By Ken Walton
​
Continued from Part 1. 

Small 9.5mm ‘Pathe Baby’ movie cameras had been available since 1923. At first they were hand cranked but from 1926 the possibility of an attached clockwork motor ‘Motrix’ was introduced. Then in 1931 (tying in quite well with the Lankester Harding films) came the 'Pathe Motocamera' and then the ‘World B’ model, which both had built-in motors. We don’t know exactly what camera Lankester Harding was using for filming but we can be pretty certain that it was one of the new motorised cameras because there is a classic 'giveaway' shot: we see the view point of the camera on a tripod filming a wall and in a couple of seconds Lankester Harding walks into shot and poses on the wall for the camera. He then exits but the camera remains rolling, whilst he would have made his way back to turn it off. This is exactly the kind of thing people with a motorised camera do when the want to be in a film but are by themselves at the time.

As far as exposure was concerned, Lankester Harding might well have used the Pathe ‘Posograph’,  a chart/calculator made of card that gave some guidance on the correct exposure for certain conditions. However, a relatively new invention was the ‘Extinction meter’, like the ‘Drem Justophot’. The extinction meter relied on a series of numbers or letters seen through a viewer like a small telescope. The letter or number just in view was the correct exposure.  On the barrel of the device a table of settings for the camera could be used to adjust shutter speed and aperture, rather like a modern 'spot meter’.

Having been invented in 1924 the ‘Drem Cinophot’, designed specifically for movie making, linked more to a fixed shutter speed.  It was improved in 1928 to make it more sensitive; just a few years before Lankester Harding was to make his films. It is very likely that Lankester Harding used an extinction meter because that was the latest most practical technology. There was a photoelectric meter in 1931 called the ‘Electrophot’ sold by J. Thomas Rhamstine, of Detroit, Michigan - but it weighed 1.5 lbs. and was not very portable like the modern light meters.

Around Europe the market for 9.5mm cameras and projectors grew with the Swiss producing the ‘Pailliard Bolex’ brand and the Austrians the ‘Eumig’. In the UK makes such as: ‘Campro’, ‘Midas’, ‘Coronet’, ‘Binoscope’, ‘Dekko’ (which might well have come from the British army bringing back the word ‘Dekho’ (‘Look’ in Hindi) from India, hence the old British phrase ‘Have a dekko’ (‘Have a look’). The best British make of projector was the ‘Specto’ made by Specto Ltd of Windsor. The Specto Company was founded by a Czech, J. Danek.

By Amara Thornton

I’ve spent hours going through Lankester Harding’s footage since we received the digitised version earlier this year.  The digital file we received was all the individual films sequentially rolled into one, making up about an hour and a half of ‘raw’ footage.  There were short breaks where the ‘leaders’ attached to each canister’s roll indicated the reference number we had assigned it – LH1 and so on.  So one of my first tasks was to separate the digitised files into each canister’s film using the leader breaks as a guide.  I was able to do this relatively easily in iMovie, and since then I’ve been experimenting with creating bespoke films using the footage and related digitised archive material in order to draw out different facets of the film and the archive.  Each time I watch it I see something new, which is pretty exciting!
 
I made this short film for the Institute’s recent World Archaeology Festival event on 11 June this year.  Having the Harding footage in a digital format makes it pretty flexible in the creation of new narratives.   Being able to manipulate the total film in iMovie allows me to view the footage almost frame by frame, bringing a new focus to my own viewing experience.  And, it’s leading to the creation of new ‘archive’ of films – thematic ones.  
 
The film embedded below features sequences from eighteen of Lankester Harding’s films.  You will see the film canister reference numbers on the top left hand corner of the footage sequences.  Harding’s photograph albums were also very useful in illustrating Harding’s initial experiences as an archaeologist in Mandate Palestine and his relationship with some of the workers on site.  The photograph of Hilda Petrie was in one of his albums, as were the group photographs of local families.  These might be particularly useful in future in helping to identify some of the workers featured on film. Thanks are also due to Alice Stevenson (Petrie Museum) and Robert Winckworth (UCL Records) for permission to include digitised images from each source.
 
I hope you enjoy this first ‘narrative’ film – there will be more to come!

35mm film had been established for many years as the gauge for the distribution of cinema films. 35mm was very good for this but some saw that there might well be a market for home cinema viewing, much as we today buy DVDs of cinema releases. Selling copies of 35mm film for home viewing was impractical; not only would the film rolls be cumbersome but also a 35mm projector would be needed - a piece of equipment that was far too large for most domestic living spaces. 

