American cinematographer (Jan-Dec 1942)

Here's How (Continued from Page 30) glass or a sheet of dyed gelatin sandwiched between two pieces of glass. In either case, the filter is optically flat, and does not harm the definition of your image as a sheet of wrinkly cellophane might. Gelatin filters, when used professionally, are held flat in a metal frame. On all counts, we'd advise using the cellophane for wrapping, and sticking to the regular filters for photographic use. Home Movie Previews (Continued from Page 29) repetitious, as it shows the craftsman interminably hammering at the metal. Some of this footage, if it can't be explained in titles, could well be eliminated. This is especially so in the case of some scenes, in which the exposure could have been improved considerably. The picture ends rather too abruptly: we see the finished work compared with the artist's original free-hand sketch, but get no idea of where or how the piece is ultimately to be used. A few scenes showing this, if possible, would end the picture much more smoothly. Easy to Edit (Continued from Page 27) all your scenes. Then when you edit them and throw them on the screen the parade will go marching by just as you saw it, and just as it actually was. But many amateurs duck around and shoot them going to the right in some scenes, to the left in others, with the result that when the sequence reaches the screen you see the marchers going by you to your right and then, all of a sudden, you blink as you see them marching the other way. "Are they suddenly coming back?" you ask yourself, "or are there TWO parades marching on opposite courses?" In the making of professional motion pictures the director is always careful to see that when a character enters a door in a long-shot and starts right toward a chair, in the closeup showing him taking the last step before sitting down he is still going right, and not left. Go to see a picture directed by a man like Ernst Lubitsch at your first opportunity, and watch how a master craftsman really handles his people in action. Especially if you are shooting kodachrome, watch out for clouds that suddenly pass overhead, practically killing your light. Recently I had to sacrifice one of the most interesting scenes of an amateur's travel picture because after the first five feet of the scene dai'k clouds had hidden the sun and the pictures were so dark you couldn't see them. If that man had waited for the clouds to pass he would have saved his scene. He won't make the same mistake again. Neither should you. Another cute little ti'ick so many amateurs do is to stop the camera in the middle of some excellent action. Then suddenly start it going again. That makes the editing job, either for the amateur or a professional, if he hires one, a real headache. I recall seeing a home movie of a baseball game. The amateur cameraman had set up his camera and shot several feet of a close-up of a player at bat. The player was holding his bat right-handed and was swinging the bat out waiting for the pitcher to throw the ball. The cameraman stopped his camera to wait also, I presume. In the meanwhile the batter decided to shift his position and bat left handed. So what you saw on the screen was a right handed batter swinging, and then suddenly he was a left handed batter swatting the ball great guns. What you didn't see, and couldn't figure out, was how that switch came about, for the man with the camera didn't photograph the batter's switchover. Another very frequent mistake amateurs make is that of not shooting enough footage when they have a really important subject to shoot. Frequently in editing films for amateurs I have been heart-broken to find they had hundreds of feet of tripe, but only a few three to four-foot flashes of the shots that really would have made their films worthwhile. There is no reason whatever why any amateur who knows how to use his camera from the point of technicality cannot make just as pleasing, just as fine, travel-films as any professional. Just last month, for example, I had the pleasure of editing a film of Guatemala and Costa Rica made by a Los Angeles man who had never shot such a film before in his life. He shot it on kodachrome, and believe me when I say it is a better and more entei-taining film than half the professional travel shorts you will ever see. It is so because the man has an unusual sense of composition, and he decided that he would take plenty of footage of the most intei'esting subjects, feeling that it is easier to cut them down than to find insufficient footage after he had come home. With all the skill of a professional this man made long-shots, then moved in and made the finest closeups you will ever find. And he didn't photograph a lot of uninteresting stuff. When he , didn't see anything worth photographing, he just didn't make pictures. Perhaps that is one of the gi'eatest failings among all amateurs. They feel that they must shoot everything — but at long range. In closing, let me advise amateurs in making travel pictures to r€>member that the people who will be looking at their pictures on the screen in the living room will not be equipped with binoculars. They will have just normal eyes with which to see your film. So make it so they can see it. Don't shoot just for the sake of shooting. Wait for interesting subjects: then shoot them showing lots of interesting action. Never photo graph people just standing. Always hav.e them doing something, and if they can't do something interesting, skip the shot. Just remember that ten minutes of really interesting scenes will make your friends want to come back and see more of your pictures, but two hours of boring long-shots will keep even your best friends away ! END. Effect-Lightings (Continued from Page 25) tually exist when the camera was grinding. For instance, suppose you want to make a scene in which two people are riding in a car. For a day-effect, you can mount your camera somewhere out around the radiator-cap and shoot it with the car actually driving along, though it's rather inconvenient. But for a night-effect, even with today's fastest films, you can't get enough exposure to do this. Instead, though, you can park the car somewhere that's convenient to an electric-light outlet, and let your lighting suggest that the car is moving! Begin by composing your scene so that the camera sees only the inside of the car. Then be sure and pull down the shade over the car's rear window, so your lens won't be looking out through that. Next, fix a clamp-on reflector unit either on the floor of the car, or perhaps clamped to the dashboard, so it throws a beam of light up into your actors' faces, giving an effect rather like the light from the instrument-board. Now, put a considerably stronger light — a spotlight, if you have one — outside the car, shining in onto your players' faces from the side. It's got to be enough stronger than the illumination from the lamp inside the car so that it appears as a definite highlight. By moving a large piece of cardboard with a vertical slot in it past this lamp, in a horizontal direction, you can, with a bit of practice, reproduce the effect you'd see in a real car as it approached, passed and then receded from real sti-eet lamps. Remember, by the way, that if your camera-angle is straight into the car, and your "effect" light is on the left side of the car, the moving beam of light should move from left to right to give a natural effect. Next time you go driving at night, just watch the way the beams of the street-lamps play across passengers' faces, and you'll see how easily you can simulate that effect for a home-movie effect-lighting. The same general trick can often be used to suggest that the car is moving in the moonlight, along a tree-shadowed roadway. Only in this case, your "effect" light shouldn't be quite so strong, and the effect is produced by moving shadows instead of moving highlights. To make these shadows, you can use real branches, or pieces of cardboard cut out in irregtilar shapes that will make shadows suggesting branches. If you want to be downright professional about it, you can make a dium large enough to fit ever 32 January, 11)42 American Cinematographer