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Hollywood — The ^Artist of the Film
Yet the artist's task in creating the gigantic needs little more than a pictorial imagination, accurate planning, careful detail work, and the expenditure of dollars. His work becomes far more difficult when, in the attempt to save money, the scene is not wholly realistic. That is, when the device of the miniature, or of condensed perspective, is employed.
In the Alpine village scene that we have already mentioned the mountains over the crest of the hill were no more than painted hoardings, although in the film itself it might have been impossible to distinguish these frauds from the photographs of the actual mountains themselves taken during the summer location. In fact, the movies have perverted that proverbial truth-teller, the camera, until it can lie like any trooper.
Behind the lot of the United Artists we found a strange piece of construction. A segment of a steamboat, from the funnel to the after-cabin, was being pushed to and from on rails by electric tractors. At its side travelled a large light stage, on which were grouped the cameras, arc-lamps, director with megaphone, and script-clerk. On the other side of the steamboat was a shallow tank some six inches in depth. It was perhaps thirty feet across, and its waters were silvered over with a coating of aluminium powder. On the far side of the tank was a backcloth fifteen feet high, against which had been built a line of miniature Parisian mansions, their five or six storeys being reduced to eight feet in height, while between them and the tank, that did duty as the river Seine, branches of trees were stuck to represent the shady water-side avenue. On the backcloth itself Notre-Dame was painted, though in an impossible position. Across the tank was the Pont Neuf, its full length compressed into thirty feet with impossibly grotesque effect. At the far end the bridge was perhaps four feet high, but its total perspective was telescoped into thirty feet. At the near end the half of a truncated
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