Machines
that Made the Movies: Finalé This article originally appeared in ICG Magazine in Jan. 2001. In 1970, Paris peace negotiators argued over the shape of the conference table while 400,000 American troops still slogged through the quagmire of the Vietnam War. The growing anti-war movement turned tragic when National Guard troops opened fire on a student demonstration at Kent State University. “Four dead in Ohio” sang Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young in their anthem memorializing the slain students. The music died with Jimi and Janis, and the “Age of Aquarius” made way for a time of angst, alienation and absurdity. Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H used the Korean War as a stand-in for the insanity of Vietnam and indeed, all war. Francis Ford Coppola’s Oscar-winning script and George C. Scott’s brilliant portrayal of Patton presented a complex, flawed hero from the last “good war.” In Five Easy Pieces, Jack Nicholson’s Bobby Dupea battled his own demons of despair, culminating in a cathartic coffee shop scene that forever changed the meaning of “chicken salad sandwich.” In a trend that began in 1955 when Howard Hughes sold RKO to General Tire and Rubber Company, business conglomerates that sold insurance and built hotels bought Hollywood studios like they were widget factories. Backlots were turned into condos and shopping malls, film libraries were sold for a song and much of the precious memorabilia of Hollywood’s golden age was lost forever, tossed into the fires of oblivion much like Charles Foster Kane’s childhood sleigh. Into this vacuum rushed the new wave of American filmmakers who turned their backs on the decaying studio system and preferred — indeed, insisted — on shooting their neo-realist movies on location without the impediments of heavy, archaic equipment, armies of technicians and the interference of the ever-present production office. The Mitchell BNC, which had reigned supreme as Hollywood’s studio 35mm camera for more than 30 years, was fast becoming obsolete in the revolutionary decade of Seventies’ cinema. Mitchell added reflex viewing to their venerable workhorse, introducing the BNCR in late 1968. But the company met increasing competition from converted, updated and redesigned BNC cameras like Cinema Products SPR (Silent Pellicle Reflex) X-35 and Panavision’s PSR (Panavision Silent Reflex). In the minds of many “film school brats” now storming the last bastions of the crumbling studio fortress, these burdensome boat anchors (even the PSR still weighed in excess of 140 pounds) were not the right cameras for the freewheeling style of the new American cinema. The Arriflex and the Éclair CM3 were small and light, making them great for handheld shots in cramped locations but they were still “MOS” cameras that needed massive, cumbersome blimps for sync-sound. The new generation of directors and cinematographers working in narrative theatrical films longed for the kind of freedom that practitioners of cinema-verité had finally achieved in the Sixties with the arrival of silent, handheld, reflex, zoom-lensed 16mm cameras. In 1963, Andre Coutant’s 16mm Éclair NPR (Noiseless Portable Reflex) arrived in the United States. It was a radical camera design from inside out. (Iconoclast director John Cassavetes utilized the NPR to film much of Faces,his 1968 “verité” feature which recounted the “painfully real study of middle-aged loneliness.”) Coutant’s work to develop miniature film systems integral to the telemetry of French guided missiles led directly to the development of the NPR’s sophisticated movement. The low-profile 400-foot coaxial quick-change magazine rested on the operator’s shoulder while the underslung sync motor could be cradled in one hand, leaving the other hand free to control the Angenieux zoom lens. The camera weighed less than 20 pounds and with the proper stance — a kind of backward lean with right elbow firmly braced on front of hip bone — the camera actually felt like it was part of your body. (The NPR was this author’s favorite camera during the halcyon days of his ancient and ever evolving film career.) Before the Éclair NPR, there was Walter Bach’s Auricon, a 16mm camera for “sound- on-film Talking Pictures.” Used primarily for TV newsreels, the Auricon was a semi-self-blimped single system camera that recorded optical or magnetic sound right on the film. Many readers will no doubt recall Auricon’s magazine ads featuring the jaunty cameraman shooting a formation of fighter jets flying over the airbase as someone calls out “Here they come…!” In expanding the envelope of documentary filmmaking, Richard Leacock (Primary, 1960), Albert and David Maysles (Salesman, 1960 and Gimme Shelter, 1970), D.A. Pennebaker (Don’t Look Back, 1965 and Monterey Pop, 1968), Frederick Wiseman (Titicut Follies 1967) and America’s other cinema-verité pioneers wielded Auricons reworked into viable handheld cameras with reflex zoom lenses, lightweight DC batteries and 400-foot magazines. Leacock’s