Films and The Studios

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 774, 21 September 1929, Page 31

Films and The Studios

VEW talkie camera Warner Brothers has added an Innovation to the photographing and recording of talking films. It has abandoned the camera box, known as the "Ice box," within which the camera was placed so that the noise of the grinding machines would not register on the delicate microphones, -phe "camera cloak,” which is used instead of the box, i 3 constructed of heavy felt, which cuts out completely any extraneous noises. It is being used for the first time in filming “The Aviator,” featuring Edward Everett Horton.. FlTiiflXO NATURAL COLOUR With the filming of motion pictures entirely in natural colour, a new style of make-up is coming into vogue in the Hollywood film colony. It differs greatly from the ordinary screen make-up, and from that used for panchromatic film. Orange is the predominant shade. The players use a deep orange lip rouge, with a slightly lighter shade of orange on the cheeks. This reflects the natural flesh tones. The dark shading around the eyes is no longer necessary, as the colour negative is extremely sensitive to dark pigments. Betty Compson, Sally O'Neil, Louise Fazenda, and the Fairbanks twins were first to experiment with the new make-up, and the results were so satisfactory that it was used by all the other members of the cast. the LAVGH PROBLEM “Spacing for laughs” is one of the problems of making talking motion pictures. On the stage the player who. gets a laugh can wait until it subsides before he goes on with his lines, but as the sound reproduction is continuous in a talkie, there is no system by which the action can be halted while a laugh dies down. Again, what is funny in one part of the world is not in another. Some audiences laugh more readily than others. Director Howard Bretherton solved the problem in “The Time, the Place, and the Girl,” for Warner Brothers, by giving the players some unimportant lines to say after each laugh, or what is hoped to be a laugh.