BEHIND THE SCENES

Northern Advocate, 29 December 1934, Page 12

BEHIND THE SCENES

| IS SEEING BELIEVING? | FILM MAGICIANSHIP. THE CAMERA—A LIAR. “SPECIAL EFFECTS” DEPARTMENT. A fifty-foot ape, with a living girl in his hand, sitting on top of the Empire State Building on Fifth Avenue. Prehistoric animals that paw and snort and switch their tails. Railroad cars plunging off bridges. Buildings toppling in earthquakes. Part truth, part fabrication. Operating in the kingdom of the motion picture industry and tabulated under the name of “Special Effects” is the unit which controls these and other photographic illusions that arouse wonder in awed audiences. * In this department was made the whale’s mouth with the electric motor to operate its jaw that realistically bit off John Barrymore’s leg in “Moby Dick.” Here are manufactured whole armies, such as you saw marching in the distance in “Farewell to Arms,” diminutive soldiers mounted in horizontal lines row on row and placed on a small travelling belt operating like a sprocket chain. Electrically controlled, they, swerve and halt and group together exactly as human beings wouic. In addition there are 8-inch horses that walk and pull and bend their heads, coming alive for you on the screen in heroic proportions. In' this one section are specialists from almost every craft. There are biidge builders, mechanical engineers, architects, sheet metal workers, wood carvers, sculptors and technicians in marine aircraft, to manufacture for you episodes that have to remain within the confines of credulity. Do you remember in the old days, when you rebelled at an unflattering likeness of yourself, someone would invariably come back with the reply, “But/it is a photograph. Arid the camera cannot lie.” Can it not? It has developed into a most magnificent liar—for now one never knows'when it is telling the truth. Illusions Necessary, •Fabulous counterfeits, producing unbelievable illusions, are fabricated, not for the deliberate duping of the public, but of necessity. The first and most vital reason is the protection of human life; the second, to present some occurrence the cost of which would be-prohibitive from the point of view of production. The : picture “Sky' Hawk” will serve as an illustration of the colossal undertakings given over to the department on “Special Effects,”., The story entailed an air’raid arid the bombing of London by Zeppelins. The Houses of Parliament, 'St. Paul’s, and great English

palaces were all modelled in clay before they were cast in plaster by technicians who knew aerial perspective. To a special engineer alone was given the construction of London Bridge. Miniature sets are generally drawn to the proportional standard of one-half inch to the foot of the real object. If a building calls for a 50-foot height the miniature must measure approximately 25 inches. Two hundred men worked two months to present a miniature city in which every window, all of which were fitted with infinitesimal panes of glass, every gable, every steeple and spire came to the eye with convincing validity. On invisible horizontal wires zoned off to a mathematical calculation rested the tiny planes, two inches in length, with little capsules of powder inside of them ready for explosions. These are fired by small batteries that work at given signals. Overhead is one of the big Zeppelins running on a wire with a fuse on the end of its nose. It cost £240 to make and measured only 25 inches, a model as perfect as human ingenuity could devise. At a given moment the Zeppelin comes in contact with another fuse wire on a miniature building and explodes. Its parts are ribboned with soft leads so that when the trigger sets off the explosions inside of it. the lead melts and the Zeppelin breaks in half. Battlefield Sequences. In battlefield sequences, such as are used in war pictures, the whole must be governed from a given point. This necessitates a switchboard on which are placed 30 or 40 buttons worked by levers. Every button controls an electrical contact point, and each is operated by one man. Thirty of them control the explosions that take place either in the air or on the battlefield. One touches off the wire of the trench that caves in. there is another for the enemy planes that swoop down, another for falling planes, a fourth uproots the trees and breakaways, a fifth serves for planes just - entering the arena of action, and so on. There is the greatest suspense in the filming of these miniature scenes. If one man misses his cue, if the explosions fail to occur on time, if any one thing fails to act as scheduled, the miniatures may be destroyed. Four to six weeks are required to reproduce the Zeppelin sequence, two whole days to reload the tiny capsules, and throe days to make up the set again. Many mental qualities are demanded of the craftsmen; alertness, accuracy, obedience, persistence, and patience. “Noah’s Ark’’ Episode. The photographing of the episode in “Noah’s Ark.” with 35 men in charge of 105 controls, was a matter of tense effort. One blunder and weeks of painstaking care would go for naught. One remembers the colossal flood that came to such gigantic proportions on the screen. The setting occupied a space only 200 feet square on the studio lot. On it were erected the diminutive hills, surmounted by the City of Babylon about to be destroyed. Cunningly inserted in those small mounds of earth Were tiny storage tanks of water, holding a total of 600,000 gallons. Every tank was electrically controlled. , A minute gate inside, operated by a lever,

