The Cine Technician (1953-1956)

IL'l THE CINE-TECHNICIAN June 1954 theremin and a whole host of electronic musical instruments were created before there was any music to play on them. Composers had to be persuaded to exploit their capacities in new music, and perhaps that is one important reason why they never caught on. The film as a whole is in some sort an example of technique preceding and thus thrusting itself upon artistic impulse. Its real raison d'etre is as an article of commerce. No film magnate has ever seriously thought of asking cameramen if they would prefer the shape of the frame (settled more or less accidentally by Edison about 1890) to be changed to some other ratio than 3 : 4, or perhaps even made variable. No one suggests to the prominent directors of today that they might like to make a few silent films, or even documentaries, as a change from ordinary features, much as a composer may alternate symphonies and chamber music. The very idea that such opportunities might be offered sounds absurd. And so it may prove, say the objectors, with 3-dimensional films. They have been invented by scientists, not demanded by artists; and therefore in a real sense they will prove an infliction on the world of art — not, be it noted, because of their technical complexity, but because they have not sprung from any contemporary artistic need or movement. Yet this argument surely proves too much. Artists, only a little less than the rest of mankind, tend to be a conservative race, and to stick to established means of expression. The theremin may not have caught on, but the grand piano and the saxophone certainly did, and they were the products of inventors. As soon as they existed, people were ready to use them. TWO of the films in the Festival of Britain programme support this more hopeful line of reasoning, both of them animated cartoons by the Canadian artist, Norman McLaren. Gay, witty, and full of dancing life, these films whirl their images around in space with a fine sense of the new freedom which is there for the taking. In Rudolf Arnheim's expressive phrase, they look " as though Art were streaming from the skies." If the films of actuality had less to offer, it may perhaps be blamed rather on lack of time to experiment, lack of finesse in the equipment, and above all fear of too sharp a break with the accepted film conventions, than to inherent limitations in the medium itself. These new aesthetics, the history of men's efforts to create a solid-seeming world out of imagination and light, and some of the story of the latest films in space — all this may appear later in a longer and more discursive work, The Stereocinema. Even in these pages, if the reader will bear with the long chain of mathematical reasoning, will be found a description of some of the almost magical transformations which the 3-dimensional film can effect. By altering constants in the stereoscopic transmission system, an object of known size can be made to expand or shrink; it can be stretched to infinity or squeezed as flat as a postcard; it can be turned inside out ; it can be made to appear simultaneously in front of and behind another object. The nearnesses of things can be jumbled up out of all relation to reality; perspective, light and shade, and the apprehension of depth may be brought into vivid conflict. Such an array of powers in the hands of an artist could make Picasso look like an academician. But the artist would need to be another Picasso. There is here an unfilled field for exploration, fascinating in its possibilities, at the meeting ground of mind and mechanism. As tw*mtf as Ever THIS year the British Journal of Photography reached its century, and now, with the spring, comes The British Journal Photographic Almanac; not quite a hundred years old yet but getting on that way, for this is its 95th year of publication. Regular students of the B.J. Almanac will recollect that the first article is always an editorial, dealing authoritatively with some wider aspect of photography. This year the editors have turned to the history of photography for their theme under the heading " The Seven Ages of Photography." The seventh age — the age now developing — they characterise as " the age of photography in colour." and this description appears to be borne out by the contents of this year's Almanac. Three out of the five special articles deal with colour photography : " Evaluating Colour Quality on Tripack Materials," " Colour and the Medical Photographer," and " Masking in Multi-layer Materials." In the section devoted to Formulae there is given a complete list, running to six pages, of all the sensitive materials available to the colour photographer, and the section dealing with the technique of colour photography, revised to date, fills 28 pages and includes all processes available in this country. Another new feature is a very complete list of materials for still monochrome photography with speeds given in B.S./A.S.A. exposure indices. The table of sensitive materials suitable for medical photography is included again, brought up to date. So have the guide to the technique of electronic flash and the notes on reciprocity failure. It goes without saying that all the regular features are also included; the reviews of new apparatus and materials, the abstracts of new methods and techniques, formulae, glossary of technical terms, lists of text-books on the various branches of photography, directory of repairers, and of course the pictorial supplement with its examples of work by leading photographers. it is published by Greenwood & Co., has 636 pages, plus 32 pages in photogravure, and costs 5/ in boards and 7/6 in cloth.