Moving Picture World (Mar-Dec 1907)

234 THE MOVING PICTURE WORLD. FILMS : FILMS and MOTION PICTURE MACHINES The best and only reliable are for sale here WE ARE SOLE AGENTS FOR Power’s Cameragraph WITH ORIGINAL FI REPROOF MAGAZINES AND Edison’s Kinetoscopes We are the largest dealers in Philadelphia in Machines. Films and General Supplies Lew is M. 5waab 336 Spruce St. >? Philadelphia, Pa. What's That — Dissatisfied with your film service ? Trade falling away and patrons not pleased ! Well what’s the use of worrying. “ There’s a remedy for every ill,” and our professional advice is to give the people in your neighborhood a trial of T« G. N. Y. FILM SERVICE You may be surprised to hear it, but it’s a fact that your patrons are mighty good judges of films. The best is none too good for them, and it’s certainly up to you to give them what they want. What we can promise for our service is PROMPT DELIVERY, THE VERY LATEST AND BEST FILMS, AND THAT YOUR INTERESTS WILL BE OURS. Let’s get acquainted. Call on us now or write, giving full particulars regarding amount of reels you use, number of changes desired, etc. It will be to your interest. The Greater IM. Y. FILM RENTAL CO. 24 Union Square, New York that of the usual story writer except that, like the dimenovelist, he must have something happening every minute, allowing for no padding with word-painting, following climax with climax, and devolving all kinds of intricate situations so that the interest of the onlookers will never lag from the pictures on the canvas. The story once written, the making of the picture passes from the world of fiction into the world of drama. The comedy or tragedy must be rehearsed and acted like any other drama before the pictures are taken. And this is one of the interesting phases of the process. There is a stage manager whose duties are as involved and intricate as and more diversified than those of the ordinary stage manager. And there are actors regularly engaged to take the parts, studying them, rehearsing for the pantomime, and then going through the actions while the camera snaps them for the reproduction. No amateurs can be turned to account for these dramas, actors and actresses of experience and ability only being used for the leading parts. The stories are usually made up during the Summer, when the stages are silent, and it is not hard to procure talent for the comparatively easy, brief work of performing before the eye of the camera, with no lines to be memorized. The principals make ten dollars a day, the best among them more sometimes, and the minor actors five, none less than that, so it is well worth their time to assume the rules of the convict, the Happy Hooligan type, etc., that find their way into these canvas stories. Besides author, stage manager and actors, there is an artist who plays an important part in the production. He must paint scenes that cannot be caught with the camera, and must make them look like the real thing. If the interior of a beautiful drawing room is needed, he paints the walls, and thereon are hung real pictures, real doorways are made, and furnishings are rented such as rugs, chairs, desks, lounges, etc., and placed about so that when the film of the camera is turned on the scene it will have every appearance of a real room. Costumes are rented for the various characters in the pictured playstories, costumes costing as much as three or four hundred dollars oftentimes. The total expenses for the materials used in one of those moving pictures we see thrown on the canvas in a few seconds is often as high as $1,500. The author’s duties, so the author explained, do not end with the writing of the story. He must choose the scenes of his situations, not always an easy thing to do. It requires eternal vigilance to know just where to go to get the proper setting for the thousand and one scenes that are pictured in one of these stories. Here is where much of the faking in the pictures comes in, the author admitted frankly. As the spectators in the vaudeville house sit and gasp at some perilous de§d pictured amid the rugged scenes of the West he never for a moment suspects that the view of that rugged mountain side was obtained somewhere in Prospect Park, or on the outskirts of Brooklyntown. The cinematographist and his camera are old friends and together they can do wonders. People say that a camera tells the truth, but the cinematographist denies the allegation. ITe knows how to make it lie to good purpose" With a certain kind of lens he can emphasize just the phase of a situation he wants, making a small excavation look like a deep gulley or a hill like a mountain. With careful selection he can find most of the scenes he needs for his stories, no matter how foreign they may he to these parts, somewhere around Brooklyn or Manhattan.