RECIPE for a Newsreel Interview

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 381, 11 October 1946, Page 12

RECIPE for a Newsreel Interview

Aunt Daisy Before the Cameras at Miramar

HERE is only one way to interview Aunt Daisy (who has just come back from America again) and that is with some kind of recording apparatus. So The Listener makes no attempt to do, in its pages, what the ZB stations have already done with recordings made at Whenuapai and at 1ZB shortly after she landed here. What we have done, to mark our interest in the return of New Zealand’s miniature goodwill mission to the Americans, is to listen in — and

watch out-at a filming of Aunt Daisy. The photograph printed here gives our readers some idea of the setup out at Miramar — at the National Film Unit Studios, where we went with Aunt Daisy one Friday afternoon not so long ago. It all began with our calling for Aunt Daisy in a Film Unit Car which had picked us up first. She was hustling up a basketful of "props"-recipe books, various personal belongings, a copy of The Listener, etc., etc., and a typewriter for Barbara. The three of us made for the lift, one of those treacherous modern things where you stand for hours watching the pointer while other people on other floors beat you to the button, and which finally sail past you in the direction you want to go. "In our experience," we said (but of course we don’t really talk like that), "it is quicker to walk down two floors to the ground than wait for the lift to go up five and come down three." "Oh! No-oooo000!" said Aunt Daisy, "Not OUR lift! Our lift? Oh, no, no." And she smiled a conqueror’s smile. We humbly stood contradicted. "You’re not going to argue, are you?" said Aunt Daisy. "He hasn’t got a chance," said Barbara. The lift went past, and up to floor five..... In a Motor-car Built for Five "When we go past Rongotai, DON’T forget the FIRE," said a backseat driver ‘with a well-known radio, voice, as we set off in the car. "Oh! It’s so nice to go for a ride," that voice went on. Barbara gently

offered the suggestion that this could hardly be any new thing to her mother. "Oh! But a Brrright, Nice, Joyful ride," said Aunt Daisy, deeply shocked that her daughter should not recognise this carefree ride for what it was. Aunt Daisy was beginning to relax, in a motorcar built for five. After a detour to let us look through a high-barred gate, at one corner of a pile of smudgy-looking wool, our carriage brought us to the studios, where began Aunt Daisy’s triumphal progress through handshakes, smiles, and welcomings. Two and a-half hours later, the job

was done, and a few short minutes of film had been provided for. As far as we could see, it took between six and twelve men to make that bit of film. There was the man in the one-time’ white overalls who vacuumcleaned the carpet twice, and then sat glumly waiting for opportunities to make a bang with a black and white board and shout "Shot two, Take one" or something of the kind; and there were the cameramen, who always seemed to have one eye screwed up; and a man who seemed to be in charge of the cameramen; in addition to the producer, who kept going back and forth with polite suggestions to Aunt Daisy; and a man who kept going round taking snaps from all angles with a Leica; and a man behind a glass window who addressed everyone else through a loudspeaker, whose favourable opinion of the sound as heard behind that glass window seemed essential before the job could go on, Then there was the Director of the Film Unit, E. S. Andrews, who stayed about ell the time. And there seemed to be assistants to the cameramen, and assistants behind the glass window, and the odd spectator or two who seemed also to be indispensable. Two Walls and a Floor Aunt Daisy was taken into a sort of carpeted bay, after the style of what motor garages call Lubritoria, a flashlooking room with only two walls, a floor, and no roof. Two paintings by

Marcus King adorned the walls. She and her daughter hung up their coats on a thing provided, and someone else rearranged them tidily for the camera’s eye. The basketful of props was distributed, and Barbara sat down ready to type Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party and Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs. For the first act, Aunt Daisy had to come in the door, greet Barbara (who had been urging good men to come to the aid, etc.), and pick up the morning’s mail to take to her own desk. Now in case anyone thinks this is all as easy as it sounds, it ought to be explained that it takes a lot of care and arranging. One performer who had to do his part especially well was the man who had to act as lock-the door had to be shut by 4 Aunt Daisy and then’stay shut, and this kept one male assistant fully employed during the several rehearsals and then the final shooting. The Shooting Begins When everyone seemed satisfied with this brief act, Aunt Daisy was seated with a script for the talking part, and the big camera was wheeled forward for the close-up shot. Aunt Daisy began to read her script--"GOOD morning everybody. Well, here I am home again and HOW happy I am to be... ." A hurried conference behind the camera, in whispers, and the producer went forward and spoke softly to Aunt Daisy (no ill-mannered megaphone-baw!-ing out at Miramar). Aunt Daisy, on this ‘occasion as on all others, loudly re-. peated all the suggestions put to her so tactfully. "They shine? Well I'll try the others, but ‘I can’t read it without them I’m sure, of course I never have a script NEVER. But I brought one to-day because Mr. Whateverhisnameis said on the phone. . ." Several rehearsals were tried with Aunt ‘Daisy trying to read without glasses, but it took a good many repetitions before she was fluent. At last she was persuaded to try without the script, and rehearsal began all over again with Aunt Daisy improvising upon a few main headings writ large with a big black pencil. This seemed to promise success. Knowing grins were exchanged behind the cameras, and everyone seemed to relax. Rehearsal, repetition, amendment, ‘abbreviation went on time and time again. Our memory leads us to think that we heard that "Well GOOD morning everybody," twenty-five times altogether. Cutting and Polishing But the thing is that once Aunt Daisy has given up the idea of sticking verbally to her script, she never says the substance of it the same way twice. She has inexhaustible vitality and bounce, and at the twentieth time seemed still to be saying it all for the first time. But in the meantime, "that bit about Paul Robeson" had been thrown out, a remark about homelife had been dropped because it was redundant, a "Saturday night" had become a "drizzly Saturday night," then a "wet drizzly Saturday night," and a plain "Saturday night" again; a little child had been a "tiny little child,’ a "two-year-old’’," a "little-child-I-suppose-he-wouldn’t-be-two," and a hot meal had become "vegetables and gravy." All this in the course of rehearsing the same short stretch of Aunt Daisy’s address to the cinema public. In other words she was doing for the camera

and sound-track exactly what she does for her radio listeners-thinking it out as she went. All this, as we have said, took about two and a-half hours, before the soundtrack man and the producer and everyone else seemed to be satisfied. Only Aunt Daisy seemed to have any regrets. Her belief was that some of her rehearsal attempts had been far better than the final performances that had actually been filmed. And as she left, she went through the triumphal progress in reverse, with the smiles and handshakes, and "AND you Will let us see it before it goes on the screen, won’t you, do, because we WOULD like just to eta Dx "