British Kinematography (1951)

26 BRITISH KINEMATOGRAPHY Vol. 18, No. 1 mkid which would result in a smaller number of takes per slate (among other things) . 3. RETAKES The Gater committee report says that it is necessary to eliminate expensive retakes. It is not clear whether the committee proposal is that retakes should be eliminated entirely or that the expensive ones only should be stopped. In principle it appears evident that retakes should be discouraged. Production costs could be greatly reduced if no retake is permitted. But production costs alone are not a satisfactory criterion of productional efficiency. If they were, the course of action required of producers would be only too clear. Production costs could be cut in fifty different ways. More important to the industry is the ratio of quality to production costs. If a bad film can be turned into a good one in a retake period, then retakes are certainly justified. Anal/sing Retakes A survey of retakes has been made. Retakes contain continuous gradations from faithful repetitions of the original take at one end of the scale, to complete rearrangements of scenes or sequences at the other. The latter may not even be shown as retakes in the production records, but marked; as entirely new scenes. These rearrangements of scenes are made because the scene as originally shot does not fit well into its sequence or into the whole film. This may be because the mood or tempo is different from the rest of the film, or even because the story is not clear with the scene as it stands, or wrong emphasis is given to some character or some event in the story; or it may simply be that the director's conception of it has matured and he has changed his ideas of how the scene should be shot. The common factor of these reasons is that the need for the retake becomes evident only when the scene is viewed as a part of a sequence or of the whole film. The scene would appear satisfactory of itself. It is not surprising, therefore, that retakes of this type occur mostly in the later weeks of shooting, and some production units even schedule a rest period after first shooting of the whole film, followed by a period set aside specially for retakes of this type. These retakes are likely to be the most costly type, since they will more frequently require sets to be rebuilt. It seems very doubtful, however, whether they could be eliminated by any technical device, ?nd indeed whether their elimination would be desirable, playing as they do an important part in the artistic evolution of the film. To simplify the present story, this important group of retakes will be arbitrarily ignored. There remain those retakes in which the scene is reshot on a separate occasion in substantially its original form. In all those cases there is something unacceptable in the scene viewed solely on its own merits and not in relation to its part in a sequence or in the whole film. Retakes of this sort will usually be decided upon immediately on seeing the rushes, and will be shot at the first convenient opportunity. There is still some elasticity in the line separating retakes to be considered now from those arbitrarily eliminated, but the number of borderline cases will not be great enough to affect the analysis materially. The stage work on four films was completed'as shown in the table below. TABLE III Analysis of Retakes Film A Fi!mB FilmC Film D 890 slates plus 73 retakes of which 45 were reshot substantially in their original form, and 28 were of the "rearrangement" type. 512 slates plus 57 retakes of which 46 were reshot substantially in their original form, and 11 were of the "rearrangement" type. 491 slates plus 44 retakes of which 1 5 were reshot substantially in their original form, and 29 were of the "rearrangement" type. 541 slates plus 39 retakes of which 24 were reshot substantially in their original form, and 15 were of the "rearrangement" type. Causes of Retakes Each of the retakes which was reshot substantially in the original form was then