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36
CINE TECHNICIAN
March 1955
Newsreel cameraman filming during the South African War
A NEWSREEL MAN'S STORY
by Kenneth Gordon
THE third of this season's lecture meetings organised by the Technical Committee consisted of a talk by Kenneth Gordon on his experiences as a newsreel cameraman. Terence Obrien, Chairman of Newsreel Section, was in the chair.
Kenneth Gordon said he was going to talk about 36 years of active filming from 1910 to 1946. A time which saw the transition from ortho film to panchromatic, from silent to sound pictures, and with some early digressions into colour.
In 1910 the cameraman had to be a jack-of-alltrades — capable of processing his film, projecting it and running the show if necessary. The pictures of Edward VII's Coronation and the Prince of Wales' investiture at Caernarvon were developed on the train in a specially equipped darkroom and shown the same night. A service as fast as that given by TV today.
The Delhi Durbar of 1911, which he covered for the Gaumont Graphic, was processed on the spot with a special lab outfit built in Paris. The film was wound on to metal spirals 200 feet at a time, and immersed in the developer which had been kept on ice in football bladders. This was the first real organised newsreel coverage; special stands were erected for the cameraman, who had to wear
appropriate clothing— khaki when they were among the soldiers and top hats and frock coats when they moved in higher circles. Suffering from a touch of malaria and full of quinine he shot the Durbar and then developed the neg. which was cut on the job and 200 copies made which were shown in the Empire and places like China and Japan in many instances before they were shown in England. The printing was done with acetylene gas lamps — the electric circuits in Delhi were heavily overloaded and the voltage fluctuated considerably, which must have embarrassed rival newsreels who did their printing by electric light.
After the Durbar, Kenneth Gordon returned to London. At this time the Gaumont-Graphic had several labs, in the provinces. P.C.T. the first of the big circuits — had darkrooms fitted up in several of their theatres so that " locals " could be processed and shown the same night.
Newsreels often gave a quicker service then than they do now — of course there were not so many copies needed and none of the complications of sound.
Charles Urban was turning out news subjects in colour at this period — by the Kinemacolour system which used rotating filters on camera and projector