Talking pictures : how they are made, how to appreciate them (c. 1937)

Talking Pictures merit of the time. In order to record him adequately and to make possible a satisfactory reproduction of a marvelous voice, research experts worked twenty-four hours a day to correct the faults found in the basic process. Questions are frequently asked about so-called process or "trick" photography. Studios keep these methods secret. There is no phase of picture making more misunderstood than special effect photography. "That's a trick shot," people are heard to say, a disparaging note in their voices. And actors have roared with rage when, following a realistic fight or struggle on which they put days of hard work, somebody near them in a theatre says, "Ah, it's all done with mirrors." Studios feel keenly that to give emphasis to trick shots, despite the fact that they add immeasurably to an illusory effect and therefore to the entertainment value of the film, is to breed the unfortunate sort of misstatement quoted above. Trick shots are frequently used to give extra magnitude to a setting when such added size could not be accomplished in any other manner. For example, by what is called the "glass" process a ceiling was put on the great ballroom in the Palace of the Czars shown in Rasputin and the Empress. Now this room was three hundred feet long and very expensive to construct. A ceiling could have been physically built. But, if it had, photography would have been impaired, for the cameras could not have secured the effects they did. So a ceiling was painted [206]