Animated cartoons

by Edwin George Lutz

To the above consideration of setting up the camera and ascertaining the correctness of the field and the sharpness of the image, the worker wise in perception will, before beginning any important work, make a test. This is merely a matter of photographing a drawing, or two, on a short length of film, taking it out of the camera, and developing it. Here, again, any knowledge of photographic processes previously learned will be found useful.

There are in all metropolitan centres film laboratories to which the animator can send his exposed films to be developed and printed. But for a test before beginning the work it is prudent and expeditious to keep a supply of chemicals on hand, and then, in a few minutes, it will be possible to tell how matters stand in any particular that is in doubt.

The next step, after the camera has been fixed in place, is to construct a mechanism by which it can be turned conveniently by the photographer, as he is seated below at the board where the drawings are placed. This is contrived by a system of sprocket-wheels and chain-belts coming from the camera and carried down to the side of the table top, where it ends in a wheel with a turning handle. For the average individual this would not be a difficult construction to put up; but it would be an altogether different problem if the animator wished to equip his camera with an electric motor to turn the camera mechanism. In this case he would have many things to consider, getting the particular type of motor, for instance, that will operate with the continual turning on and off of the power. Here certainly the best course is to have an expert install the motor and fix the intermediary mechanism connecting it with the camera-working parts.

Electric motors to drive camera mechanisms are in general use among those who make titles for moving-picture films. For this particular branch of the industry they are an indispensable adjunct.

PART OF A LENGTH OF FILM FOR A TITLE.

For every second that the wording is viewed on the screen, sixteen of these frames pass through the projector.

It would seem to the spectator in the theatre, unfamiliar with the technic of cinematography, that when he sees a title held on the screen for any lengthy period, the practical way of effecting this would be to have a single picture of this title kept stationary during the period. But this is not the way the matter is worked out. A title in a screen story is given a certain length of film, with every frame in this length containing the same words. The particular length—footage—allowed for a title depends upon the amount of its reading-matter. Some titles are very long. One such, requiring, say, fifteen feet, makes it necessary to turn the camera handle two hundred and forty times, if the operation is by hand. A very monotonous job. So title studios attach a motor and appropriate mechanism to a camera, and with it, too, an automatic counter. Then in photographing a title it is a simple matter of starting the mechanically driven shutter, watching the figures on the counter dial, and when the required exposures have been registered, pulling the lever that stops the mechanism. Where a camera, however, is used for animated drawings exclusively, a motor is not absolutely necessary.

An automatic counter would be a very useful addition to a camera in making dissolves. One form of these fantasies is that in which the screen is perfectly black at first and then a small spot of light appears, which grows larger by degrees, to reveal at the full opening the scene or subject of the film. This is produced by a vignetter, or iris dissolve. A vignetter is a device, fixed generally in front of a lens, that consists of a number of crescent-shaped segments of thin metal pivoted on a circumference. When these segments move in unison toward the centre, they gradually decrease the aperture in the lens tube. But when the movement is in a contrary direction, they cause the aperture to open by degrees. Those who have used an ordinary snap-shot camera no doubt are familiar with a similar device—the iris diaphragm, or lens stop. But in the diaphragm the segments do not completely close, and there is always a tiny opening left in the centre. The iris dissolve, or vignetter, is made to close completely.

The way by which pictures are “faded on” is to start with the vignetter closed and then open it while the camera handle is turned to take the picture. To “fade off” a picture, the process is simply reversed; i. e., gradually closing the vignetter while the last part of the picture is being taken.