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44
THE ART OF SOUND PICTURES
cast, and all the other factors necessary for screening this particular story.
The question of sets inevitably comes up for discussion at the studio in considering all stories for pictures. Hollywood writers have considerable advantage here, for they know what sets are available for immediate use with little or no additional expense. We have attempted in this volume to make a rough survey of the more notable sets existing on the lots of the larger production companies in and around Hollywood. The results of this survey you will find in Appendix II.
Suppose, for example, that an Alpine village set exists on the studio lot at the Universal Pictures studio. A story which places its characters in the Alps would have a decided advantage over other stories of equal merit for this particular studio, for the existing set could be used to film the story. This fact would put what is called a great deal of “production value” into the picture, without costing the company a cent. Originally, the Alpine set may have cost $2 50,000 to build. Its cost of construction, however, would have been entirely marked off against the first picture in which the set was used. Thereafter', according to current Hollywood bookkeeping, the use of this particular set in subsequent pictures would be a bonanza, or a free gift to subsequent picture productions. Moreover, the same set may be photographed from a number of different angles in different pictures, so that not even the camera man himself can identify the same set differently photographed for different pictures.
If a story necessitates the cast going out on location, the estimated expense begins to look prohibitive at once. Railway fare and transportation of cameras and other