American cinematographer (Jan-Dec 1942)

not then completely frozen over, was running with water on what ice there was. The Hudson's Bay Company's manager suggested we leave our cameras at Moosonee on the mainland — we ourselves were apparently far less valuable in his eyes. As we crossed the river, avoiding the open V-shaped channel in the mi~ddle, the dogs floundered like porpoises and the sleigh left a wake like a ship. The cameraman was shooting Eyemo material. The river-heaved ice looked more Arctic than the Arctic, and the thaw made the "bergs" all the more brilliantly photogenic. The water on the ice didn't show in the pictures, some of which appeared in the "Forward Commandos" issue of the "Canada Carries On" series, and looked appropriately desolate. Northern and frigid. The Manager sat sideways on the sleigh, ready to jump. The cameraman must have clung on with his legs — his hands were busy with the Eyemo. As for myself, I only know I held the Eyemo case and kept supplying, at incredibly short intervals, fresh rolls of film. We'd have had a Northemly cold christening if the ice had given way! But it didn't, and we reached Moose Factory intact. In a day or two everything was frozen solid again. I went over to Moosonee alone for the 16mm. cameras. My codirecting cameraman wasn't stirring out of doors. Not because his dog-team experience had given him cold feet (in any sense), but because he had a swollen face from an aching tooth, and the doctor prescribed heat from hot water bottles, not cold from windswept ice wastes. At Moosonee a miscellaneous cargo of Christmas goods and a kitchen range awaited the eighteen-foot sleigh. The Indian driver thought the camera-cases would be safest between two large packing-boxes near the front; and I felt quite satisfied, too, once they were lashed under the tarpaulins. True, I'd seen the same sleigh upset on a curve at Moosonee; but then it had only had two packing cases on it, and I'd imagined it went over because the load was light. Now with the present Impedimenta, especially the stove (like a gun-turret at the rear), I felt it was safely stable. "Whitt! Hwitt!" the Indian shouted the straight-ahead driving call of the Bay, and the dogs tore down the river bank — a steep thirty-foot descent, at the bottom of which tides had raised a ridge of ice. The sleigh skidded, and, despite the braking efforts of driver, slithered sideways against the ridge, where it capsized. The Indians just laughed as they righted the sleigh. After that our trip was uneventful. The casual way the Indians had treated the upset and our apparent careful stowing of the cameras made me think no harm could have been done. I didn't bother mentioning the incident to my co-worker. But the next day, out on the ice, a half mile from the Post, with the biting wind peppering us with dry, stinging *T ^-^ snow, I knew something Jind happened to the cameras. The cameraman told me so, plainly, profanely. The speed was wrong. I said that was probably because the day was extra cold. Then the shutter stuck. The cameraman replied that wasn't just the cold, not by a ! Until you've photographed continuously in real sub-zero weather you can't even approximate an adequate idea of just how cold the metal of a camera can get. Not for a single moment can it be touched with bare hands without a sensation sharper than a burn. Usually the cameraman wore thin cloth gloves so that he could make focusing and other adjustments and be protected from the cold metal. But when the shutter stuck, adjustments became too delicate. He had to take off' the thin gloves. Fortunately, his heavy gauntlets hung at his side. In the Bay area dufBe-lined (duffle is wool cloth thicker and softer than heavy blanketing), moose-hide gauntlets are worn. Each has a moosehide loop at the top of its beaded, furedged cuff"; and through these passes a gaily plaited cord of yarn with tassels. The tassels are pure decoration; the cord pure necessity. It holds the gauntlets on you wherever you happen to be. Forty — even thirty, twenty or ten — below zero is much too cold to casually toss gloves down on the snow. By the time you're ready to put them on, your hands may be starting to freeze; and if you've to grope around in a snow-drift, they'd be frozen white. But with mitts on a string around your neck, all you have to do (if you don't get the strings mixed and try to put on your exposure "meter) is to fumble benumbed hands into duffle linings and pi'ay they will get warm again. And this is what the cameraman kept doing until he'd somehow managed to finish the hundred-foot reel, even with the Special behaving as it was. Then we left the ice for our lodgings. It was relatively comfortable (at least by comparison with outside temperatures) in the big kitchen. Once his hands were warm enough, the cameraman went to work on the Cine-Special. All he had to work with was an assortment of Mr. Woolworth's least expensive screwdrivers and pliers, plus some match-sticks. Here we were — miles from a camera repair shop, and only one train in and one out each week — with a shutter mechanism badly out of alignment and a film to 4^^ On opposite page: Cinematoqrapher Douglas Sinclair films the beaver-trapping sequence in a snowstorm. Above, left, cameraman Sinclair and the author iron out a script problem on location. Right, top to bottom: finishing the beaver sequence; doq-team travel; trapper arrivinq at tradinq oost in scene from "Fur Country;" interior, showing mixture of daylight and battery-powered Photoflood. Photos Courtesy National Film Board of Canada. finish! But the cameraman eff'ected a major repair job with the scanty tools he had. He got the Special's shutter working, and after the coal-oil immersion, the speed worked, too. We didn't only learn about what cameras could do in the North. We learned likewise how film behaved. Both have something in common. For cameras and film (exposed and unexposed) had always to be kept at what scientists, I believe, appropriately refer to as the (Continued on Page 372) American Cinematographer August, 1942 351