MOVIE CAMERA IN ODD PLACES

Dominion, Volume 18, Issue 218, 15 June 1925, Page 9

MOVIE CAMERA IN ODD PLACES

A MAN WHO FILMS BIRDS’ NESTS The most surprising thing about Captain C. W. R. Knight is the fact that he weighs more than fourteen stone. It is a surprising fact because his job in life is to climb trees and take moving pictures of birds in their nests. • , ( A cheerful giant, who gained a Milltarv Cross iti the war, Captain Knight, whose latest film, “Aristocrats of the Air,” is being shown in London, took to tree-top kinematography because he discovered that no one else was doing it. He bought a second-hand film camera when' he was demobilised from the Army, got Air. Cecil Hepworth, one of the pioneers of British films, to show him how to work it, and started out to take, pictures of birds. Verv soon the originality of his work attracted wide attention, and now he stands alone in bringing birds and their nests to the kincma screen. His patience must be extraordinary. It is nothing for him to spend the best part of six consecutive davs hidden in a tree before be can secure a film record of five mingles in a heronry or to lie for days in the reed-beds of the Fenlands to capture on celluloid pictures of a feathereu mother foraging for her young. When he began Captain Knight tried to take his pictures from the ground. Having fixed his camera among the branches of a tree, he came down and worked the shutter by pulling a string. "I soon found out that this way was really no good,” he told me. “You must be up among the birds to get proper pictures of them.” The great difficulty is to remain unseen. To this eiid Captain Knight contrives a sort of tent among the tree tops, in whith he crawls and settles himself down to wait. . He often even eats and sleeps up in the air. One very important thing that, always has to be done is to get into the hiding place unobserved by the birds which he happens to be kinemato,graphically on the tra-ek of. Having located a nest, he chooses a neighbouring tree for his own purpose, and when he is ready to climb a decoy assistant proceeds to divert the attention of the birds which are to be filmed. This assistant goes out and makes himself generally conspicuous; he may dance or jump, or sing, or perform strange antics with his hat. He is certain to command the full and complete attention of the birds of the place. Intent on him, they are unlikely to notice the man who makes pictures of them climbing up the next tree and slipping quietly into concealment. Captain Knight is getting on towards middle age, but he still has all the enthusiasm for birds and nests and climbing trees which he bad as a boy. —William Pollocks in the “Daily Mail." g-~' ....-L 1 " 1 ., -ILLLI.L— —