The Cine Technician (1939)

56 TH E (' T NE-T EC TI NIC! A N June-July, 1937 Mad Dogs and Location Units By THOROLD DICKINSON AT the end of August, 1936, Fanfare Pictures sent .1 small unit to West Africa to shoot scenes, take research stills, study local colour, and bring back props and costumes for their first production, "The High Command," due on the floor at the Ealing Studios at the beginning of November. The Company ignored a tendency among associates to ridicule the project, a sentiment which evaporated when the results were shown in the finished film. The unit consisted of only four pci sons which was an acid test of their capabilities and temperament. The four were Gordon Wellesley, producer ; John Seago, production manager ; James E. Rogers, cameraman ; and the present writer, director. Our itinerary consisted of a voyage from Liverpool to the Gold Coast, where we started location work. (Before this began there were fourteen days of fun and games, laced with benevolently fascist conversation and the kind of music that the B.B.C. emits in its morning programmes). After the Gold Coast, Nigeria, where we spent two weeks on a 2,000-mile railway tour ; two weeks in Lagos, the chief port ; and, additionalh , half the unit spent a further week inland in Southern Nigeria. Our problem was to complete a journey of some 11,000 miles in eight weeks, during which time we were to expose 16,000 feet of film, the greater amount of material to fulfil a required schedule of shots ; the remainder to be used to make a two-reel documentary short. And all this before the end of the rainy season, for we were gambling on a combination of sunlight and cloudy skies to give us a better effect than the brassy skies of the dry season. The cameraman controlled and operated the camera equipment (his own Eclair and a Newman-Sinclair hand camera), the 16,000 feet of film specially packed for tropical conditions, the magnesium flares for night work, and, occasionally, the local electric light supplies. Fortunately Rogers had been to the Gold Coast before and his advice was invaluable in planning the trip. This experience also made it just possible for him to work without an assistant, but we determined not to indulge in this false economy in future, for the time spent on work which an assistant would otherwise have done could have been better employed on survey and other preparation work, and the physical strain of working in the tropics under these conditions was intense. The producer's function was two-fold ; first to make all the contacts with the civil and military authorities in order to explain the nature of the facilities required, and to round off these contacts on leaving ; secondly, to take and keep a record of all the hundreds of stills necessary for art direction and publicity work. Wellesley used a I i'n , 1 throughout, with the usual reliable results. The director accompanied the producer in all contact work ol a technical nature ; directed the shooting of all scenes (these covered back-projection plates, atmosphere shots, long shots involving the tise of doubles of the studio cast chosen from among the local European and native population ; and documentary shots) and kept a continuity record of all film exposed. [Howard Cosier Portrait. THOROLD DICKINSON. The production manager handled the finances of the expedition, arranged all supplies of food, transport, sleeping equipment (including beds, bedding and mosquito net . etc., and had charge of the staff of four native boys ; steward, cook, and two assistants. The first thing we had to learn was the enmity of the tropical sun. On the voyage out one of us went ashore in a heavy rainstorm at Sierra Leone in an ordinary trilby hat. He -pent most ol the time in -hop and in a taxi, and he was under cover in the tender going to and from the shore. But he suffered for three days afterwards from "a touch of the sun ; " headaches, sickness and dizziness. From dawn till 4.30 p.m. we learnt to wear a topee and like it ; to wear aertex underwear and change it often ; sweat thoroughly at least once a day ; and carry thick woollen jerseys for the occasions when we worked through the dusk into the night. We soon found that the European routine of work in the moming (indoors whenevei possible . light lunch, siesta till 4 p.m., exercise before sunset, a bath, a quinine tablet with soda water, and a long disinfecting glass of whisky as nighl falls, is based on sound medical experience. Our own mad-dog routine was dictated by the demands of our job and was justifiable because oi the short space of four weeks available to us.