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

216 HOME MOVIES & HOME TALKIES MAKING THE MOST OF YOUR FILM II.-CUTTING By PERCY W. HARRIS, F.A.C.I. NOTE : Many of the entries received for our " Olympia " Competition would have been greatly improved by cutting. This article gives some useful hints on the subject LAST month we discussed the way to make a good splice and the various difTiculties which have to be overcome. Assuming that you can now make a good, strong and clean splice, let us see what is the most convenient way of taking the next step— the cutting. While you can buy all kinds of elaborate and expensive appaiatus for editing, some of the best work I know has been done with nothing more than a pair of scissors, a splicer and a bottle of cement. If you are doing much editing j'ou will find it a great convenience, however, to have a pair of geared re-wind arms, mounted at each end of a baseboard about 2 ft. long, between which you can, if you like, mount your sjalicer. Per.sonally, T do not like the splicer on the same baseboaid as the ro-winds, but in this matter tastes differ. The ptirpose of the re-wind, of course, is to run the film off one reel on to another, backwards and forwards as desired ; to serve as a holder for the reel on to which the properly edited film is taken, and so forth. Some more expensive outfits have, in addition to the two geared re-wind arms, Cut and splice, and particularly cut, if you want to i m p ro ve your pictures ! an illuminated box in the centre over which the film passes so that it can be examined frame by frame with great accuracy by means of the magnifying lens or lenses provided. One editing device already reviewed in this magazine (p. 330, February, 1933) enables you actually to see the film in animation by means of a kind of shutter — in fact, there is no end to the elaborations you can fit if you want. The very best of them is nothing more than a convenience and a help in speeding up your work, and if you can achieve good editing with them you should be able to do just as good work without, pi-ovided, of course, you take a little longer time. In any case, if you can manage it, I strongly advise you to get a pair of re-wind arms — they do save so much bother and time. Assuming, then, that you have the re-wind arms, choose a reel that you iber of Zoo entries for our " Animal Filr title should prove useful Competition, this want to edit, together with an empty reel sufficiently large to take the completed film. Before you do anj^thing else take a new leader strip, cut its end to a convenient shape, such as a point, and attach it to the take-up reel. Do not make the mistake of leaving the attachment of a leader and trailer strip to the very end, after the film has been properly edited, for if you do this the numerous trial projections necessary will spoil the first few frames and the end of the film will be similarly damaged. One can always remove a broken or bent end of a leader strip or even attach a complete new one, but you cannot always rejilace the first few frames of a film and these first few frames often start the action jiist as you want it started^ — you cannot afford to lose a single one of them. The First Step Now attach the leader strip to the unedited film and wind it slowly from the old reel to the new, examining the film as you go. If you are working in daylight in front of a window it is quite easy to place a piece of white blotting pajaer underneath the film and inspect it with a hand magnifier, while if you are worKing at night you can easily arrange for a lamp to illuminate the paper in a similar way. At the moment it is not necessary to inspect the film frame by frame — this will perhaps be necessary later— all T want you to do is to separate out the various scenes. Probably your shots last from five to ten seconds each, a five-second shot, for example, will occupy 2 ft. of film and a ten-second one 4 ft., in either 9.5-mm. or Iflmm. gauge. As you identify each scene, write its name down on a piece of paper. By this I do not mean a proper title for it, but merely some name which will enable you to identify it on your editing sheet. In a 100 ft. reel you may perhaps have twenty such scenes anfl the mere effort of naming them will give you good ideas. Let us imagine yovu* sheet of paper runs something like this : (!) Children leaving house for school.