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photographed at sixty per minute, and same scene be projected at ninety, the action of the artist is changed into quick, jerky movements, which convey to the audience an entirely different impression than would have been conveyed had the scene been projected at taking speed. The death-bed scene is still a death-bed scene, true, but into it has been injected an element of the ludicrous, which has the effect of intermixing its solemnity with farce comedy. "Pep" is all very well and highly commendable in its place, but, when pallbearers are made to come out of the house at something between a trot and a lock-step gallop and to dump the coffin into the hearse with a zip, we believe the "pep" thus displayed is misplaced. Certainly the screen gains nothing by such an absurd speeding up of its action.
It must be noted, however, that there are occasional exceptions where a scene may actually be improved by moderate overspeeding of projection. Such scenes are, however, rare. As a rule they are those where speeding automobiles are involved, with no animate figures other than those in the machines. Such scenes merely form the exception which proves the rule.
In over-speeded projection the film story may carry itself, but it is nevertheless an unnatural, weird and of ttimes entirely absurd performance, which is anything else under Heaven than satisfactory. It gives the effect of unrealness, thus keeping constantly in the subconscious mind of the audience the thought that it is looking ata mere picture, whereas with action at normal speed, with attendant naturalness, it is not at all unusual for the audience to become sufficiently lost in the action to forget the screen and actually live in and with the play.
The author ventures the assertion that over-speeding of projection, as applied to its effect in the alteration of action of moving things on the screen, with resultant effects on the minds of photoplay theatre patrons, is the one worst enemy with which the industry has to contend.
It is not within the province of this paper, which is already too long, though there is ample material for many more pages, to enter into detail as to the causes of over-speeding. They are many, but chief among them is the desire of theatre managers to "run to schedule," which means the allotting to each show a certain number of minutes, regardless of variation in film footage or musical or vaudeville numbers, and the desire to crowd into those minutes a program which can not be properly handled in the allotted time. The average theatre manager seems to consider a reel of film as standing for a certain number of minutes of show. This would be entirely true if
(a) All reels of film had the same footage, and
(b) All cameramen photographed all scenes at precisely the same length;
but films vary widely as to footage, while camera speed is almost anything else but standard. That is cold fact, and never will the screen come fully into its own until it is so recognized and pro
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