American cinematographer (Jan-Dec 1942)

snake. A spectacle reserved only for a chosen few is the sight of a fullgrown director down on his hands and knees, tongue hanging out: "Like this, see ? I want to get a funny little fannywiggle on Pluto when he spots that bone and anticipates running for it, see?" The director will set no absolute, ironclad rules for the performance of a character. He is fully cognizant of the animator's problems and knows that the final screen performance is decided down on the animator's drawing-board. Animators are highly creative draftsmen with definite ideas of their own about staging and pantomime. A good animator usually will uncover new action and performance possibilities, working close to the scene as he does, that could never be visualized by either the story man or the director. So, in the interests of diplomacy and common-sense, the director will allow plenty of leeway to the animator in the handling of the action in order to stimulate any creative impulse which might otherwise be held in check. Any controversy between the animator and director at this point will usually concern the timing of action, and not about any phase of the story. Each has had his chance to get in his crack at the story development, for by the time the story reaches its last meeting prior to production, it's "Speak now, or forever hold your peace!" The next chance to change anything will be when the first animation tests are looked at in the running reel. Story revisions sometimes occur at this point, for the possibility of change and improvement is always present when working with a creative medium. But when the story is being handed out for animation, it is assumed that the continuity is set. When the performance and staging of the action is agreed upon by the director and animator, they sit down and lay out the timing of the action on exposure sheets. These sheets are long pieces of paper ruled off horizontally to indicate frames of film and vertically into columns for action notes, "cei" levels, dialog, and camera instructions. These exposure sheets represent a complete chart of a scene's progress just as the director's bar-sheets keep tab on the overall picture, and serve to guide everyone concerned with the progressive technical steps of production; animator, in-betweener, checker, inker, painter, and cameraman. (The next installment of this series will deal with the animator's problems — technical and artistic — in bringing a story to life through animation.) Commandos (Continued from Page 201) den, I believe, used Super-XX all the time. "Any way, there we were approaching the beach; I'd arranged with the naval man in command of the launch that I couldn't afford to step off into deep water because I mustn't wet my equipment. Finally we grounded, and after waiting for the troops to land, the naval man assured me we had made a dry landing, and, holding my cameras above my head, I took one step out of the launch on to a firm bit of rock. "With all the smoke you couldn't see a yard, so I turned to call to Roy, took one more step and went wallop into the icy water right up to my waist ! Luckily none of the equipment was damaged, but I myself of course was soaked right through, and the cloths I had put in my trousers' pockets for wiping the lenses if we got condensation were ruined. After an hour or so of strenuous activity my pyjama trousers began to dry, and my legs got a bit more comfortable, but my feet never got anything better than soggy and fi'ozen. "After wading ashore and getting some stuff of the troops landing. Headquarters was set up in a house near the beach and we set off with the advance parties. Roy, Harry and I kept together pretty well all the time, and later on Jack Ramsden joined us from Maaloy. "It was a bit strange at first, as we couldn't see the enemy and didn't know what everybody was up to, but we soon got used to it and happily carried on shooting till we re-embarked about 2:30. "There was a good deal of noise all the time, shells from the naval escort, mortars, dynamiting and gunfire, and a fair amount of bullets flying about — enough to make you run pretty hard when crossing any open space. But none of us had any very narrow escapes that we know of, though we did all jump when we saw an unexploded grenade lying in the snow and hurriedly tossed it into the sea. "One thing that stuck in my mind was the troops finding a case of apples, which they opened and devoured as they went about the job (I was lucky enough to sample two). 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