The following article was written and published in May 1973. I thought you might find it interesting, as it looks at a few imaginative ways in which to make films — with a cine camera and actual film! Most of the techniques described can still be achieved with video.
Cine camera, by Terry Freedman
How many times have you been watching a film and found yourself wondering "How is THAT done?" In this article I hope to show how simple effects can be achieved. Effects which require a minimum of technical know-how and are therefore within the scope of everyone.
As everyone knows, films condense time. What takes 30 minutes for people on the screen takes only 10 minutes for the audience. There are various ways by which this can be achieved, depending upon the type of film being made. For humorous films, the effect can be grossly exaggerated (as it can for scientific films, e.g. filming the growth of a plant). The techniques used are very simple. Consider the Keystone comedies. The fast action is achieved merely by stopping and starting the camera in short bursts, or, if the camera permits it, filming at a slow speed. The idea is that if the film is shot at one frame per second (a frame is one of those little pictures on the film) and projected at sixteen frames per second, the action will have been speeded up sixteen times.
Stopping and starting the camera has other, somewhat more interesting uses however. Film someone running behind tree. Stop the camera. Person changes his clothes. Start the camera. Person runs out from behind the tree. The effect on the screen is obvious.
Yet another way of utilising this technique is in pixilation. Pixilation is making real people act as if they were cartoons. If your subject jumps into the air and you film him while he is in mid-air, and do this over a distance, on the screen he will appear to be running in mid-air. Or people can be made to "run" on one leg, or both legs without moving them. By stopping and starting the camera a very effective fall downstairs can be filmed.
Objects, of course, can be animated, but in my opinion people are far more interesting subjects, and the range of effects which can be achieved is limited only by imagination, no matter what camera you possess.
The techniques outline above requires no editing since the film is "edited-in-camera", i.e. while you are filming. The following technique requires "editing". The reason why editing is in quotation marks is that this technique only requires cutting out a piece of film from the reel and putting it back inside-out. This is not editing, but splicing; editing is an integral. part of film making and is used for other effects which will not be mentioned here. .
The next technique is reverse filming. This is not the same as projecting the film backwards; by filming in reverse the film can be projected all the way through without stopping and starting the projector. This effect is achieved by turning the camera upside-down and filming in the normal way. When the film comes back from processing, you merely cut out the upside-down sequence and insert it back again inside-out. On the screen, there may be a slight loss of focus, but this is easily rectified by adjusting the focus on the projector.
This technique is useful for filming people eating. The effect on the screen is food coming out of their mouths and onto the plate. I have a film of my sister eating a pear backwards, which I always show to guests before dinner as it always makes them feel sick, thus putting them off their food and leaving more for me.
Finally, whatever type of film you make, as far as possible you should abide by the following golden rules:
i) Get in close. Wide-angle shots are usually boring.
ii) The film should have continuity.
iii) Don't shoot the whole film from the same position. Changing the camera angle makes a film more interesting.
If you have ever considered that, on the whole, "Top of the Pops" films boring, I think you will find that these three rules have been unheeded.
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