Quote:
Originally Posted by
MadMadamMalfoy 
“Excuse me, Professor. I have a question about film bases,” she said after raising her hand and being called on. “Did all Old Hollywood films use plastic film bases? I thought most of them, at least the ones made before 1951, used nitrate. Was that a type of plastic film base?”
If Miss Masters wanted to go into more detail she was more than welcome to come discuss it in his office later. For the sake of the limited time in this lesson, her fellow students who were not so well versed in films from almost two centuries ago and the fact that it would not come up in their exams, he would refrain from going into too many specifics.
“Several materials have been used for film bases in the past. Nitrate is extremely flammable and easily decomposed and led to frequent fires in projection booths as well as their disappearance from archives, hence why a transition to acetate and then polyester occurred.” No Professor Leroy was sadly not in the possession of one, what little was left was likely locked away in the archives.
As for the rest of the students who were struggling with their answers, Professor Leroy was not overly surprised. If he hadn’t had such a keen interest himself, he probably would’ve struggled too. But many of the examples were classics, filmed in technicolor and hopefully had survived the test of time.
“Times up for that activity” he bellowed before tapping the board for the answers to appear.
“I find that the best way to learn about how muggles work is to understand it from our perspective. I don’t expect you to live like muggles during my lessons so we will be learning a spell to help replicate muggle technologies without the long wait times. We are going to do a fun activity using these replica cameras” he flicked his wrist as several smaller versions of the antique motion picture cameras appeared on the desks.
“I want you to produce a short film, only a couple of minutes at most, about something that interests you about Hollywood. Once you have finished this, remove the film from the reel and bring it over to this developer tank to soak. The contents of the chemicals in this tank won’t come up in your exams so I won’t bore you with the finer details.”
“When the majority of you have finished this, I’ll explain what the spell we are going to use is on this example.” He picked up a thoroughly antique reel of film which certainly looked like it had seen better days.
“Group work is acceptable. You have around half an hour.” ooc: You have about 48 hours for the main task. Professor Leroy will be checking in periodically. Plenty of time to catch up if required too.