Amateur Movie Makers (Dec 1926-Dec 1927)

FOR RENT WORLD WAR MOVIES "America Goes Over" We are renting the FivcReel Eastman ' War Department Super Production at a Moderate Charge from our Park Avenue Store Gillette Camera \Stores/ lnc.y# Have Your TRAVEL PICTURE EDITED By a TRAVELER Gardner Wells James Boring's Travel Service, Inc. 45 Astor Place New York L TITLES Complete editing and titling V ms T ERB AXJ serv'ee ( 16 mm. or stand' ^»!v* ard. ) Cinematography. CLARK CINE-SERVICE 2540 Park Ave. CAdillac 5260 DETROIT, MICH. MOTION PICTURES of every description Shots and stock scenes of most anything LARGE CATALOG LISTING of short subjects for the home in standard or 16 mm. Special Exchange Arrangement Metropolitan Motion Picture Company 108-110 West 34th Street New York City SHOULD THEY not be represented — those dear ones not available for your family movies? DO THIS Send me $3.00 and a c!ear snapshot or portrait and I'll make an exact reproduction on film ready to splice into your family reel. Photo returned in perfect condition as received. BRYANT 3749 RALPH RENO 117 PARK AVE. NEW YORK. this is all about, the director volunteers the information. "Some people have the idea," he tells us, '"that the subject must be directly in front of the camera. This is especially true with amateurs and seems to date back to the old days of snap shot photography with a still camera when objects appeared distorted and out of plumb if they were not directly in front of the camera. It seems to me that every amateur I have seen at work places his camera directly in front of the subject. He forgets all about what we call 'camera angles.' A novel glimpse now and then (without overdoing it) from an unusual view point will relieve an otherwise monotonous scene and greatly add to the general effect of the finished picture." We now leave this stage and again find ourselves out in the open air. This particular street is really a "set" representing a European village street. In fact we would think that we were actually in Europe were it not for the electrical paraphernalia that we see strewn about. Electricians, property men, technical assistants and actors swarm the street. Batteries of spot-lights and floodlights make us realize that we are still in Hollywood. On second thought, it seems queer to see spotlights and flood-lights used in the open air in broad daylight. It is a bright day yet the camera man is asking for more light. "I have to have at least two more 'broads' in that corner," he calls to the electrician. "Broads" we learn is studio lingo for flood-lights and are in direct contrast to "spots." Both styles of lights are commonly used even in the open air scenes in bright day light to supplement natural sun light. Very often shadows do not fall just as the camera man would like them to. In such cases he gets artificial lights and has the electrician place them so that the shadows do fall in their proper places. When a hat shades the face of an actor a light is so placed to enable clear photography of the details and expressions of the face, without making its presence known to the audience. Actors in dark doorways, under trees, or in heavy shade are made to appear clearly on the screen by the use of artificial illumination. We observe that everywhere out of doors large reflectors are used to aid the daylight. These reflectors consist of very large sheets of wall-board which are either covered with tin foil or painted with bright aluminum paint. These reflectors are used to throw the light into otherwise dark corners. We are yet to see the professional camera man who is able to get along without several reflectors but for some reason or another we rarely see an amateur ucing them. They are easily made and we are going to make two or three for our own use on our return home. While it is next to impossiblie for us to obtain electrical equipment for use out of doors, we can easily substitute reflectors and, for our purpose, get excellent results. Now our subjects can pull their hats down as far as they like without darkening the face, because our reflectors will illuminate them sufficiently to make them appear clearly on the screen. In the next street of our studio, we see the director and the camera man in consultation. They hold up a piece of blue colored glass every now and then and look through it at the set. We fail to see what good it does them to look at the scenery through a piece of blue glass, so we ask what it is all about. "That piece of blue glass," he obligingly explains to us, "is not an ordinary piece of stained glass but a special tone of blue and is called a 'monotone-filter.' Photographic film does not have the same degree of sensitivity to all colors as does the human eye. Red, you know, photographs black, while light blues, such as the sky for example, photograph white. When you look through a monotone filter, however, you see everything just exactly as the camera sees it. In other words varicolored objects are reduced to a single color, hence the term monotone-filter. When an actor puts on a bright costume or makes up his face in some special character make-up, it is tested with a monotone filter before being photographed so that we will know just how it will appear on the finished film. Scene painters constantly view their work through one of these filters to see how the sets they are working on will photograph." The director and the camera man, having completed their consultation, prepare to start the action. The director explains to the actors that this scene is supposed to be taken in dense fog. He is telling them just how to act and to grope their way about, as vision is difficult. This appears to be very strange to us as it is a clear bright day and we see no equipment in sight to make a foggy or smoky atmosphere. We wonder how the effect of haze is made and the camera man tells us that he is using a "fog-filter" on the lens of his camera. This he says is a piece of especially prepared optical glass mounted in a tube that slips in front of the camera lens much like the F i f t y s i x