Cinema Quarterly (1934 - 1935)

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location. He has a greater control over circumstances, and his mind is freer to concentrate on essentials. (When Sickert was asked why he never painted in the open air, he said that it was because he found it more difficult to rule lines out of doors). The practical and technical advantages of using sets are, in fact, the advantages peculiar to the studio itself. It is built for making films. There is direct contact with administration, organization is easier, and there is centralization of staff and props. The actors have dressing-rooms which presumably give all the necessary facilities for making-up. There is everything to help the work of the sound engineer and the cameraman. And perhaps the most important factor of all is the complete command over light and, in particular, top and back lighting, which the organized arrangement of the artificial set affords. This last affects the control over the image, which is the essential of camera work; the power to detach it by nice degrees and if necessary isolate it from its surroundings. Back light thrown from above and behind the set is the most effective control possible to the cameraman. It can create infinite stages of relief and is fundamental to any development of photographic style. Since there are so many reasons for employing sets and since cinema affords so many opportunities for learning from experience, it is surprising that of all the departments of film work the study of set building has been the most neglected. Except to follow vogues in decoration, sets have hardly changed in conception from their original primitive forms. We are not considering how accurately sets may be got to imitate nature, nor are we considering how they can be used to create atmosphere. The essential problem is to see how sets may be considered and built from first to last for the development of a truly cinematic point of view. The set builders whom most producers employ are old studio retainers who hold their job through custom rather than for any particular skill or developing knowledge in their work. When producers do cut adrift from such unimaginative labour they usually call in painters, architects, stage set designers or interior decorators. None of these men have a knowledge of the special factors governing cinema set building. They pass designs made in their own professional manner to some hack art director who in turn passes them on to carpenters without proper adaptation. The art director should be as alive to the action of the film as the director himself. In his own field he should have as much initiative and scope. Just as it is the special job of the director to guide the dramatic course of the actors to the shape and style of the whole film, it is for the art director to use his own non-human material to the same end. And to do his work properly he must be fully 76