opened to let the water out. Signals had to work with mathematical precision to release the wind machines, the smoke outlets, the rain producers, and the gushing waters. Says Fred Jackman, the directing genius of these effects: “That one scene took four months to make. It cost £BOOO, and in four minutes it wasn’t worth 20 pence.” Technical magicianship has attained such proportions that no longer are large sums spent on pretentious buildings lasting but a second. For example, a story may call for a cathedral, an industrial plant, or a palajee. The structure 'is not valuable enough to justify the expenditure of £IOOO on it, yet it is necessary for the whole. So only one storey is erected in full scale, such as you may have seen in the prison scene of “The Big House.” Painted on a glass 4ft. by 4ft. were the other nine storeys. This glass was hung about 25 feet away from the camera. When a presentation of more detailed work is exhibited, such as the palace with its carved escutcheon in the Janet Gaynor picture “Adorable,” or Maurice Chevalier’s “Love Parade,” a miniature top is made in plaster. Then, whether the scene on painted glass is 25 feet away from the camera or the plaster miniature is hung on big braces in the air three feet away, the camera’s infallible eye will form the right perspective. Fantastic “King Kong.” The most stupendous, laborious and pretentious effort in fictitious effects the industry has known up to the present was in the making of the picture “King Kong.” To make tiny prehistoric animals breathe and walk had been done before; but a 50-foot ape. that demanded animation in a semblance of half human desires meant utilising every resource known to photographic legerdemain. Six different apes were manufactured, from one 18in high up to the full-scale head and chest that measured 14 feet, which was made in relation to his presumed height of 50 feet. The head and chest were all that was fabricated of the massive Kong. Different arms and unattached legs were built for some scenes. Thirty bear skins were used for his covering alone. His screen career involved one year and eight months Of work. Six men inside the stupendous head controlled different movements of his face. One operated the jaws, another the moving of the eyes, one worked the rubber nostrils, another operated the skin filled with fluid and erupted when he fought the tyrransauras. This last-named monster, the largest animal known to have existed, was witnessed on the screen in colossal size. It bellowed like a bull and stamped out whole forests—but was actually only 10 feet long. Making Them Breathe.

Audiences cannot conceive of the prodigious labour and patience involved to make these animals seem real. They must breathe and appear alive. Inside their small s;ruclurcs are regular and perfect ribs built on a spine. Resting against these ribs and attached to them is a bladder, connected in turn by a tube to an air tank with a gauge on

it. The gauge is controlled by a small crank. After every photographic “take” this crank lets out the air, a fraction of an inch, collapsing the bladder. This same process, when reversed, expands the bladder so that when the film is run through the camera the creatures breathe and pant and gasp. But by what means do they fight and lunge in battle? By stop motion. What is stop motion? It is the same process that animates a Mickey Mouse picture, except that, instead of photographing one drawing at a time, it is necessary to photograph one position at a time. The miniature animals are constructed with loose joints so that when parts of their bodies are set up in place they can be moved in any direction.

In “Kong,” when the# triceratops, which resembles an enlarged boar, charged and his body in death throes, every separate picture of the hundreds constituting the completed scene had to be made individually, resulting in only a sixteenth of a foot of film in each photograph. For instance, several dozen separate and complete “takes” had to be made to give a representation of one rearing leg. Hours of the most persevering work must elapse between the photographing of these tiny scenes; because one of the miniatures may have to move a leg, another the whole body and tail, another merely the eyes and mouth —and all the actions must be correlated. An eight hours' output is often measured in inches of film, and never more than 20 feet may be completed in a working day. The Animators. The men who do this special type of work are called animators and arc skilled technicians in their field. To animate the doll in the miniature Kong’s hand so that it metamorphosed itself where it lay on a ledge or a tree into a full-grown girl was the recording of sequences that called for machine-like labour and grim endurance. In one scene the ape was shown coming for the first time into, contact with a human beihg. a girl. With intense interest ho plucks the garments from off the figure, piece by piece, supposedly hundreds of feet in midair. “This one sequence took from 8.30 in the morning to 6 at night. “I sat In the tremendous paw of the ape. which was a solitary detached arm on a steel rod only 10 feet above the ground, while Kong picked to pieces five dresses, one after another. It was necesasry to do the scene over as it all hinged on a matter of timing.” said the actress. The enormous hand of Kong had to be animated as he picked the clothes apart, and every fragment of the dress as it gave way had to match these timed movements of the ape with piston-like precision. The heads of this department, in whose keeping was left the execution of these effects, will tell you that the making of the fictitious is a craft that demands a knowledge of architectural drawing and of civil engineering, because it is based on a high degree of perspective. Transparency. A special photographer was sent to New York City to photograph the Em-

