A PEREGRINATION

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22836, 21 March 1936, Page 4

A PEREGRINATION

RECORDS OF AN ENGLISH JOURNEY XI. THE SILVERN SCREEN Stand-in (kinerua parlance): A lowpaid player having a similitude in face and figure to the principal in a film, whose place he (she) takes on the set while lights, cameras, and grouping are adjusted preparatory to the commencement of actual " shooting " of a scene. To understand the purpose of the standin is absolutely necessary to an understanding of kinema production, for the stand-in might be said to epitomise the fantastic nature of the processes through which a film is created. It seems to be explicit in making pictures that the more a player is paid the less he (or she) shall be asked to do. So only the most important members of the cast are given stand-ins, to relieve them from the tedium of posing around on the set while the technical spadework is done. During the time their places are occupied by these pale travesties, they do their posing in the wings, as it were, affecting an entire disdain for the proceedings in which they are soon to take a vital part. They are lolling about in canvas chairs, looking most unconscionable unconscious, when one is admitted to the studio through heavy sound-proof doors. It is an Anglo-American cast, for quite a supercolossal production, and it seems as if half the more familiar faces of filmland are here. But the first shock is not to find so many typistes' he-men and ploughboys' dream-women all in one dim room as to realise they are wearing bibs. Thrust into the collar of each film hero's shirt is a handkerchief, in the mode affected by hearty diners in second-class hotels for their table napkins. Above the surprising white ruffle, their faces are vivid. They are, in truth, the most vivid things about them, for close_ inspection reduces your celluloid celebrities to_ the very ordinary proportions of humanity. But their faces are inescapably vivid, because they are painted a bright orange hue. The men's faces, that is. The resolutelybeautiful faces of the ladies are more normal, speaking in terms of cosmetics. And only the men recline in their chairs. It would clearly be impossible for the ladies, in their sheathed satin to or even to sit comfortably, without splitting something. On the set, which represents a luxuri-ously-furnished salon from Park lane, lacking a fourth wall, is much activity. Stand-ins and minor players are grouped in an elegant tableau. Obviously, they have just sipped a cocktail, and are about to walk through the swing doors before them into another chamber for dinner. Chatting with genteel animation —if it is possible to chat in pantomime, for their talk is soundless —they move forward. One is tempted to dash forward into the lost dimension of their film-world and warn them —" Stop, stop, you cannot dine to-night! " For beyond the doorg to which they advance so happily, is not a well-laden table but a hungry battery of cameras. But it is too late! The doors are flung wide, the guests step up with animation, and pass through them into a glare of Kleig-lights, into a huddle of wires, ropes, microphones, and technicians. Lifting their skirts, ducking their heads, without surprise they scuttle unfed back into the salon through the absent wall. But they are undaunted, their appetite for phantom victuals is unappeased. "Just once again," says the Director, and his guests, radiant once more, march through the doors to their barren repast. "Now we'll try the lights." The performance is repeated many times more. The guests are grouped for a long time under the burning lamps, while their noses grow shiny, their fine dresses wilt, and the cameramen adjust their cameras and the soundmen fiddle with their microphones. SHOOTING STARS The while the stand-ins stand and the technicians twiddle, the Director speaks earnestly, confidentially, to one, then another, of the principal gentlemen with

bibs and the leading ladies with worldfamous faces. He is ever thus employed when not standing by the cameras or conferring with the technical staff. He is an indomitable commander, a suppliant slave, a lover, a tutor, a wistful petitioner to each in turn. His spectacles gleam with serious enthusiasm, his arms move in persuasive gestures, his plump hips roll, as he mimes and pleads and instructs. His lordly auditors hear him without enthusiasm, eyes focussed on some distant vision. At the end of his most eloquent speeches they' incline the head aloofly, to indicate awareness of his unconsidered presence. Then at last: "We'll try it now," says the Director, " Stand-ins off the set." " Stand-ins off the set! " His words are taken up by harsh-voiced minions and echo interminably about the studio. The gallant men take off their bibs, the lovely ladie fl smooth their frocks, and enter the salon while the lesser guests depart, still unfed and looking dispirited about it. "Lights! Cameras!" Everything is ready—or nearly so. But the Director is looking sadly at his gilded stars. They are drooping negligently on the set. with almost incredible disdain. They seem, to speak truthfully, to be unacquainted with their place in the scene, and indifferent of their ignorance. Bored and remote they stand, while .the director peer s at them from many angles, and moves them about

