mm m HOSPITAL-Billy Burke does much of his surgical filming at the Los Angeles County Hospital where he keeps a full complement of cameras and equipment. Special tripod affords working without hindering surgeon. STUDIO - Not all of Burke's filming is done in hospitals. Here is the Burke studio furnished as an operating room. Minor surgeries are per¬ formed and photographed here. All filming is done in 16mm. Kodachrome. Surgical Cinematography Billy Burke has specialized in this field for 25 years, has photographed over 1050 medical and surgical motion pictures. By FRED C. ELLS A IN THE tremendous strides being made in surgery and medi¬ cine today is the 16mm. motion picture camera. Films in color of actual surgical operations are used not only to teach medical students but to inform and in¬ struct surgeons in newly developed sur¬ gical techniques. The production of such films is a comparatively limited field. That is, it is not the type of production usually undertaken by the average com¬ mercial film producer. There are many reasons for this. First, photographing a IDING surgical operation is an exacting science which few cameramen have taken the pains to develop. Also, there are many responsibilities attached to bringing into and using in a hospital operating room a motion picture camera and the neces¬ sary lighting equipment and apparatus. One of the most outstanding surgical cinematographers in the field today, per¬ haps, is Billy Burke of Los Angeles who began his career quite by chance in 1925. He was a freelance newsreel cameraman then and attempted his first surgical film DETAIL SHOTS - Surgeon for whom a picture is being made invariably sits in on special filming sessions when critical closeups are photographed for orientation sequences. Segmented skulls are regular Burke props. as a favor to a friend. Since then he has photographed more than 1,050 surgical and medical films in 16mm. Perhaps the most dramatic and exacting of all these is the film Coarctation of the Aorta which he recently completed for a Los Angeles surgeon. He is presently pro¬ ducing a 16mm. color film on the start¬ ling and comparatively recent medical discovery of the use of curare - this for a nationally known pharmaceutical house. (Continued on Page 434) INSERTS -H ere, Burke-aided by a surgeon and a pathologist-is photographing an insert for a medical film. Pathologist points out details on slide in projector. Camera photographs projection (not shown).