Agfa motion picture topics (Apr 1937-June 1940)

Tim el #/ Topics S~\ NE of the perpetually interesting '^things about editing a magazine like Agfa Motion Picture Topics is the way one is constantly reminded that no two cinematographers face identical professional problems. Repeatedly, in casual chats with friends, some point has come up which to us seemed worthy of being put into print. Nine times out of ten. the friend will reply, “Oh, I don't think there’s anything new to that I’ve been doing it for months.” But when the article has appeared, ten men in other studios ( sometimes even men on the same lot!) will congratulate us for giving them a piece of new and helpful information! What is “old stuff” to one man may be to some fellow cinematographer the precise answer to a perplexing problem that has just arisen. This magazine exists to further such constructive interchange o f information. This isn’t always as easy as it might seem, for we are so close to Agfa films and their use that we, too, can overlook things that perplex the other fellow. For that reason, we hope our readers wull ask us questions — even questions which seem to them likely to be embarrassingly elementary. After all, circumstances have a great deal to do with what details a man learns about a film and its characteristics. A cinematographer using Agfa Supreme for society dramas or musicals, with few if any exterior scenes, might easily expose hundreds of thousands of feet of film before a location call would bring up questions a fellow cameraman making Westerns would have asked — and had answered —before starting his first day’s shooting on the film. Neither of them might give a thought to characteristics of the same film which make it of value to the optical printer expert who uses it for duping. In the same way, a man who makes routine night-effect shots on Agfa Infra-Red would rarely face the problems Elmer Dyer encounters when he takes the same film two or three miles above the earth in an airplane. And neither of them would ask some of the questions asked by Lyle Abbott, who photographs terrestrial views on Infra-Red through an astronomical telescope. Yet the answer to the questions of any one of them might be helpful to all three. All of which shows why we are delighted when any of our readers ask us questions, or suggest an article he feels would be interesting. We want Agfa Motion Picture Topics to be of practical value to those who read it. both when the issue is fresh off the press and later when, as so many do. they have filed it away as reference material. A ll of us have at one time or another bemoaned the fact that, save in a rare few private homes to which most of us do not have entree, we whose daily bread is the cinema and its 2