What do the birth of motion picture production have in common with the invention of the Stedicam?PHILADELPHIA! I saw last night an wonderful, locally produced film and had no idea, that motion picture production, started in Philadelphia:

Trailer: Before Hollywood: Philadelphia and the Birth of the Movies

More clips from the documentary are available here: https://6abc.com/entertainment/watch-philly-in-focus---the-birth-of-motion-pictures/3191361/

At the screening the the Filmmakers were present and mentioned they have received a grant and will make a new version of the film, appealing to a wider audience (outside of Philadelphia)... coming someday soon.

More on Garrett Brown (who lives outside Philadelphia) and his pioneering work on the Steadicam.

This film was posted on a Facebook group, It's a 2011 BBC production. Jean Rouch, Jean-Pierre Beauviala, Bob Drew, DA Pennybaker, Richard Leecock, David & Albert Maysles (and more) are featured. Jean-Pierre Beauviala explains the technical achievement of making the Aaton quiter, it seems small but it was very significant. Andre Coutant's prototype camera is actually breath taking, as guts of camera are tiny, compared to the magazine holding the film, reduce the size of the mag to a SD card and you can see how this paved the way, for what we have today. The film reminded me how fortunate we are today (despite all discussions about missing features) with the current tools (camera, audio & non-linear editing), which are flawless compared to 60 years ago: compact, light weight, sync sound, color, long recording times (more than 20 seconds, 3 minutes, 10 minutes -as film mags would allow) AND some can fit in your pocket! Here's where we came from:

@tubefingers no I only reposted the photo I saw on the inter webs.

@tubefingers Cassettes were the earliest form of data storage for emerging digital computer technologies. Very early computers used cassette storage too. It's just a compact tape system rather than the large reels of tape the mainframe systems used back then.

From Facebook:

@jleo All good points. I only worked with carbon arcs outdoors (simulating sunlight) and in the New York City area, so heat wasn't much of an issue except for a few days in the summer, and it was only the lamp operator's issue (outside), not a problem on the set (inside).

Interesting points about film noir. Thanks!

Carbon Arc lights are known for their beautiful quality of light output. They also require a lamp operator on each lamp in use, create smoke, which has to be properly ventilated, and, usually someone to service the mechanism inside the lamp, when they are not in use.. = very expensive to use.

My slow roasted chicken story from P.1 is confirmed by some more good stories here:

I think "Marooned" (1969) was the last Cinerama movie I saw at the Cinerama Dome, although shot in single camera Cinerama

One of my favourite 3 camera Cinerama movies is How The West Was Won 1962. Classic Cinerama staging & composition. It's available in a faux Cinerama format called Smilebox, good for projection HDTV.

In 2012 these guys made "a little movie in Cinerama" This is the pre-Anamophic widescreen process. If anyone has ever seen the end result, the process did have issues matching the 2 seams between the 3 cameras. You can see in the diagram below how the 3 projectors were set up to recreate what the camera recorded.

This is a very interesting doc. that shows more of the process than I have ever seen or knew. In the doc they mention it took 5 people to project a film. In the "Seven Seas" doc, they state the image is actually 6 perforations high, whereas standard 35mm images are only 4 perforations high. That's a 50% larger image are, per camera in a 3 camera process. They state the result was an almost grainless image (on screen).

Also, we can all be thankful Cinerama was so complicated, it led to the further development of Anamorphic. It was eventually replaced by UltraPanavision 70 (Anamorphic). more on that here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_Panavision_70

@CFreak

Thanks for posting ;-) Good stuff...

I found a Facebook page that is a goldmine of old images. I will be posting a few :-)

These are Technicolor 3 strip cameras. This technology was at one time the only way to shoot movies in color (in the USA). There were 3 rolls of B&W film in the mag, each with a color filter on it, so that each strip would record Red, Green, or Blue. All 3 film strips were sandwiched in the gate of the camera in a certain order. After processing, the B&W film strips had colored light projected through them, so the color was added back in, and the 3 color resulting image was recorded on to a single strip of color positive film (something equivalent to Kodachrome or Ektachrome) and that was the copy shipped to the theaters. In the USA Kodak had developed color positive film technology (think "slide film") but hadn't been able to successfully make a color negative film.

Could you imaging loading such a complicated mag in the field, esp. if you got the layers of film mixed up? That would have been a mess, so as I understand it, the mags came pre-loaded from Technicolor.

I think single strip color negative was first developed by Agfa and Kodak only got the technology after WWII as part of the war reparations. My history might be rusty, but, that's what I remember learning here and there in 20 years working with film (and loading a lot of single strip color neg in mags).

Feel free to let me know if I have got anything wrong.

According to this video Bolsey was a Russian inventor: Bogopolsky/Boolsky/Bolsey