Movie Makers (Jan-Dec 1952)

22 ClOSeupS— What filmers are doing Now here, for those who are interested, are the facts and figures of the Ten Best competition of 1951. The staff of the League examined in that contest a total of 50.352 feet of film. This, in projection terms, figures out to 31 hours and 14 minutes of unbroken screen time, with no allowances for threading and rewinding films, setting up and rehearsing musical scores. How it took us seven weeks to screen only 31 hours of film is a fact which only those who have had to do it can understand. Almost exactly equaling 1950 in total footage, the 1951 contest marked a 6% percent increase in total number of entries. (Could this mean amateur films are getting shorter? Sometimes it didn't seem that way!) In terms of 8mm. vs. 16mm., color vs. black and white, the 1951 entries break down as shown herewith. ALL FILMS SUBMITTED 1950 1951 8mm. 35.5% 25.9% 16mm. 64.5% 74.1% Color 92.1% 90.1% B & W 7.9%, 9.9% ALL FILMS HONORED 8mm. 11.6% 23.0% 16mm. 88.4% 77.0% Color 92.3% 96.1% B & W 7.7%, TEN BEST 3.9% 8mm. 10.0% 10.0% 16mm. 90.0% 90.0% Color 100.0% 100.0% B & W 00.0% 00.0% HONORABLE MENTION 8mm. 12.5% 31.2% 16mm. 87.5% 68.8% Color 87.5% 93.7% B & W 12.5% 6.3% Perhaps the outstanding fact which will be noted in these figures for 1951 is the better balance between 8mm. films entered and 8mm. films honored. In 1950, for example, 8mm. films comprised 35.5 percent of the total entered, but only 11.6 percent of them won through to honors. In 1951, although 8mm. entries dropped to 25.9 percent of the total, their quality was such that 8mm. films captured 23 percent of the places. Not shown in the figures above are the following facts . . . Among the total of 26 films honored, 14 of them were produced by amateurs who had never before placed in the Ten Best contest . . . Among the total of 26 films honored, 18 (or 69.2%) of them were accompanied with sound of some kind, to be reproduced in some manner. Eight winners, therefore, won through wholly without sound. Of the 18 films which did use sound, 7 (or 38.8%) presented it on disc, 4 on magnetic tape. 3 on magnetic wire (or a combined 38.8%) and 4 (or 22.2%) via the sound on film track. Comparative figures on sound usage for 1950 are, in the same order: total use — 80.7 percent; disc — 57.1 percent; magnetic — 38.0 percent; sound on film — 4.7 percent. It would be difficult, we believe, to deduce from these figures any positive trend or trends on sound usage among able amateurs. Perhaps worth commenting on. however, is the definite drop of those using sound of any kind; the declining popularity of the discand-turntable system, and the firmly held level of those operating with the established magnetic media of wire and tape. The optical sound on film percentage of 22.2 impresses us as unexplainably high in view of its cost level. It should be interesting, certainly, to see in 1952 what effect the advancing magnetic sound on film method has on all of these figures. But enough of statistics. It is far more exciting, it seems to us, to contemplate the almost incredible record of the man who stands at the top of the 1951 Ten Best. We refer, of course, to Glen H. Turner. ACL. of Springville (pop. 4.000). Utah. First the unadorned facts: Glen Turner began making amateur movieabout five years ago with a Bell & Howell Sportster 8. In 1949, with a little over two years experience behind him, he entered the Ten Best contest (his first competition on any level) and won the Maxim Award with One Summer Day. In 1950. working now with a 16mm. Filmo 70-DE given him by the Bell & Howell Company, he won a Ten Best award with The Barrier. In 1951 — well, if you don't know what Turner did in 1951, you simply aren't reading the right magazine. This adds up to the following records, held solely by Mr. T: (1) winning three Ten Best awards in three consecutive years (since the Maxim Award winner must first place among the Ten Best) ; (2) winning the Maxim Award with both 8 and 16mm. films; (3) winning the Maxim Award in two out of three years of competition. JANUARY 1952 (For those readers who have only recently been ''reading the right magazine," Ralph E. Gray, FACL, is the only other amateur ever to win the Maxim Award twice, since its establishment in 1937. Mr. Gray's placements were in 1938. with Mexican Fiestas, and in 1946, with Typical Times in the Tropics.) On the more personal side, there isn't much more we can tell you about Turner than we reported three years ago. He is now thirty four years of age, married for fourteen of them and the father of two boys and two girls. A native Utahan, he has been an assistant professor of art at Brigham Young University, in Provo, since 1947. Make-it-yourself hobbies such as wood carving, model building and lostwax bronze casting are in his background, as well as a bit of privateplane flying. There doesn't seem to be anything here to account for his ability to design ballet — which, of course, he did in In Fancy Free. But then, there isn't too much either to account for those three records above. The one sure thing: it's going to take some shooting to top them. Ever wonder how articles get into Movie Makers? Well, there is an illuminating, three-part example right in this issue. Here's how . . . Not quite a year ago the Chicago Cinema Club ran a Gargantuan Gadget Night program in which, apparently, they invited the participation of gadgeteers from all the neighboring movie clubs. In due course (meaning about two months later), we read the news report of this program carried in the Clubs department of this very magazine. It listed gadgets by the score and impressed us at once as a veritable mine of editorial material — ;'/ we could get in touch with the gadgeteers. There were no addresses given. But by a variety of devious methods we tracked down the majority of these exhibitors. The result? Making That Splice, by A. C. Kadow, of Elgin, 111.; Hoiv One Amateur Edits, by Leon F. Urbain, ACL, of Chicago, and Judging Club Contests, by Stanley Yasbec, ACL, of Palos Heights, 111., all in this issue. The ridiculous part of it all is that each of these authors could have appeared in our pages six months earlier — if they'd offered their stuff . . . Gadgeteers, let that be a lesson to you! And now, before the glow of Christmas fades too far into a year that is gone, all of us here at ACL send the warmest thanks to all of you everywhere for your holiday greetings. They were, wonderfully, far, far too numerous to answer individually.