THE GENESIS OF MOTION-PICTURES
Although the possibilities of taking pictures photographically
was known as early as the third decade of the nineteenth century,
drawings only were used in the many devices for rendering the
illusion of movement. In the preceding chapter in which we have
given a brief history of the early efforts of synthesizing related
pictures, typical examples of such instruments have been given. But
the pictorial elements used in them were always drawings.
It was not until 1861 that photographic prints were utilized in a
machine to give an appearance of life to mere pictures. This machine
was that of Mr. Coleman Sellers, of Philadelphia. His instrument
brought stereoscopic pictures into the line of vision in turn
where they were viewed by stereoscopic lenses. Not only did this
arrangement show movement by a blending of related pictures but
procured an effect of relief.
[Illustration: PLAN OF THE APPARATUS OF COLEMAN SELLERS FOR GIVING
THE ILLUSION OF LIFE TO A SERIES OF PHOTOGRAPHS.]
It is to be remembered that in the days of Mr. Sellers, photography
did not have among its means any method of taking a series of
pictures on a length of film, but the separate phases of a movement
had to be taken one at a time on plates. The ribbon of sensitized
film, practical and dependable, did not come until more than
twenty-five years later. Its introduction into the craft was
coincident with the growth of instantaneous photography.
When scientists began to study movement with the aid of instantaneous
photographs, they quite naturally cared less for synthesizing the
pictorial results of their investigations than they did for merely
observing and recording exactly how movement takes place.
At first diagrams and drawings were used by students of movement to
fix in an understandable way the facts gained by their inquiries. In
England, for instance, Mr. J. Bell Pettigrew (1834-1908) illustrated
his works with a lot of carefully made diagrammatic pictures. He made
many interesting observations on locomotion and gave much attention
to the movement of flying creatures, adding some comment, too, on the
possibility of artificial flight.
Again in Paris, M. E. J. Marey (whose work is to be considered a
little farther on) embellished his writings with charts and diagrams
that were made with the aid of elaborate apparatus for the timing
of animals in action and the marking of their footprints on the
ground. Then he traced, too, by methods that involved much labor
and patience, the trajectory of a bird’s wing. And in his continued
searching out of the principles of flight registered by ingenious
instruments the wing-movements in several kinds of insects.
In our first chapter no instructions were given as to how animated
cartoons are made. And although this is the specific purpose of the
book, we must again in this chapter refer but slightly to the matter,
as there is need that we first devote some time to chronicling the
early efforts in solving animal movements by the aid of photography.
Then we must touch, too, upon the modes of the synthesis of analytic
photographs for the purpose of screen projection.
Both these matters are pertinent to our theme: the animated screen
artist makes use of instantaneous photographs for the study of
movement, and the same machine that projects the photographic film is
also used for the animated cartoon film made from his drawings.
What appears to have been the first use of photographs to give
a screen synthesis in an auditorium, was that on an evening in
February, 1870, at the Academy of Music, in Philadelphia. It was an
exhibition given by Mr. Henry R. Heyl, of his phasmatrope. He showed
on a screen, life-sized figures of dancers and acrobats in motion.
The pictures were projected, with the aid of a magic-lantern, from
photographs on thin glass plates that were placed around a wheel
which was made to rotate. A “vibrating shutter” cut off the light
while one photograph moved out of the way, and another came in to
take its place. The wheel had spaces for eighteen photographs. It
was so planned that those of one set could be taken out and those of
another slipped in to change a subject for projection.
The photographs used in the phasmatrope were from posed models; a
certain number of which were selected to form a cycle so that the
series could be repeated and a continuous performance be given
by keeping the wheel going. At this period there were no pliant
sensitized ribbons to take a sequence of photographs of a movement,
and Heyl had to take them one at a time on glass plates by the wet
collodion process.
A notable point about this early motion-picture show was that it
was quite like one of our day, for according to Heyl, in his letter
to the _Journal of the Franklin Institute_, he had the orchestra
play appropriate music to suit the action of the dancers and the
grotesqueries of the acrobats.
Better known in the fields of the study of movement and that of
instantaneous photography and pictorial synthesis are M. Marey,
already mentioned (1830-1904), and his contemporary, Mr. E. Muybridge
(1830-1904). While Marey conducted his inquiries in Paris, Muybridge
pursued his studies in San Francisco and Philadelphia.
Marey, who in the beginning recorded the changes and modification of
attitudes in movement by diagrams and charts, later used diagrams
made from photographs and then photographs themselves. He studied
the phases of movement from a strictly scientific standpoint, in
human beings, four-footed beasts, birds, and nearly all forms of
life. And he did not neglect to note the speed and manner of moving
of inorganic bodies, such as falling objects, agitated and whirling
threads.
[Illustration: OSTRICH WALKING.
Part of a plate in Muybridge’s “Animal Locomotion.” Published and
copyrighted by him in 1887.
