Business screen magazine (1938)

let's SUl H '^Visual-minded businesemen, recognizing the surge toward pictorial journalism, the movies and all forms of visual advertising, are awakening to hitherto unexplored fields of usage in which the motion picture and slidefilm are to play an important part during this decade. The phrase, "Let's sell it in pictures" will be heard more frequently this year and yet the basic understanding of films apparently needs much improvement. What happens once the idea of films is accepted in the average business organization and an appreciation of the factors of cost and personnel involved may be derived from this extensive panorama of the business film producer's plant at work. The pictures do not tell one single film story; they represent the activities of many recognized and able business studios from California to New York. Here, step-by-step, is the story of yo|ur next picture in the making: 9 The designer plans 1. The Scenario Most good business films begin with an idea ; then the first organizing step is taken with the writing of the scenario and "shooting script. Here, on paper in typing (and in pencil of the artistes scene sketches), are begun the work of creative planning and preparation. and arrurate arrhiteclural drawings bring reali>tic proportions to hasty preliininarv scene skfloht's for your sets. Here material, labor and lime are carefully c^tinialed to lit a pre-deterniined budget. '■'"Flats" or standard background panels; props and possibly your own equipment must be planned and placed to tell the selling !»l4»ry . . . all with a careful eye towarfl ecoiioniv and effcci . . . 8. Casting the players is a job you've envied but which isn*"! as simple as it looks. No glamorous ^'stars'' but able, experienced character players will put over your screen story. Realism demands the utmost care in portraying business types if the story calls for a dramatic technique. Company employees and executives may appear . . . but it lakes professional talent to deliver dramatic dialogue that really sells . . . 14. Animation helps explain a difficult mechanical process or a technical point; whatever can be told by illustration can be skilfulh depicted in seifuences tirawn by artists. Mechanical or technical animation helps put over the idea just thai much better and is a frequently used tool. In color or black and v»hile. the animator explains in simple, easily understood terms the inner workings of a machine or process... 5. Studio stages are vas and necessarily so, for the bui ing of large sets, sometimes multiple units requires plenty door space and lots of ceili height. Above the sets are c walks an<l gridirons from whi lights, background flats and ev rann'ras ar<' w<»rked. The all-i portant camera angle is the fi consideration. 11. Recording the sound microphones, on stage, gat' dialogue and incidental sour while the scene is being pho graphed — the soun<l is carri to the ""monitor" who contr< volume and the relation of t impulses anfl clears it to the cording room where, via a bei of light, the i)uisating elect current becomes a permanent p ture of sound on celluloid. 17, Screening the Answj For the first lime, the custoni sees and hearsMhal hehasbougl The Answer Print might be co parcfl to a proof of an advertil menl with its typesetting and ^1 graving proofs pasted in. H« final suggestions and editing nol aredi>cussed and the film is real| for duplicating in extra prints I the field . . .