In 1912, Thomas Edison had come up with a 22mm wide film with three sets of pictures, used in his ‘Home Kinetoscope’.  This system proved impractical and was restricted to what the Edison Company decided to release. The Edison system proved not to be popular enough and was dropped. Meanwhile, the French (Pathé Freres) launched, in the same year the ‘KOK’, or ‘COQ’ projector that used a 28mm film gauge. This format proved very successful and became widely distributed. Pathéscope Ltd opened an office in London at 64 Regent Street for the distribution of the films. Many of the 28mm releases were documentaries with titles such as: Ice Breaking in Finland and Prayer Time at the Great Mosque, Delhi. There were also moralizing films, including the title In the Grip of Alcohol. Lighter, comedy films of European performers such as Charles Prince and “Little Moritz” proved popular. 

In 1914 Pathé  tried to make inroads into the US film market and there was some success but the war intervened and things slowed down. Then an American inventor, Willard Beach Cook, came out with his own design of equipment in competition with the Pathé machine. After the war, Cook expanded his business in the US with films of more popular appeal. There were Hollywood releases such as Chaplin farces, Douglas Fairbanks action films and westerns, starring William S. Hart. The Pathéscope offerings were, by comparison, rather less exciting - Mr Smith’s Small Feet andThe Pork Butchers Nightmare among them.​

Over the past few months, Amara Thornton and Michael McCluskey have been researching a set of footage in the Royal Asiatic Society's collection.  The footage shows the archaeologist Reginald Campbell Thompson's excavations at Nineveh, near Mosul in Iraq, in the late 1920s and early 1930s.  After a very productive screening and discussion event at the RAS in January, they have just published a guest blog post on the film on the RAS blog.  Read on here...

...the first publicly accessible snapshot of the Harding footage!  Thanks to Tim Emblem-English and his team's efforts, we have now received the digital files of Harding's films.  We've put together a short preview film with clips from a few of the canisters, available to view on YouTube.

On the top of each clip you will see our reference number for the footage's original canister.  In this short film we have selected clips from four canisters - LH2, LH4, LH15 and LH23.  

The first clip, from canister LH2, shows a picnic scene at an unknown location.  While most of the picnickers are unknown to us, one person we were able to identify in this clip is the archaeologist Olga Tufnell.  Tufnell worked with Lankester Harding on several sites, and eventually was responsible for the publication of much of the Tell-Duweir excavations.

The clips were chosen to show the different sorts of activities Harding captured with his camera. While clips from LH15 and LH23 show excavation in progress, LH4 shows a more mundane (but necessary) factor of everyday life in the field - dental hygiene.  

We're still researching the films to identify people and sites, so if anything in these clips looks familiar to you let us know!

Guest post by Tim Emblem-English, formerly Archive Telecine Specialist at BBC Studios and Post Production Digital Media Services, now running his own company, The Flying Spot

​Friday 14 August 2015, and Amara and Ian from UCL visit BBC S&PP DMS at our base in South Ruislip with four neatly tied boxes containing Gerald Lankester Harding's 9.5mm film collection which we have been commissioned to digitise. After introductions and over mugs of tea we discuss the subject of the films, the equipment and processes involved in their digitisation, and the form of the deliverables at the end of the process. 

Shortly afterwards, I settle down to begin my inspection and preparation of the Harding films to make them ready to run on our Cintel Mk3 flying-spot Digiscan telecine, specially modified in-house to handle 9.5mm film. 

The Harding films are contained in the usual 9.5mm Pathe cartridges which come in two sizes holding either 10 or 20 metres of film. My first task is to sort them into numerical order following the markings that Ian has previously applied. Then it’s a case of attaching a length of new white spacing film with a CIR adhesive tape splicer to the start of the first film 'LH1' and gently winding it out of its cartridge and on to a large 1200ft capacity film spool. 

​As I wind the film through my fingers I feel for any splices or damage such as torn perforations. Splices in films of this age from the 1930s almost always need attention; any that I find I check for correct registration and reinforce with the CIR tape splicer. After 80-odd years the original film cement becomes brittle and the action of the telecine machine, although much more gentle than a projector, will certainly find the weak splices. Similarly, any tears or damaged perforations are patched with splicing tape. A quick squint through a lupe eyeglass to check that the images are the correct way round and then I reach the end of the first cartridge.

