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The Movies

LONG before Hollywood stirred from its pastoral quiet, the slopes of Edendale, a few miles to the east, were loud with the antics of actors who doubled as roustabouts or carpenters and did their own laundry. On the lots facing that part of Alessandro Street later renamed Glendale Boulevard people from the garment trade spouted through megaphones and “made up” stories as they went along, goading themselves and their players to commit artistic felonies. Picture making went on in whirlwind haste, and without formality—cowboys chased Indians, cops chased robbers, and robbers chased misfit cops. Here, between November, 1909, and July, 1910, Director Charles K. French ground out 185 films for the Bison Company, a firm that took its trademark, a rampant buffalo, from the design on the back of a ten dollar bill. (“If it’s good enough for Uncle Sam,” they said, “it’s good enough for us!”) G. M. Anderson (Max Aronson billed as “Broncho Billy”) blazed his way from one finished film to another with such dispatch that his six-guns never had time to cool. The first actor-author-producer, and the first of the hard-riding western heroes who feared and detested horses, Anderson produced a picture a week for 376 successive weeks, an all-time record.

Edendale lots were dotted with flimsy prop saloons and ranch house interiors, hapazard structures that frequently toppled over while the camera was grinding. When a cave-in occurred, the players scurried from under, or if they were rugged braced themselves and stood firm beneath the falling walls, never ceasing their exaggerated pantomime. The director, eager for action, often included the accidental collapse as part of the plot. It was in Edendale that the Keystone cops came to fame, as did Mabel Normand, Ford Sterling, Fred Mace, and Fatty Arbuckle; and here Mack Sennett, their director-boss, introduced to the movies the bathing beauty and the custard pie smash.

California had been claimed for the movies in the autumn of 1908 when Francis Boggs, star of the stage melodrama, Why Girls Leave Home, came to Los Angeles to direct the final scenes of a single-reeler, The Count of Monte Cristo, begun in Chicago by William N. Selig, one of the earliest commercial movie makers. Boggs and his cameraman, Thomas Persons, finished the film at Laguna Beach with a cast totally different from the one that appeared in the opening scenes. Months later they built the first motion-picture studio in Los Angeles, a lean-to of frail boards and canvas sets on a lot behind a Chinese laundry on Olive Street near Seventh.

Meanwhile in the East the movies were engaged in a hurly-burly of suits and injunctions, raids and riots. Since 1897 Thomas Alva Edison had been suing the independent producers for patent infringement. As the “flickers” supplanted shooting galleries and penny arcades in popularity, the producers licensed by Edison entered into an alliance to safeguard their claims to film profits. In 1909 they formed the Motion Picture Patents Company, soon widely known as the “movie trust.” It included all of the country’s more stable movie makers, and a few of the pirates who managed to turn “legitimate”: Edison’s Vitagraph, Lubin, Selig, Essanay, Kalem, Pathé and Méliés. Biograph, bluffing its way, refused to affiliate until later when it was able to dictate its own terms.

The trust’s monopoly was threatened, however, by a group of small producers and exhibitors who, having been excluded from the pact, began to construct or import bootleg equipment to film their pictures in obscure hide-outs. Against these independents the trust waged one of the most vigorous battles in the history of American industrialism. The pirates fled from cellar to garret, to roof; from New York to Florida, to Cuba, and finally to California, where the scenery of any part of the world could be easily simulated, and where the climate permitted outdoor picture making in all seasons.

Trust companies, attracted by the same climate and topography, speedily followed the independents to southern California. They opened studios, pirates and trust alike, in Edendale, and to a lesser extent in Los Angeles, Santa Monica, Culver City, and Glendale. Not until Edendale became overcrowded did producers begin to move westward through the low rolling hills to Hollywood, where David Horsley’s Nestor Film Company had paused in 1911 to make Hollywood’s first motion picture in a studio at Sunset Boulevard and Gower Street.

The trust, as it settled in California, formed a new battlefront in its war with the independents, but this time the pirates stood their ground and fought back. And as the independents began to get a firmer foothold, the movies started on their slow and painful struggle to grow up. Maurice Costello, one of the screen’s first idols, started the actors on the way to a new independence by declaring that he would no longer help carpenters hammer new sets together; presently Mack Sennett had reached such heights that he felt justified in asking his employers for an office bathtub eight feet long, six feet wide, and drawing five feet of water. More and more movie producers were inclined to remove their hats at the dinner table; Biograph began calling its film processing factory a laboratory; Essanay paid $25 in a contest for the term “photoplay” to replace the term “movies,” which nevertheless remained the people’s choice.

The Selig lot was walled to shield the players from lookers-on who were accustomed to shouting comments and criticisms. Fred Karno’s English pantomime company came to town, and left without its head-liner, Charlie Chaplin. Famous Players began production in 1912, bringing together Cecil B. De Mille, Jesse Lasky, and Samuel Goldwyn, and a year later Hal Roach made his first film.

In spite of the industry’s sudden flair for all things grandiloquent, a new creative craftsmanship began to evolve through the resourcefulness and superior showmanship of the outlaw producers. Carl Laemmle, a onetime clothing dealer, founded the Independent Motion Picture Company—known as the “Imp”—and here the “star” system was introduced. Laemmle invaded the Biograph lot and for $125 a week hired Gladys Smith, “the little girl with the curls,” whom he elevated to stardom under the name of Mary Pickford in Their First Misunderstanding, directed by Thomas H. Ince, with Owen Moore as leading man. Having lured the trust’s greatest potential money maker, Laemmle taunted the licensed producers with a series of blatant advertisements: “Little Mary Is Now An Imp!”

Another of the pirates’ innovations was the introduction of the “feature” picture—a film of more than one or two reels. The first of these, Queen Elizabeth, made in France by Louis Mercanton with Sarah Bernhardt and Lou Tellegen, had been imported in 1911 by a onetime furrier, Adolph Zukor, who spurred American producers to the development of picture drama in the grand manner. Within a few years came other films that are remembered today with respect: David Wark Griffith’s Intolerance, which introduced parallel, or “cut-back,” story telling, and Broken Blossoms, with Richard Barthelmess; Tillie’s Punctured Romance, directed by Mack Sennett, with Marie Dressier and Charlie Chaplin; Lubitsch’s Carmen, starring Pola Negri; The Squawman, and Chaplin’s A Dog’s Life. In America’s first super-feature, The Birth of a Nation, Griffith revolutionized screen technique, creating a picture which critics viewed in terms of art. Based on a story by the Reverend Thomas Dixon called The Clansman, the picture opened at Clune’s Auditorium in Los Angeles, February 8, 1915, and a month later, with greater assurance (and at two dollars a seat), it had its first showing in New York, where it rolled up an astounding box-office record.

