Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1920)

Mr. Fisher mertly created Mutt and Jeff — — Now. they almost control him, he say 3, Here's How! Bud PUTTING Mutt and Jeff into the movies is what I .'should call a nobby notion. Strictly speaking, they were not put in; they found their way in ail by themselves. It is the sort of thing you might expect of them. Having created Mutt and Jeff doesn't mean that I control their destinies — not by a long shot. They control their own destinies pretty well. In fact, Mutt and Jeff now almost control Bud Fisher. They make him work hard for eight hours every day and prevent him from realizing his youthful ambition to settle down and li\e on his income at the ripe age of thirty-five or so. I have been asked to tell how the Mutt and Jeff movies are made. It is really a complicated task to reduce it to simple terms. The best I can do. I am afraid, is to remove some popular misconceptions about how my animated cartoons are made. The thing that concerns me most, of course, is the fact that to make one half-reel picture requires from 3.000 to 4.000 s-eparate drawings. And 3.000 or 4,000 drawings to a picture, when pictures are coming out every few days, is a shirt-sleeve job that keeps a fellow hustling, let me tell you. First of all, there's the story. Like a comic strip in a newspaper, it progresses step by step toward a climax, and ends with a punch. The training I received as a newspaper cartoonist has been very useful to me in making motion picturecartoon stories. I say "making motion picture cartoon stories," but in a way I don't make them. Mutt and Jeff make them. All I have to do is to give them some scenery and they supply the action. The first actual drawing is the making of the scenes. Each scene, however, has to be drawn only once. All the t'lgures that move about in The Creator of Mutt and JefF tells ht>vv thev do it in the Mi>vies. Bv BUD FISHHR Mutt and Jeff are repo.-;inti prostrate on this table flooded with light, w ith the camera focussed on them from above. the scenes are drawn on strips of celluloid, which are placed on top of the scenes when the actual photography begins. But the photography doesn't begin yet. by any means. Each separate action, even to th^' wiggle of an ear. requires a separate drawing. If Mutt lifts his leg it requires not one drawing, but several. Otherwise it woujd be done so quickly that it could not be seen on the screen. But I don't have to draw the whole scene, or even the whole figure, for each separate motion. I just draw on celluloid the part that is moved, ami when the transparent celluloid is put on top of the scenes you see figures and scenes and all. It takes twenty-five drawings to make Mutt antl Jeff walk across the screen, ten to make them turn completely around, five to make them talk, and when Mutt wallops Jeff he does it in from eight to twelve drawings. The assembling is the next job. .Ml the drawings have to be put in order according to the numbers in the comers. Now come with me into the camera room. \ regular motion picture camera is pointed down to a table flooded with light. Each separate picture is laid on the table and photographed in turn. The camera is turned slowly, by a mwior. and makes just one exposure each time a treadle is presseil. The operator sits at the table, puts down first a scene and then on top of it the celluloid .sheets on which each step of the action is drawn. The result is to transfer all the drawings, with the scenes showing through, to the motion picture reel. .\fier that there is the cutting to do — a heart-breaking job. for it means throwing away about one-third of the film. It can't be helped, as any superfluous movement lessens the "punch." That's about all there is to tell about the mechanical side of if. The rest is something I can t tell you.