WITH THE MOVIE MAKERS
[Illustration: GETTING READY TO TAKE A SCENE “ON LOCATION.”
The camera men preparing their cameras while the director is coaching
the actors in their parts. Because the scene is to be a “long shot,”
the two cameras are put on a platform to secure greater elevation.]
WITH THE
MOVIE MAKERS
BY
JOHN AMID
WITH FIFTY-ONE ILLUSTRATIONS FROM
FAMOUS STUDIOS AND FROM THE
AUTHOR’S OWN PRODUCTIONS
[Illustration]
BOSTON
LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO.
Copyright, 1923,
BY LOTHROP, LEE, & SHEPARD CO.
_All rights reserved_
WITH THE MOVIE MAKERS
PRINTED IN U. S. A.
Norwood Press
BERWICK & SMITH CO.,
NORWOOD, MASS.
U. S. A.
FOREWORD
Motion pictures are still changing so much, in their development from
year to year, that any survey of this vast, chaotic new industry
is in danger of being out-of-date long before its time. With this
in mind, I have attempted to stress those phases of movie-making,
and of the story-telling that underlies each photoplay, that do not
change. A generation hence, the fundamental problems confronting the
makers—how to show real people, doing interesting things in interesting
places—will be the same.
Grateful acknowledgment is due Walter P. McGuire, of “The American
Boy,” where much of the material embodied in this book first appeared
in article form, for his assistance in planning the original articles,
as well as in editorial supervision of the work as it progressed. If
there is good entertainment, as well as instructive value, in these
pages, and interest for old minds as well as young ones, much of the
credit is due to him.
JOHN AMID.
_August 23rd, 1923._
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
PAGE
HOW DO YOU WATCH MOVIES? 13
CHAPTER II
TRICK STUFF 23
CHAPTER III
THE WORLD THROUGH A CAMERA 41
CHAPTER IV
INSIDE THE STUDIOS 65
CHAPTER V
MAKING A MOTION PICTURE 87
CHAPTER VI
PIONEER DAYS OF THE MOVIES 105
CHAPTER VII
WHAT MAKES GOOD PICTURES GOOD 121
CHAPTER VIII
HOW GOOD CAN A PICTURE BE? 136
CHAPTER IX
AMERICAN MOVIES ABROAD 156
CHAPTER X
MOVIES OF TO-MORROW 173
ILLUSTRATIONS
Getting Ready to take a Scene “On Location” _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
Making use of a “Real” Incident 18
The Scene the Audiences Saw 19
Roping an Auto Bandit 28
Taking “Close-Ups” on a Moving Auto 29
A Movie “Miniature” 36
A Snow Scene Made of Salt 37
“Shooting” a Tramp on a Moving Train 40
A Closer View of the Preceding “Take” 41
Getting Thrills with a Balloon 48
An Old Whaling Ship Refitted to Make a New Movie 49
Capsized by a Real Whale 60
Aiding Nature by a Skilful Fake 60
Real Danger on the High Seas 61
The Second Step to Safety 61
A Douglas Fairbanks “Set” used in “The Three Musketeers” 64
How a Movie “Set” is Made 65
Applying the Mysteries of “Make-Up” 68
A Typical Movie “Interior” 69
Staging a Movie Prize-Fight 69
How a Motion Picture Interior is Made 72
Engine Trouble on a Dakota Prairie 73
When the Hero is the Captain of a Steam Shovel 73
Douglas Fairbanks as D’Artagnan in “The Three
Musketeers” 78
Another Scene from “The Three Musketeers” 79
Filming an Old Engineer on a Fast-Moving Locomotive 86
Another Railroad Scene 87
Getting a Comedy Close-Up for a Laugh 92
A “Location” where Reflectors are Essential 93
Where Scenic Beauty is Required 104
A Proposal on a Mountain Top 105
Wrecking a Racing-Car for Sport 110
Getting a Risky Bit of Action 111
Actress, or a Victim of an Accident? 120
Getting a real “Thriller” 121
Drama on an Aëroplane 128
A Gruesome Aëroplane Wreck 129
Good Training in Cheerfulness 134
Two Cameras Against One Pig 135
Carrying an Elephant to a “Location” 138
An Auto Load of Horses 139
A Tête-à-Tête with a Lion 144
Acting with a “Tame” Lion 145
An Elephant on a Rampage 148
Human Brains Against Brute Strength 149
One of the Big Scenes in “Robin Hood” 154
Spending Money on a “Spectacle” 155
A “Western” Actor and His Favorite Horse 172
“Westerns” are always Popular 173
Archway from “The Three Musketeers” 184
A Mexican Gateway from “Winners of the West” 185
WITH THE MOVIE MAKERS
CHAPTER I
HOW DO YOU WATCH MOVIES?
