Home Movies (1944)

HOME MOVIES FOR JANUARY • Skip the redundant shots of packing suitcases and filling the gas tank and use the footage for more story-telling shots like these in outing and vacation films. keep your mm DOWN TO ESSENTIALS More Pertinent ActionLess Wasted Film. B y I OTHING, perhaps, impresses us so much with the value of a thing as when we no longer are able to have it. Take film for instance. When it was easy to get, the waste of film on useless and inconsequential shots by some movie makers was startling. Today, when we are lucky to acquire a roll of film, there's a tendency to be more frugal, more careful in the selection of our filming subjects. Many movie makers still are inclined to follow techniques of yesterday. In filming a record of a vacation trip, many continue to clutter up the beginning of their picture with long sequences of scenes of preparation and the getaway. An interesting example of this was observed recently by the writer in an exhibition of cine club contest films. One film in particular depicted a family's visit to Yosemite, potentially a superb photographic subject. To establish a basis for continuity, the filmer opened his picture with scenes in his home establishing the fact by action and titles that the vacation trip to Yosemite was about to be pictured — which was proper. But there was endless footage showing detail of the family's preparation for the trip. Bags were packed, luggage stored in the car, the tires checked and the gas tank filled. All this probably consumed 25 or 30 feet of film. These details not only were unnecessary, but boring to the audience before whom the film was screened. It was not essential to the story. With interest in Yosemite created by the main title and the opening scenes, the audience is impatient to get there. It isn't interested in luggage packing, nor of filling the tank with gas. Today, this is ordinary routine attendant to any lengthy automobile trip and quite understood by any audience without need of picturing it. Proper construction of this picture would have taken the audience directly to Yosemite by cuts, fades or dissolves, immediately after its identity was established. Another scenic film pictured the autumnal beauties of a picturesque countryside as seen by a family group on a hike. But the reel opened with a number of interior shots showing Father at home before start of trip lacing his boots, putting on his coat and similar meaningless details. Father's donning of the coat, we discovered, had no signifi cance in the sequences of outdoor shots that followed. Actually, it was a waste of film insofar as it contributed to continuity. If the coat had an integral part in a story development of the picture, it would have justified the film. As, if in putting it on, a gun falls out and thus leaves Father defenseless when later threatened by a dangerous snake. Otherwise, the audience which is primarily interested in the scenic shots doesn't care at all whether Father wore a coat, a sweater or a bathing suit. The man who filmed the picture probably would argue that making these shots presented opportunity for getting some wanted closeups of Father. But if closeups were desired, how much better to make them in conjunction with some of the scenic shots: closeups of Father gazing at distant scenery and backdropped by a bough clustered with colorful leaves, for example. The film rightfully opened by establishing fact it was a record of a family hike. But it should have jumped into the story with a sprinter's start. Another picture, an otherwise pleasing household playlet, showed a husband returning home after a day at the office. All that was really necessary to the plot was to actually show him arriving home — a shot of the husband walking in the front door would have been ample. But this energetic filmer, unmindful of the film he was wasting, pictured the husband driving homeward along the street, turning into the driveway of his home, driving into the • Continued on Page 40 21