Screen

“ 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. ”

“ And yet, Sir, if a cheese-scoop were your guide, these cavities must needs be circular.
Lun. They were so at the first—but, like the fickle Moon, my guardian satellite, I change as I go on. Oh, the rapture, Sir, of that wild moment! And did I reveal the Mighty Secret! Never, never! Day by day, week by week, behind a wooden screen, I wrought out that vision of beauty. The world came and went, and knew not of it. Oh, the ecstasy, when yesterday the Screen was swept away, and the Vision was a Reality! ”

“ Think of nothing but a paper screen dividing all your life from the lives about you,—a paper screen to poke a hole through, which is not considered outrageous, unless the screen be decorated with celebrated paintings. ”

“ In the minds of all creatures a screen intervenes as it were and hides the perfect manifestation from view. The moment that is removed, everything is settled; whatever you want, whatever you will desire, will come to pass. ”

“ What more natural thing than to put on the biggest TV show of all, and at the same time take the bow out of our shoulders, the kink out of our necks, and restore the focus of our eyes to the natural one of infinity? The whole sky was going to become one gigantic television screen, in perfect focus, in full (how full we never imagined until we saw it!) ”

“ An object is now placed behind the screen, upon which the light of a strong lamp is thrown from a point above the mirror, and is received by the mirror and reflected to the center of the arched cavity in the screen, where it will appear to the spectator. Care should be taken to place the image in an inverted position, and the light, which must be very powerful, should be so placed that none of it may reach the opening. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Don't go preferring ginks that ain't got nothing stirring, For good looks are too often but a screen. A handsome face may lie beneath a head that's made of bone, And a homely mug may hide a clever bean. ”

“ 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. ”

“ With this "screen" placed nearly in contact with an ordinary photographic plate, film to film, we proceed to make a copy negative, in the camera, of the original picture. This, when developed, will give the picture and an image of the screen, which has been interposed, together on one plate. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I always made it a rule to have a screen placed before my sideboard as soon as dessert was put upon the table; for in the times to which I allude it was the fashion to clear the cloth, and place the decanters, finger-glasses, d’oyleys, and wines (glasses) on the well-polished mahogany. By having my screen, I could arrange my relays of glasses and decanters, my tooth-picks, my snuff-box, and many other matters too numerous to mention, besides being always at my post to keep up the festivity of the evening, and preserve our family character for hospitality. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If any of you has one eye, he will see the failure on the teacher's part. However, I am not discussing gain and loss. When the screen is rolled up the great sky opens, Yet the sky is not attuned to Zen. It is best to forget the great sky And to retire from every wind. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ This law does good service in autotypic work.
As we have seen, the rays of light must pass through the screen during exposure. This screen consists of equally thick opaque black and transparent white lines. Where the light acts with full intensity it will be more diffracted over the black lines. It makes the lines of the screen broader on the negative, and will, therefore, have more covered places, which in the after printing of the prints cannot be penetrated by the light, and thus represent the light places in the print covered with fine dots. ”

“ The screen, though not closed at the top, is sufficiently high to completely mask the ladies, and there are in it twelve or more small apertures, lined or faced with a soft crimson or other warm-coloured velvet, sufficiently large to admit of a hand being passed through, so that it may be seen and criticised on the exposed side of the screen. ”

“ Every group of two or more visible things, and nearly every visible thing in itself, must of necessity be looked upon as a pattern, either pleasing or displeasing to the eye. Therefore every motion picture that has been, or can be, thrown upon the screen describes a pattern, fixed, moving, or changing. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ In others we see water flowing from the bottom of the screen toward the top, or we see a pin-wheel of sparks, to represent telegraphic messages going around the world, or we see a squirrel in his wheel-cage, to represent something or other, and in each of these cases we must also read words in glaring type blazed on top of the moving symbols. ”

“ Prayers, hymns, scripture readings and illuminated bits of choice literature were projected on a screen. I trained young men to put up and take down the screen noiselessly, artistically, and with the utmost neatness and dispatch. I discovered that many men who either lacked ambition or ability to wear collars came to that meeting, and they sang, too, when the lights were low. When in full view of each other they were as close-mouthed as clams. ”

“ Oh, well, and if you would kindly rearrange that screen? I still feel rather a draught.
(Miss Tuckey goes and readjusts the screen. It is evident that, as she goes behind it, no apparition confronts her; she emerges as machine-like as ever, calm and collected.) ”

“ If we compare the picture on the glass screen of the camera when the camera is out of focus with the visual impressions of the mind when the eye is out of focus, there will be found to be a great difference between them. ”

“ The rightness of the spectacle film is implicit8 in its name: the screen is a place on which things can be seen, and so long as a film depends upon the eye it is right for the screen—and whether it is right in any other regard depends upon taste and judgment and skill. Omit as irrelevant the news reels, animated cartoons, educational and travel films—all of them good; omit equally those printed jokes and clippings from the Literary Digest which are at once the greatest trial and error of the screen. ”

“ One of the most important qualities any such screen should possess, is that of due subordination to the great architectural features of the locality in which it is placed. Where ornament is spread all over the surface of a screen, or where the main lines wander about in capricious directions, the eye is arrested by the metal work as a plane surface ”

“ In a panorama screen effect it seems to be sufficiently realistic, for laughter purposes, to have the legs and arms of the individual in a hurry give a blurred impression, in some degree, like that of the spokes of a rapidly turning wheel. ”

“ For lantern screen there is nothing better than a smooth wall finished off in flat white, but where this is impossible a rigid is preferable to a rolling screen as giving a surface free from folds and kinks. ”

“ The negative runs through the camera, and the positive film through the projecting machine, at a rate of about a foot per second. Now let us suppose that we have a screen sixteen feet long and that we throw upon it a picture of a car running at the rate of ten or eleven miles per hour. If the picture is a close view the image will move across our screen in just one second of time, for the speed we have assumed is at the rate of sixteen feet per second. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The phantom actor, when standing on the stage b, leans against the screen k, which is inclined so as to be parallel with the glass screen, and is covered with black velvet or other dark material, as is also the stage b, in order that no image of either the screen k or the stage b may be seen in the reflection. f (the glass screen) is a large sheet of plate glass on the ordinary stage, of sufficient size to reflect the full length of the actors or objects on the hidden stage to the audience in the pit, boxes, and galleries of the theatre. The hidden stage is between the glass and the audience. ”

“ The subject was placed in front of the screen, the room darkened, the camera being placed in front of the sitter and screen. A Blitz-lamp exposure of five to six seconds was then made. Result--not a single specimen that equals our old silhouette. So much for our Viennese photographic cousins. In these great United States we simply tack a piece of muslin in front of a window, place the subject directly in front, shut off all other light in the room, focus, fire, and develop. Result--a good sharp profile almost all the time. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”