Picture Play Magazine (Sep 1923 - Feb 1924)

51 Speed Demons the laughs and thrills into pictures. Schallert a little too cautious in a way to make an impression of tremendous excitement and speed on the screen, where we are in the habit of demanding an overexaggeration of such effects. I concluded finally that the conversation was for a purpose, and that that purpose was the increasing of the tempo, the producing of an extraordinary thrill in what was happening that would make everybody doubly happy when they saw the actual1 smash on the silver sheet. It struck me too that here was perhaps a solution to a certain peculiar and perhaps perplexing effect that is attained in comedies wherein the action becomes exuberant and violent, as when you see people narrowly avoiding being run down by madly racing street cars, and miraculously escaping certain death after being run over by ten-ton trucks and steam rollers. I was by way of being convinced that the manner in which the camera was operated had something — perhaps much — to do with the success of these wild stunts. At the risk of being a little didactic, I am going to explain to you something about the film-taking apparatus and the way that it works. Otherwise I feel it will be difficult for you to comprehend the way that your eyes are ofttimes tricked by the abnormal evidences of action and motion on which you gaze in the theater. The explanation, I hope will open up a new vista of what can be accomplished in the fantastic pictures that promise soon to come into vogue. There is no telling what weird effects may be attained in some fairy tale or "Arabian Nights" spec In Harold Lloyd's forthcoming picture, the traffic jam was made more effective by slowing down the cameras while the scenes were shot, so that the action would be faster when shown on the screen. Here the action is taken by a speed camera. These five consecutive exposures were taken so rapidly that practically no difference can be seen in the athlete's position. tacle, such as. Douglas' Fairbanks is making for instance, where flights on magic carpets, and vanishings behind invisible helmets and cloaks and other quick-change witchcraft, is desired. For practically anything of this nature, in which motion or disappearance is involved, requires the development of all those resources for surprise and mystification which lie literally within the grasp of the camera man's fingers. Normally considered — and the understanding of this is very important — the movie camera takes pictures at the rate of sixteen per second. That is, sixteen tiny photographs are registered on the strip of celluloid that everybody knows as film, and when these photographs have been developed and later printed on another piece of celluloid, and are illuminated by the projection lamp in a theater, they flash on the screen life and action. There is no law, of course, that prescribes that pictures shall be taken at the rate of sixteen constantly. Nor are they. A good camera man varies the motion of his crank, which he generally turns by hand, to suit the requirements of his players, his plot and his situation. If he is a real artist he obeys mo laws or instructions, but turns according to the way that he "feels" the scene. He has a delicate sense of values photographically, and he regulates the motion of his hand accordingly. In its way his technique is being as highly perfected as that of any art, like playing the violin, or sculpturing, or painting. If there is an emotional love scene, in which every detail of facial expression must be caught, to add the note of beauty, the camera man speeds his cranking. This enables him to run more films past his lens than he would at the normal rate, to take more pictures, and thus to catch