Comparing a Hollywood Studio to an Industrial Plant

Bidwell McCormick takes you behind the scenes in Hollywood. Few persons with whom I have ever talked, who are not directly associated with the production of motion pictures, express any conception whatever the vastness of a large Hollywood sound stage.

That's true, don't you think, about almost any great industrial plant? And that's what a Hollywood studio really is, an industrial plant in the mass production of entertainment. True, only one or two or a half dozen or so at most different productions are being fabricated at a time.

But these finally emerge as hundreds of separate prints to supply as many different theaters in all parts of the country at one time. That's mass production and denotes vastness in itself. Yes, and to make an outdoor production largely under one roof where all sound, atmosphere, sunlight, degrees of twilight and darkness can be perfectly controlled requires almost

unbelievable space too. Why I was on a set recently on one of the larger sound stages where an outdoor scene was being photographed, and even that set, with its large, real trees, its brook running through real mountain grass, its campfire with horses tethered nearby, and numerous performers was what might say lost. So great was the size of the sound stage itself.

When you speak of stage, you of course don't mean a stage in the sense that stages for plays, vaudeville performances, or even the opera are known. Oh no, the sound stage is a term used to describe the great soundproof building, which houses the photographing of a scene or scene.

Some are comparatively small, some are large and a few really immense. A huge auditorium, completely soundproof, and large enough to house sometimes a three-ring circus, or an apartment house, or a good-sized railway station. That's a Hollywood sound stage. It's really terrific.