TEST OF MEMORY

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 74, Issue 192, 15 August 1931, Page 18 (Supplement)

TEST OF MEMORY

SIGNIFICANT DETAILS. TASK OF “CONTINUITY GIRL.” Do yuu always port your hair in the same way and put on the same amount j of lipstick and rouge every time you * makeup? Probably yuu don't, Mini i stars frequently fail to do so, and these i are a few reasons why the career of the continuity girl has come into being, i writes Air W. A. Mutch, in the Daily j Mail. Her job, which is just as likely to begin at midnight as at nine in the 1 morning, consists chiefly of tilling up : the gaps in the memory of other wo- 1 men—and men, too. Because women ar 100 per cent, more observant than < men, they are rapidly superseding them • in this career. Miss Eileen Wallis, one of the youngest continuity girls at the British International studios, has spent two and a- , half years in reminding film stars of the ; kind of dress, shoes, ornaments, style : of hairdressing, and so on that they j wore in previous shots of each scene. • ; Sometimes there is an interval of a; ■ few weeks between shots—a great me- j mory test for the continuity girl, who j; has to carry a mind-picture of every j< detail of the group. Not only must she ’ remember the clothes worn, the position of every article of furniture, the set of j a handkerchief in a breast pocket, but | also the shades of rouge and colour; of powder used and the amount of eye- I shadow applied. And all such details |

must be carefully memorised and ad-j hered to throughout the “shots. 77 Tact, too, is needed, for it taxes a brave woman to approach a temperamental star and remind her that the make-up man is walking about with her eyelashes in his pocket! No matter how naturally long and luxuriant an actress 7 own eyelashes may be, it is essential in some characterisations, such as that of a languorous Spanish beauty, to wear artificial ones. While women fail usually to remember that they were wearing a certain ring or bracelet in previous “takes” of a scene, men frequently forget to whiten their hair at the* temples when their part demands this make-up. These are points which have to be noticed by the continuity girl before the shot is made. < ’therwise hundreds of feet of lilm are wasted, because the scene has to be retaken. When sets are left overnight or for a few days some- I one invariably moves a vase or puts a ■ •cushion in a different place. All these ; tiny points have to be noticed and cor- : reeled.