Motion pictures

“ From this it was to Edison but a step to a practicable projector, and nothing remained but to improve its mechanical working.
Getting motion pictures is the adventurous part of the business, for this work requires operators and actors who are athletes and who do not know the meaning of fear. As pictures of scenery and events are taken in every corner of the world—in the jungles, in the arctic ice, on mountains and in deserts, the photographers all can tell absorbing stories of the strange places and things they have filmed. ”

“ Motion pictures are to-day a force to be reckoned with, and the national advertiser can not do better than to take advantage of the weaknesses of the fans, who are enrolled from all walks of life, and no one, from the boy in short pants to the old man of seventy, is immune. When they get the motion-picture bug badly—and the majority succumb—their interest in a photoplay only really commences when they view it at their pet theater. ”

“ Plateau, a Belgian scientist who became blind in work that resulted in making it possible for millions all over the world to see motion pictures, deserves more than anyone else the title, “Father of the Motion Picture.” Just as Athanasius Kircher originated projection as we know it with the magic lantern, Joseph Antoine Ferdinand Plateau has the best claim of all to credit for making the motion picture illusion a reality. ”

“ Perhaps it is because of the rapidity of its growth that the art is still a mystery to the layman. In this book the author has set himself the task of answering the hundred and one questions that must occur frequently to followers of the motion picture. In a logical manner every stage in the process of making motion pictures is covered, while due attention has been paid to the historical and business phases of the subject. A studied effort has been made to use terms clear to the lay mind. ”

“ This “sixteen” is a cabalistic figure in motion pictures. There are sixteen photographs on each foot of film. For average work the camera-man photographs the pictures at the rate of sixteen to the second, and they are shown on the screen in the picture theater at the same speed.
When the camera-man turns the crank at the side of his camera two independent mechanisms are affected by the operation, the shutter and the device for feeding the film. ”

“ Cinematography, which is the technical name for the whole art of motion pictures, is based on one of nature's defects, whereas most inventions are based 165 on some of nature's perfect processes. The defect is called by the scientists the persistence of vision, which means that after you look at an object, and it is quickly taken from before your eyes, the image remains there for the fraction of a second. ”

“ Great and strange men, some whose fame derives from activities in other fields, others hardly recorded in the passing of history, contributed to what was eventually to become the motion picture. Many of the pioneers of the magic shadow art-science realized the entertainment, educational and scientific potentialities of their discoveries ”

“ The camera’s eye may roam the world for subjects; its range equals that of the newspaper or magazine. The stage and literature, travel, science, news and advertising, all are open to the motion picture. The photoplay, presenting a visualized story, is the most popular form, for the public heeds quickest the call of entertainment. But serious students of the motion picture believe that, in time, its purely amusement features will be dwarfed by the development along lines that may be roughly grouped under the heading “educational.” ”

“ And this development, this evolution, has to do not merely with the perfecting of the art itself, but with the enjoyment that is derivable and derived from the art. Our eyes are becoming keener in the detection of gestures and mimicry; our imaginations are growing sharper, even clairvoyant; they are rapidly becoming able to read the language of pictures and movement. When the motion picture was still in its infancy, its actors assumed and employed the shrill and tinny pathos of the pantomime. ”

“ Again I do not refer to people who really do think that the movies are gripping. I refer to that mean and hypnotized state of mind which allows persons of superior intellect to say, in private or in print, that the motion pictures in their present state are "a great art," when they know perfectly well that they have never seen a motion picture which dis =played one atom of art except good photography or possibly an honest intent to reproduce grandeur by prodigious pains and unlimited expense. ”

“ The moon playing upon silent waters, the sun casting deepening shadows in the woods, a twinkling campfire, starlight dancing on ruffled waters—all provided the first pageantries of light and shadow. The first eclipse of the sun seen by man was the most thrilling and terrifying light and shadow show of that era, a premiere never rivalled by Hollywood’s best.
From the beginning of the record of human aspiration men had the urge to create representations of life. ”

“ To reflect on the possibilities of the motion picture in education is to regret that one’s school days were spent before this great invention came to us as a poultice to heal the blows of ignorance, but there is consolation in the fact that since the advent of pictures the whole world, regardless of age, can go to school. ”

“ If we study those films that please us most we shall discover easy continuity of movement, so that a path of motion described in any one scene is extended, as it were, into a similar path of motion in the following scene. In such motion pictures there may be shifts, but45 there are no breaks. Paths of motion on the screen can remain long in our memories, as though they were fixed lines in a picture. ”

“ It is a curious fact that while the modern art of motion pictures depends essentially on the development of instantaneous photography, the suggestion of the possibility of securing a reproduction of animate motion, as well as, in a general way, of the mechanism for accomplishing the result, was made many years before the instantaneous photograph became possible. ”

“ That’s the way most of us watch motion pictures—with the accent on the sit.
We don’t use our brains enough, where the movies are concerned, either in the selection of pictures to go to see, or in analyzing—and appreciating or criticizing—what we see. ”

“ The marvelous development of the motion picture and the important place it has won in the heart of the entire civilized world have attracted an interest never before attained in so short a time by any form of amusement. ”

“ Though all these seekers for knowledge worked constantly with “pictures of objects in motion” as their goal, it is not possible that any saw in the motion picture the possibility of development to its present important place. Dreamers as they necessarily were, there were no imaginations even among picture-men of the last decade that would dare such wide stretches of fancy. ”