frustrating experience with blimped 35mm Arris while filming Robert Flaherty’s Louisiana Story in 1948 convinced him that a lightweight, easily maneuverable and quiet camera was essential for documentary shooting. Arriflex entered the field with its silent reflex 16mm BL in 1964, but for handheld, run-and-gun direct cinema, the Éclair NPR (in combination with Stefan Kudelski’s “Nagra” tape recorder) was the ultimate weapon. “You Can’t Always Get What You Want…” The long-awaited answer to the cinematographer’s prayer for a compact, silent 35mm camera came with the auspicious debut of the Arriflex 35-BL in Cologne, Germany at Photokina 1970, the world’s fair of photographic equipment. The design of the Arri BL was as revolutionary in the world of 35mm as the innovative Éclair NPR had been for 16mm. The BL was self-blimped, weighed about 21 pounds and mounted its double compartment coaxial magazine on the rear of the camera body to optimize shoulder balanced, handheld filming. The magazine contained the gear-driven film transport mechanism that held a constant sprocket-fed loop for rapid reloading with a minimum of threading. The famous Arriflex rotating mirror shutter lied at the heart of the 35-BL. There was only one flaw in the 35-BL — it wasn’t very quiet. With the lens “blimp” it registered 35dB and without the lens blimp the noise level increased to 39 dB. The Mitchell BNCR could boast of a noise level of 24 dB and since the dB scale increases exponentially, it becomes apparent how “un-quiet” the 35-BL was at this development stage. Arriflex insisted that these were prototype models and promised to rework the camera until an acceptable dB level had been achieved. Even with this caveat, Arnold and Richter could have sold several hundred cameras right from their Photokina booth alone. Cinematographers waited patiently for the official unveiling of the production model set to coincide with the 1972 Munich Olympic games. During the interim, Arri’s engineers were faced with the daunting task of driving 35mm film (a plastic medium slapping against a metal gate 24 times-per-second) through a phalanx of gears, claws and pins at the rate of 90 feet per minute while also making the whole operation as quiet as a whisper. The problem had been solved in 16mm, because the speed of the film shuttling through the gate (only 36 feet per minute) and the mass of the celluloid were a fraction of 35mm. Like the decibel scale, the noise of the machine increases exponentially with the film size. Arri takes the “A” train The gritty action of Across 110th Street (1972) lifted the so-called “Blaxploitation” genre to a new level of “raw-gut realism.” Director Barry Shear’s look at a power struggle between Black and Italian Mafia in the numbers racket was filmed entirely on location in Harlem. Lt. Pope (Yaphet Kotto) and Captain Mattelli (Anthony Quinn) chased bad guys all over uptown — over rooftops, down fire escapes, through garbage strewn allies, in and out of tiny tenement apartments and across its menacing streets as cinematographer Jack Priestly and crew pursued the action with an Arriflex 35-BL. This against-all-the-odds flick was the production debut of the long-awaited Arri 35 BL and according to Priestly, the camera “passed its initial acid test with flying colors.” The camera was now “quiet as a church mouse” and allowed the crew to film handheld synch sound in the smallest practical locations. Fouad Said co-produced the film and brought his extensive location expertise to the production. Said had developed the CineMobile as a stripped-down, super efficient, go anywhere “studio on wheels” while shooting second-unit on TV’s landmark, globetrotting series I Spy. Said’s long relationship with Arriflex made Across 110th Street a natural choice for the 35-BL’s feature film shakedown. Priestly and camera operator Sol Negrin, ASC confirmed that no other sound camera would have given them the flexibility and mobility to shoot non-stop action in 60 difficult locations throughout the heart of Harlem. Arriflex continually upgraded the 35-BL throughout its 20 years of production by introducing subsequent models — the BL2, BL3 and BL4. Each featured lowered noise levels, 1000-foot magazines, viewing systems with greater clarity and brightness, and built-in video tap prisms and all the other bells-and-whistles that made the 35-BL a standard production camera around the world. Over 2000 35-BLs were manufactured and there are more BLs in the field than all other competing sound cameras combined. It’s not unusual for young cinematographers to shoot their first movie with a vintage Arri 35-BL. Legions of top shooters, including many Oscar-winners have remained loyal to this rugged little camera throughout their careers. The Motion Picture Academy bestowed a technical Oscar on the Arriflex 35-BL in 1973. The BL4s was the final iteration of the line and featured a state-of-the-art film movement that truly proved whisper quiet and virtually maintenance free. Transplanting this “silently