Grover Cleveland was a great fisherman. Once, after he was famous and
President, some one asked him what he did, all those hours he spent,
waiting so patiently for the fish to bite.
“Oh,” he is reported to have answered, “sometimes I sit and think, and
other times I just sit.”
That’s the way most of us watch motion pictures—with the accent on the
sit.
We don’t use our brains enough, where the movies are concerned,
either in the selection of pictures to go to see, or in analyzing—and
appreciating or criticizing—what we see.
How often do you watch motion pictures?
Do you know anything about how they’re made? And who makes the best
ones? And how they do it? And why they are better? And how you can
tell them? And what it means in your life to see good ones—or bad ones?
More than twenty years ago, at a Yale-Harvard football game in New
Haven, Harvard got the ball somewhere near midfield, in the second
half, and hammered away towards the Yale goal. It was a cold, rainy
day, with gray skies overhead and mud underfoot. Harvard weighed more,
and was better trained, and had better men. From the very first they
had the better of it; early in the game they plowed through to two
touchdowns, while lumps came into the throats of the draggled Yale
thousands, looking helplessly down from the great packed bleachers.
Then came that march down the field in the second half, with the rain
falling again, and the players caked with mud until you couldn’t tell
Red from Blue, and the last hopes of the Yale rooters sinking lower and
lower.
But as Harvard pounded and plowed and splashed past midfield—half
a yard, three yards, two yards, half a yard again—(five yards to
a first down in those heartbreaking days) the cheering for that
beaten, broken, plucky, fighting eleven swelled into a solid roar of
encouragement and sympathy. It rose past the cheer leaders—ignored
them; old grads and undergrads, and boys who wouldn’t reach Yale for
years to come. Yale—Yale—Yale—over and over again, and then the famous
Brek-ek-ek-ek! Co-ex! Co-ex!—rolling back again into the Nine Long
Yales. All the way from midfield they kept it up, without a break or
waver—there in the rain and the face of defeat—all the way down to the
goal—and across it. Loyalty!
Another game. Yale-Princeton this time, with Yale ahead, all the way.
And at the very end of the game, with the score twenty or more to
nothing against them, those Princeton men gritted their teeth and dug
in, holding Yale for downs with just half a yard to go! And on the
stands the Princeton cohorts, standing up with their hats off, singing
that wonderful chant of defeat:
“Her sons—will give—
While they—shall—live—
Three cheers—for old—Nassau!”
Great!
But what of it? And what has it to do with motion pictures?
Just this. Each person, of all the thousands watching those games, was
impressed.
Could not help but be. Few will ever forget all of what they saw, or
all of what they felt. Something of the loyalty of the Yale stands, the
fighting spirit of that dauntless Princeton eleven, became a part of
each spectator.
Do you _get_ it?
It’s the things that we see, the things that we hear, the things that
we read, the things that we feel and do, that taken together make us,
in large measure, what we are. Yes, the movies among the rest.
Every time we go to a loosely played baseball game, and see perhaps
some center-fielder, standing flat-footed because he thinks he’s been
cheated of a better position, muff an unimportant fly—we’re that much
worse off. We don’t realize it, and of course taken all alone one
impression doesn’t necessarily mean much of anything, but when it comes
to our turn at the middle garden, it’ll be just that much simpler
to slack down—and take things easy. And every time we see c. f. on a
snappy nine, playing right on his toes, turn and race after a liner
that looks like a home run, and lunge into the air for it as it streaks
over his shoulder, and stab it with one hand and the luck that seems to
stick around waiting for a good try, and hold it, and perhaps save the
game with a sensational catch—why, we’re that much better ball-players
ourselves, for the rest of our lives.
It’s a fact. An amazing, appalling, commonplace fact. But still a fact,
and so one of the things you can’t get away from. The things we hear,
the things we do, the things we see, make us what we are.
Take stories. The fellow who reads a raft of wishy-washy stories, until
he gets so that he doesn’t care about any other kind particularly,
becomes a wishy-washy sort of chap himself. On the other hand, too much
of the “dime-novel” stuff is just as bad, with its distorted ideas and
ideals. Twenty-five years ago, the Frank Merriwell stories, a nickel a
week, were all the thing, and sometimes it seemed to many a boy unfair
foolishness that Father and Mother were so against reading them. But
Father and Mother knew best, as those same boys will admit to-day. Too
much of that sort of thing is as bad for a fellow as a diet of all meat
and no vegetables. Wishy-washy, sentimental books can be compared to
meals that are all custard and blanc mange.
