Billy Bitzer

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Billy Bitzer

Gottfried Wilhelm "Billy" Bitzer (April 21, 1874–April 29, 1944) was a pioneering cinematographer notable for his close association with D. W. Griffith, working with him on some of his most important films and contributing significantly to cinematic innovations attributed to Griffith. In 1910, he photographed Griffith's silent, short, In Old California, in the Los Angeles village of "Hollywoodland," qualifying Bitzer as, arguably, Hollywood's first Director of Photography. Bitzer, it is said, "developed camera techniques that set the standard for all future motion pictures."^[1]

Among the innovations made by Bitzer were:

the fade out to close a movie scene;
the iris shot where a circle closes to close a scene;
soft focus photography with the aid of a light diffusion screen
filming entirely under artificial lighting rather than outside
lighting, closeups and long shots to create mood
perfection of matte photography

Prior to his career as a cameraman, Bitzer developed early cinematic technologies for the American Mutoscope Company, eventually to become the Biograph Company. He admired and learned the art of motion picture photography from Kinetoscope inventor W.K.L. Dickson, who directed the early Biograph shorts on which Bitzer cut his teeth. Until 1903, Bitzer was employed by Biograph primarily as a documentary photographer, and from 1903 onward primarily as the photographer of narrative films, as these gained popularity. (Hendricks 1964, pp. 5)

In 1908 Bitzer entered into his first collaboration with Griffith, A Calamitous Elopement. The two would work together for the rest of Bitzer's career, leaving Biograph in 1913 for the Mutual Film Corporation where Bitzer continued to innovate, perfecting existing technologies and inventing new ones. During this time he pioneered the field of matte photography and made use of innovative lighting techniques, closeups, and iris shots.

The apex of Bitzer and Griffith's collaboration came with The Birth of a Nation (1915), a film funded in part by Bitzer's life savings, and the epic Intolerance (1916).

For all his innovation, Bitzer did not survive the industry's transition to sound, and in 1944 he suffered a heart attack and died in Hollywood in relative obscurity.

His autobiography, Billy Bitzer: His Story was published posthumously in 1973.