Movie Makers (Jan-Dec 1936)

MOVIE MAKERS The light reflected from the illuminated screen passes through the colored gelatin transparency to the camera lens. Then, take a strip of gelatin, about two inches wide and a foot long, and paint on it, with transparent colors, red, green, blue, and possibly yellow, stripes about half an inch wide. Finally, with the camera running and trained on the suspended transparency, slowly pull this strip across the lens, just over it. This strip, which is nothing more than a group of different colored filters, will produce on the screen a vibrating design of every imaginable color combination. To get the correct exposure, hold the meter in the place occupied by the camera lens so that the reflected light from the screen passes through the suspended transparency and the movable strip to reach the meter. 561 A setup for making unique trick titles in Kodachrome When this background has been made to start with, the film can be rewound, and any wording may be double exposed over it, by painting the letters on black cardboard and photographing. The effect of this scheme is hard to visualize, but it is easy to contrive it and the result is most beautiful. Variegated gelatin filters and striped filters can be had from theatrical supply houses. If you get the striped number 100 Rainbow filter, one is all you need. Cut off a portion of the complete filter — which is about two feet square — and use it for the strip to move in front of the lens. The diagram on this page illustrates the procedure. Going back again to our friend, the cat, there is a place where he takes the pitchfork, pointing it at a foot sticking out of the bed covers. As he does this, there is a puff of smoke. With the camera filming in closeup, the foot, which is sticking out of the bed, dissolves, from the ankle down, to a skeleton foot, which dissolves to a crab claw and then turns into a chicken foot, which finally dissolves again into the skeleton foot. In editing, these shots were inserted alternately between scenes of a face registering agony. To do this, I set up my camera, which has mask slots, about four feet from the end of the bed and at the side, in such a way that the exact center of the field was on the ankle, which was protruding from the end of the bed. The background behind the foot and behind that part of the leg that protruded, was dead black. Then the vertical mask was inserted in the camera on the side that would cut off the foot in the picture, leaving only the bed end and the leg, above the ankle, to be photographed. About twenty feet of this was shot, the film rewound and the opposite mask inserted. All this had to be done by Mrs. Moore, while I, as the actor, kept my foot completely stationary. Then, with my foot still in exactly the same place, the camera was started and about four feet were taken of the "foot side" of the picture; this was then faded out preparatory to making the dissolve into the skeleton foot. This property, which was lent to me by a medical friend, was fastened to a suitable support in the same relative position as the real foot in the previous shot. The background was dead black, and the support was covered by wrapping with black ribbon. Black thread was fastened to the toes of the skeleton foot, which were wriggled throughout the shot. This was dissolved to a crab claw which, being so small, had to be photographed with the four and a half inch lens with tube extension, to make sure that the claw would have the same relative size as the foot. An amazing thing happened in this shot. We broke a claw off a live crab and fastened it to a support. Black threads were attached to give motion. When the hot lights were turned on. although it ''was dead as a claw can be," it actually started snapping in the most realistic and eerie fashion. We had not counted on crustacean resurrection. Let me give you just one more expedient. Near the end of the film. I reach sleepily to turn off an alarm clock and I burn my fingers on some exposed lamp wires. After jumping up in bed, I am seen holding up the burned fingers, looking at them, and then the scene cuts to a shot of two fingers, moulded from children's modeling clay. These fingers acquire faces, through a dissolve, and discuss their burns, in an animation sequence. Modeling the fingers to look like my own was job enough, but we got it done in detail, front and back, making nails of celluloid, painted red with nail polish. The fingers were about double my own size, but even so, to make them fill the whole scene in the closeups, they had to be photographed with the four and a half inch lens and closeup extension tube. You can imagine the light needed for this scene, as the already slow telephoto lens, filming Kodachrome, was further slowed by the extension tube. The windows were opened to keep the clay cool. But this was done on a night when the temperature was around zero outdoors. I worked seven hours on the animation and throughout I wore a J.JSU0 3e)foe Qhvvstmas Christmas Movies and those of all the other seasons, are more enjoyable and more appreciated if expertly Edited and Titled. Years of experience in professionally finishing films for amateur movie-makers have qualified us to give you unusual assistance and to add distinction to your pictures. Why don't you let us prove this? The results will delight you as they have scores of other clients. Helpful title booklet on request. EDITING & TITLING SERVICE Kodascope Libraries, Inc. 33 Weit 42nd Street, New York Intense — super ^^ /^y actinic — colorbalanced; soft, modulated, flexible and controlled ... in the most ingeniously constructed units made for the movie maker. Write for full details on PHOTO-FLOOD-SPOT with its radiant, mellow spot-light illumination and its interchangeable reflector; on FLEXA-LITE, the twin reflector with movable arms, the most versatile light source known; and on FOCO-FLOOD, open flood reflectors adapted for Nos. 1, 2 and 4 Photoflood lamps. Specially devised Focusing Rods control the area and intensity of illumination. IDEAL GIFTS at XMAS At all Dealers Literature on request PHOTOGRAPHIC SPECIALTIES INC. 129 West 22 Street New York