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ciples of what we now know as the projected background or transparency process. That first experiment, so many years ago. now seems as crude as Benjamin Franklin’s kite: but it may serve to show how much process camerawork is dependent upon Him speeds.
“ Process Shots ” in 1925
When we were making “The Lost World” for First National, hack in 1925, we decided that one of our miniature shots of the dinosaurs would be more convincing if we could show a background of moving clouds.
We were working in stop-motion ; animating painted clouds woidd be an almost impossible task, doubly so when added to the difficulties of animating our miniature monsters, and combining the miniatures with fullscale shots of the living principals.
So we tried projected clouds.
Our set represented a tropical canyon. For the sky in the extreme background I obtained a sheet of the largest size of positive cut-film then available. Behind this I placed a Kleigl theatrical spotlight, fitted with one of the then-popular effect-devices which by means of a revolving slide cast a pattern of moving clouds.
Working at normal camera-speeds, this would have been enough. But in stop-motion, it became necessary to devise some method of synchronizing the camera and the moving cloud-effect slide, so that the clouds would animate smoothly.
Of course, in those days normal speed meant 16 frames per second. So we checked the action of the effect spotlight until we found just how much the slide and its projected image
should move in 1/1 6th of a second to give a normal effect.
We were already driving our stopmotion camera by motor with an electric clutch-control mechanism which exposed one frame each time the release button was pressed.
It was not particularly difficult to design a similar mechanism to operate the rotating cloud-effect slide on the spotlight. This was set so that when the controlling button was pressed, the slide was moved just enough to give the correct one-frame animation.
Interconnecting these controls so that only one button need be pressed finished the job. When this master control button was pressed, the clutch on the camera let the motor expose one frame of film. Then and not until then — the cloud-slide was advanced the proper distance.
Thus we had. in a crude way, the first electrical synchronization of the camera and background projection. It was crude, but it worked.
Impossible If ith Slow Film
The point that must be understood is this: that this crude “projectionshot" was possible at that time only because we were able to work in stopmotion, with its necessarily more ample exposure. It would have been impossible in normal-speed camerawork. simply because with the film then available we could not have gotten an adequate exposure, even in this case when we concentrated the beam of a theatre spotlight on a screen less than 30x40 inches in size!
Only a few years later, sound came, and brought with it the now' familiar methods of electrically synchronizing any number of cameras and recorders.
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