Movie Makers (Jan-Dec 1949)

53 How cunningly planned closeups, made later at home, can bolster the continuity of vacation reels will fit into and aid that movie which was taken many miles away, perhaps even in a totally different type of country? Let's take a really extreme example in illustration of what I mean. We'll suppose that you have a number of scenes of a boy and a dog wandering among various types of cacti in, say, the Sahuaro Desert. We see the boy examining different cacti blossoms and spines, and there are some fine closeups of individual cactus blooms. And, although the rest of the film has a smoothly flowing continuity, this section on the cacti plants and blossoms seems difficult to edit without putting in a number of titles. Here's the way we solved this very problem. The same type of solution can be adapted to fit many different needs. Starting with a careful check to see that the boy was wearing the same costume he'd worn in Arizona, we selected a day on which the New Jersey sky was deep blue and beautifully spotted Avith the same fleecy white clouds that appear in our Arizona scenes. Then, using up-angle shots that revealed only sky backgrounds, we filmed a series of closeups in which our young explorer, pausing in his wanderings, pulls out a notebook and pencil and proceeds to make brief notes about the cacti he examines. Extreme closeups of the notebook and hands were added in each case; and it was here that we injected some bits of simple humor into the boy's notes that bring chuckles from our audience each time the film is shown. For example, in one closeup the boy pauses, scratches his head in a puzzled manner — and then writes a big question A LANDSLIDE to order was creatively faked in winner. Filmed in a local gravel pit, scenes were 16mm. scenes by Frank E. Gunnell. FACL STEAMING BIRTH of the world is creatively simulated by selected scenes made in Yellowstone Park. The wholly impressive sequence is from While The Earth Remaineth. mark after the name he thought belonged to the plant. For another sequence — in which the boy examines a cactus full of blossoms and sharp spines and then sits down in its shade to rest — we used creative faking as follows: First, we selected some local ground of the same general color and texture as that in the Arizona scenes. Seating the boy on this, we held some branches well above his head, so that their shadows would closely simulate the shadows from the real cactus plant. In the scene, which this time is filmed with a downward angle, the notebook is taken out again, the boy glances up toward the seeming cactus, and then writes that he sat under, not on, this particular variety of cactus! Cut into the original Arizona footage, these contrived closeups have never yet been detected from the genuine cacti scenes which precde and follow them. In our film While the Earth Remaineth (which received the Maxim Memorial Award in 1945 ) . we used still another form of creative faking. Documenting the Biblical story of Creation, it was in the sequence dealing with the uplifting of the land that we added a number of scenes of great mountains in turmoil — the scenes being taken in a gravel pit not far from home. Selecting a section of the gravel pit walls that resembled rugged mountains in miniature, we used 2% and 4 inch telephoto lenses, operating at 32 and 64 frameper-second camera speeds, to film a manufactured landslide sequence. With the camera aimed at the gravel pit walls, stones were then tossed at them high above and out of camera range. The resulting "landslides"— filmed in slow motion to impart weight and power to the action — are indeed impressive. More than one spectator has asked how we happened to be on the spot when the landslide took place — and author's Maxim where did it happen? Even many experito lend weight. [Continued on page 711 this sequence from shot in slow motion