On returning to New York from London, the continent and Africa, I found it very difficult to settle down to ordinary routine work, particularly that of the laboratory. The "lab" became too confining. The "great outdoors," which I had so enjoyed in months of travel, changed my perspective of the duties that had to be performed indoors.
While there is scarcely a production of any consequence today that does not call for more than one cinematographer, things were a bit different in 1912. There was hardly ever more than one man at the camera, and he was supposed to do all that the assistant, the second and an extra first cinematographer are supposed to do in the aggregate. He lugged his own equipment around, he loaded his own magazines, he ran his own errands. Despite the cosmopolitan aspect of his varied duties, the mystery of his calling was usually highly respected by those with whom he was affiliated, even if it was sometimes the case, then as now, that the producer, for salary reasons, sought to impress him that his profession was necessarily that of a nonentity.
"Do They Really Move?"
The cameraman, however, who could get his photographs to register clearly on the screen was not to be completely sneered at. The chief object then- in the days when the people were still asking "Do they really move?"- was to get the pictures on the screen. Little or no attention was paid to lighting, composition or correctness in detail on the set. Just so that you made a clear motion picture without too many blurs or flickers. Indeed, the matter of artificial lighting as it is done today was remote from the cameraman's mind, for the lighting of a set then was a fixed proposition. Lighting arrangements consisted usually of a series of Aristo lamps resembling arcs used in lighting small town streets. They were protected by cylinder-shaped glass and were suspended from above in rows of six usually, sometimes more and sometimes less.
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| Chart of early lamp position. | |
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Sets were built to conform with the rows of lights underneath them, as the overhead trolley was unknown. The floor lights were banks of "coops" and a few "Wohls" which weighed a ton apiece. The sets were painted, even to the kitchen stove and the steaming kettle. The doors were canvas and whenever a little breeze blew through the stage the set walls, kitchen stove, pictures and doors swayed with the breeze.
It was not until later years that the ability to light a set correctly became just as an essential part of the cinematographer's business as fundamental knowledge of motion photography.
No Cameraman, No Pictures
Though lowly his position was in the pioneer days, the cameraman at least was not taken as a matter of fact. It was very decidedly present in every one's consciousness that there had to be a cameraman or there would be no pictures; and the producer who invested his spare money or hazarded his all in the making of a production spent many anxious moments wondering whether the camera box was really capturing the actions of the players, whose salaries were eating up his good money. Thanks to the cinematographer's advancement and the progress of the manufacturers and the laboratories within the motion picture industry, this uncertainty is spared the producer of today.
Brave was the person from the legitimate stage who dared to flirt with films in those days. But the spirit of the adventurer- and it was, to a great degree, just such a spirit- the impelling force which lured most of the cameramen to the cinema likewise reached out to the stalwarts of the stage. So it was that my first director on a "dramatic" picture was Edgar Lewis. The assignment amounted to padding a one-reeler into a two-reeler and the location was Fort Lee, New Jersey.
Shot Longfellow Classic
The next job to which I was assigned by the "old man," as Mr. Schneider was affectionately known to us, was the shooting of Longfellow's "Hiawatha," as presented as an outdoor affair by Frank E. Moore, with a troupe of Seneca Indiana, over a circuit that extended through a number of Eastern cities.
As soon as Mr. Moore had closed with Mr. Schneider, I was dispatched to Baltimore, where the presentation was being staged in one of the city parks, for the purpose of determining whether it was practical to film the story. Well, fools rush in where angels fear to tread, so we decided to shoot Hiawatha.
Annex Director
When Mr. Moore returned to New York to proceed with the production, we realized that perhaps a director might be of some assistance, even though Mr. Moore had the presentation more or less perfected as an outdoor presentation. I was asked whether I knew a director. Yes, I knew one but I didn't tell them that I knew only one- and Edgar Lewis directed Hiawatha as one of the first five reelers ever made.
We made the summer sequences in the vicinity of Buffalo, on the Seneca Indian reservation, and returned to New York City later for the winter scenes.
My outfit, as before, was composed of a Schneider amateur model, equipped with 200-foot magazines, non-reversible movement, and a crystal view finder.
I had to shoot the visioning of the famine of death visiting the wigwams on a separate negative and double print it. It was my first attempt at a double, and beginner's luck was with me, but my second effort was disastrous. The scene was the last in the picture- Hiawatha, standing in his canoe, slowly drifts toward the setting sun with the visionary face of Minehaha appearing before him. I effected the vision all right, with the exception of a small detail. I shot Minehaha a little too close to the camera and the vision appeared behind Hiawatha.
My job did not end with the completion of shooting- oh, no! I had to develop 10,000 feet of negative on revolving drums, pick out the N.G.'s, make a print, and tone and tint the same. We received a cent a foot extra for tones. In addition, I had to shoot the titles, and wound up by projecting the finished picture. Yes, we were versatile.
Victor Milner, "Fade Out and Slowly Fade In," American Cinematographer, December, 1923, pages 9, 26.
© 1998, David Pierce, on editing and revisions (if any)
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