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Foundation, for whom it is being made, have given me a chance to film the operation.
Rig Photographic Problem
Making this film has proven itself a task of no small magnitude. Not only must the subject-matter and its presentation be handled with the utmost scientific accuracy, but the greater part of the camerawork has had to be done under extremely difficult photographic conditions.
To put it bluntly, the great shop that was specially built for this lensgrinding job was not planned with any consideration to the problems of cinematography. As a room for this huge, yet delicate job of lens-making, it is ideal; as a motion picture stage it is quite the reverse. And since making the lens is properly the paramount consideration of all concerned, the cinematographer must necessarily make the best of what is available.
This room is strictly barred to all outsiders — in fact to everyone not directly concerned with the actual work of making the lens. The great enemy is dust : a single grain of dust filtering between the lens and the polishing-tool coidd easily produce such damaging abrasions in the glass as might take weeks or even months of arduous work to repair.
The room is air-conditioned, of course, and kept as spotlessly neat as any hospital. In addition, everyone entering the room must leave his shoes outside — quite as though he w'ere enterting a Japanese temple — and don a special, guaranteed-dustless laboratory coverall. Naturally, only the bare essentials of photographic equipment may be brought into
this sanctus sanctorum — camera, tripod. and perhaps a single photollood lamp — and even these must be spotlessly dust-free.
Due to the physically great size of this biggest of lens-grinding jobs, the room is big — as large as a goodsized sound-stage. It measures 52*/2 x 165 feet, and is a clear 40 feet from floor to ceiling.
Use Practical If orking-Light The room is windowless, and all the illumination comes from a battery of 25 incandescent lamps mounted in the ceiling. If you judge the illumination by the standards commonly applied to laboratories or workshops, it is quite adequately illuminated. But if you judge it by photographic standards, the lighting is decidedly inadequate.
The entire illumination of the room is supplied by two groups of lamps: there are 16 lamps of 500 Watts each, arranged along the sides of the room, and a battery of 9 lamps of 1500 Watts each in the center of the room. And all of these lamps are mounted in the ceiling, 40 feet above the floor! As has already been mentioned. I had to make the best of this practical lighting; I could only bring in a single photoflood unit — and that only when it became necessary to light up the heavily-shadowed area directly under the lens-carriage.
By the photographic standards of only a few years ago. the conditions were absolutely impossible for satisfactory motion picture photography. But with today’s super-fast emulsions, movie-making might just be possible.
Used 16mm. Supreme Since the film was ultimately to be
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