Historic Documents & Articles

A Noted Newsreel Cameraman Writes About His Experiences in Photographing
News Events That Have Made History
by RAY FERNSTROM
from an American Cimematographer Magazine Dec 1930

FEW PEOPLE realize the amount of time, work and money expended in securing the few minutes entertainment on the screen known as the newsreel. The newsreel is sort of taken for granted, as it were, by the theatre audiences—just a few interesting shots to fill space before the feature picture. In a newsreel of one thousand feet, not more than nine or ten subjects (or stories, as we call them) are shown. However, often as many as twenty or thirty assignments have been “covered” or photographed—the limited footage crowding out all but nine or ten. Perhaps cameramen have gone through untold suffering and hardship to get those not used; but the audience doesn’t know—has no way of knowing about it — about the heartaches of the men who have shot those subjects not used.

[Read more…] about Shooting the Newsreel (1930)

from The Moving Picture News February 18, 1911

“Kindergarten” in this country has come to mean little besides a school for the tiny tots who are just setting their baby feet on the lowest step of the ladder of learning. But in the broader sense, all life is really, or ought to be, a kindergarten, for humanity is composed of children and the world a garden.
To some extent every exhibitor can be of use in the kindergarten of learning, and without much effort on
his part either. [Read more…] about The Kindergarten and Cinematography (1911)

from the ASC Manual October 1935

by
Jerome H. Ash, A.S.C.

WOULD you like to make lap-dissolves without rewinding—to dissolve backgrounds without changing the foreground—to make ‘arty’ titles with moving cloud backgrounds, in which the clouds blow into words—to make a single actor play bridge with himself, or even multiply into an army—all at a single ‘take’, with any 16mm, or even 8mm camera?
Don’t say such things can’t be done. They can be— with mirrors! [Read more…] about Lets Try Some Cinetricks With Mirrors (1935)

by
Perc Westmore
President, Motion Picture Makeup Artists’ Association,
Director of Makeup, Warner Brothers’-First National Studios

American Cinematographer Magazine May 1935

EVER since the first crank turned, cinematographers and Makeup Artists have been comparing makeup to retouching in ‘still’ portraiture. The comparison is a good one, but we’ve made it inaccurate: in retouching, both the contour and the texture of the facial areas are rendered more pleasing; in conventional makeup, we deal almost exclusively with complexion and texture, leaving the modelling of objectionable contours almost entirely to the cinematographer and his lights. That is all well enough, for cinematographers can, by painting with light and shade, modify facial contours, accentuating good features and concealing or minimizing bad ones, to a remarkable extent.
[Read more…] about Corrective Makeup as an Aid to Cinematography (1935)