Pictorial Beauty on the Screen

by Victor Oscar Freeburg

The difference between noise and harmony is a physical difference. If this were not true, no one could ever tune your piano. Jarring, clashing, discordant sounds displease the ear. Just why noise displeases is not for us to say. But we have already explained three reasons why bad motion pictures hurt the eyes. Let us remember them. First, sudden shifts from dark to bright pictures shock the eye. Second, sudden shifts from a picture in a “cool” tint to another in a “warm” tint, and vice versa, over-work the eye. Third, a series of quick close-ups or other pictures in which the frame is filled with the subject demands too much eye-movement.

In the case of the close-up, or any large picture where the points of interest are scattered all over the field of vision, the eyes, as we have said, become strained by too much rolling, a muscular effort which is necessary even though the separate points of interest may themselves be fixed, as fixed as the four corners of the screen itself.

But when the points of interest are moving things, as they generally are in the movies, new causes of strain often arise. Sometimes the object we are trying to look at moves so fast that we can hardly follow it. Quick movement is generally desired by the directors because they think that briskness, or “pep,” makes the dramatic action more intense. Consequently people in the movies walk, march, dance, fight, and carry on with terrific speed until our eyes become tired in the attempt to observe all that is happening. The cure for such pictorial hysterics is simple moderation, the elimination of jerky movements wherever possible, and the choice of movements so easy to follow that the eye may perceive them with the least muscular effort.

We do not say that you who worship speed shall not have your express trains, your racing cars, your airplanes, your cow-ponies, and your Arabian steeds. You may have them all, because they can be so photographed that an actual run of two or three miles may be presented on the screen as a movement of only two or three feet.

We find, too, that there is something pleasing about the apparent slowness of actions that are moderated by distance. On the far horizon, therefore, the fleetest things seem retarded to a stately pace that claims our restful gaze. But when a quick movement takes place in the foreground of the picture, too near the camera, ugliness results, because the demands on the eye-muscles are too severe and unexpected. Thus a sudden gesture, or the waving branches of trees or bushes, or a motor car driving up in front of a house, or even such intended grace as the movement in dancing, may spoil a picture by being too near the camera.

Another thing which makes close-up movements ugly is the flicker, which cannot be entirely eliminated. Our readers are doubtless generally aware that what we see on the screen is simply the blending of a rapid succession of still pictures falling on different spots in an order and a direction which gives the appearance of motion. If you examine a film you will find that there are in fact sixteen little photographs, or “frames” to every foot of ribbon. The negative runs through the camera, and the positive film through the projecting machine, at a rate of about a foot per second. Now let us suppose that we have a screen sixteen feet long and that we throw upon it a picture of a car running at the rate of ten or eleven miles per hour. If the picture is a close view the image will move across our screen in just one second of time, for the speed we have assumed is at the rate of sixteen feet per second. But, since there are only sixteen frames in that foot, or second, of film, we know that only sixteen flashes of the car have been thrown on the screen during that second. Therefore, whatever particular part of the car we are looking at has fallen on sixteen different spots of the screen, and each spot is just one foot to the side of the previous one, because the screen is by assumption just sixteen feet wide. Now these separations are so wide that the eye cannot help noticing them even in the fraction of a second; there is not sufficient blending of images to form smooth motion; and the so-called flicker results.

However, if the car is photographed going obliquely away from us, the entire motion may occupy only a small area of the screen, no matter how far or fast the car goes; consequently the images fall much closer together and the flicker becomes so slight that we scarcely notice it. Also, since the field of movement is smaller in extent, the rolling of our eyes in ranging over the subject is less, and the fatigue of the muscles is so slight that we scarcely notice that either.

We have been arguing that large violent movements on the screen hurt the eyes, and we hope that our readers agree with us. But if any one is doubtful we invite him to make the following test. Go to any movie theater and sit down in the seventh or eighth row. Then after having seen about half of the picture, move back to the last row, or stand behind the last row. The picture will immediately seem more restful to the eyes, because the distance has made the screen seem smaller and the motions slower, two changes which, of course, make less work for the eyes. Now stay in the new position until the program is finished, and then see that part of the picture which was at first seen from the front seat. It will appear much more pleasing to the eye than it did the first time.

Daylight and Lamplight, a painting by William McGregor. The design illustrates artistic balance and rhythm. See [pages 41] and [77].