The Cine Technician (1953-1956)

Record Details:

Something wrong or inaccurate about this page? Let us Know!

Thanks for helping us continually improve the quality of the Lantern search engine for all of our users! We have millions of scanned pages, so user reports are incredibly helpful for us to identify places where we can improve and update the metadata.

Please describe the issue below, and click "Submit" to send your comments to our team! If you'd prefer, you can also send us an email to mhdl@commarts.wisc.edu with your comments.




We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.

Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.

October, 1953 THE CINE-TECHNICIAN 131 camera crew was busy inside shooting movies. The shelters proved ideal also whenever we had to shoot in the rain. An interesting sidelight is the fact that many of our exterior shots were planned to include some famous London landmark, thus injecting authenticity of locale into the story. For example, in one shot the camera pans to follow a car coming out of an alley and turning down one of the principal streets. We continued to pan and closed the shot with St. Paul's Cathedral looming in the background. Similar treatment followed to include such wellknown landmarks as London Bridge, the Parliament buildings, etc. These shots are more convincing than any replicas that might be filmed on a studio backlot. Except for myself, our camera crew consisted entirely of British technicians. First cameraman was Hal Young, assisted by operator Arthur Graham. Hugh Salisbury was Technicolor technician. Others were Bert Lott, grip; Archie Dansie and G. Smith, electricians; Jack Bark, props; Albert Cowland, grip; and George Hendry, W. Waldron, H. Turner and William Epps. This same crew went along to aid us in shooting the additional scenes we made at Zurich. We arrived in the Swiss city at two in the afternoon, and went right to work setting up for a series of night shots at the airport. Because of the very long twilight that prevails in this northern latitude, we were able to work well into late evening. For our daytime filming, we encountered almost the same kind of light we had found in London — extreme haze. Although we were in Zurich only a day and a half, we did about three days' work in this. You see, we had to keep to our schedule in order to get the technicolor camera back to London by the 26th May. All told, we shot about 40,000 feet of Technicolor 3-strip. We were overseas almost a month — from 1st May to 30th May to be exact — my first visit to Europe, incidentally, since World War I, when I was a combat cameraman. Working with the friendly crew of British technicians was a happy experience. When we boarded our plane for home, the entire crew came to the airport to see us off. Whereas most of these men are eager to work with Hollywood cameramen with the expectation perhaps of learning new tricks about making movies, I think we both benefited — each learning from the other. Perhaps we left a usable idea or two with them. For one thing, shooting exteriors under the conditions we did, proved interesting to them. It is the general practice for London producers, whenever the script calls for a great number of exterior shots, to build a replica set on the sound stage and shoot with the benefit of constant artificial light. On our assignment, which consisted almost entirely of exteriors, we shot on the actual exterior locales without benefit of booster lighting. The only lighting equipment we had to augment daylight were two sunlight reflectors and the two photoflood units previously mentioned, which i managed to pick up in London. In most instances we simply plugged these into a convenient streetlamp power line. These two lamps proved especially valuable later when we made day-for-night shots one evening at dusk, with the photofloods providing fill light. In addition to the continuity scenes outlined in the script, we also shot a number of background plates to be integrated by Farciot Edouart, A.S.C., and his process department with the footage that was being shot by the first-unit working at the studio in Hollywood. In this operation, we had the script to guide us. We made it a point always to shoot extra footage and " protection " shots, because returning for retakes later was out of the question. The result of this assignment may be seen a few months hence when Paramount is scheduled to release Knock on Wood, which is being produced and directed by Norman Panama and Melvin Frank. Alvin Ganzer, incidentally, assisted Frank as associate director on the second-unit filming. (Courtesy, " American Cinematographer ") CINE'S GUIDE TO FILMS SEVERAL errors crept into the Feature credits ^ in our August and September numbers, due to mistakes in copying. These lists are the only credits officially approved by the B.F.P.A. and A.C.T. jointly and correct transcription is therefore vital. Publication will be resumed in our next issue, after reorganisation of the work involved to ensure complete accuracy. In the August issue, the words " Other Camera Assistants " were omitted in the credits for The Village before the names of A. Hoellering and Peter Cecil, giving rise to the erroneous impression that they were employed as focus pullers on the production in addition to Gerry Lewis. In the September issue, omitted from the credits for The Net, were the following: Special Processes: Bill Warrington, Stanley Grant, Albert Whitlock, Bryan Langley, Reg Johnson. Dress Designer: Julie Harris. Production Secretary: Pat Bydamell. New Screen Techniques, edited by Martin Quigley, Jn., contains a fairly wide selection of articles by American technicians on 3-D and Wide Screen techniques. Copies can be ordered from Quigley Publications Ltd., 4 Golden Square, London, W.l, and cost 32s. 6d. A fuller review of this book will be published in our next issue. CINE TECHNICIAN is published monthly, price 6d. You can get twelve issues for 8/6d. post free