Leo Anthony Vale

I've found that Tri-X has a snappier grain grain than 7222, which looked just mushy. & TXR is sharper, though contrastier. 'Chan is Missing' was blown up from 16mm reversal and looks great. It also used 4XR, which is really grainy. It also shows what a great film PXR was.

It's only stated that the Ensign was one of the Miles' cameras, not that it was the camera used for the Market St.film.

The zeppelin sequence is great. Even though it is a miniature. It was shot silent, but still had the actors speaking German. So it was able to be well dubbed in German.

All I can say is that it has a 1.5x squeeze, making it compatable with Vistascope and Bolex anamorphics. You might find more information in back issues of Popular Photography, Modern Photography & other amateur photo mags from the mid-50s. Check the bound periodicals section of your local library. Because of its small size and since it doesn't focus, you probably be limited to f=25mm C-mt.lenses. & small f/stops.

DeBrie Sept The DeBrie Sept seems to be a tad smaller with its smaller spring housing. Most of the online photos, or at least the better quality ones, are copywrighted & can't be copied. http://www.camerapedia.org/wiki/Debrie_Sept http://www.novacon.com.br/odditycameras/sept.htm

They have different designs. The 30mm is a Gauss design, while the 32mm is a retro-focus. In actuallity there is no 32mm Super Baltar, it's a 35mm. The rear of the 30mm will clear the mirror shutter of a cameflex/CM3 or an Arri IIC, it won't clear the mirror of a BNCR or Mark II. The Super Baltars were designed for the Mitchell relexes. The lens shorter than 50mm had to be retro-focus designs to be able to clear the mirror.

Hammer originally used a Vinten Everest, which was a reflex studio camera. Vinten Everest This article claims that Hammer replaced it with a blimped Arri for shooting anamorphic: http://www.filmcentre.co.uk/hammer.htm However I've seen production stills for 60s Hammer films being shot with a BNC, probably a rack over model. They probably bought the blimped Arri because it was cheaper than a BNC or a Newell Blimp. & maybe because it was reflex like the Vinten it replaced.

The company that had the Nikon plate for the Arri III is PED Denz. http://www.denz-deniz.com/index.htm It's no longer mentioned on their site, so you'll have to follow Robert H's advice.

I recall seeing ads in AC quite sometime back for an interchangable Nikon F mount for the Arri III made by one the german companies which specialize in making Arri accesories. But I cannot remember the name, other than it was not PS Technik.

Steve: Check out 'Japan's Longest Day', 1968 in B/W TohoScope. Directed by K.Okamota who also made 'Sword of Doom', 'Kill', 'Zatoichi vs. Yobimbo' and 'Blue Christmas'. Saw the last one in LA at the Kokusai in the late 70s. Not really a good movie, not I remember parts of it more vividly than some criticly acclaimed movies I saw last month. One of Okamata's teachers was Ishiro Honda, Kurosawa's BFF, director of 'Gojira' 'Atragon' & 'Attack of the Mushroom People' & co-director of Kurosawa's last movies. JLD is about the last day of WWII, the Big One & an attempted coup by a group of junior staff officers trying to prevent the Emperor from surrendering; no honor in that better to fight to the death.

'Aguirre, the wrath of God', while post-synced, was shot in English and the first track was English. But to play yhe American art house circuit, it had to be redubbed into german & english sub-titles added. "If it ain't got sub-titles, it ain't art." I watched 'Fitzcarraldo' on DVD with the default german track. In a scene with an official the lip-sync was rather slippery. But switching to the English track, the lip-sync was okay, though the room tone had a post-sync quality to it. To paraphrase Col.Klink: "Herzog!!!"

Good call. 'Under Capricorn' has some good and intricate long single takes. None are quite as long as 'Rope'. While 'Under Capricorn' is a gorgeous movie, it's hardly Hitchcock's best.

In 'Cranes are Flying', when Veronika is on the bus going to the railroad station. The bus stops because of the crowds in the street, she gets off and fights her way through the crowd. As she's crossing the street by the station, the camera swoops up; the crane is flying. Though I really think of this as my favorite handheld shot. Bondurchuk's 'War and Peace' has a number of shots where the camera is passed during them.

