The Educational screen (c1922-c1956])

m.. The Educational Screen IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIMMIIIIII llltllllllllllltlllllllllllllllltlllllllllKIIIIIIIII AMATEUR FILM MAKING Conduaed by Dwight R. Furness Director of Publicity, Methodist Episcopal Board of Education ■■B Amateur Motion Pictures Serve Cause of Science /^RDINARILY one is apt to ^^ think of stellar photography as involving' the most complicatcl devices, and to regard astronomical res6airch with a camera as no field for -the amateur. All the more interest attaches therefore to an 'unusual experiment recently carried on by John Q. Stewart, associate professor of astronomical physics at Princeton University, who successfully recorded motion pictures of the sunrise on the moon. The apparatus was constructed by , a graduate student and a consulting engineer, Robert Fleming Arnott, of Upper Montclair, N. J., whose device filmed the moon at 240 times less the distance between it and the earth. Pictures were taken a hundred times slower than usual, at the rate of one every six seconds, so that the sun was seen rising over the Ijumpy surface of the orb at a hundred times its usual speed. The crater of Copernicus could be seen as if it were no farther than a thousand miles away. The device consists of a small motion-picture camera using a 16 millimeter film and a special electric motor. This was hooked onto the eyepiece of the telescope b)' means of art aluminum frame. The pictures were taken at the slowrate of one every six seconds. When the pictures are projected, the sun rises 100 times faster than normal. The sunrise line of the moon travels across its surface at the slow rate of nine miles an hour at the equator, which contrasts with a corresponding speed on earth of more than 1000 miles an hour. High peaks on the moon are illuminated six hours before the glow of the sun's rays has disapp eared from the neighboring plain. .'\n area of 200 by 330 miles of the moon's surface was thus recorded. Booklet for the Amateur A booklet entitled "An Amateur Photoplay in the Making," and describing all phases of the production of "Fly Low Jack and the Game," has been published by the Eastman Kodak Company. It can be read profitably by those who are in any way connected with a cinema club or with the production of an amateur movie, and at least with interest by anyone who has a movie camera. Copies, either single or in quantities will gladly be mailed free upon request to the editor of CineKodak News. The New Filmo 70 D Camera The Filmo 70 D 16 mm. camera, recently announced by the Bell & Howell Company, is provided with seven film speeds — 8, 12, 16, 24, 32, 48, and 64 frames a second, an integral three lens turret, and a variable field area adjustment is built into the spyglass view finder. Correct diaphram stop settings for any of the seven film speeds other than normal are automati cally calculated after the exposure for normal speed has been determined from the exposure chart, by a relative exposure indicator. A folding winding key of the rachet type is permanently attached to the camera. Celluloid Class Reunions Motion picture reunions of university classes is a development which has been made possible by the wide use of home motion picture cameras and projectors, as worked out by O. D. Ingall of Nantucket, Mass., in connection with the twentieth reunion of post-graduate students of the Yale Forest School, which is described in Movie Makers. Many factors may conspire, to prevent all members of any given college class gathering for reunion, but under Mr. Ingall's plan every member of a class may now join his classmates in their return to the campus, in celluloid if not in actuality. His method is to have each member of the class who cannot attend secure a short amateur film of himself in some characteristic activity and send it in to the class secretary. These individual strips are then assembled, titled and a reel of the absent members results for showing at the reunion. Then the film, to which scenes filmed at the actual gathering have been added, is sent on a tour to each of the absent members. Thus each can see all of his old friends again and relive the pleasure enjoyed by his reunited class.