With the movie makers

by Myron M. Stearns

The car is rolled by hand to the very edge of the precipice, and blocked there with little stones that do not show—the tires of the front wheels actually projecting over the cliff. The actor taking the part of the thief holds his hands above his head, looking as terrified as he can, and brings them very slowly down in front of him, at the same time releasing the clutch of the car, with the gears in reverse and the motor running. The camera, placed quite close at one side, is slow-cranked backward. So that when the print from the film is projected at normal speed, we see the car dash to the very edge of the cliff, while the thief lets go of the wheel and throws his hands above his head just as the machine makes the plunge.

For the next shot, of course, we have a distant view of the scene, a “long shot,” showing the car plunging down to destruction, with the thief still behind the wheel. This is done with a dummy figure. But on the screen, when the picture is completed, we jump from the close scene of the thief throwing up his hands as the car reaches the edge of the cliff to the long shot of the car falling with the dummy, and the illusion is perfect.

Before the car is pushed over the edge for the real fall, the engine is taken out, and everything else of value that can be salvaged is detached. In the final scene of this tragic death these accessories may be scattered around the wreck of the car, adding to the total effect of utter destruction. The body of the thief, half covered by one of the crumpled fenders—the real actor, of course, this time, shamming unconsciousness or death, properly smeared with tomato-catsup-and-glycerine blood, adds the finishing ghastly touch.

Do you believe that any one could see that picture,—well done, the chase along the mountainside, the rush to the edge of the cliff, the drop through space, and the wrecked car on the ground—without a thrill? It would be quite convincing, and few indeed could tell which scenes were actual “straight” photographs and which were “tricked.”

In fact, it is really that classification that makes the difference: How well is the thing done? Does it give an impression that is true to life? The fact that a trick is used is nothing against the film; indeed, it may be decidedly in favor of it, providing a novel and realistic effect is secured.

For example, when the scenes described above were first assembled in the finished film, the effect was not as good as had been anticipated. The camera man had not cranked quite slowly enough. Consequently, in some of the scenes the automobiles did not move fast enough on the screen; they rounded dangerous curves with such caution that when one car finally went over the cliff, it looked like a fake. The illusion of the story, that made it true to life, was destroyed, because of giving first an impression of cautious driving, and then of an accident that would only have occurred as a result of terror or recklessness.

So still another trick was resorted to: a purely mechanical one. Every other “frame” or individual exposure in the slow scenes was cut out, and the remaining frames of the film patched together again. Action that had been filmed in one second, with sixteen exposures, was reduced to eight frames, or half a second. It was a careful cutting and “patching” as the re-cementing of the film is called—but the second trick remedied the defects of the first.

By adding an additional “fake” to the first, the picture was made more nearly true to life!

Then a final touch was added to the whole business.

Immediately after the car plunged over the cliff, in the finished film, there comes a scene of the ground, far below, flying up at you. It is as though you were sitting in the car with the doomed thief, and get the effect of falling with him through the air.