Mike Hammer (Biff Elliott) grapples with an assailant in I, the Jury http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_C6kND_Ezjv4/Sk5Dnyzb0ZI/AAAAAAAAAOM/zD9rKWewkdo/s400/JURY_1. I,theJury 1953 John Alton,DP The anaglyph picture seems to be a production still lit with a flash bulb, the other pictures seem to be screen grabs. The following exerpt is from the 'Deep black and white page' on ray3Dzone.com http://www.ray3dzone.com/3-D%20Noir.html "I, the Jury, released by United Artists July 24, 1953, fits neatly into the film noir canon. It was based on the hard-boiled novel by Mickey Spillane which, in its Signet paperback edition (with a sexy cover), sold something like 20 million copies. Spillane's hard-hitting private investigator Mike Hammer, portrayed in the film by Biff Elliott, was a loose cannon in a trench coat, and a somewhat caricatural throwback to the protagonists of the original hard-boiled writers of Black Mask magazine which included Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain, and Cornell Woolrich, all of whose works formed the basis for the original films noir. What really makes I, the Jury a significant work of film noir is its 3- D cinematography by John Alton, the undisputed master of light and shadow who, with films such as T-Men (1948) and The Big Combo (1955), forever defined the chiaroscuro look of film noir. In his pioneering 1949 book Painting with Light, a poetic textbook on motion picture lighting, Alton wrote about creating photographic depth using light. "The illusion of three dimensions--photographic depth--is created by a geometric design of placing people and props, breaking up the set into several planes, and the proper distribution of lights and shadows," wrote Alton. Later in the book, with a chapter titled "Visual Music," Alton again addresses the third dimension. "In real life, the pleasure of visual music is enhanced by the third dimension. Fortunes have been and still are being spent to put third dimension in professional motion picture photography: but to my knowledge, the closest we have come to it is an illusion of depth accomplished by the proper distribution of densities." Four years later, with I, the Jury, Alton had an opportunity to render space stereoscopically and with light and shadow at the same time. From the opening scenes, in which we see a killing take place in the shadows from the point of view of the murderer, to the final scene, in which we witness Hammer's revenge slaying of one of the most complicated femmes fatale in all of film noir, Alton made the most of it. Pitch black on the screen is latent with the malign. A two-fisted assailant may suddenly leap out of it. Throughout the film, Hammer moves through a stereoscopic visual space that is dynamically joined to light and shadow, a mirror of moral progression or decay. I, the Jury was filmed with a side-by-side dual-camera unit built by Producer's Service of Burbank which used variable interaxial from 1.9 inches to a maximum of 4.5 inches. Built by Jack Kiel and Gordon Pollock, 3-D consultant on I, the Jury, the twin camera unit allowed for convergence settings and featured interlocked f-stops and focus so that follow focus shots during filming were very precise. 3-D fans could take special delight with one scene in I, the Jury where Hammer is made to look through a hand-held stereo viewer by a winsome blonde. The audience then views the pastoral scene in stereo at the same time as the private investigator. In another scene Hammer walks past a newsstand where copies of Spillane's Signet paperback, Kiss Me Deadly, is prominently displayed. Director Robert Aldrich subsequently adapted this book into one of the greatest of all black-and-white films noir in 1955 with Ralph Meeker as the tough detective. Mickey Spillane himself was never happy with the casting of his hero so he essayed the role himself in 1963 in The Girl Hunters. As John Alton has shown us, film noir can be eminently suitable for stereoscopic storytelling. Shadow recedes. Light projects. And there is a gray scale universe of moral ambiguity in between." ********************************************************************************************** I've never seen 'I, the Jury', let alone in 3D. Though I'd really like to. I have seen 'the Maze', directed by Wm.Cameron Menzies, which is very noirish. But I've only seen it in 2D. Old books on stereo photography frequently mention the need to keep all of the planes in focus. So sharpness is important. & 2D depth clues help. Long lenses and out of focus backgrounds will tend to flatten the image, cardboarding it. I think shadowy lighting can work. But it needs to be crisp and define planes. Simple version would be alternating planes of brightness and shadow. Things that come out of the screen ought to be dark, even be silhouettes. Bright objects that come out of the screen with older polaroid and anaglyph projection usually bleed through, ruining the effect. Clocks running out more later.

But we can learn to focus and converge at different points. That is how one can free view streo pairs.

