HOW IT IS DONE

Waikato Times, Volume 109, Issue 18229, 17 January 1931, Page 16 (Supplement)

HOW IT IS DONE

MOVIE DECEPTIONS. ‘ INGENIOUS FAKES. Mr Jan Gordon and his wife Cora, two artists of Bohemian habits, who have toured Europe sketching (quaint scenes and quaint people, and writing books about them, recently crossed the Atlantic to New York, and crossed the American Continent to California (says the Melbourne Age). At Hollywood they were allowed behind the scenes In the film studios, and In their new book, “Star-Dust In Hollywood,” they have revealed many of the secrets of film-making.

Before the era of the movie it used to be said that the camera cannot lie, hut some of the best effects that are shown on the screen are the result of teaching the camera to deceive the publio. “Under-water scenes are quite dry, but are photographed through thin tanks of gently-moving water,” writes the authors of “Star-Dust in Hollywood.” In “The Black Pirate” a band of men had to swim under water in perfect formation. The men were placed in position on their stomachs; they then went through the motions of swimming, while the camera, lookJng down on them vertically through a thin tank of water, was moved backward in the opposite direction. When this was reproduced on the fixed screen it gave the complete illusion that thp men were swimming forward. In “The Thief of Bagdad,” Douglas Fairbanks rode Pegasus into the clouds. This was a dangerous feat. The horse had to gallop up a narrow incline covered with black velvet, a material that, absorbing the light, does not photograph, and thus seems invisible. The animal was gradually trained under the dazzling glare of the arc lamps. A single slip on that narrow nath might have meant death for the actor, but the gay quality of courage that Fairbanks produces so well in his films is really a quality of the man himself.

Camouflage,

* “In some films the risk is less than it seems to be. In Los Angeles is a street of houses set on the edge of a cliff, under which passes, a tramway tunnel. Immediately below is a street

have induced an almost equally lavish expense, for in spite of the muchvaunted commercial organisation of America the movies have not been reduced to the status of financially sane proportions. A notorious case was that of a director whose fancy was caught by a pretty lake high up in the mountains. He determined to set part of a play at the spot. His opportunity occurred. At huge expense he transported the company—actors, electric plant, photographic plant, tents, and stores —many hundreds of miles, to find at the end that the lake, was dry. It filled only in the spring, and the lake scenes had at last to be photographed with equal success on the Universal ‘lot,’ where an artificial lake was quickly made at a hundredth part of the cost. During our stay inHollywood this lake was serving a double purpose. A stout canvas screen divided it in two; on the one side of the screen was part of a show