MGM Studios

“ On the one hand are countless men and women besieging the studio doors in the hope of starting a [pg 2] career in any one of a thousand capacities, from actress to scenario writer, from director to cameraman. There are people with plots, people with inventions, people with new ideas of every conceivable variety, all clamoring for admission. And, on the other hand, there are the men who manage the movies sending out all manner of exhortations, appeals and supplications to just such people to come and work in their studios. ”

“ Dear, merry, kindly, pitiful life of the studios!—irresponsible, perhaps, and not of vast economic importance, but so human and so enchanting; so warm when it is bitter cold, so rich when the larder is empty, so gay when disappointment and failure are sitting wolf-like at the door. ”

“ Therefore, in writing this series, we shall start with an old saw—a warning to amateurs to look before they leap. No industry in the world presents so many angles, varying from technical work in the studio, to the complexities of high finance. If you really wish to break into the movies, go to the studios and see for yourself what you are fitted for. ”

“ The studios themselves are usually responsible for the thrilling or gorgeous spectacles displaying a wonderful array of scenery, setting, hordes of actors, marvelous mechanism and a hundred other entertaining, and possibly pleasing, features that bear only a distant relationship to bona fide drama. If the manufacturer has a menagerie, a railroad, a thousand pounds of dynamite, a wild west outfit or a military equipment on his hands he naturally desires to make use of it. ”

“ The barrier between real writers and the studios is, I am convinced, the greatest obstacle to the advance of motion pictures and the real trouble I can sum up in one sentence: “The picture stories are not written by authors, they are written by executives!” ”

“ This may seem a little rough, when we apply it to the great movie industry, but it is the truth. That is, it is the truth about the movie beginnings, the first years.
For instance, there were a couple of men who did reporting, off and on, for a Los Angeles newspaper. They drifted into motion-picture work when the first studios came into Hollywood—because they had no steady jobs to keep them from trying out this new gamble. But the star reporters and the influential “desk” men on the paper didn’t have any time to fool away on the new wildcat schemes. ”

“ Don’t go very often. More in Lillian than one suspects.”
Mr. Cohan gave himself time to digest Mr. Rennie’s outburst, and then went on with the rehearsal.
* * * * *
Inevitable the parting of the ways. Though the last word as to modern equipment, the new studio merely chilled. That atmosphere of an old manse that had prevailed at 11 East Fourteenth Street, did not abide in the concrete and perfect plumbing and office-like dressing rooms at East 175th Street. The last word in motion picture studios brought Biograph no luck. ”

“ It is so pleasant to labor when we are surrounded by beauty and convenience, that painters find a large and handsome studio to be an addition to the happiness of their lives, and they usually dream of it, and plan it, several years before the dream is realized.
Only a few days ago I was talking on this very subject with an intellectual friend who is not an artist, and who maintained that the love of fine studios is in great part a mere illusion. ”

“ It has seemed best to postpone their consideration until later on, when we turn from the studios to the laboratories, from the scenario-writer to the surgeon, from the movie hero to the captain of industry in our effort to visualize the wide and growing field that the screen is conquering for its own. And the realm of movie endeavor into which we are now about to enter 113is, to my mind, of greater interest and significance than that which we have been hitherto investigating. Mankind’s toys do not possess for us the fundamental importance of our tools and our test-tubes. ”

“ Subsequently, films are distributed to airlines and hotels, then to the home market, then to pay television, cable and, eventually, free television broadcast. The home market is important to plaintiffs, as it represents a significant source of revenue. [50]
Motion pictures first were, and still are, distributed to the home market in the form of video cassette tapes. In the early 1990’s, however, the major movie studios began to explore distribution to the home market in digital format, which offered substantially higher audio and visual quality and greater longevity than video cassette tapes. ”

“ An early biblical picture showed the scene of the last supper with the assembled Apostles seated in a variety of modern furniture from the factories of the middle western states.
It is only of comparative recency that real artists and architects have entered the production field. Today all the larger studios have extensive art departments that co-operate with the director and his staff in the preparation of the settings. Accuracy distinguishes the majority of the work of these departments. Errors in period pictures are seldom to be discerned even by the most watchful. ”

“ It has three studios devoted to the staging of picture-plays, the premises in Rome having an area exceeding 128,000 square feet. Everything is installed upon a large scale—100,000 feet of film can be turned out every day. Six new subjects of travel, educational, and dramatic interest are placed on the market every week. The big productions, however, entail a strong element of risk. The first difficulty is to select a subject which will make a world-wide appeal. When the negative has been obtained “sample” positive prints are prepared and dispatched to the great cities. ”

“ We for our part can only note with regret that any Studios should be so badly adapted to their purpose, and constructed with so little consideration for the comfort of their occupants, as these same Pimlico Studios. ”

“ He became the first producer/director to make major motion pictures independently of the giant studios, and with such films as Forever Amber, The Moon is Blue and The Man with the Golden Arm, won precedent-settling battles with censorship boards that established new artistic freedom for filmmakers. ”

“ Inside, in two studios where no one ever painted and which led to the real working studio, the finished pictures were exhibited on easels covered with antique textures, and callers gazed with wonder at the collection of properties fit for a theater,—suits of armor, tapestries, old standards hanging from the ceiling, show-cases full of ancient knick-knacks, deep couches with canopies of oriental stuffs supported by lances, century old coffers and open secre [Pg 80] taries shining with the pale gold of their rows of drawers. ”

“ The District Court reasoned that the Studios had failed to prove that library-building would occur “to any significant extent,” id., at 467; that the Studios’ prerecorded videodiscs could compete with VTR recordings and were “arguably...more desirable,” ibid.; that it was “not clear that movie audiences will decrease,” id., at 468; and that the practice of deleting commercials “may be too tedious” for many viewers, ibid. ”

