Film director

“ During the whole the director has been the busiest man on the spot. Each motion of the player has been accompanied by a command from him, but it is not for the player to let the camera know that he is listening for these words. By holding a slate covered with figures in front of the camera before the scene was photographed this strip of film now bears its own index figure to aid the factory later in assembling the complete picture. ”

“ Director: Sometimes called the Producer. The man who plans and directs the building and setting of all scenes in the production of the picture, as well as casting the actors and actresses for the various parts, pointing out, in a general way, what costuming and make-up are required, and directing their acting and stage "business" during the taking of scenes. "Producer" more properly is the term applied to the manufacturer or manufacturing company.
Doing a Picture: To "do" a picture is to produce it in film form. ”

“ Once the camera starts to “grind” you are using film, and if everything is not perfect you are either wasting money on scenes that will have to be retaken, or [Pg 118] else you are weakening the picture should the faults be overlooked. In rehearsing, the director must not only assure himself that the players are capably interpreting the emotions called for by the story, but he must also see that there is no danger of their stepping outside the lines of the camera’s vision in the excitement of the action after photography has started. ”

“ And even those who select this volume as their first venture in becoming acquainted with our heroines must well know how the film pictures look from the front of the screen.
To the uninitiated I might say that in making picture plays a company, somewhat like a regular theatrical organization, is gotten together. The play is decided upon, but instead of the acts taking place before an audience they are enacted before a camera and a man who acts as director, or manager. ”

“ In the New York Evening Mail we renewed our acquaintance with Director Brennan one night by reading the following ad:
GET INTO THE WONDER INDUSTRY OF THE WORLD.
The motion picture producing business. Hundreds of fortunes have been made and are being made in it. Successful motion picture playwright and director offer part ownership in a series of powerful, emotional plays for the screen, entitled “When Dreams Come True,” “Time Will Tell” and “Inspector Flynn.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the direction of a serial, each chapter of which is usually told in two thousand feet of film, or two-fifths as much as is allotted the average feature picture, the director is faced with the necessity of making every foot of film contain either plot interest or action interest. Pictorial beauty, characterization, atmosphere, 132qualities which sometimes assist the interest of a feature picture to a great extent, are discarded from the slightest contemplation in the direction of a serial, even as similar elements are discarded in the writing of the magazine serial story. ”

“ Also we must reject the theory that the artistic7 quality of a photoplay can be guaranteed by engaging so-called art directors who design backgrounds or select natural settings for the action of the film story. The picture which we see on the screen consists not of backgrounds alone; it is rather an ever-varying design of moving figures combined with a fixed or changing background. If an art director limits his work to the preparation of material environment of photoplay action, he is, by definition, responsible only for the place-element in the motion picture. ”

“ Despite the difficulties of the work, however, it has become quite common, and daring directors have gone so far as to have dual characters, played by one person, clasp each other’s hands. Where physical contact is attempted, it will be seen that the director, in addition to accurately timing the action on both sides of the film, must have a marker that will note to the fraction of an inch the point at which the character stretched his hand outside the camera’s range, so that, when the other side of the film is photographed, the joining will be perfect. ”

“ Following the photographing of this scene, the actor playing the twin brothers steps to the other side of the stage and, with the action already photographed now “masked,” the same strip of [Pg 22] film is run through the camera. When the picture is developed it will appear as though two actors appeared in the scene. In making such scenes the director of the production makes use of a split-second watch in order that the action may be timed perfectly and that on both sides of the film chime correctly. ”

“ The first thing for me, to be sure, was getting together the men who would help make the photoplay. Re-writing the story into a scene-by-scene continuity, hiring a studio and attending to all the business details, selecting a cast, picking out the “locations” for scenes, designing88 the “sets” and supervising the construction of them, and “directing” the scenes, is more than any one person can do. The Swiss Family Robinson itself couldn’t do it alone.
So I selected and hired a director, and a camera man, and a continuity writer, and an art director to design the sets. ”

“ Plot, performers, places, equipment—these are only the materials which a picture-maker puts into cinematic forms. The art does not lie in the separate materials; it lies in the organization of those materials, a process which may be called cinema composition.A In a later chapter we shall discuss the proposition that the motion picture director is, or certainly should be, the master cinema composer. ”

“ From this brief survey, you can see that the avenues for breaking into the movies are almost unlimited. You can be an actor, director, cameraman, scene builder, cutter, titler, scenario writer, or anything else if you will begin at the bottom and learn the game. All of these positions are highly paid and all require a high knowledge of motion picture technique. ”

