American cinematographer (Nov 1921-Jan 1922)

Page Twelve The American Cinematographer a guy named Ibsen, I think it was. The director used 500 feet of action and 4500 feet of titles in the finished perduction. I worked three pictures with him and then got fired because I dropped a toothpick when he was rehearsing. He afterwards got to be a pretty good director after he had learned something about the game. But he was a whole sackful of lemons at first. During the first two years in the business he got hired and fired oftener than I did, which is going some. I knew a director onct who new as much about picture-making as he didn't know about business methods, and he new absolutely nothing about business. He got to the place where he never flivvred a scene, and his finished perduction was wonderful. But the blamed idiot would fiddle around, and stall, and delay, and wait, and pretty soon shoot a scene; then call it a day. Then he'd get a inspiration and call everyone back and work all night. Then he'd decide Miss So-and-So wasn't the type, or else the whole sequence was a bum hunch and call it off. Or else he'd order 500 extras and get interested watching a spider or talking over the next story and not get a scene, or else decide he didn't need 'em after all, and let 'em go, only to remember he did need 'em at that, and calls 'em back the next day. His system seemed to be to spend money until the stockholders had to hock their socks for carfare, then double their investments for 'em over night with another knock out. I new another director who seemed to think that "big stuff" made the pictures. He'd rush through all the heart interest stuff so's to be able to spend lots of time on a big ball room set, which finally gets blowed up. He thought a perfect perduction was a series of battles, shipwrecks, automobile accidents, and mob scenes, and that plot and character building was a necessary evil. I've seen plenty of good pictures spoiled that way. This class of directors don't seem to savvy none that a story is a story, and that it's big. medium or skinny, accordin' to its story substance, and that "big stuff" can't be dragged in by the ears to make a thin story big or a big story bigger. There's directors, and directors and directors. There's probly as many different types of directors as there is directors. I've worked for lots of 'em. and I couldn't begin to describe 'em all, but I can say this: that a director, any director, is ultimately nothing more nor less than a story teller. All of his art, business, diplomacy, and the rest is learned so as to tell his stories better. Freak directors is going out of date; in fact,, freak everything is being eliminated from motion pictures. The types I've described is as scarce as dodos. They don't fit. The modern successful director is — well, in short, he's just what the average citizen thinks he is not. The future of the screen is in the hands of the directors. They constitoot the most powerful group in the perducing ends, and, although the author is the source of a story, it's fate is determined by how it is put on. Maybe a good director can't improve on the work of a equally good author, but a bum director can sure make it look like a hunka. The big opportunity for the director is in the development of a new symbolizm for the screen. The devices in use at present is few and far between. In books they's all kinds of stunts like exagurated figures of speech and such like stunts, which, if you figure 'em out cold and lodgical is impossible and all that, but the public has got used to 'em and knows what is meant by 'em, and hence all is jake. Same way on the stage. Interior of De Puyster's drawing room has card board doors, but it gets by. Moon effect in the last act, made on a transparency drop with a Klieg cloud effect like as not gets a hand, although it looks as much like the real moon as a roller skate looks like a Pierce Arrow. Take music, frinstance. This Frenchman, Debuzzy, makes all kinds of funny discords, and queer runs, and idiotic tunes, yet, when someone plays him who knows how the music becomes a language, telling lovely things that were too suttle to be expressed any other way. Painting purple and green shadows on a girl's face; yellow highlights, a light background. No more a copy of the sitter than nothing, yet it looks more like her than she does herself. Seven dabs of a brush and it's a locomotive and you accept it as such. You're used to accepting such things, and that is why art, litterachure and music is so full of variety. They have the idiums with which to express ideas too unusual to be told in the convenshunal way. The screen is mighty hard up for these handy little stunts. Fade out means end of sequence and lapse of time; lap-dissolve generally means retrospekt; small vignette, "what he sees," and that about winds up the arbitrary cymbolizm of pictures. Two of these stunts is altered stage devices. Seems to me like the big job for the director is the development of a idiumatick language for the screen. It's not a eas" job, 'cause the public is slow to learn, but 'tis got to be done if pictures is to advance, and the director is the logical man to do it. Realism is gradually being given second place to art and suggestion, rather than actual delineation, is being used more and more. And it should be. Suggestion is the most powerful thing in any of the other arts; why make a exception of the screen? I ain't much of a litterary critik, but I think the climax of Dante's story of Poolo and Francesca is the finest example of delikate suggestion I know of, and I don't see why such things can't be done on the screen. It won't be long before we can do such things, and then we can tell any stories without fear of the censors. The Mitchell Camera Company have sold their newest model motion picture camera to James C. Van Trees, who is using it to film the beautiful May McAvoy in "Baby Doll". The Mitchell is the first high grade motion camera to be manufactured on the West Coast. It is made in Los Angeles. I i l / I CINEMA STUDIO wUxMstx SUPPLY CO. ? f If / / 1442 GOWER ST. 1 ' I > ' Holly 819 LIGHTING EQUIPMENT FOR RENT WIND MACHINES R. (SPEED) HOSTETTER At Last, It's Here THE 2-INCH F 1.9 DALLMEYER We have also just received a new shipment of 3-inch DALLMEYER F 1.9 and 2-inch "PENTAC" DALLMEYER F 2.9. All our lenses are sold subject to 10 days' trial. Ask your laboratory man if he has heard of Houff Neol — the greatest advance in photographic chemistry of recent years. It is something NEW. H. C. BRYANT, Manager Retail and Motion Picture Departments G. GENNERT 208-10 S. Spring St., Los Angeles Phone Broadway 1395 Other Stores: New York, Chicago, Seattle