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THE FUNCTION OF THE
ART DIRECTOR
ALBERTO. CAVALCANTI
First of all, why are sets generally used in films? Often the scenes which they represent exist in nature and could be shot. There must be strong reasons for the widespread practice of building sets when nature itself is readily available. Money is not the deciding factor. On the one hand, it cost more money to shoot Madame Sans Gene in the Palace at Fontainebleau than it would have cost to build three times the number of sets for the same script in Hollywood. On the other hand, elaborate and expensive sets are often built when the real scenes can be shot more cheaply nearby.
Sets are not built either out of necessity or economy. There are other reasons, some psychological, some practical. First there is the question of how the set affects the acting. Most directors find that they get better acting on a set than they get from acting in real surroundings. After all, most film actors have been trained on the stage where they have been accustomed to working among scenery. It is not surprising, therefore, that they should feel more at home on a set than against a background of real life, and that their style of acting should agree best with artificial surroundings.
But the chief reason why sets help the acting lies deeper still. A lack of ease in acting in natural surroundings exists even in those without a stage training. When among the objects of everyday life actors are apt to be hampered by a feeling of incongruity between the artifice of their action and the reality of their surroundings. This affects not only theatrical and stylised acting, but also the more casual acting peculiar to cinema. Even when shooting people in their ordinary movements, it is sometimes possible to get a more unified effect and a stronger feeling of reality by placing them on a set. One peculiar advantage, for example, is that on a set they seem to forget the camera more readily. But the director also benefits from working on a studio set. There he is independent of the chances of the outside world ; free from the noises, interruptions and discomforts which ordinarily interfere with work on a real
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