Money Makers (1960)

M/S of two men sitting at tables in an office; they both have drawing boards before them and are designing bank notes, with art materials beside them. M/S over the shoulder of one of the men as he uses some dividers to measure something on a master copy, then picks up a paintbrush; C/U as he paints in part of the design on a (Spanish?) banknote using a magnifying glass.



Commentator tells us that this is "a firm of security printers in the City of London where a large proportion of the world's supply of new banknotes is produced"; (the firm is not mentioned by name but notes on file say it is Morris Waterlow and Sons in Worship Street, London). C/U of a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II panning left to show a steel engraving of the picture. Portraits are apparently used so much on banknotes because they are harder to forge. M/Ss and C/U of a man working on the engraving, called a steel die.



M/Ss and C/Us as we see the the design being embossed on a softened steel cylinder, being rolled back and forth on a transfer press. The cylinder is later hardened and we see it being rolled onto a large plate, to create rows of the design; the plate is then used for the actual printing on sheets.



M/Ss and C/Us of the printing machinery; we see sheets of banknotes passing through; a man takes a sheet from a pile collected at the end of the process and holds it up to the light to look at it.



M/S of a woman checking through huge wads of sheets of banknotes; she takes one out and in C/Us we see a double impression has been printed in one corner of a note. M/S and C/Us of another woman flipping through wads of single notes, checking for mistakes such as the wrong margin width. M/Ss of a man throwing wads of bad notes into it; C/Us of a security man indicating to him which bundles should be burnt. The man throws whole sheet of 'money' into the fire as the security man makes notes on a clipboard.



Note: there are extensive notes on file on the processes shown in the film. Cuts exist - see separate record.
FILM ID:117.2

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