American cinematographer (Jan-Dec 1941)

do so, confident that the meter will hold his exposure-values as even as the film's processing. But in either case, the cinematographer should have absolute confidence in his meter, and follow its indications unquestioningly. "That is why Norwood is insisting that every cinematographer who uses one of these meters must first take time to make enough practical tests so that he, too, is willing to be guided completely by the meter." The Norwood meter can be used equally well under either artificial or natural light. The method of using the meter is the same in either case: the meter is simply placed in subject position, with the hemisphere pointing toward the lens, so that it receives the same lighting as the principal part of the subject. Where this cannot be done, the meter is placed so that the lighting it receives on its hemisphere is approximately the same as that on the subject. With reflected-light meters some conditions, such as extreme landscape longshots (such as a panorama across the Grand Canyon, or the like) require a special meter-handling technique, or the use of special calibrations on the calculator-dial which automatically give a proportionately lessened exposure. With the new three-dimensional incident-light meter, this is not necessary. The meter is simply exposed to the same type of light illuminating the landscape, and its reading, as proven by Norwood's extensive tests in black-and-white and color, will be accurate. The same is the case when haze obscures a scene. The new Norwood "Director" meter is now going into production, and will be available with compensating masks for all types of film and processing conditions, including the laboratory standards at all Hollywood's major-studio and commercial laboratories, Technicolor, Kodachrome and other color-processes. It is understood to be the first of an extensive series of practical photographic developments to be undertaken by Norwood and his associates. END. Tests (Continued from Page 418) can be done. The costume itself must be right. And a "test" made under the most favorable conditions — comparatively close shots which to the unthinking might seem likely to be the most revealing, will tell exactly nothing about what will appear on the screen when the number itself is being photographed. Therefore the only thing to do is to make such tests under conditions simulating as closely as possible the conditions that you or the man who photographs the production will encounter when the number is actually filmed. It may not be so flattering to the costume, its designer, its wearer, or to your photographic skill. But it will give an accurate measure of what can be expected under the worst of actual production conditions. And that's what the test is wanted for! It sometimes happens, too, that a test may be made of a player — man or woman — under artificial lighting on the test stage, yet the player is to be cast in an outdoor picture. Of course today we can do a great deal to balance up a player's appearance in interiors and exteriors, with the control possible through the use of scrims, reflectors, boosterlights, and so on. But even so, natural lighting can be much more searching — much more revealing of any defects — than is the fully-controlled lighting of a glamor-lighted interior. In such a case, therefore, the test should include not only the most favorable lightings and angles, but also harsher, less favorable source-lightings which will as closely as possible approximate the worst lighting-conditions likely to be encountered outdoors when the troupe goes on location. In other words, tests should be approached realistically. They should show their subject not only under the best photographic conditions possible, but under the worst conditions likely to be encountered in the course of actual production. They should, in short, live up to their name, and test every conceivable possibility — good and bad — and do it searchingly. If they do that, they can prove an ever greater asset to production that we're accustomed to considering them. END. Modern Resources (Continued from Page 419) ing the regular audience. They laid down a fixed rule that no special lighting would be permitted: if we could get our pictures under their regular lighting, well enough; if not, that was our misfortune, not theirs. None the less, we went to the horse show. We had with us an ample supply of Super-XX film, an assortment of coated Baltar /:2.3 lenses ranging in focal length from 28mm. to 6" inches, and one of the 20th Century cameras, and we hoped for the best. But when we reached our location, our hopes fell abruptly. It was an openair arena roughly 100x200 feet in size. The illumination — for the scenes were to be filmed at night — was supplied by fourteen 1000Watt globes strung above the field in three rows, and a series of much smaller globes far back around the top of the grandstands. For visual purposes, the illumination wasn't too bad, but for photographic purposes, it was impossible. When I went out into the center of the arena to measure the light, the needle of my General Electric meter wouldn't even flicker. As if that wasn't discouraging enough, the ground was covered with the dark red brown tanhark customan in a rid ing-arena. With such illumination (or lack of it) and such a non-reflective background, we saw ourselves return-l ing to the studio with beautifully blai k| film, with possibly here and there anj occasional scene of a ghostly white! horse floating about in this dark field, its red-coated rider as invisible as the! invisible man. None the less, after making a hanc-j test which proved reassuring, we set upK our cameras and went work. After all,! we reasoned, we had heard a lot ofl theoretical claims about what could be j done with Super-XX film, coated lenst 3 and a 200-degree shutter. Now we had ji a chance to prove or disprove these theories in actual practice! When, two days later, we returned to the studio with several thousand feet of film, we weren't especially confident of what wre'd see when we screened the rushes, especially as the negative received strictly normal time-and-temperature development. But the rushes — and still more, the light-tests — amazed us. Photographically speaking, every scene was usable! Moreover, the scenes were as fully-exposed as though they had been filmed under completely controlled lighting conditions: as the illustrations show, instead of printing, as might be expected, at the low end of the printingscale, they printed well past the middlepoint, ranging from light 13 to ligh: 17 — precisely the range any laboratory prefers for the best results! The quality, gradation, grain-size and definition were another surprise to us all. We had expected — if our negative yielded anything at all printable — to get very poor quality, with a steep gradational scale, noticeable grain-structure, and very poor definition, the sort of scenes which at best would look distressingly worse than inferior newsreel clips if cut into a well-photographed studio production. The illustrations, I think, will indicate that just the reverse of this was actually the case; that — especially when setting, action and photographic conditions are considered — our scenes have a surprisingly good photographic quality. Another thing that surprised us was the exposure-values we got in the halflighted areas in our wide-angle longshots. Several of these, for instance, showed in the foreground some members of the audience: and instead of showing them in harsh silhouette as might be expected with the strongest illumination concentrated on the arena, we saw on the screen surprising well-rounded figure -lightings, with a reasonable amount of illumination even penetrating under hat-brims, and the like. These particular results. 1 am convinced, are due only to the particularly fortunate combination of materials and equipment we employed: Super-XX film, coated lenses, and the 200-degree shutter of the 20th Century camera. But in a broader sense, I think they give a very clear indication of the point I tried t suggest at the start of this article: that we have today equipment and materials which can make possible many things 442 September, 1941 American Cinematographer