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I II E C I N E-T EC H N I CI AN
April-May, 1937
early in October, and its obj 1 ts were to reach Agades in the Central Sahara, and then' to join the Great Salt Caravan that trek> to Bilma, five hundred miles away. The shots we were to take were to be used in the Paul Robeson film, "Jericho." It was a task not easily undertaken, as time was limited, and Agades lay two thousand miles south of Algiers, our kicking-off point.
Strangely enough we left this North African Paris in a torrential downpoui (but it was the last rain we were destined to see until Victoria Station loomed out of the fog five months later).
Our two cars, laden until their springs bent in the wrong direction with camera-gear, rostrums, food, and camping-kit, set out on this hazardous Desert trek. Although those who are interested enough to look on maps of this section of the road will find it marked with hotels and petrol-pumps, there is no guarantee that at any given time they will reach any of them. For a few hundred miles the cars purred along a passably good road, but soon we ran into soft sand in which we laboured to free the cars that had embedded themselves axle deep in it, which, if exhausting, hardened us up for the difficulties which we knew lay ahead.
Hours were long, and we camped where the setting sun found us, taking time enough to snatch a hastily prepared meal before pushing on into the night to make up lost time. To add to our discomfort, our wheels disturbed clouds of red dust that covered everything we possessed, and it was with fear that we watched our cameras slowly but surely becoming covered with it. In spite of difficulties the miles were slowly left behind us. Over the long waterless stretches water was an additional weight added to our sadly overladen cars until we reached Agades, that French outpost and capital of Air, which has not advanced along the road of progress since I visited it in 1922.
Here we were informed that the rest of our journey must be undertaken by camel as the caravan route diverged from the motor road, which had not been crossed for a considerable time, and was reported to be deeper in sand than the roads we had traversed. Ten thousand camels were to make the desert crossing to Bilma. Four hundred miles with only one water-hole, the Oasis of Fachi, where we would be able to replenish our supply of this precious fluid. Nevertheless we soon obtained thirty-five camels, and after we had loaded all our belongings upon them we were off, out into the blue, on the heels of our lumbering beasts.
Seventeen hours a day we rode, with only occasional halts for food, or when the saddles became too wearisome to plod along in the soft sand to ease our ache. Nothing disturbed the endless stretch of sand ; not a break in its flat surface until the fourth day, when we came to a mighty field of dunes, that extended across the country like a gigantic scar.
Two days beyond Fachi we halted to await the arrival of the caravan we had come so far to photograph. Like a black wave we saw them approaching ; at first, movement seemed to have been halted, we could see no animation till they were upon us. Then they came, black wave upon black wave, extending East and West as far as the eye could see. The camels, tired and thirsty, groaned under their heavy loads of salt and dates that had been traded for cloth in Bilma. Added to which, fodder for man and beast had to be carried.
Theirs had been a dillieult journey, for sand-storms
had hampered their progress, and the native camelmen looked weary and jaded with their exertions.
Our task was now more trying, for not only had we to photograph this mighty host, but no sooner had we finished that work, than necessity forced us to be under way immediately to get ahead of the long columns that were fast disappearing into the horizon.
Fachi is indeed well named the City of Shadows. Manwide streets run from each other in bewildering profusion ; its native population is a mixture of every black tribe that has passed this way. Once it was a rendezvous for all the desert raiders who played havoc with any caravan that passed its walls, and the natives' hard, villainous features confirm how few years have passed since to venture so far unarmed would be courting danger.
Fachi is built in a series of connected circles which fortified strength makes it obvious how Fachi has existed so long, hidden away as it is in the heart of the desert, and at one time subject to any raiding band that cared to take toll of it. Its walls, built of salt and sand, glitter in the noon-day sun. Outside its walls were collected thousands of camels resting before taking the last step of the journey back to Air. At night our cameras worked overtime, photographing this great camp with the aid of flares.
Mystified natives gazed at our strange equipment, a little disconcerted at our curious behaviour. It was fine to rest a day before pushing on into the Desert hours before the camp was awake to await them at the first suitable "set-up."
We had been forty days in the saddle, averaging seventeen hours a day, and it was with relief that we saw the Mosque of Agades rise above the surrounding country — as if greeting us in return for a task well done.
We were tired, but happy !
Back Projection (continued /ruin page 5).
prove they are possible. Pictures that have had sui h apparently enormous backgrounds have invariably used two or more synchronised projectors side by side. Such scenes as large rooms with three big windows showing background beyond each, or wide landscapes on either side of a foreground clump of trees, are shot in this way.
It is, of course, physically possible to enlarge one frame to even more than the 350 diameters of the average theatre. But in so enlarging on the back-projection screen, the following insuperable disabilities arise:—
(a) Tremendous light loss at sides of screen ;
(b) Enormous magnification of grain ;
(c) Loss on contrast ;
(d) The amount of residual movement of the back
ground (which is only detectable in relation to ,1 truly stationary object in front of the backprojection screen) is increased proportionately to the areas of magnification.
Talking on recent pictures, Mr. Dickinson praised the back-projection logging scenes in the Goldwyn picture. "Come And Get It," which he thought some of the besl he'd ever seen. It is interesting, he added, that the background of all these shots, with one exception, were snowscapes, and snow, of course, with its whiteness automatical^ gives that hard contrast we have found so essential to good back projection.