INSIDE THE STUDIOS
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.
Administration and executive offices, big “light” and “daylight”
stages, property rooms, costume department, garage, restaurant,
power plant, carpenter shop, laboratory, great menagerie even, are
all grouped along the base of rolling California hills that furnish
countless easy “locations” for stories of the Kansas prairies or
Western ranchos, or even the hills of old New England.
In the heart of New York City, close beside the roaring trains of
the Second Avenue “L” and within hooting distance of the tug-boats on
the Harlem River, stands the old Harlem Casino—for years a well-known
East-side dance-hall. In this building, now converted into a compact
motion picture studio, the first big Cosmopolitan productions came into
existence—“Humoresque,” “The Inside of the Cup,” and all the rest.
Both the great “lot” at Universal City, under the blazing California
sun, and the old Harlem Casino, with dirty February snow piled outside
under the tracks of the elevated,—each absolutely different from the
other—are typical motion-picture studios.
In each you can find the same blazing white or greenish-blue lights,
with their tangled cables like snakes underfoot, the same kind of
complicated “sets” on various stages, the same nonchalant camera men
chewing gum and cranking unconcernedly away while the director implores
the leading lady with tears in his voice—and perhaps even a megaphone
at his mouth—to: “Now see him! On the floor at your feet! Stare at him!
Now down—kneel down! Now touch him! Touch him again, as if you were
afraid of him! Now quicker—feel of him! Feel of him! He’s DEAD!”
Suppose we step inside the door of a typical motion-picture studio.
We find ourselves in a little ante-room, separated by a railing from
larger offices beyond. The place seems like a sort of cross between an
employment office and the outer office of some big business enterprise.
At one point there is a little barred cashier’s window like that at
a bank. There is usually an attendant at a desk or window marked
“Information,” with one or two office boys, like “bell-hops” in a
hotel, to run errands.
Coming and going, or waiting on benches along the walls, are a varied
assortment of people: a young woman with a good deal of rouge on her
cheeks and a wonderful coiffure of blonde hair, an old man with a
wrinkled face and long whiskers, a couple of energetic-looking young
advertising men, and a chap with big hoot-owl spectacles and a flowing
tie who wants to get a position as scenario writer. In the most
comfortable chair a fat man, with eyeglasses astride a thick curved
nose, is waiting to see the general manager, and fretting at being
detained so long.
A very pretty girl comes into the office with a big collie dog on a
leash, as a motor purrs away from the door outside. One of the boys
like bell-hops jumps to open the inner door for her, and she sails on
through without even a glance around. She is one of the minor stars,
with a salary of about six hundred dollars a week. The collie is an
actor, too: he is on the pay-roll at $75 a week—and worth every dollar
of it to the pictures.
At one side is the office of the “casting director,” who passes on the
various “types,” hires the “extras,” and decides whether or not this
or that actor or actress is a real “trouper” who can fill the bill.
Into this office the army of “extra people” who make a precarious
living picking up a day’s work here and there around the studios as
“atmosphere” gradually find their way; here the innumerable applicants
for screen honors come to be looked over, and given a try, or turned
away with a shake of the head, and perhaps a single comment such
as “eyes won’t photograph well—too blue”; here the many experienced
actors, temporarily out of work, come to be greeted by: “Hello, Harry!
You’re just the bird I wanted to see! Got a great little part for you
in an English story; older brother—sort of half-heavy”; or: “Sorry,
Mame—not a thing to-day. Try us next week. We’ll probably begin casting
for ‘Wheels of Fate’ about Friday.”
[Illustration: _Courtesy Goldwyn Pictures Corporation._
APPLYING THE MYSTERIES OF “MAKE-UP.”
A veteran actor building a beard, bit by bit, with a surgeon’s
artery-holding apparatus, an orange-stick, spirit gum, wool-carder,
and a fine comb.]
[Illustration: _Courtesy W. W. Hodkinson Corporation._
A TYPICAL MOVIE “INTERIOR.”
Notice the carbon arc lights at sides of the picture, used to
illumine the set. The glaring oblong faces of the lights can be
noticed in the center lights on the right. From the glare of these
lights actors often get an intensely painful affliction called
“klieg-eyes.”]
