Antarctic Film

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 8, 4 October 1935, Page 16

Antarctic Film

'THE privations and hardships of -*■ making motion pictures in Antarctica, amid blizzards that bring quick death, and iu cold reaching 80 below zero, form the newest saga of Hollywood’s unsung heroes, the cameramen. Death was always close at hand for Admiral Richai’d E. Byrd and the fifty-five men on his second Antarctic expedition, and transferring to celluloid this struggle for life was the chief aim of John L. Herrmann, Paramount cameraman, and Carl 0. Petersen, his chief aide, during their eighteen months in Little America. The 130,000 feet of film they brought back to Hollywood, containing a record of important events on the expedition, cost them painful injuries, long weary hours in the open and innumerable frost-bites. They are busy now editing the film into a feature length picture entitled “Little America.” ■

Experiences of cameramen on the first Byrd Antarctic venture, when the picture “With Byrd at the South Pole” was made, were of little help to Herrmann and Petersen. It was mainly a problem of getting their cameras to the scene of action no matter what the weather conditions were. The same cameras were used on both expeditions. The photographers found their film began breaking at 30 degrees below zero, and at 50 below the cameras themselves froze. They developed quite a technique for capturing scenes in extremely cold weather.

Fis definitely on the cards that “White Horse Inn,” the spectacular musical play requiring a revolving stage, will be a Christmas attraction in New Zealand. It has been a record-breaker in Australia, and its transfer to the Dominion will require all the ingenuity of the firm of Messrs. J. C. Williamson to enable it to be staged here. But difficulties are meant to be overcome, and a first-class company, headed by Rornola Hansen and. Herbert Browne, will be sent, witli a full staff of mechanicians and electricians to give a worthy production.