Film producer

“ The base of the film is usually of a highly inflammable composition. Again, before the pictures are perfected, for public exhibition, the producer’s outfit should include highly perfected cameras, studios, staging, and star actors, and a search, often, for appropriate outdoor settings for the scenes to be enacted. The skilful direction of people and scenes to obtain illusions requires an expert at the business; for it necessitates a high grade of technical ability for the production of scenic, travel, and scientific pictures [57] with the minimum film waste. ”

“ Pertell, "but we can switch things around at the studio later, to make it fit."
This is a secret of more than one film. The producer takes advantage of things as he finds them. Often, after a film has all been planned, and the pictures are being taken, a chance accident, or incident, will suggest an advantageous change, and it is made on the spot. Later the film is "cut" or added to, so that the change fits in.
Again, on going to the outdoor scene called for in the scenario, the manager may see a background that suits him better than one he intended using. ”

“ To the amateur the ideal manner of staging a motion picture is, of course, to handle every detail of the production within the organization, merely going outside to rent a camera, purchase film stock, and finally for the factory work of developing and printing the film. The pleasure of “doing everything yourself” is almost too great to be resisted, but if a successful production is to be assured it is wise to call on professional help in other branches. ”

“ In this dilemma the progressive manufacturer has joyfully hailed the advent of the motion picture film which enables him to display every step in the manufacture of the machine or articles, and every phase of its operation. ”

“ The average amateur photographer, who has made a practice of developing and printing his own photographs, will find little of interest in a description of the stages through which the film passes in a motion-picture factory. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Many of you boys have probably seen them in special lectures on other subjects, for they can be used to show how people live and work in every part of the world and how the various commercial products that so largely govern our lives are made."
170 But the motion-picture man, he explained, is not at all dependent upon what really happens for his films, because if he cannot train the eye of his camera on some occurrence that he desires to transfer to a film, he reproduces it in a studio, spending thousands and thousands of dollars, if necessary for actors, scenery and stage fittings. ”

“ The transportation manager rented a variety of vehicles, ranging from limousines to transport the stars to heavy equipment required for constructing a set. The production manager made it all come together. The other team members were technicians who created the film footage from the words in the script.
Because movie-making is widely known as an unusual business, most people would not be surprised that a Hollywood production company would travel around the world looking for the right street or hillside to shoot a particular scene. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Unfortunately, the feeling against the moving picture has not been entirely eliminated, despite its tremendous popularity. Once an energetic Board of Education realises the possibilities of cinematography as a supplement to the information conveyed by text-books and manuals, the film manufacturers will hasten to supply the demand thus created. ”

“ Unless the organization has within its ranks a photographer of more than ordinary ability, who is willing to spend some time and money in preliminary study of the motion-picture camera, and in wasting film [Pg 109] in experimentation, it is necessary that a professional camera-man be engaged. ”

“ The greater number of the play-producers retained by the foremost firms are men who climbed to the top rung in the theatrical profession and merely went over to the motion-picture studio because it offered them greater scope for their prowess and knowledge. Indeed, one might go so far as to say that, unless a man has served his apprenticeship behind the foot [229] lights, he is an indifferent play-producer, because he will be ignorant of stage-craft and the technique of the profession.
A man of such experience and ability is able to sum up the value of a plot in an instant. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Motion-picture publicity is so pliable that arranging with movie theaters to put on a film of your product in the making and equipping salesmen with a reel and apparatus to demonstrate before prospective customers does not exhaust its uses.
I have unearthed a New York manufacturing concern in a large way of business who have fathomed the all-important matter of deriving the fullest value from their movie-advertising investment. They utilize their film to teach salesmanship to the employees. ”

“ In a travelling expedition the operator records pictures of what he deems to be sufficiently interesting from various points of view—scenic, ethnographic, historical, or merely anecdotal and humorous. When the films are developed and a trial positive is struck for projection before the powers that be, to receive official approbation and sanction to enter the market, the critics in the private projecting room sometimes fail to see eye to eye with the cinematographer, and deem this and that to be lacking in the essentials which render a film attractive to the public. ”

