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Making Trick PICTURES with a Home Movie Camera

by Walter E. Burton

Half the fun in making home movies lies in getting unusual shots that will mystify friends viewing your production. Taking such trick pictures is quite simple and easy, as told here.

IF YOU purchase, borrow, or receive as a present a motion picture camera, you will find the mere process of photographing everything in sight thrilling enough for the first half-dozen reels. Then you will look about for new fields to conquer. Perhaps you will undertake the making of your own dramas or comedies—movies with a plot or at least a basic theme. Read the rest of this entry »

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James Bond’s Weird World of Inventions

007 tangles with the trickiest assortment of supergadgets ever assembled for the screen in new James Bond movie, “Thunderball”

By HERBERT SHULDINER

Gadgetry is a smash hit in Hollywood. Dozens of new films and TV episodes are filled with zany gimmicks and pushbutton devices to entertain audiences.

The thing that started this remarkable trend is the unprecedented success of the gimmick-packed James Bond movies. The first three 007 films raked in over $75 million. Gold finger alone has earned about $43 million—more than any film has ever returned over a comparable time span.
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Movie screen in the parlor need no longer be a problem with this new device known as the Pict-O-Screen. Concealed within the frame of a lithograph print, it can be pulled into place with a cord whenever your projector is ready. When the show is over, just tug the cord again and the screen disappears. It’s made by Radiant Mfg. Co., Chicago.

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What Makes the Movies Talk?

By William F. Crosby

Electrical Expert and Radio Engineer Millions of people have heard and seen the new talking movies, but the theater-going public knows little about the machinery that makes this form of entertainment possible. In this article Mr. Crosby writes authoritatively of the development of the talking movies, being an electrical engineer who has made a study of the sound devices.

SPEECH reproduction as an accompaniment of motion pictures has been perfected to such a degree that the common variety of silent movie promises to become something of a rarity. Even the 100-seat side-street theater will soon be able to cast out its old mechanical organ and give its patrons the same high quality musical accompaniment that distinguishes the presentations in the largest movie palaces. Read the rest of this entry »

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Behind the Scenes With Movie Sound Fakers

The baying of wolves, the clackety-clack of horses’ hoofs, the creaking of auto brakes—these sounds which you hear from the silver screen seldom come from their real sources. This story by an eminent movie sound expert takes you behind the scenes and shows you how these noises are faked.

by MURRAY SPIVAK
Famous Hollywood Sound Director

ONE afternoon recently I sat in the scoring room of the movie studio where I am sound director watching a team of horses gallop down a country road. Later in the picture trees swayed in a violent wind, and then brush broke as an actor ran through a forest. But never a sound issued from the talking screen.
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Here’s a Servant Out of This World
A seven-foot eight-inch robot does its master’s bidding in M-G-M’s new movie, “Forbidden Planet.” Made of plastic and synthetic leather, the robot is animated by electricity. Ears are rotating antennas, and its grillework month hides a loudspeaker.

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Creating Illusions for the Talkies

by MARY SHARON

You can’t believe everything you see in the talkies, and it’s a bit of luck for you that you can’t; for these illusions lower production costs and help keep the admission price within your reach.

“IF THE mountain will not come to Mohammet, Mohammet must go to the mountain.”

“But, most noble prophet, it costs too much to go to the mountain.”

“Then we’ll fake a mountain right here in the studio.”
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Behind the Scenes with the MARCH of TIME

by JAMES DYSON

A FLOURISH of trumpets and the announcement “March of Time”, coming through the loudspeaker at your local movie theater, represents the introduction of a new kind of motion picture journalism—dramatized news pictorially presented to impress you with the importance of current events.

Like the fast moving drama of its daily radio news presentation and the vivid stories of its companion magazine, March of Time on the screen has won public favor because it combines the striking events of the present with the unusual background so often forgotten in the hustle of the average newspaper editorial rooms. A clever harmony of realism and illusion swiftly flashed on the screen indelibly stamps on the minds of the spectators the historic importance or the social or economic significance of the story being unfolded before them.
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Simple Things Complicated in Joe Cook Comedy

THE unemployment problem in this country would be quickly solved if all inventors would follow in the footsteps of Joe Cook, for that inimitable comedian of the stage and screen seems to have a perfect genius for complicating the simple things of life and employing nine men where but two were used before.
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Three Dimension Movies Leap from Screen

PATENTS have recently been granted to Jacob Burkhardt of Detroit, Michigan, on a type of motion picture film which produces pictures having so realistic a three dimension effect that the actors seem almost to walk from the screen among the audience.
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Radio Calls Movie Star to Work

HERBERT MUNDIN, movie star, recently had to work in four different pictures at the same time. Finding it rather difficult to keep track of his working day schedule, and to know just where he was wanted next, he had to use a portable radio set.

With radio communication the directors had but to step up to the microphone to call their “much-in-demand” actor.

The tiny radio set and batteries are supported by a slingstrap. Headphones are used for reception, with a tiny loop aerial attached to them. No ground wire is needed since transmitter is close.

Of course the hole in the wall she was posing for was called the “U-Tube”.

“Movie-of-U” Makes Film for Screen Test in Six Minutes

ALL those aspiring to fame as movie stars can save themselves the costly trip to Hollywood for a try-out by using the newly invented “Movie-of-U” device shown in the photo at the left. The chief feature of the machine is a self-operating and developing camera. The aspirant enters the booth, inserts a quarter in the slot, presses the button that sets the electrically powered camera in motion, and proceeds to act. In six minutes after she has finished, the film is developed and is projected on the screen above the head for inspection.