[Illustration: _Courtesy Universal Pictures Corporation._
STAGING A MOVIE PRIZE-FIGHT.
Notice how each actor in the foreground has to play his part, no
matter how unimportant. To make the scene realistic, each “extra”
must appear as interested as any spectator at a real prize-fight.]
But let us pass on beyond the outer offices, and see where the girl
with the collie went.
Through a hallway we come suddenly into a vast, dark, cavernous
interior, high and wide and shadowy. From somewhere off at our left
comes a sound of hammering, where a new “set” is being erected. Off at
the right is more hammering and pounding with the squeaking of nails
being drawn as another set, in which the “shooting” has been finished,
is being “struck,” or taken down. From a far corner of the great cavern
there is a radiance of bluish-green light, where one of the companies
is “working.”
Curiously enough, this huge dark place is called the “light” stage. It
gets its name from the fact that scenes can be photographed on it only
with artificial light.
All about is a labyrinth of still standing sets—here a corner of a
business office, and just beyond the interior of a drawing room in a
rich home, with a beautiful curved stairway mounting ten feet or so
into nothing at the right. Next comes the corner of a large restaurant.
Under the guidance of an assistant director, in the glare of a single
bluish-green Cooper-Hewitt “bank” turned on as a work light, property
men are “dressing” it. They are putting yellow table-cloths on the
tables (in the finished picture they will look white; in reality they
are yellow instead of white in order not to be too glaring, before
the picture can be exposed long enough to bring out the contours and
details that are more important in the darker places); and hanging a
row of horse-race pictures along the wall.
This is a big studio, supposed to be making a dozen or more pictures
at once. We are surprised that on this whole great dark “light” stage
only one company is working; we learn that two others are “shooting”
elsewhere on the lot; one in back of the carpenter shop, where a
clever director has found an ideal “location” for his purpose right
under his nose, and another on one of the big “daylight” stages that we
shall see presently. Several other companies are out on location miles
from the studio—one perhaps in another State on a trip that will last a
couple of weeks. Still others are not at the “shooting” stage of their
picture at all; one or two are still “casting,” one that follows the
methods used by Griffith is “in rehearsal,” and still others are merely
waiting while scenario writer and director work out the final details
of the scenario or “continuity,” or while the director “sits in” with
the cutter or “screen editor” and title writer to put the finishing
touches on the completed product.
We go over to the corner where the one company on the big stage is
“shooting.” A dozen people are sitting around on chairs or stools, just
outside the lights. About in the middle of them, with a whole phalanx
of lights at right and left, two cameras are set up. Beside them, in a
comfortable folding camp-chair with a back rest, sits the director. He
is wearing what a humorous writer has called the “director’s national
costume” of soft shirt, knickerbockers, and puttees. On the floor
beside his chair is a megaphone.
If you hold your hands together with the palms flat, making a narrow
angle about a third of a right angle, you can get an idea of what a
camera “sees.” This angle is called the “camera angle.” Only what
happens within that narrow angle will be recorded on the film.
Sometimes white chalk-lines are drawn on the floor to mark the camera
angle; what is within the lines will be photographed, while what is
outside will not show.
Along the sides of this open space that the camera will photograph
are ranged the bright white carbon lights and the bluish-green vacuum
lights that illumine the scene. Overhead, suspended by heavy chains
from tracks that traverse the ceiling of the great stage, are more
lights; white carbon “dome” lights, and additional bluish-green
Cooper-Hewitt “overhead banks.”
[Illustration: _Courtesy Brown Bros._
HOW A MOTION PICTURE INTERIOR IS MADE.
A mass of complicated paraphernalia is necessary to light and equip a
motion-picture stage. The tall lights with the lines across them are
the “Cooper-Hewitts,” or vacuum lights, called “banks.” The smaller
square lights are the white arc-lights or “Kliegs.” The snake-like
cables on the floor carry the electricity.]
[Illustration: _Courtesy W. W. Hodkinson Corporation._
ENGINE TROUBLE ON A DAKOTA PRAIRIE.
