Lecture Film [Greenhouse - Morning Glories]
Date Of Production
circa 1958
Abstract
A tour of John Nash Ott's greenhouse, which includes time-lapse photography sequences of Ott's army of cameras in action, as well as daffodils, tulips and morning glories blooming.
Description
This film begins with footage of John Nash Ott trudging through the snow in his backyard. He passes through the white picket fence that borders the tool shed, and then enters his greenhouse.
The scene shifts inside the greenhouse where Ott busily records notes on a clipboard and tends to several different irises. He then climbs toward an elevated time-lapse camera equipment set where he examines an orange tree, as well as a bird of paradise tree and a banana tree, both of which are presented in time-lapse sequences.
The scene transitions again to a panning shot that documents an array of plastic hoses whose purpose is to direct cool, dehumidified air towards aluminum hoods situated above each time-lapse camera, thus allowing color film to be loaded in the cameras for long periods of time. Ott adjusts a sequence of dials which close the greenhouse's overhead shutters and turn on a series of lights, causing a flood of illumination on the time-lapse photography set. Then, Ott demonstrates one of his rolling camera's panning and tilting capabilities controlled by hand crank.
The scene shifts as Ott adjusts a lens and peers through the eyepiece attached to one of two dozen cameras, each mounted on its own dolly and track. A grand, panning time-lapse shot captures his entire assembly of cameras in action, each one gliding back-and-forth on its respective track, so as to capture its own time-lapse images of a bountiful arrangement of daffodils and tulips that all bend, bloom and droop through the passage of time.
The film concludes with a time-lapse sequence of morning glory vines curling, buds collapsing, and finally, several morning glories bursting into full bloom.
In his autobiography, My Ivory Cellar: The Story of Time-Lapse Photography, Ott recounts that the Ferry-Morse Seed Company had requested that Ott shoot time-lapse photography of one of their varieties of morning glories. He details that despite his adjusting the plant's location and lighting intensity, several attempts to encourage the morning glories to bloom failed, as their buds consistently collapsed. Then, through a sheer accident that Ott attributes to the limitations of the production's budget, he found the solution. Ott recollects:
"What happened accidentally at this same time came as a result of thinking about the poor old budget again. Expenses on this subject for quite some time had to be charged to the research and experience account, so I was quite conscious of piling up additional film costs. There happened to be a short end of unused daylight type color film which I thought might as well be used up. Ordinarily I used commercial Kodachrome, which is color-balanced to regular photo-flood lamps. As all photographers who take any color pictures know, daylight film is balanced to sunlight which is somewhat bluer than ordinary artificial lights. Indoor it is necessary to use either a blue filter over the lens with daylight type Kodachrome film or special bluish lights. This time I used blue lights instead of the regular ones without giving it a second thought. The next morning when checking the morning glories, I really did give it a lot of thought, as several of the buds had opened half way for the first time. What was it? The only possible difference was the use of blue photo-floods to go with the daylight film. Actually several of them had been used, and the bluish light was considerably brighter than the regular lights that wouldn't work at all. Could it be because the light was a little blue? Maybe wave lengths of light had something to do with these morning glory buds. That night I put additional blue filters over the slightly blue photo-floods. The next morning the morning glories were open full and perfectly. This was surprising, to say the least. The pictures were, of course, way too blue, but after a little experimenting with red filters over the camera lens, I could get a pretty well-balanced color picture. The blue filters in effect were filtering out the red wave lengths from the photographic light. It was the red wave lengths of the spectrum in the photographic lights interrupting the normal dark period at night that was the controlling factor in preventing the morning glory buds from opening."
The scene shifts inside the greenhouse where Ott busily records notes on a clipboard and tends to several different irises. He then climbs toward an elevated time-lapse camera equipment set where he examines an orange tree, as well as a bird of paradise tree and a banana tree, both of which are presented in time-lapse sequences.
The scene transitions again to a panning shot that documents an array of plastic hoses whose purpose is to direct cool, dehumidified air towards aluminum hoods situated above each time-lapse camera, thus allowing color film to be loaded in the cameras for long periods of time. Ott adjusts a sequence of dials which close the greenhouse's overhead shutters and turn on a series of lights, causing a flood of illumination on the time-lapse photography set. Then, Ott demonstrates one of his rolling camera's panning and tilting capabilities controlled by hand crank.
The scene shifts as Ott adjusts a lens and peers through the eyepiece attached to one of two dozen cameras, each mounted on its own dolly and track. A grand, panning time-lapse shot captures his entire assembly of cameras in action, each one gliding back-and-forth on its respective track, so as to capture its own time-lapse images of a bountiful arrangement of daffodils and tulips that all bend, bloom and droop through the passage of time.
The film concludes with a time-lapse sequence of morning glory vines curling, buds collapsing, and finally, several morning glories bursting into full bloom.
In his autobiography, My Ivory Cellar: The Story of Time-Lapse Photography, Ott recounts that the Ferry-Morse Seed Company had requested that Ott shoot time-lapse photography of one of their varieties of morning glories. He details that despite his adjusting the plant's location and lighting intensity, several attempts to encourage the morning glories to bloom failed, as their buds consistently collapsed. Then, through a sheer accident that Ott attributes to the limitations of the production's budget, he found the solution. Ott recollects:
"What happened accidentally at this same time came as a result of thinking about the poor old budget again. Expenses on this subject for quite some time had to be charged to the research and experience account, so I was quite conscious of piling up additional film costs. There happened to be a short end of unused daylight type color film which I thought might as well be used up. Ordinarily I used commercial Kodachrome, which is color-balanced to regular photo-flood lamps. As all photographers who take any color pictures know, daylight film is balanced to sunlight which is somewhat bluer than ordinary artificial lights. Indoor it is necessary to use either a blue filter over the lens with daylight type Kodachrome film or special bluish lights. This time I used blue lights instead of the regular ones without giving it a second thought. The next morning when checking the morning glories, I really did give it a lot of thought, as several of the buds had opened half way for the first time. What was it? The only possible difference was the use of blue photo-floods to go with the daylight film. Actually several of them had been used, and the bluish light was considerably brighter than the regular lights that wouldn't work at all. Could it be because the light was a little blue? Maybe wave lengths of light had something to do with these morning glory buds. That night I put additional blue filters over the slightly blue photo-floods. The next morning the morning glories were open full and perfectly. This was surprising, to say the least. The pictures were, of course, way too blue, but after a little experimenting with red filters over the camera lens, I could get a pretty well-balanced color picture. The blue filters in effect were filtering out the red wave lengths from the photographic light. It was the red wave lengths of the spectrum in the photographic lights interrupting the normal dark period at night that was the controlling factor in preventing the morning glory buds from opening."
Run Time
7 min 52 sec
Format
16mm
Extent
283 feet
Color
Color
Sound
Silent
Reel/Tape Number
1/1
Has Been Digitized?
Yes
Element
Internegs
Genre
Subject
Related Collections
Related Places
Sponsor/client
Main Credits
Ott, John Nash Jr. (is filmmaker)
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