The smaller illustrations show the exact size of the pictures as they
appear on the film. They are an inch wide and three quarters of an inch
deep. A reel is usually a thousand feet long, and contains sixteen
thousand pictures. On a screen twelve feet square, which is smaller
than the usual size, there is surface enough to show twenty-seven
thousand of the pictures side by side if they are reproduced without
enlargement. Yet if every enlarged picture were shown on a separate
twelve-foot screen, a single reel would require a stretch of canvas
thirty-six miles long. Likewise a screen twenty feet square would
accommodate over seventy-six thousand of the little pictures, and the
stretch of canvas required for the enlarged pictures would be sixty
miles long. After witnessing a performance, few realize that they have
seen any such stretch of pictures as the figures show.
[Illustration: By permission of “The American Quarterly of
Roentgenology” and “The Archives of the Roentgen Ray”
SERIES OF RADIOGRAPHS SHOWING THE MOTIONS OF A STOMACH SUFFERING FROM
GASTRIC PERISTALSIS]
The life of a film is usually from three to six months, though varying,
of course, with the treatment in handling. “The Scientific American”
gives credit for superiority to films of French make, and attributes
their excellence to the many tests to which they are subjected to
secure exact dimensions, adequate strength, and other properties.
It is almost as vain to speak of the cost of producing a film as it
is to speak of the cost of producing a painting. We know the cost
of the canvas of the latter, and we also know the cost of the bare
film is three cents per foot; but the cost of what is on the film may
be represented only by the cost of developing and the labor of the
machine-operator, as, for example, in such pictures as “An Inaugural
Parade,” or the famous pictures showing the “Coronation of George V.”
Sometimes, however, the cost runs as high as fifty thousand dollars, as
did the film known as “The Landing of Columbus.” These films require
many people, necessitate the taking of long journeys to provide an
appropriate setting, and need from two to three years to finish them.
Before the film known as “The Crusaders” was ready for the public, six
hundred players and nearly three hundred horses had appeared in front
of the lens. The film of “The Passion Play,” now in preparation, will
cost, it is said, a hundred thousand dollars.
Mr. Paul Rainey has stated that his wonderful animal pictures, which
showed his happenings from the unloading of his expedition from an
Atlantic steamer on the coast of Africa, through the various hunts,
and up to his departure, likewise cost fifty thousand dollars.
Some of these wonderful films demonstrated how practical was his
much-laughed-at theory that the Mississippi hounds used for hunting
bear could successfully hunt the destructive African lion and the
chetah. These pictures, which were taken with the idea of permitting
Mr. Rainey’s friends at home to journey with him in spirit in his
travels, were first shown publicly last winter at the National
Geographic Society in Washington to illustrate a lecture by Mr.
Rainey. Those who then enjoyed them can feel only satisfaction to know
that they have now been placed on public exhibition, to show to the
people at large what Professor Henry Fairfield Osborn, President of the
American Museum of Natural History, has declared to be “the greatest
contribution to natural history of the last decade.” The writer
recently saw these pictures, and while the films are naturally not
as perfect as when first shown in Washington, all the essentials are
faithfully reproduced.
It is only recently that the streaky, flickering, eye-straining
series of pictures first brought out have been supplanted by pictures
so improved and so steady and continuous that the setting of a room
or a landscape made up of hundreds of pictures appears as a single
photograph. This is admirably illustrated by a portion of Mr. Rainey’s
pictures, which show, through the peculiarly clear African atmosphere,
a range of mountains ninety miles away. Again, his picture of the
drinking-place, where, owing to a long drought, some of the animals had
come eighty miles to scratch in the sand for water, shows the stillness
of an immense landscape broken only by the swaying of the nests of half
a hundred weaver-birds in a single tree, and by the scamper of monkeys,
baboons, and other small animals two hundred and fifty yards from the
camera. The same still background is shown as these little animals
cautiously approach, drink, and are driven away by those of larger
size, who in turn give way to companies of zebras, giraffes, rhinos,
and elephants.
In a recent lecture given to benefit a fund to establish an animal
hospital in New York, Dr. Joseph K. Dixon is credited with having shown
a rare set of films which took his audience on a most interesting trip
through the Yellowstone Park, and showed them an animal hospital which
nature had provided in a secluded spot of aspen-trees, where injured
creatures went for rest and convalescence. Many vivid pictures showed
lame deer, wounded elk, and bears having their cuts and bruises healed
by their own applications of oil taken from the trees.
[Illustration: By permission of “The American Quarterly of
Roentgenology” and “The Archives of the Roentgen Ray”