To get the scenes shown in this story of a transcontinental tour the
motion-picture company travelled almost across the continent.]
[Illustration: _Courtesy Goldwyn Pictures Corporation._
WHEN THE HERO IS THE CAPTAIN OF A STEAM SHOVEL.
Note how the reflectors, seen at the bottom of the picture, are
tilted down to throw the light up into the face of the engineer,
while the camera is raised to the right place on a platform.]
Thin bluish smoke, like vapor, curls outward and upward from most of
the white carbon lights. They give off a good deal of heat. A couple
of spot-lights like those used in theaters are situated on scaffolding
higher than a man’s head, behind the cameras to left and to right, with
an attendant in charge of each.
In the bright glare the faces of all who are not “made up” with grease
paint and powder look greenish yellow. All color values are distorted.
Tan-colored shoes look green.
A scene has just been taken. The assistant director turns to an
electrician. “Kill ’em!” he says. The electrician goes to the different
lights, pulling switches to “cut ’em off.” In a moment only one of the
bluish-green “double banks” is left to serve as a working light. This
is to save electricity, of which the array of lights takes an enormous
amount.
The scene that has been taken is, we will say, of an old-fashioned New
England sitting room. In the center is a marble-topped table. In a
far corner is a “what-not,” with marble shelves. There is a bookcase
against one of the walls, and old prints and lithographs are hung here
and there. In one place is a needlework “sampler,” with a design and
motto.
The director is talking with the two actresses who were in the scene.
They are in costumes of the Civil War period, with flounces and
hoopskirts. They are supposed to be sisters.
Suddenly the director decides to take the scene over again. He has
thought of a bit of more effective action that will get the point he
is trying to make in the story over more effectively. “We’ll shoot it
again,” he says. “Let’s run through it once more first.”
The two actresses, already thoroughly familiar with the scene, rehearse
it again, adding the new bit of detail as the director instructs them.
He is not quite satisfied, and takes one of the parts himself, showing
the actress how he wants her to put her hand up to her face. Finally
she does it to suit him, and he is satisfied. “All right,” he says,
“we’ll shoot it.—Lights!”
The lights are switched on once more, and in the bright, sputtering
glare the sisters walk into the scene. Just before they cross the line
into the camera angle both camera men start grinding.
After about fifteen seconds of action the director nods, well pleased.
“Cut!” he says shortly, and both camera men stop.
Half an hour’s preparation and rehearsal for fifteen seconds of action!
Again the lights are switched off. The man in charge of the script,
sitting on a stool with a sheet of paper snapped on a board on his lap,
puts down the number of the scene and adds details of costume—what each
sister is wearing, the flowers that one is carrying in her hand, and so
on—to have a complete record in case of “retake,” or other scenes that
match with this before or after.
“Now we’ll move up on ’em,” says the director. The cameras are moved
closer, and the action of the preceding scenes is repeated. This time
the cameras are so close that the faces of the actresses will appear
large on the screen, with every detail of expression showing. Before
the close-ups are begun, the lights are moved up, too, and one of the
spot lights switched around more to one side to give an attractive
“back lighting” effect on the hair of the sisters, that appears almost
like a halo, later, when it is seen on the screen.
Before each scene is taken an assistant holds a slate with the
director’s name, the head camera man’s name, and the number of the
scene, written on it, in front of the cameras, and the camera men grind
a few turns. In this way, the “take” is made.
When the different “takes” are finally matched together in the finished
picture these numbers will be cut off, but they are necessary to
facilitate the work of identifying the hundreds or even thousands of
different shots of which the final picture is composed.
Leaving the great dark “light stage” we pass on into the lot beyond.
In front of us is another great stage, but this time open to the sky.
Instead of artificial lights, there are great white cloth “reflectors,”
to deflect the sunlight on to the scene and intensify the light where
under the sun’s direct rays alone there would be shadows.
Sets, actors, camera men and action are all as they were on the other
stage, except that instead of a profusion of sets we find here only
one or two, as not nearly so many scenes are taken here as on the other
stage.
