American Cinematographer - December 1997 - 86

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Arriflex, Aaton, and Panaflex

pieces at our shop - all of the deck
detail, davits, lifeboats,

Compatibly

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Filming Video

situations where you

Monitbpsjfc'0*

think, 'Well,
just pump out some model
parts.' But the [real] ship had only
been sailing for four days before it
sank, so there weren't a lot of pho¬
tographs of it. The plans for the
ship were lost years ago, but we

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and

Jacobs agrees, "It was one of those

Auto-Dimming Display Conserves Battery
Phase Button for

cranes

ventilators - and then bring it to
them to put on the ship."
It sounds simple enough.

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had information about the Titanic's
sister ship, the Olympic, which was
similar but not the same. For ex¬

Sharpness Indicator Test Chart
The sharpness indicator is simply
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Now you can easily and accurately evaluate the
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The Sharpness Indicator is made up of test-targets with concentric circles printed on a Reference Field
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The Fries model 435 is a new general purpose MOS production
35mm camera. With its optical printer compatible register pins,
steadiness and 150 FPS speed. The 435 is ideally suited for spe¬
cial effects, commercials or any photography where a quality

just unbelievable."

busily re¬
searching and building virtually
everything from the deck up at
their shop, work was progressing

from 2 to 150 FPS forward and 2 to 50 FPS reverse, in one
frame increments all crystal. The camera is equipped with takeup and supply torque motors.

There are both 1000 ft. and 400 ft. displacement type maga¬
zines. A new feature is the light valve which allows the operator
to direct all the light to the viewing system, or to the video
or

much about the Titanic, and had
volumes of photos, but it was still
difficult for us to find exactly
what we needed. For example,
the only way we could figure out
the placement and style of the
ventilators was to look at the
sunken wreck photos, and say,
'That looks like one of those.' It
While VCU

spinning mirror reflex camera with a 170 degree
blanking shutter. The internal 30VDC motor runs the camera

assist,

chaeological work as we were
building the patterns. Sometimes
we had to
guess from one angle in
one
photo what some parts would
look like. Fortunately, Cameron
gave us access to Ken Marshall, the
preeminent expert on the Titanic.
He's scary; he knows way too

was

steady image is desired.
The 435 is

ample, there were a lot more life¬
boats on the Olympic after the Ti¬
tanic sank, and the lifeboats looked
different. So we were doing ar¬

was

the hull at DD's makeshift

Hughes Aircraft facility. Ever the
stickler for detail, Cameron in¬
sisted that actual shipmakers con¬

combo which splits the light between both viewing and

video assist.

struct the hull out of laminated
wood. "They built it like a racing
boat out of strips of wood lami¬
nated onto forms," Jacobs marvels.

WHY NOT SEE THE WHOLE PICTURE?
The new Fries Director's Viewfinder allows the director to view the full camera aperture .980 x .735, thru
the same lenses that will be used on the camera when filming. Why aren't you getting the whole picture?

"Then the modelers

plates
hull

on,

was

put all of the
because in reality, the

not

flat, it

was

made of

overlapping pieces of steel.
Thank God

we didn't have to do
the 100,000 rivets in the hull. The
[modelers] placed these jigs over
the hull
because the real rivets
were not laid out in
straight lines,
-

Film

Clip: The finder has a set of register pins that will hold a film clip the same as the Fries camera.
Groundglasses: Interchangeable. The same groundglass as is used in the Fries 35R and 35R3 cameras.

Director's

Viewfinder

placed

Fries

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but in weird patterns - and drilled
a hole for each rivet.
They then

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a guy every

5' down the

length of the hull, and had each of

American Cinematographer - December 1997

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - December 1997