From the Spring 1993 issue of the Operating Cameraman

One hundred years have passed since the motion picture camera and the motion picture projector were invented to, respectively, record and give life to static images, exposed and displayed at 12-16 frames per second.

In 1889, Thomas Alva Edison introduced the Kinetograph, a cumbersome battery-driven camera, and the Kinetoscope, a projector for the so-called "peep show." In the same year, George Eastman produced the first celluloid strips coated with photographic emulsion. The 4-perforation per frame pull-down standard and the 35mm film width was then established by his assistant, William Kennedy Laurie Dickson.

In 1894, the Lumiere brothers, Louis and Auguste, brought out the first practical, portable, hand-cranked production camera, the Cinematographe, which also served as a printer and projector, in turn. Louis Lumiere called himself an operator (a camera-man) to describe what he did when he set up, placed and lined up the camera view, and then threaded, turned and exposed film in that camera.

From 1895 to 1896 ten Cinematographes were produced in France, while other cameras were being produced in England, Germany and the United States.

Lumiere filmed all of his early films outdoors for maximum light exposure on the very slow emulsions. After bi-packing unexposed negative behind the exposed negative in the Cinematographe, he would print his films by the sunlight reflected into the lens off a white board while cranking the bi-packed film through the camera-printer-projector. He made fifty films in 1895 which were each 17 meters in length (60 seconds at 16 fps).

To maintain the appearance of normal movement, the subject matter was usually projected at the same frame rate as it had been exposed in the camera. However, creative projectionists often varied the hand-cranked projection rate to either speed up or slow down the on-screen movement. Film editing had not as yet been discovered.

During filming, everyone, staff, actors and extras pitched in and did everything, set construction and placement, costumes, prop acquisition, set dressing, makeup, hair dressing, etc. There were no specialists per se in those days. The lighting source was the sun which made shooting motion pictures an outside activity. And this remained so until the turn of the century, just five years away, when George Melies built his glass-enclosed studio in Paris and filmed his interiors and other stage sets in daylight, protected from the elements.

The cameraman was the technical (and often creative) key to the movie-making process. Then, as now, everything was prepared for presentation to the camera. The cameraman functioned as director, director of photography, camera operator, focus puller, loader, lighting director, electrician, grip, lab technician, optical technician, and (later) film editor and projectionist, a veritable one-man band.

The cameraman then was, and was expected to be, a one-man band, providing his personal camera equipment and the overall technical direction of the recording process. He would set up his camera, load film into it, set the exposure functions, frame the action, crank film through the camera at a given rate, set fades and dissolves and irising, unload the film, develop the film, print the film, and, when early story films required moving the camera from place to place, he would edit and splice scenes together, print and then project the final result. All of this was really only an extension of what the still photographer did (and does) in getting pictures. Many cameramen of the day were well-grounded in the techniques of still photography.

By 1899, story-telling techniques developed. Scenarios were written. Film presentations were one reel (1000') in length, approximately seventeen minutes at 16 fps. At 8 frames per turn, the cameraman-operator would crank film through the camera at the rate of two turns per second in order to maintain that 16 fps rate.

By 1904, the static camera instead of recording the entire production from a single position, began being purposefully placed at varying distances from the action or subject matter. Somewhat later, the camera was placed on a mobile platform and moved while filming from a long view to a close view, while panning and tilting to hold the action in frame.

Films were being imported and exported. In the USA, two cameras were being used during production. The principal, or first camera, operated by the principal, or first cameraman, was placed in the optimal position with respect to the blocked action and was used to expose the more important domestic release negative. Next to it with the same focal length lens and similar coverage, was placed the second camera, operated by the second cameraman, which was used for the foreign release negative. Hence the origin of the designations, first cameraman and second cameraman.

In the USA, the earliest films were all of exteriors and of exterior events. Even the earliest studio interior scenes were illuminated by sunlight entering floor-to-ceiling windows, controlled by muslin sheeting. Some interior settings were constructed outdoors, or on stages which could be rotated with the movement of the sun.

It was the first cameraman's responsibility to determine the camera(s) position, the lens, the f-stop, the focus, the lighting balance and to adjust the muslin and/or to have the studio rotated to maintain proper relationship to sunlight.

When sodium vapor lamps were adapted to motion picture use, it made it possible to film on sets in studio interiors. The first cameraman had to spend much time adjusting or supervising the adjustment of the lamps in order to properly illuminate the studio settings and balance the lighting on the actors. With these heavy lights, he was given an assistant, a chief electrician, to place, connect and adjust the lights. The chief electrician would often save himself the trouble of using a ladder to adjust each light by using a boat gaff stick to reach up and tilt, turn or swing each light to a desired position, or to switch a light on or off; hence, the term, "gaffer."

With the advent of sound in 1926 for major studio production, lighting procedures, handling large crews and the multiple-camera requirements of sound recording finally divorced the first cameraman from operating a camera. Each camera had a constant-speed electric motor set to run at 24 fps but, because the silent era did not require silent-running, produced an unacceptably high noise level for production-quality sound. In addition, the strong lights made the studios extremely hot and uncomfortable.

Compounding the problem, the recording of production sound required that all cameras and their operators be enclosed in sound-proofed, non-air-conditioned cabinets (called "hot boxes"). Up to ten cameras, two to a booth, were used to film heavily-rehearsed sequences in one full-load take (up to 11 minutes per 1,000' load). In order to avoid this torture, sound-proofing blimps were soon developed to contain the noise of the silent-era production cameras and self-blimped cameras were promptly put on the drawing boards.

Microphone and boom shadows were everywhere and had to be controlled. The first cameraman, now called the "director of photography," had to be on the floor to be able to see what was happening, monitoring his lighting and the action, ready to take immediate corrective action. The responsibility for operating the camera, and keeping microphone, mic booms and their shadows out of frame, fell to the second cameraman to whom the title, camera operator, was applied.

The camera operator, the person looking through the viewfinder, has always been responsible for framing the action and including essential parts of that action in frame. In the days before video assist, the camera operator saw the framed action first and was the only one able to say accurately whether the take was pictorially acceptable or not until dailies were looked at the following day.

The heavier, bulkier precision production sound cameras with their gear heads required assistance to move, set up and operate. What had been possible for a camera operator, operating a smaller camera on a friction head--making adjustments while panning and tilting such as, focus, shutter angle, irising, sliding diffusion, etc.--became impossible or impractical to accomplish with both hands on the control wheels of a heavy-duty gear head. So the camera assistant became the first assistant camera operator (focus puller) and the second assistant camera operator helped the first assistant and slated scenes, while a loader kept film magazines loaded, down-loaded and exposed film properly identified.

The reflex camera was introduced in 1932 in Germany and used during WWII. When the reflex studio camera came into vogue, the camera operator was expected to monitor focus in addition to the responsibilities for achieving smooth camera manipulation, proper framing at all times, with no microphone, boom or their shadows or extraneous personnel or equipment in frame during a take. This expectation continues in practice today.

Today, the camera operator may be operating a film or video camera, in studio or on location--domestic or foreign; in the air or under water; perched on the end of a crane, or on a plane, boat or dolly; operating a hand-held, body-mounted, or remotely-controlled camera; or working on a feature, commercial, an episodic or sitcom series, or on a documentary. No matter where or what the project or tools, good operating practices, which have evolved over the years, are being put to good use by the specialists with the title and responsibilities of camera operator.