Page 137 - Expanded Photography

Expanded Photography Bob Cotton 137/146
Busby Berkeley: The Gang’s All Here (Polka Dot sequence sample frames) 1943.
These 'storyboards' of the Polka Dot sequence give you some idea of Busby Berkeley's inventive 'cine-choreography', where cinematography, sets, choreography and optical special effects are or- chestrated to create a masterly finale to The Gang's All Here'. Berkeley is playing with optical ef- fects here as if it was 1967 (see Christopher Chapman: A Place to Stand, at Expo67 (1967) and Stan- ley Kubrick: 2001 A Space Odyssey 1968). This is the kind of optical montage that foreshadowed the digital compositing of the 21st century.