CinemaScope

“ Thus as we analyze the optical aspects of a motion picture we are amazed at the number of things that may conspire to hurt our eyes, and we sympathize more than ever with the sincere cinema composer. He, the new hope of the movies, feels the need of other equipment than a line of talk and a megaphone. He no longer applies for a position in a studio on the strength of his record as an actor, as a stage director, as a city editor, as a college cheer leader, or as a drill sergeant in the army. He has begun to think in pictorial composition and not in words. ”

“ Profit and pleasure combine to win recruits for the art of animated photography. As an entertainment offered to the public, the moving-pictures have had no rival. Their popularity has been remarkable and universal. It increases daily, and, since we are only now beginning to see the magnitude of what the cinematograph can effect, it is not likely to diminish. This development has stirred the ambition of the amateur or independent photographer because the field is so vast, fertile, and promising. ”

“ In most cases he has graduated upon the stage, and has probably passed through all the phases between a touring company and a well-known theatre. As a result of this drilling he will have assumed a wide perspective. Sheer ability will have brought him to the control of the cinema-studio stage, where the work is most exacting, and where there is a very great demand for ingenuity and resource. Having mastered the intricacies and possibilities of the photo-play stage, and what can be done by photography, he will be a thorough master of craft. ”

“ The curse of the motion-picture industry is that in every audience there are from six to seven young women with adenoids who will insist on reading out the titles as they are flashed on the screen, filling the rest of the customers with harsh thoughts and dreams of murder. ”

“ The word, though common on our side of the Atlantic now, was at that time peculiar to the American language.
“Cinematographs?” I said. “I’ve seen them of course. You have them in your circus, haven’t you, as part of the show?”
“Yes. That’s what set me thinking about them. I’ve always felt that the next step in perfecting the cinematograph would be doing away with the screen, putting the figures on the stage, that is to say reflections of them, so that they would actually move about backwards and forwards instead of on a flat surface. You understand?” ”

“ Development.
The modern cinematograph was rendered possible by the invention in 1890 of the celluloid roll film, on which serial pictures are [23] impressed by instantaneous photography; a long sensitised film being moved across the focal plane of a camera and exposed intermittently. For an hour’s exhibition 50,000 to 165,000 pictures are needed. To regulate the feed in the lantern a hole is punched in the film for each picture. ”

“ The old ways of doing were being revolutionized day by day with the introduction of the close-up, switchback,95 light effects, and screen acting that could be recognized as a portrayal of human conduct. Exhibitors soon began clamoring for A. B. pictures, not only for the U. S. A. but for foreign countries as well; and as Mr. Griffith had a commission on every foot of film sold, it was an easy matter for us to judge our ever-increasing popularity. ”

“ How can the art of cinematography be brought within the reach of the amateur? This is the absorbing question of the moment. Moving pictures having become so popular, the traveller wishes to secure animated records of the scenes which he has witnessed in foreign climes, to reveal them to his friends, exactly as he saw them, within the home circle. Unfortunately, such an achievement is impossible under existing conditions. The apparatus, both recording and projecting, is expensive; the film is costly; while the problem incidental to the illuminant is not easily solved in the average home. ”

“ The novice may attach little or no importance to this initial move in the creation of a photoplay, but study and the experience that comes with practical analysis and the actual work of plot-building will lend emphasis to the statement that no single consideration demands more careful and thoughtful attention. Let us assume that when the drop-curtain rises in a motion picture theatre and the shadow action commences, the audience is looking, not at figures projected upon a screen, but through a window into the private lives of fictitious characters around whom the plot is woven. ”

“ The English pioneers, not being skilled in the mysteries of stage craft, wisely retired from the producing field upon the entrance of the expert from the legitimate theatre, who realised that the moving-picture field offered him increased opportunities for his knowledge and activity as well as bringing him more profitable financial returns for his labours. The British fathers of the industry devoted their energies to the manufacture of cinematographic apparatus, as they foresaw that sooner or later the amateur and independent worker must enter the industry. ”

“ When two or more rivals in a single town are making a common bid for popular favour, the public naturally patronises the establishment which offers the most refined pictures combined with comfort in the seating arrangements. The inferior film is being driven from the better class of cinematograph theatre, where a programme is offered which is varied in character, and of the highest excellence from the photographic, dramatic, and educational point of view, as well as from that of sheer amusement. ”

“ This is the Motograph Film Company of London, which has completed contracts with the most prominent European scientific cinematographers for their entire output of educational, scientific and natural history subjects. It is also endeavouring to persuade the eminent teachers of certain subjects to commit their work to the celluloid film instead of to printed books. It is a difficult quest because the professors are apt to regard the cinematograph as a joke. At the same time, once the development becomes started upon the correct lines, it cannot fail to meet with success. ”

“ Even the largest producers, who have huge theatres and command the services of expert scenario writers [6] and players, do not hesitate to purchase from outside sources.
A cinematograph camera, and a little luck, will make anyone's holiday profitable. The travelling amateur penetrates into places overlooked by the professional, and usually takes greater pains with his work. Afterwards he finds his market in the fact that the demand for travel pictures is so great that a good film of 300 feet will fetch £40 ($200) and upwards. ”

