Film "Clips" Cost £500 FOR 75 SECONDS

Press, Volume LXXV, Issue 22804, 1 September 1939, Page 2

Film "Clips" Cost £SOO FOR 75 SECONDS

Vyvyan Bonner’s Fashions

(snouixT warms ran td suss.) [By CONSTANCE ROBERTSON.I

LONDON, July 27. The name of Vyvyan Donner is well known' on technicolour “shorts” of fashions, but in addition to making these ten-minute films, the Fox fashion expert produces about 40 “clips” a year, each averaging about a day arid £SOO to produce, and-each taking about 75 seconds to screen. Vyvyan Donner is at present in London after a hurried visit to Europe to see the latest fashions. When I last met her' she was making a technicolour fashion film of furs in a barnlike studio of Fox Movietone News in New York. Complete with megaphone, she directed half a dozen “lovelies” wearing the latest in rabbitskins; yes, literally rabbit, so expertly dyed, and treated and styled that the ermine really looked like ermine, and no woman would have scorned the full-length cloak, “I like to dramatise* my fashions, Miss Donner told me, “rather than just make a motion.-picture of girls wearing clothes. The days of the old black and white fashion film have gone for ever; colour is obviously important, but so are backgrounds. A theatre background is the right setting for lovely evening gowns, dinner frocks can be shown in a cafe, and holiday clothes are much more effective when filmed in the right surroundings.” The Models Miss Donner recruits her models from wherever she chances to see them. Musical revues, legitimate plays, vaudeville, radio or a casual meeting at parties—from any of these fields the girls may be chosen. “Ordinary beauty is not sufficient,’ said Miss Donner. “New York, particularly, is filled with lovely-looking girls, but I demand distinction, good ' i

posture, the ability to walk well, and photogenic features. Sometimes the girl must also be able to swim, fence, play tennis or golf.” ' Miss Donner designs the “sets and directs the entire production of her fashion films, often taking a whole day to obtain a one-minute sequence. The “clips,” or black and white newsreel items, demand just as much care and attention as the fashion “shorts,” and Miss Donner provides nearly all the Movietone News “clips” screened each year. Versatile Director. - Before she turned her attention to motion pictures. Miss Donner had been artist and designer, cartoonist and columnist: she has staged revues for Ziegfeld, the Winter Garden in New York, and the London Hippodrome. Since making miniature fashion releases—she has directed nearly 1000 of them for the newsreels—she has been devoting her time to the featurette style releases in colour. She is said to be the only woman news-reel director in the world. Slim, smart, and enthusiastic, Vyvyan Donner frequently tries out her own new ideas in hair-dressing and frock styles on herself. While on the job in the studio she keeps half of her mind on the cameramen and the lightingexnerts, the other half is concerned with the mannequins; she removes a hair adornment, tries out various positions for the orchids, inspects the make-up. Not before she is satisfied that every drapery is correct do the girls go before the technicolour camera. Vyvyan Donner works quietly, but she knows what she wants, even if, as in New York, during a mild : heatwave tbe'fi'Ws bad to parade in fur coats before the lights ■<"hich in themselves were ■ hot enough to wilt the toughest “lovely.” 4