Robert Florey & Slavko Vorkapich – The Life and Death of 9413, a Hollywood Extra (1928)
Quote:
One need only look at the phenomenal The Life and Death of 9413: A Hollywood Extra to see that even in the cinema’s youth filmmakers were not limited by their budgets, but by their imaginations.
Made in 1928, it had a budget of $96 (adjusted for inflation, that’s $1191.33). Sources say that the money was divvied up as such: Film Negative, $25 ($310.24), Store Props, $3 ($27.23), Development and Printing, $55 ($682.54), Transportation, etc, $14 ($173.74). The sets were made of toys and cardboard buildings that were projected like shadows. Paper cut outs and spare film stock litter the background to create a thriving metropolis. Notice that the expenses of the film didn’t include actors’ salaries. That is because the actors weren’t immediately paid, but compensated with benefits that they could claim at a later date. Quite simply, The Life and Death of 9413: A Hollywood Extra was one of the thriftiest film productions in early cinema history.
With no access to Hollywood studios or equipment, most of the filming took place in the filmmakers’ residences, with walls painted black for use as a background.
The story was inspired by Florey’s own experiences in Hollywood, as well as the George Gershwin composition Rhapsody in Blue. It was one of the first films shot by Gregg Toland, who later received acclaim for his work on such films as The Grapes of Wrath (1939) and Citizen Kane (1941).
Slavko Vorkapich & Robert Florey - 1928 - The Life and Death of 9413, a Hollywood Extra [576p].mkv
General
Container: Matroska
Runtime: 13 min 39 s
Size: 301 MiB
Video
Codec: x264
Resolution: 660x576
Aspect ratio: 1.146
Frame rate: 20.000 fps
Bit rate: 2 786 kb/s
BPP: 0.366
Audio
#1: 1.0ch AC-3 @ 32.0 kb/s (Silent)
#2: 2.0ch AC-3 @ 256 kb/s (Music by Music by Carlos Dominguez, Alex Lough (2022))
Language(s):None
Subtitles:None
Thanks very much. Another fine example of items regularly found here at COTW and seldom elsewhere. For those who may not be familiar with the name, Vorkapich was a key figure in the history of the art of film Editing.