With the movie makers

by Myron M. Stearns

It is interesting work, this “shooting” picture out on “location.” There were nearly twenty of us in the party—owners, cameramen, writers, and assistants, besides the actors. Only the actors taking the principal parts were along with us, on account of the expense. For “bits” or “extras”—characters that appeared only once or twice for a moment or so in the finished picture—we relied on finding people in the cities and towns we visited, ready and able to take the parts.

Indeed, it would surprise you—or maybe it wouldn’t—to know how far the lure of picture-making has spread. Set up a camera almost anywhere in the country, and interested spectators will come out of the air from nowhere at all, as mosquitoes seem to come to a fisherman. And for the parts in your picture, if you want them, you can have almost any one, from the leader of the sewing circle to the village derelict.

More work for the property man!

Mostly, the boys that you find do the best work of all. A youngster of six or eight, if he once gets the spirit of the thing, falls into a part wonderfully, and acts as naturally as a pup in a barnyard.

We would start out in the morning from the front of the hotel where we happened to be staying. Spectators, few or many, always gathered in a fringe as soon as they saw the cameras being carried out to the machines.

There were two machines that we needed to use in the picture—both roadsters. Then there was a big “work car,” some old seven-passenger, to take the camera men and actors and as much of the duffle as could be crowded in. There was always a tremendous amount of stuff to be lugged—cameras, and film-boxes, and big mirrors and reflectors to use in getting additional light, and so on.

If we were to take any “inside shots” as well, there was also a truck to take along a load of lights—big metal standards with intricate carbon lights and their reflectors above—with transformers and yards and yards of cable to connect them up with, and mechanics and electricians to do the work. Or perhaps a generator on a truck—a big 150-horse-power motor and electric generator to provide a current that could be taken anywhere the truck could go.

Almost always there was a delay about the start; sometimes one thing, sometimes another. A reflector broken and not yet returned repaired—a property gravestone to be taken along, and late—the everlasting cat gone from its basket. Sometimes five minutes, sometimes fifteen; once in a while a whole beautiful morning lost, representing, say, a loss, or additional expense to the picture, of possibly hundreds of dollars.

Then at last away we would go—a whole young cavalcade of autos, bulging with people and duffle, heads of actors and legs of camera tripods sticking out in every direction—bumping and jouncing along out into the country to our selected “location”—perhaps an old farmhouse, twelve miles out.

For a week or so it is always fascinating; then it gets to be just the usual routine of work, like almost everything else, and the real joy of it is in the ability to keep open-minded for the sight and appreciation of new things—in the enthusiasm of work to be done, and in the satisfaction of getting good results. Folks standing at the curb to see us start from the hotel probably wished that they too might be journeying off into the open country, with all the glamor of adventure surrounding the expedition—but they knew nothing of the long, long hours of waiting through the day, while the director rehearsed and rehearsed one or two actors in a particular scene, or the whole company just shifted from one foot to the other, hour after hour, ready to be on the job the moment the sun came from behind the passing clouds—if it ever did.