There are of course many intermediate pictures and combinations, part way between the two, as we shall see; but when you stop to think of it all pictures fall under one or another of the two main classifications. Either they are entertainment pure and simple, possibly with a background of truth or philosophy or fact, or else they are reality, presented as entertainment.
And here is an interesting thing: while the story side of motion-picture making, that has developed to a great extent from stage drama, has already reached very great heights, the other side of picture-making, that we see illustrated in the news reels, is still relatively in its babyhood. Scenics and news reels and an occasional so-called “scientific” or instructive reel are about all we have so far on this side of picture making, that will probably within our own lifetime come to be far greater than the other.
The “reality” films have developed from straight photography. They take the place of kodak snapshots, and stereopticon slides, and illustrations in magazines, newspapers, and books.
Between the two, cameras have come already to circle the whole world.
Not long ago in a New York skyscraper given over mostly to motion-picture offices and enterprises, three camera men met.
“Say, I’m glad to be back!” exclaimed one; “I’ve been down in the Solomons for nearly a year. Australia before that, and all through the South Seas. Got some wonderful pictures of head-hunters. They nearly got me, once, when I struck an island where they were all stirred up because some white man had killed a couple of them.”
“I’m just back from India, myself,” remarked the second, “Upper Ganges, and all through there. Got a lot of great religious stuff.”
“You fellows have been seeing a lot of the world,” sighed the third, “while I’ve been stuck right here solid for the last eighteen months. Last eight months on a big French Revolution picture.”
Two of the men were globe-trotting “travelogue” photographers; the third was a regular “studio” camera man; while the two had been searching the world, to secure motion pictures of actual scenes, the third had been taking pictures of carefully prepared “sets” that faithfully reproduced—just outside New York City—streets and houses of Paris as they were in the year 1794.
Let us take up first the kind of movies that we usually see to-day—the photoplays made in Hollywood or New York or Paris or wherever the studio may happen to be, that tell a story or show a dramatic representation of life somewhere else.