The New Movie Magazine (Dec 1929-May 1930)

The Birth of the Talkie ( Continue J from page 35) the boys had so much sport with it that we christened it 'The Black Maria.' We were looking for service not art — and, remember, it was the first motion picture studio which the world had ever seen. "The building, itself, was about twenty-five by thirty feet in dimensions, I should say, and we gave a grotesque effect to the roof by slanting it up in a hunch in the center and arranging shutters that could be opened or closed with a pulley to obtain the greatest benefit from the light. "Then, in order to make certain of as long a working day as possible, we swung the whole building on pivots like an old-fashioned river bridge so it could be turned to follow the course of the sun. We covered it with black tar paper outside, and painted it a dead black inside to bring out actors into the sharpest relief. It was a ghastly proposition for a stranger daring enough to brave its mysteries — especially when it began to turn like a ship in a gale. But we did manage to make pictures there. And, after all, that was the real test. THE 'Black Maria' always reminded me of an Irishman who used to work for me in my early days when we were trying out certain variations of the railroad telegraph system; that is, sending a message from an ordinai'y wire to and from a moving train. We were working with our apparatus down on Staten Island at the time, and my Irish friend — his name was King — was in charge of the crew on the line. "He was a good electrician, too, but for some reason he had difficulty in making the system operate as it should. Sti-ange to say, it worked like a charm when the train was running in one direction but as soon as it started on the return trip troubles began. Although King would swear and tear his hair he couldn't fathom the source of the disturbance. "Finally, in disgust, he wrote me that the only solution he could think of was to run an axle under Staten Island so the island could be turned instead of the train! This was a good deal the same kind of problem we had with our old 'Black Maria.' But we couldn't very well control the sun. So we had to compromise — and fix up a contrivance to turn the studio. "We didn't use artificial light in those days. We had to depend altogether on nature. Therefore, it was a case of literally having to follow up the sun so as to extract all the benefit we could from every fugitive ray." Crude methods, the modern film producer may say, but they gave us results — and fairly continuous results, too. "That was the broad purpose, but how to accomplish that purpose was a problem which seemed more impossible the longer I studied it. It was in 1887 that I began my investigations, and photography, compared to what it is today, was in a decidedly crude state of development. Pictures were made by 'wet' plates, operated by involved mechanism. The modern dry films were unheard of. "T HAD only one fact to guide me at 1 all. This was the principle of optics, technically called 'the persistence of vision/ which proves that the 106 sensation of light lingers in the brain for anywhere from one-tenth to onetwentieth part of a second after the light itself has disappeared from the sight of the eye. "Ptolemy, the ancient Greek mathematician, first demonstrated this truth by means of a wooden wheel, painted with spots of red paint. As the wheel was whirled swiftly around, the spots on its surface apparently melted together and gave the effect of one continuous red streak, although when the wheel had stopped it was seen the spots had not changed their positions at all. "This fact served as the basic principle for various mechanical toys, creating the illusion of pictures that moved before the eyes of the beholder. A very simple contrivance of this kind was spinning cardboard, revolving on a string. On one side was the picture of a man, and on the other side the picture of a galloping horse. As the card spun, the man apparently leaped into the saddle of the horse, whereas what actually happened was that the revolutions of the card brought the second picture into view before the eye had lost the mental image of the first. I presume the inventor of the noveltv made a good sum. He deserved to. "This same idea was later elaborated into a contrivance called the 'Zoetrope' that was very popular when I was a young man. Around the inside lower rim of a cylinder affair, opened at the top, a series of related pictures was pasted, generally of a humorous character. As the cylinder was rapidly rotated the wondering eye, glued to the opening in the top, was regaled with a succession of scenes presumed to have all the appearance of life. The fact that most of the pictures were woodcuts and that the action didn't always match at the right moment created at times a weird effect, but for years the Zoetrope was one of the most popular fads of the day. "The photographic art itself was beginning to languish but even with its imperfections it remained for the camera to add the needed touch of finish and reality to the revolving pictures. The circumstances of how this came about were rather curious. Indeed, I don't think that many persons today, even connected with the film industry, are familiar with the facts of how photography contrived to introduce the semblance of motion in its product. AN ENGLISHMAN of the name of Muybridge, who was an enthusiast on two subjects — cameras and racehorses— was visiting, at his California farm, Senator Leland Stanford, who was also something of a 'crank' on the subject of blooded trotters. During the visit the merits of a certain horse, owned by the Senator', came under discussion, Stanford contending for one fact and his guest arguing for another. To settle the dispute Muybridge conceived an ingenious plan. "Along one side of the private racecourse on the farm he placed a row of twenty-four cameras. Attached to the shutter of each, he fastened a long thread, which in turn was carried across the track, and then, to make sure of obtaining sharp exposm-es, he erected a white screen opposite to serve as a reflector. When all was in readiness the race-horse was turned loose down the track. "As it dashed ' past the rows of cameras the various threads were snapped, and a series of photographs, establishing each successive point in the 'action' of the horse, were automatically registered. When they were developed they revealed for the first time a complete photographic record of the minutest details of a horse in actual motion, and Muybridge had the satisfaction of using them to win his argument. "He would have laid the pictures away in his private collection, but someone suggested trying the effect on a Zoetrope apparatus. The result was so startling that it created something of a public sensation. But, except as a novelty, there was little practicable benefit gained. To have made an actual motion picture, lasting even for the space of a single minute, at the rate of twelve exposures per second, the minimum for steady illusion, would have required, under the plan of Muybridge, seven hundred and twenty different cameras." "What then were your main problems in the construction of the first motionpicture camera?" BEFORE everything else the question of making a unit machine — that is, one where all the exposures needed could be made with the same apparatus and through the same lens. And this at once brought up the second difficulty. Obviously, it was quite impossible to construct any single camera capable of the proper speed and mechanism required for the purpose and use glass plates for the exposures. I saw at once these would have to be discarded entirely, and any experiments would have to start from a brand new point of departure. "We tried various kinds of mechanisms and various kinds of materials and chemicals for our negatives. The experiments of a laboratory consist mostly in finding that something won't work. The worst of it is you never know beforehand, and sometimes it takes months, even years, before you discover you have been on the wrongline all the time. First we tried making a cylindrical shell, something like an ordinary phonograph cylinder, and sensitizing the surface in the hope of obtaining microscopic photographs which could be enlarged. "These impressions would have been no larger than the point of a pin, if successful, and, of course, our plan involved a tremendous magnifying process to produce results. But we couldn't find a substance for coating the cylinder that was sensitive enough for our need. The old dry albumen that had been used by photographers we found would not do at all. Then we tried a gelatine bromide of silver emulsion, and for a little while it looked like it might work. "And again we found that we were wrong. Celluloid by this time was on the market — and we conceived the idea of a drum, over which a sheet of pre (Continued on page 109)