Close Up (Mar-Dec 1931)

Page scan 000334 from Close Up

Record Details:

Title:
Close Up
Date:
Mar-Dec 1931
Publisher:
[London, etc., Pool]
Volume:
Close up ... devoted to the art of films
Leaf #:
000334
Language:
English
Subjects:
motion pictures, Motion pictures -- Periodicals
Collection:
Switzerland, Early Cinema, and Global 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:
June 20, 2024
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316 CLOSE UP High intensity is needed to offset porous screens ; but conversion to high intensity is a costly procedure. The demand for more and more light has actually resulted in the production of synthetic diamonds in the projectioncarbon's crater. Mid-intensity illumination arrived to reduce amperage : low intensity lamps are now able, after the expenditure of five shillings or so, to produce high intensity illumination on the screen. Small adapter chucks will fit to existing lamps (whether horizontal or angle arcs) so that a range of carbons, which possess all the characteristics of high intensity carbons, can be substituted. American architects are considering the reversal of the auditorium slope towards the rear of the theatre instead of towards the stage. They wish to do away with the idea that some seats are better than others. Possibility of unexpected acoustic problems arising out of the application of this plan will be met by variety of building materials, such as the new asbestos praxboard. English experiments attempt to deliberately distort the sound output in the theatre with electrical filters in order to compensate for distorting effects of the hall (two blacks making a white !). STEREOSCOPY. Here the stereoscopic stills! A lined screen is used in the plate holder : parallel black lines drawn on the opaque black coating on the rear side of the glass plate. The photograph is taken by moving the camera in an arc round the object : at any instant the camera forms a photographic image only of those parts of the plate that lie immediately back of the transport lines. Dr. Ives showed a highlv expensive screen of glass rods reflecting light back in the direction from which it came. A large number of pictures, originally made from different view points, are projected on the screen ; so that, with a large enough number of projectors, any observer, no matter what his position, sees a separate picture with each eye. George and John Berggren used a screen of crushed glass and a camera with a double lens acting on the same principle as the human eye. Their camera, they say, is capable of photographing scenes at a distance of five miles! " Such scenes," they add, " would be projected on a huge screen !" The sophisticated public used to gasp when the avant-garde painted a close up on rubber, stretched the rubber to bursting point, and wound the camera backwards. Today, such simple joys are no longer possible : no more melting the transparency on a lantern slide and recording the merry fun. The public has transferred its interest to the scientists. Film travels at 2,160 miles an hour: 40,000 pictures a second! For such super speeds the camera has no shutter : successive pictures are made by intermittently illuminating the object being photographed. Complete organ ■without pipes I Stuart Davis jokingly suggested this to me when films first appeared on the horizon : recorded tones played through amplifier — now a fact. Marvels of the photo-electric cell! Even for turning on the street lamps after dusk, testing cigarette paper, the growth of bacteria in solution — sideshows to film wonders ! . . .