American cinematographer (Jan-Dec 1942)

IN most parts of the country, the autumn months are the most colorful of the year. The changing reds, oranges and yellows of the autumnal foliage are a constant invitation to expose Kodachrome. People talk about "spring fever" — but it's nothing compared to the urge that comes in the fall to most cinefilmers to take their cameras out in the country and shoot for autumnal color! But this year things are different. Tires are scarce and gasoline, in many regions, even scarcer. The riotous fall colorings may still be there — so is the urge to shoot them — -but the usual means of getting out there is likely to be sitting in the garage in storage. However, that still needn't keep us from taking cinematic advantage of these colorful subjects. Only — we've got to change our technique one way or another. One way to do this to to change our method of getting to our cinematic stamping-grounds; another is to change our stamping-grounds. It may seem surprising to many of us who have habitually used the family car even to go to the corner store for a packet of smokes, but there are such things as street-cars, interurbans and busses. And they're still running. Often they'll take us at least to within striking distance of pictorially worthwhile countrysides. Similarly, we hear a lot about railroad transportation shortages, but these seldom exist on the little branch lines. And these little-travelled branch lines are just the ones mose likely to take us out into the kind of shooting country we want to reach! Even in such a thoroughly metropolitan area as that around New York City, you can discover several dozen of these little branch-line trains which can take you in an hour or so out into such rural placidity that you realize "Forty-five Minutes from Broadway" can be a lot more than just a song. I won't say you'll find the "Reubens" George M. Cohan sang about, but you'll find rural subjects that will delight your eye and keep your camera going as long as you've an inch of unexposed Kodachrome left. If you don't believe me, just study up a bit on the little branch-line trains in the timetable, and spend a holiday or so learning where they go! If you can't leave the city, there are always the parks, to say nothing of the more familiar tree-shaded thoroughfares. And a touch of autumnal color can transform even the most familiar scene into something seemingly new and decidedly worth filming. You could make a very interesting picture, for that matter, centering around the coming of autumn to your own neighborhood. It's still early enough so you can get an opening sequence showing the neighborhood foliage still in its early-fall greenery. Then show the first touches of fall colorings, using both long-shots and close-ups, and of course taking due care to contrast the trees with colored foliage against those as yet AUTUMN BYWAYS IN COLOR By SID HICKOX, A.S.C. unchanged. Carry this through as more and more trees and shrubs put on their autumn clothes. For human interest, you can build up little sequences showing the neighborhood children getting ready for school, and starting in again at their classes and homework. Sequences of the wife getting or making her fall outfit, and of father laying in the winter's supply of coal are "naturals," too. These human sequences should naturally be punctuated with scenes of the increasing spread of fall coloring. Then might come the first falling leaves, followed by shots of the neighborhood lawns carpeted with red, yellow and brown leaves, shots of father spending his Saturday afternoon raking them carefully up, and finally burning them. The picture could well conclude with scenes showing the coming of the first really biting autumn winds and, if you're lucky, the first snowfall, perhaps lap-dissolving into a shot made much later, showing the neighborhood at last in the snowy grip of winter. This, by the way, suggests several ideas which would be highly effective on the screen if you've the patience and persistence necessary to work them out accurately. For example, a series of lapdissolved shots of the same tree, or the same neighborhood, or even of your home going through the transition from early fall's greenery through the varied colorings of autumn to the stage of dropping leaves, bare branches and finally soft, white snow, would be extremely effective. You could make a sequence like this easily enough without tying up your camera, too. Simply mark a startingpoint at the beginning of the roll, and measure and record the footage of leader, and of each scene and dissolve thereafter. Each time you finish a scene, take the camera into a darkroom and care fully rewind the film, so that you can shoot other pictures on other rolls until the time conies to film the next shot in your lap-dissolved sequence. Then, of course, thread the camera with the marked starting-point in place, and run the film through with the lens capped until you've run off the footage that will bring you to the point where you stopped shooting on the last take. Back in the old days, I've known professionals who, making a sequence like this, held their film for more than six months, making each partial exposure as the opportunity presented itself. It will help, too, if you use a tripod for these scenes, and mark the exact position of the tripod with pegs driven into the ground. Thereafter, you can get the camera very accurately back in place by lining up the tripod-legs with these pegs, and of course measuring the height of the lens from the ground, so that it stays the same. The general technical treatment of autumn scenes in Kodachrome is simple. Wherever possible, frame your compositions so you can take advantage of color contrasts to give you interest and depth. Contrasting a brilliantly red or yellowleaved tree against a nearby one with dark-green leaves is always effective. Since you have color-contrasts to help you out, you won't need to make as much use of lighting contrasts as you would ordinarily. Simple flat and crosslightings are all you'll need most of the time. However, occasional back-lighted shots — especially of trees with light yellow leaves— can be tremendously effective. So, too, can close-ups of individual leaves. If you're a real master of exposuremetering, you can accentuate some of these effects to good dramatic purpose. Begin the picture with normal exposure. (Continued on Page 418) American Cinematographer September, 1942 411