Inventor Promises Disk Record Movie Shows for the Home

Film Projector Runs like a Talking Machine WHAT Edison did with the talking machine; what Bell did with the telephone; what Ford did with the automobile, C. Francis Jenkins, inventor, of Washington, D. C, now proposes to do with the movies.
Read the rest of this entry »

I had no idea that panning a camera used to be called panoraming. Saying: “Don’t panoram or tilt unless absolutely necessary” just sounds weird.

view additional pages

Amateurs Capture ACTION for the NEWSREELS

When a peaceful valley suddenly becomes the scene of a roaring flood, the amateur news cameraman is on the job. Where hurricanes rage or great explosions take their toll, the newsreels depend upon alert amateurs. This article tells how it is done.

by MAXWELL R. GRANT

PRISON sirens howl as a band of desperate convicts blaze their way out of the penitentiary with smuggled guns. Hot on their trail follows an amateur cameraman. He photographs scenes of the resulting confusion, the hurried marshalling of police cars, the armed guards pacing the prison walls, the excited crowd of curiosity seekers, and gets human-interest shots overlooked by professional news-reel men.
Read the rest of this entry »

view additional pages

When Hollywood STARS TURN To HOBBIES

By HOWARD SHARPE

WHILE their images are engaged in entertaining millions of people in theaters all over the world, Hollywood stars can be found entertaining themselves—in their workshops. And while their images flash across the screen, garbed in sophisticated evening apparel, gay costumes of former periods, or flashy uniforms, the stars are hard at work in grease stained coveralls, dungarees and sweat shirts, or the first old garments to come to hand. Read the rest of this entry »

view additional pages

MAKEUP SECRETS of Movie HORROR Pictures

When you shudder at the sight of frightful characters in horror movies, it is usually the makeup man who is responsible for your thrills. Read here how he creates actors that terrify you.

by JAMES BOWLES

FROM the depths of an ancient casket a bony and shriveled hand stretched back across history thirty-seven centuries to snatch a scroll from a terror-stricken actress.

Deep, gray lines of age streaked the hand. Dust fell from ancient fingers. Yet it moved, actually grasped the parchment, and disappeared from the screen.

Outside the camera angle sat Boris Karloff. It was his hand whose antiquity the camera revealed, a hand “mummified” earlier in the morning by Jack Pierce, movie make-up expert, who recently produced a living mummy in the person of Karloff, complete in 1500 feet of rotted cloth bandages, wrinkled skin, closed eyes and the yellow hair of a person dead many centuries.
Read the rest of this entry »

view additional pages

The Talking Newspaper

By MICHEL MOK

This vivid account of how sound and action reels are made lays bare for you the secrets of a new industry. Big trucks or planes rush camera to scene of news.

SIX o’clock of a stormy spring evening. Fire breaks out in the Ohio State Penitentiary at Columbus. Five thousand men fight for their lives behind melting prison bars. Three hundred and seventeen are killed in their cells by flames and suffocation.

Three o’clock the next afternoon. Carefree crowds fill the moving picture houses along Broadway, New York City. There, 600 miles from the scene of the holocaust, only twenty-one hours after the first alarm, Pathe News pictures of the disaster are thrown on the screens.
Read the rest of this entry »

Movie Camera Is Also Projector
FILMS may be projected as well as taken with a midget home movie camera marketed recently for amateur use. A tiny but powerful electric motor operated by four flashlight cells drives the film during exposure, and supplies power for the projector bulb. The film used is 9-1/2 mm. wide, but has a picture area about the same as that of 16 mm. film, since perforations are in the center between the frames. The camera has a fast f 2.5 lens, giving usually clear pictures.

view additional pages

Strange PERILS of Making MOVIES Beneath the Sea

Hollywood’s most intrepid cameraman relates startling adventures he has encountered making undersea movies which chill your blood.

by HOMER SCOTT – Pioneer Underwater Cameraman

IN 14 years I probably have gazed into the cold eyes of more curious fish and looked on the bodies of more actors and actresses beneath the sea than any other man. From the shores of Southern California to the rocky coast of the Socorro islands, far south in the Pacific, and even off the shores of New Zealand I have descended many times in one of my half-bells, my legs dangling puppet-like in the cold water, to photograph dramas that sometimes thrilled me more than were the audiences that viewed the results on the screen. ] When the editors of Modern Mechanix and Inventions asked me to write of the thrills and tell you how these scenes are filmed, I said to myself, “Gosh, there’s nothing very interesting about undersea picture-taking.”
Read the rest of this entry »

view additional pages

FILMING TABLE TOP EARTHQUAKES

by EARL THEISEN – Honorary Curator of Motion Pictures, Los Angeles Museum.

When the director calls for floods, train wrecks, and volcanoes, the miniature men create the scenes. Read how they produce these effects.

BEHIND the studio walls tucked off in a corner may be found the miniature department. It is hidden away where persons will not interfere with its work or find out its secrets.

To the miniature man everything is possible from the fabrication of airplane crashes, train wrecks, explosions, floods, to the bringing to life on the screen of prehistoric monsters. In this department of the studios is filmed those things that cannot be photographed or are too dangerous to be photographed in full size. The miniature men are specialists in reproducing literally on a table top practically anything that occurs in real life.
Read the rest of this entry »

CAMERA MAKES EIGHT MOVIES ON ONE FILM
By making eight successive rows of pictures upon a single strip of standard film, a pocket movie camera designed by a British actor approaches the ultimate in economy. As many as 144 of its midget views are packed in the space that five full-size frames would occupy. Mechanism within the camera automatically shifts the exposures from one row to the next without interrupting the picture-taking, and a similar mechanism is used in projection. The illustrations show the new camera and a sample of developed film.

This is the precursor to those little coin-op TVs they used to have in airports.

ONE-MAN THEATER HELPS KILL TIME

To help travelers while away the time when waiting for trains, a one-man movie theater, suitable for installation in railway terminals, has been designed by a New York inventor. Entering the booth of one of these devices, a patron would seat himself before a miniature screen and insert a coin in a slot. An automatic projector would then entertain him with a current film production until he was ready to leave. A number of booths of this type would offer a choice of films.

view additional pages

FILMING A MOVIE WAR

BURSTING bombs failed to stop scores of German soldiers charging across the scarred battlefield under cover of night. The ground was rent by machine-gun bullets. Soldiers dropped hopelessly in barbwire entanglements.

It was the World War all over again for many American Legion men and ex-German soldiers acting as extras during the filming of The Road Back. Every exploding shell and spattering of machine gun fire brought back memories of war’s deadliness. But this was a movie war—nobody was being killed! Hollywood’s explosive experts, through years of experience, have developed tricks that make acting in a movie war safer than crossing a busy highway.
Read the rest of this entry »

Movies of Television Show Provide Permanent Record
With a 1200-foot magazine that permits continuous recording of a half-hour program, a specially designed movie camera photographs television programs directly from the monitor tube at the broadcasting station. The double-chamber magazine holds both unexposed and exposed film and can be removed in a lighted room. The camera will be used by stations to provide a permanent record of their programs.