American cinematographer (Nov 1921-Jan 1922)

January 1, 1922 THE AMERICAN CINEMATOGRAPHER 7 Jimmy the Assistant EFFICIENCY Efficiency around a movie plant is probly the knottiest problemb the office has to handle, because the n^ovie game aint like nothing else in the world as far as business dealings is concerned. You cant apply any of the regular business methods of saving and get away with it. Frinstance, theres such a thing as efficient waste in picture making, and then again, legittament econemy has flivved lots of perductions. By that I mean waste and econemy in the regular business sence of the word. The movie game would drive a business man nutty and busted before he would know where he was at. Running a movie plant efficiently and successfully is just about the same as running the violent ward in a nut house. Each picture and every vital person connected with its perduction is a individual case which has to be handled so's to get the best results, no matter what apperently foolish consesssions has to be made to do it. The movie manager has to coax, bully, wheedle, apply stratejackets, pray, swear, encourage, squelch, throw money away, raise heck over 15c, and hunderds of other conterdictery things according to whichever patient he happens to be dealing with. Come to think of it, the foreman in a foolishfactory has a soft snap compared to the business manager of a movie place. Nacherally, men able to handle such a job is scarce as frog fur. It calls for a certain kind of diplomattock genyus that everybody aint got. All honor to them that has it! I saw this efficiency thing worked all differnt ways once. I was working at a joint where they had sixteen companies all percolating at once in about a eight unit studio. It was some busy hangout. Seems like this place just started out in the regular way, with a few units turning out the regular run of stuff, and somehow happened to hit a winning streak. Every production went over big, for them days, and the office probly figured to ride their luck for all it would stand while they had the breaks. They grabbed off a lot of directors, home-brewed a flock of stars, some of which is the biggest we have today, and lit into perducing for all they was worth. They cleaned up something scandalous, but they wasn't the least bit efficient in the regular business sense. There wasnt no limit on perduction costs; the idea was to get the picture out the best they could, and let it cost whatever it happened to be. Everybody got whatever they wanted, no matter what it was or what it cost. Cameramen could order a piece of freak apparatus, use it once, and maybe throw it away, for all anybody cared. Director could call a mob for one scene if he wanted to. Stars had company cars at their disposal. In them days lots of stars didnt have cars of their own. Pretty soon the stockholders found out how the place was being run. They was making a barrel of money then, but they figured they might get a little more if the place was looked over for leaks, so they picks out a good New York efficiency expert and puts him on the job. You can imagine the sensations he must have had when he got a good look at the joint. After the doctors pernounced his case of shell-shock cured, he rolled up his sleeves and started in. * * * * * * * Two minutes will now be allowed for you to use your imaginations. ******* We now fade in on a sequence six months later. The studio is for rent and the company busted. Too much efficiency. The money makers had been pampered too much for to stand the treatment he handed out, so they quit. Efficiency man was glad of it. He could hire others much cheaper. His sistem of hiring was something like wifie shopping for Christmas cigars. The new hirelings, aided and abetted by the lemons that was left, turned out a brand of junk that couldnt be gave away. From a picture standpoint his methods was nothing short, of sooicide. From a business standpoint he was dealing in a very liberal, open-handed manner. He had a good line of argument — for something else. Frinstance. All our pictures is cleaning up about the same amount of dough because they has a certain following which attends regular. Yet some pictures cost $20,000 and others $40,000, and maybe more. Now if the cheap picture mjakes as much as the more expensive kind, lets not make any more expensive pictures. Lets save that twenty or thirty thousand. (You gotta remember it was years ago when this happened, and them figures was awful big then.) If you was running an automobile factory and one car cost twice or three times as much as another apperently identical car, you'd probly find some way to standardize perduction costs. That's just what he did. His efforts was something like the guy putting green specs on his horse and feeding him shavings. Like the horse, the studio was going perfectly according to the efficiency man, when it up and died. This little example I have just gave shows both extreems of the case. The first way was awful wastefull. on acct. of the awful amount of graft that was pulled. That was about the only real big leak. The other apparent extravagances was what you might call efficient waste. Suppose a director did waste two or three days playing for some freak effect. It might not be worth a darn when he got it, but then again it might be something worth while. Nobody knew, not even them that was doing it. Like this one instunce, most the "wasted" money was spent trying for something new, or to get a old idea better. The other angle of regular business methods is all jake, except it dont work. There wasnt nothing wrong with the efficiency man's figuring except the results. Pictures cant be turned out like clocks or shoes. He didnt know that. He dont know it yet. You see, he told the stockholders that if there hadnt been a slump in the market he would have had the place running in fine order. It probly never occurred to him that he had anything to do with the slump. Running a studio so it will make money is as ticklish a job as feeling a baby rattlesnake's new tooth. There no rules to go by, for one thing. You might just as well print a set of rules for how to write best sellers every time. Each person connected with the studio has got to be understood by the manager, because he's got to handle them so's to get the best there is out of them. That's a man size job in itself, and thats only a small part of it all. I said there wasnt no rules to go by, but thats a mistake. Theres one I overlooked, and that is, get the best there is, no matter what it costs. "Best" dont always mean most expensive. Thats another place where the diskreshun of the manager comes in. The regular business efficiency m,an is just about as useful around a movie plant as a nut director would be in the insurance game. There's too many expensive ways of saving money for his training to swallow. Successful comedy companies spend maybe $5,000.00 for a single comedy stunt. Imagine one of our modern penny-pursuers sanxioning that. Yet that very stunt may create enough interest in the perduction to pay for itself many times in publicity value. Then again it may fliv. You can't never tell. The best you can do is to be a pretty good guesser. I never heard of a efficiency man who was a good guesser. They had all eliminated the ability as not being good efficiency. When any man learns enough about the movie game to run it absolutely efficiently he wont be a efficiency m)an ; He'll be the Big Boss and probly own the whole works! Camera Stolen A sneak thief stole Bell & Howell camera, No. 474 from J. D. Jennings at Robertson-Cole Studios during the Christmas holidays. Cameramen are requested to look out for it. Holly 3266 Kosmos Film Laboratory 4811 F ountain Avenue Hollywood Specializing in color, but also "doing all things well" in film laboratory work Developing , — Printing , — . Titles Consult us about your color problems