SCREEN STUDIO SECRETS

Greymouth Evening Star, 20 December 1934, Page 2

SCREEN STUDIO SECRETS

WHITE MAY BE YELLOW. Everybody who has “snapped” a lovely scene or a good-looking friend, only to find that in the developed result the scene is a muddled grey mass and the friend is apparently one of tho less romantic gangsters—everybody who has had this experience will sympathise with the difficulties of the clever people responsible for art direction and costumes on the screen (writes the Film Correspondent of the “London Daily Telegraph”).

I had a talk with Mr Herbert Norris, the costume expert. He talked illuminatingly of the mysteries that lie behind the superb pictorial effects of such films as “Jew Suss,” now at the Tivoli, and “The Iron' Duke,” now in the making at Shepherd’s Bush. One of the first things the newcomer to the studios learns is that white is never white. It may be yellow. Visit any studio and you will observe the handsome men and pretty women of the screen walking around in complexions of brightest, most hideously jaundiced saffron. Similarly, the hero of the piece, wearing the evening dress described in a certain school of fiction as immaculate, actually sports waistcoat, shirt, collar and tie of the same gaudy hue. Or the cameraman may favour buff, bright blue, or pale grey. In any event the screen will show pure white. The one thing you must not wear is white, which is much too dazzling for good photography. In the same way Mr Norris avoids black. If you saw “Jew Suss” you, will probably recall the handsome i weeds worn by tho widowed duchess near the end. What she really wore was nigger brown.

MR ARLISS’S UNIFORM. ) The cost of dressing an elaborate j film runs into many thousands. Of ; this outlay, however, a good propori tion will be recovered from sales to theatrical costumiers. An actual example—Mr George Arliss’s uniform us the Duke of Wellington—is not. without interest. The Gaumont-British Corporation is reticent about, trade secrets, but I believe this uniform cost over £lOO, without tho seven decorations, which, if bought at the usual retail rates, would bo £l5/15/- each. The sword (which Mr Arliss happened to have left over from “Disraeli”) would add another £lO or £l5; the equipment of his horse £‘lo more—a total of over £2OO. "But why,” people sometimes ask. “must such costumes be so expensive? Must the gorgeous satins and velvets, the gold lace, the gold and silver and ' enamel in decorations, all be real?”] The reply is that they must. Your | eye might be deceived at the other i end of a room, the fakes might pass j muster in a long-shot. But in a close-I up be sure your screen will find you ; out. j