​I either cut or detach the end of the film from the spindle and the usual problem with 9.5mm films that have been stored in their original cartridges for many years becomes apparent – the inner turns have been wound up tightly on such a small diameter spindle for so long that they have the curliness of a watchspring and just want to coil up in a tangle. Having sorted out the tangle I manage to attach a short length of white spacing film to the end which calms things down a bit and move on to the next cartridge and repeat the process, adding successive films with white spacing between until the large spool is full. Onto each length of spacing I write the next film’s reference number so that they can all be identified to avoid any confusion. Another length of white spacing on the end and films 'LH1' to 'LH18' are joined up and ready for cleaning. 

Cleansing of films such as these is done by hand and involves winding the film slowly through a folded Selvyt cloth moistened with Isopropanol.  A pause every so often to remoisten the cloth and see how much dirt has been removed and if it looks spectacularly filthy I give the reel a second pass - which turns out to be required for the Harding films.  Once the large first reel is cleaned I start on the remainder of the cartridges.  In due course, taking time to refocus my eyes, films 'LH19' to 'LH46' are duly inspected, mended and cleaned.

​Although I haven’t studied the images closely at this point, during all the winding and inspection it became apparent that the collection is the result of several different cameras and some of the individual cartridges are compilations edited together from different sources on different film stocks, although all in black-and-white. Two of the cartridges turn out to be commercial printed films – the “home entertainment” of the 1920s and 30s. These incorporate Pathe’s “notched titles” feature, where a notch cut in the edge of the film would cause the projector’s transport to stop for a few seconds before moving on. Used for freezing static shots or titles and captions this was a cunning way of extending the screen time of films which otherwise might only run for 1½ minutes from a small 10-metre cartridge. With time, as projectors got brighter and lamps got hotter the system had to be dropped since the risk of burning stationary film in the gate became too great.

In a perfect world, once cleaned it is best practice to leave 9.5mm material like this which has come out of its original cartridges wound up tightly on a large-diameter spool or film core for as long as possible to “rest” and persuade the extreme curliness to relax. Not doing so can cause loss of focus during transfer towards the end of individual films when the curl is so strong that the film refuses to lie flat in the telecine gate. This time to rest is a luxury we don’t always have when jobs come in with tight deadlines but in this case Amara and Ian are in no hurry and I am able to leave the Harding films wound up on two large reels safely stored in cans in our secure and temperature-controlled vault, waiting for the next stage of the process – the telecine transfer itself. 

To be continued…

By Ian Carroll and Amara Thornton

We have been marking the film canisters in the Harding collection in preparation for taking the film footage to be digitised.  There are in total 46 metal canisters holding film stock in the collection, ranging in size from 68.4 mm to 51 mm.  Once empty of film, each original canister will be kept.

Marking the original canisters will allow us to retain the association between the information on the film canister and the digitised film.  This contextual information will be added as metadata in the archive's record.

Once the paraloid was dry, we used white Rotring ink so that the numbers would show up on the surface of the black canisters.  Then a second coat of paraloid was applied on top of the white painted number.  In line with conservation technique, this process is reversible so the markings can be removed at any point if necessary. 

We put canisters into rough groupings, partially guided by references in the archive.  Canisters with site names on the labels were kept together, and any numbers were put in sequence where possible.  Although not all the canisters were labelled, some that were had information on the where the films were developed. 

Labels on some of the films suggest that a few canisters may contain films bought for home viewing.  In one case we found a partial film title peeking out from beneath a developers label.

Marking the film canisters enabled us to reflect on the range of material on the films in this collection.  While some of it is certainly archaeological, there may be unexpected surprises in store.  We’re looking forward to seeing the digitised footage and finding out whether the information we currently have is actually reflected on screen.  In other words: do the films do what they say on the tin?

Guest post by Angela Saward (Curator of Moving Image and Sound, the Wellcome Library)

One of the gems within the Wellcome Library’s Moving Image & Sound Collection is the footage taken on Wellcome's second expedition to the Sudan at Gebel Moya. The expedition was well documented at the time and many related papers are held within the Wellcome Library's Archives and Manuscripts department. In fact revisiting these documents turned out to be a forensic exercise in detection.

Wellcome and his archive

Henry Solomon Wellcome (1853-1936), American by birth, entrepreneur, wealthy philanthropist and archaeologist, resourced his expeditions with care, engaging the best men for the job. The craft of cinematic production was very much in its infancy but all three Sudanese expeditions (1911-12, 1912-13 and 1913-14), engaged a stills photographer.  On the first expedition this was R. C. Ryan, the second and third were attended by two: A. G. Barrett and C. H. Horton. No mention of the cinematic material was made in the published findings of the expedition, Frank Addison's The Wellcome excavations in the Sudan, which post-deceased HSW by 15 years.

