Close Up (Jul-Dec 1929)

Record Details:

Title:
Close Up
Date:
Jul-Dec 1929
Publisher:
[London, etc., Pool]
Volume:
Close up ... devoted to the art of films
Leaf #:
000466
Language:
English
Subjects:
motion pictures, Motion pictures -- Periodicals
Collection:
Early Cinema, Global Cinema, and Switzerland
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:
June 20, 2024
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CLOSE UP Still, the ear of the spectator is not ready for the nuances that the eye will welcome. Sensibly Mr. Cameron does not waste time with these psychological problems, but gets on with his job. Operators will swear by his book, and at a system of entertainment which demands that they shall regulate tonal volume of sound reproduction by the number of patrons in the theatre. The lay mind is struck by the way a sound film must be rehearsed, if the best results are to be obtained, by each operator, much as a play must be rehearsed at each theatre. Sound tracks on the film are synchronized and the band can be treated like silent positive, but records would drive a saint to the depths of a character in one of Warner Brothers' underworld dramas. Splicing film with sound track is bad enough, for the join can be heard unless it is covered with a triangular patch of black lacquer, whose frequency is below audible range. The screens can no longer be opaque, the microphones are adjusted behind the screens, so that the sound will reach all parts of the house, and the fabric must be porous. Screens in use to-day, with loose threads forming a fine fuzz, are unsatisfactory because of their poor power of initial reflection, and because the interstices collect dust, rendering the fabric unfit for use in six months. I hope that I have given some idea of the vast amount of data in Mr. Cameron's work, which ranges from remarks on film speed indicators to the information that the central portion of the positive crater of an arc is the only steady fragment of the illumination. 328