American cinematographer (Nov 1921-Jan 1922)

November 1 , 1921 Page Seven climax mentally registered in detail that it may be swiftly built up again and caught in a still before the actors get "out of character" and the action gets cold. I am now busily engaged in photographing the new production of Jackie Coogan's, "My Boy." I was told to get the best possible stills, and I have spent no little time in that endeavor. Little Jackie is a most wonderful subject for photography. In all of the dozens of plates I have used, Jackie has not marred one. He takes a most exceptional picture from every angle, and to say it is a pleasure to work with a subject such as Jackie would be putting it mildly, indeed. During the "Queen of Sheba," lately made in Hollywood, the writer was sent for to do some special portraits of the Queen. The time given me was merely between the morning and afternoon shooting. In a little over two hours and thirty minutes I made fifty negatives 01' the young lady, each picture carefully and accurately posed, draperies placed properly, lights changed to accentuate the queen's beauty, and with three entirely different costumes. They were bully pictures, too. The lady herself was pleased, and I'll say that means something. That quick thinking and deftness of action are most essential is easy to believe. And take it from me, reader, tact is another essential, or your little actress's temperament bobs up and you might as well pack up your old kit bag and be on your way. I know a little leading woman who held up publicity of a huge production because she refused to be photographed by a still man who happened to fall under her ban. However, she was right and he was fired. In the play of Kismet, with Otis Skinner in the stellar role,' the writer did the still photography, and the magnificent scenic investitutre of that Arabian Nights dream gave many opportunities for rarely beautiful effects both in lighting and composition. At no time in all the nine weeks consumed in transferring the fantastic tale to a film ribbon was there a moment which was not full of interest. Once in the prison scene, when Hajj the beggar recognizes his ancient enemy, Jawan, and, creeping over in the dusky half light, strangles him with those marvelously expressive hands of his, we were all literally enthralled, thrilled into silence with the intensity of the moment. T. Gaudio, first camera man, broke the strain, exclaiming, "In all my life, this is the first time I was so carried away I almost forgot to crank." Always when Mr. Skinner was on the stage the picture impulse ran high, and hundred of photographs might have been made, running the full gamut of his emotions. One particular portrait I made of him he complimented very highly as being the best of him ever taken in costume. "Location tomorrow" is the call which stirs the blood of every member of the company, but most of all that of the still man, for, usually, "location" means the mountains, the big woods, the picturesque rocky sea-coast, nearly always some spot of beauty, where his picture sense may be given full play and his fancy in glancing sunlight and shadow free rein. In one play location was up among the big pines, in the heart of the San Jacinto Mountains. Picturesque beyond my feeble powers of description, range after range of purpled mountains, tumbling brooks, waterfalls, a lake of exquisite beauty; nature giving everything to the camera man to be his very own. Small wonder his heart is in each picture made in such surroundings. On this same trip were several mornings of dense cold fog — a hundred feet away and one was lost. However, with all hands muffled to the ears and all cameras shrouded to the very lenses, to keep out the wet, many scenes were shot in the mist, weird uncanny figures creeping into view and gone again into the fog, almost instantly. "It's never been done before in pictures," quoth the assistant director. This fog business was not in the scenario as written, but since it was forced upon us it was used; and let me say that when we returned to the studio, 150 miles or so from our mountain location, we reproduced that same effect perfectly with the sun broadly shining. That everything is possible in the movies is trite, but certainly and wonderfully true. Among other duties the still man has to keep his mental eye neeled for publicity stuff — off stage glimpses of actor, director, the mechanics of the movies, any bit of the game which might be of interest to the outside world. The director, the villain, the pulchritudinous hero and the dainty heroine "executing" Mme. Butterfly give us an intimate view of the family in a moment or two of relaxation. Standing astride the rafters forty or fifty feet above the stage, in the effort to obtain a publicity view of a ballroom with three hundred or four hundred people, lights, mechanics, etc., is hardly considered a stunt by George Stillman. Airplane stuff is all in the day's work, nevertheless the hop off seldom fails to give a thrill, and it gets some exciting when, strapped in the cockpit, camera wired and guyed fast, you fly up and up, then suddenly feel a surge against breast and shoulder straps, find .your head where your feet ought to be — toward the earth — and a picture to take ! Somehow George gets the shot through, and once more on solid ground scarcely thinks the stunt worth mentioning. A real thriller of a feat was to be lowered off a precipice in a rope swing with hundreds of feet of mere atmosphere below, to shoot a still of a movie stunt. I have perched on a mountain ledge picturing action at the mouth of a mine, head under the dark cloth facing the mountains, and my coat tails exactly a thousand feet from the nearest place to sit down. Some of the incidents in George's daily existence are highly humorous and lend spice and a certain variety to his otherwise dull existence. As, for instance, the time when on duty at a "rodeo," a husky steer about the size of a couple of mountains and with a perverted sense of the funny, made for me and the camera, head down and tail up. When he made his first move I was looking in the camera. When he moved next I was in the distant perspective, almost I may say at the vanishing point, and the camera was distinctly on the horns of a dilemma, Everybody laughed but me. That one time I didn't get the picture. Only once in my camera career have I wished I was a coal heaver or in some other artistic position which would keep me always on dry land. In a Jack London play, at sea for some ten days, all went well when the sea was calm; but when we struck the open ocean and the gentle zephyrs got all snarled up, every soul of us was wholly, miserably ill. In some fashion the scenes were shot with the movie camera, while the still man lay limp in the lee scuppers, or whatever they were. When "Still man" was called, though, he got to his trembling pins, green of eye and gray of face, pressed the bulb feebly, and lay camly down in his beloved scuppers to die, and wondered why he didn't. But he got his pictures. Beside being a portraitist and shootin" action, the still man's ordinary duties include photographing every person in the cast in character, to record all details of costume, make up, jewelry worn, etc. Scenes are shot weeks apart which in the finished film appear in continuity, so every character must have minutest details to follow — not depending upon memory. The recording of staare settings with all furniture' and props in place, testing of color schemes both in costumes and scenes, copying prints and illustrations in books at the libraries, picturing street scenes which have to be reconstructed, all combine to make his day a fairly active one, and more and more is he and the work he does becoming a factor in film making. The real necessity for a still man of experience and ability in each separate working unit is being recognized' to a greater degree every day. In fact, in most studios he is considered as essential a part of the personnel as director, camera man or electrician. The still man in Hobart Bosworth's company is an artist — I use that word with due discretion — and his pictures are marvels of beautiful lightinsr and composition. William Fox has lately written at length unon the value and importance of still pictures, while Mr. Allan Dwan has but recently brought to his Hollywood studio a famous photographer for special still work. So it truly may be that the still camera man is slowly, but very surely, to come into his own, his talent recognized and his work rewarded as it should be. Clarke Irvine, editor of The Cast, the house organ of the Robertson-Webb exchange, is producing the most scintillant publication of the kind in the country. Mr. Irvine has the faculty of getting hold of news stuff and presenting it attractively.