WIELDING THE "MEG."

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 225, 22 September 1928, Page 5 (Supplement)

WIELDING THE "MEG."

THE DUTIES OF A DIRECTOR.

HOLLYWOOD'S HARDEST JOB.

! RESPONSIBILITIES COMPENSATE

FOR POWERS

It is the hand that wields the megaphone that rules filmdom. For the "meg" is the traditional symbol of directorship, which, in turn, is one of the most unlimited monarchies in the world. Compared with the powers vested in a modern film director, one of the ancient Caesars, it is claimed, was little more than a day labourer. If the*e is a Mount Olympus of Filmdom three out of four of its super-celestial inhabitants are, directors. True* it is one of the best-paid positions in movies. Its salary scale runs from £60 a week pay cheque of the director of crude "slap-stick" on the onereel comedy "lot" to the £200 a day contracts of the real "big-timers" like James Gruze and Erich von Stroheim. But it should be well paid. It is no exaggeration to say that the director has by far the hardest job in all Hollywood. While the film industry has made out of the director, a figure of almost unlimited power, it has, at the same time, heaped on his Bhoulders responsibilities that few men could bear for any length of time. Some idea of the terrific physical and mental price that a directorship demands, may be gathered that the knowledge that, despite the" prestige and financial rewards the position brings, there are several capable men in pictures to-day who would not consider an appointment. Price of a Directorship. Only recently one man refused the third offer of a directorship he has had in the last two years.. It meant a salary of £1250 a week, where the man in question is making less than £200. There were no strings of any kind to the offer. It was with a well established company and with the best of working conditions. Yet it was flatly refused. The man who refused it was Albert Selby Le Vino, a free-lance scenario writer,-who has done the stories for a dozen film successes of the past few years. Neither mentally nor physically is Le Vino a coward, nor is he afraid of work. He has one of those keenly alert brains, and he gets / a prodigious ' amount of work out of it in a year, but he is frankly appalled at the price which a directorship demands of its candidate. He doubts if any man can fill the responsibilities of a really first-class director for five years without suffering a complete nervous breakdown, and declares that although he has the normal desire for money and the things it will,buy, he does not want it so much that he would trade his peace of mind, his physical health and his joy of living for it. A director becomes an old man long before his time, literally burned out, is his contention.

"The director," says Le Vino, "is at once the Lord Commander-in-Chief of Hollywood, and the fool of the family. If anything goes wrong, from a storm that wrecks a half-million dollar set to a player who catches the measles and holds up a sequence, it is -the director's fault. Consequently he spends his entire life in a frenzied endeavour to See that approximately a hundred assistants in a dozen different lines of specialised work, do not let anything go wrong. His combined duties would tax the abilities of six very capable men,, yet he is expected to do them all himself. "A director's hours average about fifteen a day. He is usually on the set an hour or more before his players arrive in the morning, and after a day's 'shooting* is finished he stays for three or four more hours looking at the ''rushes' of the previous day's work, in the projection room. When his day's work is finally dope he is too 'fagged out' mentally, to do more than roll wearily into bed and snatch a few hours' sleep befqre starting the whole weary grind all over again. Sunday work is the rule rather than the exception, and four straight months of

mind-wracking labour ia the average time consumed for each programme picture. No thanks; no director's job for me. I may make less money as a writer, but I see a lot more of my family. Also lam enabled to get some little joy out of living." The Necessary Qualities. "The director has to have a sense of drama and' a sense of story •telling,*' was the explanation offered by Clarence Brown, when questioned on the subject. "He has to have the ability to inspire in his actors the emotions and reactions necessary to his story; he has to have a pictorial sense that will ! enable him to assemble his scenes in good pictorial composition. He has to nave business ability—enough of a gift of management to keep his picture within reasonable limits of cost; he has to have resource enough to adapt himself to any difficulty that may suddenly arise, such as a location site that wasn't what he expected, or the lack of some equipment that, in an emergency, he must replace with a substitute. He must have balance enough to avoid "over-shooting"—a picture can be only so long—and he must tell his story as effectively as possible in the least amount of film. He must have an infinite capacity for noting detail; he must be able, for instance, to spot a wrist watch worn by mistake by one of a thousand Roman soldiers in a big mob scene, such as I saw Fred Niblo do while he was shooting "Ben Hur." Add a great deal of patience and a huge amount of perseverance to the list, and you have a fair idea of the many qualifications for a successful director. ■Further information of the formidable equipment which a director of the bigger pictures must possess is given by James Cruze, famous Paramount director, who made "Old Ironsides." "To begin with," Cruze # said, "a director must be an expert in photograph so that he can judge his values. He must be a student of human life, or the spirit of drama will be lacking in the characterisations, situations and reactions in his picture. "Naturally a director must know the technique of acting if he would tell players how to perform; he must know lighting, if to give orders to cameramen and electricians; he must have an insight into art if he is to make requests of artists; and he must be prepared to judge critically the efforts of scenarists and even title writers if he is to pass on the picture, product for which he, after all, is held plainly responsible. But beyond all this, if he is making a large historical pro-: auction such as 'The Covered. Wagon,' or 'Old Ironsides,' he must spend months in painstaking research until he is .nearly letter perfect in his subject.' In making 'Old Ironsides' is was necessary for me to make an intensive study of sea warfare as it existed in 1804, so that I would make no error in manoeuvering two fleets' of sailing men-o'-war. To be sure of my subject I spent months absorbing early American history, the marine science and language of the era, the modes of dress and manners of the day. I even sailed to Tripoli and studied the topography of the Mediterranean coast." There seems little doubt then, after surveying the evidence, that the director has the hardest job in Hollywood. Who, then, has the hardest job among the directors? Few people will deny Cecil B. De Mille's claim. "C.8." is not only one of the most ambitious directors in pictures, but he. also manages to cover such trifling positions as production executive, bank official, distributing executive and financier. An actual day's working schedule, tabulated While he was working on "The King of Kings," gives an idea of the really amazing amount of work done by Cecil B. De Mille in the course of his daily routine. It covers his activities from 7.30 in the morning- until after 11 at night, until he had no opportunity for rest. He did not go near the set until 9.45 a.m., but between the time he arose and 9.30 he had read reports on sales overseas, given orders for his production department, read reports from foreign exchanges, dictated careful answers to voluminous correspondence, 'conferred with his general manager on projected shifts and changes in stories due to go into production, and called in scenario writers for a conference on the coming work of the day. Shooting went on all through the day, until five at night, and after that several hours had to be spent in looking at rushes, preparing

for the following day's work and reading scripts so that, when the time came to call "camera," he would' have all necessary facts at his fingertips to direct the scenes without having to refer to notes.