The centerpiece of the collection is Mitchell BNC 11.  Research is active and restoration is planned.  Andrew Gupta’s objective is to have the camera in a suitable state for public display so that it can eventually be donated to the organization or institution that can best guarantee its preservation.

In terms of motion picture history there are bigger and more significant cameras out there — but — in any historical context this specific camera is somewhere up among the best of them.  As one of the ten Warner Brothers 1938 BNC cameras that filmed all in-studio dialogue/sound scenes until at least the 1960’s the history element of this camera is so spectacular that it challenges any imagination.  Every major director and almost every leading and/or long time actor, either under contract to Warner or on loan or independent, performed their art in front of this specific camera.

This camera worked on components of Casablanca, Sergeant York, Yankee Doodle Dandy, Mildred Pierce, The Maltese Falcon, Arsenic and Old Lace, Santa Fe Trail, Operation Pacific — and that’s just a few titles picked from the 1940’s that many might recognize in 2024.

The fact that the Warner Brothers paid the modern inflation adjusted equivalent of about $750,000 for this specific camera illustrates how seriously this fine instrument was taken by the legendary professionals who operated and maintained it until 1990 at Warner Brothers.  This would have been a flagship in-studio camera for Warner Brothers until the mid 1960’s.  It’s also worth noting that the camera department at Warner Brothers very specifically never had this camera “reflexed” or substantially modified in any form (I have spoken to a man who was present when the sound housing was removed from the camera in 1990).  That the camera was preserved until the very end by the Warner Brothers camera department may, perhaps, convey a message about BNC 11.

In 1990/91 the camera was acquired, along with all the other Warner Brothers cameras, by a Japanese global corporation and converted into among the very finest film animation cameras in the world.  BNC 11 produced industry leading Japanese motion picture animations until as late as 2011.  The camera is currently a fully functional world class 35mm animation camera, complete with a Nikon lens mount and among the most advanced motors developed in the entire age of film.  Andrew Gupta acquired the camera in Japan after a large scale estate went to a Japanese public auction in April, 2023.

Although this early BNC resembles the more common of its age NC camera, this BNC had every single component of its architecture specialized to reduce even the slightest of sounds during filming.  George Mitchell later recorded that the pre-war BNC cameras (in the range of twenty made in the West Hollywood factory) were all sold close to at-cost; meaning this camera cost Mitchell Camera Corp. the modern inflation adjusted equivalent of about $750,000 — to make!

After World War II, under the leadership of William Fox and George Mitchell, Mitchell Camera Corp. produced much larger numbers of BNC cameras at lower costs in their new and expanded Glendale, California factory.  Those BNC cameras would go on to be the standard 35mm motion picture camera for every major movie studio in the world until at least the 1980’s.  As late as 2004 Mitchell BNC-R cameras were used by Paramount to film the television series “Frasier.”

BNC 11 is currently preserved with dedicated climate controls and security precautions as the centerpiece of the Andrew Gupta Collection.  Also housed in the collection are Warner Brothers’ Mitchell 16 cameras numbers 751 and 792.