"No doubt," laughed Hammer. "But what we ought to do is to have Woodart fix up some way of stopping that thing during close-up. We could start with a normal Martini and end up with fifty gallons."
Woodart shook his head. "Cost twenty times as much liquor itself," he said with a good-natured smile. "You see, the energy that keeps this thing in balance comes from the wipe-out of the previous scene. Stop it that way and your light bill heads for the ceiling."
"O.K.—it was just an idea."
Vanders faced the group. "Look," he said. "I'm a professional villain, and all villains are supposed to want something for nothing and finding out that it can't be did."
Woodart agreed.
Then the scene changed to an overhead shot of Cincinnati. Taken by helicopter, the scene was an angle shot down across Fountain Square towards the river. In the cinema such shots do not seem bizarre, but in solid, the street with its teeming cars and pedestrians was tilted at an angle: the angle between street and camera remained as it was, and the camera, of course, became the projector which was in the back of the theater.
The "eye" zoomed down and the street grew in size until the fountain that gave the Square its name was in plain view. It seemed incongruous that the water in the fountain came out at an odd angle to gravity and fell back at another odd angle, yet this was not a running reproduction of Fountain Square but a swift series of instantaneous reproductions and the droplets of water like everything else was replaced in whatever relative position it was, regardless of the facts of true gravity.
The scene tilted flat, finally, and traveled along the street on the level until the principal character was approached, whereupon the action began. The camera followed Jack Vanders into a bar where he met Martha Evers and ordered the Manhattan that was to become Gargantuan in size—
Jenny Foster put her face up for a good night kiss, and then shoved her apartment door open as Tim turned to leave. Inside, the living room light was on, and Jenny instantly called Tim back.