Home Movies and Home Talkies (Jun 1933-May 1934)

172 HOME MOVIES & HOME TALKIES MAKING THE MOST OF YOUR FILMS 1.— Splicing By Percy W. Harris, F.A.C.I. No matter what your intentions have been — no matter what your equipment may be — the only way yovir films will be judged is by their appearance on the screen ! And if they can speak for themselves without the necessity of a running fire of exjDlanations and excuses from you, so much the better ! I find that a great many amateur cinematograph ers, careful enough in the comjDOsition of their pictui-es and in the necessary technical details relating to focusing, exposure, etc., are strangely careless when it comes to the question of presentation. Far too often films are shown just as they have been received back from the processing station, sometimes even without joining tip the shorter lengths. Scene follows scene in bewildering confusion, and before one has time to appreciate any one of them the next, and totally unrelated, shot fills the screen. Such a procedure is confusing to the audience and does little justice to the pictures themselves, while the attempt to explain the successive shots are nearly always a failure for the simple reason that the explana Fig. 1. Film broken (enlarged picture) tion of a scene is rarely finished by the time the shot is over ! All this can be avoided with very little work and one's summer films improved almost beyond recognition, while the additional pleasm-e of the work will come as a revelation to many. " Editing " may sound highly skilled work to the uninitiated — and so it is in its more advanced forms — but simple editing can be undertaken by anybody and is a most enjoyable pastime for autumn and winter evenings. What Editing Means Editing, briefly, consists of cutting out the bad and unwanted parts, rearranging the scenes in suitable sequences and splicing them together. The preparation of titles and thensubsequent insertion is also a branch of this work, but this has so many points of special interest that the question of titles will be left for a further article. Meanwhile, I want to give you a few hints on the improvement of your films based on personal experience. Not that this particular method of working is the only one, or necessarily the best, for there are many ways of carrying out the work, but perhaps it is helpful to deal with one particular way and then you can subsequently modify it to suit your own special needs. Before you can do any satisfactory work in editing, cutting, inserting titles and so forth, you must be able to make a good splice, and this requires a certain amount of apparatus. This apparatus is not necessarily expensive, but it must be accurately made otherwise the joins will not pass satisfactorily through the projector. I do not propose to deal with any special makes of splicing apparatus nor do I want to suggest that good sjjlices can only be made with expensive outfits. Just as satisfactory a splice can be m.ade with an outfit costing a few shillings as one which sells for a "fiver," although this latter will make our work much • {uicker when we have many splices to do. What is a Splice } What is a splice ? It is a strong and accui-ately made jom of two pieces of film. If it is properly done, the join will be just as strong as the film itself, will be invisible on the screen, and will pass through the projector just as smoothly as the rest of the ])icture. The requirements of a good splice are that there should be sufficient overlajj to make a good jom, not too much to spoil the picti.ire and that Fig. 2. Two ends of film cut for splicing the lutiform spacing between adjacent sprocket holes should be accurately maintained. The film itself consists of a special kind of non-inflammable celluloid base coated on one side only with gelatin?, which in turn carries the special silver salts in which the image is formed. Ordinary photographic film as used in still photography is made of celluloid coated on both sides with gelatine, one layer carrying the picture, the other being clear and serving only to prevent curling. Gelatine shrinks when it dries, and if an ordinary film had gelatine coating on one side only this, when shrinking, would curl the film up in ap. rmpleasant manner. By having coatings on both sides both shrink equally, and one balances the other. In the case of cinematograph film, however, we actually require it to be coiled up and a non-curling base would have no special advantage. The absence of any gelatine on one side of the film is a distinct advantage in the case of cinematograph film for, as we shall see in a moment, it helps adhesion. The Emulsion Problem When we sjilice our film we cut it in such a way that when the sprocket holes on each side of the join are a correct distance from one another there is a slight overlap of the two pieces of film. The shiny or noncoated side of the film joint, therefore, overlaps the coated side and if we could satisfactorily stick the uncoated celluloid to the coated gelatine there would be no need for scraping. However, no satisfactory solution has been