Panoramic View, Aisle B, Westinghouse Works

Panoramic View, Aisle B, Westinghouse Works (1904)

During the early 1900's Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company made a number of industrial films that allowed the public to see what went on inside their buildings. Needless to say, these films didn't contain any sort of plot but some might find them interesting.

Whereas most of these Westinghouse films were rather boring, this here is certainly an exception as this one here actually turned out to be a landmark. Billy Bitzer, who would gain fame as D.W. Griffith's cinematographer, was behind the camera here and we're basically given a crane shot to where the camera was placed on some sort of item and we're given a tour of the factory floor. If you watch any of the films in the series before this one then when you come to this it'll be like getting hit with a cold bucket of water on a hot summer day. I say that because this series of films really aren't that good but this one here is a refreshing new take. The cinematography is actually excellent and the tour we're given is entertaining to say the least.

In this film and 'Panoramic View, Aisle A, Westinghouse Works", Billy Bitzer, who would later become famous as D.W. Griffith's cameraman, invented the Busby Berkley shot, formally known as the 'moving crane shot.' Searching, as good cameramen do, for a new and interesting way to shoot a particular film, one of a series of shorts meant to show off the production facilities of the Westinghouse Works in Pittsburgh, Bitzer attached himself and his camera to one of the cranes that moved heavy objects from one working spot to another in the factory, hoist himself thirty feet in the air and gave the moviegoer a bird's-eye view of the factory floor.

Let us, therefore, celebrate Bitzer and the cameraman, one of the principal behind-the-camera artists involved in the production of a movie, along with the director and the writer. The job has grown immeasurably more complicated since Bitzer did everything himself more than a hundred years ago. The screen-credited camera department of a typical movie can include more than a dozen individuals from the Director of Photography to the clapper boy to the man who maintains the cameras, encompasses more than 170 years of work since the early French and British experiments with photography and all of human history and prehistory of the visual arts. Every once in a while, someone comes up with something new and exciting, and here is one of those occasions.

Cameraman Billy Bitzer used the same technique here as he did when filming Panoramic View Aisle A, namely to attach himself and his camera to an overhead crane and start cranking as the camera slowly glided along the length of the factory. It's a simple idea, and this film serves to show how even a simple shot can lose it's impact if it isn't done right.

In Aisle A the camera's view of the factory reaches further into the distance and the crane therefore seems to move more slowly which not only gives the viewer more time to study the activities taking place on the vast shop floor but also lends a somewhat dramatic quality to the shot. Here, the camera is angled differently, at more of an angle so we see less of what is taking place in the distance - and the impact of the shot is weakened considerably.

This is still an interesting film however, compared to the general quality of actuality films from the period. What does hit home is the sheer number of people required to keep a company on the scale of Westinghouse running smoothly. Today, their numbers would have been vastly depleted by computerisation.