Home Movies (1954)

MOVIE Our Enemy — Time One day when I was home with little to do, I began to find out just how important time really was. In a short time I became conscious of things which I had long taken for granted] \\ e live by clocks. In the morning the alarms wakes us up. In our half-sleep we cuss the thing and shut it off, but from that point on, our life is a series of sprint races against time. We dash into the shower, trying desperately to cut the sleep so we can make it to the office by 8:30. On the way to the garage we cram a slice of bread down our gullet and wash away the sandpapery feeling with a cup of hot coffee. Then we hurry to the garage. Without letting the car warm up, we cram the reluctant gears into reverse and power our way into the street and gun the motor in the gen 1 1 V .1 9 { h 8' . 7 © 5 eral direction of the office. On the way down we turn on the radio: just so we will know what time it is. We park and chase the elevator up three flights of stairs to our job. From 8:30 till noon work is a series of time-watchings: how long till the coffee break? How long till noon? At noon we slow down for a couple of minutes while we elbow our way into a too crowded restaurant and fight the crowd for a small stool at the counter because the tables are full. Vi e look at our watches. Ten minutes of our precious hour is gone. Where is the waitress? Doesn't she know we've only got one hour for lunch? The food comes. W e stuff it down with one eye on our coffee the other on the merciless clock. As the last crumb scrapes its way down our throat we dash out the door, stopping only momentarily on the way. to drop 75 cents in the cashiers outstretched hand. Then, it's a fast march back to the office. Afternoon at the office is worse. It is a series of roundhouse collisions with the clock. We're due at Mr. Schlumpnagle's office at three. ^ e leave at two-ten exactly but traffic ties us up. We lose three minutes and we're frantic. Step on the gas boy. Make it up. You're due on tbe the other side of town at three. Then, back from Schlumpnagel's office driving like a gunman in an effort to make it back to the office by four: always back by some definite time. Somebody's coming. Make it back by four. From four to four forty five you slow down. The interview was quiet and you rest but at four forty five the pace quickens again. Just fifteen minutes to quitting time. You watch the hands on the clock. They drag. Who is holding the hands. Somebody is stalling time. Ah! The clock says four forty nine exactly. In a flurry of uncontrolled excitement you whisk the paper off your desk and into an already toofull drawer. You empty your ash tray and as the hands point straight up at 5 o'clock you slam the ash tray down and jump to the door. At home the wife tells vou supper will be ten minutes late. The washer broke down, she explains, and she's behind schedule. You're famished. The ten minutes drag so slowly. You've almost missed the big fight. In a flash stomp into the living room and turn on the television. You relax. You watch the fight. You talk. You read. What? Eleven already? Impossible! You drag yourself to bed. remembering to set the alarm for seven. I tried to capture these feelings on film. I tried to show just what time was. I've just completed the film and I called it "Time. Man's Natural Enemy". It was a lot of fun to make. — Harold Barnes, Minneapolis. Kidding T.V. Ever wonder how some of the shows get on l.v.1 Some of them are so simpering they'd be bovcotted in kindergarten as too childish. Now. I'm just as bad as the next guy. I watch all of the shows. I see the westerns, the fights, the panel shows, quizzes and familv shows. But, one day I really got fed up. They all seemed like drivel and I decided to let off steam. I did it by making a movie which kidded the pants off the straight shows in t.v. I thought that other readers might like to fiaht back the way I did. Fir^t I divided a typical t.v. day into representative types of shows. It tried to pick things which would be representative of the things every one watches. To do this I chose: a '"soap opera', a panel show, a cookinsr show, a commercial, the popular C.B.S. eye and wrestling. I then planned to burlesque all these shows. I wanted to make them seem as real as possible with all elements becoming insane. I chose a television format for the show. My story opened with a family sitting in front of the t.v. The camera dollies past them into the t.v. screen and the screen fades into the first film. To give the shows a realism with humor, I twisted the titles of legitimate shows. The soap opera was called "John's Other Wife's Other John ". The panel show was called "Who Said That's My Line?". The cooking school was "Chef Spitooni's Program ". The commercial was an honest "right from the heart" used car commercial. The C.B.S. eye was real except that it was bloodshot and cried. The wrestling was just as dirty and hamy as I could make it. — Augie May, Chicago. Christmas Cards After Christmas, cards have a way of piling up and fast becoming useless. I put mine to work in January. I made my Christmas film then and I used the cards we received to be the "stars" of my Christmas film. The idea worked this way. I wanted to ekep a record of the cards. To do this I either had to keep the cards or film them. I chose the latter. Obviously, however, the cards themselves made pretty dismal actors. I wanted to lift them from this ordinary class. I did it in two ways. First. I "animated" them, by tight and critical cross-cutting. I filmed long shots of the full cards. I filmed them by placing them on my titler. Then, when a card had a particularly prettv or funny cover design. I moved in and made closeups of the interesting parts. I gave them movement by shooting certain figures or parts from several different angles then editing these angle shots together so that the cards seem to move. These were often repeated in a definite rhvthm. In some instances I com 10