Picture Play Magazine (Mar-Aug 1916)

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The Latest Wrinkle — Silhouette Movies 43 The jinni appears in answer to the call of Inbad's wishing ring — from "Inbad the Tailor," the first silhouette movie. All the action by the characters in the play is performed in front of the lights, so that the figures stand out in sharp, black relief against the radiant background. Plain black curtains frame the stage, and so far in front that it crowds the alley wall of the studio ; a sunken pit contains the camera, its lens almost level with the ground. "That," explained Mr. Gilbert, while his assistant, Air. Henry Bryant, another artist, gravely nodded assent, "is in order that every inch of the figures may be recorded, down to the very shape of their shoes." Courtesy demands that too many of the mechanical secrets should not be given away, but there are a few salient features about Mr. Gilbert's technical methods of production which can be mentioned without furnishing aid or comfort to the many envious imitators who would steal his idea on the first opportunity. It is, to begin with, an amusing, ingenious, and plastic technique. I was struck with the resemblance between the studio at No. 44 and the stage of the Park Theater, New York, when Josef Urban was rehearsing the somewhat tedious but scenically beautiful "Garden of Paradise," by Edward Sheldon. The same atmosphere existed. The same new methods of stagecraft were employed — simplicity, color, economy, beauty. All the properties in the main scene or foreground, for example, consisted of plain black cardboard cut into the necessary shapes of doors, flowers, bowls, et cetera. The background, Air. Gilbert explained, could be colored without any special difficulty. A simple change in the focus of the camera brought out an interesting effect of distance. A mere