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Dividing Labor for Production Control: Thomas Ince and the Rise of the Studio System Author(s): Janet Staiger Source: Cinema Journal, Vol. 18, No. 2, Economic and Technological History (Spring, 1979), pp. 16-25 Published by: University of Texas Press on behalf of the Society for Cinema & Media Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1225439 Accessed: 21/07/2009 17:40

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Dividing Labor for Production Control: Thomas Ince and the Rise of the Studio System1

Janet Staiger

Thomas Ince was a classic case of a stage actor who, during a brief period of unemployment in 1910, turned to the fledgling movies as a source of income. Yet his long-term impact on filmmaking would be very great indeed. Working first for IMP and then Biograph, he returned to IMP when promised a chance to direct. He completed his first film in December 1910. Ince soon tired of the one-reel format, however, and accepted a position in the fall of 1911 to direct for Kessel and Bauman's New York Motion Picture Company. He headed to Edendale, California, where a small group of people were already making films. The studio at that time was a converted grocery store: one stage (without even a muslin overhang), a scene dock, a small lab and office, and a bungalow which served as a dressing room. Ince wrote, di- rected, and cut his first film within one week.2 From these beginnings, by 1913 he had a fully developed continuity script procedure; by 1916 a one-half million dollar studio on 43 acres of land with concrete buildings. There were a 165-foot electrically lit building (which was unique), eight stages 60 by 150 feet, an administration building for the executive and scenario departments, property, carpenter, plumbing, and costume rooms, a restaurant and com- missary, 300 dressing rooms, a hothouse, and a natatorium-and 1,000 em- ployees and a studio structure which was essentially that associated with the big studio period of later years.3 Why?

Previous historians have provided only partial answers. Lewis Jacobs attributes Ince's innovations to the need to standardize large-scale produc- tions through "formula" pictures and publicity: "Essentially a businessman, he [Ince] conducted himself and his film making in businesslike fashion .... Planning in advance meant better unity of structure, less chance of uneven quality, and economy of expression." Kalton Lahue, in Dreams for Sale, writes, "Ince kept [his studio] functioning at peak efficiency by holding a tight rein on everything that was done." Eric Rhode notes that Ince "was among the first film-makers to adapt his craft to the latest ideas in industrial management and to set up the assembly-line type of production."4

Cinema Journal / 17

What historians describe without outlining structure is the division of labor under the control of a corporate manager. Nor do they indicate the steps Ince took in progressing to his final system. Using Paul A. Baran and Paul M. Sweezy's monograph Monopoly Capital as a large framework, Harry Braverman, in Labor and Monopoly Capital, sets up a model and explanation of how and why labor is divided. As a model it is stochastic rather than deterministic-some amount of variation may occur, but on the whole, the model should account for an individual instance of the historical change and development of a labor structure.

Braverman's Model of Labor in Monopoly Capital According to Braverman, in the most basic capitalistic situation, humans

have a potential labor power which they sell to the capitalist who, in turn, hopes to derive from their labor power the greatest possible surplus. But this potential labor power is affected by: 1) "the organization of the process" and 2) "the forms of supervision over it."5 By selling his/her labor power, the worker is no longer in control of his/her labor time; that control is ceded to the capitalist who has purchased the labor time and the potential of labor power. Naturally, given the profit maximization motive, the capitalist will seek to gain as much as possible from that potential in time and power.

However, unlike physical capital, the results of this purchase are un- certain. The original method of the capitalist was to "[utilize] labor as it [came] to him from prior forms of production," which usually was the craft or domestic system of labor.6 The capitalist subcontracted for the work he wanted accomplished. But certain problems arose with this system: "irregu- larity of production, loss of materials in transit and through embezzlement, slowness of manufacture, lack of uniformity and uncertainty of the quality of production."7

The first means of striving for control of these variables was to centralize the employment, which provided some control over the irregularity of pro- duction through the threat of loss of employment. This initial step, however, had no effect on the other problems. It is here that division of the labor process develops as a second means of solving the other areas of un- certainty.

