HOME MOVIES

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 771, 18 September 1929, Page 15

HOME MOVIES

Outdoor Interiors For j Amateur Work SCENE CONSTRUCTION (Bfj f II onto vie.” J r INHERE are only two possible ways of designing a theatrical setting. One is the realistic and the other is the idealistic or imaginative way. The latter, which requires a higher type of intelligence and education to appreciate, consists in expressing moods and not facts, as when a money-lender’s office is represented by a back drop of blood red, on which a spider’s web of immense size is painted, and the money-lender’s desk is a block of ice. The former way, that of realism, is common to commercial pictures, and necessisated by their appeal to all kinds and conditions of men, imaginative and otherwise, educated or not. It is to be hoped that amateur movie producers will follow in the footsteps of the Little Theatre movement, and will tend toward the idealised or symbolical, which is easily produced, economical and free from precedent or rule. For the purpose of the present article, however, we may coniine ourselves to the more conventional realistic way of building sets, assuming that they are to be erected out of doors, that they must cost as little as possible and yet be as convincing' as possible. Let us remember at the start that realistic is not synonymous with real. Merely to copy real life accurately will not produce the impression of reality on the screen. Size of Sets For fixample, how large should a set be? Unless it is larger than in real life, it will appear smaller, because the camera lens works at an angle of thirty degrees or less, while the human eye roams about its orbit over an area of about one hundredeighty degrees. Standing five feet from an ordinary drawing room wall, you can see the whole wall; the camera, to see the same wall, has to be twenty feet away or more. Moving the camera away to get the background. we are usually obliged to move the furniture and the action downstage, to keep the action within reasonable size on the -screen, unless we chose to jump quickly to a big close-up. For that reason, the floor area of a movie set is commonly larger than the floor area of the corresponding room in real life. The same with light. The average wall in a home is covered with a light coloured, smooth, patterned wallpaper, whose function is to reflect as much light as possible. Yet In real life we seldom pay attention to a wallpaper. In the movies we have all the light we need from other sources, and that kind of wallpaper would attract undue attention without serving any good purpose. We shall not seek realism, therefore, by covering our sets with the same kind of wallpaper that, is used in a real room. On the contrary, we shall either burlap the walls, or cover them with a rough plaster surface that will break up the light and give texture to the wall, or

c .-- „ . - _ . - paper them with a fibrous, oatmeal- | like surface of much darker shade Being thus cautioned against false | realism, we shall not fall into the opposite error of assuming that our i spectators will accept as realistic any wobbly contraption we choose to call | scenery. If we are able to afford | it, we shall buikl our scenery as solid as rock; we shall really and truly i carve panelings and mouldings; we | shall use stone fireplaces and porcej lain sinks. But if we wish to econI omise, we can still manufacture con- ' vincing sets of cheaper materials. • By far the cheapest way to make scenery is to use painted canvas flats. For out door use. they may have to be backed with building paper, to keep the light from being seen through the canvas, and they will have to be braced firmly to resist the ordinary breeze, but they will afford a vast variety at little cost. If we are to use outdoor sets our first requirement, is a level location of ample dimensions on which to erect a quite level floor of soft wood, so smooth that the light will uot show under the flats. The space should I not he less than fifty to sixty feet from 1 north to south, and thirty feet from i east to west. The actual flooring j should cover thirty-five feet, at least, j by twenty-five. The camera will often ! be off the floor. On that flooring we shall erect our j sets, each consisting theoretically of i two, and only two, walls at a right angle. The longer wall will run north-south, and the shorter, eastwest. Whether the entire set faces north or south will depend on the climate, the time of day at which the scene is to be shot, and -the facilities for diffusing and reflecting the light, as discussed later. Sometimes the longer wall will be at the right of the camera, sometimes at the left. Each Avail will consist of so many six-foot flats, four-foot flats, two-foot flats, door flats and window flats, an incredible variety of combinations being possible with even a small stock. Unner no circumstances shall we attempt a three-sided room, as the third side gets in the way, cuts off light, and would have to consist of flats of a different nature.