I pire Slate Building. This authentic ; scene was inserted in the picture by i means of a method known as the ■ “transparency.” In matching the films . taken of the real girl as she lay _ on ; the ledge of the Empire State Building, ; if the mechanical hand of Kong as . he picked her up had deviated so, much ; as a thousandth of an inch above or . below her, it would have strained your ; credulity. This' blending is a fusing of ; the unimpeachable with the unreal and is the very essence of the trick that ! fools the eye. : These transparencies are one of the i most important adjuncts of picture ; legerdemain. With this process the aci tion of the player can be transppsed ■ into any desired background. Richard Barthelmess. for example, can be made , to walk through a plantation actually , photographed in Java; or Miss Carol Lombard can be put in Honolulu wat- : ers, riding a surf board— although Miss ■ Lombard and Mr Barthelmess are photographed for both sequences in Hollywood. In “No One Man, ’ Miss Lom--1 bard’s picture referred to above, the . surf board rested on a ball and socket i that rocked it from side to side on a ; studio set, with sprays of water spread- ; ing out from beneath a small wooden trough that worked on hinges. Every ! time the trough collapsed it shot the water over the surfboard —that is all the water Miss Lombard ever saw in that Honolulu scene. How It Is Done. A transparency is exactly like a backdrop in a theatre scene, except that it is animated. The action performed by the players takes place before a ground-glass screen of 18 by 20 feet. As the scene is played, a projection camera of the sort used in moving picture houses throws on this glass curtain from a distance of 100 feet the already photographed Waikiki waters and beach which had been especially taken in Honolulu for this picture. In simple jahraseology. it means rephotographing another photograph. Transparencies give a deepened accent of authenticity achieved in no other manner, and in some instances no expense is considered too great to obtain these effects. For “Madame Butterfly.” a camera crew was scheduled to sail for Japan in time to photograph all the cherry blossom backgrounds. There was nothing in this picture that was not the true Japan, from its temples to its wistaria. And the only make-believe sequences were those putting into these real settings the actors in the Hollywood studio. Photographic backgrounds have also been made in the Orient for the screening of the book, “Oil for the Lamps of China.” You might have seen for a few seconds on the screen a large group of diners composed of men and women in evening dress. At no time could one believe that the people eating and drinking with semblance of actuality were miniatures two inches high made of composition, sitting at tables the size of a silver dollar, in which were inserted small particles of mica to give a reflection as of tableware. Pasted across the backs of these tiny men and women are infinitesimal slivers of chiffon; on these are turned the wind ma-

chines so that the scene gives a semblance of human beings in movement. Calculating Perspective.

And now the question, what brings them' to such a size when you see them on the screen? The most important thing in the filming of miniatures is how to calculate the perspective. If the perspective is wrong there is no illusion. Perhaps nowhere does Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity come home to one with such compelling force. Here is one instance in human affairs where his theory can be put into practice and be proved. Perspective is all a matter of right relationship. The camera meets its own perspective regardless of size. You cannot defeat its accuracy. It finds and demands its own position in relation to its .object. If interfered with, it achieves only the abnormal. Certain effects where living beings are supposed to be destroyed can only be obtained by illusion. One remembers “The Big Trail,” a picturisation of the hazards endured by pioneers during a trek across the western plains, where a landslide obliterated waggons and animals. On a dirt road in the studio ranch were piled little hillocks of earth to. resemble mountains. These hillocks had a hinged shelf tucked away in them, which was operated by a pulley. There was a ground drop of six to eight inches. Below these suppositious hills lay a tiny track covered by a thin layer of soil. On this track the travelling feet of miniatdre horses with real hair tails operated on minute wheels. At a given point the trigger was pulled and the earth belched forth, inundating horses, waggons, miniature men and women. A Magic Carpet. Is seeing believing? There was nothing in this scene that made its protest of deception to the eye. It is a far cry from present-day phenomenal illusions to the period when Douglas Fairbanks flew his magic carpet in “The Thief of Bagdad.” This incident had to be worked out by Douglas and his studio staff. On a 90foot Llewellyn crane hanging up in the air was suspended a large carpet on six wires. When the beam started the carpet would be left behind a little and it was a thrilling moment to the studio crew when the slack was taken up and the carpet swirled through the air. Opposite on a wheeled platform sat’the cameraman with his travelling camera, whicn sped along with the crane as it moved. Douglas regarded the whole thing dubiously. The man responsible for the contraption sang out, “It’s all right. Doug. It is guaranteed to hold 600 pounds.” “I’d like something more than a guarantee in a spot like this,” called back Fairbanks, stepping gingerly into mid-air.