The division of labor process "begins with the analysis of the labor pro- cess . . . the separation of the work of production into its constituent ele- ments."8 Assigning a worker to repeat a single segment of a total task produces three advantages according to Adam Smith: 1) increase in dex- terity, 2) saving time, and 3) "the invention of a great number of machines which facilitate and abridge labor."9 A fourth advantage, saving costs, was pointed out by Charles Babbage. Since the task was segmented, only the worker who was doing the most difficult part of the work had to be paid for his/her skill rather than paying all the workers for the most difficult part- which was what happened under the older craft system. Braverman asserts

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that these principles have led to separating the worker's brain from his/her hands and that division of labor promotes an almost systematic elimination of skills required for a person to work.

This division of labor was the second of three steps in monopoly capital's quest for organizing and supervising the potential for labor time and power. The third was "scientific management" which was "the control over work through the control over the decisions that are made in the course of work."10 This advancement in management was initiated, in particular, by Frederick Winslow Taylor, whose work (often called "Taylorism" and typ- ified by the efficiency experts of the first part of the twentieth century) began to be widely disseminated after 1890.

The effects of division of labor and scientific management were multiple-all leading to the separation of the planning phase and the execu- tion phase. This separation destroys an ideal of the whole person, both the creator and the producer of his/her ideas. Practically, this results in certain characteristics which appear consistently in divided labor.

First, there is a physical separation between the conception and produc- tion phases.

The concept of control adopted by modern management requires that every activity in production have its several parallel activities in the management center: each must be devised, precalculated, tested, laid out, assigned and or- dered, checked and inspected, and recorded throughout its duration and upon completion. The result is that the process of production is replicated in paper form before, as, and after it takes place in physical form.12

Second, not only is conception and execution divided, but specialization results in both planning and producing. Thus there develops the modern corporation which is characterized by: 1) corporate managers, 2) "producing activities which are subdivided among functional departments, each having a specific aspect of the process for its domain,"13 and 3) extensive develop- ment of the marketing process.

Ince had several models of organizing work available to him. He had worked in the theater and might have chosen a labor structure similar to that. Or he might have followed Griffith's (and most of the rest of the industry's) lead: group units which shot from a brief outline.14 Instead, he seems to have followed the lead of moder industry. Ince, however, is not unique. He is an innovator, perhaps ahead of others in some respects but not by much. His contributions to the production structure of the film industry need to be placed in perspective by examining the conception/execution process and the labor division in his production unit.

The Separation of Conception and Execution The first part of this structure is Ince's separation of the conception and

production phases of filmmaking. To repeat Braverman's observation:

The concept of control adopted by modem management requires that every

Cinema Journal / 19

activity in production have its several parallel activities in the management center. . . . The result is that the process of production is replicated in paper form before, as, and after it takes place in physical form.15

For Ince and filmmaking, this replication is in the continuity script. The framework for the continuity script already existed in the scenarios of the period. In nearly every issue of The Moving Picture World descriptions of how to write scenarios are given budding screenwriters. Even as Ince was beginning to direct, an article in 1911 advises:

Follow the cast of characters with the scenario proper. Divide the scenario into scenes, giving each change in the location of the action a separate scene- that is, whenever the plot renders it necessary for the operator to change the position of his camera, as from an interior to an exterior view, begin a new scene. Number the scenes consecutively to the end of the play. At the beginning of each scene, give a brief but clear word picture of the settings of the scene; also the position and action of the characters introduced when the picture first flashes on the screen .... Now carefully study out the needed action for each scene; and then describe it briefly, being careful to cut out every act that does not have a direct bearing on the development of the plot.16

The article continues to describe many of the characteristics we now as- sociate with classical Hollywood cinema.