“ Kircher and Edison do not stand alone in the parade of pioneers in the art and science of the screen. The list of builders of the cinema is as cosmopolitan as its appeal: Greeks, Romans, Persians, British, Italians, Germans, French, Belgians, Austrians and lastly, and in some ways most importantly, Americans. Ancient philosophers, medieval monks, scholarly giants of the Renaissance, scientists, necromancers, modern inventors—all had a role in the 2500 year story of the creation, out of light and shadow, of this most popular and most influential expression—the motion picture. ”

“ It should be impossible, therefore, to consider that the photoplay setting is a complete, independent picture, and that the actors are separate visible things merely placed in front of the setting. And if the movie director makes the mistake of not fusing actor and setting into a pictorial composition, it is perhaps because he imagines the spectator with himself in the studio, where the scene and action are like those of the stage, instead of putting himself with the spectator before the screen. ”

“ We have in projectors a valuable aid to our works as educators. The “movies” are the coming apostles of education; in them we have the world in miniature, and its value as an educative force can hardly be over-estimated. In a very few years every well-equipped library will be installed with its own cinematograph apparatus, and possibly its own asbestos-lined cinema-operating room, as at Stockport, for instance.
The Book.
A film on the making of a book could be made decidedly interesting, showing the many processes that go to the making of a book ”

“ Considering the position which the motion-picture has attained in our social and industrial life, the establishment of national cinematograph laboratories appears not only to be opportune, but necessary. ”

“ Motion pictures are still changing so much, in their development from year to year, that any survey of this vast, chaotic new industry is in danger of being out-of-date long before its time. With this in mind, I have attempted to stress those phases of movie-making, and of the story-telling that underlies each photoplay, that do not change. A generation hence, the fundamental problems confronting the makers—how to show real people, doing interesting things in interesting places—will be the same. ”

“ Plot, performers, places, equipment—these are only the materials which a picture-maker puts into cinematic forms. The art does not lie in the separate materials; it lies in the organization of those materials, a process which may be called cinema composition.A In a later chapter we shall discuss the proposition that the motion picture director is, or certainly should be, the master cinema composer. ”

“ Changes in techniques or styles of motion picture production cannot affect the importance of these films. Specialized students of the motion picture and drama will derive profit and pleasure from seeing the first attempts to tell a story on the screen, the evolution of screen syntax by D. W. Griffith, and the first appearances of such celebrities as Mary Pickford, and the films listed in this catalog and preserved in the Library of Congress and elsewhere will have an even wider appeal to general historians, sociologists, and educators who may have no interest in the motion picture as such. ”

“ In approaching the conclusion of the first half of this series of articles which has given, inadequately and sketchily, a bird’s-eye view of the past and present of the movie as a purveyor of amusement, the writer finds himself turning to other fields of endeavor in which the screen is pushing forward as a pioneer with the hope in his heart, amounting to a certainty, that the screen drama in America is upon the threshold of a great and glorious future. Revolutionary changes in the photo-drama are being brought about by methods arousing intense scientific and technical interest. ”

“ In this respect the cinematograph producer is far better off than his rival on the real stage. Situations, scenes, and episodes incapable of production by the latter, can be produced very simply on the film. Novels, short stories, plays, the Bible, Greek inscriptions, inventions, little episodes and incidents in everyday life—anything and everything is grist for his mill. Of course, fashions change just as in any other phase of our complex life. ”

“ Nothing is too difficult for the motion-picture man, and he has never proposed a feat so daring but what he could find plenty of actors willing to take the necessary parts. Battles, scenes from history, sessions of Congress, railroad wrecks, earthquakes and hundreds of other spectacles have been planned, staged and acted out by the makers of cinematograph films, while, of course, all the plays that we see on the screen are planned and carefully rehearsed before they are photographed. ”

“ An example of the amazing lack of artistic co-operation in the movie world is furnished by the following press notice, sent out from one of the largest moving picture theaters on Broadway. “Audiences who see a film projected on the screen at the —— Theater, seldom take the details connected with its showing into consideration. It is a well-known fact that a photoplay is seldom presented at the —— in the form it is received from the manufacturer. ”

“ To the amateur the ideal manner of staging a motion picture is, of course, to handle every detail of the production within the organization, merely going outside to rent a camera, purchase film stock, and finally for the factory work of developing and printing the film. The pleasure of “doing everything yourself” is almost too great to be resisted, but if a successful production is to be assured it is wise to call on professional help in other branches. ”

“ Unfortunately, the feeling against the moving picture has not been entirely eliminated, despite its tremendous popularity. Once an energetic Board of Education realises the possibilities of cinematography as a supplement to the information conveyed by text-books and manuals, the film manufacturers will hasten to supply the demand thus created. ”

“ At times their revolutionary ideas are put into practice before they are thoroughly understood, and the result is far from satisfactory. The improvement proves to be more imaginary than real. But if recourse is first had to the cinematograph, the process can be submitted to a searching practical trial before it is installed. A film can be taken and each separate image can be examined minutely with the aid of the magnifying glass, until a pretty complete idea is gained as to the true value of the invention. ”

“ Once the camera starts to “grind” you are using film, and if everything is not perfect you are either wasting money on scenes that will have to be retaken, or [Pg 118] else you are weakening the picture should the faults be overlooked. In rehearsing, the director must not only assure himself that the players are capably interpreting the emotions called for by the story, but he must also see that there is no danger of their stepping outside the lines of the camera’s vision in the excitement of the action after photography has started. ”