Projection screen

“ Suffice it to say that the pictures of the players in motion are taken on a long celluloid strip of film, just as one picture is taken on a square of celluloid in a snap-shot camera.
This long reel of film, when developed, is a [35] "negative." From it a "positive" strip of film is made, and this is the one that is run through the projection machine throwing the pictures on the white screen in the darkened theatre. ”

“ The illusion of seeing the characters and hearing them speak at the same time is produced by the synchronization of a phonograph and the picture-projector. Now, while perfect timing can be secured, no way has been found to keep the synchronization perfect. A scratch on the talking-machine record, for example, can be seen to result disastrously if it jumps the conversation a word in advance of the figure on the screen. Again, motion-picture film must undergo considerable wear in the projection-machine and frequently the perforations are torn. ”

“ The projection of life-size motion pictures on a screen before an audience might have been achieved considerably earlier had Edison not felt that there would be no commercial market for such a device. The little peep-show models could be manufactured at rather low cost and sold at a profit, so no impetus was given to the development of a screen projector which might, he thought, quickly dissipate the public’s interest and destroy the market. ”

“ Another noteworthy point is the way in which a still-life lantern slide is thrown upon the screen when desired. The projector carries two lenses, one for animation, and the other for still-life lantern slide work. The ordinary way of bringing the latter into use is to push the front part of the projector bodily sideways so as to bring the second lens before the condenser and the light. The objection to this method is that the rigidity of the projector is likely to be disturbed, especially after a little wear, with the result that the projection of the moving pictures is apt to become unsteady. ”

“ As already pointed out, if celluloid films are employed with this camera, they cannot be used for projection purposes, because positives cannot be printed from them upon the standard perforated positive film. Consequently, the amateur who wishes to take motion pictures for projection306 on the screen will find the Kinora system valueless. It was designed especially for the production of positive bromide prints mounted upon a reel to be used with the special viewing machine. ”

“ The only real objection to a muslin screen is the loss of light which it entails. It is not only a poor reflector of light, but it allows much of the light to pass through it. With many such screens, the picture is as well visible behind the screen as it is in front of it. ”

“ Projected against a screen, or viewed through a magnifying-glass, the pictures are eminently lifelike, for the reason that the enlargement need not be more than ten times the original size. On exhibition evenings the projecting-room, which is situated in the upper story of the photographic department, is hung with black, in order to prevent any reflection from the circle of light emanating from the screen at the other end, the projector being placed behind a curtain, also of black, and provided with a single peep-hole for the accommodation of the lens. ”

“ The screen must be set perpendicular to the horizontal axis of the projector objective and condenser, and if the machine is inclined slightly the sheet must be tilted in a corresponding degree, or it will be impossible to secure a picture which is clear and sharp all over, for the simple reason that some of the rays of light from the projector will be shorter than others. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ You insult them by as good as saying, "It's not much of a screen, but it will do for you. If you do see behind it sometimes, it doesn't matter very much; and if the people looking on, who know me better, see behind all the time, it doesn't matter in the least." A screen, to be at all courteous, should be impenetrable both to the people concerned and to the lookers-on ”

“ With the motion-picture projector a series of slightly varying pictures of the same subject are projected in quick succession. This succession is at such a rapid rate that the interval of time during which one picture moves out of place to make way for the next is so short that it is nearly imperceptible. In consequence, the slightly varying pictures blend on the screen and we have a phantasmagoria of movement.
The phenomenon of this movement—this semblance [5] to life—takes place, not on the screen, but within the eye. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The great trouble with the usual author is that he approaches the camera with some fixed literary ideal and he can not compromise with the motion-picture view-point. He does not realise that a page of Henry James prose, leading through the finest shades of human consciousness, is absolutely lost on the screen, a medium which demands first of all tangible drama, the elementary interaction between person and person or person and circumstance. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But the chief point remains that we see the whole picture with both eyes and not with only one, and that we are constantly reminded of the flatness of the picture because the two eyes receive identical impressions. And we may add an argument nearly related to it, namely, that the screen as such is an object of our perception and demands an adaptation of the eye and an independent localization. We are drawn into this conflict of perception even when we look into a mirror. ”

“ Keep thinking what you or others will most use the computer for. Color graphics? Fine. But your multicolor monitor won’t display characters as sharply as a black-and-white or monochrome screen would, and the screens might lose their crispness faster and add to the eyestrain of heavy word processing. One-color screens, then, would be best for typical writers and secretaries. On the other hand, if you’re an executive or clerk working with many figures alongside each other, the color monitor might help you and your eyes keep the numbers apart. ”

