Expense in Motion Picture Making 



By Albert Marple 



IT IS indeed difficult for one who is 

 not on the "inside" of the motion 

 picture business to reahze the ex- 

 pense to which a picture company will 

 go to secure effects necessary for the suc- 

 cessful filming of a photoplay. Some- 

 times the setting for a single scene 

 costs hundreds and even thousands of 

 dollars. When it is considered that 

 even a one-reel play consists, gener- 

 ally, of something like fifty scenes, it 

 may be readily understood that the 

 cost of producing even a single reel 

 play is enormous. What, then, must 

 be the outlay for five, six and even 

 seven-reel plays? A few months ago 

 the writer traveled with a company 

 during the making of a one-reel play. 

 It took the company four days to put 

 the play on and, although not a single 

 setting was made for this production, 

 the work being mostly outside the 



studio, that "one-reeler" cost the com- 

 pany about nine hundred dollars. The 

 joke of it was that after being made and 

 finished, that particular play was "pigeon 

 holed" and, for some mysterious reason, 

 was never copied for circulation among 

 the motion picture theaters. This is but 

 one source of the "incidental" expense 

 of a company. 



Street scenes cost the most. It is 

 indeed seldom that a scene of this 

 character does not run up into the 

 thousands of dollars. Weeks and 

 months of work will be put upon a 

 street for a single scene. Just as soon 

 as that particular scene has been suc- 

 cessfully "shot," down it comes and 

 another "street" rises in its place. 



A street scene built for the play, 

 "Terrance O'Rourke" is an exact re- 

 production of a street in Tangiers, 

 Northern Africa. Employees of the 



It took nine tons of powder to make this explosion, the smoke from which clouded the air for 

 two minutes in the resulting motion picture 



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