Ince had traveled to Edendale in October 1911. According to a trade paper, in June 1912 Ince split his studio into two production units because his staff was increasing in size and becoming unwieldly. At this time Ince was writing scenarios, shooting footage, and editing the films, and the com- pany was averaging one two-reel film per week. Under this new system Ince would direct the two- and three-reel Western dramas and Francis Ford, John's older brother, would shoot Western comedies and smaller-cast dramas.17 A later commentator, George Mitchell, attributes the detailed continuity script to Ince's desire for control over what Ford did.'8 This speculation seems plausible: if management desires to control uniformity and quality of product, some means of supervising the individual work tasks must be devised. But there may be more to it than that. The continuity script also provides efficiency and regularity of production. Describing the Ince studio eighteen months later, W. E. Wing wrote:

To the writer the most striking feature of Inceville . . . was its system. Although housing an army of actors, directors and subordinates, there is not a working hour lapses in which all the various companies are not at work produc- ing results. We failed to see actors made up and dressed for their various roles, loafing about the stages or on locations; perturbed directors running here and there attempting to bring order out of chaos, while locations waited and cameramen idly smoked their cigarettes, waiting for the "next scene."

With preparations laid out in detail from finished photoplays to the last prop, superintended by Mr. Ince himself, far in advance of action, each of the numer- ous directors on the job at Santa Ynez canyon is given his working script three weeks ahead of time.'9

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Ince's scenarios had, by 1913, become what are now labeled continuity scripts. A good number of these scripts, as well as scenarios for Griffith and Sennett films, are available in the Aitken Brothers Papers at Madison, Wis- consin.20 The earliest Ince script available is for The Raiders, which was shot in late 1913. This one is as fully developed as later ones, containing the constituent parts of all of his continuities.

Each script has a number assigned to it which provides a method of tracing the film even though its title might shift. A cover page indicates who wrote the scenario, who directed the shooting, when shooting began and ended, when the film was shipped to the distributors, and when the film was re- leased. This entire history on paper records the production process for ef- ficiency and waste control.

The next part is a list of all intertitles and an indication as to where they are to be inserted in the final print. The location page follows that. It lists all exterior and interior sites along with their scene numbers, providing ef- ficiency and preventing waste in time and labor. These continuities were apparently used during the filming process since pencil lines are drawn through the typed information.

The cast of characters follows. The typed portions list the roles for the story and penciled in are the names of the people assigned to play each part.

A one-page synopsis follows and then the script itself. Each scene is numbered consecutively and its location is given. Intertitles are typed in, often in red ink, where they are to be inserted in the final version. The description of mise-en-scene and action is detailed. Penciled over each scene is a scribble (presumably marking the completion of shooting), and some- times on the side is a handwritten number-possibly the footage length of the scene. Production stills for advertising often accompany the script.

Occasionally there is the typed injunction: "It is earnestly requested by Mr. Ince that no change of any nature be made in the scenario either by elimination of any scenes or the addition of any scenes or changing any of the action as described, or titles, without first consulting him." The usual anecdotes of a stamped phrase "shoot as written" or "produce this exactly as written" were not confirmed by any of these scripts.21 Rather, contempo- rary accounts suggest tht Ince, his production manager, the scenarist, and the director discussed and revised the script until it was in final shape for shooting.22 The continuities include detailed instructions such as special effects and tinting directions for the intertitles. Later, when Ince gave up cutting the films, notes to the editors are added.

Finally, and very significantly, attached to the continuity is the entire cost of the film, which is analyzed in a standard accounting format. The first section is labor costs, which account for eighty to ninety percentage of the direct costs of production. The second part is costs for expendables such as props, scenery, rentals, and music. In addition, the precise number of feet of

Cinema Journal / 21

negative and positive film is indicated along with a breakdown of cost per reel and per foot.23

All of this demonstrates that Ince's use of the continuity script resulted in a two-stage labor process-the work's preparation on paper by management followed by its execution by the workers. The five problems associated with optional systems-irregularity of production, loss of materials, slowness of manufacture, lack of uniformity, and uncertainty of quality-are controlled by that management. This standardization of the work process was used by Ince's publicity department as a mark of quality and uniformity of the film product: "Ince" becomes a brand name through its advertising.

