VISITORS AT THE STUDIO

Southland Times, Issue 23377, 8 December 1937, Page 8

VISITORS AT THE STUDIO

PRODUCTION METHODS IN AUSTRALIA The wide interest in films as a source of entertainment has aroused an equal interest in the methods of production employed in motion picture studios and those of the Cinesound company in Sydney have been a considerable attraction to visitors. It is a problem whether contact with the process of manufacture of a film would destroy illusions about the finished product. Most people, however, have been entranced with the work, and have expressed their intention of seeing the picture on the screen. ( One of the sequences from “The Broken Melody,” at present being filmed in the Cinesound studios, shows on the screen Lloyd Hughes, Frank Harvey and Alec Kelleway in a living room. They are in evening clothes, and they are speaking their lines easily and fluently. The room has a carpet on the floor and it is well furnished. What the audience does not know is that the room consists of only three walls, and that the lamp apparently hanging from the ceiling is actually suspended from a beam. The room has no ceiling. If the camera had been tilted up it would have shown rows'of big lights shining down into the room from the tips of the walls and looking over the walls from a scaffolding on which the lights are erected a number of electricians Would have appeared. Many feet above, the soundproof ceiling of the studio would have been seen.

Again, had the camera been turned a little to the left, the picture would have taken in various groups of people standing motionless—electricians, stage mechanics, property men, and artists made-up and ready to go on the set. A. little to the right the picture would have included another set partially erected, with carpenter, painter and plasterer, and others standing at attention because just a moment before a loud siren had shrieked, demanding dead silence.

The audience is spared all these things, however. All the clatter and movement ceased when the siren sounded. “Roll it,” said the director, and the camera, now on its best behaviour, filmed the picture as it was required for the screen.