American cinematographer (Jan-Dec 1942)

The exposure angle has not been stressed as it is taken for granted any reader of The American CinematogRAPHER is familiar enough with his camera and exposure-meter, if he has one, to make all these basic adjustments quickly and accurately. Making the most of conditions and filming as much in the proper sequence as possible will save a lot of time and bother. You will find, as I did, it is not necessary to know far in advance what you intend to shoot in order to make a good movie. END. Film Your "Victory Garden" (Continued from Page 215) runs out of food is as good as licked. Our country is not going to run out of food, nor will we allow hunger to knock out any of the nations united with us in our world-wide struggle. Bread and meat, and milk are assured in reasonable abundance, but there are other items, chiefly the bulky, leafy vegetable, essential to a healthful diet, that may become harder to get, whether fresh or canned. England is not starving, yet fresh vegetables are said to command fantastic prices, compared to those we pay here. It is not that these essential vitamin-rich vegetables are hard or expensive to raise — they just take a lot of labor time, and their bulk and perishable nature puts an extra load on transportation facilities already taxed to the limit by urgent, direct war needs. In this country we know that we can have our vegetables and other fresh green foods without ever being asked to pay five dollars for a single cucumber. For in the backyard kitchen garden we have found a way to whip the twin bugabood of man-power and transport-space shortages. Within ten paces from its kitchen door, the average family can raise almost all the green food it needs throughout the summer, and some for home canning as well. All that is needed is a plot of fertile, well-drained land, perhaps 20x50 feet in size, a few tools, some seed, and the healthful spare-time ■work of taking care of the growing plants. Such a plot is very properly called a "Victory Garden," for it adds to the Nation's food supply, provides healthful, fresh-air activity for indoor workers, and releases farm and industrial manpower (not to mention transport space) for war needs. And since, as a reader of THE AMERICAN CINEMATOGRAPHER, you're inevitably a movie-maker (even if not a garden addict!), you can give your Victory Garden project an excellent sugarcoating by making it the subject of some or all of that spring and summer filming (preferably in Kodachrome) that you mightn't do otherwise if you're conserving tires like the rest of us, or if you happen to live in a coastal "Combat Area" where so many of your pet peacetime filming subjects are now on the restricted list. Your own back yard (unless it actually overlooks defense works!) is still open for unrestricted filming! My suggestion would be to begin by seeing Burdett's film on the subject, entitled "Garden for Victory," it's available for either rental or sale through Bell & Howell's Filmsound Library in several versions, both color and blackand-whites, silent and sound, for both 16mm. and 8mm. projectors. See for yourself what he's done with Filmo and Kodachrome, with a few feet of ground and some growing vegetables for subjects. Then see if you can't "top" his efforts for yourself! Whether your film does or not is up to your own filming abilities. But the vegetables you grow will be just as good eating — and fully as much contribution to the War Effort! And you'll benefit personally by gaining a lot of healthful, fresh-air exercise, and adding to your library a film that's probably a bit different from the usual run of travel and family pictures you've alwavs made before. END. Maurine (Continued from Page 214) is pleasing to the eye. That is all one needs to know about the theory of composition. "When I advise photographers to go to the movie houses and study the closeups on the screen I am serious. I have never stopped doing it. When I see something new and decidedly unusual and pleasing I go back to my studio and, with my sister Marjorie as my model, I start experimenting with my lighting arrangements until I suddenly see on the groundglass of the camera the same effect I saw on the screen. I make a note of the lighting details, and when a subject comes along who looks like the type of the star so lighted, why I just light her that way, and everybody is happy. "Don't try experimenting on your customers, though! Be sure you work out the lighting on a model. You should be such a master of your lighting that you do not tire your customer out while you experiment with setting your lights. "Now, get me right on this one point. I do not advise that all a photographer do is copy the motion picture cameramen's work. You can do that until you finally begin to get the feel of a new style in portraiture. Then you'll find yourself doing the way the ace cinematographers do — studying each subject individually, and lighting him to suit those individual requirements. But until you get that screen-closeup technique thoroughly implanted in your mind, you'd better be a copier, or else you'll just keep on turning out the same, static type of pictures so many other photographers do. "The same plan works just as well with movies — amateur or professional, lOmm. or 8mm. — too. If anything, rather better, for you're working in the same medium as the cinematographer whose work you study in the theatre. The trouble with all too many movies — not only strictly amateur films, but pictures made by 16mm. professionals, as well — is that the people who make them seem to forget that they're making movies. When they photograph people under artificial lighting, instead of using a true movie lighting, which would give an illusion of natural roundness and an impression of life and animation, they simply set up enough lights to get the necessary exposure-values, without much apparent thought of what else lighting can do. The result is generally an impression that you're looking at a mere reproduction of a person, rather than at a presentation of a personality. "Another thing I can't stress too much is the use of make-up. I use it in all of my portraits — and as a result, scarcely any of my portrait negatives are ever retouched. All the retouching is done with make-up, before the picture is made. This of course is doubly important when you're really working with movies, rather than stills. "My suggestion is that when you see a picture that's worth studying, see it at least twice. The first time through, no matter how interested you may be in the technique, you can't help being distracted by the story. But the second time you see it, you already know how the story comes out, so you can keep your mind completely on the technique, and really learn something." That Maurine is apparently right in her ideas is pretty well proven by her own experience. Most people in the United States have seen photographs of Jane Russell, who had the starring role in Howard Hughes' still unreleased film, "The Outlaw." She's probably received more pictorial publicity than any other starlet whose first film has yet to reach the public. Well, it was because Howard Hughes saw one of Maurine's portraits of her that Jane Russell was picked for the role. Then Hughes sent every person being considered for parts in his picture to Maurine to be photographed. He made his selections from those portraits. Furthermore, when he had his cast tentatively selected, he made motion picture tests of them with 16nun. camera and sound-equipment, as reported some months ago in THE AMERICAN CINEMATOGRAPHER. And he engaged Maurine to direct the photography of most of these tests, so that she could put on film the quality she brought out in her portraits. Testing Auricon Camera (Continued from Page 213) of the people present who had participated in the making of the Club's Defense Film an opportunity to appear and says a few words, we made long-shots as extreme as the combination of a 25mni. lens and 25 feet of floor-space would permit, three-shots, two-shots, mediumshots and both normal and extreme closeups. We made them with absolutely no consideration of the factor of sound, 224 May, 1942 American Cinematographer