Movie screen

“ 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. ”

“ The screen creates a new demand on the part of those who have not themselves seen the picture. A middlewestern librarian tells me that many of their calls for the book come from those who have seen the advertising of the picture, or who have heard their friends 220talk about it, or who assume that a book which has found its way into motion pictures must be out of the ordinary. ”

“ Rick shook his head in admiration. "Rear-screen projection with a wide-angle lens. That's really using movie technique for all it's worth."
"Rear-screen projection?" Scotty queried.
"Sure. Movies and TV use it all the time. When the hero is supposed to be watching dinosaurs fighting it out, he's actually standing in front of a big screen of special plastic or ground glass, with the picture projected on it from behind. The mist acted as the screen, so we saw the image but not the projector beam. ”

“ When the film is developed and a print made for exhibition, it is run through the projecting machine of a theater: if it were run at the rate of a foot a second, sixty feet a minute, the figures on the screen would move just as fast as they did in real life when the picture was taken—no faster and no slower.
But the custom has grown up of running film through the projecting machines faster than the film was run through the camera. Instead of being run sixty feet a minute, it is usually clicked along at the rate of seventy feet or more a minute. ”

“ Nor is the screen really committing sacrilege in making use of the literary achievements of master tale-tellers. Since the movies first began to present 78photoplays based upon the world’s great novels, there has been a constantly increasing demand at our circulating libraries for the works of worth-while authors possessing the narrative gift. The telephone actually increased the vogue of the telegraph. The wireless is enlarging the working-field of the telephone. By the same token, the screen is not narrowing but broadening the realm of letters. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Lincoln asserted that you can’t fool all the people all the time, but 97at one period it seemed as if the screen were stubbornly endeavoring to perform this miracle. A picture-play, whatsoever might have been its origin, succumbed, as a rule, to a tendency to underrate the general intelligence, the power of memory, and the knowledge of life and human nature possessed by the average movie audience. ”

“ 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. ”

“ HINTS FOR PRIVATE THEATRICALS.—III.
My dear Rouge Pot,—I promised to say something about scenery screens.
If the house happens to boast a modern pseudo-Japanese screen of a large size (say six feet high) , it will make a very pretty background for a drawing-room scene, and admit of entrances as I suggested. But screens with light grounds are also very valuable as reflectors, carrying the light into the back of the stage. There is generally a want of light on the amateur stage, and all means to remedy this defect and brighten up matters are worth considering. ”

“ Though the excellence of a moving picture display depends primarily upon the projector and the film, its brilliancy and clear definition can be made or marred by the screen. When the pictures are being thrown from the front of the house and the audience see a reflected projection, the screen must be opaque and prepared from a suitably woven cloth. ”

“ Let us simply add that the kind of rest we have in mind is never the rest of inaction, of sleep, or of death; it is rather a dynamic repose. Just as the still portions of the motion picture may be active upon the spectator’s mind, so the motions may be reposeful while they are both at work and at play. Such harmony of pictorial motions on the screen is not too high an ideal for the lovers of the cinema. ”

“ Thus a sudden gesture, or the waving branches of trees or bushes, or a motor car driving up in front of a house, or even such intended grace as the movement in dancing, may spoil a picture by being too near the camera.
Another thing which makes close-up movements ugly is the flicker, which cannot be entirely eliminated. Our readers are doubtless generally aware that what we see on the screen is simply the blending of a rapid succession of still pictures falling on different spots in an order and a direction which gives the appearance of motion. ”

“ When we consider that changing tonal value may be combined with changing direction, as well as with changing velocity, of moving spots, moving lines, moving patterns, and moving textures, we realize more keenly the problems of the cinema composer. His medium is at once extremely complex, extremely flexible, and extremely delicate.
But we have not yet revealed all of the strange qualities of the motion picture. A unique power of the screen, which can never be utilized by any other graphic art, is that which gives motion to things that are themselves absolutely at rest and immovable. ”

“ They have, in effect, contrived to breathe life into normally changeless records of the camera; and the process is now applied, with marked success, to animated scenes of the most diverse description. The busy traffic of city streets, the play of expression upon the human countenance, the movements of waves, waterfalls, fleeting clouds—these and many other effects have been depicted upon the screen with equal fidelity before audiences that have seldom failed to show their appreciation of the novel form of entertainment thus provided. ”

“ If there were some mechanical difficulty which made this clashing effect of the motion pictures necessary, we could never hope for beauty on the screen; for no art can achieve beauty by producing pain. But we know from the work of such directors as James Cruze, D. W. Griffith, Allan Dwan, Rex Ingram, and John Robertson, that the moving picture camera is capable of recording light gray and dark gray, as well as steel white and ebony. ”

“ The camera through which one looked was simply a stereoscopic glass directed on a double film screen, and the pads were the telephone receivers through which one heard the voices of the actors, which seemed to come from their mouths. The plays themselves were most dramatic in character, since their object was to endue the spectator with a highly disturbing emotion in a minimum of time. They were therefore very allusive, and I should have found it hard to understand many of them if the gestures and tones of the actors had not been profoundly striking. ”

