.  Ells,  engraved  on  a  plate  on  the 
underside  of  the  lens  mounting.  Usual  1" 
lens  and  adapter. 

1  Eastman  carrying  case  for  same,  blue  velvet 
lining. 

1  Eastman  metal  tripod,  for  Cine  Special. 

1  15mm.  Wide  Angle  Eastman  lens. 

1  2"  1.6  Eastman  Te’ephoto  Lens. 

1  4V2"  4.5  Eastman  Telephoto  Lens. 

1  6"  4.5  Eastman  Telephoto  Lens. 

2  Kodachrome  filters. 

Anyone  having  information  of  above  equipment 
contact  Fred  C.  Ells,  844  Toyopa  Dr.,  Pacific 
Palisades,  Calif.  Phone:  Santa  Monica  52628,  or 
AMERICAN  CINEMATOGRAPHER.  An  ample 
reward  will  be  /paid  for  its  recovery. 

WANTED 


WANTED  TO  BUY  FOR  CASH 
CAMERAS  AND  ACCESSORIES 
MITCHELL,  B  &  H,  EYEMO,  DEBRIE.  AKELEY 
ALSO  LABORATORY  AND  CUTTING  ROOM 
EQUIPMENT 


CAMERA  EQUIPMENT  COMPANY 
1600  BROADWAY,  NEW  YORK  CITY,  19 
CABLE:  CINEQUIP 


WE  PAY  CASH  FOR  EVERYTHING  PHOTO¬ 
GRAPHIC.  Write  us  today.  Hollywood  Camera 
Exchange.  1600  Cahuenga  Blvd.,  Hollywood. 

WE  BUY— SELL— TRADE  ALL  MOTION  PIC¬ 
TURE  EQUIPMENT,  SOUND  AND  SILENT. 
SEND  YOUR  LIST.  THE  CAMERA  MART. 
70  WEST  45TH  ST.,  NEW  YORK  CITY. 


458 


December,  1943 


American  Cinematographer 


TODAY 

and 

Zornomw 

The 

Logical  Combination 


J.  E.  BRULATOUR,  he. 

FORT  LEE  •  CHICAGO  •  HOLLYWOOD 


Mary  Pickford  Charles  Rosher,  A.  S.  C. 


( Charles  Rosher,  Director  of  Photography) 
KISMET 

In  Technicolor  for  Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer 


(Tony  Gaudio,  Director  of  Photography ) 
DAYS  OF  GLORY 

For  Casey  Robinson  —  R.  K.  O.  Pictures 


More  Ztiau  a  Quarter  of  a  Century  of  faithful  Performance  ☆ 


FILMO-MASTER  “400” 
8MM.  PROJECTOR 


FILMO  COMPANION 
CMM.  CAMERA 


FILMO  AUTO  LOAD 
16MM.  CAMERA 


FILMO  MASTER 
16MM.  PROJECTOR 


FILMO  70-E 
16MM.  CAMERA 


He  may  be  half  a  world  away  from  you  and 
the  things  that  mean  Christmas  to  him  .  .  . 
but  even  in  some  strange  part  of  the  world 
.  .  .  there’s  one  familiar  bit  of  home  .  .  .  one 
thing  you  both  have  shared  and  enjoyed  to¬ 
gether  countless  times. 

There  are  MOVIES! 

And  again  this  Christmas  you’ll  be  sharing 

them _ for  overseas  on  every  battlefront  and 

battleship  ...  in  camps  and  bases  .  .  .  Filmo- 
sound  Projectors  will  be  clicking  off  movies 
.  .  .  reminding  your  fighting  man  that  the 
spirit  of  Christmas  still  lives  in  the  world  he’s 
fighting  for.  And  you  may  share  these  same 
films  with  him  .  .  .  and  feel  less  lonely  for 
the  sharing. 

B&H  Filmosound  Library  offers  you  and 
him  a  great  selection  of  special  Christmas 


FILMOSOUND  V - 

An  achievement  in 
B&H  engineering 
which  maintains  high 
performance  standard  s 
despite  restrictions  of 
critical  materials.  This 
projector  is  now  made 
only  for  the  armed 
forces. 


Then,  for  pure  holiday  fun,  there  are  thou¬ 
sands  of  Hollywood  comedies,  cartoons, 
shorts  to  build  into  a  memorable  Christmas 
home  movie  program. 


And  if  you  want  to  see  what  your  fighting 
man  in  Africa  or  Italy  is  doing,  get  Battle  jor 
Tunisia,  Axis  Crushed  in  Africa,  Italy  Sur¬ 
renders  or  Allies  Move  In. 


Let  Filmosound  Library  help  you  share 
Christmas  with  the  boy  you  love  .  .  .  who’s 
far  away  this  Christmas.  Bell  &  Howell  Com¬ 
pany,  Chicago;  New  York;  Hollywood; 
Washington,  D.  C.:  London.  Established  1907. 


films.  There’s  Scrooge,  which  is  Charles 
Dickens’  immortal  Christmas  Carol  brought 
to  life.  There  are  A  Saviour  Is  Born  and  Child 
of  Bethlehem,  beautiful  filmings  of  the  First 
Christmas. 


/ - \ 

PERHAPS  YOU  CAN  HELP 

US  PLAN  THE  FUTURE 
OF  OPTI-ONICS 

We  need  expert  engineers  experi¬ 
enced  in  electronic  and  mechanical 
design  to  help  us  explore  the  broad 
peacetime  horizons  of  Opti-onics. 
This  is  a  big  job  ...  it  takes  big 
men.  If  we’re  talking  to  you,  write 
us  your  whole  story  and  send  your 
photo.  We’ll  set  up  an  interview. 
Address  Chairman,  Opti-onics 
Development,  7100  McCormick 
Road,  Chicago  45,  Illinois. 


♦Opti-onics  is  OPTIcs  .  .  .  clectrONics 
.  .  .  mechanics.  It  is  research  and  en¬ 
gineering  by  Bell  &  Howell  In  these 
three  related  sciences  to  accomplish 
many  things  never  before  obtainable. 
Today  Opti- 
onics  is  a 
WEAPON.  To¬ 
morrow,  it  will 
be  a  SERVANT 
.  .  .  to  work, 
protect,  edu¬ 
cate,  and  en¬ 
tertain.  »Trade-mark  registered 


These  famous  B&H  products  and  the  new  ones 
you’ll  see  after  the  war  won't  be  "emergency- 
assembled”  from  leftover  parts.  They’ll  be  as 
carefully  engineered  ...  as  precisely  built ...  as 


rigidly  inspected  as  any  B&H  product  has  ever 
been.  You’ll  buy  them  and  use  them  with  the 
same  pleasure  and  confidence  you’ve  always  had 
in  equipment  built  by  Bell  &  Howell. 


Bell  &  Howell  Company 

1848  Larchmont  Ave.,  Chicago  13,  111. 

Please  send  me  Filmosound  Library  Catalog  and  Sup¬ 
plements  (  )  and  reserve  the  following  Christmas 

films . 


for . 

(date) 

Name . . 


Address 


RETURN  OLD  PROJECTOR  LAMPS  WHEN  ORDERING  NEW  ONES 
Products  combining  the  sciences  of  OPTIcs  •  electrONics  •  mechanics 


PRECISION- 
MADE  BY 


* 


, 


- 


%