“ Finally, when the officials themselves are satisfied with a film it is thrown on the screen for the board of censors in the various cities, and if it measures up to standard, and contains no objectionable features, it is ready for public reproduction. ”

“ The studio test would accurately show the quality of the product, but the image on the screen would look as though the sheet had been washed with an ineffective detergent. All that has happened here is the converse: a demonstration has been altered in the studio to compensate for the distortions of the television medium, but in this instance in order to present an accurate picture to the television viewer. ”

“ And, therefore, if the financial investment in each film and in popular magazines were not so exorbitant as to require instant and widespread popularity, men of spirit and imagination would be able to use the screen and the periodical, as one might dream of their being used, to enlarge and to refine, to verify and criticize the repertory of images with which our imaginations work. ”

“ This device is particularly useful, inasmuch as the talking machine is somewhat sensitive to outside disturbance; if the machine is not set quite level, or receives a violent vibration, the needle jumps suddenly from one groove into another. By accelerating the projector this lead can soon be reduced without touching the talking machine in the slightest.
The operator need not follow the movement of the pictures upon the screen, or listen to the talking machine in order to ascertain that synchrony is perfect. ”

“ When all are dry and the screen covered, the whole can be varnished; a shilling's worth of varnish will more than do it. Photographic views look very well on a screen, better, I think, than the cards. A screen is very useful to hide an unsightly door, or to stand in a draught. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It doesn't cost anything like that much to put four or five giants from that kind of motion picture on a screen in a Big-Image interrogation room. The cost, in fact, is negligible, because just one scene can be repeated over and over. You're seated all alone in the middle of what looks like a medieval torture chamber—if you leave out the racks and thumbscrews and iron maidens and just think of such a chamber as a blank-walled, cell-like horror—and on the screen, fifty or a hundred times lifesize, are the lads who have been given the task of cutting you down to size. ”

“ A line of small letters on the Snellen test card may be less than a foot long by a quarter of an inch in height; and if it requires seventy shifts to a fraction of a second to see it apparently all at once, it must require many thousands to see an area of the size of the screen of a moving picture, with all its detail of people, animals, houses, or trees, while to see sixteen such areas to a second, as is done in viewing moving pictures, must require a rapidity of shifting that can scarcely be realized. ”

“ The projector (Fig. 8) is composed of a lamp house, a condensing lens to make the beam of light converge upon the film for illuminating it evenly, a film-stepping device, and a projecting lens for throwing the enlarged picture of the illuminated film upon a screen.
Fig. 8—Projector Complete
The lamp house is made of ordinary stovepipe metal and the dimensions given in the sketch are for a size suitable to use an acetylene or gas burner. ”

“ A broad belt of shadow was designed to cross the chancel, behind the screen, throwing up, on one side, the gilded tracery of the screen, and on the other, the flood of light that bathed the sanctuary and altar. All this is gone, and the effect is now absolutely commonplace. There are screens near Totnes of [319] extraordinary richness—at Great Hempston, Ipplepen, Harberton, and Berry Pomeroy—covered with gold and adorned with paintings. But none are perfect. A screen consisted of three parts. ”

“ 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 ”

“ The screen, with its new cloth, is so arranged that, its banality destroyed by degrees, beings and things stripped by a caprice of lightning, nothing is left standing but the idea, naked or veiled in its sole, essential mysteriousness. ”

“ This screen is slid into the first fold of the bellows of the camera, that is to say, very close to the sensitized plate, and at the moment of focusing, the position of the apparatus is so regulated as to make the image of the subject appear through the apertures in the screen and in the proper position. This process is the most rapid and is the surest. No reflection is any longer possible, and the preservation of the plate is absolute. What is no less advantageous is the sharpness of the outline, which permits of the most delicate junctions ”

“ The resources of the screen for creating thrills are inexhaustible; it draws upon the heavens above, the earth beneath, and the waters under the earth; and as nothing that can be pictured can be untrue—or so the confiding “movie” patron, unfamiliar with the tricks of the business, believes—the screen has also the great advantage of plausibility. ”

“ The home preparation of such a screen plate is a somewhat difficult matter, and will not be absolutely successful if one has not a faultless ruling machine, a composition which is thoroughly opaque, which adheres well to the glass and gives clean, sharp lines in ruling, and which does not chip, and it will require a tremendous expenditure of patience and perseverance. ”