Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 34, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 October 1901 — MOVING PICTURES. [ARTICLE]

MOVING PICTURES.

HOW THE SKETCHES ARE REPRODUCED UPON THE FILMS. The Amount of Movement That May Be Crowded Into Fifty Second*. The Greatest Successes Are Often Brought About by Accident. “A queer thing about moving pictures,” said an expert operator in that line to a New Orleans Times-Democrat reporter, “is the illusion- they generally produce as to the time they occupy while on the screen. What is known as the ‘standard~exhibition film’ is 60 feet long. It is used almost entirely for comic scenes, trick pictures and other effects that are got up in the studios of the experts who make them a specialty. Every theater goer has seen them, and I will venture the assertion that the average man will declare they take at least three or four minutes ia passing before the eye. As a matter of fact the picture is On the screen less than one minute. You can easily figure it out for yourself. The ordinary 50 foot film of the kind to which I refer is put through the reproducing machine at the rate of 16 pictures to the second. Each picture is three-fourths of an inch broad, which makes the 16 measure exactly one foot, edge to edge; in other words, the film travels a foot a second—so feet, 50 seconds. What gives it the effect of taking up so much more time is the immense lot of action that is usually crowded into the brief period it is in view. Until the moving picture was invented I don’t think anybody had the least idea how much could be done lu 50 seconds. It seemed hardly time enough to turn around in, yet when the experts began to study its possibilities they found it was ample for hundreds of little pictorial comedies that have since delighted audiences all over the world.

“It is entirely a matter of rehearsal. A subject Is selected, generally calling for from three to four people, and every detail of the ‘business’ or action Is carefully worked out in advance. Suppose, for illustration, that a comic burglary is the topic. The business, In skeleton, might run something like this: Old dozing in parlor; enter burglar; old gentleman awakes; burglar bides; enter policeman, searches the room, collars old gent; they fight and roll on the floor while burglar suddenly emerges and leaps out of the window. That doesn’t sound particularly side splitting, but in the hands of intelligent comedians it can be made really very funy. The all essential thing is to crowd it into 50 seconds, and to that end each bit of action is carefully timed and made to fit into each other bit like so many well geared cogwheels. The old gentleman’s startled yawn, the burglar’s glance around the room and every step, movement and gesture from beginning to end is calculated with the utmost nicety, and at last after dozens of rehearsals the act is attempted before the recording machine. If everybody Is lucky, it goes through on schedule time, but the slightest hitch is fatal, and if one occurs the film is spoiled, and they must try all over again. No wonder it seems impossible to future spectators that so much could transpire in 50 seconds. “But some of the most tellipg effects In composition pictures.” continued the operator, “have been the result of accident and were entirely unpremeditated. That was the case with a film that I had a hand in preparing and that afterward made a tremendous hit and proved to he one of the best sellers ever put on the market. In getting up the picture our principal purpose was to introduce a large and - ntelligent bulldog 1 owned at the time, and we sketched out a simple little scene in which a tramp steals a pie from a kitchen window, is pursued by the dog and is last seen trying to scale the back fence with the animal banging to his coattails. “The training of the dog was the main trouble, but 1 finally taught him to lay hold of anything red, and we sowed a big piece of flannel as a mark to the back of our tramp’s coat Red photographs black, so it couldn’t be seen In the pictures, aDd after a good many rehearsals the dog learned to dash out at exactly the right moment aud nail the marauder, whose cue was then to rush for the fence and consume the remaining time in making an apparently desperate effort to scramble over the top. At last we got everything all ready, gave the word and started the record machine to take the picture. “Immediately the little comedy began. The tramp appeared, looked around stealthily, saw the pie, hooked It and was having a feast when out sprang the bulldog and seized him by the coattails. He thereupon sprinted to the fence and was about to carry oft the rest of the programme when, to oar consternation, the boards gave way, and be came down bang on top of the dog. The film bad about ten seconds to ran, and It was occupied In recording one of the liveliest scraps that ever happened. There was no hippodrome about It Both parties were out for blood. When the fence fell, the bulldog bad promptly transferred himself from the tramp's coattail to the tramp’s calf, while that unfortunate person snatched up a broomstick and tried to pry him loose. They rolled over and pnt about 00 times as much action and animation In the last ten seconds as had been crowded into the preceding 40. We finally palled them apart, and It was not until the negative was developed that we realized what a prize we had accidentally secured. That earnest and Impromptu wind up has convulsed audiences all over Christendom and made folly as much of a hit In Europe as It did at home." -**rw*