Throughout this period, the trust companies languished, dwindling into oblivion because of their persistent mass production of outmoded short films. The pirates, once hounded across the continent, now set the pace in a new direction and began to dominate the industry—though, even as late as 1925, the movie trust maintained a New York office where their agents dictated blistering letters in a vain effort to collect the license fees that had been carried on the books for more than two decades.

As the twentieth century grew into its ’teens, the film-going public began to demand not only feature productions, but stars, stars, stars. Up in marquee lights went such names as John Bunny and Flora Finch, Lottie Brisco, Grace Cunard, Helen Holmes, Arthur Johnson, Marguerite Clark, Blanche Sweet, Tom Mix, Anita Stewart, Earle Williams, William S. Hart, Charles Ray, Norma and Constance Talmadge, Wallace Reid, Ben Lyon and Bebe Daniels, and the Gish sisters. Angelenos, who had loitered in the old days around the Biograph lot, remember the Gishes: how Dorothy wore a pink ribbon and Lillian wore blue, so that Griffith, their director, could tell them apart.

Casting was carried on in the bar of the Alexandria Hotel, downtown, at Fifth and Spring Streets. Five o’clock was the recognized hour for cocktails, baked ham in hot rolls, and the allocation of parts in new productions. Every unemployed actor in town made for the Alexandria and tried to catch a director’s eye with a bit of business—they talked and lived pictures, and the world beyond did not exist for the men and women of shadowland.

The years from 1912 to 1920 brought few radical changes in mechanical methods of movie making—though cameramen perfected the dissolve, the fade, the double exposure, and the close-up—but the World War, ending the competition of European film companies, left the huge and growing world market to American producers. Lewis J. Selznick, brimming with good will inspired by new business, could condescend to pleasantries with Nicholas, the recently deposed Little Father of all the Russias. In the fabulous tradition, Selznick in 1917 dispatched a cablegram to the former Czar: “When I was poor boy in Kiev some of your policemen were not kind to me and my people. I came to America and prospered. Now hear with regret you are out of a job there. Feel no ill will what your policemen did, so if you will come New York can give you fine position acting in pictures. Salary no object. Reply my expense. Regards you and family.”

Never again could an actress like Mrs. Patrick Campbell, favorite of British Shavian audiences, cross the sea and a continent to go slumming in Hollywood: to hoist an eyebrow, as she did when meeting Harold Lloyd, with the query: “And you, my good man, tell me, are you employed on the films?” Hollywood actors, knee-deep in butlers, had ideas of their own. Just as their forebears had broken away from the studio carpenters, so did Chaplin, Pickford, Fairbanks, and Griffith break with the producers. In 1919 they organized United Artists, assuming complete control of the process of making their own pictures, and prompting Richard Rowland, head of rival Metro films, to lament that the “lunatics have taken charge of the asylum!”

During these years the movies expanded in still another direction: the ownership of theatres. Chains were organized and battles fought for the control of first-run houses. In an effort to eliminate competition, producers bought hundreds of legitimate theatres and either dismantled them or remodeled them for exhibition of their own films.

The general extravagance required money. Money required bankers. Bankers demanded a voice in the industry’s affairs. And so it happened that such onetime independents as Adolph Zukor, Carl Laemmle, William Fox, and Samuel Goldwyn found themselves taking orders from Wall Street. By 1936 the major film companies—Paramount, Loew’s (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer), Universal, United Artists, Warner Brothers, 20th Century-Fox, Columbia, and R.K.O.—traced their ownership through the Electrical Research Products, Inc., the Western Electric Company, and the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, to the House of Morgan; or, through the Radio Corporation of America and The Chase National Bank, to the Rockefeller interests.

To meet the new order and to better working conditions the cinema workers began extensive organization in trade unions, and the Motion Picture Producers Association fought back. In an industry generally associated with fabulous money and great generosity, wages became unbelievably low. Average annual technicians’ earnings, which in 1929 were $2,463, had dropped by 1935 to $1,767, while in 1937 studio painters, carpenters, and plasterers were averaging $1,500 a year. Members of these crafts worked fewer than 65 per cent of the year’s working days in 1937, and not more than 20 percent had steady employment, while five of the film companies (Loew’s, Columbia, Paramount, 20th Century-Fox, and Warner’s) reported a 25 per cent increase in profits.

Even the “quickie” producers of “Poverty Row” had junked the helter-skelter production in which carpenters doubled as gladiators, leading ladies made their own costumes, and one man might finance, write, direct, cut, and sell a motion picture film. The movies that reach first-run houses today are produced by a streamlined process in which all efforts are highly organized and specialized.

After the successful talkie revolution (it began in 1927 with The Jazz Singer when A1 Jolson strode to the piano and words came to life on his lips: “Say, Ma, listen to this!”), movie producers undertook to experiment with new possibilities in color pictures, though the use of color remains restricted because of the extremely high cost. The Technicolor Corporation holds a virtual monopoly on patents, and controls use of the color process, (by leasing the $15,000 color cameras and selling), developing, and printing color film. Walt Disney, the most outstanding artist in the development of the animated cartoon, contracted with the corporation in 1934 to make his Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphony cartoons in color, beginning work the same year on his first full-length feature production, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

The social and artistic significance of motion pictures has increasingly concerned educators, church groups, women’s clubs, and critics of American life. Though the average weekly attendance of 75 million gives the movies an influence equalled only by newspapers and radio, the artists whose creative efforts go into picture making have long felt hampered by the fact that, as Walter Wanger expressed it, “any minority, any individual, any rag, any nation could dictate to us.” In July, 1938, a distributors’ boycott of Blockade crystallized their discontent. At a meeting of 300 delegates, representing 150,000 members of motion-picture unions, guilds, and other organizations, these artists demanded that “gag rule” be removed from the industry, so that motion pictures might become “a very important pillar in the democratic structure.”

When the producers themselves, back in the early 1920’s, feared a nation-wide boycott because of the cycle of sex and crime films, and the public outcry at the scandals unearthed in stars’ private lives, the industry forestalled the pressure groups by forming the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, Inc. With Will Hays as its head at a salary of $100,000 a year the industry began a climb toward public confidence.

Realists in business and politics, the major producers balked at a realistic treatment of any theme in films. Some producers, believing that audiences sought only to forget their troubles, gave them farces, ranging from the mild to the screwball, with a standard rotation of boy-meets-girl inanities, followed by a cycle of boy-slaps-girl. Another school of producers became aware of a plea, grown more insistent in American life, for realism, and even the most romantic pictures began to achieve greater fidelity to essential truth and significance of theme. Gradually, out of this approach to truth-telling, came such films as I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, Of Human Bondage, Dead End, The Informer, The Life of Emile Zola, Stage Coach, Juarez, and Confessions of a Nazi Spy.