beating heart” of the BL4s, Arri engineers morphed the camera into the next generation production tool — the Arriflex 535. Outwardly, the 535 bore a slight resemblance to its predecessors’ distinctive profile. Inside, “space age” microprocessors controlled all camera functions and provided a data stream that could be monitored and manipulated by a plug-in laptop computer. The electronic mirror shutter was fully programmable to facilitate totally transparent speed ramps. Frame lines were electronically projected on the ground glass and the fully rotating viewfinder could swing over to either side of the body — an ambidextrous camera, if you will! When the 35-BL was first introduced, video assist was barely a gleam in Jerry Lewis’ eye (more on this in future articles), but when the 535 made its debut in March 1990, video taps had proliferated like suckerfish on a school of sharks. Arri engineers factored this new reality into their design specs and provided a built-in video path for the 535, which would enable the usage of any video interface. Twenty years after the 35 BL made its first tentative appearance at Photokina, the Arriflex 535 fulfilled every promise that the modern synch-sound production camera could offer. In 1992, Arri unveiled the 535B as a lighter weight companion to its more sophisticated sibling. Arriflex continues to explore the uncharted future of filmmaking. In partnership with Gabriel Bauer of Moviecam fame, Arri engineers have developed a new production camera that could prove as revolutionary as the 35-BL was almost thirty years ago. The “Arricam” will be unveiled in the spring of 2001 — a providential year for any hi-tech product launch (an upcoming issue of ICG Magazine will offer a full overview of the Arricam.) The Arricam-ST (Studio) and Arricam-LT (Lite) comprise the modular camera system that combines the best of Munich and Silicon Valley. “State-of-the-art” seems an empty cliché when describing this sophisticated motion picture marvel. Camera assistants will become “system’s managers” as they master the Lens Data System (LDS) that “shows relevant information from the lens in use, such as focus and iris settings, the focal length, as well as the resulting depth of field, all on a convenient display.” Gone are the Kelly Wheel and the carpenter’s tape as the LDS includes an Ultrasonic Tape Measure (UTM) that scans the set and records focus distance even if the assistant “cannot reach or touch the camera, such as in remote crane operations”. (Will talented focus pullers with their uncanny sense of “natural radar” be next on the “endangered species” list?) “On the road again…” with Panavision “May you live in interesting times.” So goes the ancient Chinese curse. That being the case, the years 1973 to 1974 proved very “interesting.” The Vietnam Peace Agreement was signed but the fighting would continue for two more years. The OPEC nations bullied the world into an energy crisis and “stagflation” entered the economic lexicon. The Dow Jones Industrial Average hit a low of 663, the Watergate scandal forced Richard M. Nixon to resign the American Presidency and the American League adopted the designated hitter rule (is nothing sacred?). Aviation pioneer Charles Lindbergh died and in the sky trails he blazed — a Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird flown from New York to London in less than two hours, merely a few miles short of “Lucky Lindy’s” 33-hour solo hop to Paris in 1927. In spring 1973, deep in the heart of Floresville, Texas, Panavision’s president Robert Gottschalk hand-delivered the first production model of the Panaflex 35mm camera to the set of The Sugarland Express. (Certain crewmembers recall seeing the camera presented on a silver platter, but memories are often embellished with the passage of decades.) After four years in development and a year of very discrete field testing, the all-new Panaflex was ready for its feature debut. More than 130 movies had submitted requests for the Panaflex, but Gottschalk and company chose the Zanuck/Brown production for Universal because “this feature posed some unique photographic problems” that only the Panaflex could solve. Gottschalk’s choice couldn’t have been more propitious as Sugarland also ranked as the feature debut of a 25-year-old wunderkind named Steven Spielberg. The future Oscar-winner had recently directed the stunning television movie Duel, a neo-noir tale of road-rage, terror and revenge. Spielberg now helmed what might be called the ultimate road picture with a plot that required a caravan of 60 police and 200 civilian cars to pursue the feisty Lou-Jean Poplin (Goldie Hawn) as she flees across the blue highways of East Texas. The cinematographer on this epic of motorway mayhem was Vilmos Zsigmond ASC, who went on to score an Oscar on another Spielberg collaboration — 1977’s wondrous UFO epic Close Encounters of the Third Kind. He was already a legend in the new Hollywood of the Seventies for his groundbreaking work on The Hired