Stringer: Portrait of a Newsreel Cameraman

Duration: 1000 ft

Year Published: 1979

Creator: Films inc.

Complete Record: Motorcycle Club of Toledo racing their motorcycles through town, on snow, chasing turkeys; cameraman with camera talking about the race he filmed; shots of men performing stunts on motorcycles, on skis, and with cars, then narrator says that the Universal Newsreel is how people in the US saw the world, followed by images of disaster, of violence, and the absurd; picture of Mike Gitinger, a Stringer, a freelance cameraman who worked for all the major newsreels; shots of a man in the snow, a woman holding a pig while a man feeds him, an old woman and a cop shooting at a man on a motorcycle; Gitinger speaks on the significance of newsreels, followed by part of film, “Camera Catches Traffic Violators”, about a camera that catches people committing traffic violations- police chase culprit, catch him, and use the pictures as evidence in court; film on anti-skid device for a car, that never caught on; an invention for small apartments, the Castanien, that was a table with a stove and that turned into a bathtub; perpetual motion machine to power lights, iron, and vacuum cleaner; bulletproof glass being tested by shooting at women holding it in front of them and in which Gitinger sometimes went behind the glass, too; Gitinger discusses that he was in the laundry business before he got into newsreels, took correspondence course; shots from his first film, which was a beauty contest in Ohio; another film of his neighbor’s performing DOG troop jumping through hoops and performing blind tightrope walks; Tin Can Tours of the World group in their recreational vehicles, a novelty then; Bud and Luke’s Restaurant, where clients were insulted in a circus-like environment and served in many different ways and sometimes thrown out of the restaurant filled with utensils that were stuffed into the clients’ coats; film of office workers who moved into a large freezer during a hot summer; pig being walked in the streets and being fed in an eatery; grade school students protesting the firing of their teacher; Gitinger discussing a story about a blizzard in Michigan and how snow was forty feet high in some areas, followed from footage from the film, which includes shots of kids skiing and aid being given to people stuck in their homes; another blizzard film where the snow was covering cars on a bridge and which froze both of Gitinger’s ears; another film on a bridge where cars were skidding on the ice covering it; he discusses a film he shot on New Year’s eve of an accident near his house where three children were pinned in a car which had skidded against an utility pole where the wire had broken off and had touched the ground and where a neighbor died while trying to help, although it never appeared in a newsreel; another newsreel on the Ohio river floods in the late 1930s, which caused major damage, was a major story, where Gitinger lost film when his boat capsized, and where he earned a lot of money because he wasn’t obligated to shoot for just one company; film on flood in Pomeroy, Ohio, which had seven blocks under water and where the water almost completely covered homes, he shot for five different companies; film on Lieber strikes in which two people died and troops were called in; Monroe Steel strike where more violence was present and where gas bombs were set off and where cars were overturned, which Gitinger completed with a camera borrowed from Movietone; strikebreakers and factory police where there was not much violence, so he got them to throw rocks at each other and also run after each other because Gitinger needed more action for the newsreel to have any worth, a common practice when newsreels were shot in the 30s; Gitinger talking about getting a man to wear some skates and a rocket pack attached to his back, followed by newsreel of the man using it; Gitinger, followed by footage of a cat in a chicken nest with baby chicks, all set up by Gitinger; newsreel of cat and DOG wrestling, which took a lot of takes to set up; newsreel, also set up, of men at a beauty store in Toledo, Ohio; newsreel of bulletproof cloth being tested with air rifle, which was also set up; another newsreel where Gitinger used his little cousin as a subject for a film of a girl target practicing; another newsreel that he set up using his grandmother supposedly being a sharpshooter, where oil was used to make smoke come out of the barrel and in which a rifle, out of camera range, was used to shoot the bulbs supposedly being shot by the old lady; another film which was set up in which a group of chorus girls were dancing on a high level bridge, then being joined by the construction workers