American cinematographer (Jan-Dec 1942)

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Tricks Make Titles Interesting By JEROME H. ASH. A.S.C A GOOD beginning is half the battle in interesting an audience in your picture — and an eye-arresting main title is one of the best ways I know of getting a picture off to a good start. Here are a few simple camera tricks that will help lift your titles out of the run-of-the-mill class. In professional pictures, you've seen titles apparently melt into a formless smear, haven't you? Well, here's an easy way to do it yourself. Begin by making a transparency of your title with a stillcamera, using any good, double-coated plate (not roll or cut film!) like the "Standard Orthonon." For a i)lain title, you can simply copy a hand-lettered or typewritten title written in black on a white card; the developed plate, being a negative, will give you white letters on a black field. For an "art" title, you can double-expose your transparency, copying the background from a suitable still negative. If you're shooting in Kodachrome, you can tone your plate with any of the commercially-available toners which will color the emulsion blue, red, green or sepia, and leave the clear letters uncolored. Now put this into a simple shadow-box attached to your titler so that all the illumination on the transparency comes from behind. Line up the title-plate and camera .just as you would in shooting any ordinary title. Now, here's where we come to the trick. In making the transparency, you expose and develop the plate as usual, but when you fix it, fix it in plain hypo — that is, with no hardener in the solution. This leaves the emuLsion soft. Wash the plate as usual, but only dry it enough to get the surface moisture out. When you've exposed sufficient footage of your title, heat the plate with an electric heater or blow-torch just outside the camera's field, and as close to the plate as you can get it. The heat will inelt the soft emulsion, and the title will disintegrate into a formless blob. Sometimes, depending on the means you have for heating the plate, you may find it necessary to have the camera running below normal speed — even in stop-motion, sometimes— to speed up this melting. If you mount this plate upside down while you do this trick, you can make the title "molt" in; and if you make two identical title-plates, you can make your title melt itself in and out. Another shadov/-box trick you can do when shooting titles in color is to use a black card with letters cut out, and illuminated only from behind. You can make the letters any color you want by putting colored cellophane behind them. For example, you can put colored cellophone straws behind the letters, arranged in log-cabin style and in rows of alternate colors. Lit from behind, you'll get a really remarkable effect. And, of course, you can double-expose any picture you want against the black field of this title, and you'll get the effect of multicolored letters superimposed on the picture. On the other hand, you can eliminate the black field and cut-out letters, and make your whole title of these back-lit cellophane straws, preferably with the straws, close together, running horizontally across the frame. Paint your lettering on the straws so that the letters will show up a black silhouettes against the luminous, colored background. Now, suppose you want these letters to animate in or out. If you want them to animate in, paint the letters, and then as soon as the paint has dried, rotate the straws so that the poi'tion of the letters painted on each straw is on the upper surface of the straw, and thus hidden from the camera. Shoot a few inches of the colored background this way. Then stop the camera and rotate the top row of the straws which have been lettered so that their painted surfaces are toward the camera. Shoot a few frames of this, and then rotate the next lower row, and so on, until all your lettering has been animated in. Then, of course, you can i-un off the necessary footage of the title, after which you can use the same trick to animate the titlelettering out. On the screen the effect will be that the letters "wipe" themselves in and out. Naturally, you can make the wipe move up or down as you wish, and by putting the straws in vertically or at a slanted angle, you can make the wipe hove horizontally or diagonally. Another trick you can use is this: take a ball and cover it with a thin coating of either plasticine or (if you can get it!) shellac. While this surface is still tacky, stud its surface with small fragments of mirror. Then hang this glittery, multifaceted ball behind the cellophane-straw curtain. Focus a spotlight on it so that the light reflects from the ball to the cellophane curtain in your titler's shadow-box. If you revolve the ball slowly while you shoot your title, innumerable little points of light will skitter across the title, changing color as they moVe from one colored straw to the next. A variation of this is to reflect the light from a drum faced with strips of mirror. I've seen packages of bodypowder and bath-salts for sale in drugstores which came in packages like this. Maybe you could give one to your wife — and then beg the box from her for your moviemaking! If you live in a city where there's a theatrical-supply store, you can get some of the multi-colored gelatin they use for colored-light effects in theatre spotlights. It's known as Brigham's gelatin, and comes in a variety of both solid colors and combinations. One type, I believe, has a sort of rainbow-striped effect and is available in several colors. Other types have mottled effects in different colorcombinations. The pattern known as No. 80, as I remember it, is a splotchy mixture of green and yellow. No. 85 is a mixture of green, red and clear gelatin. The No. 90, purple, green and clear, and No. 95, red, yellow, green, blue and clear. This material costs only a few cents a sheet, and by using it either directly behind your cut-out title-letters, or in front of a spotlight for front-lighting titles, you can get some very interesting effects. You'll add to them if you keep the gelatin moving so that the colorpatterns also move. The possibilities of three-dimensional trick titles are almost endless. These really run into what the still-photo enthusiasts call "table-top" photography, for what you do is to build a miniatui'e set around the lettering of your title. You can make them just as simple or as intricate as you want. One clever one I remember seeing in an amateur picture devoted to a child's Christmas consisted of a simple, terraced background — probably made of books or something like that, with colored cloth or tissue-paper over them. The letters — the familiar, wooden cut-out block letters — were arranged on the "steps" of this terraced stage. At the sides of the frame were two or three small toys — just enough to give the right atmosphere. The same title-idea was repeated for the end-title. And in this, a small mechanical donkey was wound up and brazenly wagged its tail at the camera, while it shimmied over toward the center of the frame! "Table-top" titles like this give you lots of opportunities to play around with your lighting. You can play with back-lighted and cross-lighted effects to your heart's content. I'd suggest making generous use of spotlights in this, and (Continued on Page 418) 416 September, 1942 American Cinematografher