Movie Makers (Jan-Dec 1953)

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22 JANUARY 1953 would not cover bhe fields of all these objectives, we used a Smith Varifocal finder, which I had specially modified to correct for parallax with extreme accuracy. For the lighting, no standard or stock setup was followed. We used anything from one No. 2 flood lamp in a 10 inch reflector to as many as four No. 2's and two No. 4's for some of the full-room scenes. Exposures were determined with a G.E. DW-58 meter. In order to have consistent values in color rendition, I took all readings from the back of my hand while holding it in the subject position. I would then set the lens at an aperture % st0P larger than the meter indicated. There was, honestly, a very considerable amount of time and effort put into our film ; but we felt amply rewarded when it won the Grand Award in our Kenosha club contest. It is impossible to describe the thrill that was ours when we were notified by ACL that Duck Soup had placed at the top of the Ten Best and was chosen for the Hiram Percy Maxim Memorial Award for 1952. From the League's review of Our Timmy in August, 1945, to their award notification of November, 1952, is actually a span of seven years and three months. It took us, you may say, a long time to prove that the ACL was right in its calm and objective analysis of our early family filming efforts. But, as of right now, we are mighty glad that we decided to try and do so. saw Ci nerama [Continued from page 13] gines follows its image. And if it flies towards and over the camera, the spectator hears the sound as it approaches, as it is overhead, and finally as it recedes in the distance behind him. A seventh sound track, combining the other six, also is reproduced as a safety measure against the momentary failure of one of the single tracks — which might result in an audio "dead spot" in the theatre. Cinerama. I discovered, was the brain child of Fred Waller, an inventor and optical engineer who already had to his credit a still camera which took a 360 degree picture. Also, in the direct genealogy of this new movie giant was another Waller still-picture development which delighted thousands of camera-toting visitors to the New York World's Fair of 1939 and '40. This was the projection of full-color transparencies on the spherical interior of Eastman Kodak's House of Color. Encouraged by the success of this projection system, which did create a remarkable tri-dimensional effect, Waller immediately turned his attention to designing cameras which could photo graph interlocked images for curvedscreen projection. One of these became a technical miracle of World War II. Using a five-lensed camera and five separate projectors, he developed the famous Waller Flexible Gunnery Trainer for the Navy. This unit projected synchronized motion pictures of "enemy" planes on the inner surface of a dome, in front of which the trainee machine-gunner stood and fired away. Cinerama is the direct outgrowth of Waller's gunnery trainer, with the number of lenses and projectors reduced to three and the screen cylindrical rathei than spherical in shape. But this curved screen itself presented a problem, for it was soon discovered that light from one side of the screen was reflected to the other, thus diluting the image. Waller licked this difficulty by designing a screen of 1100 vertical strips of perforated plastic tape, arranged like the louvers of an enormous Venetian blind. To the audience these appear to be solid; actually, they permit unwanted reflections to filter off behind the screen. Another technical obstacle that had to be surmounted was the visibility of the dividing lines between the three images on the screen. To remove them Cinerama engineers evolved an ingenious device they dubbed a "jiggilo"; it is simply a sawtoothed attachment that oscillates within the projector, weakening the edge lines of each picture so that no sharp demarcations are discernible. Now, fifteen years after Waller began his preliminary experiments, Cinerama is at last a lusty and crowd-pleasing reality. And the work of perfecting the new technique continues. The second Cinerama camera has been finished. Projection equipment is ready for installation in other theatres in the United States and England. Plans for the first full-dress dramatic production are well under way. And Hollywood, which only a few years ago turned a cold shoulder on such a "radical" innovation, has lately evinced an extraordinary interest in the new medium. . . . Well, after all, they also opposed the advent of sound along the golden shores of the Sunset Strip. TV and the amateur [Continued from page 12] travelog photographers have not learned that still scenes are not movies. If there is no action, don't take the picture — at least not for television. For television must have action and plenty of it. PHYSICAL REQUIREMENTS First among the physical requirements in films for television must be a medium range of density. Our impression is that many amateur films are deliberately underexposed slightly to increase their color saturation. Now such pictures may look wonderful when shown with a high wattage lamp on a short throw. But when you get such a picture on a television screen, there is no color, no definition, no shading and, blotto, no picture. Another must for television movies is a maximum of closeups and no shot farther away than middle distance. Among the movies that are so common on television you have seen what happens when the cowboy goes riding out of the screen. When any figure becomes less than one fourth of the diameter of the screen, the picture loses resolution and says nothing. Further, the TV viewer in the home is likely to be plagued with a certain amount of off-focus, static and disturbing room lights. Thus, your picture must be mighty good to start with to produce a clear image with all these disturbing factors present. Another serious problem in using amateur films on television is that of providing a suitable sound accompaniment. For you must remember that a movie without sound is not a finished television product and therefore is not marketable under present conditions. As we are set up today, the ideal audio medium is an optical sound track directly on the film itself. But, for the amateur producer, this has two drawbacks. These are (1) the expense and (2) the fact that most existing amateur footage has been shot at 16 frames per second. Although I had run for me at clubs and elsewhere many effective audio accompaniments from magnetic tapes, the problems of exact synchrony in this medium have yet to be solved satisfactorily. It seems unlikely, therefore, that any television station will try to work with this specialized equipment. In the case of our Reel Adventures program, we invariably invited the amateur himself to be present in the studio to deliver his narrative directly. Even this system, however, had its dangers; for some of our producers got mike fright so badly that they could scarcely say a word. The new magnetic sound on film, which advanced amateurs are adopting so ably to their audio needs, should be quite another story. For here they (and we) can be sure of exact synchrony on every playback and of high-fidelity sound quality as well. Here at WGN-TV we are very much interested in the potentials of magnetic striping, particularly in connection with our own news films. Since the essence of a good news film is timeliness, and since the magnetic sound on film system is far more immediate in its application than an optical track can ever be, I am rather confident that we will find a way to make use of it before long. And when this is done generally in television, the amateur producer will have one of his biggest problems solved.