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This is from back in 1993, while I was working on a TV series called "I'll Fly Away." Sam Waterston was our star, and after a discussion about "matching close-ups," I decided to pull a prank on Sam.

The idea actually came to me when I was being fitted for glasses and saw a "pupilometer" on the optician's desk. It's a little ruler that measures the distance between a person's pupils. I asked her where I could get one, and she gave me that one!

The next episode of the show, when it was time for a closeup of Sam, I pulled out my pupilometer, held it up to Sam's face and asked him to look straight ahead. Being a bit of a cynic, he asked me what the hell I was doing! I explained that this was a new technique for getting better close-up matches, as it was taking the subject's pupilary distance into account. "What a bunch of bullshit!" he said. I told him no, it was true, and the technique was described in the latest issue of The American Cinematographer.

He said he would like to see it, so that weekend I wrote it (on my Commodore 64, by the way) so that it looked like a page from that magazine. Then I stuck the printed document into a real copy of the magazine, and Xeroxed it. The resulting page looked, for all the world, like a Xerox of a real page in The American Cinematographer.

I took several copies with me the next shoot day and gave one to Sam, who thanked me, stuck it into his pocket, and said he would read it later. I passed out the other copies among the crew with no explanation.

The crew was hoodwinked! They all thought it was real! When Sam came back on the set he didn't mention the article, as he had not yet read it. Overhearing some of the buzz on the set about it he read it the next time he was off the set.

When he returned, he told me "This is the greatest hoax I have ever seen!" My work was rewarded.

Click "Download" to read the article, which is a PDF document.

Description
This is from back in 1993, while I was working on a TV series called "I'll Fly Away." Sam Waterston was our star, and after a discussion about "matching close-ups," I decided to pull a prank on Sam.

The idea actually came to me when I was being fitted for glasses and saw a "pupilometer" on the optician's desk. It's a little ruler that measures the distance between a person's pupils. I asked her where I could get one, and she gave me that one!

The next episode of the show, when it was time for a closeup of Sam, I pulled out my pupilometer, held it up to Sam's face and asked him to look straight ahead. Being a bit of a cynic, he asked me what the hell I was doing! I explained that this was a new technique for getting better close-up matches, as it was taking the subject's pupilary distance into account. "What a bunch of bullshit!" he said. I told him no, it was true, and the technique was described in the latest issue of The American Cinematographer.

He said he would like to see it, so that weekend I wrote it (on my Commodore 64, by the way) so that it looked like a page from that magazine. Then I stuck the printed document into a real copy of the magazine, and Xeroxed it. The resulting page looked, for all the world, like a Xerox of a real page in The American Cinematographer.

I took several copies with me the next shoot day and gave one to Sam, who thanked me, stuck it into his pocket, and said he would read it later. I passed out the other copies among the crew with no explanation.

The crew was hoodwinked! They all thought it was real! When Sam came back on the set he didn't mention the article, as he had not yet read it. Overhearing some of the buzz on the set about it he read it the next time he was off the set.

When he returned, he told me "This is the greatest hoax I have ever seen!" My work was rewarded.

Click "Download" to read the article, which is a PDF document.