CFI had a CineColor--type process in the 40s called Magnacolor. AMC used to run 'Popular Science' and 'Unusual Occupations' shorts, transferred from what seemed to be original prints. They alternated between CineColor and Magnacolor, both of which seemed identical. However in, I think, 1949,when EastmanColor came out, CFI commissioned Kodak to make a double sided, two color print film which could be developed in Eastman Color chemicals. CFI named this Trucolor. Roderick Ryan's 'History of Motion Picture Colour Technology' gave the processing steps. Comparing them to the EK print process, the steps are almost identical. The main difference is that the Trucolor's developing time is shorter & maybe the drying time. Considering that the developer had to soak through only one layer of emulsion instead of three, the shorter time makes sense. Most of the color Roy Rogers movies were in two-color Trucolor. I guess those transfers were from newer three-color prints. Around 1953, trucolor was switched to Eastman color. In the early 50s edition of Cornwell-Clyne's 'Colour Cinematography', he says the Trucolor two-concept is such a great idea, that all film manufacturers should use the Agfa patents to manufacture similar stocks. C-C was a big advocate of not using color dyes until the print stage. PS: for all you stereo free viewers, one of the Gasparcolor frames on Brian Prichard's site is a stereo pair.

Admittedly this is about a still film, still it is Kodachrome, which the Church should canonize. From last Saturday's 'All Things Considered' on NPR: http://www.npr.org/blogs/pictureshow/2010/07/23/128728114/kodachrome Transcript of the above: http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=128728114

It flunked the test. I think the Technicolor prism behaves similarly to the Bolex prism. & since an anamorphic lens system has two different focal lengths, horizontal & vertical, the focal planes are shifted by differnt amounts. LBAbbott, in his FX book/memoir, states that a 75mm anamorphic is the shortest focal length that can be used with a 3-strip camera. As to Anscocolor, after WWII the Agfa patents were declared war booty, so anyone could use them without paying royalties to IG Farben. Thus Gevacolor, Ferraniacolor and Fujicolor. Probably a few others that aren't still around. John Baxter's 'Trading with the Enemy' has an amazing story about the german spy ring at the Agfa-Ansco plant in New York state. & Anscocolor was a reversal process until it was replaced by the negative/positive process. & 'Lust for Life' was the last Anscocolor movie, printed on Eastmancolor. Also the first movie to use the name Metrocolor.

One doesn't have to wear glasses to veiw stereo pairs. I find that free viewing stereo pairs is rather meditative.

Not really. The zoom, 300mm, 400mm and 600mm have rear anamorphics. While the 40mm, 50mm, 85mm and 135mm have front anamorphics. The rear anamorphics require quite a bit of space between the back of the lens and the focal plane, so they have to be used on longer focal lengths.

