Amateur Movie Makers (Dec 1926-Dec 1927)

TROUBLE {Concluded from page 16) into the projector, hoping I could wind it up satisfactorily via the lead pencil route. This film had been built up from selections made from a great many different reels. They were pictures I had taken during the past two years. Not only had I selected the best scenes I had ever taken for this reel but I arranged them in a sequence which I believed would add very much to the interest. I had never screened the reel before in its existing form. IN arranging the scenes, I had cut them all out of the various reels in which they had been assembled and hung them up on a string stretched across the room. In this way I had some 57 strips of film of various lengths, all hanging from the string. I had shifted them back and forth until I finally had them in an order which I thought would produce the most interest. I had then taken them down, one at a time and spliced them in with their titles. I remembered that I had noticed that during the hanging process that some of the film curled up sideways quite a bit and seemed to acquire ripples and various disorders of this nature. I paid no attention to it at the time. After this landscape film got started, and I had picked up the slack by means of a lead pencil, I was conscious that the focus was completely out of adjusrment. To keep the lead pencil cranking, and to readjust tie focus proved to be quite a stunt but somehow I managed it. I had no more than refocused it when it jumped out of focus again. I had to readjust it back to where it was in the fiist place. This ran along a little while, and all of a sudden it was out of focus again, and it was necessary to go back to another adjustment. No sooner had I got this in focus then it jumped again, and I had to go back to the original once more. I was getting to be quite a busy person running the lead pencil at just the right speed, and chasing the focus up and down. For the entire film this proceeding continued, and by the time it was over I was a nervous wreck. THE focus of the next reel was quite steady. I was able to keep the lead pencil on the job and go through with the program. Thus it went until all of the reels had been run through. I sighed with relief. The exhibition was voted a great success but no one ever knew what I went through trying to hold the thing together. Of course this never could have happened before a small gathering. But just the moment the number of people in the audience gets up to that figure to constitute a crowd, you can count upon it that everything that can go wrong will go wrong. MY difficulty with the focus was due to the fact that the film had been hung up. It had curled up sideways, and in going through the projector had not flattened out, with the result that the focus was bad. The lesson to be learned from this is : don't hang up your film on a string and let it curl, but instead keep it wound up in a reel where it stays flat. The next lesson to learn is to take those little spring wire belts out and put new ones in after they have had a certain amount of use. Otherwise they will lie in wait for you until you attempt to give an exhibition before more than eleven people, and then they will break right in the middle of things. PROFESSIONAL CAMERA at an amateur price for MOVIE CLUBS & MOVIE MAKERS Film your pictures on standard size. film. Show your club productions in a theatre or large auditorium. Repay your club expenses and secure projecting equipment without extra cost. The INSTITUTE STANDARD Professional Motion Picture Camera Costs less than a high-grade amateur camera. The pictures can be shown in any theatre or movie house. All metal construction handsomely finished, light-weight and portable. Complete with carrying case. Variety of models for every taste and purse. Write jot FREE CATALOG and full particulars Showing jour lens mount attachment New York Institute of Photography Dept. 18 14 West 33rd Street, New York City 'ryyyTTTi n rTTf »yTvvt DPvOPA LINE TO BASS n i BASS has compiled, for free distribution to sportsmen, a very interesting catalog of Cinema Apparatus. Describes the Bell &. Howell Filmo camera, lea Kinamos, DeBrie, etc. Accessories to gladden the heart of amateur and professional. Expeditions equipped. Fifteen years of highly specialised experience at your service. Address Cine Department. BASS CAMERA COMPANY IOQ N. DEAB.BOR.N STREET CHICAGO L-^_ A FINISHING LABORATORY where the AMATEUR receives personal, professional attention. Standard size negatives developed. We make either standard size prints or reduced prints for use in 16 M.M. projectors. Also titles of all kinds. 130 WEST 46th STREET New York City Tel. Bryant 4961 Twentynine