1 The Director of Photography – an overview

190 Practical Cinematography
Figure 21.1 The 1923 silent 16 mm
film layout
Figure 21.2 The 1932 standard
16 mm layout with a soundtrack
So Bell & Howell developed a new standard, a little narrower than
17.5 mm, and with a new, smaller, sprocket hole. There was also to be
only two holes per frame, located either side of the film at the intersection
of the frames and 16 mm wide, as shown in Figure 21.1 (35 mm
has eight perforations per frame, four each side).
One of the design parameters of this development was that they had
decided that, for amateur use, an image size of around one-sixth of the
size of the silent 35 mm frame would be adequate.
In 1926, sound films came to the cinema. It wasn’t long after that the
now popular 16 mm amateur format also wanted sound. It was to be
some time before the amateurs could record their own sound, but
before this there was a market for feature films, cartoons, etc. to be
shown at home. By now, the quality of 16 mm equipment, especially
projector mechanisms, was such that it was apparent that they could
give quite adequate image steadiness using only one row of perforations.
In 1932, Bell & Howell introduced the Filmosound 120 projector,
dispensing with the left-hand row of perforations and using this
area for an optical soundtrack. The new format layout is illustrated in
Figure 21.2. At this time the 16 mm standard was very much ‘substandard’
and, indeed, was often referred to by that name.
We now jump to the early 1960s, by which time 16 mm was almost
semi-professional. In America much news film was being shot on the
format, often using the Auricon camera or one of its derivatives. The
soundtrack, for this application, was now on a magnetic strip coated
down the left-hand edge where the optical track used to be.
Around the same time, the BBC in London was facing two problems.
Firstly, they were about to open a second channel, BBC2, and
both channels were about to go into colour. This was going to put up
their filming costs considerably, for at that time drama was usually
shot in 35 mm, though much of the factual output was then shot on
16 mm. They therefore decided that they would see if 16 mm could, at
least for British television, become a truly professional gauge and the
rest, as they say, is history.
The significance of the BBC’s contribution to the development of
16 mm into a professional gauge should not be overlooked. Arthur
Branson, and later Paul Bootle, put an enormous amount of energy and
BBC resources into the huge improvements in the image quality of the
16 mm format. It is a wonderful synergy that as the BBC’s throughput of
16 mm footage was so enormous, Kodak were prepared to fund considerable
research and development to improve emulsions and the quality
of the perforations, given that it was the founder of Kodak, George
Eastman, who pushed for the gauge at its inception.
The BBC also provided funding, development resources and
research for several of the then new self-blimped lightweight 16 mm
cameras, as well as helping with the development of many of the highspeed
prime lenses – setting the trend for many years to come in both
16 mm and 35 mm cinematography. They were also instrumental in
developing and bringing to the market the new generation of relatively
high-speed, long-range zoom lenses, which we now take for
granted in 16 mm cinematography.
In the early 1960s there was another development that was, perhaps,
to be just as significant in the history of 16 mm. Rune Erickson realized
that if the 16 mm negative frame area was extended out to the
edge currently occupied by the soundtrack, the resultant picture’s