Electronicam
Electronicam was a television recording system that shot an image on film and television at the same time through a common lens. It was developed by James L. Caddigan for the DuMont Television Network in the 1950s, before electronic recording on videotape was available. Since the film directly captured the live scene, its quality was much higher than the commonly-used kinescope films, which were shot from a TV screen.
Contents |
[edit] How it worked
The schematic for the Electronicam is fairly simple-- an image is shot through a lens. Behind the lens is then a beam splitter that sends one half of the light to a 35 mm or 16 mm camera mounted onto the right side of the television camera. The other beam splits off to the side onto another mirror at a 45-degree angle that is picked up onto a video camera tube. Because the camera dollies had to support two cameras -- one conventional electronic orthicon tube TV camera, and one 35mm motion picture camera -- the system was very bulky and heavy, and somewhat clumsy in operation. This made complex productions problematic. Single-stage shows, such as Jackie Gleason's Honeymooners shows, were relatively easy since they had few sets and generally small casts.
In the studio, when two or three Electronicam cameras were used, a kinescope system recorded the live feed (as if it was a broadcast), so the Electronicam films could later be edited to match. The audio was recorded separately onto either a magnetic fullcoat or as an optical soundtrack negative.
[edit] Usage
The "classic 39" episodes of The Honeymooners were shot with Electronicams, which meant they could be rerun on broadcast TV, and eventually transferred to home video. Without Electronicams, almost all The Honeymooners episodes would no longer be available today, as most DuMont kinescope recordings were destroyed in the 1970s.[1]
Also, around 1956 British producer Joseph Arthur Rank brought three Electronicams to the United Kingdom to experiment with the system, but he was eventually disappointed with the picture quality.
