HOME MOVIES

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 777, 25 September 1929, Page 16

HOME MOVIES

Outdoor Interiors For Amateur Work SCENE CONSTRUCTION (By “Homovie.”) (Continued,from last week). MAKING SCENERY How is that scenery made? The flats are wooden frames covered with canvas, painted, clamped in perfect alignment, and in varying sequences. We may standardise on the ten-foot height, which is ample for the size sets we shall build. If the camera shoots over the top, extend the tripod and tilt slightly downward. Taking some three-inch wide battens, we build a number of frames: two will be six feet wide; three will be four feet wide; two will be two feet wide. This does not include door and window frames mentioned later. Let us brace these wooden skeletons across the back. Then let us buy enough heavy, unbleached muslin to cover them. This muslin comes in a width of about forty inches, which is sufficient to cover the narrower flats. For the wider ones, we join two pieces along the length with an invisible flat seam at the back. We tack the muslin on the flats tightly, especially at the sides and at the bottom to prevent its wrinkling. Next we prime the canvas flats, using for this purpose carpenter’s glue in flakes, melted in a double boiler and diluted with water until it is quite liquid. We apply it warm with a three-incli brush or a wider one. While the canvas is drying, which may take an hour or more, we prepare the paint. We have bought two or three pounds of dry burnt umber, at about threepence a pound, and two or three pounds of dry white. We mix each colour separately with water containing enough glue to act as a binder, so that the paint will not rub when dry. Then we make colour experiments on a piece- «»f canvas, allowing the paint to be*me quite dry and photographing it before deciding upon the right tint. The object is not to produce a pleasing colour, but one that will be uniform and fairly dark—about chestnut colour. Having found the right shade, and mixed the paint accordingly, we apply the paint, using the same brush as before, after a washing. When the flats are painted, we place along the sides of the back of each cleats or other devices that will hold cords for fastening that flat to its neighbours. Absolute rigidity is essential. Our next step is to build in similar manner two door fiats, one or two window flats, perhaps a fireplace flat. In each case we start by buying (second-hand, from a house wrecker) a good-looking door, window, or fireplace, and we make the frame to fit that. Such frames are better covered with board than with canvas. (To be continued next Wednesday.)