Weird Angles Are Now Made By Carpenters

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 744, 17 August 1929, Page 27

Weird Angles Are Now Made By Carpenters

Welcome Respite for Suffering Cameramen CONTINENTAL INFLUENCE

[ Talking pictures have done ; more than alter standards | of acting and general studio | requirements. They have \ changed completely the acJ cepted methods of staging j and mounting films.

HFEW years ago, writes an American studio expert, a motion picture set looked like one of those pastel-coloured washes that architects prepare for their clients. Then came the Continental influence and all sorts of weird effects were introduced by means of shooting pictures from various angles—hanging comeramen and cameras upside down, suspending them with a hook — and other such playful devices that made them half acrobat and half cameraman.

The dramatic effect of the pictures was heightened by the employment of this procedure. Such imported pic-

tures as “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,” “Variety” and “The Last Laugh” were responsible for the thought and action. But along came talking pictures and with them ponderous comeras that had to be moved about with a travelling crane. Imagine shooting pictures from various angles with this equipment.

Then, angles were built into the sets to give the desired effect and when a staircase had to look alarmingly steep and angular, the cameraman didn’t worry—it was left to the ingenuity of the stage carpenter. In “Bulldog Drummond” the sets are designed to give the proper air of midnight horror to a story of blackmail, torture and sudden death—suggestive of the genius of Edgar Allan Poe. Vanishing points are all wrong; windows slant unaccountably; floors slope in several directions at once; there are shadows where no shadows should be and none at all where they might be expected. This is the new screen mode.