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25 C.S. Bill : camera tracks back in front of him.
26 C.S. Chick : camera tracks back in front of him.
27 C.S. Bill. As in 25.
28 L.S. Bill and Chick riding towards camera as they come round the bend. They are almost level.
29 C.S. Tommy. He takes his pipe from his mouth.watches anxiously.
30 L.S. Chick and Bill : they are going across screen left to right, almost level.
3 1 V.L.S. Chick and Bill riding towards camera from the distance. At the winning post, Bill just passes Chick.
32 M.L.S. Tommy. He puts his pipe in his mouth and walks on to the track. He looks pleased.
33 L.S. Chick and Bill coming towards camera. Chick goes out of frame right and Bill stops in M.S. He rests in front of camera, takes off his goggles and looks up, relieved.
Music stops.
Crowd cheers (as in Bill's mind). Roar of bikes dies down. Music starts.
Ft. fr. 2 7
2 12
2 II 4 13
I 9
4 7
4 6
7 7
23 5
From an editor's point of view,1 I was faced with one great advantage and a number of difficulties. In most race or fight sequences of this kind, the audience gets a prior knowledge as to what the final result will have to be if the story is to continue. In this case, however, the situation before the race is that Bill himself is uncertain whether he can make a come-back. If he wins, he knows that he will get his old job again, but that he will never get his wife back. On balance, therefore, the audience should anticipate that Bill will lose. This uncertainty made it easier for us to hold the audience's interest.
The difficulties were more numerous. Previous to this, there had already been four racing sequences in the film, so that we had to introduce certain variations here. There could only be very few reaction shots — only two onlookers were present — and there were only two competitors in the race. This narrowed the choice of shots. Finally, for various reasons, we were unable to cover the sequence with as many shots as we would have liked.
The sequence starts with a sort of musical echo effect of the speedway riders' march. We used this in order to contrast the emptiness of the arena with the crowd and bustle of the earlier race sequences. The mechanics standing idly by instead of being on their toes, and Bill's old mechanic acting as starter with a handkerchief instead of using the elaborate mechanical starting gate were both points of difference from the earlier visits to the track. So far so good. But it was the race itself which was the difficulty.
With the shortage of material it became obvious that we would have to concentrate on shots of the race itself and use only occasional reaction shots of Tommy. We could not let either of the riders get too far ahead of the other : Bill had to be the eventual winner, but Chick was, after all, the ace rider and
1 Notes by Jack Harris.
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