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projected scenery flashed passed or were magically transport-
ed to a score of foreign countries without stepping outside the
doors of the studio! In the British film The Smallest Show on
Earth (1957) we are treated to a variety of cinema interiors
with audiences watching rear-projected ‘screen’ images, as
well as ‘cheat’ editing where the film cuts from the cinema
interior to a full-screen shot supposedly of the image appear-
ing on the ‘screen’ (sometimes with pseudo screen masking
around the image to create the illusion). Probably the least
convincing aspect of ‘effects’ in The Smallest Show on Earth
are not the cinema interiors but that unfortunate model shot (or
was it a glass matte shot?) of the distant burnt out Grand
Cinema seen from the window of the Bijou! What a let-down!
The challenge of filming inside a cinema inspired early
Foyer and ticket box for the film Sherlock Jnr. film makers to bring out their bag of tricks! If you thought The
Purple Rose of Cairo (1985) was original having a member of
when he sees William S Porter’s The Great Train Robbery the audience walking in and out of the screen, then turn back
(1905) in an early Canadian nickelodeon that’s a very studio- the clock to 1924. It had all been done before by famous silent
bound creation. comedy star Buster Keaton. In Sherlock Jnr Buster is a pro-
The other obstacle to filming in a cinema setting is rather jectionist who dreams of being a great detective. In several
more technical. How to film action against a projected screen imaginative scenes he joins the action on the screen. The film
image while realistically retaining the ambience of a cinema makers worked out a clever way of solving the technical prob-
interior. How also to synchronise the shutter of the camera lems involved. The ‘screen’ is actually a cut-out proscenium
filming the scene with that of the projector throwing the image on a stage set. Buster simply mounts the cinema stage and
on the cinema screen. Their filmstocks just weren’t sensitive enters the stage set contained within the black screen ‘mask-
enough to record both a screen image and the interior of the ing’. This scene-within-a-scene, surrounded by a black frame,
cinema. They often took the easy way out, filming before the is both remarkably simple yet remarkably effective in con-
film started, and then cutting away to an image supposedly vincing us it is a projected screen image.
appearing on the ‘screen’. In more recent years producers Another technique used a lot in the early cinema (and
would optically combine a screen image with that of a well-lit
‘cinema’ interior. This could often produce a rather unfortu- Leaving the cinema in Brief Encounter.
nate impression that the audience was seated in a fully-lit
auditorium watching a brightly-lit screen — a technical
impossibility even with modern projectors! The problem of
synchronising the camera and projector defeated many film
makers and was only fully solved by the development of inter-
locking systems to run the motors of both camera and projec-
tor together so as to avoid flicker of the re-filmed screen image
or, at worst, blanked-out images where the projector and cam-
era shutters were totally out of phase (one closed when the
other was open!)
After World War II, Britain’s Pinewood Studios specialised
in perfecting rear (or back) projection techniques. This made
it possible, in the studio, to set the foreground action against
any background whether indoor or outdoor. The story is told
in Pinewood’s history, Movies from the Mansion:
“Backgrounds were mostly to be provided by back projection
and special screen holders were made, together with a huge
projection tower with lights which could be positioned auto-
matically. It was found that even interiors could largely be pro-
vided by projection techniques. Actors might be performing in
what looked like a real room, but apart from perhaps a table,
chair and door the rest would all be photographic background.
It even proved unnecessary to send the stars on location. Any
exteriors could be shot in long-shot with stand-ins, and the rest
could be organised in the studio with the back projection
plates made on location.”
In scores of British films produced in the 1950s and
beyond, scene after scene was enacted before rear-projected
backgrounds. Lovers stood on heaving decks against fake
ocean-scapes, or travelled in innumerable trains or cars as the

CINEMARECORD Autumn 2001 21