Formerly nearly all scenes were taken in sunlight, and studios were
built that had no provision for lighting except the sun. But while the
film industry was still in its infancy the development of artificial
lighting made possible results that could not be secured with sunlight
alone, and since that time artificial lighting is used on most
motion-picture scenes that represent “interiors.”
About us on the “lot” are other stages, covered with glass, that
lets in the sunlight but keeps out the rain, so that work may go
on uninterruptedly. On most of these a combination of natural and
artificial light is used—electric lights as in the “light stage,”
supplemented by daylight.
We pass on to the property houses—great buildings like warehouses
ranged one behind the other. In one place we find a room where modeling
is going on; skilled artists are making statues that will be used in
a picture depicting the life of a sculptor. In another place special
furniture is being made. One great warehouse-like building is devoted
to “flats” and “drops,” of which the differing sets can in part, at
least, be built. Then there are the costume rooms, and the “junk”
rooms, with knick-knacks of all descriptions.
You’d be amazed to know how many properties are needed in the making of
even the simplest motion pictures. Take, for instance, the set that we
have already described—an old New England sitting-room. The furniture,
the marble-topped table and the what-not with its marble shelves and
the chairs and possibly a hair-cloth sofa, were of course obvious. The
old prints and lithographs and even the sampler, hardly less so; but in
addition to these, think of the ornaments that would have to appear on
the what-not shelves and the kind of lamp that would be on the table
and what books there would have to be in the bookcase. Without these
details, the room would not look natural.
Take a look around the room where you are reading this page. Notice
how many little things there are that you would never think of
arranging, if you were to have carpenters and property men reconstruct
it for you as a set for a picture. Newspapers—all the hundred and one
little things, left here and there, that go to make a home what it
is—even to the scratches on the walls, or the corner knocked off one
arm of a chair.
[Illustration: _Courtesy United Artists Corporation._
DOUGLAS FAIRBANKS AS D’ARTAGNAN IN “THE THREE MUSKETEERS.”
Here are presented all three basic characteristics of a good
story—fascinating characters engaged in stirring action, at an
interesting time and place. Note the careful details of costuming,
and decorations of the old furniture.]
[Illustration: _Courtesy United Artists Corporation._
ANOTHER SCENE FROM “THE THREE MUSKETEERS.”
See how even the flagstones of this narrow alley of Old France have
been reproduced with faithful care.]
The property man of a famous director once told me: “I’ve got the
greatest collection of junk in the whole business. Just odds and ends.
No one thing in the whole outfit worth anything in itself, but the King
(he was referring to the director) would be crazy if he sold it for
ten thousand dollars—yes, or twenty-five thousand, either. I tell you,
sometimes junk is the most important thing in a picture.”
After a set has been built, it is usually “dressed” by hiring first the
furniture from one of the concerns that have grown up for just this
purpose—renting furniture, old or new, to motion-picture companies
that want to use it for a few weeks. If, in addition to what has been
rented, the producing company is able to supply bits of “junk” from
its own property room and make the set look more natural, so much the
better.
The story is told of one enterprising concern in Los Angeles that
started in collecting beer-bottles just after prohibition went into
effect. Since the bottles were no longer returnable, they were able to
buy them here and there for almost nothing, until they had on hand a
tremendous supply. The word went around that such and such a concern
was in the market for bottles, and every boy in Los Angeles gathered
up what he could find and took them around while the market was still
good. People thought they were crazy, and had a good laugh at the movie
industry that didn’t know any more than to buy up hundreds and hundreds
of old beer-bottles that nobody would ever be able to use again.
Then one of the producing companies wanted a batch of bottles for
some bar-room scene and found that they didn’t happen to have any
on the lot. They went to the big property concern that they usually
traded with, only to find that they, too, didn’t happen to have any
beer-bottles. So they went to the concern that had been buying them
all up at junk prices.
Certainly they could have some bottles—all they wanted! They would be
thirty cents a week each, and a dollar apiece for any that were broken
or not returned. Take it or leave it!
The corner on old beer-bottles had suddenly become profitable.
The producing company tried to get bottles elsewhere and beat the
monopoly—but time was pressing. When the overhead of a single company
is running at hundreds of dollars a day, a property man will not be
forgiven if he holds up the whole production while he scours the city
to save money on beer-bottles. The price was paid.
