Picture Play Magazine (Mar-Aug 1916)

226 The Centaur Studio Then the leopard came on. wild and bloodthirsty. To enrage him even more guns were repeatedly shot and whips cracked. The director got a trifle closer the moat, the men with the guns held them a whole lot steadier, and the eyes of the trainer were more alert. The ferocious brute gave a sudden snort, reared on its hind legs. and. with a frightful rush of speed., sprang upon the door. The picture was hurriedly taken and the angry animal was Very carefully led back to its cage after prolonged persuasion and as much diplomacy. Every one breathed easier, including Mr. Horsley himself, who had come from his private office to catch a glimpse of the scene. I looked rather appealingly at Miss Gibson. She understood the look, and I got a few words with him. "Was it true that you lost your entire fortune in the moving pictures once upon a time. Mr. Horsley?*'" I asked him. bringing up ancient history. "Yes," he shook his head sadly. '"All that I had in the world — two hundred and fifty dollars ! It spurred me on to get it back again, however, and then "And then.'* I finished for him, "you commenced inventing things for the motion-picture industry, and now you have your own studio — and all in seven years !" Mr. Horsley again agreed with me. Then he told me the story of the invention of the light dirtuser. now used in every motion-picture studio in the world. "If a stage setting, representing, say, a parlor, is erected in the sunlight, the light beams cast well-defined shadows from the furniture and the players.*' he explained. "In the ordinary parlor there are no shadows, so to overcome this difficulty in moving pictures, white cloth is stretched on frames over the set. This softens, or diffuses, the light so that it does not cast shadows, but leaves it strong enough for photography. "My first producing company was using a small back yard in Xew Yrork City as a studio." Mr. Horsley continued. "The yard was in the rear of a big tenement house on one of the upper floors of which lived a washerwoman. She used to dry her clothes on an aerial pulley line which ran directly over the little studio, and when the wind blew the clothes flapped, and the shadows they cast on the stage settings below danced fantastically. The dancing shadows were bad enough, but quite often some article would drop from the clothesline and come fluttering down in the middle of an important scene. Oh. it would have been great if George Ovey was with us then !" he laughed. "However, we were producing dramas, and it would be necessary to take the scene all over again at considerable trouble — not to mention expense. So I Anally decided to pay the woman fifty cents to keep the wash oft the line when a scene was being taken. That plan worked all right until holdup tactics were adopted. I was taking some scenes on a sunny Sunday morning. The enterprising washerlady noticed it, and hung her clothes on the line quite needlessly. Then she doubled her price because it was Sunday, and charged a dollar for taking in the clothes. That was too much for my limited pocketbook. Accordingly I stretched some muslin over the 'sets.' The cloth caught the shadows from the flapping clothes and prevented them from falling into the picture. Also it gave a soft, diffused light. The doing away with the shadows proved to be the most important part." At this point some one came out and requested Mr. Horsley's attention, so I left him and went to watch a few more scenes that were of the same nature as the one just over, except that they were