Close Up (Jul-Dec 1928)

Record Details:

Title:
Close Up
Date:
Jul-Dec 1928
Publisher:
[London, etc., Pool]
Volume:
Close up ... devoted to the art of films
Leaf #:
000618
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 to-day his position was that of a star, but the movie firmament with its stellar glories had not yet come into being, and except in Jack London's Sea Wolf, which was the Balboa's chefd*oeuvre and a momentous production for its day, I doubt whether King's name was ever even mentioned on the screen. The Balboa Company sold all of their product to Pathe Freres. They received a dollar and a half a foot for it, or approximately $1500 a reel ; a price w^hich netted them a very comfortable profit. The total cost of producing a picture averaged only about a dollar a foot. Many of the items of expense that enter into the making of a present-day film were then undreamed of. The studio itself was a converted bungalow. Its one-time kitchen served as the editorial sanctum. Salaries were low — mere loose change compared with those of to-day. Seventy-five dollars a week was the maximum, and only two persons received it — the director and the leading man. Nor was there more than one cameraman to a picture ; and he had no assistant, either, and was thankful to get his thirty-five dollars each Saturday for his unaided cranking of two films during the week. Neither was there more than a bare margin over a thousand feet of actual film consumed in the taking of a reel of picture. Numberless retakes and excess footage of from one hundred to five hundred per cent, were luxuries then non-existent and beyond the vividest imagination of the director. Then, too, there was only one stage, and that consisted of an open platform out in the back yard, with two or three dressing rooms and a laboratory adjoining it. Artificial lighting had not yet come into use, with its incidental increase in cost. Sunshine, the outstanding and alluring asset of 34