Thousrnds of Dollars Are Wasted on the Altar of Ego.
Is This Waste?
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Justifiable Waste.
There is wanton waste and economical waste, paradoxical as the latter may sound. Cecil B. DeMille has been an expert on making wastefulness bring in dividends. Did you ever see a C. B. DeMille picture that did not have at least one big scene that looked like a million dollars? You never did. There is always a great ball-room scene, or an expensive-looking bacchanal, or a historical Hash-back with intricate and elaborate costumes. You whistle and comment, "Gee, C. B. certainly shot his wad on that scene."
The exhibitor reacts in just the same way. He sits in the projection room and mentally calculates how little he can buy the picture for. But expensive looking scenes impress him. He figures that he must expect to pay more for a picture that cost so much to make.
It is an error in economics to spend money that does not show. No matter if it is artistic, the lavishness must be as visible as the nose on the exhibitor's face. In Charles Ray's picture, The Girl I Loved, a whole farm was built on the studio lot, at enormous expense. But Charlie couldn't convince an exhibitor of the fact.
"Go on," the exhibitor would argue slyly. "Don't tell me that picture should cost mc so much money: Why, you could shoot most of it out in somebody's cow pasture."
"More sincerity and less flashy ostentation" is the plea of the critics and the public, but the plea is not echoed by the exhibitors. And as the policy of pictures is often- held in the pudgy hands of some ignorant, pig-headed exhibitor who firmly believes that what the public wants is something they have outgrown at least two years back, can you blame the producer for deciding in favor of ostentation?
Driven, on the other hand, cost something like $35,000 to make. An absurdly small budget to make a picture on. Yet Charles Brabin did it, and his picture was acclaimed one of the finest of the year.
Economy did it. Brabin took his company up into the Georgia mountains. They lived the life of the mountaineers, in little cabins. Every expense had been figured out beforehand. Brabin knew almost to the foot how much film he would shoot. And he did not over-shoot.
Over-shooting is one of the greatest sources of waste. A producer often shoots four and five times as much film as he ever expects to use.
Occasionally a canny producer gathers up the rejected film and patches it up into a new picture.
Do you remember the Paramount comedy, Don't Tell Everything? If Hollywood gossip was true, it was made partly of the remnants of the ill-fated Affairs of Anatol.
Time Is Money
Time is money, with the enormous studio overhead running up every minute. But you would never know it, gazing at the leisurely fashion in which motion pictures seem to be made. Sometimes hours pass by, while a director fumes and frets and the actors yawn and gossip, and electricians sweat over some lights that refuse to function.
Sometimes a camera will balk right in the midst of a great mob scene, and the whole thing will have to be repeated.
"I never saw a camera balk over a small shot," Cecil DeMille said once. "But take a big, smashing scene using thousands of extras, and ten to one something will happen to the camera."
It is the apparent time-waste that reduces the efficiency experts to a state of inarticulate frenzy. These "cost-hounds" are the most cordially hated persons on a lot, and sometimes justly so. Used to the cut and dried functioning of a factory, they cannot understand that a motion picture cannot always be turned out with all extra movements eliminated. They pounce upon little evidences of waste with all the gleeful zest of a cat upon a mouse.
"Look here," the cost hound demands of a director. "This cost sheet shows that you bought two fifty-cent cigars for your picture on location. Why wouldn't nickel cigars have done just as well?"
"Because we were in a small town, and that was all they had. It would have taken three hours of valuable time to go to the next town for cheaper ones."
Costly Philanthropy
Sometimes a director allows hundreds of extra folk to dawdle on salary for days, in order to preserve the strength or humor the whim of a high-salaried star. One director is greatly beloved by extra people because of his bent for keeping as many extras on salary throughout the picture as he can. He knows how much a day's work means to an extra, and when he has the slightest excuse for keeping an actor, he does it. Because he is a very good director, he gets away with this laudable but costly philanthropy.
The malady known as "klieg eyes" has caused more waste of time and money than any other malady. Scenes have been held up for days, while the star kept ice packs on her streaming eyes.
But the inveterate cost hound is working on this expensive malady, and little by little it is being conquered. Many actors wear colored glasses on the set, when not working, to prevent the ultra violet rays of the big lights from inflaming their eyes.
Handling Mobs
For years, a great deal of time has been wasted in handling extras in the big mob scenes. But army efficiency methods are being injected into the movies. Fred Datig and Harold Stallings, casting directors at Universal City, worked out a successful plan for handling the great crowds used in The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
It has formerly taken from three to four hours to check the extras into the studio and give them their costumes. Under the new system, it took just fifty minutes to dispose of some 1,200 extras and start the cameras grinding. They received their tickets at the front gate. Then, instead of the usual tedious roll call on the set, they passed before two men at typewriters. The typists took their names as fast as they were given, and the next official, gave them their costumes.
Salvaging Sets
A great source of waste in days past has been the huge and elaborate sets built. Much of this waste is now being overcome.
At the Lasky studio, there is a studio carpenter who makes a study of cheap materials, lie can build the most marvelous ball-room out of composition board, stained or covered with wall paper. The wall corners are held together only by small iron keystones. The polished ball-room floor is usually made of composition board, too, and treated with bard glaze finish.
The elaborate fireplaces, friezes, fountains and carved panels are designed by the studio artists, and cast in plaster moulds. After they have been used, the plaster is discarded, but
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