. Then ho thinks of a way past their unresponsiveness. He beckons _to the stand-ins. " Miss Blot, show Miss Languish where you were standing. There! Just so. Thank you so much, Miss Languish. Now, Mr Blank, will you show Mr Magnificent just how you sat. There, Mr Magnificent, if you would move just a shade —so sorry. Thank you, thank you." The stand-ins creep off again. Miss Languish, Mr Magnificent, and their celestial peers have the stage. All that is now necessary is to persuade them into doing what their stand-ins have been doing, under their bored gaze, for 60 minutes. The Director, tireless, ingratiating, alert, trots back to his cameras. The guests move to their rendezvous beyond the double doors. This, time the voices are clear and loud. As they advance, Mr Sinister, who is evidently the villain, detains the so-heroic Mr Magnificent. He whispers in his ear, grasping his urm meanwhile. Mr Magnificent appears affronted. He listens, he nods. He slaps Mr Sinister on the shoulder. Mr Sinister, elaps him back. They follow the other' guests into the face of the cameras. Full half a dozen times the little drama is repeated: half a dozen times Mr Sinister and Mr Magnificent hold their brief colloquy. Slap, slap! Then the Director is satisfied. "Cameras! Lights! Sound!" All is bustle. The silent motors commence to turn. A youth holds a number plate, before the camera, chants a rigmarole, and ends it with a sharp report from a wooden clapper. The guests march into dinner again, Mr Sinister and Mr Magnificent discourse as seriously as if their words were new and portentous. Slap, slap! And a scene is being filmed. " Very good," says the Director. " But . ." He moves, cajoling, pleading among the players, hia desperate last wishes on his lipo. The shooting proceeds again. FANCIFUL FACTS When the shot has been made, finiilly, and the stars retire limply to their chairs, full time for the performance has been about ninety minutes. The scene 'that results will appear eventually on the screen (if it is not "cut" or scrapped) for perhaps thirty seconds. It has cost — well, these expensive ladies and gentlemen, this concourse of scriptmen, electricians, cameramen, and the rest like, a little butter on their bread! Those # who have read their "Once in a Lifetime," that diabolic serio-comedy of Hollywood, and who remember President Roosevelt's (battle with the super-presidential salaries of the stars, and who have any knowledge (as who has not?) of the domestic peccadilloes of the kinema's elite, do not need to be told of the lush extravagances, the almost mythical preposterositieg (a super word for a E.uper theme!) of the industry. They realise that in Filmland things are different, outside the experi-; ence and comprehension of people like themselves. They hear with small amazement of the decline of a film company into the receivers' hands, involving three hundred million dollars in its slide; they are scarcely impressed to learn that this film cost two hundred thousand pounds, and another earned a million sterling; while another was scrapped after ha.lf a million dollars had been spent on making thirty thousand feet of it—three times the normal programme length. These are facts, not the fancy figures of the publicity office, but why labour them? No one is going to dispute them, for such statistical improbabilities concern an improbable land of make-believe, which also, as you may prove with your own eyes, exists. Here, in a gaunt concrete building in a dingy London suburb, flourishes an industry that hag no historical equivalent beyond our present century, that spends money like water and recoups it like sand "from the sea-shore. Here nothing is preposterous, from the fact that through these grim portals pass ordinary people so enveloped in glimour that they are no longer human to nine-tenths of humanity, to the extraordinary circumstance that from this great, forbidding factory the essence of romance is borne away in tins and transplanted to. the ends of the earth, to recreate an illusion for millions of the earth's plain folk. Alice never walked through the look-ing-glass into so strange a land as one finds in the mundane wastes of Shepherd's Bush, where'Mammon holds a mirror up to Nature. • • ■ J. M.