The archives reveal the extent of the completed cinematic films to be:

• Set A 14 tins of original film labelled A-H Barrett, 1-6 Ryan
• Set B 14 tins of duplicate positive film labelled as above
• Set C 15 tins labelled original positive film

Care was taken in the preservation and storage of this material; in total there were 9823 feet shot by Barrett and an unspecified amount by Ryan.  A document dated 8th March 1921 notes that: 

Arthur George Barrett was born in 1885 and in the 1911 census he listed his occupation as Press Photographer. He was married to Nancy Barrett and lived in Camberwell, South-East London. He was engaged by Wellcome on the 18th September 1912 for ‘artistic work’ and to go out to the Sudan; his salary was £3 10 Shillings a week (increasing to £4 10 shillings for the expedition for the following season). 

When there was work available, he worked for Wellcome from 1912-1916 after which he joined the Royal Naval Air Service. He was then re-engaged in 1925. In the archive there are numerous letters sent by Barrett to the organisation whilst he was an employee, one of which was a request to HSW to personally recommend him in his application to be a member of the Royal Photographic Society for his photographic work at Gebel Moya – this was duly carried out. 

Barrett achieved recognition for his invention of the kite camera to capture aerial photography over the excavations – as can be seen, it looks to be both ingenious and a somewhat Heath Robinson affair. 

By Ken Walton

At the end of April, Filming Antiquity screened two different excavation films at the Petrie Museum for the “Capturing Light” event.  These two films, of Henry Wellcome’s excavations at Jebel Moya, Sudan (1912/13) and Egypt Exploration Society (EES) excavations at Amarna, Egypt (1930-1933), were made at very different periods. The Wellcome film is more or less “Edwardian” and the EES film very much of the inter-war era. Between the two periods there had been many advances in film and filmmaking including the invention of clockwork camera motors yet we still see Hillary Waddington using a hand-cranked camera in his 1930s Amarna film.

I received a Diploma in professional film production at the London Film School, and then worked at the London Film School in the editing department before coming to study Archaeology at UCL.  While research into the archives relating to these films is ongoing, I will offer some insights into the kinds of equipment and techniques used during these eras to capture these fascinating moving images.

The Cameras

Frank Addison makes no mention of the filming in his 1949 site report on Jebel Moya, but recent research by Angela Saward, the Wellcome Library's Curator of Moving Image and Sound, suggests the cameraman was expedition photographer Arthur Barrett (more on him in a future post!) 

At present it is unclear what kind of movie camera was used to film the 1912/13 Jebel Moya season, but at this early stage in filmmaking, it was the French and British that led the field.  There are a number of candidates for the camera used, including British made movie cameras such as the Williamson or the Moy and Bastie.  Although it was not imported to Britain until 1914 the French made ‘Debrie Parvo’ (‘Parvo’ meaning ‘compact’) invented in 1908, was widely used by the time of the Jebel Moya excavations.  Wellcome, a wealthy man and someone who might want the best and could afford it, could still have privately imported the advanced Debrie. 

There was no 16mm film in the early 1900s and the Jebel Moya film was shot on 35mm film.  The Debrie Parvo would have held 390ft of film which was hand-cranked and would have lasted 6 minutes at 16 frames per second. It was encased in a wooden box but it had an inner metal case and workings of metal. This would be an advantage in places like Africa where mould and insects had been known to attack wood and leather. 

Filming

Being hand-crank cameras, both the Jebel Moya and the EES Amarna cameras would have had to be tripod mounted. The Cine-Kodak Model A was also 16 frames per-second - it was really an amateur camera compared with the earlier Debrie Parvo, which was considered ‘professional’.

The Debrie allowed the camera operator to focus through the 'taking lens' - the lens the film was exposed with.  This was achieved by having a 'ruby window' (red filter) in the viewfinder.  Because the film was more or less 'orthochromatic' (only sensitive to the blue and green light of the spectrum) the red filter enabled the operator to view through the taking lens without affecting the exposure of the film.  As I understand it, the film could be moved to the side and the image viewed directly, or on a ground glass; the image was upright.  Once focused the 'ruby window' viewfinder could be closed and the operator would then use the side-finder for normal filming.  Another plus for the Debrie was the ability to alter the shutter speed.

