American Cinematographer - August 1994 - 78

lens with

InTeniions continuedfrom page 14

a

mirror shutter

Before

camera.

Angenieux of France introduced their
18mm lens with a long back focal clearance,
the widest angle lens that could be used
on an

Arriflex

camera was

28mm.

In 1955

filming from helicopters
practical with the invention
of the counterbalanced helicopter mount,
which used the principal of inertia to damp
out the vibrations caused by the rotor
blades. T he Helivision mount, developed
by Albert Lamorisse in France and used to
became

more

wonderful effect in The Red Balloon,
showed the

possibilities of this camera plat¬

form.
The

early Sixties saw the introduc¬
dolly, incorporating a hy¬

tion of the crab
draulic

arm to

raise and lower the

camera.

With the AlacAllister

details of this
have survived
^

T

A Moy and Bastie camera from

rig

England, patented 1909, one of

the most popular cameras on

'

1 n Y ranee,

b0,h sides of the Atlantic,
in 1927, Professor
Henri Chretien invented and built the

dolly it became pos¬
sible to steer a dolly by two or four wheels,
to move it forwards, backwards or sideways,
and to move the camera up and down at the
same speed as a person could stand up from
a sitting position.
In the late Sixties Garrett Brown's

Steadicam added yet

another dimension to
Handholding a camera
had been possible since 1908 and, provided
the lens used was limited to a wide angle,
it was possible to do so with reasonable

cylindrical anamorphic
lens with a 2:1 squeeze ratio, which in 1953
became known as CinemaScope.
In 1932 Bell & Howell, using a
Cooke design, manufactured the first gen¬
erally available zoom lens, which went from

camera movement.

40

space

Hypergonar lens,

100mm, had

to

and had

a

an

f/4 maximum aperture

be focused

of diopt¬
spinning
mirror reflex shutter by Arnold & Richter
in Germany in 1938, however, these zoom
lenses were very difficult to use. (Of the six

ers.

to

by the

lenses believed

surviving models
museum,

to

have been made,

are present

in the ASC

the Grant Loucks collection

Alan Gordon

at

Enterprises in Hollywood, and

the Samuelson collection in London.)
At about the same time Agfa

in
Germany came up with the first color mask
negative color film, predecessor of the color
films we know today. None of the earlier
color systems have survived.
The three basic inventions that
have

fundamentally shaped the way we
shoot sync sound today are magnetic record¬
ing, developed from the pre-war German
Blattnerphone wire recording system; pulse
sync, invented simultaneously by Peter
Ranger in the U.S. and Norman Leevers in
England (late Forties); and the crystal-con¬
trolled

camera

motor

from Perfectone of

Switzerland in the late Sixties.
The

76

-

what the Steadicam did

was

make it

possible to float the camera in
and glide it from setup to setup.
The Lourna

camera

crane,

devel¬

oped in the late Sixties in France (and
added to in England by the invention of the
remote

control

camera

lated

normal

geared head) placed the

a

camera

where it had

could be

head which

never

emu¬

been before: it

lightweight platform
and then dipped into a scene, allowing 360degree pans without showing the camera
crew. Another radical development was its
ability to be disassembled into pieces light
enough to be carried by at most two people.
The same time period saw the in¬
troduction of the handholdable sync sound
35mm studio cameras. Quiet, shoulderholdable cameras had long been available
set

up on a

in the 16mm format (the Eclair NPR from

France), but the introduction of the
Arriflex 35BL and the Panaflex
made it

cameras

possible

to shoot dialogue scenes
in circumstances that were not possible
with Mitchell BNCs and the like.
'The

past

major developments of the
decade have been spin-offs of the mi¬

development in the early Fif¬
or inverted telephoto

crochip age. Alotion control opened a new
era of special effects
cinematography and
digital manipulation; and compositing is a

possible

revolution

ties of the retro-focus

lens made it

to

use

Until the invention of the

zoom

steadiness

/ISC's

to use a

wide angle

Seventy-fifth Anniversary

as

great as any

August 1994

before.

Freund Letter continuedfrom page 75

of-place tricks, what can the poor
cinematographer do but deliver
them
and grow discouraged in
the process?
To you, Mike, I want to
express my admiration of an artist
who knows the value of legiti¬
mately fine cinematography and
who, as evidenced by what I saw
on the screen not only in this
pic¬
ture but in all of your productions,
is always willing to give his cin¬
ematographer a free hand to con¬
tribute it outstandingly to the ben¬
efit of the production.
To you, Arthur, I want to
express my admiration for having
risen so magnificently to the op¬
portunities Mike and Casablanca
gave you, and turning in the
crowning achievement of a long
and distinguished career. For too
many years you have been as¬
signed to productions which did
not give you any
opportunity to
demonstrate the skill your fellow
cinematographers know is yours.
But when the opportunity came,
your mastery of all the resources
and subtleties of cinematography
-

enhanced both the dramatic and
the physical values of the produc¬
tion. I
the

am sure

that what I

saw on

there much
more by your skill in lighting and
composition than by anything that
existed actually on the set. Your
picture unfortunately is not up for
the Academy Award this year -
but you can have mine any time
you want it. An achievement like
yours deserves the highest recog¬
screen was

nition

[we]

can

put

bestow.

I know you two were

backed up

by a fine and far-see¬
ing studio organization, from pro¬
ducer Hal Wallis right on down
the line. But if there had

not

been

outstanding ability, understand¬
ing and cooperation on the set, I
would not now be writing this let¬
ter. You may wonder why I am
doing it, anyway, since I am at
another

studio, under

a contract

which still has four years to run.
The answer is simple: I
feel that now, perhaps more than

before,

our industry, and the
large, need fine pictures.
Above all, we need the sort of unever

world

at
American Cinematographer - August 1994

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