FOREST FIRE SCENE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 February 1941, Page 9

FOREST FIRE SCENE

TOOK MONTHS TO FILM. 3 hree . Three crews worked in eight hour shifts for three months at 20th Century-Fox studios to produce the forest fire sequences of Maurice Maeterlinck's "The Blue Bird." Yet the

■product of ail this labour will require I approximately four minutes to pass ! through the projection machines dur- , ing the screening of the Tcchnicolour , film. To film these 500 feet of film, which for an ordinary sequence-could be shot in two days, required an outlay in labour and materials that makes them the most expensive footage of j celluloid ever to be produced in Holly- : wood. A hen the average film-goer - sees Shirley Temple. Gale Sender- ! gaard. Eddie Collins and Johnny Rus- j sell fleeing from the forest fire down 1 an avenue of falling trees in flame. ; the effect undoubtedly will provide an i important thrill in his evening’s enter-1 tainment. And when he beholds Miss ‘ Sondergaard trapped and burned in a stockade of flame, he may feel cold i shivers ascending the length of his i spine. But he may dismiss the entire ‘

sequence as "movie trickcry." The [ truth is, however, that there is' no such ; I thing as movie trickery. The holo- 1 j caust in "The Blue Bird" was not f I “done with mirrors." It was a real 1 fire, so hot that the camera crew had ' to wear asbestos suits, and the camera ' 1 had to be protected by a fireproof ; j bulkhead with a porthole of pyrex , glass. That we managed to secure thej effect of an entire forest ablaze, wri-1 les Fred Serscn (special effects chief).; that we successfully "burned" Miss!

Sondergaard to a crisp without so much as singeing one eyelash—all of this was no legerdermain, but merely the result of careful rehearsal and planning for every eventuality. For one week before the set was built an observer was stationed on the proposed site. Day and night he and two relief men took readings on the wind direction and wind velocity. These became an important consideration. inasmuch as we had to plan our shots in such a way that the wind would carry the smoke and flames away from the cameras and players. Each limb which had to fall, each tree, each root that snapped—every one of these things had to be specially prepared with hinges or otherwise to do just what was expected of it and nothing else. Much of the time the players seemed surrounded by flame —and actually were. Powerful blowers kept the flumes in control, blowing them away from actors and camera.