Home Movies (1943)

PAGE 422 HOME MOVIES FOR DECEMBER Here's the Key to Good Titling! Home movie titling is really easy once you have a reliable guide that tells how to focus and center camera, what exposure to use, styles of lettering to use, title measurements, etc. Here is THAT guide written by America's title making authority, George Cushman. Its contents include: How to compose and letter titles Choosing proper title backgrounds Auxiliary Lens Chart and Field Areas How to develop your own titles Tinting and Toning Titles Complete plans for building titler Animation in Titles How to Center Titles Trick Effects in Titles Exposure Data for Titles Exposure Tests for Titles — and Scores of Other Topics THIRD EDITION NOW READY. ORDER YOUR COPY TODAY! $1 00 Postpaid VER HALEN PUBLICATIONS 6060 Sunset Blvd., Hollywood 28, Calif. 3 Scooped the JSewSreels • Von tinned from Pane 404 shots of the dirigible Hindenburg exploding in mid-air everal years ago. He, too, had been chased from the scene. Together we went into a huddle and decided we were going to get movies of the disaster come hell or high water. Paralleling the tracks on which the ill-fated limited cracked up, but outside of the railroad company's property limits, was a large factory building. With our fingers crossed and a prayer on our lips, we hurried over, hoping to get on the roof. At the entrance we were fortunate in encountering a pleasant and obliging guard who admitted us to the plant and directed us to the roof, after we duly identified ourselves. Having shot similar incidents before, I know from experience that a tripod is just so much excess baggage. I figured it would be a hindrance on this job and thanks to this hunch, I left it at home and thus was able to clamber with perfect freedom up a precipitous and narrow ladder inside the factory fire tower ;nd leading to the roof. Gaining the roof, the whole terrible spectacle spread out before us. The spot was perfect for picture making with a telephoto lens. We could see a huge crane lifting derailed coaches back onto the tracks; and another untangling a battered coach frame impacted against another. One coach was jammed against a signal tower; another was lying on its side, its roof ripped completely off as though by some gigantic can opener. Lending an eerie touch were countless blue flashes dancing midst the tangled coaches — flames from the torches of welders summoned from nearby war plants. These men had worked feverishly without rest all night long opening up the steel cars to permit rescuers to reach dead and injured passengers. Firemen, police and service men were everywhere. From my vantage point, I could plainly see the body of a woman wedged in the truck of one overturned coach. Deep within the coach was the body of a Marine. Several of his buddies stood silently by, awaiting his release — true to the Marine Corps slogan, "Semper Fidelis." I got my long shots, including one of the roof of an overturned coach. This was lying in a field beside the tracks where it had been tossed after the terrific impact. In the overturned coach, forty passengers died instantly. Working my way down from the roof to the top of a nearby shed, I passed the Paramount News crew grinding away on a fire escape landing. I continued down to the top of a freight car where a group of news photographers were working. From this car, I was able to secure some good closeups of the rescue squads in action. One shot, reproduced here, shows rescuers removing a shrouded victim from the wreckage. The day was still young when I concluded that I had given the scene the maximum camera coverage. So I hastened on to get the film developed and printed. I rushed the film to the laboratory and instructed them to develop it as a negative and make two prints. I shot the event with DuPont sound recording positive film. I have had good success with this film using it outdoors at Weston 12. When it is to be home reversed, I shoot it at Weston 8. I had no time to prepare titles, but the laboratory man saved the day with the suggestion that he would shoot the front page of the morning paper with its bold headlines heralding the tragedy. This he did; spliced his title negative to my film, and the next morning he delivered two prints, one of which I shipped via Air Express to Lisle Conway in Syracuse, New York. The other print I used for local exhibition, screening it first during a midaay show which my employer puts on daily for a local war plant. Theatres did not have newsreels of the tragedy until two days later, so I felt justly gratified in having scooped the newsreels and proving again the facility with which 1 6mm. can do a filming job. 3n forma lion PleaSe . . . • Continued form Page 394 A: The average length for a fade established in professional practice is 48 flames for either 8mm. or 16mm. film. This, of course, is the maximum. Often shorter fades are desired. This can be determined in terms of fraction of a second. Forty frames of 16mm. film equal one second. A 48-frame fade, therefore, would appear on the screen for a little over one second. A half-second fade, therefore, would require about 20 frames from point where fade begins to point of deepest opacity. Splices Part Q: Most of the splices in my films have been coming apart lately when 1 project them. I hate always used the same brand of cement. In re-splicing the film, I have done everything I could