Cranks and Motors - Text 13
By the end of the silent era, Hollywood studios routinely relied on three categories of cameras to produce different types of shots. Bell & Howell 2709s and Mitchell Standards, fitted with cranks or electric motors and used in conjunction with tripods that made it possible to produce tilts and pans controlled by cranks, were used for ordinary studio shoots. When camera movements tracking fast-moving subjects were required, hand-cranked Akeley cameras fitted on gyro heads were called upon. And when the director demanded extremely free camera movements, cinematographers reached for the portable spring-wound Bell & Howell Eyemo.
The industry’s conversion to sound momentarily narrowed the options available to cinematographers working on studio productions. Films and sequences featuring synchronous sound could only be shot with cameras fitted with electric motors and connected by a heavy cable to the same electrical grid as the sound recorder. Hand-held cameras relying on portable batteries, such as the Arriflex, would eventually be introduced in the late 1930s. But it was only in the 1960s, with the advent of synchronous systems relying on crystal vibrating at a very precise frequency – another innovation originating from the world of documentary filmmaking – that studio cameras of the sound era managed finally to break free of the cables hampering the work of the camera operator.