Filmmaking doesn't have to be that hard

That's Tester talking to a kid in the audience.

You know Desmond Tester? He played the kid brother in Alfred Hitchcock's Sabotage. He seemed to be a playing a child but he was 17 at the time. I've seen him referred to as a "boy actor" rather than a "child actor" and that may be why.

Tester went to Australia after World War Two and began working in Australian TV.

I stumbled upon this article. It starts as a letter to Desmond from a director who had worked with him in the '50's.

https://stefansargent.com/2010/11/21/production-diary-letter-to-desmond-from-stefan-with-love/

From the article:

TCN CHANNEL 9, SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA 

I’m working as a junior TV director at J. Walter Thompson. By chance I make a commercial that is so good it knocks the one made by the agency’s head of television off the air. He hates me. I’m moved to a small office and given no work. Time to go… 

I contact the station manager at Channel 9. He finds some space in a garage built as a prop for Aussie gas company, Ampol. 

I move in and discover I’m sharing space with Desmond and Miss Penny, that’s the entire Ch. 9 children’s department. 

Desmond, the local host of The Mickey Mouse Club, asks me to shoot a weekly, three-minute show, The Kaper Kops. 

YOU CAN’T BE SERIOUS 

We have just one roll of 16mm film to shoot each episode. 

“That’s only three minutes.” 

“Right, we have no editing.” 

“Desmond, I’ve got all the kit, why not do it properly? I’ll shoot 400 ft. and cut it down to three.” 

“No, we shoot in sequence with no editing.” 

Shoot in sequence — no editing? “What happens if there’s a mistake?” 

“No retakes. Wait and see. Once you know everything is take one, mistakes don’t happen. It’s like live television, only on film.” 

Now I know he’s nuts. 

WIND-UP CAMERA 

I shoot at 8 frames a second on a Bolex clockwork 16mm camera. TV in Australia is 25 frames a second, so everything is speeded up by three on playback. Nine seconds of real-time live action is condensed into three. 

A 100 ft. daylight loading spool is really 110 ft. I set the counter at minus five feet, thread up the camera in broad daylight, close the camera side door, and run on to zero to get rid of the exposed bit.  

We shoot live action to 100 ft. on the counter. 

There’s really have another five feet inside there, but it’s going to get fogged on the way out. I keep running until — clickerty, clack — the film runs out. Open up the camera, lift out the now full take up spool. 

SHOOTING BY NUMBERS 

Desmond is the sneaky crook, Slippery Sam. 

I need a 3 sec. shot of him checking out the jewelry shop. I shoot 9 secs. @ 8 fps. Great, that’s our opening. The next shot is — our next shot. Reverse angle as Desmond puts on his mask and runs into the shop. He robs the jeweler. Shot of him running out. Jeweler phones the Kops. 

“Twenty feet, exactly, Desmond.” 

Now we shoot 20 ft. of the Kops getting the news, driving and spotting the crook. 

“We’re on 40!” Time for the chase. Desmond steals a bike. He can go places that the Kop Kar can’t go. I take alternate shoots of the Kops giving chase and Desmond escaping them. 

At 60 ft., Desmond aka Slippery Sam, arrives at the Rose Bay flying boat airport. We have a title card. FLY TO LORD HOWE ISLAND. I do a takeoff shot from inside the plane. 

The Kops are on board too, looking for Sam. At 80 ft. we land in the lagoon. 

Finally, a 20 ft. chase around the island. He’s caught! Now at 100ft. Got it. Shoot the extra 5 ft., the film runs out!

Tester in the striped shirt. There's the Bolex they filmed with.

Those days are over.

But there was Lenny Lipton's book Independent Filmmaking. Stan Brackage wrote the foreword. He noted the incredible about of technical information in the book, but said that Lipton's weak spot was editing. It was something Lipton apparently didn't enjoy doing so he gave bad advice, encouraging the use of tape splices. 

Brackage suggested that if you dislike editing that much, avoid it altogether by shooting in sequence and editing in camera. I've seen this suggested in other books. I've done it and it worked okay on short films.

In the days of analog video. Hi8 and Super VHS were prosumer formats, but editing was their Achilles heel. The only way to edit it without a noticeable loss of quality was to transfer it to one inch tape and pay a fortune to rent an editing suite. The only affordable alternative was to film your movie in sequence and edit in camera. You could rewind and record over outtakes.
 

I knew some guys who did that. They were doing a video for their church in a small town in Alabama. It was going to be shown on local TV. They did all the editing in camera because they didn't know how else to do it. The guys at the TV station were amazed at how well it worked.