MAKING A MOVIE

“If one goes to the root of the matter,” the playwright and screen writer Sidney Howard said, “motion pictures are neither written nor acted, but made.” A glance around any of the walled towns that are today’s major picture lots bears out Howard’s statement. They are dominated by massive sound stages with unwavering lines and unornamented surfaces characteristic of modern industrial design. In large administration buildings file clerks, stenographers, and all the other clerical employees of a modern factory’s “front office” labor over books and bills. In laboratories scientists experiment with schemes to speed up production, and in other buildings technical experts operate delicate processing machines of baffling intricacy. The major studio lot contains machine and printing shops, a foundry and a metal works. If the picturesque sets and oddly dressed actors are disregarded the studio is a huge manufacturing plant: on a major lot from 1,000 to 3,000 workers representing approximately 275 crafts methodically pursue the business of making motion pictures.

The head of a motion-picture studio is usually called the head producer. But the word producer is a much overworked term. Cecil B. de Mille, Samuel Goldwyn, and Frank Capra are also producers in the highest sense of the word; they have a financial interest in the productions they make and are responsible for their success or failure. Of such bonafide producers as these, Hollywood contains not more than a dozen. In charge of most of the pictures made in Hollywood are so-called associate producers—men of less authority and power who nevertheless are the top supervisors of most Hollywood movie productions.

Though the head producer is the top official in the studio, he is not all powerful. The major studio corporations are controlled by financial interests largely in New York City, and it is to the eastern corporation officials that he must cock an ear for basic instructions. Besides determining how much money will be available in a given year, “New York” takes a hand in apportioning this money among the various proposed productions—and thereby becomes an influence in the shaping of studio policy. In conferences between the production head and the eastern owners, funds are allotted to pictures of four definite types: “A” pictures, based on a current best-selling novel or popular play, the studio’s most ambitious undertakings; “A” productions that are not outstanding but that nevertheless contain the studio’s stars; “B” pictures which use feature players rather than stars, and a sprinkling of minor contract players and “unknowns” ; and short subjects and cartoons, which most of the studios in 1939 had come to consider an important item in their production schedules. The most ambitious “A” pictures are the movies’ biggest gamble. Production costs range from $250,000 to $2,000,000 or $3,000,000, but a profit is never certain. The time taken in making such a picture averages between two and three months. “B” pictures are produced on budgets which seldom exceed $250,000 and usually average between $125,000 and $150,000. With fewer stars to offer the box office, “B” pictures depend on catchy, fresh treatments, and plots paralleling events of public interest. These pictures are block-booked, or pre-sold, sometimes a year in advance of production. The time consumed in production ranges from twelve to twenty days. On “Poverty Row,” a short section of Sunset Boulevard near Gower Street, “quickies” are produced at the rate of two or three a week, but these hastily concocted dishes are strictly for “grind” houses and the more backward country regions.

Responsible to the head producer and working closely with him are a corps of field generals numbering eight or ten in the larger studios, that includes the story editor, the man in charge of writers, the production manager (in charge of the studio’s real properties and all its tangible assets), and a group of individual or associate producers. As a rule, this staff in joint conference fixes production schedules and budgets for specific productions, sets shooting dates, assigns directors insofar as feasible, and, through swaps or new contracts, maintains the studio’s star list at the level it considers advisable. The producer’s job is part art and part business. He is responsible for the success of the pictures with which his name is bracketed, and is usually compensated on a percentage basis. He passes judgment on stories, selects writers, directors, and actors. He must consult with artists on costumes and sets, and with musicians concerning scores. At the same time, he must watch the clock, and keep costs within previously set limits.

The director’s job is, of course, primarily artistic, but he shares with the associate producer the task of co-ordinating talent and temperament, and he must likewise bear in mind the restrictions of time and budget allowance. In most cases, to insure harmony between script and direction, the director works with producer and writers while the script is taking shape. Sometimes, however, a director is not called in until the screen play assumes its final form, in which case in all probability he will want it completely rewritten to fit his ideas. Preparation, shooting, and editing are the three steps in the production of a motion picture, but many studio departments function simultaneously. Some departments are at work only during the preparatory period; others enter and leave, only to re-enter again when their functions are required. Furthermore, there are no set routines in picture making. Every studio has its own production methods and different pictures call for different routines.

Nevertheless, almost all pictures commence with a search for a story. Hunting stories is the continuous business of the story department, and is regarded as difficult. Every story department contains staffs of readers in Hollywood, sometimes numbering as many as a dozen, and in New York. These readers comb books, plays, and magazines for stories with visual interest and plots abundant in situations readily translatable into action. It is the custom now in most story departments to issue a weekly bulletin compiled from synopses of stories read in Hollywood and New York. These bulletins are sent to all associate producers, and when a producer sees a synopsis that appeals to him he puts in a claim for it. If it is okehed by the studio head, it is purchased and he starts to work.

Because of the risk of being involved in plagiarism suits, the studios will not read stories directly submitted by unknown writers, but the synopsized story, or “original,” written specifically for the screen and submitted through recognized agents, is an important source of screen fare today. Such stories are often fewer than twenty pages in length, but written with great attention to possible shots and screen-play construction.

Besides novels, plays, and originals, the producer’s story may come from an idea of his own, based on the need of some special star, a biographical or historical character, or something from the world of science or invention. If such is the case, an outside writer’s fee is usually eliminated: the studio’s own writers are put directly to work hatching the producer’s egg. Prices paid for stories are of course based on the demand for them: agents frequently send copies of an original story to all major studios simultaneously, hoping the bidding will hike up the price. Nevertheless, it is not unusual for a relatively unknown author to be paid as little as $500 for a story which will be used as the vehicle for an “A” picture packed with stars and feature players. Best-selling novels, successful Broadway plays, and originals from the pens of well-known authors bring prices ranging from $1,000 up.

In making synopses and passing judgment on stories, the story department readers consider many questions. Is the story a suitable vehicle for any of this studio’s stars? Will it lend diversification to the studio’s production schedule or broaden its scope? Does it belong to a currently popular cycle, or does it have qualities that might make it a forerunner of a new cycle? If one or more of these possibilities exist, the story editor is likely to call it to the attention of one of the producers on his lot. In 1939 the severest problem of producers, as far as stories were concerned, was finding new material for highly specialized and “typed” stars such as Edward Arnold, George Raft, Grace Moore, and Marlene Dietrich.

Checking title rights is an important duty of the story editor. Because good titles are in great demand, unscrupulous producers not connected with the major lots sometimes register titles with the Hays office (Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, Inc.) and assign a cheap writer to work out a story to fit it. Because registration entitles the holder to the title rights for a limited period of time, provided the holder can prove intention of using it, this practice has enabled more than one Hollywood entrepreneur to grab a handsome price running into four figures for a two, three, or four word title.

