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April 1937

The Pinewood studios

Lawrence Williams is an Englishman who was trained as an architect at the Architectural Association and is now supervising art director for Herbert Wilcox Productions, and consulting art director to Pinewood studios, the firm that opened large and magnificent premises at Iver Heath in Buckinghamshire last year.

The film sets referred to in this article show the particular quality that distinguishes Williams' work. Some critics think that a set ought to "say" something, that it should express the emotion of the scene, express a personal quality of its own, like, say "friendliness" or "antagonism" or should impress an audience by an exaggeration of architectural motifs. This sort of thing is very well in its place, for instance, in a spectacular like The Great Ziegfield, but normally a director does not ask for it. If an architect strains to say something special in a building his design may end by looking rather vulgar.

If you had seen a thief being chased down a street by an angry crowd you would not be expected to remember afterwards what the street looked like.

In one set we can see the fashionable salon of a furrier's shop in the film Come Out of the Pantry. It is a simple set, dignified and sleek in design, in which a hard shining floor contrasts with soft wooden chairs; where a bulging rug sets off the austerity of flat walls, and where lightly draped curtains emphasise the brazen rigidity of steel columns.

The set is a type commonly needed in film today. It need not cost much, unlike the period set, for which the art director must make careful studies and send out buyers for precious pieces of furniture.

In one of the other film sets we see the hall of a London house. There is a feeling of modernism here, although tradition is closely adapted. The staircase is pleasing for action and the set stands close up to the camera and at the same time provides various angles of interest from which shot may be taken. The upper flight of steps ascends immediately above the lower flight but the landing, appearing to run right round the hall, gives a fine suggestion of overhead space, which of course is not really there. The stair soffite, seen close up, can be made to act as an upper framing line to a picture; a shot taken of an actor seen through the bars of the balusters looks interesting, and a shot from the landing pointing down will show a picture with the lively check pattern of the floor. Columns are always useful to the cameraman. By placing his characters against them he can cut up his compositions and be sure of some space around them.

Providing space around the actors is vital. Actors must be kept away from walls and stood in the open where light, pouring in from all sides, will bathe them in brilliance.