“ The great appeal of the screen lies in the showing of vivid movement, the flow of forms, the subtle weaving, through soft play of light and shadow, of fanciful figures that melt like music while we gaze, and yet remain in our minds like curves of a strange melody. When such glimpses of beauty come, our eyes and brains surely do not feel any friction or strain in the process of looking. But when ugly motions are presented the eye must perform excessive movement, and the brain must exert excessive effort. ”

“ Such are a few of the many motion-picture activities which have sprung up in the last few years, and made it possible for us to see whatever is interesting in any part of the world, on the cinematograph screen. Beside the professional cinematographers, there are of course any number of smart boys and young men who are having fine times with the amateur projecting outfits sold by the big makers of apparatus. These machines run from mere toys made up for a little roll of film, already prepared, to projectors with which very creditable parlour shows can be given. ”

“ But when we are shown a motion picture which has been made with the camera pointing downward, so that a level thing, like a plain or the surface of the sea, appears standing on end, then we like to see the points of interest so distributed that the various parts of the screen seem to be proportionally filled. ”

“ With the inability of the eye to tell that the screen is merely exhibiting separate photographs, the appearance is of motion. In most persons this visual persistence is only about one twenty-fourth of a second, but that is long enough to allow animated photography to be a pleasing illusion to them, for it gives the shutter of the projector time to hide one picture while the mechanism moves the film down to the next picture, bring the film to a dead stop, and let the shutter open again to reveal the next stage of animation. ”

“ If one placed in the small hole in the shade a glass lens to give a sharp image, and substituted for the wall a movable screen, on which the projected objects could be focussed, one would have the essential elements of a modern camera. ”

“ An old negative, from which the film has been partially scraped, is placed in one of the plate-holders, and the film is brought into the common focus of the eyepiece and the great mirror. The appearance of the guiding star, which varies somewhat with the position of the guiding eyepiece on its slide, is then carefully noted, and is kept constant during the exposure by turning, when necessary, the focusing screw of the eye-end. For preliminary adjustments a ground-glass screen is often convenient. ”

“ Every one not engaged in the performance, but who is behind the screen, waiting for his part, must be particular to keep back of the light, so their shadows will not be thrown on the screen.
In making entrances and exits, come on from the sides, about two feet from the screen, and you must remember that the farther you are from the screen, and the nearer to the light, the larger will be your shadow on the screen. Recollect, too, that you must be in profile, or sideways to your audience, otherwise the effect of your acting is lost ”

“ There is no aperture so shaped that it cannot be framed in screens by the ablest screen makers. In the case of the metal screen the bent work is really a work of art, in that they are not puckered or pinched, but are sans humps, sans bumps, sans everything but beauty, rigidity and conformity to conditions. ”

“ When we analyze pictorial composition on the screen we must proceed as we have done throughout this book. We must look at it from the point of view of the spectator in the theater. The spectator does not see the setting with one eye and the actors with the other, he does not separate the respective movements of human beings, animals, trees, water, fire, etc., as they play before him, and he does not disconnect any one scene from the scenes which precede or follow it. To him everything on the screen is connected with everything else there. ”

“ Television maps from many cameras to the entire world, and all can simultaneously partake in its images. Television is distributed and introduces simultaneity in that several events from several locations can be broadcast on the TV screen. By comparison, cinematography is centralized. Filming is limited to the location where it is being carried on. Cinematography is intrinsically sequential in that it follows the narrative structure and constitutes a closed entity. Once edited for showing, the film cannot be interrupted to insert anything new. ”

“ It is not discouraging to discover a fault, so long as we see that it is one which might have been avoided. We want to make it plain in this chapter that, although the movies sometimes hurt the eyes, it is never due to any necessity. It is a fact that pictures on the screen, when properly made, are always pleasing to the spectators’ eyes. And he who does not accept this as a fundamental proposition can hardly come by any large faith in the future of the photoplay as art.
But we must make a few more eye tests for beauty. ”

“ Motion picture cameras, at the other end of the line, are constantly photographing the sights, which are conveyed to you by an apparatus like television, except that you may see directly instead of gazing at a screen. ”

“ The modern motion projector is light in weight, small in size, and can be [100] easily operated. Films can be shown at any place, at any time, and are the ideal method of demonstrating the salesman’s wares. Some manufacturers are making a speciality of these portable projectors, which may be tapped to the lighting circuit and used in the office of the prospective customer, with a blank wall as a screen.
This method of exhibition has been hailed with delight, and the number of manufacturers availing themselves of this medium of salesmanship grows in number day by day. ”

“ No other art, not even music, contains so great a number of varied parts as the motion picture. To fuse all of these parts into a single harmonious whole requires knowledge and skill and happy inspiration, yet fusion must take place in the cinema composition itself in order that the spectator may be spared the143 annoyance of trying to unify in his own mind the ill-adjusted factors on the screen. ”