Au contraire! pardon my french. Here's a 2 color T'color camera: A three strip camera: An 8-perf technirama camera with 2000' co-axial mag: The 2 color seems to be a B&H 2709 on steroids. While the 8-perf body llooks alot like the 3-strip body. Is there room inside it to stuff in a 2-color on its side? Some where in a Yahoo group is a post from Peter Haas who was an engineer at Fox in the 50s, in which he explains how Technicolor was able to convert the 3-strips to horizontal 8-perf. The drive shaft connecting the motor to the twin movments was horizontal, thus making it relatively easy to connect it to a horizontal movement. I've been unable to find that letter. I only have limited time on line and can't afford the time to hunt it down. Perhaps these will be of help: ********************************************************************************************** Djsherlock View profile More options Jan 29 1996, 4:00 am Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.tech From: djsherl...@aol.com (Djsherlock) Date: 1996/01/29 Subject: Re: What is VistaVision? And Technirama Reply to author | Forward | Print | Individual message | Show original | Report this message | Find messages by this author tra...@ix.netcom.com (Trawby) previously said: >>>I agree that after you converted a Technicolor 3 strip to horizontal 8 perf you wouldn't have much left of the original. They may have used a prism to rotate the image so that the film actually ran vertically.<<< Ah, that one I can answer definitively. I went to my files and I quote here an article from the June 1957 issue of INTERNATIONAL PHOTOGRAPHER: "The three-strip Technicolor camera has been converted to Technirama by replacing the double gate and beam-splitter with an eight perforation movement. The horizontal double-frame movement racks up and down for focusing through the taking lens. ...Film travels vertically in a straight line from the magazines to the feed and take-up sprockets and is given a right-angle twist before entering and after leaving the film gate." -Dan ********************************************************************************************** ********************************************************************************************** Martin Hart View profile More options Jun 21 2005, 7:28 am Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.tech From: Martin Hart <see-addr...@website.listed.below.org> Date: Tue, 21 Jun 2005 11:28:13 GMT Local: Tues, Jun 21 2005 7:28 am Subject: Re: Technicolor VistaVsion cameras? Reply to author | Forward | Print | Individual message | Show original | Report this message | Find messages by this author In article <1119349967.590681.207...@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com>, cine...@hotmail.com says... > I notice in the "making of 'TO Catch a Thief' in the current DVD, there > are numerous photos showing unblimped TECHNICOLOR cameras supposedly on > location for TCAT which is in VistaVision. I know that TECHNIRAMA used > converted Technicolor 3-strip cameras but wasn't aware that they were > used for the VistaVision Process in 1954. Can anybody shed any light on > this? > Regards, > Peter Mason Peter, Technicolor, realizing that three-strip was dead, converted at least half a dozen of the old cameras to eight perf for Paramount to use for VistaVision while waiting for the Mitchell Elephant Ear cameras to start being delivered. Most of the 8-perf conversions saw double duty shooting both VistaVision and Technirama. In the early 1960s, the Mitchell Elephant Ear VistaVision cameras started seeing duty shooting Technirama. The Mitchell VV Butterfly camera also was used for Technirama, but no way could it be hand held with that additional 40 pounds of lens on the front end. Hitchcock used the Technicolor VV conversions for "The Trouble With Harry", "The Man Who Knew Too Much", and "To Catch A Thief". Warners shot "The Searchers" in VV with Technicolor conversions. Supposedly, and I'm a little skeptical about this, the first Mitchell Elephant Ear cameras went to DeMille for "The Ten Commandments". I have never seen a photo of a Technicolor VV camera using the 2,000 foot coaxial magazine that was very commonly seen in Technirama shoots. Marty -- http://www.widescreenmuseum.com The American WideScreen Museum ********************************************************************************************** <SNIP> > I had always heard that the Technicolor cameras had been converted to > Technirama, but now I think that it was the 2-color Technicolor cameras that > had been converted, not the 3-strip. <SNIP> It was definitely the 3-strip cameras that were converted to VistaVision, and later to Technirama. VistaVision films made in Europe almost always were 3-strip converted cameras. As Paramount acquired more and more new Mitchell elephant ear cameras the 3-strip conversions were freed up and saw service with the Dutch Delrama anamorphic attachments beginning in 1956 as Technirama. If I ever get this damned web thing done, I'll have lots of photos of the equipment. I've discussed the Technirama conversions at some length with Technicolor old timers. The main reason for the extensive conversion to 8 perf may have simply been the fact that Eastmancolor negative made them pretty useless for anything other than effects work and there was certainly plenty of room in the body to install just about any kind of movement and a two car garage. I don't have any nearby references on the older two color Technicolor, but I'm not sure that the Technicolor units photographed double frame. Their prints, unlike other early color processes did not use multiple frames and filters to provide their color spectrum. Somewhere along the line I had the impression that Technicolor was using two negatives in the two color cameras. Marty -- Tra...@ix.netcom.com TECLOC - Preserving "The Window of the World" Coming Soon! - The American WideScreen Museum ONLINE ********************************************************************************************** <<<EUREKA!!!>>> Here it is: Peter View profile More options Jun 27 2009, 10:39 am Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.tech From: Peter <peterh5...@rattlebrain.com> Date: Sat, 27 Jun 2009 07:39:15 -0700 Local: Sat, Jun 27 2009 10:39 am Subject: Re: Eastman, DuPont, and Ansco Film Specs - 1952 Reply to author | Forward | Print | Individual message | Show original | Report this message | Find messages by this author On 2009-06-27 01:12:28 -0700, Neil Midkiff <nmidk...@earthlink.net> said: > As usual, I may have gotten my stories confused, but I always had heard > that it was the 2-color Technicolor cameras which got converted to > VistaVision use. After all, they had the eight-perf sprocket advance > mechanism already: 2-color Tech put two adjacent frames simultaneously > on the same negative, one using a red filter and the other using a > green filter to record some of the color information in the image > coming through one lens, a beamsplitter, and prisms. So it advanced > the film by eight perfs at a time (and used up a 1000' reel in about > five minutes, just as VistaVision would later do). It was the Stein two-color cameras which were initially converted to VistaVision, as the "Lazy-8" cameras. > From the limited knowledge I have from seeing a three-strip camera in > a museum and reading everything in the library and on the Internet I > could find on the subject, it would seem to me that it would be easier > to convert an ordinary 35mm camera to VistaVision use than it would be > to start with a three-strip camera, which would have far more parts in > it than you'd need (multiple film paths, each with four-perf advance > mechanisms) in a bigger chassis, and nothing I can think of that would > be of specific help to a horizontal 8-perf application. Just as the Technicolor Three-Strip was a from-the-ground-up all-new camera (with NC/BNC-type movements from Mitchell Camera Corp, one in the normal position and one in the reverse position, both movements being driven from the same worm shaft), the Technicolor VistaVision was nearly an all-new camera, salvaging very little from the Three-Strip donor cameras. Perhaps the conversion seemed more obvious to Technicolor's engineers when they realized that the vertically-running shaft which drove the twin Mitchell NC/BNC movements for Three-Strip was in an almost perfect position to drive a single Mitchell Camera Corp VistaVision movement, driving that movement from its back side, as is customary for Mitchell movements, rather than through right-angles, as was true in the Three-Strip. The remainder of the 96 volt dc/230 volt three-phase ac motor system could be reused, as could the viewing system, with some obvious modifications to accommodate the larger aperture size. Initially, conventional 1000' mags were used, but later 2000' side-by-side mags were used. The Technirama production camera was a straightforward adaptation of the Technicolor VistaVision camera, just as the Technirama MOS camera was a straightforward adaptation of the Paramount "Butterfly" VistaVision MOS camera (normally used in the field for shooting process plates). Of all the 8-perf cameras of that era, the piece-de-resistance is the Mitchell VistaVision camera, and the motor drives the movement through a set of right-angle gears, so the motor may be accessible from the rear of the camera, and not from the bottom (which would only add to the camera's already top-heavy design. Mitchell also designed a new, narrow geared head for the VistaVision camera, thereby placing the weight of the camera in a more desirable position, but that head was so good it soon became a standard offering, and was also found on BNCs, BFCs and others. -- CinemaScope®: The Modern Miracle You See without Special Glasses!

