Editing Little Fugitive (1953 film) (section)

===Engel's unique camera===
Engel was an experienced photo-journalist when he was asked in 1939 by his friend [[Paul Strand]] to shoot some motion picture film for his film ''[[Native Land]]'' using the  compact 35mm [[Bell and Howell]] [[Eyemo]] holding 100 foot rolls that could film about one minute of film. But he was disappointed that Strand put this camera designed for hand-holding on a heavy metal baseplate attached to a heavy wooden tripod.<ref>Joel Schlemowitz, ‘’Experimental Filmmaking and the Motion Picture Camera'', Routledge, London and New York, 2019, pp. 153-153</ref>

During World War II he was a still photographer but he probably was familiar with a handheld 35&nbsp;mm battery-operated camera developed during the war for combat photography, the Cunningham Combat Camera. The large square camera was mounted a rifle stock, held tightly to the cameraman's chest by handles mounted on each side, and aimed in the general direction of the action, sighted by a top-mounted viewfinder. With a two hundred foot magazine, it could run for two minutes. The other primary motion picture camera used by the military was the [[Bell and Howell]] [[Eyemo]], a spring-run camera held to the eye with a 20-second running time.<ref>Richard Koszarski, ''"Keep'Em in the East" - Kazan, Kubrick, and the Postwar New York Film Renaissance'', Columbia University Press, New York, 2021, p. 334 See photos of the camera at "The First Real Combat Camera", ''American Cinematographer'', November, 1942 reprinted in March 2020 at http://we.acs/the-first-real-combat-camera.com accessed 1/31/2023</ref>

After the war, Engel and an engineer he met in the service, Charles Woodruff, reconfigured the Cunningham camera into a much smaller camera for civilian purposes. Engel explained, "Designed for me, it was a compact 35mm, hand held, shoulder cradled, [with] double registration pins and twin lens finder and optical system."<ref name="Schlemowitz, p. 154">Schlemowitz, p. 154</ref> It used the Cunningham 35mm 200 foot interchangeable magazines which met the camera at the film gate with the lens, motor, shutter, and viewfinder comprising the camera body. Twin lens geared together enabled the viewfinder lens and the camera to be focused together, as on Engel's preferred still camera, the [[Rolleiflex]]. Like the Rolleiflex, the viewfinder was viewed from above. Held against the waist, rather than in front of the face, the camera was both steadier and less conspicuous than the Eyemo. "With a simple shoulder belt support," Engel said, "I was armed with a camera which became the heart of the esthetic and mobile approach to the film the ''Little Fugitive''.<ref name="Schlemowitz, p. 154"/> This camera was about the same size as the Eyemo, but looked like a giant [[Ocarina]] with the camera in the wide part at the top and the smaller curved part below.<ref>Photos of Engel's camera can be seen on the "Morris Engel" page on Facebook and on Schlemowitz, p. 154</ref>

Film teacher Joel Schlemowitz says, "The film’s storyline, about a young boy gone on the lam among the boardwalk, beach, and amusements of Coney Island, provided the opportunity to film in situations well matched to this unobtrusive camera's virtues. The Rolleiflex-inspired chest-level configuration also assisted in giving the film its sense of visual rapport with the film's child actor, placing the camera at eye level with the youngster's view of the world."<ref>Schlemowitz, p. 155</ref>