An imposing work, made under the auspices of the University of
Pennsylvania, of more than 700 large plates. It was the first
comprehensive analytical study of movement in human figures and
animals.]
Muybridge, on the other hand, seemed to have a trend toward the
educational, in a popular sense of the word; and had a faculty of
giving his works a pictorial quality. He showed this in the choice
of his subjects and the devising of machines that combined his
photographs somewhat successfully in screen projection.
In Muybridge’s first work in which he photographed a horse in motion,
he used a row of cameras in front of which the horse proceeded. The
horse in passing before them, and coming before each particular
camera, broke a string connected with its shutter. This in opening
exposed the plate and so pictured the horse at that moment, and in
the particular attitude of that moment. This breaking of a string,
opening of a shutter, and so on, took place before each camera.
Muybridge in his early work used the collodion wet plate, a serious
disadvantage. Later he had the convenience of the sensitized dry
plate and was also able to operate the cameras by motors.
When Marey began to employ a camera in his researches he registered
the movements of an entire action on one plate; while Muybridge’s
way was to take but one phase of an action on one plate. The two men
differed greatly in their objects and methods. Marey in his early
experiments, at least, traced on one plate or chart the successive
changes in attitudes of limbs or parts, or the positions of certain
fixed points on his models. But Muybridge procured single but
related pictures of attitudes assumed by his subjects in a connected
and orderly sequence. The latter method lent itself more readily
to adaptation for the projecting lantern and so became popularly
appreciated. Perhaps it is for this reason that Muybridge has been
referred to as the father of the motion-picture.
The photographic gun was Marey’s most novel camera. With this
he caught on a glass plate the movements of flying birds. This
instrument was suggested by a similar one used by M. Janssen, the
astronomer, in 1874, to make a photographic record of the transit of
a planet across the sun’s disk.
[Illustration: MAREY’S PHOTOGRAPHIC GUN.]
The kineograph, mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, by which
the illusion of motion was given to a series of pictures arranged
like a book, formed the basic idea for a number of other popular
contrivances. One of these was the mutoscope, in which the leaves
were fastened by one edge to an axis in such a way that they stood
out like spokes. The machine in operation brought one leaf for a
moment at rest under the gaze of the eye and then allowed it to snap
away to expose another picture in its place. When this was viewed in
its turn, it also disappeared to make way for the next in order.
[Illustration: PLAN OF LUMIÈRE’S KINORA.
An apparatus similar in principle to the mutoscope.]
As yet experimenters were not altogether sure in what particular way
to combine a series of graduated pictures so as to produce one living
image. Besides the ways that have been exemplified in the apparatus
so far enumerated, some experimenters tried to put photographs around
the circumference of a large glass disk somewhat on the order of the
phenakistoscope. Heyl’s phasmatrope, of 1870, was on this order.
On this plan of a rotating disk, Muybridge constructed his
zoöpraxiscope by which he projected some of his animal photographs.
Another expedient tried by some one was that of putting a string
of minute pictures spirally on a drum which was made to turn in a
helix-like fashion. The pictures were enlarged by a lens and brought
into view back of a shutter that worked intermittently.
Although the dry plate assuredly was a great improvement over the
slow and troublesome old-fashioned wet plate, there was felt the need
of some pliant material that could be sensitized for photography
and that could furthermore be made in the form of a ribbon. The
suitableness of the paper strips for use in the zootrope and the
praxinoscope obviously demonstrated the advantages of an elongated
form on which to put a series of related pictures.
Experiments were made to obtain a pliant ribbon for the use.
Transparent paper was at one time tried but found unadaptable.
Eventually the celluloid film came into use, and it is this material
that is now generally in use to make both the ordinary snap-shot film
and the “film stock” for the motion-picture industry.
Edison’s kinetoscope of 1890, or more particularly its improved form
of 1893, that found immediate recognition on its exhibition at the
World’s Fair at Chicago, was the first utilization on a large scale
of the celluloid film for motion-pictures. It is to be remarked,
however, that in the kinetoscope the pictures were viewed, not on a
screen in an auditorium by a number of people, but by one person at
a time peering through a sight opening in the apparatus. It was the
kinetoscope, it appears, that set others to work devising ways of
using celluloid bands for projecting pictures on a screen.
While some inventors were busy in their efforts to construct
workable apparatus both for photography and projection, others were
endeavoring to better the material for the film and improve the
photographic emulsion covering it.
There is no need in this book, in which we shall try to explain the
making of animated screen drawings, to recount the whole story of the
progressive improvements of the machines used in the motion-picture
industry. But a short notice of the present-day appliances will not
be out of place.
[Illustration: PLAN OF EDISON’S FIRST KINETOSCOPE.
Modified from the Patent Office drawing.]
