Courtesy Goldwyn Pictures Corporation.
How a Movie “Set” is Made.
The scaffolding shows the flimsy construction of the movie buildings. Only the walls that will appear in the picture are constructed, propped up from behind by undressed scantlings. Note the reflectors set up to throw additional light on the scene that is being photographed.
CHAPTER IV
INSIDE THE STUDIOS
If you have never been inside a motion-picture studio, an interesting experience lies ahead of you. For what soon becomes an old story to any one working “on the lot,” is fascinating enough to any one who sees it for the first time.
At Universal City, California, just across a range of hills outside Hollywood, lies a motion-picture plant that covers acres and acres. Administration and executive offices, big “light” and “daylight” stages, property rooms, costume department, garage, restaurant, power plant, carpenter shop, laboratory, great menagerie even, are all grouped along the base of rolling California hills that furnish countless easy “locations” for stories of the Kansas prairies or Western ranchos, or even the hills of old New England.
In the heart of New York City, close beside the roaring trains of the Second Avenue “L” and within hooting distance of the tug-boats on the Harlem River, stands the old Harlem Casino—for years a well-known East-side dance-hall. In this building, now converted into a compact motion picture studio, the first big Cosmopolitan productions came into existence—“Humoresque,” “The Inside of the Cup,” and all the rest.
Both the great “lot” at Universal City, under the blazing California sun, and the old Harlem Casino, with dirty February snow piled outside under the tracks of the elevated,—each absolutely different from the other—are typical motion-picture studios.