The Boy's Book of New Inventions

by Harry E. Maule

It very often happens that a stage director in his effort to get a graphic story reproduced on the film takes a great many more pictures than can be crowded within the limits set for the play. Then with the scenario in front of him, and a good magnifying glass to bring out the detail of the pictures, he takes his scissors, just as the editor takes his blue pencil, and begins cutting from the story the unnecessary pictures, just as the newspaper or magazine editor cuts useless paragraphs from the story or article. He must not cut out any picture that helps to tell the story, and yet he must sometimes cut out as much as 400 feet of film. He "kills" an unnecessary picture here, and an unnecessary picture there, and adds up their length until the story has been reduced to the proper size.

Although spectacles such as the one in the picture representing a battle on a bridge, and others even larger, are staged in the various big motion-picture studios, the most exciting work in the filming of motion-picture plays is out of doors where the natural surroundings make the stage. A great many of the shows seen to-day are taken this way, with real trees, real water, real mountains, or real streets affording the settings. Hence with studios in which battle scenes, riot scenes, water scenes, and practically any indoor scene can be reproduced; and also the great outdoors at the disposal of the cinematographer, there is practically no limit to the subjects that can be turned into dramatic films for the education and amusement of the public.

A few instances of the plays made out of doors will serve to show the limits to which the producers are willing to go to get new shows. The Edison company, with its big studio in New York and its manufacturing plant at West Orange, N. J., in the heart of the country where the Revolutionary War was fought, is reproducing a whole series of films of American history. These, so far as possible, are made on the exact spots where the dramatic events occurred. The first of the series entitled, "The Minute Men," was taken near Boston, where those historic defenders of liberty fought for their country. In this film is the famous scene representing the Battle of Concord, which was taken on practically the identical ground where the battle was fought. The producers spent a great deal of time in planning this series of pictures and so far as possible had every historical fact correct, so that the value of the series from the educational point of view is apparent. The other titles in the series will show how the scenes of the Revolutionary War were brought home to the American people. They included "The Capture of Fort Ticonderoga," "The Battle of Bunker Hill," "The Declaration of Independence," "The Death of Nathan Hale," "How Washington Crossed the Delaware," "Church and Country; an Episode of the Winter at Valley Forge," and so on. The film dealing with Washington's trip across the Delaware in the ice was made under conditions as nearly like those of the actual events as possible to get them. The pictures were taken during the coldest part of last winter (1912), and the photograph opposite page [193] was taken while the big scene was being acted out. This was taken in an arm of Pelham Bay, near New York, and the "scene shifters" had to work for hours in the bitter cold breaking up the ice and shifting around the great cakes in order to get the desired effect. Their success is attested by the picture reproduced here.

The Selig Company, with studios in Chicago and Los Angeles, and big stock companies of actors in both places also take some wonderful outdoor films. One of these was a play representing life in the African jungle, for which a special trainload of actors, and a whole menagerie of elephants, camels, lions, rhinos, leopards, pumas, zebras, and other animals, were shipped to Florida, where scenes much like those in Africa were found. This same company also sent a stock company and a corps of photographers to the Far North, where a film play was made amid the Arctic ice.

The Chicago studio of this concern is one of the wonders of cinematography, for not only has it a great building in which indoor plays are filmed, but a great land reserve for outdoor productions. In one place are artificial hills built in the natural forest, and upon them artificial feudal castles. In another are log cabins for frontier scenes, and in yet another a barren stretch for other kinds of scenes. The Los Angeles company is close to the mountains, the ocean, and the Great American Desert, so that it can furnish material for an endless amount of exciting Wild West shows.

One of the big films made in Europe was "The Fall of Troy," produced by the Itala Film Company, which reproduced the great wooden horse, the walls of Troy, and all other historical details. The great French, German, and English companies also have made big films.

In the production of plays built on well-known novels the motion-picture industry has found one of its most successful fields. Dickens's great novel, "A Tale of Two Cities," afforded the Vitagraph Company of America, one of its best films, while James Fennimore Cooper, Alexander Dumas, and even Shakespeare, and grand opera have been transferred to the cinematograph. From the great Biblical stories also have been taken films that have been shown by missionaries, and others interested in religious work, all over the world. The "Passion Play" was one of the first long films ever shown and it made a tremendous success.

Big spectacles are always popular and to fulfill the demand two locomotives have been run together at high speed, the motion-picture concern buying the machines outright for the purpose and leasing the railroad for a day; an automobile has been driven over the Palisades of the Hudson River, ships have been towed out into the ocean and blown up and whole towns of flimsy stage construction have been built only to be burned, while the motion-picture photographer recorded the whole thing on a film. One concern even got permission from the Los Angeles Fire department during a big fire, and dressing an actor as a fireman cinematographed him as he heroically rushed up a ladder amidst the flames and rescued a screaming woman from an upper window. The woman was an actress who had risked her life to go into the burning building and be rescued.

Of course the great motion-picture industry has not been without its fatal accidents. Several times actors playing the parts of men in difficulty in the water have actually been seized with cramps and have drowned before the eyes of the spectators. One time a picture was being taken of a band of train wreckers who were supposed to tie the switchman to the track. The train was supposed to stop just short of the man, but it actually ran over and killed him. The pictures were used at the inquest. During the filming of war pictures there have been explosions of gunpowder that were not intended, and in the taking of pictures of wild animals in their native haunts and in menageries, several photographers have been badly injured.

There is another big and important department in the filming of motion picture plays in trick photography. Every one who reads this has seen at the picture-theatre films of things that he knows perfectly well never could have happened—men walking on the ceiling, fairies the size of a match acting on a table beside a man, a saw going through a board, a piece of furniture assembling itself, a man run over by an automobile, his legs cut off, and then stuck on again all within a few minutes, marvellous railroad wrecks, and a thousand other things which could not happen or which the motion-picture photographer probably never could catch in his lens. All of these things are done through trick photography.