American Cinematographer - December 1998 - 125

Moving Through Imaging History
by Eric Rudolph
A

delightful surprise awaits film fans
willing to stray from the beaten path in
New York City. The American Museum
of the Moving Image, located 2]A miles
in Astoria,

east of midtown Manhattan

Queens, should thrill anyone interested
in movies and how

they are made. The
display alone is enough to
warrant a trip by those curious about or
involved in cinematography.
Imagine spending a few hours
wandering through a time machine of
cinematic history, starting with a peek
through the viewfinder of a handcamera

cranked, circa-1910 Pathe 35mm movie

Topped with its rectangular film
magazine, the Pathe is still a familiar
icon of the early silent era.
camera.

Commandments.

Nearby, but light years away in
concept, is a Bolex Super 8 S-8 home
movie camera, complete with a synced
audiocassette recorder improbably
attached to its side in a metal housing.
NBC's New York affiliate experimented
with this hybrid in the mid-1960s in an
attempt to reduce the weight and cost of
16mm single-system sound news
gathering.
A display of exhibition equipment
includes

a

1927

Western

Electric

Vitaphone 35mm Universal Base
projector, complete with synced disk
player. This is the system that made the
early talkies sing.

Next to several of
the

key movie cameras in
display of 18
vintage
models
are
the museum's

clips

Makames's
Picture

which

Debrie Parvo Model L (the camera
used to film such silent-era epics as
a

Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin
Napoleon).

and Abel Gances

hand

is

a

VistaVision Model 54, with its

Rudolph.

byEPhroitcs

wooden
modern

are

also interactive kiosks

animation, ADR and film-to-television

pan-and-scan techniques. Others offer
proprietary descriptions
and images of 201 careers in the movingimage fields. Extensive makeup and
prosthetics displays feature the actual

the museum's

Left to right: Debrie Parvo (1908),
& Howell Studio Model B (1912),

Mitchell

large sideby-side film take-up and supply
housings; similar horizontally fed
spherical widescreen cameras were
used to make Vertigo and The Ten

Bell

unidentified, Pathe Professional 35mm

masks and animatronics
The

In another

area

of the exhibit,

tools stand

alongside the old. A
Silicon Graphics workstation, on which
demonstrations of CGI work are given, is
set up near one of its predecessors - a
large RGA/Oxberry Compuquad Effects
Stop Motion optical printer, a state-ofnew

seen

in many

famous films.

(1910).

Nanook of the North and Man of Aran),

on

a
a

on

workings of the various
film transports and other
salient features. Highlighted are the
famous round Akeley "Pancake" camera
(a
model
used
by renowned
documentarian Robert Flaherty to shoot

Also

resolution, which is housed in
cabinet about the size of
There

The Motion

shows in detail the inner

and

viewpoints. Viewers listen and watch as
the directors choose and arrange their
shots. The O'Brien segment is particularly
amusing, as energetic director Liz Plonka
cajoles and praises her camera operators,
swears colorfully and laughs out loud at
the mugging, quipping O'Brien.
Other highlights at the American
Museum of the Moving Image include a
huge '50s-era RCA color television
camera with swooping futuristic styling
and a full prime-lens turret; an exhibit
explaining present-day television's
curious predecessor - mechanical
television, which actually broadcast
programming in the 1920s; and a 1927
Bell
picture-phone with 50-line

Karl

from

Camera,

Conan O'Brien from the various cameras'

photographic mini-lab.

television monitors that

play

viewpoint, playing segments of a
Yankees game and Late Night With

also

museum

boasts

a

startling full-sized mechanical figure of
Linda Blair created by makeup maestro
Dick Smith for the head-spinning scene
in The Exorcist, which sits next to a large
miniature of the imposing black Tyrell
pyramid from Blade Runner.
After all of this stimulation,
visitors

pre-CGI 1980s.

might be ready for a TV break.
Downstairs is most of the Monk's Cafe

Elsewhere, a bank of television
monitors simulates a television director's

well-worn, much like

the-art visual-effects machine from the

set from

Seinfeld. Surprisingly
a

small and

real Upper West
123
American Cinematographer - December 1998

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