The Moving Picture Girls; Or, First Appearances in Photo Dramas

by Laura Lee Hope

Next comes the selection of the location for the various scenes. Indoor ones are comparatively easy, for the scenic artist can build almost anything. But to get the proper outdoor setting is not so easy, and often moving picture companies go many miles to get just the proper scenery for a background.

So careful are some managers that they will send to California, or to the Holy Land, in order that their actors may have the proper historical surroundings. This costs many thousands of dollars, so it can be seen how important it is to get the film right at first.

There are two main parts to the moving picture business—the taking of the pictures and later the projection, or showing, of them on a white screen in some theatre.

For this two different machines are needed. The first is a camera, similar in the main principle to the same camera with which you may have taken snapshots. But there is a difference. Where you take one picture in a second, the moving picture camera takes sixteen. That is the uniform rate maintained, though there may be exceptions. And in your camera you take a picture on a short strip of celluloid film, or on a glass plate, but in the moving picture machine the pictures are taken on a narrow strip of celluloid film perhaps a thousand feet long.

The camera consists of a narrow box. On one side is a handle, and there is a lens that can be adjusted or focused. Inside is varied machinery, but I will not tire you with a description of it. Sufficient to say that there are two wheels, or reels. On one—the upper—is wound the unexposed film. One end of this film is fastened to the empty, or lower, reel. The film is passed back of lens, which is fitted with a shutter that opens and closes at the rate of sixteen times a second.

Turning a handle on the outside of the camera operates it. So that when the scene is ready to be photographed the actors, whether men or animals, begin to move. The handle turns, and the unexposed film is wound from one reel to the other, inside the camera, passing behind the lens, so that the picture falls on it in a flash, just as you take one snapshot. But, as I have said, the moving picture camera takes snapshot after snapshot—sixteen a second—until many thousands are taken, so that when the pictures are shown afterward they give the effect of continuous motion.

The film is moved forward by means of toothed sprocket wheels inside the camera, the shutter opening and closing automatically.

When the reel of film has all been exposed, it is taken to the dark room, and there developed, just as a small roll from your camera would be. This film is called the negative. From it any number of positives can be made, all depending on the popularity of the subject.

To make positives, the negative film is laid on another strip of sensitive celluloid of the same size. The two films are placed in a suitable machine, and then set in front of a bright light. The two films are then moved along so as to print each of the thousands of pictures previously taken.

The positive film is then developed, "fixed" to prevent it from fading, and it is then ready for the projecting machine. This latter is like the old-fashioned stereopticon, and by means of suitable lenses, and a brilliant light, the small pictures, hardly more than an inch square, are so magnified that they appear life-size on the screen.