Film and TV Technician (1957)

January 1957 FILM & TV TECHNICIAN taking industry as a whole, and including the earnings of the agricultural workers, is about £2 a week. They manage to live pretty well on it, for prices are not high. The cost of living is, in fact, exceedingly low. The consumer goods I saw in the shops cost far less than they do over here. A pair of cotton trousers, for example, is only fifteen shillings for the best, and the rent for a one-roomed flat, with a small kitchen and lavatory, is only nine pence a week. At the studios the bottom wage for artists was £2. 10s. a week. The top grade performers get £7 to £8 a week. The technicians start higher and rise higher. There are no stars at all. The star system is not operated there. Before I learned of this, when I asked who the stars were, they looked at me in wonder. They had no idea what I was talking about. They asked me to explain. I mentioned Marilyn Monrose, but there was not the slightest show of recognition from the group of directors and technicians around me. " Who is Marilyn Monroe?" In a moment I got the question that you would only expect to get from a judge in the law courts in England. " Who is Marilyn Monroe?" one of them asked. Now you who haven't been asked it might think it is the easiest thing in the world to answer. But try answering it to a group of Chinese film men through an interpreter, without even a photograph of the girl to help you! Not that the picture would have helped much. Their standards are different and the shapes are different. Busts, for instance, are out. I suppose I should say bust are in — well in, for the dresses reveal no cleavage and the chests are dressed as flat as they can be. The girls look none the less attractive for that. No Comparative Standards The Chinese now have no comparative standards in films, either technically or otherwise, for they don't get very much from the West. Hamlet was the last British film they got and they will still in raptures over it when they talked to me. They were expecting to get shortly Great Expectations, and were looking forward eagerly to seeing it. "Can't you get your people to send us more films?" they asked. " We would welcome it." I passed this on to the Rank Organisation on my return and I hope something comes of it. Other film companies should also take note. Their sets are very realistic. One film I saw being made was set in a coal mine. It was as good as any we have built on the set here. Their backcloths I thought not quite as good as ours. But their and others for musical films — for as long as twelve years. At Chiang-chun the resident repertory company of film actors and actresses numbered 143 members. Occasionally, especially when they are making the film version of a stage play, they borrow one or two of the stage cast; but for the most part they prefer to rely on their own resources because, in the case of this studio particularly, the theatre in Peking is many hundreds of miles away. The Shanghai studio, on the other hand, relies on the theatre not only for players but for its directors. They flit from one to the other. It is quite common there for a stage director when he moves to the studio to take many of his stage artists with him. Much Longer to Make At Chiang-chun all the stages were being used for feature films, each running, as ours, for approximately ninety minutes. But the films take much longer than ours to make. I was told that the average time for making a feature film is from six to eight months, for studio shooting alone. They are aware that this is inordinately long standard of acting is very high. It ought to be. Attached to every studio is a school for acting. The pupils begin young and are kept at it for years, some of them — as in the case of Peking opera trainees and are trying to cut down on time. " We are making twelve films this year, which will give us an average of six months a piece (Continued on page 10)