My Vintage Iron

[Gary Watson]

So, many of you might have noticed that I list myself as a "former MG owner." I've got to say that the requirements for being an MG owner and being an independent filmmaker are very much the same...time and money. As soon as I started production on the first INSIDE THE OCTAGON my MG ownership was doomed, particularly the MGTC project I started in 1987. By the time 2000 rolled around I found myself MG-less. But I still have a fascination with vintage iron and I'd like to tell you a bit about that big blue camera in my photo. It's an early 1950s Mitchell BNCR 35mm motion picture camera that I bought in 2003. One of the BNCR's predecessors, the Mitchell Standard camera, was a mainstay in Hollywood from the 1920s and was an improvement on the Bell and Howell 2709 that preceded it. The 2709 had strayed from the wooden construction of earlier motion picture cameras and defined the general form factor of the modern cameras which Mitchell adopted. And while Mitchell flourished, the 2709 did not. A later development from the Mitchell Camera Company was the NC camera. The NC stood for Newsreel Camera. But when sound entered the scene, the noise of the camera motor and mechanism became a problem on the set. Mitchell further developed the NC by building it into a soundproof housing, thereby creating the Mitchell BNC, standing for Blimped Newsreel Camera. A blimp is a housing around a motion picture camera that dampens the noise of the mechanism. Although the first BNC was built in the 1930s, it wasn't until after the war that production really ramped up. And even at that, there were only a little more than 350 Mitchell BNCs built. By the 1960s reflex motion picture cameras had appeared on the scene. With a reflex camera the viewfinder actually looks through the taking lens during photography. On the BNCs, the scene was viewed with a separate finder attached to the side of the camera during photography. To meet industry demands, many BNC cameras were modified with reflex viewing systems and became BNCRs, or Blimped Newsreel Camera Reflex. The Mitchell BNCR remained the workhorse of the motion picture industry until the mid-1970s when Panavision updated the design further and began to overshadow the aging Mitchells. However, to this day, the mechanical movement of the Panavision camera is based on the Mitchell movement designed in the 1920s. Of the 350 odd Mitchell BNCs built, mine is number 156. It was previously owned by Paramount Studios and was part of a fleet of BNCRs used to shoot sitcoms such as CHEERS, WINGS, and FRAISER. In 2004 I used the Mitchell to shoot a short film I produced called AFTER TWILIGHT and a feature called MR. HELL for another director. The footage for each film was stunning and classic. Yes the Mitchell is twice as heavy as a modern camera and yes, it lacks some of the modern conveniences of today's hardware, but the images it can create are amazing. Think of it, this camera built more than half a century ago is still capable of making timeless beautiful images in a format that is still compatible with modern theatres and DVD players, standard or high def. And within the length of my career, I have videotapes just over thirty years old that I would be hard-pressed to find a machine to play them on, tapes from the 1980s in formats that are long obsolete, and a digital video camera that is not even six years old but, while still current, is three models and one format behind. And as for high-def, it looks great, but there's at least a half dozen incompatible shooting formats out there. The film from the Mitchell can be converted to any format you want, no matter how obscure. It's great to know that some things have longevity and staying power. Gary Watson