American cinematographer (Jan-Dec 1942)

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"Gmu, on Juily » t lUxiuvut to w. ^oim^ Left: Black-and-white scene enlarged to close-up and laterally reversed to show actor looking in right direction as he speaks title. Right: 8mm. Kodachrome enlarged to 16mm. Kodachrome and sound added. graphed with Type A Kodachrome or panchromatic film. If you're working in black-and-white, the faster the film you use in the camera, the better off you'll be, as it will minimize your exposure problems, and enable you to stop down for increased definition. In 16mm., the film being back-projected should be turned over or reversed laterally, so that the projected picture will appear correctly on the screen. Since 8mm. has only one row of perforations, you can't do this in 8, but you can get the same effect by mounting either a right-angle prism or a front-surface mirror on the projector lens and projecting at right-angles to the camera-screen axis. Be very sure the film is clean, and select a picture that has as little grain as possible. The screen I've used is made of a piece of tracing-paper set in the easel of the titler. You can (or could, until priorities intervened) get small screens of the same cellulose acetate the professionals use for their work; but for this comparatively small-scale work, I've found tracing-paper does very well indeed. If you look at the screen with your eye in the same position the camera's lens will occupy in shooting, you'll probably notice a "hot spot" — a circular area of greater intensity directly in line with the projector's lens. This "hot spot" will photograph as an area of slightly greater exposure than the rest of the picture. You can tone it down by careful application of white talcum-powder to your tracing-paper screen. The projector should be in the sharpest possible focus, as viewed fi'om the camera side of the screen. Be sure to focus the projector when the film is running through it. You can determine your exposure by meter, taking the reading with the meter placed half-way between the camera and the screen. To avoid having the meter misled by the room-lighting, have all of the lights in the room turned off when taking your reading, and also when shooting the scene. Since some of the scenes projected may be light, and some dark, it's best to take an average reading, making readings on several different scenes — both dark ones, light ones and normal ones — and averaging up the several readings this gives you. Once you're accustomed to this process, of course, you can learn to "follow focus" on your exposure, opening up the lens for the darker scenes, and closing it down for the lighter ones. But until then, an averaged reading is pretty safe — and lots easier. The big trick of the whole process is of course making sure that the shutters of your camera and projector don't sytichronize "out of step," for if that happens, one shutter will be open while the other is closed, and your camera will (Continued on Page 370) Mn .^' L,w fJ rwf' American Cinematographer August, 1942 357 Il__^