The front anamorphic has a horizontal squeeze. So a 50mm anamorphic lens will have a horizontal angle equivalent to a 25mm lens. The rear anamorphic has a vertical stretch. So a 25-250mm spherical zoom with a rear anamorphot becomes a 50-500mm anamorphic zoom. & the rear anamorphot has its focus permanantly focused. Jan Jacobsen's patent for rear anamorphics seems so basic, I think he is the inventor of them. Since this is the second time I mentioned him here: http://in70mm.com/newsletter/1999/57/jacobsen/index.htm http://in70mm.com/newsletter/1998/54/jacobsen/story/index.htm http://in70mm.com/newsletter/1998/54/jacobsen/obituary/index.htm

Ultrascope is an anamorphic lens system built by Arri. The lenses were designed by Jan Jacobsen. I doubt that Insane is your real name. Per the forum rules change your moniker to your real name.

The last three-strip movies were made in 1955. 'Firefox' was the last US one and 'The Lady Killers was the last British one & the last one period. Though Disney used consecutive frame Technicolor for animation for quite some time afterwards. Many of the three-strip cameras were converted to 8 perf horizontal single strip.

The SuperScope process was an early version of Super35, RKO used it a lot. Initially it used a 2/1 aspect ratio & was blown up to a square 2x squeezed image. So there were 0.715" x 0.715" projector aperture masks. There was a later SuperScope235 system. I came across a brief article in a trade mag at the UCLA library which gave the ground glass markings, which were .440" x .940" or .950". Do the math and the camera aspect ratio is around 2.16/1. in order to fit that into a C'Scope frame for projection, one had to use a squeeze of around 1.8x. Thus SuperScope235 was not identical to Super35. However in 1957, MGM began shooting some of its B/W CinemaScope movies in a process identical to Super35. There will be a credit line in the main titles which says: "process lenses by Panavision".