Phil Whitman — Little Close-Ups of the A. S. C. (1922) 🇺🇸
Philip H. Whitman, genial secretary of the A. S. C, began his education in the best school in the world — a newspaper office. He picked out the New Orleans Picayune as a good place to spread his talents around and as a cub reporter he made as much trouble for the boys at the copy desk as possible but he learned the game and while there became interested in photography. He was always hanging around the camera gang and at last they took him in to get rid of him. That was the beginning a cameraman and of Phil’s career as he has stuck to it till “plumb yit” as they say in Tennessee.
As a news cameraman Phil was a success on many papers and at last struck Los Angeles and became inoculated with the movie virus. He joined on at the old Keystone studio in 1915 and began study to qualify himself for special work along lines of trick photography, illusions, “stunt stuff” and intricate double exposure work.
Mr. Whitman is, therefore, a cinematographic specialist. His position is unique in that he never photographs a production from beginning to end, but is called in as a specialist at critical stages when an extraordinary effect is required.
There is no better training for this that that afforded in the making of comedies where the very life of the picture is the thrill, the chase with its sudden and amazing vicissitudes, the high speed stuff, the illusions and the many tricks. Also, he can put grown up people into a miniature set not bigger than a doll’s house and make it all seem like the real thing.
Have you seen the big Monte Carlo set in “Foolish Wives?” Well, that’s a real set all right, but if Mr. Whitman had been called in on that job Universal would only have had to build the first story of the casino to use in the action and the other could have been painted and fitted into the picture so that you couldn’t tell which was real and which faked.
After leaving Sennett in 1918 Mr. Whitman went to Fox [William Fox] for two and one-half years and then worked on several independent productions until called to join the staff of Universal several months ago where his time and talents are devoted to doing the unusual.
He [Phil Whitman] is a member of the Board of Editors of The American Cinematographer.
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Collection: American Cinematographer, February 1922
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