Frank Capra was enamored with adapting James Hilton's 1933 novel Lost Horizon which he did, released in 1937. However, it was quite the epic shoot which was epitomized in the amount of film reel used, partially due to the multiple cameras implemented in filming to cover every scene from several angles. For example, one scene lasting four minutes, saw Capra shoot 6,000 feet of film, the equivalent of one hour of screen time. He also spent six days filming Sam Jaffe performing the monologues of his character High Lama...then he reshot the scenes twice, one of those times being with Walter Connolly because it was felt Jaffe's makeup was unconvincing and he looked too young for the role. That totaled to 40 minutes of footage featuring the High Lama that was eventually trimmed to the 12 minutes that appeared in the final cut. By the time end of filming, Capra had used 1.1 million feet of film. Stay tuned!
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