The value of music in inspiring the proper mood in a company of players.—An argument in favor of this aide to the director and the recitation of an occasion where a director went mad
Chapter XVIII
Many directors use music to inspire from their actors and actresses the best performances. The idea is plausible and often productive of the desired results. Often, too, it is carried to extremes. There is one quite famous star who needs “Hearts and Flowers” rendered in the slowest pitch of melancholy, to satisfactorily walk across a setting. She doesn't register any deep emotion in this instance either, unless walking can be so termed.
It was some time in the year 1914 that music was discovered as one of the director's chief aides. A large ballroom scene was being photographed at the old Thanhauser studio in New Rochelle. Invitations were sent to members of the press to attend and watch the work. A rare innovation was promised. The innovation turned out to be the fact that the ballroom dancers actually danced to the strains of an orchestra! Previously picture dancers had been forced to rely on their own sense of rhythm.
Since then musicians have grown to be almost as vital in picture making as the cameraman or the actors themselves. At the studios in the early morning appear almost as many men carrying violin cases as there are with makeup boxes.
The idea isn't at all as far-fetched as it may sound. Music, more than all the advice and coaching that a director may give his company, serves to cast them in the proper mood for a scene. National folk dances and folk songs offer proof of this. It is a familiar sight to see members of Latin and Slavic nations, stirred to the very depths of their souls by the familiar notes of some ancient folk song or dance. It will inspire them to forget their surroundings and break into abandoned action.
Thus, when an actor or an actress is called upon to do a particularly pathetic and emotional scene upon the screen, the proper accompaniment from musicians assists the player in striking the right note in the performance. There are comedians, too, who employ musical inspiration. However, when they are playing a burlesque scene they often call for the slow, tearful music that is used for the serious scene. It gives them a better slant on the burlesque element in the scene.
Probably the director first conceived the idea of using music in the making of his pictures from the fact that it is used to such great success in the presentation of the completed picture to the public. Sometimes the difference in effect in seeing a picture in the bare projection room of a studio and then watching it shown in a theatre to a full orchestral accompaniment is startling. So, rightly argued the director, if music can be employed to such benefit in the exhibition of a picture, it can be employed to equal benefit in the production of it.
In a studio where two or three companies are working at the same time it must be confessed that the effect of the various orchestras is more or less confusing. The actors and actresses would be doing quite the right thing if they went altogether insane. I was in a large studio in the west only recently when a cabaret scene was being filmed on one set to the wildest of jazz tunes. Immediately to one side of it there was a subduedly lighted church scene, wherein hero and heroine were, for purposes of pictures, going through the marriage ceremony. The man who was playing the little melodion for this scene was having a furious time trying to make himself heard above the ten piece jazz band only a few feet away.
The director of the church scene finally decided to await the time when the director of the cabaret scene paused between “takes” of his picture. He thought he had hit the right moment and was half way through his quiet marriage when “zim-boom-bang” the jazzers were at it again.