American Cinematographer - November 1988 - 83

approach to form. "Originally, our plan was
pinball game from directly
overhead, with the photograph of the city
skyline laid down flat against the game.
Then, after the viewer read the cityscape,
we would pull back and come down to a
pinball players point of view. In fact, we
thought that this was the only way we
could do it on time and under budget.
However, when we did that, by the time
the camera reached its final position, you
couldn't read the cityscape at all - lying flat
against the game, it just turned to mush. The
light got too small. So we decided to reshoot
with the cityscape standing upright, right
out of the middle of the game. The glass in a
normal pinball game, of course, would pro¬
hibit this setup, so we were messing with
'pinball reality' a little, but coming up with a
much more understandable image. We de¬
cided that it was okay to be a little less
literal, since we've already suggested that
there's two men walking around in there,"
he laughs.
The Harry machine, which
makes this electronic magic possible (and
affordable), was sorely needed as an adjunct
to normal paintbox technology, according to
Linden. "Quantel came out with their paint¬
box first," he says, "and people were dying
for a way to string those images together.
Technicians would painstakingly retouch
frame after frame, and they'd have to play
them back and record them a single frame
to shoot the

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Film and video

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With a Super Grip in your bag of grip
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PRECISION SPEED
CONTROL

slow and expensive. There was
string long sections of altered
images together separately.
"The Harry is designed in a very
artistically friendly manner. Their electronic
airbrushing is really putting a lot of re¬
no

boats, planes, motorcycles

and snowmobiles. Just like the
constant and powerful suction of

at a time on a 1" machine. So it became very

klutzy,

onto cars,

yet gone to the extreme of mounting
equipment onto the side of a space

very

way to

touchers out of business, because it's more

precise and controllable - it's a faster and
easier way to alter imagery. There's a light
pen on a big tablet, and the pen is respon¬
sive to how hard you press on the tablet. If
you push harder, you get a wider patch of
'paint' coming off it. It's terrific for doing soft
mattes and blurred edges. Sometimes a
hard-edged matte will be too crisp and end
up looking phony compared to the actual
images, but with the Harry you can blend in

w

COMPUTER/VIDEO FILMING
MADE EASY
SYNCHRONIZES ARRI CAMERAS TO:
* VIDEO/COMPUTER MONITORS
* HMI LIGHTS
* PROJECTOR IMAGES

with the kind of softness that the video

The PRECISION SPEED CONTROL Is ideal
for filming monitors. The 50,000 CRYSTAL
SPEEDS and phase shift button allow

image is giving you anyway, and the result is
a seamless piece of videotape.
"With conventional film

Video/Computer monitors to appear sharp
irritating scan bar.
Speed range is 1-50 fps in .001 fps
increments. Completely independent from
Video/Computer source. No interconnect
and clear without the

re¬

touching, you've got to match gels and
paints and colors, which gets very compli¬
cated. With the Harry, you touch the cursor
to the color you want to reproduce, and it
reads the

pixels that make

up

those colors,

cables necessary.

KaC

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electronics
1625 Stanford St. * Santa Monica, California 90404 * USA
Phone (213) 829-1811 FAX (213) 453-2601 TELEX 6503152405

81
American Cinematographer - November 1988

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