The Division of Labor The second major part of this structure is the growth of division of labor as

planning becomes specialized in the hands of the corporate managers. When Ince began directing, some division of labor already existed for certain tasks, but the jobs were still flexible. Often the scenario might come from any one of the group.24 Ince himself performed several of the functions which were to be separated out and bracketed as specific tasks: he was the organizer of the work (the producer), the controller of the final script (the scenario editor), the head of shooting (the director), and the film cutter (the editor). As the company expanded operations, he relinquished parts of his work and became a supervisor, utilizing control methods through middle management heads to maintain operations as he wanted them.

The first function to be transferred was the basic writing of the script. By Spring 1912 Richard Spencer was in charage of writing the scenarios, and The Moving Picture World called the Edendale scenario department the "most highbrow motion picture institution in town."25 Ince, of course, still worked on the scripts with Spencer. C. Gardner Sullivan, who was to write many of the scenarios, was hired during this period. By 1915, the writing had been split: Spencer was chief story editor and Sullivan headed the scenario department which included six writers.26

The next of Ince's functions to go was the actual direction of the films. After Francis Ford was placed in charge of a second unit in 1912, the direc- tion staff increased rapidly, and INCE GRADUALLY STOPPED DIRECT- ING. By 1914, Inceville had eight directors, and by 1915, Reginald Barker headed a group of nine with five or six production units shooting simulta- neously. Ince was now titled "Director-General" for the company.27 The third function which Ince relinquished direct control of was that of actually cutting the films, a task he had delegated to others by 1915.28 Ince still retained final control through continuity script directions and final examina- tion of each produced film.

The division of labor did not involve Ince's work alone; the steady growth in studio facilities and in scale of production concurrently resulted in addi-

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tional segmenting of other film production functions. The management of such a complex organization required more professional abilities and, in the Spring of 1913, George B. Stout became Ince's financial head. After re- organizing the administrative system, Stout turned over the controls to Gene Allen and then transferred to Mack Sennett's studio which Ince nominally controlled as West Coast head for Kessel and Bauman. There, Stout also proceeded to divide Sennett's labor by breaking his studio into ten de- partments based on work functions.29 Ince's photography unit expanded rapidly, and set and construction demanded an art supervisor. In 1915, the New York Motion Picture Company aligned with the newly formed Triangle Film Corporation, and Ince, as well as Griffith and Sennett, became vice- president of the corporation. An expansion period followed, and more spe- cialists were hired: a former chief cameraman from Universal was employed "to superintend the development of negative films"; Victor Schertzinger began writing musical scores to accompany the films; and Melville Ellis, described as a "designer and fashion expert of International reputation," was hired for the costume department.30

One aspect has been left out of this description of the growth of division of labor and that is the situation of the actors and actresses. Stunt people and stock players were replacable workers. But what about the stars? At an exhibitors' convention both the stars and Ince's control as a mark of quality and uniformity were the central advertising themes. So the stars were not as interchangeable as were the other players.31 Instead they seemed to serve a function similar in nature to Ince's: product differentiation. For that reason, it would be important that a star be tied to a particular studio so that the star's "unique" qualities would be associated only with that studio's films. At the time of Triangle's formation, Ince disclosed that his idea was "to get stars, teach them the tricks of the camera and then keep them at salaries high enough to restrain them so that they cannot work first for one company and then for another."32 Even at this time the star as worker was often "bound" to the studio through multiple-year contracts in order to reduce fluctuation in the studio's image. Although a worker, in the sense of being an interchange- able part in the script, the star is also a quality or substance in the product itself and fulfills the function of a means to differentiate the pictures of one company from another.

