Film studios

The major change in film production methods in the United States during this period was the change to shooting in “dark” studios. The existing glass-roofed studios were blacked out, and the many new ones being built around Los Angeles were constructed with solid walls and ceilings. This meant that shooting could continue all day and night, without being limited by the changing sunlight. The general diffuse daylighting in the old studios was completely replaced with floodlights, and the actors were individually lit with floodlights on floorstands. The use of a spotlight from high at the back onto the actors to rimlight them became more frequent, and around 1918 some American cameramen started to use spotlights to light the actors from the front. All this meant that the figures of the actors were modelled more by the lighting, and more separated from the background by the lower light levels now used on the sets. This was a major step towards the standard studio lighting methods of the sound period. At the same time there was the beginning of a move towards using artificial light to light the actors on location, and some of the biggest studios bought electric generator trucks for this purpose. All these developments took years to reach Europe.