All this was quite a contrast to the later amateur Cine Kodak Model A Waddington used at Amarna.  This camera had a 'fixed focus' standard lens (25mm, being a 16mm camera) with the camera operator having to use the built-in finder that did not see through the taking lens and gave an upside down image. It was not in fact until the 1940s that the German company ‘Arriflex’ invented the rotating mirror shutter mechanism that camera operators could see a high quality image through the lens whilst filming. There were sophisticated side finders and prism finders before this like the ‘Mitchell’ but the Arriflex device was the great breakthrough. 

Exposure might have been difficult for the Debrie with no exposure meters at the time, but the operator could have relied on charts suggesting the right f-stop - the lens aperture opening - for various lighting conditions. Exposure meters were just coming in when Waddington began filming in the 1930s. The f-stop and film stock light absorbing speed, its American Standards Association rating, were the only variables as far as exposure was concerned because the shutter speed was fixed on the Cine Kodak Model A. Stock would have been cheaper for Waddington to buy because whereas 35mm comes out as 16 frames per foot the new 16mm was 40 frames per foot.

With hand-cranking, any variation in the cranking speed could have resulted in a change of exposure. Slightly slower cranking would lead to more light on the film and overexposure. This may account for fluctuations in the filmed image when the film sometimes becomes lighter or darker. This fluctuation does not happen with motorised cameras that keep to speed.

Waddington achieves slow motion in part of the EES Amarna film. To accomplish this effect Waddington would have had to increase his hand cranking and at the same time open his aperture to compensate for less light reaching the film. Alternatively, he could have printed each or every other frame twice which would have had the same effect for the audience. We would need to see the film-frames to know for certain how it was done, or look at the digitised version frame by frame.

Another feature of all films, hand-cranked or motorised, is the ‘flash-frame’. This is a portion of overexposed film just at the start and finish of a ‘take’ and is due to the camera running slow at these times. A classic sign of un-edited ‘rushes’ (the first ungraded or ‘one-light print’ of a film for viewing by the director and editor) is the inclusion of flash-frames.  Flash-frames would normally be removed by the editor in a finished film.  Interestingly, in the sequence showing the “division” of artefacts in the 1930s Amarna footage what look like flash-frames appear.  The footage also includes film information boards describing the shots. Normally these boards are only used by the editor and would be removed from the finished film. All this suggests at least some of the Amarna footage that was digitised was unedited.

Survival

We know John Pendlebury gave some film shows of the EES Amarna work (e.g. at the Society of Antiquaries) so there may be a finished film still surviving somewhere. The EES Amarna films that were scanned onto VHS (and then unfortunately disposed of in the 1980s) look like they might have been just the unedited ‘rushes’ and not the finished film.

The Jebel Moya film was ‘Nitrate stock’ and prone to dangerous deterioration, while Waddington’s film was Cellulose Diacetate safety stock invented in 1923 and used to make the early 16mm films. Movie film nitrate stock was only ever produced in 35mm and done away with in 1951. The Jebel Moya film stock eventually deteriorated and was destroyed, but the Waddington film stock survived. Both films would have had negatives - the Jebel Moya negative is lost to us, but could the Amarna negative have survived?   

Futher Reading

Raimondo-Souto, M. 2006. Motion Picture Photography: A History. Mc Farland Co. Inc.

Salt, B. 2009.  Film Style and Technology: History and Analysis. (3rd edn.). Starword.

Amara and I were asked to speak at a special event organised by the Petrie Museum. As part of their public programme on 'The Light Project', we looked at the role of photography and film in early twentieth-century archaeology. Amara unearthed some fascinating images of Flinders Petrie and a stunning image that showed how an Egyptian tomb was wired with electric light to impress the tourists. I discussed films from the 1912-13 excavation at Gebel Moya funded by Henry Wellcome and 1930s footage from the excavation at Tell el-Amarna sponsored by the Egypt Exploration Society. The Wellcome films are wonderful images of the disciplined work site and scenes of amusement including a white-suited bicyclist drawing the attention of local children. The Amarna films, in contrast, show a more playful side to the excavation team as the group of seemingly bright young things are captured joking together in Fair Isle jumpers. A special thank you to Angela Saward from the Wellcome Library for allowing us to screen the film footage and for offering some helpful information during the discussion that followed our presentation. Thanks also to the EES for providing access to the Amarna films and to Helen Pike of the Petrie Museum for planning this event and the entire Light Project programme. And a final thank you to Louise Atherton for taking this photo of the event.