Business screen magazine (1946)

Disguised as a delivery boy, the cameraman hid his camera in a cardboard box to shoot on board a New York City bus. The film crew, disguised as tourists, carried equipment to secret setups on board ship hidden inside small suitcases. They were shooting sync sound bits for (gasp!) Candid Camera. They were using an NPR. The cameraman boarded the bus with his cardboard box, and sat down by himself. The soundman got on at the next bus stop, with his Nagra in its leather case hanging unobtrusively from his shoulder. The director was waiting at the next stop, with a trombone player from the local high school band, in full band uniform with trombone. And at every stop thereafter, another member of the band, in uniform with instrument, climbed on the bus and joined those already on board in playing selections from John Philip Sousa. Smile you're on Cardboard Box. Through the small holes in his cardboard box, the cameraman shot the bus driver's reactions, which ranged from amazement to fury. When the driver stopped the bus to look for a policeman, director-interviewer Bob Schwartz tapped him on the shoulder and delivered the immortal lines: "You're on Candid Camera." The bus driver didn't believe it, even when the cameraman got up and walked over to him, still rolling, to get a close-up of his expression as Mr. Schwartz told him that inside that little cardboard box was a motion picture camera, taking pictures. Gasp. NOVEMBER, 1970 Psst! — Hand me a Chicken Leg. The cruise to Bermuda took four days. If the Candid Camera team were discovered by a passenger, the news would spread fast and they would be unable to work for the rest of the time at sea. Several bizarre situations had to be set up and shot withouttheirvictimsknowing what had been going on until the last day of the trip. The film crew ate in the passengers' dining room: the actors had to skulk inside their cabins all the time — except when they were impersonating soup-spilling stewards or starving stowaways. Hidden inside one of the lifeboats, the "stowaway" would lift its canvas cover a few inches and ask a passing passenger to please bring him a chicken leg from the buffet table. Suspicious Suitcases Prohibited. To get to each new setup, the film crew carried their equipment casually through the passageways inside small suitcases — big cases would look too suspicious. For this, they needed a camera about the shape and size of a briefcase — and luckily, they had one. The NPR. At the setup, anyplace where there was room to shoot they couldn't use be circle 131 on reader sen/ice card cause a passenger might wander in. Anyplace where they wouldn't be discovered was too small to shoot in — so they used that. I said Sync, Madam -not Sink. No room for 1200 foot loads in there. No AC power. No tripod, even, half the time. Certainly no blimp. The shooting to aired-footage ratio on Candid Camera was around a hundred to one; and the best action often happened at film runout, of course. Gasp. But Mr. Schwartz reports that the two-man crews could change the NPR's magazine literally in three seconds: and the NPR's built-in clapper automatically re-established sync. With earlier cameras, they had used a system of warning lights to let the interviewer know that he should stall the action while the crew changed magazines. But with the NPR it was found to be unnecessary. The NPR turned out to be the ideal Candid Camera camera. NPR Brochure? Eclair; 7262 Melrose, L. A. Calif. 90046 31