The Moving Picture World (1907)

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66o THE MOVING PICTURE WORLD. How the Cinemato^rapher WorKs. If you happen to look out your windows any of these fine mornings and see a "real gent" attired in full evening dress crr.-'ly choking a be-u-ti-ful damsel right out on the sidewalk or a villainous faced man with a cruel black mustache beating a poor little match girl over the head with a baseball bat, take one more look before you rush to the telephone and tell the police that a blood-curdling crime is being pulled off right before your very hands and face. Chicago has become one of the great centers of the motion picture industry, second only to Paris. Here, right in the streets of Chicago or in the country just outside, are made the pictures that you see in lectures, theaters, vaudeville-houses and 5-cent amusement halls. There is such a demand for new pictures all the time from these various sources that the firms who make a business of supplying the amusement-seeking world with new and startling motion pictures are busy all the time on fresh subjects. A moving picture film is only a group of several thousand photographs that are thrown on the screen in such rapid succession that the eye is deceived into think- ing it sees real motion. But a photograph reproduces only what has actually happened, so that all the thrilling scenes represented in a motion picture series have really occurred somewhere. It is the manufacture of these occurrences so that the camera can reproduce them that is the most serious part of the motion picture firm's business. Anybody can go any day and get a picture of the new County'building, or the sea lions in Lincoln Park, or a picnic on the Wooded Island. People sit in front of a screen at the vaudeville-houses and recognize in the back- ground of the pictures Chicago streets and buildings, but they see strange and weird occurrences that in all their experience they never have witnessed in Chicago, and they wonder how the miracle is wrought. WEIRD HAPPENINGS TO ORDER. The motion picture man is able to observe these strange phenomena and have his machine right on the spot to get them because he makes the weird happenings to order. The "real gent" in the evening dress who chokes the be-u-ti-ful lady at 10 o'clock in the morning—a most un- seemly hour for a "real gent" to wear a full dress, let alone to choke a real lady—has been carefully rehearsed to do this cruel deed by the motion picture men. The clothes the "real gent" wears are property clothes owned by the motion picture man, and so is the near- Worth costume that adorns the beautiful lady. The "real gent" is furious in his anger. Why not? He gets $4 a day for doing that. If you are a theatrical person, and your show has closed or busted, and there is no engagement in sight, there is a lot of choking you would do for $4 a day. •The biggest motion picture, firm in the city has its ■ machine operators out every day with a company of thespians who are willing to fall in/the lagoon and be rescued, chased madly down the street, be carried by brave firemen from burning houses or beat a match girl over the head with her own crutch. The most important man around a motion picture establishment, next to the proprietors themselves, is the man who originates the story which the motion pictures are to tell. He is at once playwright, producer, property man. mistress of the wardrobe and stage manager. His first work is to think out something that will be full of human interest and that can be told through the medium- ship of the pictures. He either writes out his plot or else thinks it all out carefully and carries the details in his mind. Then he sends around and engages the people needed for that particular set of pictures. In Paris there are regular companies of motion picture posers, who do nothing else but act in front of motion picture machines. In Chicago the posers are changed frequently, so as not to have the same faces in the various picture sets. All the performers are actors. Some of them are plav- ing regularly in theatrical companies around the city, and go out to pose in front of the motion picture cameras to earn a little extra money, besides getting an outing and a new experience. Other actors are those appearing at the vaudeville shows, usually in the class known as chasers, although af ten'actors of established reputation will pose for the sake of the advertising that pictures wiD give them. Actors out of work" and looking for quick money always call around at the motion picture houses. So that it is not difficult to obtain plenty of capable people to act out the motion picture story. - • SETTING FOR BANK ROBBERY. The motion picture playwright selects his people for any certain set of pictures he wishes to make and notifies them of the hour they are to assemble anywhere. Then with a couple of assistante he gets out the costumes and properties that will be needed and selects the places re- quired to furnish a proper setting for the; story. If he has a scheme for a set of pictures representing a bank robbery he will call up banks in the suburbs anil ask if he can please rob them. It may be a story that involves a church wedding, so arrangements must be made with a church sexton to get into a church. Every day the motion picture people are out at work. One day they are busy on a thrilling story of a train rob- bery and go to a small station where they have arranged to have a train run along on a side track and be robbed. The next day a funny tramp story may be worked out in a fashionable neighborhood, and the day after the troubles of a picnic party may be worked out under some of the big trees along the Des Plaines. One day last week a company started out to the Soutb Side to depict a story representing the troubles a fat boarder had with flies at a Summer resort. The first concern of the manager was to get an old-fashione< frame house that would look like a typical Summci boarders' paradise. He heard of one near Thirty-seventt street and Ellis avenue, and so after his company Ha< assembled he put them on a Cottage Grove avenue cai with that place in view. Besides the actors there were the motion picture oper- ators lugging mysterious black bags containing theii machines. Then there were assistants with signs, cos tumes and various properties. After the company ha< taken their seats in the car the manager outlined the plot LIVELY SUMMER BOARDERS SCENE." "Now, say, everybody, get together," said the manager "This is going to be called 'The Troublesome Fly,'« 'Fun at the Boarding-House,' or something like that, It* great. Going to be a regular scream if you peopl< ginger up a little bit and throw some life into it. N<~ here's the dope: There's a fat guy, that'll be }'i George, who comes out in front of this hotel joint, and say, the flies don't do a thing to him. See? A great b fly—-here it is. See, it's as big as a mouse—is lower*