Home Movies (1944)

PACE 28 HOME MOVIES FOR JANUARY Commonwealth Announces Another Sensational Group of Major Company Productions in 16mm. Sound Six Proven Walter Hanger Pictures that packed the first-run houses to the rafters! Top-Flight Stars Ann Sheridan loan Bennett Fredric March Edward Arnold Laraine Day Walter Pidgeon Joel McCrea George Raft Pat O'Brien All Tops in Movie Entertainment Alfred Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent featuring Joel McCrea, Laraine Day, George Sanders, Herbert Marshall Trade Hinds featuring Fredric March, loan Bennett, Thomas Mitchell Slightly Honorable featuring Pat O'Brien, Edward Arnold, Ruth Terry Winter Carnival featuring Ann Sheridan, Richard Carlson, Marsha Hunt Eternally Yours featuring Loretta Young, David Niven, Hugh Herbert The House Across the Bav V featuring Geore Raft, loan Bennett, Walter Pidgeon Send for Booklet of Rental Rates 110 West 32nd St., N.Y. 1, N.Y. tint bath ready, we'll put the length of film in a pan or dish of water, loosely coiled, so that it becomes thoroughly wet to make for more rapid and even coloring. Concerning the tint bath, there are two commercial tints available in most camera shops which work equally well: Craig Cinetints — a powdered preparation which must be mixed with water to make up the bath — and Mansfield Fototints now mide by the Edwal Laboratories. The latter are supplied in concentrated liquid form in a handy shaker-top bottle from which a few drops of the dye are shaken into an ounce of water at ordinary room temperature to make the bath. Incidentally, in order to introduce Mansfield Fototints to movie amateurs as a medium for coloring their black and white films, the Edwal Laboratories are making available trial bottles of their color concentrates for twenty-five cents. These supply sufficient concentrate to color over a hundred feet of film, and will be of interest to those who wish to try this fascinating innovation in the cine hobby. Care must be taken that the dye is thoroughly mixed and evenly dispersed throughout the bath. A non-metallic vessel must be used such as an enameled saucepan, soup dish or porcelain mixing bowl. Avoid iron, copper or aluminum containers. An enameled photo tray is ideal, but any glass or china bowl will do as long as it will hold enough of the tint to completely cover the film to be colored. Now that the tinting bath is ready and the film pre-softened for it, the short length of film should be placed in the dye in a loose coil and the dish gently rocked to facilitate even coloring. The depth of color obtained depends upon the concentration of the bath plus the length of time the film remains in it. If directions on the bottle are followed as to making up the solution, a good color will result in about 2 minutes. If a deeper tone is desired, allow the film to remain in the bath for a longer time. Then, when a satisfactory tone is reached, remove the film from the color solution, rinse for a few minutes in a pan of clear water and then dry. Before hanging film to dry, it is a good idea to swab both the back and front surfaces of the film with a piece of wet absorbent cotton to avoid water spots and hasten drying. This swabbing operation may be dispensed with if a few drops of some "wetting" agent such as Edwal Kwik-Wet is added to the rinse water. The simplest way to dry the film without having to get into everyone's way is to rig up a light line across the room and then using ordinary paper clips as hooks, attach it to the line at 2 or 3 foot intervals through the sprocket holes. Let it hang in loops in a warm room. It will dry in an hour, or even less if Kwik-Wet has been used in the rinse water. When dry, the colors become permanent and fixed fast. If, however, tor any reason, you wish to remove some of the dye, any standard film cleaner will do the job. On the other hand, should it appear that the tint is too delicate in tone, retint the film exactly as though it had not been so treated. This will deepen the shade selected. In this same fashion, a film tinted one color may be reimmersed in a bath of another color for varied intermediate effects. The tints themselves may also be mixed when making up the bath to get middle shades. Thus, with the six colors available — Fire Red, Sapphire Blue, Amber Brown, Royal Purple, Emerald Green and Sunlit Yellow — any color combination can be worked out. Before closing, there is one point that may cause trouble. Some commercially processed films are coated with a lacquer substance after they are processed. This lacquer, of course, inhibits the tinting process and should be removed for best results. In such instances, it is advisable to write the film manufacturer or processor and inquire what solvent should be used to remove the lacquer. When possible instruct the laboratory to omit the lacquer when films are sent them that are to be tinted later. In a future issue I will tell how to use toners; also how to construct and use a simple processing frame so that lengthy strips of 8mm. or i6mm. film can be tinted or toned, or both, just as quickly and easily as short strips of individual scenes. The combination of the two arts, tinting and toning, not only will produce surprisingly colorful movies, but provide a new adventure for the home movie hobbyist. the yUonth • Continued from Page I J ing to my prepared script. I found this a great help and it saved a lot of time when actual shooting started. Except for a few closeups, all shooting on this picture was done in two evenings — two very busy evenings for me as combination cameraman, director, script girl, electrician and finally actor in a bit part in one of the scenes." All scenes in the shooting script were thoroughly visualized on paper before shooting began. In fact the entire shooting script consisted of sketches of the action with a brief written description of the details. "I have been using this system of script writing for years," Henze stated. "My reason for making these rough sketches is that it makes it so much easier during production to