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.
In the laboratory we visit first the developing-room, feeling our
way cautiously into the dark around many corners that cut off every
possible ray of light from outside. Walking on wet slats we reach
at last the chamber in the middle of what seems to be an almost
impenetrable labyrinth, and in the dim red light can barely make out
the vats where the strips of celluloid, wound back and forth on wooden
hand-racks, are being dipped into the developer.
Nowadays many of the laboratories are equipped with complicated
developing machines, that combine all the processes of developing,
washing, “fixing,” and drying in one. Where prints, made from the
original negative, are being developed, tinting is added. The
undeveloped film, tightly wound in small rolls, is threaded through one
end of the developing machine in the dark-room; it travels over little
cog-wheels that mesh into the holes at the edges of the film, and goes
down into a long upright tube filled with developer. Coming back out
of this, still on the cogs, it travels next down into a tube of clear
water for washing. Then down into another tube containing “hypo,” and
up again for another tube and second washing. Then, still winding along
on the little cogs it travels through a partition and out into a light
room, where it passes through an airshaft for drying, across an open
space for inspection, and is finally wound into as tight a roll as it
started from in its undeveloped state.
In the printing-room, still in the dim red light, we see half a dozen
printing-machines at work, with raw film and negative feeding together
past the aperture where the single flash of white light makes the
exposure that leaves the negative image upon the print.
Next, in daylight once more, we see the great revolving racks of the
drying-room used for film developed by the hand process—with hundreds
of feet of the celluloid ribbon wrapped around and around great wooden
drums.
In the assembling-room we find girls at work winding up strips of film
and cementing or patching the ends of the film together to make a
continuous reel.
Another room is more interesting still. This room is dark once more,
with a row of high-speed projection machines along one side and a
blank wall on the other. Here the finished film, colored and patched,
receives its final inspection. Against the white wall four or five
pictures are flickering simultaneously. Since the projection machines
are only a few feet away from the white surface that acts as a screen,
each picture measures only two or three feet long and two-thirds as
much in height. In one picture we may see a jungle scene; alongside
it a reel of titles is being flashed through, one after another; next
to this again is the “rush stuff” for a news reel with the president
shaking hands so fast it looks as if he had St. Vitus dance; next comes
a beautifully colored scenic, and at the end of the row the dramatic
climax of a “society film,” rushing along at nearly double its normal
theater speed.
Leaving the laboratory, we pass down a street, bordered on one side
by a row of little boxlike offices that are used by the directors of
the different companies; opposite, in a similar row of offices, the
scenario writers are housed. The end of the street brings us back once
more to the building that houses the administrative offices through
which we came when we entered.
If we had time we could visit the menagerie that lies at the rear of
the studio proper, and that makes even the line-up of a circus tent
look tame. Or, we could spend a day watching the company shooting
the storm scene at the back edge of the lot, where the customary old
airplane propeller has been mounted on a solid block with a motor
attached and backed up alongside the scenes to furnish a gale of wind.
But we have already seen enough for an introduction.
To make a six-reel picture takes from three or four weeks to twice as
many months and costs all the way from ten or fifteen thousand dollars
to half a million, and sometimes even a million. You can imagine the
investment required where a producing organization is running ten or a
dozen companies at once, each turning out pictures at top speed.
Only the other day one of the Hollywood studios changed hands at the
sale price of three-quarters of a million dollars. Some are worth twice
that amount.
But it is not the size of the investment that counts. It is the quality
of the finished product. That is the thing we want to look farther
into.
[Illustration: _Courtesy Goldwyn Pictures Corporation._
FILMING AN OLD ENGINEER ON A FAST-MOVING LOCOMOTIVE.
Notice how close director and assistant director are to the line of
the “camera angle.” The director using a small megaphone to overcome
the noise of the train and the rushing air.]
[Illustration: _Courtesy Goldwyn Pictures Corporation._
ANOTHER RAILROAD SCENE.
The umbrella put up to shade the company gives an idea of the length
of time often necessary to take even the simplest scenes. Hours,
possibly, were spent at this one spot.]