"Amateur filmmaker, cinema historian and railway engineer H.A.V. Bulleid pays tribute to his dual loves of cinema and rail in an experimental short film. Bulleid uses 'metric editing' - the first of Russian director Sergei Eisenstein's 'methods of montage' - in which cuts are dictated by the number and sequence of frames, not what occurs on screen. First, Bulleid pays tribute to cinema, featuring the facades of picturehouses around Derby in static shots, which build to a dazzling crescendo of short shots. The section on trains features longer views of the railyards in operation, with trains shunting and coming into the station, before a final section focuses on trams, following electric streetcars as they move down urban streets" (EAFA Database).
"Film about how to make films." Library and Archives Canada.
"By a clever editorial feat, Charles H. Benjamin has transformed a series of animal scenes which he filmed at New York City's Bronx Zoo into a pseudo travelog of the African game belt. He achieved this effect by simply cutting shots of heavily wooded streams into footage of the uncaged animals in the famous zoo, and the illusion is pointed up by some striking title frames. Mr. Benjamin's camera work matches his editorial insight, for his exposures and composition are first rate. His use of back lighting gives his shots of flamingoes and drowsing lions a brilliance that puts them far above the usual run of animal pictures." Movie Makers, Dec. 1946, 488.
"Misdirected medical research, with gruesome and very exciting consequences, is the basis of the plot of The Scalpel, a photoplay produced by Richard H. Lyford, with the aid of a group of boys and girls of high school age. The plot is extravagant, the story is rather too filled with amazing action, and there is not a doubt that the melodrama as a whole puts too great a burden on the acting ability of a group of young people, even though they are surprisingly able. Nevertheless, here is an amateur made thriller of the Frankenstein and werwolf tradition that really sends chills chasing down your spine. The transition of the unfortunate doctor into a demented and abnormal creature involved makeup that is really astonishing outside of a theatrical studio. It can't be said that the handling of the episode is any less convincing in this amateur production than are the same undertakings in the best Hollywood films of this nature. In addition to being really successful in its object, this picture offers some excellent technical work and very competent management of a large cast." Movie Makers, Dec. 1936, 550-551.
The noted female impersonator Charles Pierce is invited to visit to the home of Norma Desmond (of Sunset Boulevard [Billy Wilder, 1950]).
"short abstract animation featuring visual rhythms created by the tempo and movement of circular, triangular, and square objects. Mori’s Senritsu was a black-and-white animation with synchronized music accompaniment, and Shimizu noted how the film attuned the visual images to the rhythm of the music, describing that “this kind of valuable experiment will inspire commercial talkies, more than Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphony do.” - Noriko Morisue, "Filming the Everyday: History, Theory, and Aesthetics of Amateur Cinema in Interwar and Wartime Japan" (Yale University: PhD Dissertation, 2020): 99.
"Film is a documentary on how to perform certain special effects in motion picture film. Film shows Toronto Movie Club members creating a double exposure, a humorous illusion, animation; shooting with a mirror and reversing motion" Archives of Ontario.
"Stop the Projector, I Want To Get Off features James Weatherburn as the bumbling projectionist who is trying to learn how to run one of the fool contraptions. His attempts are not quite all-out comedy, yet his antics are amusing, and anyone who remembers the day he first tried to run one of these complicated machines will be amused at someone else's interpretation of what the sensation is like" PSA Journal, Sept. 1966, 35.
"Amateur filmmaker, cinema historian and railway engineer H.A.V. Bulleid employs an array of camera effects and trick photography techniques in this experimental short. Bulleid uses a mirror to distort a woman's reflection and a lens mask to conjure multiple images of her within the same frame, followed by a brief sequence showing how it was created. A ghosting effect uses double exposure to show the woman getting up from the chair but leaving her body behind. Bulleid also uses coloured filters and gauze diffusion to alter the look of his shots, and slow motion to change their visual impact. To display the versatility of interior shooting under normal lighting conditions, Bulleid uses orthochromatic film stock, before returning to exterior effects, using greased disc diffusion to create a dreamlike wash over the image. The film concludes with two sequences created using trick photography techniques including film reversal and split-screen shooting, and an example of step-zooming which gradually zeros in on the Big Ben clock tower at the Houses of Parliament in London." (EAFA Database)
"Produced as a gift to Dorothy Burritt's husband, filmmaker Oscar Burritt (who was working in Toronto at the time), this is an offbeat study of life at their Vancouver apartment -- suite 2, 1960 Robson Street. The camera explores the apartment and the household memorabilia, and Dorothy is seen sitting for a portrait by painter Peter Bortkus. Later some friends drop by for a screening of Sacha Guitry's film Pearls of the Crown, followed by a party. Among the guests are Moira Armour, film editor Maureen Balfe, UBC student Stanley Fox, photographer Peter Varley, and an unnamed figure wearing a bird costume. Most of the people shown would have been involved with the National Film Society of Canada (Vancouver Branch). Suite Two won honourable mention (amateur category) at the first Canadian Film Awards in 1949." (BC Archives)
The film was restored in 1986 by the British Columbia Archives.
Total Pages: 9
Amateur Cinema