“ Directors from the theaters, like the De Milles, and others of the men who learned values in the library and the university, know of course the folly of such childish story building, but in the great volume of production their share is small. In spite of this the big man in Hollywood is the director—they are strong men, tireless, and creative. ”

“ The farther we go into the study of the relation between the player and the rest of the motion picture, the more we realize that this relation can best be established and controlled by the director, and that the player is, in a sense, only a pigment with which the director paints. ”

“ Should the organization be willing to go a step further in seeking the aid of professionals, the services of a capable motion-picture director would go a long way toward the betterment of the final production. We believe it possible for an amateur with the dramatic sense, following the director’s method of work as outlined in this book, to stage a satisfactory picture without the services of a professional director. ”

“ The best scheme of things and one which is followed in many studios today is to have a director and a continuity writer work hand in hand not only on the construction of the picture story but also on the director's end of it—the writer acting in the capacity of supervisor and advisor to the director. ”

“ I remember very well one director, a big man in his day but who has since sunk to oblivion as far as picture production goes, who used to take great delight in showing his players how to play certain scenes. ”

“ The actor in the films is the creature of the director. The director is an important factor in the speaking stage, more so than the spectator often realizes, but in the pictures he dwarfs the players. ”

“ To teach the craft through the printed page is as impossible of accomplishment as instructing a steeple-jack in his trade through correspondence school. “A director must be born, not made.” This old adage, adapted to our present situation, is of a necessity partially false, inasmuch as at the time of the present day directors' initial birthdays there was no such thing as motion picture production. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The fact that the average director refers to his continuity or rather somebody else's continuity to guide him is no reflection on his own ability. It produces proper balance in the work of picture making and the director knows it. He knows too that the art of picture making is no exception to the old rule that two heads are better than one. ”

“ It is the director who is more truly the picture maker than any one of his collaborators in the work. Ideally, he should prepare his own scenario, just as the painter makes his own preliminary sketches, and the fiction writer makes his own first draught of a story. Ideally, too, the plot should be devised by the director (who might then truly be called a cinema composer) , devised especially for motion pictures, and with peculiar qualities and appeals that could never so well be expressed in other mediums. ”

“ The actor, for instance, has had to mould himself to new requirements, demanding of him oftentimes a more exquisite art than the spoken drama comprehends. A vast number of actors have acquired something near perfection.
A power has risen in the production of the photoplay, however, that has often hampered the progress of the new drama. All authority, in too many instances, has been given to the director. ”

“ The ideal screen story will, I think, always be written by the director or directed by the writer, the only difference here is in the words. The man who creates the mood of a story is the author of it, no matter by 226what name you call him. I have nothing but admiration for the director who can write a story or for the author who can direct one, but at present all directors without exception change and re-write every story they handle and there are one hundred and eight active directors in Hollywood. ”

“ I know of no branch of a director's job that is more fascinating than getting color and atmosphere into the settings—thinking out bits of 'business,' little flashes of life which, though only on the screen for a few moments, can give an air of reality to an entire sequence of scenes, that would perhaps otherwise be lacking. ”

“ The majority of American directors whose work has been considered in this book know just how to achieve proper balance in their pictures. They know where the work of the author ends and that of the scenic artist begins. No director worthy of serious consideration in an American studio today permits his dramatic scenes to be sacrificed to make way for masterpieces of pictorial background. ”

“ It is too much to ask that every motion picture director be an art director besides. A man might be perfect as a dramatic director and still be utterly lacking with respect to composition. But if the director cannot be versed in both the arts there should be, and doubtless will be in time, an art director working along with the dramatic director on every scene, interior or exterior. ”

“ He selects these locations, being sure that the physical action of the story can be played in those he selects and then submits them to the director. If the director has a reason for not liking any of them, the location man must jump into his automobile and tour the countryside for suitable substitutes to his first selections. ”

“ How does the director of a motion picture make sure that pleasing motion will appear upon the screen? Does he alter, or select, his subjects? Does he choose his point of view? Does he patiently wait for the right moment? Or must beauty come by accident, as music might come from a cat’s running over the keyboard of a piano? ”

“ You have shown them that you know how to arrange your players in a big scene so as to get the best possible dramatic and artistic effects, you have shown them that you can direct the manipulation of the lights so as to produce a different sort of illusion, you have 175shown them, briefly, that you know more about camera work than the cameraman, more about lighting than the electrician, more about acting than the cast, more about composition than the art director, and more about writing than the continuity writer. ”

“ And when a director proceeds to translate a work of his own from type to picture form he is filling both positions. However, the fact that he is creating in one of his capacities, doesn't mean that he is creating in the other as well. ”