Filmmaking in Hollywood During the 1910s

Filmmaking in Hollywood During the 1910s

The Hollywood studios
1)have often been referred to as factories,
2)turning out strings of similar films as if on assembly lines.
3)This characterization is only partly true.
4)Each film was different and so required specific planning and execution.
5)The studios did, however, develop methods of making films as efficiently as possible.
6)By 1914, most big firms had differentiated between
  a) the director, who was responsible for shooting the film, and
  b)the producer, who oversaw the entire production.

The labor of filmmaking
1)was increasingly divided among expert practitioners.
2)There were separate scenario departments, for example, and
3)a writer might specialize in plotting, dialogue, or intertitles.
4)The version used during filming was the continuity script,
5)and it broke the action down into individual, numbered shots.

The script
1)allowed the producer to estimate how much a given film would cost.
2)The continuity script also allowed people working on the film to coordinate their efforts,
3) even though they might never communicate directly with each other.
4)In the planning stage, the set designer would use the script to determine what types of sets
  were necessary.
5)After the shooting was done,
6)the editor put the film together,
   guided by the numbers shown on a slate at the beginning of each shot,
7)which corresponded to the numbers in the script.
8)These shots were designed to match at each cut,
9)creating a continuity of narrative action.

Los Angeles
1)The big film companies also built studio facilities during the 1910s,
   mostly in the Los Angeles area.
2)Initially, these primarily involved outdoor filming on covered stages.
3) By the late 1910s, however, large dark studios were also constructed,
    either by covering the glass walls or by building windowless enclosures.
4)Here filmmakers controlled lighting with electric lamps.
5)These studios also had extensive backlots,
6)where large outdoor sets could be constructed;
7)to save money, the production firms often kept some of these standing,
   using them over and over.

During the late 1910s,
1)foreign audiences, many of whom had been cut off from the Hollywood product during
  the war, marveled at how American films had changed.
2)Aside from having appealing stars and splendid sets,
3)they were fast-paced and stylistically polished.
4)One reason for this appeal was that American filmmakers had gone on exploring the
   classical Hollywood style, linking technique to clear storytelling.

Filmmakers
1)continued to use crosscutting in increasingly complex ways.
2)In addition, by the mid-1910s, individual scenes within a single space were likely to be
   broken into several shots,
3)beginning with an establishing shot,
4)followed by one or more cut-ins to show portions of the action.
5)Directors and cinematographers were expected to match the positions and movements of
   actors and objects at each cut so that the shift in framing would be less noticeable.
6)Point-of-view shots were used more commonly and with greater flexibility.
7)The use of shot/reverse-shot editing for conversation situations had been rare in the early
   1910s, but by 1917 it occurred at least once in virtually every film.
8)Similarly common were cuts from shots of people looking at something to point-of-view
   shots revealing what they saw.
9)Indeed, by 1917, the fundamental techniques of
   a)continuity editing,
   b)including adherence to the 180-degree rule, or axis of action,
      had been worked out.
10)Filmmakers would typically break even a simple scene into several shots,
     cutting to closer views and placing the camera at various vantage points
     within the action itself.
11)This editing-based manner of constructing a space contrasted considerably with the
      approach being used in Europe at the same time.

The look of individual shots also changed.
1)Most early films were shot using flat, overall light,
   from either the sun or artificial lights or a combination of both.
2)During the mid-1910s, filmmakers experimented with
    effects lighting,
    a)lighting on part of the scene,
    b)motivated as coming from a specific source.

Most influential film with lighting  
1)The most influential film to include this technique was
2)Cecil B. De Mille’s The Cheat,
3)which utilized arc lamps derived from the theater.
4)By the end of the 1910s and the early 1920s, large film studios boasted a great array of
  different types of lamps for every purpose.

Light from a single, powerful spotlight offscreen left creates a dramatic silhouette on a
translucent wall after the villain is shot in this scene from The Cheat.

The Cheat (Cecil B. De Mille, 1915)