Joelle's Q-interview on the master — "The point of view was from…"
‘The point of view was from the crib, yes. A crib’s-eye view. But that’s not what I mean by driving the scene. The camera was fitted with a lens with something Jim called I think an auto-wobble. Ocular wobble, something like that. A ball-and-socket joint behind the mount that made the lens wobble a little bit. It made a weird little tiny whirring noise, I recollect.’ […] ‘The mount’s the barrel. The mount’s what the elements of the lens are arranged in. This crib-lens’s mount projected out way farther than a conventional lens, but it wasn’t near as big around as a catadioptric lens. It looked more like an eye-stalk or a night-vision scope than a lens. […] Lenses were Jim’s forte. This can’t be much of a surprise. He always had a whole case full. He paid more attention to the lenses and lights than to the camera. His other son carried them in a special case. Leith was cameras, the son was lenses. Lenses Jim said were what [p. 940] he had to bring to the whole enterprise. Of filmmaking. Of himself. He made all his own.’
Context
The auto-wobble lens itself, in the most hardware-specific description the book ever gives the lethal apparatus: ball-and-socket joint behind the mount, a tiny whirring, a barrel projecting like "an eye-stalk or a night-vision scope." Around it, the production's division of labor — "Leith was cameras, the son was lenses," Mario as the lens-bearer with the special case (the case n.160 has interred with the body) — and JOI's own credo secondhand: lenses were what he had to bring "to the whole enterprise. Of filmmaking. Of himself. He made all his own." The optics career and the identity are one clause apart; the lethal film's crucial component is homemade.