American cinematographer (Jan-Dec 1941)

"The back-light goes here," says Leon Shamroy, A.S.C., to Maurice Liu, while Joan Bennett serves as a model in a set representing a London air-raid shelter. FOR a long time Hollywood has prided itself on being able to reproduce in faithful set-design conditions which might be met with anywhere in the world. But when Maurice Liu, Chancellor of the Los Angeles Chinese Consulate, decided to shoot a documentary film around the current heroic struggle of his people, he little guessed that on the 20th Century-Fox lot he would find conditions so nearly parallel to those he would face in photographing the catacomb industries deep in the rock beneath the streets of Chungking, China, that the studio sets could literally serve as a classroom where he could study, under the most expert tutelage, the photographic and lighting problems he would encounter in filming his picture in Free China's bombed capitol. But he did. Luckily for Liu, his good friend Leon Shamroy, A.S.C., was preparing to start a picture called "Confirm or Deny" just at the moment when Liu had completed his plans for a photographic expedition to China. Liu had worked in both 16mm. and 35mm., and with both black-andwhite and color, but he felt the magnitude of the job before him required that he do considerable brushing up on the latest methods in lighting and other photographic essentials. Turning to his friend Shamroy for this, he found not only instruction, but a "classroom" which provided almost the exact conditions under which he would labor in China. "Confirm or Deny" deals with an American newsman's adventures in London in December, 1940, during the height of the bombkrieg, when an alleged abortive invasion attempt was made by the Nazis. While the Chinese architecture was missing, the sets by Richard Day and Wiard B. Ihnen gave Liu an otherwise perfect duplicate of the conditions he would face in Chungking — bombed buildings, crowded cellars and air-raid shelters, with all the complex lighting and camera-angling problems he could expect to face in actuality. So for the first three weeks of the studio film's production, Liu spent nearly every day on the set, consulting with Shamroy and learning from him all the special techniques he would need to use in his homeland. As if the hand of coincidence wasn't Hollywood Trains A Cinematographer For China By RAY DANNENBAUM strong enough already, there was an added advantage to Liu's study with Shamroy. Although Liu was born in Shanghai and has travelled extensively in China, this is his first photographic job there. Shamroy, on the other hand, knows China photographically from firsthand experience there, since in 1930 he covered not only the coastal ports, but most of the Chinese hinterland as well, serving as Chief Cinematographer for the Hunting-ton Ethnographic Expedition. On this trip, which is sponsored by the Chinese Nationalist Government, Liu is taking four motion picture cameras — a Bell and Howell Studio Camera, a 35mm. Eyemo, and two 16mm. Filmos. With him, in addition to such auxiliary equipment as the latest Hollywood-made portable floods and spotlights, Liu is taking 20,000 feet of 35mm. black-andwhite film (Plus-X) and 10,000 feet of 16mm. Kodachrome. Stills will be shot with two Leicas, using both Kodachrome and Plus-X. And naturally after his period of schooling with Shamroy at 20th Century-Fox, Liu's choice of an exposure-meter was the General Electric which is the standard used at the studio. Unlike most expeditions of this nature in times past, which made much of carrying portable processing equipment and processing film on the spot, Liu's exposed film will be processed in Hollywood, under Shamroy's direction. Teststrips of Plus-X will be developed on location as a control, just as any studio camera-unit would do. But film today can be relied on to withstand even the long journey from Chungking to Hollywood between exposure and development, so Liu's film will receive the benefit of being processed in one of the world's finest film laboratories in peaceful Hollywood. Handling the Kodachrome presents a different problem. It must, of course, be processed in one of the Eastman Kodachrome processing-plants, either in Australia or in America. At the same time, due to the restricted latitude of color processes, some control is desirable. So it was decided that Liu will shoot frequent test-rolls of Kodachrome, and rush them to Hollywood via Chinese governmental planes and the trans-Pacific Clipper. As soon as the film has been (Continued on Page 443) American Cinematographer September, 1911 121