American cinematographer (Jan-Dec 1941)

fleets a lot more light than you're used \ to at home. Taking your readings with this in mind, you'll get excellent results. And, by the way, when you minimize ' the effect of sky reflection in your meterreadings, you'll find that in most cases your Kodachrome will automatically give • you beautiful deep-blue skies, and your black-and-white, fairly dark grey ones without any filtering, so that clouds, snow-capped mountains, and the like will stand out beautifully. "When you're making scenes in which people figure, be sure and take your meter-readings for the faces, rather than for the scene as a whole. And take your readings so you'll be exposing for the darkest-tanned or most shadowed face! With everything else so colorful and so highly reflective, those faces and shadows are the governing factor in your exposure. "This is particularly the case when you're shooting the Indians. Their complexions are a deeply reddish coppercolor— very dark — and unless you expose for them, they'll be underexposed and lost in either Kodachrome or blackand-white. In fact, they'll be worse than that, for our Indians wear white buckskin costumes, ornamented with colorful, pastel-shaded beadwork and feather trimmings, and the contrast between the dark faces and the white costumes will exaggerate the actual contrast unless you expose for the faces and trust the latitude of film and processing to take care of the highlights. That old-time rule of still photography — 'expose for the shadows, and the highlights will take care of themselves' — is a pretty safe guide to go by anywhere. "There's another thing about handling film at the high altitudes you'll encounter in Glacier Park. The light is deceptively penetrating. I've learned from Rocky Mountain Goats come down to the chalets in early evening, and may be filmed easily with fast film. sad experience never to try to load film — especially Kodachrome — outdoors, even in what you'd normally call shade. If you do, you'll find edge-fog spoiling your film for as much as 25 or 30 feet from the inner end of your leader! Of course you can't always go indoors to load the camera when you're shooting in such an expansive part of the 'great outdoors' as Glacier Park — but you can almost always sit down somewhere in the shade, fold your coat over your lap, and use it like a changing-bag. It's a certain amount of bother, of course, but believe me, it is worth it in film saved. "Another thing, it isn't very healthy to leave film-cans in the car where the direct rays of the sun can hit them. I don't know whether it's the heat, or some peculiarity of the high-altitudo sunlight, but again there's danger of fogging. To be on the safe side, keep your new and exposed film covered up in your camera-case. "Filtering either black-and-white or Kodachrome there in Glacier Park is a simple matter. With Kodachrome, I almost never use a filter except when I've been shooting interiors inside one of the lodges or hotels, using Photofloods and Type A film; then if I want to finish up the roll on exteriors, I naturally have to use the usual Type A daylight filter. "According to most Kodachrome instruction-books, some of the extreme long-shot landscapes we have up tbere ought to call for the use of the Kodachrome haze filter. But, to speak frankly, I never use that filter. To my mind, it's worse than useless, for two reasons. In the first place, the faint, blue-violet haze you'll get in the distance of such shots is a part of the actual, visual impression you receive looking at the view itself. I like to have it in my picture, and I find most audiences like shots that show it. "Secondly, if you really want to cut through haze in Kodachrome, a polascreen will do the job much better. It will also deepen your sky very effectively when you want one of those deep blue "Maxfield Parrish" skies to make mountains or clouds stand out. As a rule, in actual practice, when I use a pola-screen for either of these purposes, I seldom use it to the full polarization, but instead to about half or three-quarter polarization. It makes scenes made that way match up better with the other, un-polarized shots. 'By the way — if you've been using a pola-screen for any length of time, as I have, better check it over for discoloration before shooting color with it this season. I lost quite a lot of valuable film from that cause last summer, and I found that quite a number of the eai-lier pola-screens have had to be replaced because they discolored. The discoloration wasn't visually obvious unless you were looking for it, but it showed up very objectionably on the screen. "Filtering in black-and-white at Glacier Park's altitudes is also a simple matter. The light is so strong up there (Continued on Page 145) /|/Jl& ■ From top to bottom: St. Mary Lake; Indians welcoming new arrivals at station; Two Medicine Lakes; View from Prince of Wales Hotel, Waterton Lakes National Park (Canada), adjoining Glacier Park; another scene on trail beside St. Mary Lake; Yale (standing on dolly) filming an interior scene in Glacier Park Hotel for "In All the World." American Cinematographer March, 1941 117