Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 88.djvu/424

 Capturing Jamaica for a Film Play

By George F. AVorts

�� �■A Ji ■

�j^^Tr. J

� � �»'~>:^^i^5P|'t- l^^^^^nHB^S

�BB3B^BB^^BB|iia^^g^ffl^^^Biiag^ ^ '^'^^^^ -^^^i^^ ^^^ ^.^r-^.^^^ r- ^- *

��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

��396

�� �