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Naturally, the same interlock that kept a camera and a recorder, or a recorder and a projector in step could also be used to synchronize a camera and a background projector.
But still the projection process was impossible, simply because the film then available did not permit us to get an exposure in any reasonablysized projected image.
Only when the first super-panchromatic emulsions were introduced did it become possible to make composite shots in which the background behind living actors consisted of a rephotographed, projected motion picture. That I and the staff I then had at the Warner Brothers’-First National Studios made the first use of this process, and obtained patents on the basic features of the process, is beside the point. If we had not done so, someone else would have, for many cinematographers were thinking of the idea, and the mechanical means and the sensitive materials necessary to make it possible were at last at hand.
Successive Improvements
Since then, the physical scope and utility of the process have steadilyincreased. It is true that great strides have been made in methods and in the efficiency of equipment, especially lamphouses and arc carbons. But any impartial analysis will show that each really notable advance has followed close on the heels of the announcement by one film manufacturer or another of a faster emulsion.
Second in importance only to the advent of those earliest superpan-type films which made the process possible is the advent, nearly two years ago, of the first of today’s modern, superfast films — Agfa Supreme, and the
similar types which have since followed it. Let’s consider what these films mean to process photography.
The production utility of the process is measured by two factors. First, the physical scale upon which it can be employed. Second, the convincing effect possible in the blending of live and projected action in the composite picture.
It is obvious that if technical considerations limit us to screens five or six feet wide, we will be restricted to rather close angles in the composite shot, or to small-scale backgrounds such as could be seen through a rather small door or window. If the script calls for long-shots or angles which would overshoot our small background screen, it will be necessary to take the company actually on location, and to work by conventional methods. In such an instance, it would be almost better to have no process-shots, rather than to have them restricted to only the more intimate angles. Little, if any time, money or effort would be saved.
Depth of Focus
Secondly, assuming that process screens of larger dimensions can be illuminated to a technically practical exposure-level, we will still find ourselves badly hampered if screen illumination forces us to make our scene at the maximum aperture of the composite camera's lens, for the focal depth will not be sufficient to give us a normal relationship between the foreground actors and their projected background unless the two are unnaturally close together.
As has been proven abundantly during the past two years, the increased speed of such modern films as Agfa
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