Film and TV Technician (1957)

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FILM & TV TECHNICIAN January 1957 FILM MAKING IN CHINA I WENT to China together with Lennox Robinson, the Irish playwright, as the guest of the Actors and Actresses Association and the Writers' Association, to speak at the Bernard Shaw Centenary celebrations at Peking and Shanghai. Inevitably we saw a good deal of the theatre and I was also afforded the opportunity of visiting all their film studios, watching them at work and meeting most of their artists and directors. Only Three Studios There are at the moment only three film studios in all China. Of these the biggest is at Chiangchun, about seven hundred miles to the north-east of Peking, in the heart of what used to be Manchuria, but is now called the North East Province. Here, tucked under the wing of Soviet Russia, are all the major industries — coal mining, iron and steel foundries, one auto are on the payroll all the year round as employees and are given two weeks holiday with pay every year and a pension scheme which Entrance to Studio Chiang-chun mobile factory turning out their first tractors. 1 have read in the press here that these factories have been placed here so close to Russia for security and protection. But this is nonsense, for the coal and iron are found in this part of the country, and the Japanese had already laid the foundations of these industries, including films, before the present government took over. The second largest film studio is at Shanghai, and the third at Peking. At each one of these three there is a stock repertory company of actors and actresses who By R. J. Minney provides for their retirement. They are given accommodation near the studio in blocks of buildings where they have either a small flat for Lighting in Peking Studio themselves and their families or just a room to live in. I have visited a number of these homes and found them most comfortable, if a little restricted. There are excellent reading rooms in a central block, as well as facilities for table tennis and other indoor games. In the grounds there is basket ball, a current craze with the Chinese, swimming in some cases, and other forms of open-air sport. At every studio there are nurseries for children, rest houses for the artists, and sanatoria. Their health and welfare are well looked after. The studio at Chiang-chun is a large modern block, very Western in its style of architecture, unrelieved here by a Chinese superstructure, with turned up ends, placed cither at the corners of th< building or above the central entrance, such as they have on most of their other modern buildings, whether Government offices or factories. There are six stages here, one of them fairly large, but only about a third the size of the big stage at MGM at Elstree; the other five are of medium size, approximating to the old Stage Three at Gainsborough Studio at Lime Grove, where so many of us worked before they were taken over for television. They use papier mache a great deal. It seems to take the place of plaster. The walls are papiermached, with struts of bamboo at the back for strengthening and support; all the decorations, coats of arms, statuettes, crowns and coronets are made of it, and most cleverly painted. They are in consequence very light and easy to move about. Old Mitchells All the cameras are old Mitchells. some of them tied up with bits of string. We went through that ourselves during the war and our films were none the worse for it. Here, too, they seem to make-do extremely efficiently. All the gantne.are made of wooden scaffolding, with wooden steps and galleries. The dolly rails are of wood too. The cameras appeared to move smoothly, but I noticed that they had to be most carefully manipulated. A further complication was that the studio floor was very uneven and the rails had to be laid with pads here and there to get them straight. The atmosphere behind the scenes was exactly as here. They allocated approximately the same number of technicians for camera, sound, etc. as are required I for crews, and I discovered that :n the higher grades the technicians are far better paid than the actors and actresses. Wages When we come to wages we must remember that the standard of living is a great deal lower in China than it Is here. The average minimum earnings in that countrv.