“ The film author’s place is in the studio; he should be the silent witness of every scene; he should be thoroughly conversant with such technical progress as has been made and is being made in the way of illumination and psychic photography. But he dare never forget that a film work is not the work of an individual.
An author has to have, if success is to crown his efforts, a great store of general information, a store such as reaches far out beyond the studio. He should have a general but clear idea as to what it costs to mount a film. ”

“ In order to gain an idea of one branch of the industry, the manufacture of the film, one must pay a visit to the extensive works of the Eastman Company, the plant of which is able to turn out no less than 7,200,000 lineal feet of film for moving pictures every week—truly a tremendous output. ”

“ Most of the directors take part in the assembling stage when the film is cut to its proper length, the subtitles inserted, and the finishing touches applied that make the picture ready to meet the eyes of the outside world. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A firm engaged in supplying topical films cannot hope to succeed without amateur assistance. No matter how carefully and widely it distributes its salaried photographers, numberless events of interest are constantly happening—shipwrecks, accidents, fires, sensational discoveries, movements of prominent persons, and the like, at places beyond the reach of the retained cinematographer. For film intelligence of these incidents the firm must rely upon the independent worker. ”

“ But let us get on with our tour of the studio. We have not yet come to one of the most important places of all—the laboratory where the film is developed.
The laboratory work of many producing companies is not done on the lot at all, but is sent away to one of the big commercial laboratories that does work for many different companies. But several of the larger producers have their own laboratory plants. ”

“ Like poor Julia Duane, the moving-picture producers have one problem which they must face alone. They are confronted with difficulties unknown to the publisher of books and the producer of plays. The movie man must frame a story which will interest grown-ups and at the same time contain nothing which will disturb the innocence of the youngest child in the audience. ”

“ Masterpieces are coming not through spending millions on supes, and “real” temples, and forts; but rather by writing a scenario particularly adapted to film-production, hiring and training actors that know how to act for the camera, preferably those without bad stage habits to unlearn, cutting out all unreal scenery, costume and make-up and keeping everything as simple and as close to the actual as possible. The best movie play I ever saw was in a ten-cent theatre in St. ”

“ The logical follow-up medium for your film is the motion-picture publication field, for every fan takes regularly at least one publication devoted to photoplays, and the cover of national magazine or periodical you have in mind may only catch his eye at the news-stand. ”

“ We accentuate the word become in order to emphasize the fact that even the professional writer must learn the technique of photoplay construction before he can hope to produce a script that will not only be accepted by a film manufacturing company for production, but will be produced exactly as he has written it, without the need of drastic revision or rewriting. This, however, is very rare today.
Producing a Big Scene in the Selig Yard. See Cameras on the Right
Film-Drying Room in a Film Factory. ”

“ We refer, of course, to stories specially written for the photoplay stage, for when a film manufacturer produces a story by a well-known fiction writer, which originally appeared in novel or in short-story form, the manufacturer does business with the author's publishers, unless the author has specifically reserved for himself all dramatic rights—a practice which, by the way, is becoming more and more general. ”

“ The history of the cinematograph impresses upon us at every turn the necessity which experimenters were under of devising special facilities and improved apparatus in all of the numerous fields that impinged upon their work. They were obliged to break ground in every direction. For instance, besides securing the right kind of film, they had also to find the best means of developing it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ From a cursory view no difficulty appears to be attached to the preparation of a film of odds and ends of topical interest; but as a matter of fact the task is quite as exacting and strenuous as the production of the morning newspaper.
The work can be handled successfully only by a firm having an extensive organisation, and with better chances of success if it has specialised in the ordinary “topical.” There must be an editor to direct operations and to prepare the film. He must possess a large and scattered staff, so that no part of the world is left uncovered by a cinematograph. ”

“ He shall be considered as the producer of the cinematic work or the work prepared for radio or television broadcasting, the person who handles achieving a work of art, or takes the responsibility of achieving it and provides the authors with the material and financial means which guarantee producing and directing the work. ”