To understand why white void Hollywood studios are so appealing to recent film makers, let us first see how they employ it in their productions. The white void Hollywood cyc wall is simply a featureless expanse of white. The studios simply erect a broad wall that is totally featureless. The room is then painted in a pure white color. Once this is done, it gives the illusion that the subjects ( actors ) are seen as standing in an empty white space.
The room is so featureless that it’d be very unlikely to tell from any photographs or footage taken with the cyc in the background that there are any walls at all . You cannot see the walls, the floors, the ceiling, or any other proof of space and dimension. The actors appear to be hanging in nothingness. A great white void Hollywood studio blends all the walls, the floor and the ceiling into one continual space in such a manner that the dimensions of space are lost when filmed or snapped.
This is the reason why the white void Hollywood studio room is known as a white cyc, as it is a real void. It lacks any notion of dimension and placement when shot in a film. Why would a director prefer to shoot a scene in a white void Hollywood studio? What’s the intention of loosing the dimensions of setting? The white cyc studio comes in hardy when the director wants to achieve the film effects discussed in the following paragraphs. There are occasions when the director will wish to express a transition from one realm to another like when going from a dream to fact. The dream is digitally put in place of the white screen, and when that dream is over, the stage can then shift back from the white wall. This is one of the best ways of expressing dreams instead of shooting in a monochrome mode.
Similarly, a director may want to shove the plot with a flashback scene. That implies she has to craft a way of removing the viewer from their present space-time to a past event as imagined by the actor. The simplest way to shift the viewer is by removing the ordinary misce-en-scene and carrying the viewer thru the white cyc where the flashback is acted out ( past ) and back again to the normal misce-en-scene ( present ). It works perfectly and no spectator will be confused about the plot’s back and forth movement.
Another great example we are able to highlight in the use of white void Hollywood studios is the so called ‘imprisonment settings’ in film making circles. Imprisonment settings are the settings in which a director may wish to shoot an interrogation, or a subject in any sort of detained environment ( prison, mental establishment, etc ). This is easily achieved with the white cyc studios since the white void has no exits, no windows and no definition of dimensions so freedom is seen as absent.