Although there is some talk around Hollywood to the effect that writers should learn to submit stories in scenario form rather than as originals, very few scenarios are purchased. When a producer gets his hands on what he considers a good story idea his first step is the hiring of a writer to make a treatment—an intermediary step between the raw material and the shooting script. From the writer’s point of view, the treatment is a description on paper of just how the screen writer plans to make the raw material into a product suitable for screening, and he generally writes the treatment after conferring with the producer and the director. Once the treatment has been accepted at a second story conference, the writer does the first draft of the script itself. If the original material is a novel, the writing of the script involves a great deal of condensation; if a play, the process is one of expansion. Because condensation of literary material generally produces more artistic results than does expansion, most writers find novels more congenial to work with than plays.

In subsequent story conferences with his producer, the director, and perhaps the art director, the script begins to take the form of a motion picture. Such things as camera angles and photographic composition are considered and within a few weeks, if all goes well, the script returns to the producer in final form called shooting script. This final version may be the second draft, or the fifteenth—depending on whether or not the producer is willing to accept the ideas of the director and screen writer working for him. Before production can be launched, however, the script is submitted to the Hays office, whose function is to warn the studio against deletions that may be expected by the censorship boards of various states and the objections of civic and religious groups and foreign nations. The script is then taken over by the technicians and converted into a breakdown, which means that some hundred and twenty-odd typewritten pages are transformed to a large board covered with small tickets, each ticket representing a scene. The breakdown reveals with amazing exactitude how many days will be consumed in the shooting of the picture, and because the length of shooting has much to do with ultimate cost of the picture, cutting is frequently necessary at this point. Once this has been done, the writer’s contribution has been made.

In choosing a writer the producer has a large field from which to select. There are thousands of writers in Hollywood, and more thousands elsewhere. He may choose a studio writer, or he may choose a free lance. In any case, his aim is to secure someone adept in following the story through its many drafts, and he will of course choose someone familiar with screen technique. “New York writers,” a term that embraces all scribes outside of Hollywood, receive weekly wages in the thousands, but the studios’ writing shops contain many “junior writers” who receive less than $50 a week because they lack “prestige.”

Some producers call in additional writers to work on the story. One may contribute new situations; another, dialogue; and a third, the continuity or final form of the screen play. Producers of this stripe are for the most part unpopular with authors and directors, however, for the latter believe it is impossible to obtain unity in a story when each writer has a different conception of it.

When the writer submitted his first draft of the script he, perhaps unknowingly, launched the studio into a flurry of activity. Copies of his script were sent to all departments, and the production office, which supervises the budgets and co-ordinates the activities of all departments, has assigned a unit manager to supervise the physical problems and finances. The director has chosen his assistant (except in those cases, not rare, where the director is not picked until the story is close to final form). The art department has prepared sketches for the various sets. The music department has been working on a score, and on special songs, if they are called for, and casting is well under way.

Although the stars are customarily chosen for a picture by the producer and the director, the brunt of the casting job falls to the casting director, who has his special classifications of the thousands of players listed in Hollywood, which he consults as soon as he receives his copy of the script. He makes suggestions for the various parts in the script on an assignment sheet, which he sends to the producer and director. If a director is doubtful about a casting director’s choices that director will make his own tests. Otherwise, the casting director himself handles the production tests for the actors tentatively chosen, after which the budget for salaries is checked by the production office and the players’ contracts drawn up. The average cost of a production test is $600; consequently the selections of the casting director are made with care.

Hollywood measures its actors strictly according to rank. There are stars, feature players, and bit players in the studio’s stock company, and from this roster the casting director makes all selections except extras and atmosphere players. A contract player, or star, is an actor or actress who has a term contract for six months. This contains options renewable up to seven years, a guaranteed salary for twenty out of twenty-six weeks whether or not the player works, and a lay-off period of six weeks during which he or she must have at least one consecutive week’s lay-off. The contract also provides for a rising salary scale. On theatre marquees the star’s name precedes the name of the picture, whereas those of feature and bit players, contracted for on a weekly and daily basis and considered important in bolstering up a picture, follow the picture title on the theatre marquees.

A star borrowed from another studio is engaged at a fixed sum. Borrowed feature players continue to draw their regular salaries from their home studios. The borrowing studio pays the home studio not less than a month’s salary for the feature player’s services, plus an “accumulated carrying charge” fixed at three weeks’ salary that presumably reimburses the home studio for having carried the actor during idle periods. Lesser supporting players are never loaned on less than a monthly basis.

Selecting supporting players is a simple matter compared to the task of picking extras and atmosphere players. In the studios’ early days many agencies sprang up to handle the throngs of people hoping for movie careers. When a studio needed extras a casting director in one of the agencies would inspect the crowd outside his door and select the most likely types, and those selected paid the agency a percentage of their earnings. This unfair and inefficient system in 1926 was supplanted by the Central Casting Corporation, an office founded by the Association of Motion Picture Producers. Receiving over 11,000 calls for work each day, it is the largest employment agency in the world.

In 1939 an extra is any actor not required to speak lines who receives $16.50 or less per day and is not under contract to the studio. All wage distinctions depend on appearance, physical type, and wardrobe. The lowest wage, $5.50, is paid for nondescript mob and atmospheric types. Extras who portray attendants, porters and the like receive $8.25, and extras who take the parts of policemen, waiters, business men, and people in street clothes are paid $11 a day. Those receiving the highest wage must provide and maintain their own wardrobes, including complete sports, afternoon, and evening outfits. Period costumes and uniforms are, however, provided by the studios.

Babies used in films are well paid. Babies thirty days old or under receive $75 a day; those thirty to ninety days old receive $50 a day; those from three to six months of age receive $25. But any child under six months of age is permitted by law to remain at a studio only two hours a day and allowed an actual working time not to exceed 20 minutes, with exposure to artificial lights limited to 30 seconds at a time. Doctors and nurses must be on hand for frequent physical examinations because the studio is by law responsible for the infants they employ—even six months after their performances.

When production begins, the assistant director each day notifies the casting department what extras are required for the following day. The studio casting directors in the major studios send their orders via teletype to Central Casting, where a bell rings, a light shows, and the order is automatically typed out with the date, the time the extras must report, the name of the director, the number of the production, the type of makeup necessary, and other details. Then follow the number of extras, their ages, costumes, salaries, and other specifications. Known as call sheets, these orders are placed in the hands of assistant casting directors, who sit before call boards containing the names of thousands of extras not working that day. The name plate of each extra has a number of colored dots indicating his or her wardrobe. As the calls for the extras required come in, they are conveyed by a loudspeaker from the telephone switchboard to the specially constructed desks. Thus an assistant casting director may have any call turned over to him. He rejects some, assigns others, and himself phones those he particularly wants.

