With the movie makersStearns, Myron M. (Myron Morris)
General
With the movie makers
Stearns, Myron M. (Myron Morris)
Motion pictures -- Juvenile literature
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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