“ The production of several completed plays per week necessitates the employment of a considerable staff of people of miscellaneous trades and abilities. At each of these two studios there is employed a number of stage-directors, scene-painters, carpenters, property-men, photographers, costumers, electricians, clerks, and general assistants, besides a capable stock company of actors and actresses, whose generous numbers are frequently augmented by the addition of a special star, or by a number of extra performers, such as Rough Riders or other specialists. ”

“ When you reflect that to-day he receives approximately five thousand dollars a week, together with a large percentage of the returns on every production, it helps you to realise that the jinnee of the screen has functioned almost as well as did his ancestor of the “Arabian Nights.”
And in no place is the magic more apparent than in California. When De Mille went out to Los Angeles to look around for a site, Hollywood promised nothing of its present pomp. The vast studios, the beautiful villas, the famous pleasure-places—all21 have arisen in the past decade. ”

“ Even if true, that showing only begins the proper inquiry. The development of the VTR has created a new market for the works produced by the Studios. That market consists of those persons who desire to view television programs at times other than when they are broadcast, and who therefore purchase VTR recorders to enable them to time-shift. [50] Because time-shifting of the Studios’ copyrighted works involves the copying of them, however, the Studios are entitled to share in the benefits of that new market. Those benefits currently go to Sony through Betamax sales. ”

“ Hence with studios in which battle scenes, riot scenes, water scenes, and practically any indoor scene can be reproduced; and also the great outdoors at the disposal of the cinematographer, there is practically no limit to the subjects that can be turned into dramatic films for the education and amusement of the public. ”

“ These beginnings and crudities are very remote from the elaborate and expensive paraphernalia and machinery with which the art is furnished to-day.
At the present time the studios in which motion pictures are taken are expensive and pretentious affairs. An immense building of glass, with all the properties and stage-settings of a regular theatre, is required. The Bronx Park studio of the Edison company cost at least one hundred thousand dollars, while the well-known house of Pathe Freres in France—one of Edison's licensees—makes use of no fewer than seven of these glass theatres. ”

“ It is the dearth of studios and the great demand for them that makes the price so high. Those who have had studios some time of course pay very much less, others put up with little holes far too small to paint a picture of any size. Carlo Perugini is painting in the studio of a friend, and that is a strip not large enough for one person. ”

“ In order that the writer or painter may not be disturbed by the sound of a piano, the composers' studios are as isolated as possible. All the studios have open fireplaces and pleasant verandahs and are furnished simply but always attractively. Each studio has been planned for its own particular site. Some are hidden in the woods, some command views of Monadnock or East Mountain, and some long vistas through the trees.
In order that the working day may be long and uninterrupted, at noon a basket lunch is left at each studio. Dinner is the time for relaxation and social intercourse. ”

“ But unfortunately, most of those who head towards the cinema studios do not take time to learn the facts about the industry. They do not look over the multitude of different highly specialized positions which the movies offer and ask themselves for which one they are best suited. They just plunge in, so intent upon making money at the moment that they give no thought at all to the future. ”

“ LP44556.
North Hollywood division. Mark 7, Ltd. Produced in association with Universal Studios. Distributed by MCA-TV. 26 min., sd., color, 16 mm. (Adam-12) Appl. au: Adam-12 Productions. © Adam-12 Productions; 22Jan74; LP44556.
LP44557.
Krash. Mark 7, Ltd. Produced in association with Universal Studios. Distributed by MCA-TV. 26 min., sd., color, 16 mm. (Adam-12) Appl. au: Adam-12 Productions. © Adam-12 Productions; 5Feb74; LP44557.
LP44558.
The Fine art of staying alive. Universal City Studios. Produced in association with Talent Associates, Norton Simon, Inc. & Universal Studios. ”

“ If she had her way, we’d tear down every marvelous rube goldberg in the Park and replace them with pristine white sim boxes on giant, articulated servos.
The problem was that she was really good at coding sims. Her Great Movie Ride rehab at MGM was breathtaking—the Star Wars sequence had already inspired a hundred fan-sites that fielded millions of hits.
She’d leveraged her success into a deal with the Adventureland ad-hocs to rehab the Pirates of the Caribbean, and their backstage areas were piled high with reference: treasure chests and cutlasses and bowsprits. ”

“ If you have never been inside a motion-picture studio, an interesting experience lies ahead of you. For what soon becomes an old story to any one working “on the lot,” is fascinating enough to any one who sees it for the first time.
At Universal City, California, just across a range of hills outside Hollywood, lies a motion-picture plant that covers acres and acres. ”

“ After a roll of negative film has been exposed it is sent to the studio dark room for development. Every precaution is taken, of course, that no ray of light other than that which comes from the ruby lamp shall enter this room where films representing hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of dollars are being developed. ”

“ The studio manager consults with him as to the expenses of the scenery and the length of time to be spent in making the picture and then summons the technical staff.
The technical staff of a studio is a rather large assembly. There is the art director, who plans the scenery, the technical man who directs the building, the casting director, who selects the actors, the electrician, who assists in working out the lighting effects, the laboratory superintendent, who must supervise the developing of the film, the cutters, who assemble the completed film, and last, but not least, the cameraman. ”

“ Often their work seems lost in the mass of commercial production, but it is a good beginning. Such citizens take an established studio for a specified time and at the end put on the market a production that backs up their particular idea. There are certain terms between the owners of the film and the proprietors of the studio for the division of the income, the profits of the cult being spent on further propaganda. The product need not necessarily be the type outlined in chapter two, The Photoplay of Action. Often some other sort might establish the cause more deeply. ”