The international photographer (Jan-Dec 1937)

PHOTOGRAPHER OCTOBER, 1937—29 opportunity in treatment. It can offset the bugaboo of talk, talk, talk — at 90 feet per minute — by glossing over essential but familiar and uninteresting story action to allow more precious time for new slants on character or comedy or background or novel situations and scenes. Hollywood thus could possibly be daring enough to experiment with the subjective rather than the objective approach to a story and still keep the plot action rolling along so that even a moron wouldn't become uncomfortable. This is the path that is being opened by Slavko Vorkapich and others like him. When to montage is added the avenues opened by projection background photography, the story horizon immediately appears much wider. There also exists in this connection a tremendous field for sane economies in production costs. Many a scene or sequence will develop in a story treatment to the extent of being absolutely essential to the action, yet it would cost so much if photographed in the traditional way ( battles, riots, lavish parties, sports events, scenes requiring costly location trips) as to lift the budget beyond the production program commitments for that particular type of picture. Judicious application of montage can save both the budget and the continuity. The montage ideas cited above — as practiced by Vorkapich conspicuously at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and by industry thinkers on other lots — generally are planned and studied in advance of production in the development of the shooting script. However, montage has an additional value, which cannot be too greatly emphasized. That is its function as a life-saver when something is found to be radically wrong with a picture after the preview. Montage can be used by the creative editor to plug holes in the story; to condense scenes whose original importance in the script have been diminished and overshadowed by ideas and twists that have developed on the set during production. The familiar "pickup shots" are nothing but a form of montage. Along these lines, many workers in the independent field are daily accomplishing feats of constructive thinking in montage that would cause some of our conspicuously outspoken theorists of "film art" to do nip-ups in consternation if confronted with the same problems under conditions so adverse from the standpoint of finance and resources. Montage, therefore, has been developed in recent years by that group of workers of whom Vorkapich has snared the most outstanding recognition, not towards the arty and theoretical, but rather toward the practical and even the essential. Montage today is used to prevent either the producer's money or the audience's time from being wasted. It is geared to the modern tempo. It is as terse, factual and to the point as today's crisp journalism. Vorkapich was born in Jugoslavia and educated in Belgrade and Budapest with the idea of becoming an artist. When the World War broke out, he enlisted with a student corps. Impressions gained during the thunder of battle, in later years inspired his montage theories. For years, following other callings, he reviewed fleeting war impressions in his mind until he finally found a way to use them. After the war he became an artist in Paris, then New York, and finally landed in California. Vorkapich later took up picture direction, and in Hollywood first had an opportunity to experiment with special effects. His first step in creating a montage is to lay out a script. He studies over what the montage is intended to tell, such as Jeanette MacDonald's rise to fame as an opera star in "Maytime." He then gathers scenes, pictures of objects or action, or whatever he believes will convey the impression, obtains the negatives, superimposes and arranges them until the effect is a mixture of scenes dissolving into each other, one coming over the other, unusual and telling effects. Vorkapich sometimes works days on a montage script that will occupy only a few seconds on the screen. Lately, he has collaborated with Herbert Stothart, the composer, who arranges a "musical montage" to go with the pictorial one. Ed Gibbons. welcoming a number of new motion picture technical craftsmen to the IATSE family — the makeup artists, hairdressers, scenic artists and costumers — all of whom last month became affiliated with the IATSE, joining with the West Coast studio locals of cameraman, soundmen, laboratory technicians, and the huge studio mechanics Local 37, with its grips, props, gaffers, special effects, studio projectionists, miniature makers, etc.; as well as the newsreel and commercial photographers in Local 666, Chicago, and Local 644, New York, and the far-flung army of IATSE theater and exchange workers, headed by the projectionists and stagehands. Our hosptality takes the form of adding new sections to the magazine and expanding present ones. A new department will deal with the work of makeup artists and hairdressers. The technical news of the scenic artists will appear in the lighting and sets section, which heretofore has been devoted to news of the work of Local 37. The prop news, (under local 37's jurisdiction) will be combined in the future with the news of costume departments, since this work is closely parallel. News of the scenic artists, who work hand in hand with the grips of Local 37, will appear in the Lighting-Sets section. Readers of International Photographer will look forward with interest to further articles on modern perspective and other phases of cinematography and theatrical design from the learned pen of Lew Physioc, president of the scenic artists, and a long time technical editor of International Photographer. TlefrfoeptA. Reeves' Building Welcome to "IA" Newcomers to IATSE studio family are cause for new Photographer sections and additions to others. International Photographer takes great pleasure in this current issue in Art Reeves buys structure in Hollywood for plant expansion. Art Reeves, just as International Photographer went to press, purchased a structure at 7512 Santa Monica Boulevard to house his plant and laboratory. The veteran manufacturer of lab, sound and camera equipment will have 6000 feet of increased space to allow for an expansion program for his organization. 99 $luu,OOOPropsfor"RobiiiHDtid Over 20,000 items listed as Warners' artisans put maces, longbows, quivers, lances, quarter-staves and other medieval items on a modern production basis. Even with Hollywood studios in the throes of "million dollar pictures," few recent films have called for such extensive outlay for props and costumes as Warner Brothers' lavish production of "The Adventures of Robin Hood." now in production in Technicolor. This film is one of the Burbank studio's big bets on the new season program. It is budgeted at over $1 ,600,000 and over $100,000 of this is for props alone. More than 20.000 different items listed among the props were turned over last month to "Scotty" More and