Talking Screen (Jan-Aug 1930)

They Go Places and Do Things [Continued from page 33'\ become mighty monotonous if you see it exclusively for six or eight reels; so Lawton hunted up five distinctly different types of desert, beginning with frenzied Joshua forests and ending with recomposed granite hill formations — the very edge of Hell itself! For the town, he discovered Bodie, an old abandoned mining camp that sprung up overnight during the California Gold rush days, and was as quickly deserted. Railroad companies are one of the most reliable sources of information available to a location manager; for if they can find good locations along their rights of way, the studios will use their trains. In Sarah and Son a dramatic bit of action was to take place on Long Island Sound. A motor boat was to travel from a secluded bay under a railroad tYestle, and out into the open sound. The writer had a definite location on Long Island in mind ; but it was faithfully duplicated fifty miles from the Paramount Studios, in California, at a place called Anaheim Landing. T WAS a busy location manager who went on The Virginian location. Hours before dawn he was out gathering in the cows — .^000 of them, who were scheduled to swim a river at eight o'clock next morning! A crew of 250 spent three weeks on this location near Sonora, California, costing $75,000. It's hard to estimate the cost of .studio locations. Theoretically, they approximate 1% of the production cost; but they fluctuate from $50 to several hundred thousand. One of the most costly locations now shooting is All Quiet on the Western Front, filmed on the 110,000 acre Irvine Ranch in Orange County. Only the portion that is flat and not surrounded by mountains can be used for "Belgium". As this land was cultivated, the studio had to pay the owner for his entire barley crop, in addition to the regular rental fee. Here trenches have been dug for both Allied and German armies. N amusing incident occurred during the firing sequences of this picture. A tenant in an outlying house wrote in to the Universal Studios complaining that the concussion from the bombing had broken a flower dish, and he wanted it replaced, pronto ! A location manager, constantly meeting the public, must be a past-master in diplomacy. ■When one of Fred Lawton's companies was shooting, the monitor man reported an odd sound interfering at frequent intervals. Radio stations were heard announcing. Lawton paid a visit to every likely broadcasting .station in the vicinity, without discovering the trouble. At last he climbed into a car and made a circuit of the local territory, finally tracing the disturbance to a private radio in a home atop Mulholland Drive, two miles from Universal. Because of the peculiar geographical situation, whenever the wind blew in a certain direction, the radio made whoopee with the studio sound track. Diplomatically Lawton invited the owner to visit the studio and see what made talkies talk. Now there's a friendly agreement that if there's an ill wind, the owner of the radio will read a book. IA'WTON has also won cooperation from > airplane pilots. The studio is situated in a bowl of hills in such a manner that planes flying even quite high often cause the sounds of their motors to reverberate in the monitor cabinet. An unsuspecting pilot sometimes steps from his plane to discover a form telegram already waiting at the flying field, asking him to shy away from Universal. Lawton has even caused the owner of a power-driven lawnmower to let grass grow under his feet during a few days of location work. THE most modern addition to location files is a collection of location sounds. A roving camera crew under the supervision of George Schneiderman, of Fox Films, is recreating the voices of every European capitol. In Paris alone, sixty-one reels were filmed: the hubbub of taxis beneath the Arc de Triumph; the measured tread of countless hundreds visiting the tomb of the Unknown Soldier; the chatter of tourists; the gossip and jests at sidewalk cafes; the rumble of trains; the scurrying porters in the Gare Sainte Lazare; the whir of airplanes above Le Bourget field. As each sound film reaches Hollywood, it is classified and stored in huge concrete-and-steel vaults until it is needed as an authentic sight-and-sound background for a particular production. You can travel from Toronto to Timbuctoo with studios — or you can find the entire world on location within a hundred miles of Hollywood. No trouble at all. This Way Out Stays Fat Some die o' bootleg liquor, Some die o' dancing sweeties, Some die o" dissipation And some die o' diabetes; But by far the saddest victims Who sink in Fortune's bog, Are the dumb, outmoded actors Who die o' dialogue. 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