Motion picture studio

“ 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. ”

“ MOVIE MANNERS This chapter does not deal so much with how to act in a picture as how to act in a studio.
Motion picture people live, more or less, in a world of their own. It is a world which may seem a bit topsy turvy to the outsider, with its own peculiar customs, and a greater freedom from restraint than is customary in the conventional world outside. Examined a bit closer, these outlandish ideas appear to be the very same ones which are always associated with artists—a bohemian spirit which is the same whether in Hollywood or the Latin Quarter of Paris. ”

“ 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 studio seldom permits a director to keep more than three or four settings standing at once for any considerable length of time. So it must be arranged that the early action of the picture takes place in the first three or four settings erected. In other words, the settings of the production must be progressive as well as the characterizations. It is a little mechanical trick that is much easier to utilize than it is to explain. ”

“ Besides it offers the most humble of the studio staff the opportunity to rise to the top.
During recent years cameramen, property men, authors, continuity writers, artists of brush and of pen and ink, actors and business men from varying lines have become identified with the art of motion picture directing. The law of averages has declared that many of these should fall short of success. Many have. 6But others have succeeded, have succeeded even beyond the expectations of their sponsors. ”

“ 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!” ”

“ Whenever the photoplay is mixed in the same programme with vaudeville, the moving picture part of the show suffers. The film is rushed through, it is battered, it flickers more than commonly, it is a little out of focus. The house is not built for it. The owner of the place cannot manage an art gallery with a circus on his hands. It takes more brains than one man possesses to pick good vaudeville talent and bring good films to the town at the same time. The best motion picture theatres are built for photoplays alone. ”

“ On Sunday they took a motor trip through the mountain boulevards and on their way home passed the extensive enclosure of the Continental Film Company. A thriving village has been built up at this place, known as Film City, for many of those employed by the firm prefer to live close to their work. Another large "plant" of the same concern is located in the heart of Hollywood.
As they passed through Film City Uncle John remarked:
"We are invited to visit this place and witness the making of a motion picture. ”

“ 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. ”

“ During the summer months as many as six different companies will be working in as many different corners of Europe, acting plays in the open air for the picture palaces. Even the interiors in Gaumont films are often real and not merely constructed for the occasion. As a rule the studio is used only during the winter when the climatic conditions are unfavourable for outdoor work. ”

“ Almost every motion picture theatre has its orchestra, pianist, or mechanical piano. The perfect photoplay gathering-place would have no sound but the hum of the conversing audience. If this is too ruthless a theory, let the music be played at the intervals between programmes, while the advertisements are being flung upon the screen, the lights are on, and the people coming in.
If there is something more to be done on the part of the producer to make the film a telling one, let it be a deeper study of the pictorial arrangement, with the tones more carefully balanced, the sculpture vitalized. ”

“ Mimic art calls for a sharp milieu, a pronounced environment. Since the descriptive power of the gesture does not extend beyond the hidden contents of the human soul, the figures of an unenvironed motion picture would float about in empty space.
The world of the spoken drama is limited to the cubic feet of space within the theater; the motion picture, on the contrary, has the world for its field; it moves in perfect freedom. The camera follows the actor wherever he may go. ”

“ Often in a studio, even, the director will be notional—"temperamental," he might call it—and let a day go by, and again the glare of the powerful lights may so affect the eyes of the players that they have to rest, and so time is lost in that way.
But the time lost in a studio is as nothing compared to the time lost in filming the big outdoor scenes. There the sun is a big factor, for a brilliant light is needed to take pictures of galloping horses, swiftly moving automobiles and locomotives, and every cloudy day means a loss of time. ”

“ It should be impossible, therefore, to consider that the photoplay setting is a complete, independent picture, and that the actors are separate visible things merely placed in front of the setting. And if the movie director makes the mistake of not fusing actor and setting into a pictorial composition, it is perhaps because he imagines the spectator with himself in the studio, where the scene and action are like those of the stage, instead of putting himself with the spectator before the screen. ”

