from The International Photographer April 1934 pg.8
NATURAL publicity such as an earthquake is quickly taken advantage of by showmen and we have the best in the business here in Hollywood, but making a natural cataclysm perform on
schedule, so the world may see for itself just how a major earthquake looks in action, is a problem attempted only by the world’s greatest optimists. They do it and it is genuine, except that the casualties get well immediately, when the directors shouts “cut.”
It is true that some companies have taken advantage of the wreckage caused by erathquakes, but in this article we are concerned only with the ones where moving picture stars and actors are woven into a series of incidents and adventures, during the filming of a major motion picture production.
The fact that THE INTERNATIONAL PHOTOGRAPHER is a professional and technical magazine and its circulation is almost entirely confined to the workers in the motion picture industry is the only reason such an article as this can be attempted.
Credit should be given where it is due and according to my idea the following named men are foremost in this particular work: Fred Mann, William Davidson, William Teel, Roy Jones, Vernon Walker, Don Jarvis and Eddie Haas. They have all taken direct supervision of the actual erecting and demolishing of sets used in the series of earthquake pictures now being exhibited.
The photographs shown here are by courtesy of the Twentieth Century Productions and made by Fred Archer.
The first type of set to be considered is the interior, because most people are inside a building when an earthquake starts. As illustrated in Figure 1, the set is built on rollers and tied to the floor with heavy steel springs. The ends of the floor joists are extended to a series of handles outside the picture angle, where a group of electricians operate these by giving a quick pushing and pulling motion. After the first big push the springs take up the motion and the set literally quakes before your eyes ; a twelve horizontal motion gives a tremendous effect on the screen, walls crack in conspicuous places as illustrated in Figure 2 and men stationed above the set release debris of all kinds. If this action is continued too long the set would fall down because of structural failure. Sometimes precautions are taken by tying a cable to the top of the wall and then to a truss in the roof of the stage. This gives a swaying effect to the wall, which is partly suspended.
The floors are made in sections and operated separately by different groups of technicians. This literally tears linoleum apart and causes large cracks in the floor. Furniture is pulled over with wires and in a few seconds a beautiful interior set is in shambles.
Exteriors are more complicated and dangerous, great walls of solid brick and masonry crash with a roar, people and traffic rush from cover to cover and caution must be taken that the paper bricks and ground cork hit the people. It might be serious to have them struck by the solid debris. Only the most experienced technicians can be trusted with scenes of this nature.
Walls falling outward, such as shown in the picture, are weakened on the line of breakage and are either pushed out from the inside of the building or are pulled out with a cable attached to a truck; surprising as it may seem to some people, a cable one-quarter to one-half inch in thickness is unnoticed on the screen when the camera is set for a long shot.
Figure 3 illustrates how a solid masonry wall is supported by hinged posts, called weak knees, and when the cable is pulled the ends of the wall drop, causing the center to pull apart, forming a breach.
Figure 4 illustrates how a crack in a street is caused to open and close again on somebody’s legs or body, while debris is toppled on them from some crumbling building. Here they are helplessly held and crushed to death right before your eyes, as the girl in the picture lying on the sidewalk.
Another way of bringing an entire building down is to make a complete wrap once around it with a heavy cable and securely fastening one end to a post or dead man. The other end is fastened to a heavy truck, which drives away and the cable literally cuts the building in two. The effect is tremendous, various parts giving way and the sounds accompanying it are very real.
Grips and electricians operating reflectors and lights, explosions, every little detail caught by the moving film with master photography in every frame.
The sound engineers, with microphones mounted on booms and even carrying them in their hands, moving in close and back again to get the best results.
[…] moving them quickly to help the cameramen “put it on the film” (studio vernacular.)
Still photographers with an 8 by 10 still camera in one hand and a Graphlex in the other, getting the choice action stills, the kind that sells the picture to the exhibitors and the public.
The director pushing signal buttons, waving his arms and making pantomime to the actors who, poor fellows, are scared to death for fear some falling object may not be timed just right. Oh, Boy, anybody who has gone through several of these earthquake pictures is entitled to be jumpy and jittery when he feels the earth tremble just a little.