BIG ADVANCE

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 816, 9 November 1929, Page 27

BIG ADVANCE

; Third Dimension with New Camera I liave just seen the latest development in the quest of the perfect moving picture, writes a New York critic. The demonstration, at which I was present, was given privately in the

studio of the Radio Corporation of America last night before a small audience that included cinema and theatre magnates, leading lights of the world of electrical wizardry, and It consisted of the projection on a screen having an area of 1,700 square feet of pictures specially made for the occasion by what Mr. George K. Spoor, its inventor, calls a “natural vision” camera. Perfect Illusion By means of this a picture as large as the proscenium arch of any theatre, and giving perfect illusion of depth, can be projected. The invention represents 13 years’ experimental work, and Mr. Spoor seems to have achieved success, for the pictures were remarkably clear to edge of a screen three times as large as that used for ordinary pictures, showing life-size figures, and all with a stereoscopic effect. The green-tinted pictures of Niagara Falls shown were so natural that the huge cascade in one of them seemed to be almost splashing on the studio floor. Larger Film The film used in the Spoor machine is 21in wide, compared with the standard film width of 12in. Large pictures, capable, like Spoor’s, of covering the height and width of

the stage, are'being shown by prominent companies. These, too, mark the beginning of the end of the familiar “close-up,” because of the natural size of the figures, but lack the charming illusion of depth given by the Spoor camera. Sound went with the pictures shown recently, an improved Radio Corporation device being demonstrated. The speaking and singing in a comedy shown with Rudy Vallee as the star vocalist were the clearest and most natural I have yet heard.