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398 Round the Studios
sets surviving from Metropolis, began to clear ground for the huge new U.F.A. film centre. Something magnificent grew from the barren waste. Hundreds of floodlights made an artificial day for the night-shifts and made the work ceaseless. In a few weeks four new studios had been erected — great square buildings, their bare walls uninterrupted by any windows. Ventilation is maintained mechanically. So free from outside sound are these studios that, even during a thunderstorm, no murmur reaches the ears of those working within.
The electrician's store houses 1,500 spotlights for studio-illumination. Sixteen million feet of film a j'ear pass through the small printing plant attached to the studios for the rushes alone. There are five private theatres, each with its own projection-room, where the day's work can be thrown on the screen for the benefit of directors, stars and staff.
In one yeox 100,000 square 3'ards of plywood are used in the Ufa workshops, and an equal quantity of linen ; not to mention 40,000 square yards of planking, 600,000 feet of lathwood and moulding, 300 tons of plaster, 6,000 square feet of glass, and 1,000,000 kilowatts of electric current generated by 9 power-plants of 23,000 amperes capacity.
Grouped round the studios are rows of very modern dressing-rooms, bath-rooms, and rest-rooms. Workshops, offices, and board-rooms provide for a studio staff of 500. The i^roperty-rooms and furniture stores alone number 14 distinct apartments, containing 10,000 pieces of furniture and 8,000 costumes. There are 21 cutting-rooms.
Neubabelsberg has a unique feature in its " Nature Studio." Uf atone Educational films are world-famous. In these Nature studios, timeswitch cameras (worked by no human hand), with microscopic and telescopic lenses, and special temperature-controlling apparatus, have all gone to the making of films which have brought fame to animal — and even microbe — actors.
All this sounds exceedingly statistical. What of the human element ? At no studio is the spirit of co-operation more evident than at Neubabelsberg. In the big canteens of the studio you will see blue-overalled electricians lunching with daintily-dressed extra-girls, carpenters taking coffee with firemen, real and make-believe, and stars and their directors discussing dilhcult points of production.
There are 800 workmen employed in and about the studios, and they all speak with the warmest praise of the conditions in which they work at the U.F 'V. headquarters..