Editing Nanook of the North (section)

===Filming===
Using a [[Bell & Howell]] camera, a portable developing and printing machine, and some lighting equipment, Flaherty spent 1914 and 1915 shooting hours of film of [[Inuit]] life. By 1916, Flaherty had enough footage to begin evaluating screenings and was met with wide enthusiasm. However, in 1916, Flaherty dropped a cigarette onto the [[original camera negative]] (which was highly flammable [[Nitrocellulose#Nitrate film fires|nitrate stock]]) and lost 30,000 feet of film.<ref name=Barnouw>{{cite book|last=Barnouw|first=Erik|author-link=Erik Barnouw|title=Documentary:A History of the Non-Fiction Film|year=1993|publisher=Oxford University Press|location=Oxford|pages=33–35}}</ref> With his first attempt ruined, Flaherty decided to not only return for new footage, but also to refocus the film on one Inuit family as he felt his earlier footage was too much like a [[travel journal|travelogue]]. Spending four years raising money, Flaherty was eventually funded by [[France|French]] fur company [[Revillon Frères]] and returned to the North and shot from August 1920 to August 1921. As a main character, Flaherty chose the celebrated hunter of the Itivimuit tribe, Allakariallak. The full collaboration of the Inuit was key to Flaherty's success as the Inuit were his film crew and many of them knew his camera better than he did.<ref name=Barnouw1>{{cite book|last=Barnouw|first=Erik|author-link=Erik Barnouw|title=Documentary:A History of the Non-Fiction Film|year=1993|publisher=Oxford University Press|location=Oxford|pages=34–36}}</ref>

====Building of the igloo====
The building of the [[igloo]] is one of the most celebrated sequences in the film, but interior photography presented a problem. Building an igloo large enough for a camera to enter resulted in the dome collapsing, and when they finally succeeded in making the igloo it was too dark for photography. Instead, the images of the inside of the igloo in the film were actually shot in a special three-walled igloo for Flaherty's bulky camera so that there would be enough light for it to capture interior shots.<ref name=Barnouw2>{{cite book | last=Barnouw| first=Erik| author-link=Erik Barnouw| title= Documentary : A History of the Non-Fiction Film| year=1993| publisher=Oxford University Press| location=Oxford| page=36}}</ref> This instead is what Flaherty said: "The average Eskimo igloo, about 12 feet in diameter, was much too small. On the dimensions I laid out for him, a diameter of 25 feet, Nanook and his companions started to build the biggest igloo of their lives. For two days they worked, the women and children helping them. Then came the hard part—to cut insets for the five large slab-ice windows without weakening the dome. They had hardly begun when the dome fell into pieces to the ground. 'Never mind,' said Nanook, 'I can do it next time.' For two days more they worked, but again with the same result; as soon as they began sitting in the ice windows their structure fell to the ground. It was a huge joke by this time and holding their sides they laughed their misfortune away. Again, Nanook began on the 'big Aggie igloo', but this time the women and children hauled barrels of water on sledges from the waterhole and iced the walls as they went up. Finally, the igloo was finished, and they stood eyeing it as satisfied as so many small children over a house of blocks. The light from the ice-windows proved inadequate, however, and when the interiors were finally filmed the dome's half just over the camera had to be cut away, so Nanook and his family went to sleep and awakened with all the cold of out-of-doors pouring in."<ref>Robert Flaherty Talking," in Cinema 1950, edited by Roger Manvell (London: Pelican, 1950) 18–19.</ref>