The Cine Technician (1953-1956)

102 CINE TECHNICIAN July 1956 Dynamic Frame Technique At the Plaza, Lower Regent Street, recently there was the first demonstration of a " new " technique called " Dynamic Frame ". The film itself is a three reeler and was produced by Associated Pathe and the Experimental Fund of the British Film Institute and is in Vistavision and Technicolor. Its director, Mr. Glenn Alvey Jnr. is the mainspring behind the process. He chose the story from H. G. Wells' The Door in the Weill as it lends itself to a varied range of effects from fantasy to realism. The technique consists simply of a changing shape, proportion, and position of the picture frame in relation to the dramatic needs of the story. It is an attempt to solve the past and present limitations of composition. The old almost square 4:3 screen proportions are unsatisfactory for the immense long shots that were needed for say : historical spectacles. While the present wide screens do not solve the intimacy of a close up. More important, each past static composition whether square or wide screen neutralised its own impact, because every shot, whether close up or long shot, was proportionably the same shape and scale. Dynamic Frame now permits the director to vary the scale ratio at will. He can use the existing wide screens like vistavision or cinemascope or go back to the old conventional shape. He can achieve the desired effects of height or claustrophobia by vertical, tall, thin compositions or use the broad, shallow and free horizontal framings. Costs Negligible An important point, too, is that unlike the introduction of vistavision or cinemascope, the costs are negligible, as the process uses the existing wide screens. The changing shape of picture frame is based on a simple system of masking mattes constructed specially for the camera. The film is developed in the normal way and no adjustments or different lenses are needed in projection. A point, incidentally. that was quickly noted in the Daily Film Renter's editorial, " it's a production device pure and simple, costing the exhibitor nothing new in equipment. And it's British". In their brochure for the demonstration of Dynamic Frame, the B.F.I, posed this important question for the industry, "Is the Dynamic Frame simply a gimmick, or can it be an important contribution to film technique? By Lewis McLeod Some people have already hastened to chorus — "It's a stunt." Others more thoughtfully have said it is the latest attempt to hold audiences from drifting to TV. Our President, Anthony Asquith, said in his opening remarks at the demonstration "Its the most important contribution to film technique for many years. Its importance lies in the fact that it springs from an imaginative understanding of the film as a medium and is not merely a mechanical answer to television. For while it preserves all the splendid spectacular effects of wide screen, it restores to the director the possibility of intimacy". Great Possibilities The demonstration was correctly fudged by most people not by the success of this particular film, but by the tremendous possibilities it illustrates. Indeed most comments showed that its over-use in this purely sample film, made one a little conscious of the changes, thus distracting the audience rather than leading to an appreciation of the effects Mr. Alvey was trying to convey. Despite this, some of the movements and direct cuts in scene proportions I found strikingly effective. But The Door in tin Wtill contains its real possibilities only in embryonic form. Its full artistic maturity awaits its modern master. Veteran film makers realise that the idea of changing screen shapes by masking compositions is not new. One remembers Griffiths wall of Babylon shot from Intolerance, where he used vertical masking to achieve height. Similar masking is found in Eisenstein's Potemkin of people hurrying down steps i not the famous Odessa steps another shot). An example of horizontal masking was used by Lubitsch in 1919 in Madame Dubarry to give a long processioneffect of the hearse. This early masking was a similar effect to overcome the artistic limitations of compositions. Eisenstein (whom Chaplin considered to be the greatest film aesthete) gave a lecture to the technician branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science, at Fox Hill Studio in September 1930, on the subject of Wide Films. The title of the lecture was the "Dynamic Square! !" " Take it Seriously " "I would like to point out the basic importance of this problem to every creative art director, director and cameraman" began Eisenstein. "I appeal to them to take it as seriously as possible — for if we permit the standardisation of new screen shape without the thorough weighing of all the pros and cons of the question, we risk paralysing once more for years to come, our compositional efforts in new shapes as unfortunately chosen as those from which the practical realisation of the wide screen film now seems to give us the opportunity of freeing ourselves". He continued in his ponderous erudite style, telling us the difficulties of shooting totem poles, Gothic cathedrals and the "abysmal canyons of Wall Street". He referred particulary to the study of painting such as Hokusai's horizontal and vertical roll pictures, and the work of Edgar Degas, compositions he said, "available to the cheapest magazine yet exiled for thirty years from the screen. He criticised the idea that close ups are equally expressive on wide screen, by precisely defining the nature of a close up. "The impressive value of a close up lies not at all in its absolute size, but entirely in its size relation to the optical impulse produced by the dimension of the previous and following shots." Now Eisenstein established his genius in the cinema by his mastery of the principles of editing, as shown in the film classics Por< mkin, Nevsky, and also his writings. So his remarks about the need for a new assessment of editing laws because of the complete changes in screen dimensions and shapes are interesting today.