One way to comprehend the growth of the entire studio structure is to recall the initial description of the new studio that Ince built in Culver City in late 1915, at the same time that he was renovating Inceville in Santa Monica: the 165-foot electrically lit building, the eight stages 60 by 150 feet, an ad- ministration building for executive and scenario offices, property, carpenter, and costume buildings, 300 dressing rooms, a hothouse, a natatorium, and so forth. But as impressive as that description is, Ince does not seem to have been unique. While he had the best scenario department, others also had them; Keystone, too, was divided into task sections. A special issue of The

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Moving Picture World in 1915 describes the growth of the West Coast pro- duction companies and lists the New York Motion Picture Company as just one of many whose facilities were expanding.33 The highly mobile employ- ment patterns in the industry, the widespread publicity, and evidence of the organization of other studios make it clear that Ince was not unusual; that, in fact, most studios were structured somewhat like his.34

A Revised Perspective By 1915 the major divisions of labor had been segmented. A pyramid of

labor was the dominant structure with a top manager, middle-management department heads, and workers. This fulfills Braverman's description of a fully organized modern corporation in which "the producing activities are subdivided among functional departments, each having a specific aspect of the process for its domain . . "35

This development was more important to the long-term structure of the film industry and to the development of the form and the style of the films that industry was to produce than was the impact of any individual film or director. In the 1910s several models for organizing motion picture labor competed for acceptance, but the model based on a well organized factory, brought to its fruition by Ince, eventually succeeded in dominating. While his system was attacked as potentially producing "mechanical picture[s],"36 its economical advantages seem to have won over any artistic fears.

Yet we should not create in Ince another great man of history. While he was an innovator of the continuity script, the industry as a whole was de- partmentalizing its production units. Earlier historians' comments that the continuity script led to economical and efficient production are correct, but the script is only part of the system of the creation of the product. The continuity script works because it is an external manifestation of a more fundamental structure inextricable from modern corporate business-the separation of the conception and production phases of work and the pyramid of divided labor. It is this fundamental structure which explains Ince's pro- duction organization, a structure which earlier historians have failed to foreground.

A question that derives from this is, was there a simultaneous standardiza- tion of the product? To answer this question would require an extensive analysis of Ince' s films-both the well-known and the lesser works. But it is clear that in the broader model of division of labor and scientific manage- ment, the film industry by 1915 had the structure it was to follow for the next fifty years.

NOTES 'This paper is a result of a seminar in social and economic problems in American

film history conducted by Douglas Gomery, Fall 1977, at the University of

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Wisconsin-Madison. I would like to thank the members of the seminar for their suggestions and help in formalizing these ideas. I also appreciate further research leads given me by members of the Society for Cinema Studies at the 1978 conference where a draft of this paper was read.

2George Mitchell, "Thomas H. Ince," Films in Review, 11 (October 1960), 464-68; "The 'IMP' Company Invades Cuba," The Moving Picture World, 8, no. 3 (21 Janauary 1911), 146. (The Moving Picture World will be abbreviated MPW hereaf- ter.)

3Kalton C. Lahue, Dreams for Sale: The Rise and Fall of the Triangle Film Corporation (South Brunswick and New York: A. S. Barnes, 1971), pp. 61, 65-6, 71; "Los Angeles Letter," MPW, 25, no. 8 (21 August 1915), 1301; "Forty-Three Acres for Incity," MPW, 27, no. 6 (12 February 1916), 958.

4Lewis Jacobs, The Rise of the American Film: A Critical History (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1939), pp. 162, 205-6; Lahue, Dreams for Sale, p. 46; Eric Rhode, A History of the Cinema: From Its Origins to 1970 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1976), p. 58.

5Harry Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1974), p. 54.

