Home Movies (1944)

PACE 40 HOME MOVIES FOR JANUARY Do you get a lot of pleasure from building your own home movie gadgets? Then here is the very book you want. Chock full of ideas for gadgets for 8mm. and 1 6mm. cameras and projectors— things easy for any amateur to make. HOME MOVIE GADGETS and how to make them $4 00 PER COPY postpaid Nearly 100 pages profusely illustrated with photos and sketches telling how to make gadgets and accessories for cameras; for making wipe-offs and fades; title making; editing and splicing; and a host of others. No theories — every gadget tested and proven by an advanced amateur. The plans and specifications of just one of the gadgets alone is easily worth the price of the book. Limited printing on first edition. Order Now! Ver Halen Publications 6060 Sunset Blvd. HOLLYWOOD 28 CALIFORNIA -Make .AlovieJ ZJell Story, . . . • Continued from Page )S should be reasonably complete as to detail of important action and story progression. Then, if there are any gaps in the pattern of continuity, they can be discovered in ample time to correct faulty construction and avoid necessity of retakes. Its much easier and less expensive to make these corrections on paper than later with film. Next step is to take this synopsis and break it up and expand it into a number of sequences, just as we would paragraph a story. Each scene and therefore each sequence will take up the story smoothly and logically where the previous scene or sequence left off. Its much like taking a photograph and cutting it up into a jig-saw puzzle. With the directions or shooting script carefully prepared, the pieces that are the scenes and sequences are sure to fit properly together and form the complete picture. When we have shot our scenes according to script, we should have a good motion picture. It will reveal the thought and preparation we have put into it. The story will hang together without artificial bracing. Each scene v/ill be pleasing to the eye in pictorial content. The uninitiated may say this is too much bother and work. Not at all! It's great fun. Its the biggest part of the fun of making movies. Pressing the camera release is, of itself, no great accomplishment. Its what is registered by the camera and the way it is presented on the screen that counts. Keep Scene* to CteentiaU . . . • Continued from Page 21 garage, closing the doors, entering the house, and once inside — shedding his coat and hat. These scenes were just excess baggage. There was no need for them insofar as the plot was concerned. They merely held up the story action — slackened audience interest. There are story plots, of course, where a sequence of such shots would be justified to build suspense, as for instance, if the story concerned the escapades of an unfaithful wife with her husband returning home unexpectedly while she was entertaining a secret lover. With the situation properly revealed to the audience ; with the wife shown hastily trying to get her lover out of the house before he could be discovered by the husband, the series of shots showing the husband enroute home and putting the car away would delay probability of the lover's discovery and thus keep the audience guessing. In shaping our films in suitable continuity, we should keep several points in mind: The public has become quite conscious of what constitutes good continuity from long and regular attendance of motion picture theatres. It has learned to anticipate action and is impatient to see the action it has anticipated. Many actions of everyday life have become so commonplace that everyone takes them for granted. Hence, it is not necessary to show them on the screen. A person steps into a car and drives away. It is wholly superfluous to show the intermediate steps of starting the motor, releasing the brake, shifting the gear lever, etc. Audience imagination fills in these familiar details. Many an otherwise effective travel picture is often marred by introductory scenes of bags being packed and stowed in cars. It is a general custom, when traveling, to pack bags and take them along, but the audience will assume this is being done without being shown. And even if luggage was not taken along, what difference would it make in the travel scenes to be pictured later? How much better to have that film for shots of places visited or of activities encountered along the way? The secret of interesting movie making lies in keeping our picture pertinent to the main subject matter at all times : to tell our story tersely, pointedly, and interestingly. We must never emulate the long-winded orator who takes ten minutes to relate a simple fact. Similar redundancy in movies is boring and expensive in film. Strive for straight-line story treatment— regardless -whether the movie is a playlet or a vacation picture. Cover the high spots of the subject and omit the commonplace and obvious. Less film will be wasted and a better picture will result. Cxperimen ta I Workshop • Continued from Page 2) camera, you can also determine if dirt or emulsion particles have accumulated on the pressure plate. To remove this, moisten a soft cloth or a piece of soft stick such as a manicurist's orange stick in finger nail polish remover and rub the accumulation away. Never use a hard or metal object to clean polished surfaces of the film gate. — Pete Larsen, Salt Lake City.