American cinematographer (Jan-Dec 1941)

So You Want To Make 16mm Commercial Movies? By One Who Tried It THE author of this piece must remain anonymous for reasons that will become clearer and clearer as the story unfolds. Determined to tell all, he nevertheless doesn't want what is left of his life intruded on by well-meaning but argumentative visitors (and their wives) bent on convincing him that they must be classed as glorious exceptions to the unflattering facts he is about to set down. But at the same time, peeping surreptitiously over the Editor's shoulder, he has caught glimpses of a trend among certain classes of cinemateurs upon which a job of nipping in the bud ought to be done if the aforementioned cinefilmers are to remain happy and well-fed. To put it bluntly, it has come to my attention that there are quite a number of gentlemen living ordered, conventional lives, with jobs in respectable businesses, with wives perhaps, and in some instances even a kiddie or two, who are planning to give up their all for the privilege of producing commercial 16mm. motion pictures. It is this bit of news, gone unnoticed by most in the stress of more extensively-publicized international events, which has drawn me from hibernation. It touched me to the quick. (I'm not sure what the quick is, but it must have been something serious to drag me from my comfortable hibernation waiting for 16mm. commercial-film customers.) If I were a psychoanalyst, girt about with whiskers and imposing degrees, I could probably find an impressive Latin name for the peculiar psychosis (or is it a fixation?) that impels these filmers to toss away a tangible something for a very problematical nothing. But even if I can't name the disease, I can analyze it, for I've had it — almost fatally — myself. And since it is a disease, we might as well preserve the pseudo-medical atmosphere and proceed to discuss the matter in terms of the case-history of a mythical individual who, with true medical reticence, we might as well call "the patient." The patient has a good job. This is deduction in the best Sherlock Holmes tradition so I'm not divulging any private biz. He must have a good job because he has had enough money left over after paying the rent and the groceries to buy a movie camera, with all its expensive etceteras, cutting equipment, a projector and a screen. And money enough after that to keep the omnivorous thing supplied with film. And that calls for more than hay. Then the patient has a car. Oh, yes he has. Even the worst patient knows that as far as he expects to go with his camera, he'll go farther in a car; for the present anyway. And so, I submit, our patient, who can afford all that is listed above, has a good job and is well off, even if he doesn't realize it. Our patient, on his days off, sets up his camera at every likely opportunity, presses the button and in due course and after the proper delays, gets back a photographic record of the happy occasion. Friends who were present at the shooting are invited over and all respond enthusiastically. The women in the party may be individually, though privately, convinced that the cameraman didn't do a particularly good job for them personally, though sure he flattered her sisters; but the women, as a whole, are even louder than the men in their praise of the man whose patience, skill, art and sacrifice put the pictures on the screen. Not the inventor, you dope, the guy with the camera. There is one bit where the camera was turned upside-down and the characters leap feet-first out of the water onto a springboard. The audience, seated in the cameraman's own darkened living-room, howl in unrestrained laughter. There is another bit where the patient's son, age 2, advances quite unexpectedly into the picture as his father is shooting the son and heir of a visiting relative (not present and particularly disliked by those who are). The son of the visiting relative, age 19 months, is biffed over the head with a stuffed elephant by the son of mine host who got the whole thing with a 2" lens from the kitchen window unknown to the protagonists. When this bit is shown it is hailed as a masterpiece. Such artistry, such human interest! How clever! How too, too sweet! Then, as a piece de resistance, there flash on the screen scenes from a recent visit to the Grand Canyon. On that trip nothing less than Kodachrome would do. It would be a crime with all that color not to use Kodachrome. Sure it is more expensive. But what are a few dollars ? After all, we don't take trips like that every week. So all right. Wifey agreed, and all un Portrait of a message; otherwise, a glamour-shot of a knitting machine for a commercial movie. beknown to anyone (till later) bought herself a particularly cute, and colorful, outfit to wear at that colorful spot. After all what's a few dollars? You don't make a trip like that every week. Well, when those scenes flashed on the screen they really showed that it had been worth the extra for the Kodachrome. And our patient had made good use of the knowledge he had acquired, one way and another, on the best way to expose it. The colors were beautiful. And the camerawork was devoid of some of those more startling bits that had distinguished our patient's earlier work. There were no fast, dizzying pans, and he had carefully deleted the footage of what looked like a moving bacterial mass but actually was the patient's thumb in front of the lens. Well, as I was saying, when these particular scenes were shown, when the reds and the yellows and the blues and the greens of that masterpiece of Mother Nature's were shown in all their glory, and none of their discomfort, right in our patient's living-room, there was a chorus of Ah's that would have delighted a tonsil expert. A magnificent view across to the opposite side of the canyon was interrupted by another, equally beautiful, of a tilt down to show the donkeys with their human burdens journeying to the floor below. Then there was a view looking along the entire length of the cavity showing a glorious sky and framed in the immediate foreground by a gnarled fir tree. That was a masterly touch, that fir tree! Our patient remembered someone telling him that foreground would help his landscape shuts and so, at the time of shooting, he had moved over enough to get it in his finder. (Continued on Page 448) American Cinematographer September, ID 11 433