6Braverman, p. 59. 7Braverman, p. 63. 8Braverman, p. 75. 9Adam Smith quoted by Braverman, pp. 76-7. '0Braverman, p. 107. "For a Marxist analysis of these effects, also see Ernst Fischer, The Essential

Marxist, trans. Anna Bostock (New York: The Seabury Press, 1970), pp. 15-51. '2Braverman, p. 125. '3Braverman, p. 260. 14Peter Milne, Motion Picture Directing (New York: Falk, 1922), p. 136. '5Braverman, p. 125. 16Everett McNeil, "Outline of How to Write a Photoplay," MPW, 9, no. 1 (15 July

1911), 27. 17"Doings in Los Angeles," MPW, 12, no. 10 (8 June 1912), 913; "Doings in Los

Angles," MPW, 14, no. 1 (5 October 1912), 32. '8Mitchell, pp. 469-70. '9W. E. Wing, "Tom Ince, of Inceville," The New York Dramatic Mirror, 70, no.

1827 (24 December 1913), 34 [also in George C. Pratt, Spellbound in Darkness, revised ed. (Greenwich, Connecticut: New York Graphic Society, 1973), pp. 144- 45].

20Aitken Brothers Papers, Scenarios, Manuscript Collection (Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, Madison, Wisconsin), Boxes 1-9.

21Milne, p. 140; Jacobs, p. 204; Arthur Knight, The Liveliest Art: A Panoramic History of the Movies (New York: Macmillan, 1957), p. 38; Edward Wagenknecht, The Movies in the Age of Innocence (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1962), p. 175; Lahue, Dreams for Sale, p. 45; Rhode, p. 58.

22Wing, p. 34; Milne, p. 140; William S. Hart, My Life East and West (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1929), pp. 206-7.

23For example, The Iron Strain (1915) costs were $2737.56 per reel (six reels) and $2.73 per foot.

24Mitchell, p. 468. 25"Doings in Los Angeles," MPW, 15, no. 7 (15 February 1913), 668. 26Wing, p. 34; Jean Mitry, Histoire du cinema: Art et Industrie, Vol. 1: 1895-1914

(Paris: Editions Universitaires, 1967), p. 440; Mitry, Vol. II: 1915-1925, pp. 88-9; Hart, p. 213; Lahue, Dreams for Sale, p. 40.

Cinema Journal / 25

27"William S. Hart," MPW, 22, no. 7 (14 November 1914), 920; Mitry, II, pp. 88-9; Lahue, Dreams for Sale, p. 40; Ad, MPW, 25, no. 2 (10 July 1915), 333.

28Lahue, Dreams for Sale, p. 45. 29Kalton C. Lahue, Mack Sennett's Keystone: The Man, the Myth, and the Com-

edies (Cranbury, New Jersey: A. S. Barnes, 1971), p. 244. 30Mitchell, pp. 472-3; Mitry, I, p. 440; "Los Angeles Letter," MPW, 25, no. 9 (28

August 1915), 1466; "Ince's Big Picture Completed," MPW, 27, no. 10 (11 March 1916), 1638; "Los Angeles Letter," MPW, 25, no. 8 (21 August 1915), 1301; "Triangle Appoints a General Manager," MPW, 25, no. 8 (21 August 1915), 1303; "Triangle Opening Announced," MPW 25, no. 10 (4 September 1915), 1622; "Manu- facturers' Exposition," MPW, 25, no. 5 (31 July 1915), 820.

31"Manufacturers' Exposition," MPW, 25, no. 5 (31 July 1915), 820; Aitken Brothers Papers, Scenarios, Boxes 1-9.

32"Los Angeles Letter," MPW, 25, no. 7 (14 August 1915), 1144. 33George Blaisdell, "Mecca of the Motion Picture," MPW, 25, no. 2 (10 July 1915),

216. 34Aitken Brothers Papers, Correspondence, Boxes 10-14. 35Braverman, p. 260. 36Milne, p. 136.