Close Up (Jul-Dec 1928)

Page scan 000190 from Close Up

Record Details:

Title:
Close Up
Date:
Jul-Dec 1928
Publisher:
[London, etc., Pool]
Volume:
Close up ... devoted to the art of films
Leaf #:
000190
Language:
English
Subjects:
motion pictures, Motion pictures -- Periodicals
Collection:
Switzerland, Early Cinema, and Global Cinema
Format:
Periodicals
Contributor:
Library of Congress, MBRS, Moving Image Section
Sponsor:
Library of Congress, Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division
Coordinator:
Media History Digital Library
Description:
As an active film magazine, CLOSE UP lasted only a short time, from 1927 to 1933. Yet the legacy of this English-language periodical, which was published in Switzerland, continues to matter. Edited by Bryher and her husband Kenneth Macpherson, CLOSE UP became THE magazine for energetic debates about the nature of cinema and manifestos imagining new forms of filmmaking and spectatorship. The magazine published articles by filmmakers, such as Sergei Eisenstein, and female literary modernists, such as H.D. and Gertrude Stein. As film scholar Anne Friedberg explains in the anthology CLOSE-UP, 1927-1933: CINEMA & MODERNISM, 'CLOSE UP became the model for a certain type of writing about film -- writing that was theoretically astute, politically incisive, critical of films that were simply 'entertainment.' For six and a half years, CLOSE UP maintained a forum for a broad variety of ideas about the cinema; it never advocated a single direction of development, but rather posed alternatives to existing modes of production, consumption, and film style.' Like Friedberg's own writing, CLOSE UP continues to be essential reading for anyone interested in the history of film and media theory. -- Eric Hoyt, 2014
Date Added:
July 25, 2024
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CLOSE UP and sunlight. The dependable California sun was then the one and only means of lighting a set. Strips of white cloth were hung on overhead wires and moved back and forth to secure a proper diffusion of light. The sets were built of compoboard or of canvas stretched on wooden frames. A shelf of books, a rose trellis, or any other desired bit of background was provided by a scene painter. These primitive devices were not peculiar to the Lasky companw They represented the then common mode of picture making. And it was De Mille, brimming with ideas and calling on his extensive knowledge of the theatre, who instituted the first radical changes. It was he who introduced practical " sets and properties — real, usable, substantially built walls, doors, windo\\s, bookcases, stairwavs, pillars, fireplaces. And those who believe that the camera does not detect tlie difference between the semblance and the substance need only compare some of the early-day films with those of the present. It was De Mille, too, who introduced artificial lighting, and thereby led the motion picture away from its primitive flat photography to true pictorial values. Here is the story of the genesis of this innovation, as told by De Mille himself in a lecture at Harvard University a year or two ago : When we first went to California we used only sunlight. There was no artificial light employed at all. Having come from the stage, I was desirous of getting a certain effect in a picture I was making of The Warrens of Virginia. The particular scene was that of a spy coming through a curtain, and I wanted to light only half of his face. So I borrowed a spotlight from an old theatre in Los Angeles, and gave his face just a smash of light from one side, the other side going dark. I saw the effect on the screen and carried out that idea of lighting all through the rest of the picture — that is, a smash of light from one side or the other; a method tiiat we now >ise constantly. 44