The Cine Technician (1953-1956)

■ K ^""'" May 1954 i928 Wide Screen jjiocess by Georye Hill and Prof. Alberini. Photoyraphed on normal 35mm. stock, pictures sideways covering ten sprocket holes, optically reversed in printing. Sheet music from the film of An Inspector Calls was displayed in the windows of Francis, Day & Hunter's classical and light music department in Soho Square, when I called on Brian Bradley. Established in the boom period of Minstrelsy, the firm can regard film music as a comparatively new development; not only do they exploit music from features, but provide some 300 modern titles of stock music for second features, newsreels and shorts. From personal experience I know how suitable F.D.H. discs are on shorts, as they are specially recorded with the problems of the dubbing editor in mind. Equally popular is W. Paxton's music, recorded on tape and disc. But whenever you mention the wide use of their music in films, Bill MacDonnell always adds the reminder, "and TV." Many cutters have found Paxton's selection of library sound effects invaluable in documentaries, newsreels, " and TV." Some people think that the only help that needs to be given to the British film industry is money, and they look to the National Film Finance Corporation in Nascreno House with appealing eyes. But that building is also the headquarters of a long-established company that gives an equally essential service to all sections of our industry. Ask its Managing Director, Arnold Williams, any question about the firm, and, whatever his reply, he will tell you in slow and deliberate words about " National Screen Service " — always a slight, natural emphasis on that last word. The mainstay of N.S.S. is its Trailers, and few cutting rooms in British feature studios don't know how Esther Harris and Mike Stanley Evans and their teams descend on them during the busiest stage of editing, and tactfully extract a strange assortment of scenes that become moulded into some two hundred feet of film, full of opticals, that tell the cinema audiences all that is good for them to know about the coming attraction. As skilled, yet as limited, as the art of the miniature painter, the value of their work is seen by the fact that 92 per cent of our cinemas show a Trailer sent out by N.S.S. , and, of course, the Trailers are made in the closest co-operation with the Publicity Departments of the renters and producers. Not only are the Trailers produced at National Screen's Perivale branch, they are processed (when in black-and-white) in the laboratories there that are under the control of Lewis Rudkin, and they are despatched to the cinemas from Perivale. It is in this renting side that the strength of the company lies, because N.S.S. have become the experts in the handling of these small consignments of film. If a two-minute film is wanted to appeal, say, for funds to help save Westminster Abbey, what is more logical than that N.S.S. should distribute it? — and what is more logical than that N.S.S. should produce it? And so they all come, the filmlets that help the cinemas sell more ices and orange squash, those that warn you to be careful on the roads, and those that get you to stand for a few moments while the National Anthem is played. Most of these special productions are directed and photographed by " The Two Normans " Norman Hemsley and Norman Johnson, both early recruits to A.C.T. But pioneers of the film trade have also been active in a concern that has been operating for 28 years: Howard Gave, for instance, who played the part ol" Jesus Christ in Griffiths Sign of the Cross, was for some time Progress Chaser at Perivale, and the late Cecil Hepworth, who gave so much to the early British film, was with N.S.S. to within a few days of his death last year. But National Screen Service looks to the future, too, and is now planning to improve the quality of posters that exhibitors show; this service, which is being carefully prepared for later this year, will hire out attractive posters to the cinemas to help them in their business — and so, indirectly, help the producers and the renters of the films shown.