COSTLY CHANGE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22350, 22 February 1936, Page 38 (Supplement)

COSTLY CHANGE

AMERICAN STUDIOS NEW ELECTRICITY SYSTEM Camera equipment worth not less than £750,000, together with an incalculable amount of projection, recording and cutting equipment, will be replaced or rebuilt in Hollywood with the next few months. For in May Los Angeles will begin to draw its Eower from Boulder Dam, where a new ydro-electric station has been erected, and the current supply will change from 50 to 60 cycles per second. Considerable loss of money and disorganisation must result to American studios as a consequence. All the studios replace a number of theijr cameras every year in order to keep up. to date, and se%'eral will take the opportunity to enlarge their annual replacement plans and to change over to a more modern type of equipment. Twentieth Century-Fox, for example, are building 20 cameras of a new type to go with the new current at a cost of £40,000. But the studio chiefs regard this as a blessing in disguise. The new camera, which has been evolved by the studio staff, runs so silently that it can be worked without the large, heavy, soundproof " blimp " which-is necessary to prevent the noise of the camera from being picked up by the microphones. The company's original stock of cameras numbered 37, which with the appropriate "gadgets" was worth over £66,000. This number will be ultimately made up - and even increased as Darryl Zanuck, their new chief of production, is building a new stage, to be followed by three more, and hopes ultimately to raise the number to seven, each stage requiring at least three cameras when in use.

Warners, who also have some 40 cameras in regular use, have just finished the last of nine new stages and have started making "Green Pastures" on it. Paramount, who own perhaps 100 cameras, have some 40 in every day

use, and have added a 100-ton refrigeration plant and eight new printers (all of which work from the electric current) to their equipment. The remainder of • the eight major companies each have between 40 and 50 cameras in regular use, except United Artists, who have from 14 to 16, and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, who have at least 100.