8mm Forum: Cinerama Adventure

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Posted by Graham Ritchie (Member # 559) on December 01, 2011, 01:54 PM:

Came across this interesting book a while ago written by the late Harry Wigley in 1965 and was founder of Mount Cook Airlines. Harry Wigley died in the 80s.

He writes of filming "South Seas Adventure" and what was involved in the New Zealand part.

Here is some of it, as written by Harry Wigley.

The flight tests were reasonable satisfactory, but it was really asking too much of the Auster and our margin of safety was reduced too fine a limit.
A pod with a square frontal area thirty inches by thirty inches, about five feet long and with its rear pulled into a rough streamlined shape was made of plywood and attached to the rack of one wing. With the cameras in, this weighed slightly over 300 pounds. A similar but smaller pod to house the batteries was hung on the racks of the opposite wing and it is amazing that the aeroplane managed to fly at all.

The plane was then flown to Christchurch and after being modified to meet with the Cinerama team's approval the gear was mounted, but the camera, which was considerably heavier than the batteries, was shifted from the port to the starboard side.
To counterbalance the uneven weight the fuel tank on the side of the camera had been left virtually empty and the one on the side of the batteries had been filled, but somehow this fact was overlooked when we went for a full-load air test after all the gear was fitted. As well as having full tanks on the same side as the camera, I had on board a sixteen-stone cameraman who sat in the front seat, also on the same side.

The three weeks or so we spent with the Cinerama team were extremely interesting. The Auster was dangerously underpowered for this particular job, and I certainly would not tackle it again; Nevertheless some quite spectacular results were achieved.

Within a fortnight of the film being released in New York, people were arriving at The Hermitage and asking to be flown round the "Cinerama route" and the col between the Anzac Peaks and the eastern arete of Mount Cook through which we flew has been known as the Cinerama Gap ever since.

The pod in which the camera was housed is slung up to the rafters of our Timaru garage. Sometimes when passing it I glance up at it and shudder.

Posted by Patrick Walsh (Member # 637) on December 01, 2011, 07:41 PM:

Very interesting, I did not know that the Cinerama crew shot some local footage!, may have to see if I can watch it!
Pat

Posted by Graham Ritchie (Member # 559) on December 08, 2011, 12:51 PM:

Hi Pat
I am pretty sure I have seen some of the NZ content used in other films as well. When Mt Cook engineeing and other parts of the company were sold off around 1997 a lot of film and promotional material was thrown out. The company that Harry Wigley founded was slowly bought out after his death until Air New Zealand had 100% shares then "asset-stripped" it, even though the company was in this case profitable and at the time I worked for them were the biggest tourist operater in NZ.

Anway back to Cinerama.

From "How the West Was Won" 1962.

Posted by Ricky Daniels (Member # 95) on December 09, 2011, 05:57 AM:

Graham,

Here's a link to lots of information about Cinerama and current restoration projects and even a 'new' short being filmed in 3 strip, the first 3 strip shoot since HTWWW!

http://www.in70mm.com/cinerama/index.htm

Of particular interest are the links on the left, some mention of South Seas Adventure...

http://www.in70mm.com/news/2011/filming/index.htm

http://www.in70mm.com/news/2011/trends/index.htm

http://www.in70mm.com/news/2011/cinerama/index.htm

I love this 70mm website [Big Grin]

Best,
Rick

Posted by Claus Harding (Member # 702) on December 09, 2011, 10:02 AM:

Graham,

I love the old-fashioned spirit of daring Wigley exhibited.
A small one-engine plane, a heavy, unsuitable load under the wings and not enough horsepower...and then we go flying in the mountains... [Eek!]

I can only imagine how many regulations would have shut that down today.

How much of that footage is around?

Claus.

Posted by Bruno Heughebaert (Member # 2756) on December 09, 2011, 06:48 PM:

Hi, it's the first time i'm posting on the forum but i read it for a long time ago now.
Sorry for my poor english, i'm not used writing in english
I saw this on ebay : Seems to be part of a cinerama film
http://www.befr.ebay.be/it m/own-a-piece-of-movie-history-FULL-CINERAMA-REEL-act-1-projector-b-7-WONDERS-/230710124696?pt=US_Film&hash=item35b7652098

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