The routine in assigning minors for atmosphere or bits is much the same as for adults, except that the California State Board of Education keeps a watchful eye over the procedure. Children registered at Central must renew a permit from the board every three months. Permission to keep their names active at Central is predicated on a physical examination and a satisfactory scholastic record. While on the set the children must attend school under the instruction of a teacher appointed by the board (salary paid by the studio), cannot be on the set more than eight hours, and must be attended by a parent or guardian.

The intricate files of Central Casting classify the 12,000 registered extras according to sex, age, height, and general appearance; and list such physical assets as chinlessness, large feet, buck teeth, and cauliflower ears. Registrants are also classified as to previous occupation and proficiency in the various entertainment fields. A machine called the mechanical casting director may be used to run through the files and selects extras of desired qualifications by the numbers on their cards, but it is used infrequently because the employees of Central Casting carry relatively complete files in their heads. The head casting director alone knows by heart the names, addresses, wardrobes, and qualification of several thousand registrants. Unfortunately, only about five per cent of Hollywood’s army of extras get calls. The casting directors themselves freely state that to join the ranks of the extras is the quickest way down. There is almost no hope of advancement, and every chance of slipping. Outside of the studio, however, producers, directors, and talent scouts conduct a continuous hunt for new stars. Little theatres, radio stations, night clubs, and road shows are combed by scouts who work from a central office in New York City.

The art department is one of the first to start work on a motion picture and one of the last to finish. Shortly after the selection of the story, and while it is still in its synopsis form, the art director confers with the producer and gives his general ideas concerning the treatment of scenes, and at the same time submits a rough estimate of the cost and required space for the necessary sets. When the actual shooting is over, the art director is still on the job to receive the final order to demolish the sets, with parts preserved for possible future use.

The department is headed by a supervising art director, and contains several unit art directors and artists of individual style and talent actually in charge of specific productions, a staff of designers and draftsmen. The set dressing department is also under the supervision of the art department, and the construction department and the drapery department are closely connected with the practical work of the art director.

Keeping in mind the mood of the story, the action encompassed by it, and such problems as lighting and color, the supervising director prepares board plans for the set and turns them over to a unit art director. The latter prepares a layout which includes sketches of every set in the picture and elevation drawings drawn to scale. To assist a non-visual minded director, water-color sketches or small models are sometimes also prepared. From the sketches the designers, draftsmen, and artists construct the working plans of the sets. To prepare a set plan for final approval, the unit director, guided by the final script and assisted by the research department, determines how much of each set must be constructed to cover the action of the scenes and how much may be “faked” with the aid of the special-effects department. For many sets only the lower part of buildings are constructed, the illusion of great distance frequently being created by means of construction on a reduced scale.

From the working plans estimates are made which must closely approximate the budget allowance. When the new plans and estimates have been completed and considered in conference by the producer, director, and others involved, the actual set construction commences, under the supervision of the unit art director. Following the art department’s plans and sketches, set dressers collect necessary furniture, rugs, and pictures mostly from studio warehouses. When the supervising art director has passed on the finished sets the various other departments with work to do on them are notified, and the sets are then turned over to the director and production begins. In carrying out the ideas of the art department the property department and set dressers bear in mind that a single off-color or misplaced object becomes “busy” or discordant, and takes attention away from the story and the actors.

From twenty-five to thirty sets are required for the average picture, although some require twice as many. Most of them are erected on the sound stages, although some outdoor scenes may send the company on “location,” which usually means to the studio “ranch,” a studio site perhaps an hour’s distance from the lot. Sets are constructed on the massive sound stages whenever possible. Location trips are expensive and studio equipment is more accessible and physical conditions more readily controlled on the lot. The open areas of the studio lot are also used wherever possible, an entire village frequently springing up almost over night beside administration buildings and sound stages. To the eye of the visitor such sets are extremely life-like, although close inspection will show the stones in a massive building are papier-mache and hollow in back, and the palm trees in a native setting consist of a pole or two ingeniously cloaked in burlap and composition plaster with real fronds fastened to a small platform at the top. Leaves are lacquered to give the appearance of freshness, and the water in the river before a cluster of thatched native huts is from the Los Angeles city water mains. In a thousand such ingenious ways the artists and construction workers of the studio obviate the necessity of expensive miles of travel.

Some studios employ special “experts” to work out required optical illusions, but these are usually referred to the special-effects division of the property department, or, if the special effect desired is novel and extremely difficult, it is worked out in collaboration by several departments. Most of the tricks are standardized. The “breakaway” chairs and tables shattered on an actor’s head are constructed of light and brittle balsa wood. Breakaway glass, manufactured from confectioners’ sugar, is not only difficult to make but requires special iceboxes and chemicals for preservation. But special resin has recently been developed that can be melted and molded into sheets and stored without difficulty. Fog is manufactured by shooting compressed air through crystal oil, and cobwebs are made with rubber cement sprayed from a special airgun. Blood is usually composed of chocolate syrup and glycerine. Especially gruesome effects with this concoction have been produced for consumption in some foreign countries where censorship has been slight. In a recent production containing gory battle scenes the illusion of a spear passed through a man’s body was achieved by means of a leather belt around his waist with pieces of spear screwed to it fore and aft. A spear striking a man was in reality hollow and projected along a wire which ran from a point beyond camera range to a wood pad concealed beneath the victim’s clothing. Decapitation and disemboweling were accomplished by means of a dummy head and shoulders attached to an unusually short extra player, and a rubber knife swung against an artificial abdomen fitted with a zipper arrangement spilled the warrior’s insides when an invisible string was yanked.

Large-scale illusions are more complex and more expensive. The highly dramatic wind storm in a 1937 production required the use of thirteen wind machines—large propellers attached to airplane motors; and the cascading waves that washed away an entire village were produced by simultaneously releasing the water from a series of storage tanks into a concrete basin in which a miniature village had been constructed. Close-up sequences showing crumbling church walls were produced on a sound stage with the aid of water tanks, papier-mache bricks, and soluble mortar.

A property man can quickly acquire almost anything by consulting his files. Malayan badgers, boa constrictors, parrots, and African beetles all may be rented in Hollywood; butterflies may be ordered by the dozen and ants by the quart.

