Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/765720
26 P E R S P E C T I V E | J A N UA RY / F E B R UA RY 2 0 1 7 in print Top: In the late 1950s, business partners John Harold Coakley and Bill Jekel painted this 13-feet- tall by 20-feet-wide interior room backing for their company's inventory catalog. Coast Backings Corporation created and owned dozens of backings like this one for rental to the entertainment industry, and many of these historic backings, including this one, remain in the rental inventory of JC Backings. Right: A detail from the same backing reveals the loose, impressionist quality of the best scenic painting. This odd, triangular-shaped building, with its sawtooth roof and skylights, was among the earliest studios to be located within the pastures, orchards and wooded glens of East Hollywood, the cradle of the West Coast motion picture industry. These studios were all created for a singular purpose—to make motion pictures on an industrial scale. They were brash and bold start-up enterprises whose advocates were derogatorily referred to by the locals as "movies." Their films were scripted to take place in a wide variety of periods, places and environments. At first, their technology was rudimentary, requiring vast quantities of filtered daylight, a firm wood floor and theatrically painted stage drops. With the advent of stage lighting and sound, the tools became bigger, heavier and more complex, so the companies created much larger windowless stages in which to make films. The stories and cinematic world became more sophisticated, so a reimagined approach to scenic painting was now required, one specifically designed for the creation of photorealistically rendered and, ultimately, multicolored backdrops. A new generation of Scenic Artists, in collaboration with their forebears, improved the architecture of their workspaces and brought a new creative audacity to their profession's art and craft. continued Art Directors Guild Archives/Courtesy of JC Backings/Photographer Cameron Devon