New Film Attempts Documentary of West End

The morning of Armistice Day, 1951, while workingmen and housewives gratefully caught up on their sleep, a group of students rolled their equipment into the busy, noisy West End section of Boston and began shooting a documentary.

This project marks an important break from anything over produced by a student organization. While Ivy Films is contributing its staff to the actual mechanics of production, only two men control the script, the direction, and the problems of finances: co-producers Ted O Cron '52, Ivy's president, and Louis F. Lindauer, Brandeis '53.

On paper, the 45 minute documentary is notably advanced in artistic content and depth from the majority of Hollywood productions. Following the work of Robert Flaberty in "Louisiana Story" and Italy's De Sion in "Bicycle Thief," director Cron hopes to "take the aspect of the documentary away from the newsreel entirely."

His device is to center the emotional interest of the picture on the story of a family of Displaced Persons arriving from Europe into the environment of the West End.

Unlike documentaries such as "The River," which reported the damage from a Mississippi River flood. Cron attempts to create a mythological cycle which is emotionally and psychologically connected with his audience. The story of the D.P.'s first day and a half, of their attempts to imitate those around them, of their assimilation into the West End society, is the story of any person arriving into a new environment.

The climax of this assimilation comes when the camera suddenly reveals that the wife is pregnant, her child will be born an American.

The audience will leave the theme of the D.P. family in their minds, but Cron explains that this is merely the vehicle for the documentary he is essentially producing.

Working in 16 m.m. Cron hopes to blow up the negative to 35 m.m. with a minimum loss of technical quality.

Ivy's honeymoon with the co-directors is strictly of working necessity. Cron and Lindauer first met at a conference at Brandeis, later worked together on a 15 minute quicky made during the summer of '49 at a total cost of $18. All effects were engineered inside the camera by Lindauer, currently director of Photography.

Cron first hit upon the idea of a documentary while working with the West End's Peabody Settlement House. The Peabody House has turned out one popular Hollywood star, Ruth Roman, who was often in its dramatic productions.

Cron and Lindauer wrote the tentative script last spring and submitted it to Ivy Films as this year's production. Cron withdrew the script this summer, after Ivy had drifted into the red. An agree-men was reached whereby the co-producers are financing and supervising the production, using Ivy's staff to make it. The Ivy men are receiving training, and will get screen credit for their work.

The co-producers are well satisfied with he present arrangement. Lindauer commented that "everyone's heard of the perfect set-up. Well we've got it."

Budget is expected to run somewhere under $1,000 dollars. Ivy paid off its debts over the summer, and could finance the picture, but prefers not to take the chance. West End organizations such as the Red Feather, the Community Chest, the Unions, Church groups, and Settlement groups are interested in having the picture made, but cannot lend financial assistance.

The budget problem continually plagues Cron and Lindauer. They had planned to shoot the first sequence, that of the D.P.'s disembarking, in one of the New York piers. They found that the piers had outlets only for DC current, rendering their AC lighting equipment useless. Rather than rent the converters at $33 a day, they will use over 1000 feet of wiring to attach their equipment to the AC sockets aboard ship.

Staffs Essential

Three staffs make up the backbone of the operations. The production staff is the integrating group, handling the personnel, the equipment, the props, and arranging shooting schedules. The direction staff handles the pacing movement of shots, the mood desired, and the length of the shot. Photography staff manipulates the lights and cameras.

Because the director will often call for shooting in the morning, during class hours, the crews have been divided into two sections. Crews almost never go out en masse.

The production and direction staffs decide together what part the crowd wil ltake in the shots. There has been a minimum of trouble, mainly because Cron and Lindauer became friendly with one of the teen-age gangs.

Instead of the usual orchestral background, Cron plans to use noise effects supplemented with a few instruments. The narration will be dubbed in later. Cron and Lindauer are hoping to find an adequate narrator at the University.

The producers hope for an honest portrayal of the bad points of the West End. To emphasize the traffic problem, they have included a sequence of a man being run over by a car.

Cron states that "we are not presenting a solution to the problems of the West End. We hope the audience will provide its own solution." For the time being, Cron and company must provide their solution to a great many problems.