Spare-Time Film Stars—

Northern Advocate, 7 December 1935, Page 1 (Supplement)

Spare-Time Film Stars —

Take another look at those bright girls strap-hanging, those refreshingly smart secretaries escaping from that vast building, writes H. A. V. Bulleid in the “Daily Mail.”

Some of them, an hour or so after leaving their work, will be under the eye of the motion-picture camera —in the studio of an amateur cine society.

There are some twenty of these societies in London alone, whose output is from one to four pictures each year.

Last year I directed a play, set in the Welsh mountains, which runs for twenty minutes, and the story is told entirely in pictures; on the other hand (so great are the possibilities), I have just completed a full-length psychological drama with seventy sub-titles.

Amateur films are generally made for amusement. The sales-girl or typist, and for that matter the salesman or clerk or electrical engineer, who have the leading parts in a current cine society production, do not want to wear out their already tired brains with the heavy work of a complex film with involved montage and difficult camera-angles. They want to pass a few evenings and week-ends enjoying straightforward acting in a moderately simple drama, comedy, or tihriller. And that they are on the whole successful cannot be denied. A projection evening at a cine society is never dull and is often mostentertaining. The well-worn story of the horror of a scene “getting the players down” has to be smiled upon as pure hokum. You have to think what you’re doing when acting for the screen, and this precludes all risk of getting thrilled, especially when a camera is buzzing away beside you, and dazzling lights are shining on you from all angles. As regards general production routine, the amateur director is at a slight advantage compared with the professional. Apart from the consoling facts that the amateur need not bother about either the box-office or the censor, he has not, generally speaking, to contend with temperamental players, nor with those who have the profile complex. Nor is he troubled by the picture-stealing menace.

Production expenses are the biggest stumbling-block. Filming on stan-dard-size film costs nearly £1 per minute; the amateur, therefore, uses narrower film, which lowers the cost to about six shillings per minute, but even so this is a heavy item. Moreover, use of sub-standard film, coupled with the absence of synchronised sound, prevents the general public from ever seeing amateur films in the ordinary cinemas, though they are often on view in halls and concert rooms, usually in aid of chai’ity, and they arc invariably worth a visit.

Let the film-struck join a cine society, which will, give them a chance to see just how good they really are on the screen; and even if the result is tremendously depressing they will have seen the hard labour attached to all screen acting and tasted the intriguing fruit of a superbly interesting hobby.