Home Movies (1944)

PACE 10 HOME MOVIES FOR JANUARY CINE ROUNDUP News Topics of Interest in the Realm of Movie Making The Year 1943 might well be marked as the turning point in the development of 1 6mm. motion pictures — the year an "amateur medium" came of age and was recognized equally potent as standard 35 in its ability to entertain, instruct and inform. Most powerful influence, perhaps, was the government's use of 1 6mm. films in training and in supplying screen entertainment to men in service overseas. Industry, too, discovered what many advocates of visual education have claimed for years, that instructional films shorten training time required for new employees from fifty to seventy-five percent. All this has had effect of giving authoritative weight to the heretofore dubious claims of the proponents of visual education. So much so, that big business, always capable of taking a well placed kick and running it for a touchdown, is now focusing attention on the wide and not yet fully explored field of visual education for post-war development. Where production, distribution and exhibition of instructional films for schools has floundered for years, unable to get a decent start toward the unlimited goal that lies ahead, big business now looms ready to take over and make something of this important field of motion pictures neglected so long by the very people to whom its success is most important. In August, Henry Luce and associates in Time, Inc., publishers of Time, Life, and Fortune, purchased a controlling interest in General Precision Equipment Corp., in a move believed paving the way into the 16mm. film field. It was previously reported that Time, Inc. had for months been surveying the 16mm. non-theatrical film field, with an eye towards the post-war field for 16mm. educational and entertainment films. Supporting this is fact that in November, Time, Inc. was reported to have purchased the world's largest library of strictly educational films from ERPI Film Consultants. There is some conjecture, too, that Time, Inc., with its interests in radio broadcasting and television, may have plans for a new instructional set-up for schools by which teaching films would be made more generally available to the nation's classrooms by means of wired television, thus circumventing the distribution problems that have been a serious factor in retarding development of visual education for schools to date. Wait Disney and Walter Lantz, topnotch producers of animated cartoons for theatre screens, have broadened their field of production to embrace training films which invariably require a measure of animation to clarify certain operational sequences. Originally called upon to supply animated sequences for outside training film producers, both entered the training film field and are reportedly now producing more training films than any other organization. Disney has publicly announced that his organization will produce teaching films after the war. ★ * ★ South America is fully awake to possibilities of the educational film. Recently, Nathan D. Golden, chief of the Motion Picture Unit of the Department of Commerce advised the short subjects departments of Hollywood studios that they will overlook a tremendous post-war market unless they immediately survey the 16mm. situation in Latin-America. At present, according to Golden, the office of Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs (CIAA) with its 13 16mm. projectors and its 69 mobile trucks and films, is bringing home to educators and civilians in the remotest regions of Latin-America, the effective teacher the motion picture can be when used for that purpose. Many Latin governments such as Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru are sponsoring use of visual education via motion pictures. ★ ★ * Commander E. B. Oliver, of the Bureau of Ships, Navy Department, recently stated: "In the Navy itself, we are now teaching just about everything by means of 16mm. motion pictures, fiom tying knots to swimming." ★ ★ ★ Recently, 2oth-Century-Fox's camera department put into feasible form, a process ultimately expected to give motion pictures the complete illusion of third-dimension. Method consists of a combination of lens treatment, cornposit perspective, and a certain lighting technique which can be applied with equal results to either black and white or color films. Cameras necessary to success of the illusion have extreme wide aperture and fast cutting action of the shutter. ★ * ★ Recently the Princeton Film Center, Princeton, N. J., received a letter via Clippermail from the office of Civilian Defense, Honolulu, T. H., ordering a motion picture entitled: "Know Your Enemy Japan!" As though they didn't! ★ ★ ★ The America Standards Association, long noted for their success in inducing manufacturers to standardize on such items as size and thread of screws and bolts, weights and thicknesses of metal plate, the weights of fabrics, printing papers, etc., have just announced completion of a new standard of Photographic Speed and Speed Numbers which will be of considerable value to the amateur photographer. While the present standard may well be considered a major advance in unifying method of expressing sensitivity characteristics of photographic materials, the committee's work is far from complete. Present standard describes detailed methods for determining values only for the commonly used amateur materials. It is planned that as fast as possible, standards will be drawn up to cover all classes of film. ★ ★ * Thirty-six minutes of continuous speech can be recorded on 11,500 feet of hair-like steel wire on a spool no larger than the ordinary 50 foot film spool, in a new type of magnetic wire sound recorder being built by General Flectric Company. It is reported that some manufacturers are looking into possibility of obtaining license to use system as a means of providing sound for home movies, especially 8mm., after the war. ★ ★ ★ When American aviators shoot down a Jap plane in Pacific battles, and no one is around to confirm the kill, they are still assured of due credit and the honor of painting another "rising sun" on fvselage of their plane indicating their shooting score. Installed in all fighter and bomber planes is a compact 16mm. camera which photographs everything within the aerial gunner's range while his gun is in action. The instant gunner or pilot presses firing switch of his weapon, the camera starts exposing film and records all hits and near misses.