Costume and make-up departments are both active long before a picture is actually shot. Aside from the fact that Hollywood designers must anticipate styles by at least six months, the astute and talented fashioners of clothing give a great deal of attention to the psychological effect of clothing on both actors and audience. They must also closely consider the photographic problems of light and composition. Costumes are invariably designed for the star and usually for the feminine supporting players. The male members of the cast supply their own wardrobes unless it is a period production. Before work is actually begun on costumes, sketches made by the wardrobe artists are okehed by the producer, the director, and the actors concerned. Besides dressing the stars and feature players, the wardrobe department frequently is called upon to supply hundreds of costumes for extras and bit players. These may be rented from several large Hollywood costume companies that function independently of the studios. Often, however, suitable costumes cannot be rented but must be made. If such costumes are needed in great quantities it is sometimes cheaper for the studio to contract for them with outside wholesale tailoring establishments. Nevertheless, the studios’ own storage rooms are choked with clothing of all descriptions from all periods of history. The wardrobe shops of the large studios are in themselves a garment industry, containing rows of cutting and ironing boards, sewing machines, and all the other paraphernalia of the garment trade.

The make-up department is busiest during production, but special make-up for stars and character actors is prepared far in advance of the shooting date. Make-up is broadly divided as “corrective” and “character.” The former is skillfully applied shade and color to create or enhance attractiveness and charm, and make-up artists work closely with cameramen to achieve desirable results. Many women with blue eyes, for instance, are always lit with a small spotlight fitted with a magenta-colored gelatin screen to increase their eyes’ darkness and sparkle, and one star owes much of her glamor to the consistent use of a strong downward-pointed light on her face, which accentuates her high cheekbones and makes the lower part of her face appear less square.

Make-up and the ability to wear it are probably 75 per cent of a successful character portrayal. Character make-up is an artist’s job, involving the transmission of a detailed visualization from paper to the screen. Sometimes many tests with different actors and different types of make-up are necessary before a successful characterization is achieved.

During the period preparatory to shooting the production office has been busy. From the picture’s early days a unit man from the production office and an assistant director have been on the job co-ordinating activities and watching time schedules and budget allowances. The production office manager exercises broad supervision over the progress of the film, alloting stage space so that production will not be held up on this account. He eliminates, often over the objections of director and writer, scenes he believes are unnecessary. He is careful to see that pictures start on time to meet release dates, and he makes allowance in his schedule for the six to eight weeks required in the cutting and dubbing rooms. Once the shooting schedule has been set and production commenced, he stands by to see that no time is lost, for, as at no other period in the making of a movie, while production is under way, time is important. Millions of dollars flow through his office and all manner of errors and accidents must be eliminated, or tracked down and adjusted by him.

The production manager’s representative, the unit man, however, exercises a more immediate and close supervision over the individual picture. With the assistant director, the unit man breaks down the script after it has been finally okehed. The breakdown reveals the amount of time to be used for each set and the number of players needed, and itemizes in minute detail the requirements of every department. This breakdown tells each department exactly what it will have to furnish throughout the production, with full descriptions and quantities enumerated. It is the studio Bible, and guaranteed to give the assistant director and production unit man a headache superseded only by the one they get from making up the preliminary shooting schedule. The latter must be changed repeatedly until every department is satisfied. The preliminary shooting schedule is written up from the breakdown, and specifies the set time, the time each character actually works, the number of days he is idle, and the total number of days needed for the completion of his part.

It is from the preliminary shooting schedule that the various departments work out their budgets, which they send to the production manager. The head of the electrical department, for instance, after receiving the shooting schedule, consults the production department and with the latter works out estimates of the number of electricians, lights, and the amount of electricity that will be necessary. The same general procedure is followed by art, property, and other departments.

When all departments have turned in their budgets, the production manager assembles them and adds the studio overhead expense, which may run as high as 40 per cent of the total. He then prepares a final shooting schedule, in consultation with all department heads. The production manager includes in his budget allowances for the sound and music departments, transportation and location expenses, script clerks, the photographers who will make “stills” each day of the shooting, stand-ins for the stars, and other miscellaneous items.

The last days before shooting begins are hectic ones for the assistant director. Although assigned by the production office he is in reality responsible both to production office and director and he frequently has difficulty pleasing the two. With such paper work as the breakdown and the shooting schedule out of the way, he has tasks assigned by the director. He assembles the staff of technicians, selects extras and bit players for the director to approve, and just before shooting actually begins conducts a last minute inspection of schedules, scenes, props, and players. On the morning when the director arrives on the set to conduct his first rehearsals, it is largely due to the labor of his assistant that chaos has given way to a semblance of order.

Directors are for the most part typed as to temperament, a condition no doubt due to the stereotyping of film stories. One director is known for his skill in handling fast-paced comedies; another is known for his handling of subtle psychological drama. Most directors are specialists in particular fields, having been made so by their past experience.

During pre-shooting preparation the director has met a barrage of questions from the various studio departments, because his is the final judgment in determining what interpretation the story is to receive from the camera. He must pass judgment on questions of art, story construction, costumes, actors, music, lighting, and camera technique. When shooting begins, the director would like to concentrate simply on getting a hundred and fifty harmonious and meaningful photographs on a few miles of celluloid ribbon, but no such happy lot is his. Throughout production he must co-ordinate the work of the various technical departments, at the same time attempting to keep technical and mechanical factors subservient to his artistic plan.

He would like extensive rehearsals, for instance, but for most pictures these are economically impossible. As a rule he must be content with brief rehearsals, trusting his performers to have absorbed something of the mood and feeling of the story beforehand. Not infrequently this trust is misplaced. Before shooting, a careful director rehearses the scene for action. Then it is rehearsed for cameras and lighting, and again for the sound department, which checks the levels and position of the actors’ voices. When lighting, focus, and sound are satisfactory the actors take their places. A signal light indicates that sight and sound are in focus. The director and cinematographer give last-minute instructions, and the director calls “action,” or “speed.” A bell then rings, a red light flashes a warning at the stage entrance, and the cameras begin their work. The shot seldom takes more than two minutes. Then come retakes—two or three, or perhaps a dozen if imperfections are noted. Afterwards, camera, light, and sound adjustments are made for close-ups, long shots, dissolves, fade-ins, and other variations which may later be used to add to the picture’s interest and action.

Actual shooting generally requires more than a month for an “A” picture, and to an outsider an interminable amount of time seems to be wasted: in an eight-hour day only three to six minutes of film are shot which will be seen in the theatres. But the long waits are a necessary part of production, during which the many technical adjustments of lights, camera, and sound are made. The script girl is an indispensible aid to the director during production. Sitting beside him, she takes detailed notes concerning “business,” use of props, and camera angles. Many scenes are shot in violation of the story’s chronology, to enable the production office to get the maximum amount of service from stages as well as from actors. But the shooting schedule, with its careful synopses of scenes, makes this a less difficult task than it might seem. Shooting out of continuity is, however, a major reason why directors like to rehearse the entire script before any shooting takes place.

