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PHOTO 1: Rear projection on glass, with title hand lettered on superimposed cell, was author's first method. Projector was purposely lowered.
Slide title
techniques
WILLIAM MESSNER, ACL
LIKE so many other movie makers, I came to our fascinating hobby of filming from a background of still picture work. And, more specifically, 35mm. Kodachrome slides. I still make them today.
Thus, once I turned to amateur movies as my major hobby, it seemed only natural to try and combine color slides with my films as title backgrounds. There didn't seem to be too much written on the subject. So, after a short period of examining the problems involved, I decided to experiment for myself. There are, I discovered, numerous methods for using color transparencies as title backgrounds. In general, I found all of them easy.
REAR PROJECTION ON GLASS
The first method which suggests itself is by projecting the slide from the rear on a sheet of ground glass. The main title of one of my films, The Blizzard of 1947-48, was made in this way. Using a PM titler (see photo 1), I set the camera 24 inches from the title holder. A Kodak 150 watt slide projector was then set on a table in the rear of the title holder just far enough back to fill the 9 by 12 inch title frame. Inserted in the frame was a sheet of acid-etched ground glass — on which subject more later. The projector table was purposely kept lower than the title table so that the slide was projected at an angle to minimize the hot spot.
A hand lettered title, printed on celluloid with a black ink used by music copyists and applied with a lettering pen, was then inserted in front of the ground glass on the camera side. Using Type A Kodachrome, the exposure was f/1.9 at 8 frames per second, with the title faded in and out by opening and closing the diaphragm.
Exact advice on three simple methods for using your color slides as title backgrounds
PHOTO 2: Here slide is projected on matte paper, with title doubled in later. Same setup can be used without wind-back by lettering directly on the sheet.
DOUBLE EXPOSURE ON PAPER The subtitles in this film were made in an entirely different manner. The camera was set on a vertical homemade titler and moved down to 24 inches from the base. A slide projector with a 300 watt lamp was then fastened to a camera tripod and set as close to a vertical position as possible and still clear the top of the camera (see photo 2). A plain 8V2 by 11 inch sheet of white bond paper was now laid on the titler base, and the slide projector was so adjusted that its projected picture barely filled the paper. This picture was then filmed as a background at f/1.9 and 8 frames per second.
The film was then wound back and the white lettering filmed against black velvet. For this operation, however, the camera was positioned 3 feet from the title base, in order to make % inch letters appear smaller and in proportion to the main title.
In this double exposure method of filming the subtitles, the slide background was faded in and out with a Bool fader; the lettering by itself was faded in and out with a Fadette to speed its [Continued on page 150]
CAREFUL CENTERING and examination of slide image for dark areas are important. Slide exposure is averaged.