The American cinematographer (Jan-Dec 1932)

AMATEUR SECTION November 1932 • American Cinematographer 27 Forerunners of the Amateur Film by Cuido Secber Translated by Hatto Tappenbeck, A.S.C. EDITOR'S NOTE: This interesting article which appeared in a recent issue of "Filmtechnik," the official magazine in Germany of five leading photographic societies, was inspired by the recent development of 8 mm. film. It is the belief of the editor of "Filmtechnik" that the 8 mm. will be the final standard of the amateur and that the 16 mm. will be adopted by industrial concerns, making it semi-professional. This is the first of a series of articles which delves into the history of the narrower width films. THE AMATEUR film as we know it today has gone through a long history of development. Soon after the 35 mm. or standard film, as we call it today, was recognized, we find inventors busy with the thought of introducing motion pictures to the masses. For a long time they were in doubt and thought it might be better to stay with the standard film; and so they produced in the course of many years a number of very simple and cheap apparatus to make it possible for the amateur to produce motion pictures on standard film. But at the same time we can see efforts being made to popularize cinematography with the use of a narrower film. If we look at the situation of today we find that it has taken indeed more than thirty years to arrive at a width which spread quickly over the whole world and which seems to be destined in many cases not only to replace the standard film, but also to supersede it. The reasons for its surprisingly fast spread may be seen in the facts that the largest film manufacturer of the world, the Kodak Co., made the start, that furthermore only uninflammable material is used, and that finally the reversal film frees the amateur of all processing and gives excellent results at a comparatively small cost. Today there are more than forty makes of amateur cameras and projectors on the market, which proves again the interest shown in the narrow film and the hopes built on it by the manufacturers. The construction of the cameras makes it possible to obtain results comparable to those on standard film, and the ama ';Rcprinted from "Filmtechnik," Berlin o o j o; ! CD ! CD', 1 o' L ; CD\ °L CD\ o: CD', of CD', Fig. 1 Fig. 4 Fig. 6 teur projectors have been gradually perfected to such an extent that we can today project just as bright and large an image with narrow film as we ordinarily see only when using standard film. Birt Acres of London was the first to introduce the "Narrow film." Birt Acres was the big rival of Lumiere. He photographed the English University boat races, which took place on March 30, 1895, with his "Kinetic"-camera. This was only a few days after the brothers Lumiere had registered their French patent and before they took out their English one. Birt Acres seems to have been defeated at this boat race by the length of a few days only. His English patent is dated about 5 weeks later than that of Lumiere, and he seems already to have given his first public showing in the very beginning of the year 1896. Birt Acres plays a special part in the history of the cinematography, because he was the first one to use two sprocket wheels in his camera, one to regulate the film before and the other after it was exposed. He did not invent a new narrow film for his purpose, but simply split the 35 mm. standard film in half. Thus he obtained a film strip of MVz mm. width (Fig. 1) which had the perforations only on one side. As this single perforation proved to be thoroughly practical he constructed an apparatus for photographing and projecting this amateur film. As Fig. 2 plainly shows, his camera movement consisted of a beater which, according to contemporary reports, produced extremely steady pictures. The apparatus contains Continued on Page 34 Fig. 5 Fig. 3 Fig. 2