Another peculiar type of pictorial motion, which has never before existed, and does not come into being until it is projected upon the screen, is the magic motion of the “animated cartoons.” The camera-man sees no such marvelous motions. He faces only a stack of drawings. The artist who makes the drawings does not see the motions except in his own imagination. But the spectator in the theater is delighted to see the strangely bewitched men and beasts, birds and trees, rocks and streams, weapons and machines, all behaving in impossible ways that no maker of fairy tales ever dreamed of. Here is a new field of pictorial composition, with distant boundaries and fabulous wealth. Those who exploit it will be able to teach many a valuable lesson to the director who merely takes photographs of actors in motion.
Nearly all of these motions might be found in a single “shot,” that is, in a single section of film. But when these sections of film are joined together to form the finished photoplay they produce still another kind of motion, a constant shifting from scene to scene. Whether this succession is to be a series of collisions or a harmonious flow, depends upon those who cut and join the films.
There is finally the total movement which is the product of all of these motions working together. A scientist can show you in his laboratory that when a cord vibrates in one way it gives forth a particular note, and that when the same cord vibrates in another way it gives forth a different note. He can also show you that a single cord can vibrate in several different ways at the same time. The tones and overtones thus produced constitute the peculiar timbre, or quality, of a musical note. Thus, too, in a motion picture the ensemble of all the kinds, directions, and velocities of motion constitutes the particular cinematic quality of that particular picture play. Whether that resultant quality shall be like a symphony or like the cries of a mad-house, depends on the knowledge, the skill, and the inspiration of the cinema composer.
Having named the principal motions in a picture we come now to the question of how those motions should be composed. When a musical composer sits down before his piano he knows that he may strike single notes in succession, giving a simple melody, or several notes at the same moment, producing a chord, or he may play a melody with one hand and a different melody with the other, or he may play a melody with one hand and a succession of chords with the other, or he may use both hands in playing two successions of chords. Before he is through with his composition he will probably have done all of those things.
It is much the same with the cinema composer. Before he has finished even a single scene he will probably have produced all of the different types of motions in varying directions, with varying velocities, and varying intensities. How may he know whether his work is good or bad? What are the proofs of beauty in the composition of pictorial motion?
A practical proof is dramatic utility. The motions of a photoplay are in the service of the story. They should perform that work well, without waste of time and energy. An æsthetic proof is their power to stimulate our fancy and to sway our feeling. Pictorial motions should play for us, until by the illusion of art we can play with them. Another proof is reposefulness. For at the very moment when we are stimulated by art we desire to rest in satisfied contemplation. How pictorial motions may produce beauty on the screen by being at work, at play, and at rest will be told in the following chapters.
CHAPTER VII
PICTORIAL MOTIONS AT WORK
All the movement which you see on the screen may be enjoyed, we have said, as something which appears beautiful to your eye, regardless of its meaning to your mind. But if that movement, beautiful in itself, also carries to your mind some significance, if it serves the dramatic plot in some positive way, then the picture will be so much the richer. Acting, of course, is visible movement that delineates character and advances plot. It is pictorial motion at work. And acting, curiously enough, is not limited to people and animals. In a sense there may be acting also by things, by wagons or trees or brooks or waves or water-falls or fountains or flames or smoke or clouds or wind-blown garments. The motions of these things also constitute a kind of work in the service of the photoplay.
One might say that the artistic efficiency of a motion picture may be partly tested in the same way as the practical value of a machine. In either case motions are no good unless they help to perform some work. “Lost motions” are a waste, and resisting motions are a hindrance. The best mechanical combination of motions, then, is that which results in the most work with the least expenditure of energy.