D. A. Pennebaker and His Amazing Auricon
In preparation for our upcoming release of D. A. Pennebaker’s groundbreaking 1967 Bob Dylan documentary Dont Look Back, we recently visited the legendary filmmaker at his home, where he introduced us to an old friend.
As Bailey goes on to point out, Pennebaker made a modification to the Auricon that involved attaching a grip handle to the front of the camera, allowing it to rest more comfortably on one’s shoulder. One of the first times this was used was on Dont Look Back. Though it was relatively lightweight, the camera was somewhat back-heavy because of the magazine being slung behind the shoulder, which could cause inexperienced operators to lean backward.
Among the hours of outtakes from the film, some of which we’ll be featuring on our release, is a reel of silent footage shot by a particularly illustrious amateur cameraman: Bob Dylan himself. In the following glimpses from that footage, shot in one of the musician’s London hotel rooms, you can get a sense of the difficulty he had wielding the Auricon, which tends to want to arc up to the ceiling. And, yes, that’s Allen Ginsberg dancing like a madman.
