"SHOOTING" NEW ZEALAND IN A HURRY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 77, 13 December 1940, Page 8

"SHOOTING" NEW ZEALAND IN A HURRY

Time Marches On At The Double With Victor Jurgens

Fraser that he would travel through a country by express train and then write a book about it. _ V. J. Jurgens, "March of Time" cameraman, who has been visiting New Zealand, isn’t quite as superficial as that, but he certainly doesn’t waste any time when he is on the job. He came to this country for the specific purpose of exposing 10,000 feet of film (eventually. to be edited and cut to 1,900 feet, "March of Time" length) and he had rather less than two weeks to do it in. Allowing an average working week and @n average working day, that would be, say, 1,000 feet of film per day and 120 feet of film per hour. And when you consider that Mr. Jurgens has to chase up his subjects before he can "shoot" them, that isn’t bad going at all. " A Real American " Mr. Jurgens has left everybody who. met him breathless. An interview with him? Well, hardly. "You’ve not idea how he hustles round. We could hardly keep up with him. He’s a real American you know. It’s not likely ,he’d have time for an interview. .. ." However, a trap was set for Mr. Jurgens the afternoon he was to leave Wellington for Auckland and the PanAmerican clipper on his return home, and before he knew where he was he was being interviewed. | No hoary newsreel veteran is Mr. Jurgens. He is young and blond and tall and pleasant and disarming. A college boy grown up. He is married and lives in New York, but hasn’t been having much home life lately. ("Guess I get round fo seeing them about once a year.") But now he is on his way home, | and if all goes well, he’ll be there for Christmas. Started as Office Boy He has been with the "Time" organisation pretty well ever since he has been in long pants. He started off as office boy on " Time" and " Fortune," grew up in the production and advertising departments, and when " March of Time" was started six years ago he was moved up. He didn’t start off as a cameraman, but he had always been interested in movie cameras, and once he was given a break I: was said of Sir John Foster-

he went ahead. During the past few years he has shot a good few miles of film. From the start, " March of Time" set out to supply something that Henry Luce of "Time" thought was lacking in ordinary newsreels-significance, drama, punch-call it what you will. Take the instance of Mr. Jurgens’s first assignment outside the U.S., the " covering" of Alaska. Any newsreel man could go to Alaska and expose a mile or two of rivers and mountains and Eskimos. "March of Time" wanted more than that. The rivers and mountains and Eskimos were only background for a dramatic presentation of one of the greatest colonising schemes of modern times. That was the theme, the colonising of Alaska. Alaska was his first foreign assignment, but since then he has been travelling constantly, though never yet to Europe. He was in China two years ago, in Mexico just before flying down to Australia and New Zealand. He allowed himself three months for his present trip. Nearly eight weeks in

Australia, two weeks in New Zealand. Two weeks of travelling. That’s plenty, as he flies everywhere, and has used trans-Pacific clipper and trans-Tasman flying boat. His New Zealand Angle He is chary about admitting he spent more time in Australia than in New Zealand. Diplomatically he says he would have liked to stay much longer here. In Australia he was chiefly interested in the magnitude of the Commonwealth’s war effort; the angle to his New Zealand story is the Dominion’s social legislation and the fact that we are one of the world’s greatest larders. Not Interested in Scenery Scenery didn’t interest him; State houses and dairy farms definitely did. In all, he has exposed 10,000 feet of film, and it may be from three to six months before this particular issue of "March of Time" is released. The date of release depends on production schedule and just how soon editors and com-

mentator can get to work on the film he has exposed. Mr. Jurgens uses only one camera, a 35 millimetre Eyemo that you can " put in your hat"; when flying he keeps his luggage down to 90 pounds, nearly all of it camera and film; he was at work "shooting" the State houses at Orakei within half an hour of disembarking from the trans-Tasman flying boat, astounds everybody by starting work at four o’clock in the morning; he thinks he has had remarkably good co-operation from the New Zealand Government — officials from the Internal Affairs and Publicity Departments hustled him through the country at a quite satisfactory pace; the " March of Time" staff numbers some 90 people these days, though recently, when the full length feature "The Ramparts We Watch" was being made, it went up to over 200; Henry Luce takes a keen interest in "March of Time," though the direct head of the organisation is Louis de Rochemont, an old newsreel man who produced "March of «the Years" in the newsreel parent of " March of Time."