THE ACTION OF THE MUSCLES ON THE FRAME COULD BE SHOWN ON THE SCREEN.
A series of drawings like this would be the first thing to prepare for making the film.
A similar animation of the skeleton would be that of the bony levers in the human frame. And as a comparison, actual mechanical levers of all three orders could be made to operate in connection with the levers in the skeleton.
It would be possible, to some extent, to put the “Origin of Species” on the screen with the help of animated diagrams. For the vertebrates, a section of the film could represent a schematic evolutionary tree. On it, the lower forms of back-bone life, such as amphibians and fishes, would be placed on an offshoot near the lowest part of the main trunk. Odd creatures like marsupials would branch off a little higher up, and still higher a larger branch of the tree would split into two minor branches for reptiles and birds, respectively.
The tree would show above a branching off into three important divisions for the ungulates, carnivores, and quadrumana. The story could be continued by separate delineations of the different branches and tell in further detail the development of the forms that belong to them.
The art of the animated cartoon and the educational screen drawing has as yet not been developed to its highest point. It needs, for one thing, color. Such films are only shown, at present, in monochrome or simple outlines. Of course colored cartoons will come. Effecting the tinting by hand would be easy as a process, but very tedious and costly. A practical way of coloring the ordinary photographic film is now in use by tinting them with the aid of stencils. Both the stencil-cutting and the coloring are accomplished by the help of machinery.
At present there are color processes that produce very beautiful photographs on the screen; but they do not show, at least in those that so far have come under the observation of the author, all colors of nature. The craft is awaiting the inspired inventor who will produce motion-pictures in colors that will exhibit nature’s full range of hues and shades. Then in comparison with Niepce’s simple process, of about 1824, of fixing a lens-formed image upon a metal plate coated with bitumen, the photographic art will have attained to a marvellous degree of technical development.
A consummate color process should reproduce, too, an artist’s work upon the canvas without losing any variations of hue that he has set forth. Then it will be possible to have animated paintings. One will go, when this wonder has been achieved, to an exhibition gallery to see art works with the additional interest of movement as well as those of color and individual interpretation. And, too, our museums will have projecting rooms and fireproof libraries for keeping films.
It seems like fantastic dreaming to hold such notions; but many things that were once considered purely visionary—have now become commonplaces.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
Illustrations in this eBook have been positioned between paragraphs and outside quotations. In versions of this eBook that support hyperlinks, the page references in the List of Illustrations lead to the corresponding illustrations.
Illustrations without captions have had a description added, this is denoted with parentheses.
Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within the text and consultation of external sources.
Some hyphens in words have been silently removed, some added, when a predominant preference was found in the original book.
Except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the text, and inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained.
[Pg xx]: “Michel” replaced with “Michael”
[Pg 14]: "Exact size." removed from under film strip image, as size varies in digital version.
[Pg 31]: “give” replaced with “gave”
[Pg 40]: “Franscisco” replaced with “Francisco”
[Pg 45]: “Word’s” replaced with “World’s”
[Pg 70]: “on opposite page” replaced with “below” to reflect updated layout
[Pg 73]: “constructon” replaced with “construction”
[Pg 102]: “its” replaced with “it”
[Pg 112 and 113]: Illustrations moved up to be adjacent to the paragraph where discussed. Reference to location updated.