Movie Makers (Jan-Dec 1938)

620 DECEMBER 1938 IDEAL GIFTS AT CHRISTMAS • You can make the memories of this particular Christmas live for many years to come. May we suggest a tangible method that will perpetuate all the frolic and fun round the fire-place and yule-tree — your children as they exult over their new and fascinating gifts — the contentment of the older members of the family circle as they delightedly watch the antics of the youngsters. • A Hugo Meyer Wide Angle Lens is the tangible method that will perpetuate these pleasurable scenes. It is a lens whose highspeed and all-embracing angle will capture all the scattered details of your festive room with a very minimum of photographic illumination. It is, indeed, the ideal means for enabling you to relive your present happiness in the far, distant future. • Presented to movie making relatives and friends, a Hugo Meyer Lens is a thoughtful gift — at Christmas time — or any other time, for that matter. It reflects a more than perfunctory interest on the part of the giver towards the recipient — it reflects an interest in his achievement and provides a precise, dependable and versatile optical medium that will do much to enhance the quality of his work. WIDE ANGLE LENSES FOR 16MM CAMERAS Trioplan //2.8 in micrometer focusing mount $45.00 Trioplan //2.8 fixed focus . 39.00 Kino-Plasmat //1.5 in micrometer focusing mount. . 84.00 Literature on Request HUGO MEYER & CO. 39 West 60th Street Hew York' would have bogged down badly. There was motion, of course, in the parades, but these, of themselves, would have been trite fare, had they not been related to the battlefield by shots of watching veterans and by a whole series of admirable angled shots of the statues and markers on Gettysburg field. It is noteworthy that what might have been the dull portions of the record — the construction, housing and victualing arrangements— were given very intelligent, brief handling. Charles A. Ferrie, jr., an urban movie maker, has gone back to the land for the beauty and charm of Mother Earth. Here, in carefully filtered and unfailingly well composed shots, he has caught the moist freshness of newly turned soil, the delicate loveliness of waving grain, the quiet dignity of men going about the homely tasks of the farm. His method of subject matter treatment has been to study these things from the outside, as a sensitive spectator, rather than to involve them (and the spectator) in a story told against such backgrounds. Mr. Ferrie's photography is consistently good and often striking, while his sequencing adds much of interest and inspiration to an essentially pastoral subject. The eagerness of a movie maker to use a new cine camera is the clever introduction and leitmotiv of Movie Bugs, an exceedingly well photographed picture by Dr. Frederick W. Brock. The picture tells how the movie maker protagonist gets in touch with a science teacher and how the two of them construct a support for the camera for use with it in filming through a microscope. The succeeding shots of hydrae and paramecia and other microscopic organisms are beautifully filmed, and the picture infers the obvious conclusion that any university zoology department should be equipped to make such studies. Clean cut interior lighting and a well knit story distinguish this fine filming job. New England Holiday is the kind of travel film any movie maker should be proud to produce. Replete with human interest and a warm feeling of good fun, this two reel record is distinguished by a wealth of splendid compositions and natural camera treatment. Albert F. Watts has lavished on such typically New England subjects as Gloucester harbor, the fishing fleet or a clam bake the sensitive feeling of an artist for line and mass and the alert understanding of cinematics of a genuine movie maker. Smoothly integrated sequences have been edited with unerring suavity and liveliness, comprising a whole which is both vital and lovely to look at. The production is fundamentally weakened only by a selection of title wordings considerably less spirited and effective than the films which they accompany. To present, on 8mm. Kodachrome, where the problem of definition in dis tant shots is made more difficult by the greater screen enlargement in projection, a serious and satisfying architectural study of a structure that extends not a few hundred feet into the air, but thousands of feet horizontally, is a task that calls for skill in movie making. Raymond O'Connell, in San Francisco — Oakland Bay Bridge, has exhibited that skill and has to his credit, in this film, a definite accomplishment. The study is rendered comprehensible to the audience, at the very outset, by the use of a model of the bridge, which is introduced in the course of the picture, with excellent effect. In several instances, one passes from a shot of the model to another of the actual structure from the same angle, and so easily that it is possible to forget the cinematic labor put forth in finding a vantage point for the camera to show exactly what was needed. Of especial merit are shots of the changing pattern of the cables, made from a moving motor car, which provide a fine essay in abstract design. Shadow's Bones is all about Frank E. Gunnell's cocker spaniel, Shadow, and his annoying habit, common to most dogs, of leaving bones in all manner of places, where bones should not be, such as bath tubs, magazine racks, beds and other localities which are not really canine cupboards. With brilliantly accomplished black and white 16mm. cinematography, Mr. and Mrs. Gunnell, as cameraman and "support" for the chief actor, Shadow, have done what is still too rare in home movies — they have found the humor of home life, and of themselves as a part of it. The plan of this tale is simple, direct and is provided with a genial finish. The direction and acting, especially in persuading the recently acquired household pet to go through his part of the performance with naturalness and zest, are excellent. This sets a new mark in interest that can be given to family records, and the interior lighting is beyond criticism. Working still in the same lyric mood which inspired In The Beginning and Consider The Lilies (place winners of earlier years), Fred C. Ells has turned this year to the Twenty Third Psalm for the theme of Still Waters. In it, to use his own words, he has tried "to bring to mind some of the beauties of the natural world, and to make the spectator conscious in some small way of the mysterious, wonderfully planned creation in which we live. The picture is pure lyric from start to finish, with no more continuity than a love song." Mr. Ells has, on occasion, been thrillingly successful in fulfilling this high charge, bringing to the screen some of the most stirring beauty it would seem possible to recreate. The cumulative effect of the relatively short study, however, is weakened by imperfect technique in the preparation of the Biblical title wordings.