“ DIGGING IN “Well, we’re in the movies—we’re working in the moving pictures.”
“Moving pictures? You’re working in moving pictures? What do you mean, you’re working in moving pictures?”
“We’re working at a place—they call it a studio—acting in little plays—dramas, and comedies—a camera takes pictures while we act, and the pictures are shown in those five- and ten-cent theatres that are all around the town, mostly on Third and Ninth Avenues and Fourteenth Street—such high-class neighborhoods.” ”

“ Paramount Pictures Theatres Corp., a subsidiary of Paramount Productions, Inc., and successor to Paramount Pictures, Inc., is a New York corporation engaged in the business of operating motion picture theatres throughout the United States. ”

“ If yours is a high-class store, it naturally will not do to have your film shown at a nickeldrome attracting the poorest of the working classes. I would especially advise you, before putting your motion picture into circulation, to make a tour of the photoplay theaters in your territory. It is not enough to judge by the outside appearance—mingle with the audience—and size each one up from the point of view of your proposition. ”

“ At home he may exploit his ingenuity in making trick films, a most popular feature at the picture palaces, so long as he keeps novelty to the forefront. Trick films, unfortunately, take so long to prepare and demand such care, skill and patience that the largest firms of producers as a rule are not eager to attempt them, because their production disorganises the more regular and profitable work of the studio. ”

“ Kircher and Edison do not stand alone in the parade of pioneers in the art and science of the screen. The list of builders of the cinema is as cosmopolitan as its appeal: Greeks, Romans, Persians, British, Italians, Germans, French, Belgians, Austrians and lastly, and in some ways most importantly, Americans. Ancient philosophers, medieval monks, scholarly giants of the Renaissance, scientists, necromancers, modern inventors—all had a role in the 2500 year story of the creation, out of light and shadow, of this most popular and most influential expression—the motion picture. ”

“ The studio settings in distortion represent the spectacle; they are variations of scenery or “location”; the chase over the roofs is a psychological parallel to the Keystone cops; and the weak moment of this superb picture is that in which the moving picture always fails, in the double revelation at the end, like that of Seven Keys to Baldpate, representing “drama.”
No. The drama film is almost always wrong, the slap-stick almost always right; and it is divinely just that the one great figure of the screen should have risen out of the Keystone studios. ”

“ In most cases he has graduated upon the stage, and has probably passed through all the phases between a touring company and a well-known theatre. As a result of this drilling he will have assumed a wide perspective. Sheer ability will have brought him to the control of the cinema-studio stage, where the work is most exacting, and where there is a very great demand for ingenuity and resource. Having mastered the intricacies and possibilities of the photo-play stage, and what can be done by photography, he will be a thorough master of craft. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As a means of supplying drama to America as a whole our commercialized professional theatre has broken down. The reasons need not concern us here. They are many, no doubt. One, of course, is the rise of the motion pictures, which are cheaper to present and to witness, 57and which enable the local theatre manager to keep his house open six or seven days in the week. ”

“ To-day the short picture, though still forming the bulk of the output, is somewhat neglected, for the quickest way to the public’s fancy seems to lie in the big production that rivals the stage-play. In Europe the long picture is declining in favor, and the picture of one and two thousand feet returning to popularity. In the United States, however, it would seem that the future of the motion picture lies in the production that gives an entire evening’s entertainment, offering, as it does, opportunities for the exercise of artistic effort that are denied by the fifteen or thirty minute picture. ”

“ The American stage, like that of Great Britain, France, Germany, and Italy, had regarded the picture play with disdain, and had ridiculed the possibility of its ever becoming a spirited competitor to their particular interests. To-day the American stage is engaged in a struggle for supremacy with the moving-picture theatre. The American picture producers erected huge studio-theatres, with every convenience, capable of producing any type of play demanded, and giving the author greater opportunity for effect than ever the legitimate stage could hope to offer. ”

“ The floor of the operating room should be kept clear as far as possible. Careless operators often allow their take-up magazines to become deranged and when they fail to work, allow the film to run on the floor. A thousand feet of film scattered loosely about occupies considerable space and is very likely to become badly tangled in case there is anything on the floor for it to tangle with. The writer has witnessed cases where it was necessary to take some of the film outside of the booth in order to get it straightened out. ”