British Kinematography (1953)

March, 1953 HONRI I THE FILM STUDIO 79 glasshouse stages had the muranese glass covered with black paint. By the year 1920 almost every studio was operated wholly with some kind of artificial light. New stages were solidly built, instead of the old flimsy greenhouse structures, and arc lighting became the standard form of illuminant until the introduction of talking pictures in 1928. In that year sound imposed an era of silence upon the studio equipment and personnel. The loudly clicking hand-turned cameras were replaced by the relatively silent high speed cameras (used at first in sound-proof booths) and the noisy arcs were changed for silent incandescent lamps, the use of which was then possible owing to the introduction of red-sensitive panchromatic film stock. It is practically an axiom that the lighting and most other operational equipment of a film studio is dependent upon the type of film stock used, and as this changes, so do various items of equipment become obsolete. Colour film stocks resulted in another change later on6, when arcs were introduced in an improved high-intensity and more silent form. Bigger and heavier lighting equipment led to more and more elaborate arrangements for suspending it above the sets, until we arrive at the present-day studio with its huge power station, its refinement of equipment and its multitude of specialist devices, from cobweb machine to artificial snowstorms. I have so far dealt with the progress of the film studio in a general way, from the time when the studio had an operating staff of a dozen until now, when the number has risen to anything from 150 to 700 or more for a studio turning out first feature films. During the period from about 1914 to the present time, the number of studios in England has steadily decreased at the same time as the scope of the productions has become larger. According to Rachel Low7 there were about forty establishments in London and the provinces which could be called studios during the period 1906 to 1914, most of them of the glasshouse type. Some of the modern studios are built on the same sites as the old glasshouse stages, such as Walton-onThames, Ealing, Worton Hall, Twicken ham and Shepherds Bush. The last three — alas — recently ceased to be film studios. On the other hand, most of the early silent studios8, converted from other usages, have long since disappeared or have been reconverted for other purposes. I mention these because it was not until 1927, when the Cinematograph Films Act was passed, that finance really became available for constructing from the foundations, premises which were specifically designed for film production and were comparable with American installa Fig. 1. Part of the " Big Ben " studio at Alexandra Pa/ace {1914) — daylight with supplementary arcs. tions. Denham, Ealing, Elstree, Pinewood, Shepperton, and other modern plants were then constructed and for the first time the British film could take a leading place in the film diet of the nation and of the world. Developments in Equipment In reviewing individual items of equipment and technique used in British film studios from 1900 up to the present time, let us first