Movie Makers (Jan-Dec 1949)

19 A scissors scenario with ready-to-shoot subtitles THE white-blanketed countryside, hardy evergreens black against the winter sky, smoke billowing from a distant farmhouse, all will make attractive opening frames to follow your first subtitle. City scenes, too, are equally suitable — rooftops heavy with the newly fallen snow, icicles sparkling in the morning sun, tree branches sagging under the unaccustomed weight. Side or back lighting of these angle shots will heighten their dramatic effect. But wintertime is not all peace and tranquility. The first snowfall is also an invitation to the kids to drag out their skates and skis and sleds. The second subtitle flashes on the screen, and it's your cue to start your own winter film carnival. The scene shifts to the backyard, the playground across the way or the skating pond down the road. Young Tom, skimming swiftly over the frozen lake, is a little impatient with Jane's first stumbling efforts on the ice. The Junior Olympics on Saturday afternoon bring out half the town to watch future champions fly over the glistening hills on their hickories, compete in the Soapbox Snow Derby and whoop through a rousing hockey game. You can use a lot of that odd footage from last year and the one before to fill in the gaps. Crowning the young king and queen of winter makes a nice climax for this sequence. Such a general subtitle as No. 3 creates an easy catchall for the random sequences you may have of winter's vagaries. How about that line of cars buried in the snows of last winter's bHzzard? How about Pete, the postman, plodding through the drifts on his appointed rounds? And how about Dad shoveling out the front steps or Mother spreading bread crumbs for the birds in her backyard aviary? All of these and others are rich with human interest. Here, following the fourth subtitle, is your chance to compose a sequence of quiet beauty. The low light of a winter sun will cast long, thin shadows across the molded drifts. Overtones of rose from the fading sun will gleam in contrast with the bluish shadows. Singly or in patterns, lighted windows will wink on amid the dark masses of beckoning homes. It is, at dusk, winter's moment of greatest magic. Cine-Clip Scenarios, a Movie Makers feature unique in the field of filming, present every needed picture part in one handy package. Complete on this page are a lead title and the subtitles for a simple family picture. Printed with them are general suggestions for the subject matter treatment. These possibilities are elastic: you can edit in odd-shot and unused footage, or you can shoot new scenes to order, as you think best. The area of the titles, including the surrounding rules, will be covered easily by your camera (8 or 16) when filmed at a camera-to-title distance of eight inches. Use a five diopter supplementary lens with fixed focus objectives. In use, clip out each title just outside the rule, paste it on a white card of suitable size for your titler and proceed as usual. There are many easy ways of adding color to these captions. Simplest will be to water color or crayon in a colored border on each of the cards. Equally effective is to have the titles reversed on blueprint paper, thus creating clear white letters on a bright blue ground. Or, if you'd like to double expose these captions over relevant action scenes, reverse them this time in photostat, for white letters on a black background. WTHTFt, ^ *m CARHfW Town and country now are wrapped in the soft white mantle of winter. But snowtime is playtime. Here are Olympic masters in the making. While for others winter can mean moments of work and worry. But with the end of day, peace and quiet fall once more across the land.