“Sketches” Sound; Files It For “Talkies”

SYNTHETIC musical notes that can be filed away in a card index have been developed by a group of Soviet musicians and scientists. The hand-sketched notes, resembling combs, are used to produce musical accompaniment for motion picture films.
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Radios in Your Hair

RADIO receivers, tinier than a penny matchbox have been developed by Paramount sound men in Hollywood. These replace the megaphones that directors used in the days of silent pictures to shout instructions to their stars. The resulting confusion on crowded sets was nerve racking to both the director and members of the cast. When sound was added, the megaphone had to go. It was then replaced by intricate signaling systems and many necessary interruptions and expensive retakes. Now this tiny inductive-type receiver, that uses no batteries or tubes, is concealed on the actor’s person. It is claimed that it can pick up signals as far as 300 feet away from the transmitter which is placed near the movie studio stage.
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Very interesting article by one of the original Hollywood stunt men. It certainly seems like this was an even more extreme profession in the early days:

“I had to wear the blood-spattered clothes in which Jack Silver—”Old Silvertip”—died the day before I did his stunt. It was a leap from a train crossing a trestle to the water beneath. Hesitating a fraction of a second, Silvertip had struck pilings on the far side of the stream and been killed. We must not hesitate.”

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CHEATING DEATH for a LIVING

By BOB ROSE

I BELONG to a strange fraternity. After nineteen years, only six of the original 150 remain. We are the motion-picture stunt men.

I have seen most of the others die, one after another, in performing dangerous feats. Yet, during my own career I was never seriously injured in doing 560 parachute leaps, eighty plane changes in the air, 150 dives from heights above ninety feet, 180 automobile wrecks, riding horses over cliffs sixty-five times and staging fights atop ninety-foot ship masts and making the proper fall into the water so many times I have lost count. The pioneer stunt men who remain besides myself are Cliff Lyons, Yakima Canutt, Duke Green, Gordon Carveth and Frank Clark.
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And it only took us another 50 years or so before it became commonplace.

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“SOLID MUSIC”

“Three-Dimensional” Sounds Created

LIKE pictures on a screen, the best of public-address amplification and loudspeaker reproduction hitherto available has lacked reality. It is not that the instruments are defective in their reproduction of pitch and volume; but the ear is a fairly selective instrument, and hard to deceive when aided by the eyes. The sounds are right, but the directions from which they come are wrong. However, a recent demonstration, staged by telephone engineers, has the astonishing effect of overpowering the testimony of the eyes. Unseen players, singers and dancers seem to move tunefully or noisily across an empty stage.
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Machine Shows Cartoons Without Screen
A NEW idea in motion pictures machines has just been developed. by Max Fleischer, the well-known movie cartoonist. The mechanism, shown above, consists of a large cylinder on which are attached cartoons of the various comic characters, and a large rotating shutter with two narrow slits on either side of it.

As the cylinder is rotated, the shutter revolves in unison, so that by standing at a point in front of the machine and looking at the right portion of the shutter, animated cartoons of amazingly smooth action can be viewed.

In contradistinction to the common movie projector, Mr. Fleischer’s machine has no intermittent action, and the big wheel never stops but revolves continuously. A full picture with smooth flickerless action is the result.

ACTORS’ BREATH MADE VISIBLE FOR WINTER FILM SCENES
Motion pictures of winter scenes may be made realistic by a device that makes the actors’ breath visible, just as it would be at low temperatures. The device resembles false teeth. It enables the actors to keep Dry Ice in their mouths without harmful results. The warm breath causes the Dry Ice to give off vapor not unlike that produced by persons breathing in cold weather. The device does not interfere with speech.

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MOVIE CARTOONS Gain THIRD Dimension

MAX FLEISCHER worked a full year to produce 250 feet of motion picture film on one of the first animated cartoons ever to reach the silver screen. Alone, he made thousands of drawings, wrote the story, and did the photography. The animated cartoon was “Out of the Ink Well.” It made movie history just after the World War.

Today he has a staff of 225 people who turn cut a 650-foot animated cartoon every ten days. All of them are in sound, many in color and, latest of all, with three dimensions. The famous “Popeye the Sailor” animateds are leaders in the field; “Betty Boop,” “Ko-Ko the Klown,” and the familiar Screen Songs with the famous bouncing ball are known to every movie-goer. They are released through Paramount Pictures Corporation.
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According to wikipedia this was the 3rd drive-in to open in the U.S.

California Autoists View Movies in New Open Air Theatre

LOS ANGELES motorists, movie bound, may now sit in their cars and enjoy the latest sound pictures in a giant open air theatre recently completed.

The frame which holds the 40 by 50 foot screen is a structure 72 feet high and 132 feet wide. Three huge loudspeakers, each 22 feet long and 7 feet across the mouth, are mounted on top of the structure. These loudspeakers are directed at the tops of the cars, whose soft fabric is said to make an ideal sounding board.

The fenced – in spectators’ area holds 450 cars which are parked in lanes graded at an angle so that the cars point up at the screen. This inclination enables back-seat spectators to obtain a unobstructed view of the screen. Projection machines are in a low building in front of the screen, said to be the largest in the world. Installed in a low building in the second row, these machines work at an up-shot angle, instead of the customary down-shot used in indoor theatres.

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MILLIONS for MOVIE IDEAS

By Frank Lloyd

Paramount Producer-Director

THERE is upward of one million dollars waiting for you in Hollywood if you can find a satisfactory way of projecting motion pictures in three dimensions. There’s another million for some device which will create a universal focus for a camera. Possibly you could drive an even better bargain.

But before you start, remember that the best brains in the industry have been struggling with the ideas for years and nothing worth-while has been found. Hundreds of letters come to the studios, containing both shrewd suggestions and fantastic ideas, and still the search goes on. Scores of patents have been issued on both subjects and yet nothing good enough seems to have turned up.
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H. G. Wells Photographs the FUTURE in His Motion Picture “THINGS to COME”

SUBTERRANEAN cities flourishing under the scientific miracle of weather manufactured by machines—

Light-ray traps which recapture the very incidents of long vanished centuries so that you may watch Columbus discover America if you wish—

Flowers and vegetables grown without soil or sunlight—

Personal radio telephones carried on the clothing in a space no larger than a coat button—

An electric Space Gun powerful enough to rocket human beings around the Moon—

Boring machines which carry joy-riding passengers to Aladdin’s caves ten miles beneath the earth—

These are some of the amazing achievements predicted for the world of tomorrow by H. G. Wells, world-famous British novelist who is hailed as the greatest prophetic genius of our day. With other miracles of the year 2054, they will soon be seen in Mr. Wells’ startling motion picture, prophetically entitled “Things to Come.” Read the rest of this entry »

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How THREE COLOR MOVIES ARE MADE

WOULD you like to know how the color in a Walt Disney Silly Symphony or in “La Cucaracha” is obtained? Have you ever wondered how a motion picture film, in which each picture is about the size of a postage stamp, is colored so it can be magnified 35,000 or more times and still retain the beautiful coloring of a Silly Symphony?
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Synthetic Scenery Eliminates Movie Sets
HUGE, one-sided sets built at great cost in Hollywood movie studios to recreate for the camera famous buildings and famous settings, are fast becoming obsolete. Stored away in round metal cans in the film vaults of Radio Pictures, are hundreds of well-known synthetic settings, and cameramen are now being sent around the world to gather thousands more, to be used in a revolutionary new process called “rear projection.”
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