HUSH-HUSH POLICY

Hawera Star, Volume LIV, 24 April 1935, Page 11

HUSH-HUSH POLICY

NO LONGER OBSERVED TRICKY “PROCESS SHOTS.”

Time was when movie producers would hardly whisper their trade secrets to their own wives. They were appallingly afraid of shattering what they called “audience illusions”—as if I 1 the poor old audience had any. This hush-hush policy 'has now disappeared, and the film-makers display an eagerness to tell all. They are now willing to reveal, for the first.time, the technical trickery by which Paris, Bombay or Bariboo, Wisconsin, can be photographed, in a Hollywood’ studio. These “process shots” reach their highest development in RKO Radio’s “Romance in Manhattan,” in which Ginger Rogers and Francis Lederer are appearing.

All the action takes place in ’New York, a good .3000 miles from the RKO Studio. Lederer, as a' Bohemian immigrant boy, passes the Statue of Liberty, peddles * p§..pprs „at 42nd. Sf.ree.t. and Bioadwav, and promenades Wall Street during the lunch-hour parade. In the old days, when, gold pieces grew on every plant in Hollywood, Lederer, with a mighty troupe of actors and technicians, would have been dispatched to New York, and there the scenes would have been filmed at tremendous coSt. But for the New York scenes in “Romance in Manhattan” only a cameraman and a “precision camera” went to New York. This cinematographer took all the New York backgrounds needed, carefully measuring the camera angles and making notes of the angles of light. Then, in the RKO Radio Studio, Lederer, Miss Rogers and Co. performed their exterior scenes against theso backgrounds, projected on a translucent celophane screen.

These “process shots” are tricky things. The studio lighting must conform precisely to the natural lighting during the making of the backgrounds. And the perspectives must be correct to the split inch, in order that the illusion may be preserved. This work is in the hands of highlytrained technicians, for it is an extremely delicate job. Micrometer precision is essential. And so perfect are the results now obtainable that costly location trips to far-off cities are almost unknown to-day. This method of photographing stars in Hollywood against backgrounds made thousands of miles away is known as the “Dunning Process,” after the man who first thought it up. He perfected it just as the depression fell upon Hollywood with a dull thud, and he deserves several medals and a few thousand dollars for his brainwave.