Smoke and Mirrors
A while back, there were some questions about an Ernie Kovacs photo posted here that had him pouring water (that was missing the glass), on a titled gimble set. The set was at quite an angle but the viewfinder shot was level…how? Mirrors. This old style system is still around and in use mostly for cooking segments, but the mirror arrangement can also be flipped to make the shot look like the camera is floor level, like for dance numbers. Now you know!
“All In The Family”…Best Retrospective Ever, In Five Parts Last week, January 12, was the show’s anniversary and many of you asked for more. MSNBC’s “Time And Again” was in itself a great show that did an excellent job of documenting media history, so here is their April 2000 look at The Bunkers. Enjoy and […]
GE Theater This shot is from the set of a 1956 GE Theater presentation at CBS Television City. Ronald Reagan was the host of the long running series and working for GE as their national spokesman got him interested in politics as he not only represented them on television, but in person around the country […]
January 14, 1990…’America’s Funniest Home Videos’ Debuts On ABC Here is the first episode with what I think was the best host ever, Bob Sagget. Bob hosted the original show which aired as a special in November of 1989. It was such a hit, ABC had it on the air on Sunday nights in just […]
Another Beauty Shot…Norelco PC60 Here is another of Parker Smith’s portraits of a few of my cameras. This PC60 began life at CBS Studio 52 in New York, just around the corner from Studio 50, The Ed Sullivan Theater. It later went to CBS Washington and was used on the White House mobile unit. Enjoy […]
I’ve seen setups like this in the past for cooking segments. These days, though, we use a small camera that was easy to mount on the ceiling.
On cooking shows, we used a mirror over the cooking surface all the time to get an overhead shot. The large mirror was quite heavy, and it did fall once due to a faulty tether.