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SETTING THE STAGE
Max Ree (left), of RKO, has every motion picture set worked out in detail on a tiny scale over at the studio carpenter shop before one nail is driven on the set proper. This gives the director a concrete vision of the set with which he will have to work and if he wants to make changes it is a simple business — with a model. Far simpler than it would be with the full-sized set. See if you can find any changes between the model on the left and the set proper, below. These were used in The Case of Sergeant Grischa, and when this scene appeared on the screen it seemed like Russia itself.
A LL the world may be a £\ Stage, but the talkies X jIl have wrought miracles of setting that the Bard of Avon never dreamed of. The sound stage today may show a sylvan spot of growing trees and grass and a gently flowing stream; tomorrow it may have magically turned into a modernistic boudoir, a Russian peasant home, or an exotic cabaret. No branch of the motion picture industry is more fascinating and versatile than the art department.
When the movies were in their baby-talk stage, every portion of picture making was seriously affected. The settings were among those hardest hit. Because of peculiarities of recording, microphones had to be placed very close to the speakers —behind a palm, upon the floor, or coyly concealed in somebody's breast pocket. Long .shots were taboo. The high-vaulted stages of the past were considered unfit, so were frantically replaced by squat, intimate little buildings. People walked like ghosts in felt-soled shoes. Voices spoke gently, but echoed like a shout; so sets were built of monks-cloth or celotex and dressed with acoustic paint. Then, gentle voices fell down and died a hollow death amid too many swaddling clothes. Nobody .sounded quite human when the old mike did its stuff in the projection room.
Mr. Polgla^e (with curly hair), of the Paramount studios, works only with black and white sketches except where the script calls for Technicolor. He seldom uses models. Below yon see him busily at work.
GRADUALLY sound equipment was perfected to the point of reproducing almost faithfully whatever was fed into it. Now it was no longer necessary to huddle together like a football squad to ask, "Had your iron today?" Sets again had ceilings and walls; people moved about uncaged ; the camera could show^ wide open
This water scene from Let's Go Native, which certainly looks real enough, was actually produced on an enormous sound stage in the r a m o u n t studios.
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