To watch first-class motion pictures (when you can find them) is like
reading worth-while stories. They tell us, show us, as often as not,
places that are interesting, and different from the parts of the world
we live in. They bring all people, and all times, before us on the
screen. But the poor pictures that we see twist out of shape our ideas
of people and life; they show things that are not and could not be
true, they gloss over defects of character that a fellow should—that a
regular fellow will—face squarely. A clothing-store-dummy “hero” does
things that no decent scout would do—and we’re just as much hurt by
watching him on the screen as we would be by watching that flat-footed
center fielder on the losing baseball team.
[Illustration: _Courtesy W. W. Hodkinson Corporation._
MAKING USE OF A “REAL” INCIDENT.
In this scene, taken at the edge of the Mississippi, the young hero
has just missed the old ferry, from which the pictures are being
taken. He was unfamiliar with the machine he was driving, and nearly
went to the bottom of the river. The scenario was changed to make use
of this mishap.]
[Illustration: _Courtesy W. W. Hodkinson Corporation._
THE SCENE THE AUDIENCES SAW.
In the preceding illustration the cameras that took this picture are
shown. But on the screen only what was included inside the “camera
angle,” as shown here, appears.]
Why are the Bill Hart pictures about the best of the so-called
“Westerns” of the last seven or eight years? Isn’t it because on
the whole Bill Hart has played the sort of chap that is most worth
while—with courage, kindness, and loyalty, and ability to control his
temper and do the right thing?
Only, did you ever stop to wonder how it happened that so often Bill
Hart’s “hero” was a bandit or train-robber or outlaw? If the fellow
Hart played had really been as good as he made out, would he have been
robbing or killing so many times? At least, it’s worth thinking about.
And in one of Hart’s Westerns the hero had to ride a horse over a
twenty-foot bank—almost a cliff—to get away from his pursuers. It made
you wonder how they could “pull a stunt” like that without too much
risk. It looked as though both horse and rider were hurt.—As a matter
of fact, the horse actually broke a leg, and had to be shot. Nobody
seemed to think there was anything out of the way about that—merely
killing one horse to get a good picture. But how does it strike you?
Of course, that horse incident is an unusual one, but there are
hundreds of interesting problems that come up in the making of motion
pictures nowadays. Pictures are one of the things that week by week are
making us the fellows we are—oughtn’t we to know something about them?
In one year, according to the government tax paid on box-office
admissions, nearly $800,000,000 worth of photoplay tickets were bought.
That means more than $2,000,000 a day paid to see motion pictures. If
the admissions averaged about twenty cents apiece, that means some
10,000,000 people a day watching the movies—getting their amusement
and instruction, good or bad, and their impressions, good or bad, that
go to determine what sort of people they will be, and what sort of a
nation, twenty years from now, the United States will be.
What about it? Isn’t it a pretty important thing for us to know
something about the best movies, and the worst, and why they are the
best, or the worst? And how they might be better?—So that we can
encourage the right films, and censure the ones that ought to be
censured, and do it intelligently, playing our part in improving one of
the biggest influences that this country or any other has ever seen?
For surely we all know that if we can avoid the photoplays that aren’t
worth while, they will be just that much less profitable for the men
who make them, and the pictures that we do see, that are worth while
(if we can tell which ones they are, and recommend them to our friends
after we’ve seen them), will have just that much more chance to live
and show a profit and drive out the poorer specimens and get more worth
while pictures made.
One of Marshall Neilan’s pictures was called “Dinty.” It told the story
of a little newsboy in San Francisco. It contained a lot of cleverness
and a lot of laughs; for instance, Dinty had a string tied to his
alarm clock, that wound around the alarm as it went off, and tipped a
flatiron off the stove, and the weight of the flatiron yanked a rope
that pulled the covers off Dinty.—Then, on the other hand, there was a
lot of stuff in it that was not so good.
Now, when you saw that picture, if you did, could you tell what was
good and what was not so good, and why the poorer part was poor? If
you could tell that, you’re in a position to profit most from such
pictures as you see, and get the least possible harm. Also, you can
help the whole game along by intelligent comment and criticism, and
enthusiasm for the right thing.
Of course, you can get some fun out of watching a picture as a
two-year-old watches a spinning top, but you can get a lot more if you
use your brains. Try it.