Hand, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Deliverance, Images and The Long Goodbye. A road movie like Sugarland had photographic requirements light-years away from the studio confines where the PSR and the BNCR held court. Spielberg noted that at least 50 percent of the action on Sugarland took place inside moving cars where a normal studio camera wouldn’t stand a chance. The Panaflex was the perfect camera for these scenes and allowed complex synch-sound shots where the operator, working in the back seat, could follow action inside the car and outside on the highway by executing “pretzel twisting pans of 480 degrees.” According to Gottschalk, the Panaflex (short for PANAvision reFLEX) was a cinematographer’s utopian dream — “the world’s most advanced motion picture camera.” Its completely new design shared only the lens mount with the Panavision PSR. Albert Mayer, who had previously worked for Mitchell Camera, was hired in 1968 to oversee the design and manufacture of the first generation of Panaflex cameras. Robert Shea designed the new intermittent movement while master machinist Jurgen Sporn hand-built the prototypes. While still owing much to the time-tested Mitchell movement, this new film transport featured dual pilot-pin registration: double fork pull-down claws and super silent operation with separate pitch and strobe adjustments. What set the Panaflex apart from all other 35mm cameras was its self-blimped modular design, which allowed a multitude of configurations. Within minutes, the camera could be converted from full studio mode with top mounted 1000-foot magazine to a diminutive lightweight (less than 25 pounds) handheld mode with rear-mounted 250-foot magazine that posted a noise level of only 27 dB. Long or short eyepieces, behind the lens filter slot, LED footage and frame rate displays, reflex viewing with rotating shutter variable from 40 to 200 degrees and an ergonomic design made the Panaflex a professional 35mm camera that could be, as its press release touted, “all things to all people.” The Panaflex family would expand over the next 18 years with each new model incorporating improvements requested by working cinematographers. The Gold Panaflex introduced in 1976 featured brighter, clearer viewing and a new motor drive. The Platinum Panaflex of 1987 integrated a host of new electronic features and brought operating noise down to 19dB. In the words of Panavision, the Panaflex was the most advanced handholdable motion picture camera in the world. The Panaflex X, the high-speed Panastar and the 16mm Elaine rounded out the Panaflex family. Panavision never rests on its laurels, or Oscars; in 1978, the Panaflex received an Academy Award of Merit for its concept, design and continuous development. In 1992, their crack design team began an intensive review of Gold and Platinum models with the intention of producing yet another “hi-tech, space age, state- of-the-art” motion picture camera that would usher in the new millennium of filmmaking. The result of this multi-year program was, of course, “The Millennium.” There were no glitches in this Y2K machine and its list of technical innovations sound more like the specs of a new super computer than a movie camera. The Local Area Controller (LAC) offers programmable speed ramp changes in conjunction with the electronic focal plane shutter. The “electronics architecture” uses microprocessors, DSP (digital signal processing) chips, LAN (Local Area Network) and Wide Area Network buses to control myriad functions that hum together in the quest for the perfect transport of each frame of 35mm film. Virtually every aspect of the Millennium is new, from the magnesium magazines to the RGB component video tap. The Platinum-based movement was refined by way of a computer model that foretold “the lightening of all the pull-down arms, registration pins” and other key materials to decrease the operating noise to such an extent that even the keenest eared sound mixer will never know if the camera is rolling. “Quiet on the set” never sounded so good. “Old soldiers never die…” The early 1970s witnessed a renaissance in American cinema - aesthetically and technically. Flashback to the heart of this new “Golden Age” and recall a few of the films released between The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather II (1974).This distinguished roll call includes American Graffiti, Badlands, The Exorcist, The Last Detail, The Long Goodbye, Mean Streets, The Paper Chase, Paper Moon, Save the Tiger, Serpico, Sleeper, The Sting, The Way We Were, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, Blazing Saddles, Chinatown, The Conversation, Harry and Tonto, Lenny, The Parallax View and Young Frankenstein. Each of these films told a great story (even the comedies!) and all were stamped with perfectly appropriate, inevitable and often stunning cinematography — from classic high-key glamour lighting to down-and-dirty realism. Three of these movies — Paper Moon, Lenny and Young Frankenstein — were even photographed