American cinematographer (Jan-Dec 1932)

Twenty-four AMERICAN CINEMATOCRAPHER September, 1932 Coordination (Continued from page 15) sistently good. He says: "The reason is that motion picture photography is not a one-man job— yet everyone in the studios today seems to labor under the impression that it is. You can't make a picture by merely getting a cameraman, giving him some film and a camera, and telling him to go out and make a picture. You've got to cooperate with him: give him something to photograph — people, sets, and a story. Furthermore, each of these things has to be provided with the thought of their suitability to being photographed. For, after all, that is the only real reason for everything that goes into a moving picture; to be photographed and sold to the theatre-going public. You can make the best actors in the world play the greatest story, against the most gorgeous sets — but if any of them — or all of them — are not individually and collectively suited to their jobs of being photographed, the result won't be as successful as it could be. "You would think, of course, that after some thirty years of making moving pictures, picture people would realize this fact: but most of them don't. Instead of thinking in terms of the completed picture upon which they are working, most of them think merely in terms of their individual job. They forget that their work must eventually be filtered through the lens of the camera in order to be really completed, and passed on to the public. Instead, then, of being camera-minded, they are job-minded. As a result, the picture suffers. "In theory, every department — every individual, from the producer down, should do its work constantly mindful of the fact that its contribution must, in some way or other, be photographed, and that, to be photographed to the best advantage, it must be perfectly coordinated with the contribution of every other department in such a way as to give the cameraman a photographically perfect subject to photograph. Then we would have really fine pictures! "But that is theory. In practice, things work out very differently. Each department does its work as well as possible — but apparently with only the thought of proving its own brilliance, regardless of how the other factors that go to make up the picture may suffer. "In the very beginning of things, a story is selected. From some of the things we see on the screen now-days, it would certainly seem that the stories were selected by people who had never seen or heard of a camera. But, no matter: the producers have come in for quite enough criticism on this score elsewhere — we all have heard the story of their storyblunders often enough, though we rarely hear much said in favor of the times when they didn't blunder. At any rate, our story is selected. "Then the story is adapted — put in continuity form, so that it may be photographed. Here is a job that certainly calls for camera-mindedness. Sometimes the scenarists have this faculty; sometimes they haven't. At any rate, even though they sometimes do ask for effects that even the most ingenious trick-photographer can't supply — and often seem to go out of their way to avoid using simple photographic devices for putting over their points, they do try to see things more or less photographically. So, our story is adapted. "And here is where the massacre — from the cameraman's viewpoint — begins. Copies of the script are sent to the set, costume, and casting departments. And each of these departments forthwith goes ahead to do brilliant work — too often with small consideration of each other, and still less of the cameraman and his problems. "The Art Department reads the script over and leaps to its drawing-board to turn out a collection of architecturally brilliant sets. "The Costume Department likewise proceeds to devise new and beautiful creations to bedeck the players. "The results are truly wonderful — individually. Collectively they are atrocious. And the poor cameraman is supposed to step onto the set and make the combination of these two look attractive on the screen! If he doesn't, everyone gleefully shouts that he is solely to blame. If he's lucky, of course, it is 'My sets,' and 'My costumes' that did it. Of course the sets are beautiful. So are the costumes. But when you bring the two together, you often see that they were designed with little or no reference to each other. Their designers simply forgot — or overlooked — the fact that their creations had not only to be used together, but to be photographed together. To successfully meet this demand, the respective designers must not only cooperate with each other, but cooperate individually and collectively with the cameraman. Even if they don't know which particular cameraman is going to be assigned to the picture, they can at least consult some cameraman, who should naturally be glad to help them, even if it isn't his picture. And, to augment this, they should strive to become camera-wise. Too many art directors delude themselves into believing that they are camera-wise when they merely know (by rote) the angular differences between a 40mm., 50mm., and a 75mm. lens. Too many costume designers fool themselves the same way when they squint at their drawings through an old blue (ortho) monotone glass. The result, naturally, is that some morning the cameraman comes to work and finds himself confronted with impossible combinations of sets and costumes. One recent instance was of an unlucky fellow who was one morning handed a most beautiful set: an ultra-modernistic bar, all in black and white — mostly black. His star appeared in an equally striking costume — all black, while the men were so many shadows in black evening clothes. How he managed to photograph these and prevent their running together into a mere blur of black, even he doesn't know. But that was not the end for him: the next day, he found himself working on a beautiful, soft grey set — with his star also in beautiful, soft grey. Regarded as a business of matching the colors of set and costume, it was a decided success; but as a matter of providing an even passably photographic subject for the photographer, it was an abject fizzle. Viewed in retrospect, it's decidedly funny — until we consider how much valuable time was wasted in an effort to make these un-photographic combinations photograph even passably. Just a little intelligent, camera-minded cooperation could have prevented this difficulty and expense. Thus far we haven't said anything about the directors, but these gentlemen are equally deserving of attention. When all the other factors are perfectly coordinated, the director can still make or mar the photographic perfection of his picture. When things are less perfectly organized, his power for photographic good or evil is vastly increased. First of all, everything depends upon the director's methods of action. If he is sufficiently camera-minded to see when the cameraman is up against such difficult problems as we have just spoken of, he can, if he will, help him tremendously. Supposing, for instance, that a director found his cameraman faced with such a combination of grey set and grey costumes, he could either increase the problem, or simplify it. If his attitude is that of Shakespeare's character who said, 'I am Sir Judge; when I open my mouth, let no dog howl!', he puts the cameraman (to mix our metaphors) "on the spot." If, on the other hand, he is willing to adapt his dramatic requirements slightly to aid the cameraman — by, for instance, playing his action far enough from the walls to allow an attempt at separation through lighting — he can help the cameraman out of the difficulty in which he has been placed. In other words, if he realizes, that only through increased cooperation can be alleviate the damage done by lack of cooperation on the part of others — and from which he must, in the long run, suffer quite as much as the cameraman — he can do a great deal to get good pictures of un-photographic subjects. "Then there is another point where camera-wisdom on the director's part can improve photography. That is in the matter of the now popular moving-camera technique. This device (Continued on page 26)