Putting Color Into the Movies
Everyone has seen the new color-talkies on the screen, but few people know how the startlingly life-like color effects are produced. This article gives the story of how technicolor films are made.
by RAY FRASER
BACK in 1915, Herbert T. Kalmus, a struggling chemistry instructor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, invented a camera which took two pictures at the same click.
He had hopes that it would prove helpful to the country constable in trapping the speeding motorist. The picture thus obtained would prove scientifically the speed at which the automobile was traveling and also register the number of the vehicle.
When he tried to find his way to a practical application, he found that one camera of this type would cost more than the sum total of taxes collected by most townships for a single year. But he felt he had an idea and clung to it tenaciously.
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Odd Machines Put Fun in Movies
By John E. Lodge
MOVIE studio men were stumped when a comedy script called for an oyster that would open its shell and wink one eye. But a New York maker of comedy props welcomed the job. A few days later, he appeared at the studio carrying an ingenious shell made of papier-mache. The two halves opened and closed on a spring hinge and an eye within winked when a studio man pulled a hidden string.
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Beam of Light Carries Music
Powerful Ray Speeds Radio Program Across Half-Mile of City Buildings RADIO fans witnessed a twentieth-century marvel, the other night, when they listened to a radio program transmitted over a ray of light.
High in the tower of the Chrysler Building, in New York City, an orchestra played before a microphone. No land wire linked it to the broadcasting studio half a mile away. Instead, the blue beam of a 50.000-candlepower searchlight sped the music across intervening rooftops.
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That’s an amazingly modern looking camera for 1936.
Television Turret Camera Sends Movies of Olympics
Bleacherites ten miles away from the Olympic stadium saw the sports events by television. Mounted on a movable pedestal like a turret gun, a television movie camera trained its giant eye on the international games and transmitted the action pictures to distant bleachers and to a projection room in the German post-office headquarters. Done experimentally, the reception was not always clearly defined.
TESTS NOW SHOW IF CHILD IS TONE DEAF OR MUSICAL
Has Junior a natural ear for music? Or are his piano lessons wasted effort? It’s easy to find out at once, according to Prof. Harold M. Williams, of the University of Iowa Child Welfare Research Station. Tests he has devised show whether a child has a real sense of rhythm and whether he can keep a tune in singing.
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New 1978 Electronic Games
A host of video and nonvideo electronic games, many using microprocessors, promises the public more stimulating fun for leisure time.
BY KRIS JENSEN
A COUPLE of years ago, an electronic video game consisted of a simple “black box” that, when connected to a TV receiver, produced little more than some version of video table tennis. In some cases today, that black box is virtually a personal computer. Now there are games whose color images try your gambling instincts at blackjack, your “destroy” capability against an enemy tank, your patience and fortitude through a maze while a “cat” attempts to devour you, your artistic talent with computer-drawn pictures, or your knowledge of math and history. And that is just the beginning in video games!
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There’s Music in Everything
HAVE you ever been lulled to sleep by the musical click of the wheels as your train sped over steel rails? Have your fighting instincts been aroused by staccato drum beats or have you listened to tunes played on such improvised instruments as a musical saw, a length of pipe with a funnel in one end, a comb and piece of tissue paper, or a deflating automobile tube whose valve was fingered by the performer?
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TV’s Tiniest Actress
Barbra Loden cavorts in miniature on the Ernie Kovacs’ show, astounding and amusing audiences with her feats.
BARBRA Loden is TV’s tiniest performer by virtue of electronic wizardry. In reality she’s a shapely 5 ft., 5 in., 112-pound gal with a mighty fine specification sheet reading 36-23-34. She performs on Ernie Kovacs’ show twice a week, cavorting through a series of weird Lilliputian escapades dreamed up by Kovacs and director Barry Shear.
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