Hands of Hollywood (1929)

Record Details:

Something wrong or inaccurate about this page? Let us Know!

Thanks for helping us continually improve the quality of the Lantern search engine for all of our users! We have millions of scanned pages, so user reports are incredibly helpful for us to identify places where we can improve and update the metadata.

Please describe the issue below, and click "Submit" to send your comments to our team! If you'd prefer, you can also send us an email to mhdl@commarts.wisc.edu with your comments.




We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.

Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.

Sets THE SCENIC DEPARTMENT The Scenic Department has charge of the photographing of 'glass shots,'1 painted backgrounds, and photographic enlargement backgrounds. The men employed in this department possess great skill and originality, and they have been responsible for the creation of many beautiful and unusual camera effects. They work in close association with the art director. In fact, the title scenic artist is synonymous with the title of art director in many studios. "Glass Shots" If a script calls for characters acting in front of a large building, and the production department decides that the erection of such a set would be too costly, a device is used called a "glass shot." For example, a scene describes an army capturing a fort or a castle in the middle of a desert. The first storey of the fort or castle set is built. Then men from the scenic department, called scenic artists, paint the remainder of the structure in miniature upon a piece of ordinary glass, about 4x6 feet. When the director is ready to "shoot" the scene, this piece of painted glass is placed directly in front of the camera in such a position that the painting on the glass matches perfectly with the base of the set, through the lens of the camera. For these "shots" the camera and glass are placed on a specially constructed platform overlooking the actual set. An illustration may make this device clearer. The story of a picture, made some years ago, called for an exact reproduction of St. Mark's Cathedral in Venice, Italy. This cathedral is famous because of the great number of beautiful statues carved on its sides and roof. The set for the lower part of this edifice was built. Then a clever scenic artist painted on glass an exact reproduction of the upper portion of the cathedral. After the camera was placed behind this glass painting and the scene was taken, the developed film showed St. Mark's Cathedral in its entirety. The camera — a modern magician — had put the roof of St. Mark's on the set. [51]