Home Movies (1954)

FOR HOME MOVIES WITH THAT PROFESSIONAL TOUCH FAST/ SENSITIVE! MADE FOR ACTION Weston tungsten rating— 225 ASA tungsten rating— 300 ORIGINALLY DESIGNED FOR TV Now available at camera stores 8 and 16MM and sound COID SEAL SPECIAL Background for beginners HOW TO MAKE A MOVIE) The cheapest items in the movie maker's list of essential equipment are usually omitted altogether. A stub of pencil and a few sheets of paper can mean a better film than any amount of expensive apparatus. Yet most cine fiends seem to have a horror of putting anything down on paper. The word "script" sends the average movie addict scuttling for cover. "I know what I want to film.'" he ll mutter sullenly from the depths of his home workshop. "What's the point of writing it down shot by shot?" I nfortunately. the answer to this is that very few filmers really do know what they want to film. Question them closely and they'll explain that they just want to show the family being themselves. It's certainly a most laudable object but. as so many results show, good intentions aren't always enough. It's a pretty safe bet that if a man can't put the outline of the film he intends making down on paper, the film won t be very successful. I don't suggest that literary ability goes hand-inhand with cine ability. The professional cinema has often shown how a word-spinner can get hopelessly lost in the film world, where movement is the most important element. Words, in fact, can easily lead the ardent beginner astray. Movies demand that the producer thinks — and writes — in pictures. At first it isn't easy. But a little practice works wonders, as in most things, and it isn't long before a pictorial script can be sketched out quite simply. Think first of your subject: let's imagine you just want a straightforward record of a family party. If you leave it all to luck and charge into the frav shooting off film in all directions, you'll finish up with a hodge-podge of shots which just don't hang together, no matter how conscientious you might be at the cutting bench. Perhaps you think a film of this kind can t be neat and tidy unless you invent some wild story which will strain your own imagination, your relations' powers of acting and your audience's patience. Don't believe it! The partv itself is story enough, if it s handled in the right way. What's the basic situation? Your relatives and friends arrive in batches. spend a pleasant I we hope) evening, and depart. But there's a little more to it than that. This is where the pencil and paper are needed. How should the film begin? The arrival of the guests seems the obvious answer, but if you face each new arrival with a battery of lights and a whirring camera you know quite well that they'll go horribly coy and peer straight in the lens. O.K. So a bit of faking is called for. If you explain to your guests immediately after their arrival that you'd like them to repeat their actions of a few minutes ago. you should get good results. Prov iding people are asked to perform familiar actions, they're not usually too self-conscious. Let them all have a good look at the camera before you start, and then inform them Suzan Ball, movie starlet edits her own home movies while pet feline Chatta looks on. that you trust that will satisfy them for the rest of the evening, because they're not to look at it again. Having decided on your opening sequence, draw a few small 4:3 ratio rectangles and sketch in your first shots. \ ou know your location and you know your cast. It's up to you to get the best out of both. Don't forget that the oldest rules are aften the safest. An establishing long shot may be the usual opening, but it's none the less commendable for that. So go ahead and start off with the hall and the wife about to open the front door in your first little sketch. Then what? There "s your first visitor and his family, standing in the doorway. Let's see clearly who it is. A close-up will show us who the guests • See "BEGINNERS" on Page 434 KIN-O-LUX Inc. 105 WEST 40TH ST., NEW YORK, N. Y.