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This antique camera,\u00c2\u00a0used to make short film Londoners,<\/em> was found in a British warehouse. <\/p>\n In his quirky new short Londoners<\/em>, director Joseph Ernst uses a hand-cranked camera from the 1920s to film contemporary city dwellers as they might have been portrayed during The Artist<\/em>\u00e2\u20ac\u02dcs glory days.<\/p>\n The British filmmaker got inspired after discovering vintage documentaries by Mitchell and Kenyon<\/a>, who chronicled everyday life in Edwardian England during the early 1900s.<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153When you look at the old Mitchell and Kenyon films, there is a kind of innocence, a charm and allure of a time past,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Ernst told Wired.com in an e-mail interview. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I knew that this side of life still existed in London. The challenge was, would it be possible to produce such a document of this day and age?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n As seen in the exclusive silent premiere of Londoners<\/em><\/a> above, the answer is a black-and-white \u00e2\u20ac\u0153yes.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Soccer fans, cafe loungers, subway crowds and parade-goers peer into the camera as though from an earlier century, lending the group portraits an eerily timeless quality.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Londoners<\/em> isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t Ernst\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s first experiment in offbeat cinema: For his previous short film, Feeder<\/a><\/em>, he poked a camera down the esophagus of a willing subject to record exactly what happens when humans swallow food.<\/p>\n His less-invasive follow-up became an interesting essay on today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s world, as Ernst trundled a bulky antique camera onto city sidewalks crawling with wannabe smartphone documentarians.<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Modern society finds no comfort in the digital camera,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Ernst said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We shy away from them. We complain if someone points it in our direction. But if you bring out some spectacular relic from the past, people forget all that. They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re surprised that such a thing still exists and that it actually still works.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n Londoners<\/em> owes much of its flickering charisma to a wooden, 18-frames-per-second camera \u00e2\u20ac\u201d circa 1915 \u00e2\u20ac\u201d that Ernst discovered in a warehouse full of antique filmmaking gear managed by David French<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I would never have got this kind of footage with a digital camera,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Ernst.<\/p>\n
\nPhotos courtesy Joseph Ernst<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nTECH SPECS <\/strong> Camera: The Ertel Filmette<\/a> was manufactured in Germany between 1910 and 1920. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We needed a camera manufactured after 1909, which is when they standardized film gauges,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Joseph Ernst. Before 1909, cameras used film sizes that do not exist today.<\/strong>
\n Lens: The camera\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s original 50mm lens was used for the entire Londoners<\/em> shoot.<\/strong>
\n Tripod: Vintage tripods proved too fragile, so Ernst used a heavy Ronford that had to moved with a trolley.<\/strong>
\n Film stock: 35mm Kodak 5222<\/a>.<\/strong>
\n Film cartridges: Ernst chopped up a now-standard 400-foot reel of film stock into three 130-foot sections to accommodate the camera\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s relatively tiny magazine.<\/strong><\/div>\n