Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers (1930-1949)

upon the merits of the individual shots themselves. In film-making under present conditions, however, the director is denied the possibility of any prior judgment on this point. He is compelled to rely upon "assembly" or "rough-cut" of the rushes before he can begin to evaluate these juxtapositions properly. By then it is frequently too late, except at considerable expense, to add what is discovered to be missing or to put right what is found to be wrong; furthermore, it is not until this stage that it can be realized that certain shots which are satisfactory in themselves are nevertheless redundant. Nor is it surprising that this state of affairs should be so ; because of the nature of the medium in which he is working, the director is in the position of an artist denied the facility of sketching-in the general outline of his picture and therefore forced to bring the various details to perfection as he proceeds. It should be recognized that the only outline to which the director can refer is his shooting script. This can, however, prove a false and misleading guide, inasmuch as the whole art of film-making consists of the translation of a literary form into a visual one, and it is only visually that the finished result can be judged. (2) The Technique of the Electronic Camera The use of the electronic camera — or rather a unit of three or four such cameras — will obviate many if not all of the difficulties which confront the film director who is employing single optical equipment. It is of the essence of the electronic method employing more than one camera that, during both rehearsal and shooting, the director can view upon his monitor screen not merely isolated shots but complete sequences (i.e. the blended output of his several cameras) of whatever length he may desire. The director can thus study the "architecture" of the film whilst the construction of the whole is still being composed, and the element of artistic hazard intrinsic in multiple-camera working with purely optical cameras is entirely avoided. The film industry has already shown its awareness of the contribution which the electronic camera can make to smooth-running studio production by the introduction of an electronic aid in the form of a view-finder used in conjunction with multiple optical cameras. The advantages possessed by the combination of optical camera and electronic viewfinder may be roughly summarized as follows. First, the element of operational blindness is removed ; the director can study a camera-view of the shot during both rehearsal and the actual shooting. He can satisfy himself that the decoupage, i.e. the breakdown into shots and angles, is as effective visually as it appears to be on paper. He can, whilst there is still time to alter or modify his own intentions, watch continuous sequences, and he is no longer compelled to work in a series of discontinuous glimpses. Finally, the electronic image can be multiplied and distributed, so that other key workers — the producer, the lighting engineer, the make-up supervisor, etc. — can exercise their own separate supervisions. Because of these advantages the addition of the electronic view-finder to an orthodox camera is regarded as a progressive step; nevertheless, it is essentially a traditionalist solution to a problem which is amenable to more satisfactory solution by newer methods. If the electronic image produced by the viewfinder on the camera (or rather the master image produced by the several view-finders on the various cameras in the unit) already exists in convenient form, the most rewarding course would be to improve the quality of that image until it attains technical parity with normal film, and then to photograph the master image itself rather than turn back to the individual cameras for the actual process of recording. Collins and Macnamara: Electronic Camera 447