Most stars as well as directors know that their best efforts can be spoiled by an unsympathetic cinematographer. Formerly called the cameraman, this technician is in actual charge of shooting the scenes. He must, besides possessing the technical skill to create consistently first-rate photographs, be artistically sympathetic to both stars and director. Many director-cameraman teams function on a more or less permanent basis, and the contracts of many stars make provision for their favorite cinematographers. The cinematographer rarely touches the camera, other than to view his set-up on the ground-glass foscusing screen. His real work is to direct the photography of the scene—leaving the mechanics of camera operation to his crew, which consists of an operative cinematographer, who actually runs the camera; one or two assistant cameramen who handle details of focusing, checking and caring for the equipment; a still man who makes the hundreds of still photographs during shooting that are used in theatre lobbies and magazines; and a gaffer, or chief electrician, who is not actually a member of the camera department but is nevertheless in charge of the matter of lighting and an invaluable aid to the cinematographer.

Unless busy on other productions, the cinematographer enters active participation in the preparation of a picture during the early conferences of the art department, costumers, directors, and writers. His experience helps in selecting sites for outdoor scenes, for example, as he determines which points can be conveyed successfully by photograph. By the time shooting begins, the cinematographer has made detailed plans concerning camera angles and positions, and with the aid of stand-ins the lighting has been roughed in. During rehearsals he perfects such details as changes of lighting required by movements of the players and unwanted reflections cast by a piece of furniture or a bowl of flowers. Every factor may be photographically correct in the first take, but four or five are generally made, and the cinematographer tries to make each one better than the last. It is a tribute to Hollywood’s camera experts that a scene is seldom retaken for photographic shortcomings.

The cinematographer’s intricate technique of painting pictures with light beams to create illusions of depth and roundness owes its steady improvement to the development of improved tools. In the movies’ early days lighting simply meant illumination by means of floodlights. Today, almost the only survivor among the cinematographer’s early tools is the broadside, commonly called the broad, which is a simple lamp housing two 1000-watt globes side by side in a box-shaped reflector which spreads their light in an even flood over an angle of approximately 60 degrees. The fundamental tool today is the spotlight, of which there are two basic types: the older lens-spots, and the reflecting spots which form their beam by means of a parabolic mirror rather than a lens. A new type, combining the features of both, is called the solar spot. It uses a bull’s-eye lighthouse type lens in combination with a small spherical mirror to produce a smoother and more controllable beam than either of the older types. Among a number of special-purpose lamps in use today are the Lupe, a long funnel-shaped lamp holding a tubular globe and mounted on a double-jointed standard which permits it to be used in almost any position ; the sky pan, a bowl-shaped reflector used against painted sky backings or backdrops; and the relatively obsolescent banks and strips, which are simply big floodlights holding four, six, or more globes. For natural-color photography the standard lamps are replaced by rotaries, sun-arcs, and Hi-arcs, noiseless arc-lighting units that produce light almost identical with natural daylight.

Many tools are used to control the light projected from the various lamps. Because present-day camera lenses frequently pick up objects in too great detail, the diffusing screen is used to soften a picture. Among diffusers in use are nets of fine gauze, screens of frosted gelatin, and glass discs with a spiderwork tracery of fine lines or concentric circles. There are also such other devices to control the lamp rays as flat or adjustable screens, called niggers and bogos ; conical hoods, often called snouts; and snouts with adjustable, flat flaps, which are called barndoors.

Out-of-doors light is controlled by means of reflectors, large squares of plywood covered with tin, aluminum, or gold paint that disperse shadows. Booster lights are also frequently used, as are canopies of netting, called scrims, which are stretched over the players’ heads to soften or eliminate direct sunlight. Another important outdoor accessory are the color filters the cinematographer uses to accent particular colors.

Films, lenses, and cameras have all advanced apace, as has the technique of using them. The development of film is largely one of progression from color-blind film sensitive only to blue and ultra-violet light, to the super-panchromatic film in use today that sees colors in very much the same relative strengths as the human eye. Lenses have grown more and more accurate in their delineation of scenes, and faster. Cameras have evolved from relatively unsteady and undependable instruments into high-precision machines costing from five to fifteen thousand dollars.

No hard and fast rules concerning cinematographic technique can be laid down, but there are certain fundamental principles that good moving picture photographers always bear in mind. They attempt to keep their lighting in tune with the dramatic mood of the scene, using an ingenious assortment of variations of the accepted rule that tragedy requires lighting in a low key, while comedy calls for a high key. As with the lighting, the technique of camera angles is essentially a series of elaborations using a simple basic vocabulary. Camera angles are based on the long, or establishing, shot; the medium shot, a closer approach to the subject; the two-shot, which is the closest the camera can approach two people and keep them both in the picture; the close-up, and the extreme or big-head close-up. The effect of an oppressed character is heightened by having the camera look slightly down on him; the effect of happiness or lightheartedness portrayed by a player is intensified by having the camera look slightly up to him.

Moving-camera technique is one of the cinematographer’s most difficult problems. Such variable factors as speed, timing, and lighting must be considered. Lighting a big moving-camera shot is in itself a problem. Ordinary lighting satisfactory from one viewpoint is unsatisfactory when the camera has moved to another point. The lighting must be such that during every inch of motion the camera sees things as they should be.

Special process shots, also in the cinematographer’s sphere, include trick shots of some varieties, but the purpose of most special process photography is to film normal action more effectively or safely than could otherwise be possible. The most common types of special-process shots are scenes in miniature and projected-background or transparency shots, in which a desired back-ground—perhaps in the Swiss Alps or an African jungle—is projected on a translucent screen behind the actors. The making of special-process shots generally requires the services of a group of cinematographic experts of the special-effects department, but when the principal players appear in such scenes the co-operation of the production’s cinematographer is imperative.

Natural color photography, the latest development in cinematography, has brought to the fore new problems in lighting and composition, but cinematographers consider them minor ones and are confident that as color photography nears perfection they will be able to carry on with the same standards they have achieved in black and white.

The motion-picture studio sound department owes its existence to inventions in the field of radio amplification. Because the recording of sound on wax discs has given way to recording on film, the essence of sound recording today is the transformation of sound vibrations into light and onto a roll of film from which they may at will be reproduced as sound. The personnel of a studio sound department usually consists of a director of sound recording, whose work is both technical and administrative; a chief engineer responsible for the technical phases of operation; a chief mixer, in charge of the various staff units working on various pictures; several operating transmission engineers in charge of the recording circuits and other equipment; and sound crews assigned to individual pictures, usually composed of a mixer, a number of stage helpers, and a recorder responsible for the operation of the recording machine and its auxiliary equipment.

Preparation for sound recording of a picture starts with study of the final script to determine the special recording problems that the picture advances. When the sound director and chief mixer have determined the nature and scope of the picture’s problems, a sound crew and suitable equipment are assigned to the new picture. The microphones, amplifiers, mixer panels, recording machines, and other apparatus required for a single recording constitute a recording channel, which will be of the fixed type for sound-stage recordings, and mobile, usually mounted on a truck, for location scenes.

