The miracle of the movies (1947)

SO YOU WANT TO SEE A STUDIO ? THERE is no mystery, only a lot of misconceptions, about the way in which a film is produced. To appreciate to the full all that has been achieved during this century of the cinema it would be as well to take a look at a studio and a film in production. Nearly everyone wants to visit a film studio, and, in the course of a year, hundreds of people have their wish granted. Very many, however, come away feeling frustrated. The fault was their own. They had omitted to go prepared with a rough idea of the film makers' craft, and so much of what they saw, though simple, appeared meaningless. A film is in reality two films. One film bears pictures and the other a photographic record of the accompanying sounds. Though made simultaneously they are two separate and distinct things in the studio until they are " married ", that is to say until the film editors and the director decide that they can combine the two in one for the sake of ease in handling in the theatres ; the projectionist has only one film to look after at a time and thus, without trouble on his part, picture and sound are always in synchronisation. Of what does this "marrying" consist? Simply the combining of the sound track negative with the picture negative so that, on the positive prints which go to the cinemas, the sound track is printed down one edge of the same strip of celluloid as that containing the pictures. At later stages in this book we shall see how a moving picture is made to move, and, later still, how it is made to talk. Just at the moment we are only concerned with the where and what and when, rather than the how, of its production. The studio is, in reality, a factory. If it is a large one like Denham or the vast structures of Hollywood it will cover from fifty to one hundred acres of ground, but about three-quarters of this is simply 13