Amateur Movie Makers (Dec 1926-Dec 1927)

THE CLINIC Vamped And Revamped — B3) Dr. Kinema Doctor Kinema has been retained as an amateur consultant by AMERICAN MOVIE MAKERS. The doctor will discuss problems in amateur cinematography that many of us meet constantly in our adventures in picture making. The doctor has made two requests of our readers: first, that they forward plenty of questions; second, that wherever possible, they send with those questions what they believe to be the correct answers. He does not want to fill the Clinic with his own ideas. Therefore, he invites all members of the AMATEUR CINEMA LEAGUE and all readers of AMATEUR MOVIE MAKERS to make contributions to his department. Please send in questions, answers and discussions to Doctor Kinema, care AMATEUR MOVIE MAKERS. Capitol Building, Hartford, Connecticut. A special article by Doctor Kinema appears elsewhere in this issue. EDITING Do not overlook the immense advantage of editing your amateur film. It means all the difference between success and failure. Many amateurs are inclined to overlook this very important matter. They "shoot" a roll of one hundred feet and when it is received back from the finishing they rush it into the projector and the film is judged in its raw state. Even a professional film would be discouraging if done that way. Your film probably has many very good pictures that are very interesting but their entire effect is lost because of the jerky blank spaces between shots, the shaky portions at the end of the shots, the too fast panoramas, the hurry close-ups, the grey over exposures, the black under-exposures, and the poor stuff generally has not been cut out. If, instead, the film had been run over in the reel re-winder or splicing machine, and the obvi ously useless stuff eliminated, or in other words if the film is edited, a very different story would be told when it was projected. There would be an immediate improvement of about five thousand percent noted and a corresponding increase in satisfaction and pleasure on the part of all concerned. Nothing is so discouraging as to look forward with keen anticipation to the return of a film and then after projecting it feel as though you never cared to look at it again. This can be avoided every time by taking the time to edit the film before you project it. TITLES Next to properly editing one's film, the most important thing is to title it. A lot of scenes, strung together, ever so good photograhically, convey only a small fraction of the message that it does, when titles explain what the scenes are. It requires an extra ordinarily good film to be interesting without titles and an indifferent film without titles is a "total loss," nine times out of ten. Titles are perfectly easy to obtain. All that is necessary is to write them out and order them. They will be in your hands in ten days, all nicely arranged in the order you wrote them. Splicing them in their proper places is good fun, and a marvelous method of getting one's mind off one's troubles. If one has the knack of composing snappy, bright titles, they lift a film an unbelievable amount. One can make one's own titles, of course, but it is simpler for most of us to order them. They are not expensive, and they are now furnished with a very attractive border which gives a very finished effect to a film. IS IT FRONTWARD OR BACKWARD? Every amateur is bound to have heaps of trouble splicing in and re-arranging film in his early days. Until he learns the little technique he will have some scenes upside down and in backward. In some cases he will be unable to tell from the image on the individual frames which is the beginning and which the end of a bit of film to be added to a reel. There is one way to tell. Hold the two films that are to be spliced together and look at the light through them. If they are both shiny side toward you, and both right side up, that's the way they should be spliced in order for the end of the old to lead into the beginning of the new. Usually the action will indicate which is the beginning of a bit of film. But if it is a landscape, there is no action and one must have another means of knowing which end is which. Seventeen