in glorious black-and-white! The cameras breathing life into these wonderful motion pictures were as diverse and interesting as the films themselves. Among their number were the ultra-modern Panaflex, the modern Arriflex BL, the transitional Panavision PSR, the French Éclair CM3 and various reflex models of the venerable Mitchell BNC. But this era would be the last hurrah for Mitchell as film production moved inexorably toward the newest generation of smaller, lighter, more efficient motion picture cameras. The last BNC (serial #365) left Mitchell’s Glendale, California plant in 1968. Only 32 BNCRs were built from 1968 into the early Seventies. Mitchell introduced the handheld Mark III 35mm camera in 1972, but success eluded its last attempt to enter the quickly evolving market place. Only nine Mark IIIs were built (it resembled a cross between the Arri BL 35 and the Bolex 16 Pro) and most were shipped overseas to become forgotten footnotes in the Mitchell archives. The Mitchell Camera Company began producing state-of-the-art moviemaking machines in 1919. Their first model, the Mitchell Standard, became the benchmark for all movie cameras that followed. As late as 1968, Mitchell cameras photographed 85% of the world’s motion pictures. After the last camera went out the door, Mitchell continued providing parts and service, built the Mitchell gear head, and went through a series of owners including Panavision, Lee, and Flight Research. The company moved from Glendale to Sun Valley and finally wound up in Wilmington, North Carolina under the ownership of Joe Dutton Camera. George A. Mitchell’s grand and glorious company, for so many decades an integral part of Hollywood and the movies, is now relegated to the dusty chronicles of celluloid history. To paraphrase General Douglas MacArthur, “Old cameras don’t fade away, they just keep shooting.” Currently, Mitchells are used everyday for special effects and high-speed photography, especially when rock-solid registration is required. Even silent era Bell & Howell 2709s — the first cameras with precision-built intermittent movements — can still be found “rolling steady” on optical benches and film scanners. Rumors persist that a Pathé Studio camera from the Bitzer-and-Griffith era is currently in the inventory of a Mexico City rental house. (Cinematographer Robert Elswit did utilize a Pathé to shoot footage supposedly set in 1911 on Paul Thomas Anderson’s multi-character opus Magnolia.) The Panavision PSR remains a staple of the multi-camera TV world, where until very recently, reflex Mitchells danced across the sitcom stage on many hit shows like Wings and Coach. There is a brisk market for used professional motion picture cameras from the “pre-Panaflex” generation. It is interesting to note that an array of tried and true 35mm movie cameras — Eclairs, Arris, Mitchells — are available for less than the price of many “semi-professional” DV-Cams. Take a 30- or 40-year-old film camera, stuff it with state-of-the-art emulsion, add talent and you still have the recipe for movie magic. Twenty-first Century motion picture cameras like the “Millennium” and the “Arricam” are post-modern cinematography tools festooned with every hi-tech bell-and-whistle ever imagined. Strip away the computer chips, video taps, electronic data-stream modules, space age composite materials and all the other refinements of the last 100 years and the essence of the movie camera remains the same — a little machine in a box. The guts of the camera are basically unchanged since the early days of Pathé, Bell & Howell, and Mitchell. It is amazing that such a simple arrangement of gears, sprockets, cams and flywheels working to transport a thin strip of celluloid through a tiny window of light, one frame at a time, can create so much magic. “The most exciting way ever invented to tell a story is with a moving picture camera,” wrote Budd Schulberg in his 1942 Hollywood novel What Makes Sammy Run. Perhaps this magic 19th Century machine endures because no other machine can tell stories that connect so directly to the human heart. An unknown cameraman once wrote, “the camera is the invisible character in every film, the one who sees everything and never has a line.” As Norma Desmond intonesin the finale of Sunset Boulevard (1950), “There’s nothing else. Just us and the cameras and those wonderful people out there in the dark. . .” Epilogue The author would like to thank the following gentlemen for their help in preparing these articles: Bob Fisher (who has been writing about movie cameras for 30 years), Peter Anderson, ASC, Richard Bennett, Sam Dodge, David Dotson, Bill Russell, and Martin Hill (who owns, among other treasures, a Mitchell BNC #3). The 100-year history of cinema is merely a blink of the “kino-eye” when compared to the history of all other art forms. With the “digital age” looming on the millennial horizon, we might think of the “Machine Age” of the motion picture camera as simply Act One in the continuing saga of “The Movies.” • |
