Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 149, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 June 1910 — MOVING PICTURE TRICKS [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

MOVING PICTURE TRICKS

Now that the novelty of the moving picture has worn off," said a man whose business is to think up new ideas for the Aim makers, “It requires a good deal of ingenuity to show the public something it hasn’t seen before. In the early days of the business, there were one or two simple tricks that never failed to fool the average audience. But nowadays the old tricks won’t do. For instance, one of the first stunts was to take a roll of pictures and then run it off backwards on the machine. You would see regiments of soldiers marching backwards down the street, and disappearing in the distance, or there was that old stand-by, the water sports film, which, when run the wrong way, showed men rising feet first from the water, turning somersaults and finally landing gracefully on the springboard overhead. Another reversible film which kept many people guessing a kyig time was one which first showed a mass of clay, and then to take form and shape itself into the likeness of George Washington. How was it done? Simply by taking a wax image of the Father of His Country and slowly melting it while the photographs were being ticked off. Now, when we ran the film backwards the melting process was reversed. But as I said, these things don’t go down any longer. J'. *You’d be surprised to know how resourceful some of the photographers are to-day. There is a film which has lately been sent out all over the country that marks the climax in the art of motion picture faking. I don’t believe one man in a thousand who sees it will have the least idea how it was done. It represents the flight of the children of Israel, and gives the scene where Moses waved his wand and the Red Sea parted. “The man who took that picture spent twelve hours on the Red Sea section alone. He singled out a spot on the shore of Long Island, where there was a sandbar which was out of water at low tide, and under water at high. He started at high tide and took, say, a score of pictures of the sea as it looked then. After fifteen minutes he reeled off another twenty, and fifteen minutes later he did the same. Thus at the end of six hours he had a film showing the changes for every quarter of an hour. At the end of that time the tide had receded so that the sandbar could be seen. Then he called in the supers and had them walk across the bar while he took their picture. “That was only half the work. Later in the the tide began to rise, he returned and began again to take a few pictures every fifteen minutes. At the end of six hours the water had risen to where it was when he began. We had some doubt as to how the film would come out; we didn’t know whether the tide, when photographed that way, would give the desired effect of a sea parting, and then closing up again. But it did. I don’t know of any film that looke more lifelike and wonderful. The waves seem to rush apart for a minute, and then rush back again, just as described in thb Bible.”