Close Up (Jul-Nov 1927)

Record Details:

Title:
Close Up
Date:
Jul-Nov 1927
Publisher:
[London, etc., Pool]
Volume:
Close up ... devoted to the art of films
Leaf #:
000486
Language:
English
Subjects:
motion pictures, Motion pictures -- Periodicals
Collection:
Global Cinema, Switzerland, and Early Cinema
Format:
Periodicals
Contributor:
Library of Congress, MBRS, Moving Image Section
Sponsor:
Library of Congress, Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division
Coordinator:
Media History Digital Library
Description:
As an active film magazine, CLOSE UP lasted only a short time, from 1927 to 1933. Yet the legacy of this English-language periodical, which was published in Switzerland, continues to matter. Edited by Bryher and her husband Kenneth Macpherson, CLOSE UP became THE magazine for energetic debates about the nature of cinema and manifestos imagining new forms of filmmaking and spectatorship. The magazine published articles by filmmakers, such as Sergei Eisenstein, and female literary modernists, such as H.D. and Gertrude Stein. As film scholar Anne Friedberg explains in the anthology CLOSE-UP, 1927-1933: CINEMA & MODERNISM, 'CLOSE UP became the model for a certain type of writing about film -- writing that was theoretically astute, politically incisive, critical of films that were simply 'entertainment.' For six and a half years, CLOSE UP maintained a forum for a broad variety of ideas about the cinema; it never advocated a single direction of development, but rather posed alternatives to existing modes of production, consumption, and film style.' Like Friedberg's own writing, CLOSE UP continues to be essential reading for anyone interested in the history of film and media theory. -- Eric Hoyt, 2014
Date Added:
August 29, 2022
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CLOSE UP the set is brilliantly (only in one sense of the word) lit. Please don't think that I am advising you to light a set hke this, I am only presenting you with a prehminary exercise. You will have found out one or two things by doing this. You will have discovered that you frequently want a spot shooting down a wall from the top of a set to 'lift' a shadow. (You may use a spot like this on exteriors to suggest the illumination of a street lamp.) You will realize too that often you want a lamp shooting on to a set, and yet keep its rays shaded from the lens of the camera. This is done with a 'nigger', a large black-board in a frame, rather like an easel. Again you will know that it is difficult, when there are several lights on a set, to find out whether a light covers a certain object or not. To discover the range of lamp you must wave your hand in front of it, and you will see the shadow on the object. WTien the actors are in the set you have another indication of how to place your lights. You can, and should, throw some light on to them. Experience will show you that in a 'close-up' you will get a shadow of the nose thrown on the face, if your lights are too near. This difficulty must be overcome by 'diffusing' the lights, that is by placing a frame of some material in from of them. Silk is softer than hnen, and oil paper makes the light still more spread. The actors would have a very worried expression in a 'close-up' if you did not diffuse the light, besides they would be candidates for a severe attack of Kleig eyes. There is the alternative of using soft mercury vapour lamps which cast no shadow, but the camera 44