“ That the imperfect films of the first decades offered only imperfect, at times even repellent, pictures, is altogether natural. The intellectuals of all nations, and those who had schooled their eye and their heart on the perfection and beauty of the [60] old and established arts, were terrified, if not horrified, at and by the unlicked antics of this new contraption. They saw in the motion picture nothing more than a machine to entertain, chiefly to amuse, the populace. ”

“ The motion photographer is able with the aid of his camera to perform any number of miraculous feats. He can have one man play two or three parts on the screen at one time, thus having an actor engage in conversation with himself, and so on. And then, readers are most likely all familiar with the pictures showing magical appearances and disappearances of characters. Or the picture-maker can give you a thrilling view of the burning of a city, yet he need not have journeyed outside the studio or expended more than a few dollars to get the scene. ”

“ That would be worse than forever playing tennis with a man who could never hope to ever equal your own game.
Do you see what we are getting to? Leadership!
Motion pictures, are, in a certain sense, a part of the great publishing business of the United States. They publish stories in picture form. And in those stories they publish ideas, and ideals, and rules of conduct, and good taste, and good sense,—or the lack of all those things.
It is through the publishing business—the movies as well as books or magazines or newspapers—that we get the information and ideals153 by which we live. ”

“ Probably this projector also was made by Paul or he assisted in its design. Acres, however, was primarily interested in his profession of photography, and motion pictures appeared to him to be only one aspect of the subject. In 1897 he said: “There is something in photography and, in particular, in animated photography. Indeed, I think there can be no doubt that animated photography is destined to revolutionize our art-science, both as regards matters historical and scientific, in addition to giving us life-long portraits.” ”

“ The proportion of motion-picture goers in this country is one to every five inhabitants, and, however it may work out in your town, it is practically certain that the majority of men, women and children spend their evenings at the motion-picture show. ”

“ MOTION-PHOTOGRAPHY AS AN EDUCATIONAL FORCE
There remains no doubt whatever that the cinematograph has completely won over the great public—the many millions who are constantly seeking fresh fields of amusement and diversion. Of all the classes that patronise the moving-picture entertainment, the children form the one most open to its influence and most responsive to what it offers them; and it is this well-known impressionableness of the young mind that has set people thinking of the educational responsibility of the moving-picture show. ”

“ But the ‘make-up’ of the motion-picture theater screen differs in that only one thing may be presented at a time. If an advertising film is unfolded, you have no other alternative in the darkened hall than to give it your attention. ”

“ The art of picture producing has recruited so many young men that perhaps the majority of them must needs be put in 224this class. In the year to come I sincerely believe that the study of the creation of motion pictures will be taught as an art or craft just as playmaking is today. In fact, the scenario classes in many of the universities now are paving the way for the broader classes to come. Most of the dramatic scholars in the picture art have been recruited from the stage. These are the men who have the traditions and the teachings of drama at their finger tips. ”

“ The logical follow-up medium for your film is the motion-picture publication field, for every fan takes regularly at least one publication devoted to photoplays, and the cover of national magazine or periodical you have in mind may only catch his eye at the news-stand. ”

“ MOVIE ADVERTISING FROM THE VIEWPOINT OF A FAN
You may hardly credit it when I assert that motion-picture audiences are the most critical in the world. They do not outwardly show their disapproval of things, but after they resolved that the photoplay was here to stay, anything as a motion picture would no longer satisfy them. So the film producers had to humor the folks who had made their wealth, and to-day the fans have been educated up to such a pitch that nothing but the best will satisfy them. Here, then, is the class of readers represented by moving-picture publicity. ”

“ From the dark booth of eternity, He pours His creative beam through the films of successive ages, and the pictures are thrown on the screen of space. Just as the motion-picture images appear to be real, but are only combinations of light and shade, so is the universal variety a delusive seeming. The planetary spheres, with their countless forms of life, are naught but figures in a cosmic motion picture, temporarily true to five sense perceptions as the scenes are cast on the screen of man's consciousness by the infinite creative beam. ”

“ When a piece of fiction—no matter whether it be a short story, a serial or a novel—appears, an endeavor should be made to arrange with a film concern that the photoplay should appear simultaneously with it in fiction form. ”

“ For complete success in moving-picture work it is essential to have an elementary knowledge of the principles upon which the art is based. Although pictures are said to be shown in motion upon the screen, no action is reproduced as a matter of fact. ”

“ The device did not achieve projection in the strict sense. Bacon’s description clearly states that through the use of mirrors objects were made to appear where they were not. In effect, this reminds us of the illusion of the modern motion picture. There are stories that native people when first seeing motion pictures, attempt to run up to the screen and greet the pictures. It is only through experience that they learn the characters are not actually alive on the screen. ”

“ As a sequel America and motion pictures are linked in the minds of millions throughout the world.
Edison came to the motion picture through his Talking Phonograph, which he had developed not as an entertainment machine but as a device which would be a substitute for the court reporter and in other proceedings requiring exact recording. The motion picture experiments were made rather as a hobby and a diversion from more serious research and invention ”

“ It is through learning something about the distributing and exhibiting angles of the motion picture business that we can find out why pictures can’t be so very much better than they are to-day, under present conditions. ”