Capturing Jamaica for a Film Play 



By George F. AVorts 



A Moorish city, covering thirty acres of ground, with castles as well as huts, and costing 

 thirty thousand dollars, is but part of the gigantic setting of the new film play 



WHEN Annette Kellerman and 

 her large company of players 

 arrived in Jamaica one day last 

 August with the intention of making a 

 moving picture that would cost some- 

 where in the neighborhood of one mil- 

 lion dollars, she found that the entire 

 group of islands was under martial law. 

 Jamaica was heavily garrisoned, all 

 sorts of restrictions were placed upon 

 strangers, and into this unfriendly at- 

 mosphere of British colonial red tape 

 came an invading army of actors and ac- 

 tresses, cameramen, electricians, proper- 

 ty men, scene painters, directors, and 

 what not. Besides all these there were, 

 of course, heavy artillery in cameras, and 

 the ammunition to be fed to them, tons 

 of chemicals, properties enough to stock 

 the Metropolitan Opera House for a 

 Wagnerian season, and just for good 

 measure an entire menagerie, consisting 

 of lions, tigers, elephants, camels and 

 other creatures calculated to lend Orient- 

 al atmosphere when the right time ar- 

 rived. 



Whether or not the estimated cost of 

 one million dollars has undergone the 

 usual press agent's expansion, the fact 

 remains that the picture will be one of 

 the most spectacular that has ever been 



produced in the whole history of films. 



A fair idea of the amount of materials 

 required for the stage settings, costum- 

 ings, handling of films, etc., can be 

 gained from the knowledge that five 

 shiploads went down to Jamaica from 

 New York the first time. The first con- 

 signment of actors, actresses and work- 

 men alone amounted to twelve hundred 

 persons. One thousand tons of proper- 

 ties and stage settings have been shipped. 



To insure the proper attention to the 

 cinematographic film, chemical labora- 

 tories, storehouses and printing and de- 

 veloping plants have been constructed. 

 An ice plant for chilling the tropical v\-a- 

 ter used in development was erected. 



One of the first tasks to which the 

 director in charge. Herbert Brennon, set 

 himself was the construction of the larg- 

 est stage that has ever been built. It 

 measures over all five hundred by two 

 hundred feet, and is being used for the 

 erection of giant "sets" of all varieties. 

 More than six diflferent companies occu- 

 pied with different scenes of the film can 

 work at one time. 



Probably the most cumbersome task is 

 the construction of an inland Moorish 

 city which covers thirty acres of ground. 

 Contrasted to the usual flimsy structures 



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