The three indispensable pieces of mechanism are the camera, the
projector, and the printer, or apparatus that prints pictures
photographically. All three in certain parts of their construction
are similar in working principles. The mechanical arrangements of
the camera and projector especially are so much alike that some of
the first apparatus fabricated were used both for photography and
projection. A few early types of cameras served even for printers as
well.
The essential details of the three machines named above can be
described briefly as follows: (1) A camera has a light-tight
compartment within which a fresh strip of film passes and stops
intermittently back of a lens that is focussed on a subject, a
rotating shutter with an open and an opaque section makes the
exposure. (When the strip of film is developed it is known as the
negative.) (2) A printer pulls the negative, together with a fresh
strip of film in contact with it, into place by an intermittent
mechanism before a strong light. A rotating shutter flashes the
light on and off. (The new piece of film, when it is developed and
the pictures are brought out, is known as the positive.) (3) The
projector moves the positive film by an intermittent mechanism
between a light and a lens; a rotating shutter, with open and opaque
sections, alternately shuts the light off and on. When the light rays
are allowed to pass the pictures contained on the positive film are
projected on the screen.
[Illustration: PRINCIPLES OF THE PROJECTOR AND THE MOTION-PICTURE
CAMERA COMPARED.]
It seems unnecessary, perhaps, in these days of the ubiquity of
snap-shot cameras, and the fact that nearly every one becomes
acquainted with their manipulation, to mention that a photographic
negative records the light and shade of nature negatively, and that a
positive print is one that gives a positive representation of such
light and shade.
[Illustration: A NEGATIVE.
A POSITIVE PRINT.]
A motion-picture camera of the most approved pattern is an
exceedingly complicated and finely adjusted instrument. Its principle
of operation can be understood easily if it is remembered that it
is practically a snap-shot camera with the addition of a mechanism
that turns a revolving shutter and moves a length of film across the
exposure field, holds it there for an interval while the photographic
impression is made, and then moves it away to continue the process
until the desired length of film has been taken. This movement,
driven by a hand-crank, is the same as that of a projector—previously
explained—namely, an intermittent one.
This is effected in a variety of ways. The method in many instruments
is an alternate one of the going back and forth of a pair of
claw-levers that during one such motion draw the film into place by
engaging the claws into perforations on the margins of the film.
[Illustration: PLAN OF A MOTION-PICTURE CAMERA.
_A._ Film. _B._ Top loop to allow for the pulling down of the
film during the intermittent movement. _C._ Magazine to hold the
blank film. _D._ Magazine to hold the exposed film. _E._ Claw
device which pulls down the film three-quarters of an inch for
each picture. _F._ Sprocket-wheels. _G._ Exposure field. _H._
Focusing-tube. _I._ Eye-piece for focusing. _J._ Shutter. _K._
Lens. _L._ Film gate.]
The patterns of the shutters in camera and projector differ. That of
the projector is three or two parted, as stated in our observations
previously made. A camera shutter is a disk with an open section. The
area of this open section can be varied to fit the light conditions.
[Illustration: TYPES OF CAMERA AND PROJECTOR SHUTTERS.]
The general practice relative to taking motion-pictures is to have
one-half foot of film move along for each turn of the camera handle.
Eight separate pictures are made on this one-half foot of film. But
in a camera that the animated cartoon artist uses, but one turn
of the handle for each picture is the method. In most cameras the
gearing can be changed to operate either way. To photograph drawings
in making animated films a good reliable instrument is necessary,
and requirements to the purpose should be thought of in selecting
one. One important matter that may be mentioned here is that there
should be an easy way of focussing the scene. Generally in taking
topical pictures and views, an outside finder and a graduated scale
for distance and other matters is made use of, but for drawings it
is essential to be able to focus on a suitable translucent surface
within the exposure field in the camera.
There are certain numerical formulas that those going into
motion-picture work should learn at the start. It is well, too, for
the general reader, even if he is interested only as a matter of
information to take note of them. Their comprehension will help to a
better understanding of how both the ordinary photographic film, and
the film from animated drawings, are made, prepared, and shown on the
screen.
As the ordinary phrase goes, any single subject in film form is
spoken of as a reel; but in strict trade usage the word means a
length of one thousand feet. As it is generally reckoned, sixty feet
of film pass through the projecting machine every minute. This means
that a reel of one thousand feet will take about seventeen minutes.
Now with sixty feet of film crossing the path of light in one minute,
we see that one foot hurries across in one second. And as sixteen
little pictures are contained in one foot of film, we get an idea
of the great number of such separate pictures in a reel of ordinary
length. All these particulars—especially that regarding the speed
at which the film moves—are vital matters for the animated cartoon
artist to keep in mind as he plans his work.
[Illustration: ONE FOOT OF FILM PASSES THROUGH THE PROJECTOR IN ONE
SECOND]
MAKING ANIMATED CARTOONS