the projection lantern the films are kept in due registration by passing over cylinders studded with little cogs or pegs which fit into perforations in the margin of the film and secure regular and even motion without slipping. Films are nearly always perforated by a special machine to the Edison gauge of four perforations to each picture. They may be bought ready perforated before exposure, but for commercial purposes are perforated by the photographer, in order to make sure that his system corresponds throughout with the machines in use. Variations in gauge are a great trouble to the cinematograph lanternist and are frequently due to slight shrinkage of film which has been perforated before development.
Perforation is also of great assistance in securing exact registration when two lengths of films have to be joined together—which is easily done by means of thin strips of celluloid moistened with acetone—or when introducing the black bands during which ordinary title slides are being projected on the screen. But titles are nearly always printed as part of the film itself.
Cinematography in of the coloured .films hitherto shown have been tinted by hand—and not badly when it is considered that the artist has such a tiny picture to work upon, and the laborious task of dealing with some thousands of pictures, in which the same tints have to be repeated ad infinitum. Some are machine-coloured by a clever contrivance. But the real colour film has arrived. A special shutter is provided with two ray filters, orange red and blue-green, one for each alternate exposure ; and a similar shutter is used for the projecting lantern. The eye seems capable of imagining for itself the complementary colour. The film has to be very highly sensitised, as well as panchromatic, because the pictures must generally be produced, considering the two filters, much faster than the ordinary ones—at least twenty-five to the second. However, one of the most exquisite achievements in colour effects is a film showing a bed of tulips just ready to bloom. The exposures were taken at intervals of a quarter of an hour. Those who have had the pleasure of seeing this film at the cinematograph entertainment when, as if at the bidding of some fairy, the trembling leaves draw further apart, the stalks waver and the buds burst open one by one, to display their richly hued wealth of petals, must agree with us that it is most delightful and beautiful.
The Opening for the Amateur.—In this country alone there are no less than 5,000 cinematograph theatres, besides travelling entertainers and educational establishments where the moving film has been adopted. New films are always in request, and for a really popular one the Continental and American rights fetch a considerable sum. Here is a chance for any one of artistic talent. The commercial films are far from good. In many places, especially in the country, it is easy to get together a number of characters and construct little amusing comedies which will be worthy of reproduc tion. Episodes of this kind and pastoral plays are the best field, leaving pageants and public events to the professional photographer, with whom it is unwise to attempt competi tion. A good camera and developing outfit is the only necessary outlay. When a good negative film is secured,
the best plan is to send it to one of the leading firms, who will undertake the printing, and probably make an offer for the copyright.
The Founders of Cinematography.—In 1877, Muybridge of California took a large number of photographs of a trotting horse by employing a series of separate cameras arranged side by side, and illustrated his lectures on the subject by projection through a lantern. Anschutz, in Prussia, invented a camera wherein successive images were impressed on a rapidly moving plate, and revived the Zoetrope in an im proved form, for the display of these movements. At about the same time, Mr. W. Friese-Greene took out the first patent for a machine, using a continuous celluloid film as the support for the series of moving negatives, and he must therefore be regarded as the father of Animated Photography in the modern sense. The Edison Kinetoscope appeared in i891. In April 1895 Messrs. Lumiere, in Paris, and Mr. Birt Acres, in London, almost simultaneously arrived at a practical machine. Mr. Acres photographed the University Boat Race in that year. Other names to be remembered are Varley, Paul, and Maskelyne. The progress of the cine matograph, like that of all notable developments, is strewn with the wreckage of many ingenious but unhappy inventors. For the last ten years the records of the Patent Office show an average of two or three applications in each week, most of which have found oblivion at an early stage in their career.
Many of the commercial machines are capable of produc ing pictures at a very high speed, subject only to the adjust ment of the shutter slit, and the provision of a driving power capable of imparting a uniform rate of motion. Machines for special scientific purposes have been devised, of extra ordinary capacity, such as that by Dr. Cranz, of Berlin, which will photograph the path of a bullet fired at a bladder of water hung on a string. The effect of this film when drawn through the optical lantern at the ordinary rate is very curious, as well as instructive. More significant still are the photo-micrographic films, showing the domestic proceedings of the animalcule ; and those illustrative of X-ray work, which latter we have not yet had an oppor tunity of seeing. Stereoscopic films are more a matter of expense than of any other difficulty, and altogether the applications of the cinematograph are each season becoming so various, that they are almost coterminous with photo graphy itself. For one type of work alone we can say definitely the cinematograph film is ineligible—the hand camera. And the reason of this would be appreciated by the reader, if he had once witnessed the projection of a film prepared with the instrument held in the hand, and had experienced the hopeless giddy sensation while figures and buildings rock up and down, with an occasional desperate leap skyward followed by a plunge into the depths of the earth. One thing we must postulate for the animated-picture maker—a good, rigid, and reliable stand for the apparatus to rest upon.
The only modern handbook. on the subject is by F. P. Liesegang, and at present there is no English translation.