The photoplay; a psychological study (1916)

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THE PHOTOPLAY changes of scenes, has other possibilities of conveying his intentions. He must not yield to the temptation to play a pantomime on the screen, or he will seriously injur© the artistic quality of the reel. The really decisive distance from bodily reality, however, is created by the substitu- tion of the actor's picture for the actor him- self. Lights and shades replace the mani- foldness of color effects and mere perspective) must furnish the suggestion of depth. We traced it when we discussed the psychology of kinematoscopic perception. But we must not put the emphasis on the wrong point. The natural tendency might be to lay the chief stress on the fact that those people in the photoplay do not stand before us in flesh and blood. The essential point is rather that we are conscious of the flatness of the picture. If we were to see the actors of the stage in a mirror, it would also be a reflected image which we perceive. "We should not really have the actors themselves in our straight line of vision; and yet this image would ap- pear to us equivalent to the actors them- selves, because it would contain all the depth of the real stage. The film picture is such a 178