Sound crew members report to their posts an hour or so before shooting begins in order to connect power lines, suspend microphones, and test their equipment. While the cast is in rehearsal the mixer checks the quality of sound on his instruments and the recorder is simultaneously checking the sound volume delivered to the recording machine. When the director signals the mixer for a take, the latter signals the recorder, who starts his motor system. Camera and recording machines are of course synchronized. After the take is made the mixer again signals the recorder, who stops the motor system and marks the film for the next scene. If the take is satisfactory from all standpoints it is approved or “choiced” for laboratory processing.

Dialogue is nearly always recorded during the actual filming of a scene, but music is frequently pre-scored, and most other sounds are dubbed in later. Most music scoring is done on stages specifically constructed for that purpose. In pre-scoring a soloist with orchestral accompaniment for instance, the orchestra is first rehearsed to check the arrangement; then the soloist and orchestra rehearse together; and finally the orchestra alone is recorded. If the recording is good the orchestra is then dismissed, and the soloist records her song, synchronizing it with the orchestra background which has already been recorded by means of an earphone. Because she is not being photographed she is free to indulge in facial contortions and mannerisms that would not otherwise be allowable. Voice and orchestra are later combined in one record which is played during actual shooting of the scene in which the solo is heard. The reproducing machine is interlocked with the camera; consequently the camera and playback run at identical speeds. During the shooting the soloist makes lip movements only, concentrating her attention on a visual performance.

The regular scores that add so much to a picture’s mood are usually dubbed in after it has been filmed and edited. As a rule they are written specifically for each picture by one of the many numerous composers who have been drawn to Hollywood. Other dubbed-in sounds such as the chirp of a cricket or the roar of a train are secured from the extensive files of the sound library.

Although during the making of a picture sound and photographs are recorded on separate films, later to be synchronized and transferred to a single strip of film, today few sounds are faked. Sound engineers believe the actual sounds to be more realistic than imitations, as indeed they are when recorded and reproduced by Hollywood’s increasingly precise and delicate recording instruments.

Echoes are a constant torment to sound men. On sets where heavy draperies cannot be used echoes may spring unexpectedly from a water glass on a table or from the corner of a set. On location, rain and wind are likewise problems, which sound men have ingeniously circumvented. Wind gags and rain gags consisting of a wire framework covered by light silk or linen cloth do not completely eliminate such disturbances, but are sufficiently effective to enable recording to be carried on when it would otherwise be impossible.

At the close of each day’s work the director, producer, actors and a few chosen others view the previous day’s “rushes,” or “dailies,” which have been received from the laboratory. The most desirable takes are selected and turned over to the film editor. Although a few studio cutters edit films from movietone prints with both pictures and sound on the same film, the majority prefer the more flexible system of working from separate sound and picture prints.

In dealing with these “dailies,” or “rushes,” the film editor must exercise ingenuity and a strong sense of pictorial story-telling. His job is to condense 30,000 to 300,000 feet of disconnected pictures into a smooth-flowing story seldom exceeding 12,000 feet.

The more important equipment in a cutting room consists of metal rewinding tables, film bins, storage and filing cabinets, splicing and numbering machines, and moviolas. The moviola is similar in appearance to a projection machine, but much smaller. The picture is seen through magnifying lens on one side, and the sound is heard on the other. The editor uses it to make certain his cuts on the sound track are correct. It also enables him to be certain he has not cut into a movement which should be completed.

The film editor or his assistant put the two separate strips of film—sound and pictures—through a machine that automatically numbers them identically, foot-by-foot. This numbering system enables the cutter always to keep his scenes perfectly synchronized. The film strips are next cut into scenes, after which they are assembled according to the script. The editor endeavors to select shots that give variety and add to the emotional tone of the story. When the various shots have been assembled into a “rough cut” it is ready for projection—first by the film editor to catch slips, and later in a projection room before the director and producer. After the latters’ suggestions have been incorporated in the film by means of a recutting, various devices such as fades, dissolves, and wipes are inserted at points that had been previously so designated by printed titles. Such devices, formerly produced on the set by the director and cameraman at great expense,are now made with an optical printer, an intricate machine that holds an illuminated positive in one end and focuses it on unexposed film by means of a lens. Fades, for instance, are made by decreasing the aperture of the lens. Inserts, symbols of thoughts or ideas such as letters, newspapers, and clocks are also added, after which the film is sent to the laboratory again where the negative is cut to match the new working print and a new print made, called the “feeler print.” Then, after the addition of sound effects, dubbed-in music and the like, a print is made on which sound track and picture film are combined.

The film is then ready for a sneak preview at a small theatre in some neighboring town where studio executives and some of the technical staff carefully observe its effect on the audience. Because the film is not yet in final form, the studio endeavors to keep the first preview a secret from the press. After a conference among the studio officials and technicians who witnessed the preview, the picture may be altered considerably, and new scenes may even be added. A final preview is usually then held, to which members of the trade press are usually invited. The picture is then released to the public and its success is measured by the degree of the public’s interest as registered at the box office.

Before the picture’s release, however, the publicity office has done its bit to make the public acquainted with its story, its players, and its excellence. Studio publicity officials estimate that more than 350,000 words are written and distributed daily by the 350 press agents employed by them. A major studio publicity office includes a director; “planters,” whose job it is to get the studio’s material into desirable newspapers and periodicals; unit men who write stories and interviews concerning the players, theme, and anything else they can think of about the specific productions; artist and photographers.

Hollywood also contains more than 300 correspondents, each representing journals of 40,000 or more circulation; more than 100 part-time correspondents for smaller papers; and approximately 100 out-of-town columnists, feature writers, and magazine writers who appear at the studios with special assignments at least once a year.

Publicity for a picture may begin before the purchase of the story if the latter is a popular play or novel. Short notices may be released “rumoring” that a certain producer is “angling” for the purchase. But the carefully-budgeted “B” pictures generally receive a publicity allowance approximately 15 per cent of the cost of production. The money is divided among newspapers, magazines, press sheets, billboards, pictures, electrotype plates, newspaper mats and the like, but 90 per cent of all paid advertising is placed through eastern advertising agencies. The advertising for “A” pictures is more complex and indeterminable. If the studio is reasonably certain of a hit, money may be spent lavishly and without any relation to production costs. An advertising campaign is of course launched in the larger metropolitan areas in order to stimulate interest, but in addition to this a “world premiere” costing perhaps $25,000 may be held, and percentage arrangements may be made with exhibitors whereby the latter agree to share advertising expenses as well as profits. Miracles have been requested of the publicity departments in the past, but studio officials are learning that publicity cannot make a picture successful or a star permanent. The trend is away from excessive ballyhoo, and toward emphasis on the story and title rather than the stars.