American cinematographer (Jan-Dec 1942)

was the first thing that gave me any real standing in my owTi family. Up to then, I was just a kid brother, and treated as a sort of necessary evil. I couldn't do anything in particular; I wasn't particularly athletic (I was rather bookish, instead) so I wasn't particularly good at games, and I was both too young and too busy to have many social graces. But the fact that I could take good pictures (at least what seemed good ones then!) set me apart as someone who could really do something distinctive. And what a mystery I made of my work in the darkroom to my long-suffering family and friends! "Anyway, I became a really good assistant cameraman. At least, for 1915 I was a good assistant: when I look at the intricate job my assistant has today, making intricate follow-focus shots and being wholly responsible for the focus, making out complicated camera-reports, and maintaining one of today's much more complicated cameras, I'm not so sure that the assistant cameraman I was back in 1915 could cut the mustard on a 1942 set! Yet we rUd have one problem the average modern assistant doesn't have ta consider: we often had to keep magazines containing film upon which we were making intricate multiple-exposure shots, with ten or a dozen preciselymatched takes on a single strip of negative, segregated until the last take was shot. I couldn't have been too bad, for I assisted some of the best men in the industry, including Arthur Miller, A.S.C., Al Liguori, and half-a-dozen other men whose names — tops then — are now forgotten. "Finally, after about four years as an assistant, I was promoted to the then new position of second cameraman. "I lasted less than two w'eeks on that job! "The First Cameraman on that picture was a lean, cadaverous Frenchman, with the most sorrowful face I have ever seen. In comparison to him, John Carradine woud look fat and well fed. He always went about enveloped in a long, flopping overcoat and an equally amazing tem Pacific States Film I.aliora lories Complete 16 mm. Film Service • MACHINE DEVELOPING For the Professional Photographer. Densitometry, and Time and Temperature Control. Specializing in Negative-Positive Sound Track and Picture work. Also Duplicate Negatives, Composite Prints, etc. KODACHROME— SILENT DUPLICATIONS— SOUND A three day service on prints from original Kodachrome. Complete Sound Service. 1027 NO. HIGHLAND HOLLYWOOD GL-9525 CALIFORNIA perament. Suddenly, right in the middle of the picture, he decided that he was going to go back to France immediately — and raise violets! "There was the picture, less than half finished, and minus a First Camei-aman. Trustingly, they came to me and asked if I thought I could finish it! With the confidence of a brash eighteen-year-old I said yes — and stepped into the most difficult assignment I have ever had. "For it wasn't just an ordinary picture. The star, Alice Brady, played a dual role — and a diflicult one. She not only had to talk to herself in the two characterizations, but to walk in all around herself, shake hands with herself, and even pin jewelry on herself. Today's great standbys — process photography and optical printing — weren't even invented yet, so I had to do the whole thing in the camera. "Probably because I didn't know any better, I worked out a comparatively simple method of doing these scenes. Instead of using elaborate mattes, I used lighting: I did many of the takes on a set completely upholstered in black velvet, and kept this from photographing by simply keeping all light away from it, and concentrated solely on my actors. Using this for some takes, and an identical, normal set for the others, I managed to get what the script called for. "For the rest, I guess I was lucky. I'd learned pretty well what was then known about photographing sets and people — and I was particularly in luck with my star, for Miss Brady was in love, and I don't think anyone could have made her photograph badly, she was so radiantly happy. At any rate, she was pleased with what I did, and so were the director and producer. I was a full-fledged First Cameraman from that day on. "Since then, I've carried on, trying all the time to learn as much as I could from every source possible. One thing, for instance, has helped me in particular: the study of the technique of the great masters of painting. In motion pictures, you're working in a difi'erent medium, of course; you can call it an art, or not, as you prefer, but it's still visual storytelling, with the great addition of visual motion, both of viewpoint and of action. Yet you can still learn immensely by studying the lightings and compositions of the various great names of painting. Most of them, too, were trying to tell stories visually; and they had the time and the patience to analyze what they were doing more closely than most of us do today. "As an example, take the picture I'm doing now. (We began it as 'Tulip Time,' but I think the present title is 'Seven Sisters.') It's a Dutch story, about a family of seven girls. With the locale and atmosphere of Holland to portray, I naturally turned for inspiration to a Dutch painter — Vermeer. But only for a key to my visual treatment; slavishly copying his paintings would be wrong, for he dealt with a different period, and had a different storv to tell than I. use the G-E Exposure Meter IF you want .sillioueltes, you can make sure of exposnre by using the (>-E meter ill this manner: With water made brilliant liy hack lii;hting, as shown in the above photograph — or with snow, sand, or sky — simply point your Ci-K meter at the scene, and read the e\posni-e. But if you (lout want a silhouette and want subject detail, measure the dark side of your subject with a close-up reading and expose according to the n\eter reading. Get more out of your pictures and get tlie effect you want with the (l-K. It brings ycju amazing accuracy, and extreme .sensitivity, and has many other features you will like. .\sk your dealer, (leiicrdl EIrclrir Cnin /iinii/, Sclicnertiidj/, .V. )'. Photograph o/ Imn Dmitri taken oti Dmitri Camera Tour Courtesy Canadian National Railways Federal tax included GENERAL iX) ELECTRIC American Cinematographer May, 1942 231