Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaThis is the most famous film in the Westinghouse Works series.
- ConnectionsFeatured in The Story of Film: An Odyssey: The Hollywood Dream (2011)
Featured review
Bitzer Invents the Busby Berkley Shot
In this film and 'Panoramic View, Aisle A, Westinghouse Works", Billy Bitzer, who would later become famous as D.W. Griffith's cameraman, invented the Busby Berkley shot, formally known as the 'moving crane shot.' Searching, as good cameramen do, for a new and interesting way to shoot a particular film, one of a series of shorts meant to show off the production facilities of the Westinghouse Works in Pittsburgh, Bitzer attached himself and his camera to one of the cranes that moved heavy objects from one working spot to another in the factory, hoist himself thirty feet in the air and gave the moviegoer a bird's-eye view of the factory floor.
Let us, therefore, celebrate Bitzer and the cameraman, one of the principal behind-the-camera artists involved in the production of a movie, along with the director and the writer. The job has grown immeasurably more complicated since Bitzer did everything himself more than a hundred years ago. The screen-credited camera department of a typical movie can include more than a dozen individuals from the Director of Photography to the clapper boy to the man who maintains the cameras, encompasses more than 170 years of work since the early French and British experiments with photography and all of human history and prehistory of the visual arts. Every once in a while, someone comes up with something new and exciting, and here is one of those occasions.
Let us, therefore, celebrate Bitzer and the cameraman, one of the principal behind-the-camera artists involved in the production of a movie, along with the director and the writer. The job has grown immeasurably more complicated since Bitzer did everything himself more than a hundred years ago. The screen-credited camera department of a typical movie can include more than a dozen individuals from the Director of Photography to the clapper boy to the man who maintains the cameras, encompasses more than 170 years of work since the early French and British experiments with photography and all of human history and prehistory of the visual arts. Every once in a while, someone comes up with something new and exciting, and here is one of those occasions.
helpful•30
- boblipton
- Jun 27, 2009
Details
- Runtime2 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.33 : 1
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