The first motion-picture

The first motion-picture studio was dubbed by the staff the "Black Maria." It was an
unpretentious oblong wooden structure erected in the laboratory yard, and had a movable
roof in the central part. This roof could be raised or lowered at will. The building was
covered with black roofing paper, and was also painted black inside. There was no
scenery to render gay this lugubrious environment, but the black interior served as the
common background for the performers, throwing all their actions into high relief. The
whole structure was set on a pivot so that it could be swung around with the sun; and the
movable roof was opened so that the accentuating sunlight could stream in upon the actor
whose gesticulations were being caught by the camera. These beginnings and crudities
are very remote from the elaborate and expensive paraphernalia and machinery with
which the art is furnished to-day.
At the present time the studios in which motion pictures are taken are expensive and
pretentious affairs. An immense building of glass, with all the properties and stagesettings
of a regular theatre, is required. The Bronx Park studio of the Edison company
cost at least one hundred thousand dollars, while the well-known house of Pathe Freres in
France--one of Edison's licensees--makes use of no fewer than seven of these glass
theatres. All of the larger producers of pictures in this country and abroad employ regular
stock companies of actors, men and women selected especially for their skill in
pantomime, although, as most observers have perhaps suspected, in the actual taking of
the pictures the performers are required to carry on an animated and prepared dialogue
with the same spirit and animation as on the regular stage. Before setting out on the
preparation of a picture, the book is first written --known in the business as a scenario--
giving a complete statement as to the scenery, drops and background, and the sequence of
events, divided into scenes as in an ordinary play. These are placed in the hands of a
"producer," corresponding to a stage- director, generally an actor or theatrical man of
experience, with a highly developed dramatic instinct. The various actors are selected,
parts are assigned, and the scene-painters are set to work on the production of the desired
scenery. Before the photographing of a scene, a long series of rehearsals takes place, the
incidents being gone over and over again until the actors are "letter perfect." So persistent
are the producers in the matter of rehearsals and the refining and elaboration of details,
that frequently a picture that may be actually photographed and reproduced in fifteen
minutes, may require two or three weeks for its production. After the rehearsal of a scene
has advanced sufficiently to suit the critical requirements of the producer, the camera
man is in requisition, and he is consulted as to lighting so as to produce the required
photographic effect. Preferably, of course, sunlight is used whenever possible, hence the
glass studios; but on dark days, and when night-work is necessary, artificial light of
enormous candle-power is used, either mercury arcs or ordinary arc lights of great size
and number.
Under all conditions the light is properly screened and diffused to suit the critical eye of
the camera man. All being in readiness, the actual picture is taken, the actors going
through their rehearsed parts, the producer standing out of the range of the camera, and
with a megaphone to his lips yelling out his instructions, imprecations, and approval, and
the camera man grinding at the crank of the camera and securing the pictures at the rate
of twenty or more per second, making a faithful and permanent record of every
movement and every change of facial expression. At the end of the scene the negative is
developed in the ordinary way, and is then ready for use in the printing of the positives
for sale. When a further scene in the play takes place in the same setting, and without
regard to its position in the plot, it is taken up, rehearsed, and photographed in the same
way, and afterward all the scenes are cemented together in the proper sequence, and form
the complete negative. Frequently, therefore, in the production of a motion-picture play,
the first and the last scene may be taken successively, the only thing necessary being, of
course, that after all is done the various scenes should be arranged in their proper order.
The frames, having served their purpose, now go back to the scene-painter for further
use. All pictures are not taken in studios, because when light and weather permit and
proper surroundings can be secured outside, scenes can best be obtained with natural
scenery--city streets, woods, and fields. The great drawback to the taking of pictures outof-
doors, however, is the inevitable crowd, attracted by the novelty of the proceedings,
which makes the camera man's life a torment by getting into the field of his instrument.
The crowds are patient, however, and in one Edison picture involving the blowing up of a
bridge by the villain of the piece and the substitution of a pontoon bridge by a company
of engineers just in time to allow the heroine to pass over in her automobile, more than a
thousand people stood around for almost an entire day waiting for the tedious rehearsals
to end and the actual performance to begin. Frequently large bodies of men are used in
pictures, such as troops of soldiers, and it is an open secret that for weeks during the Boer
War regularly equipped British and Boer armies confronted each other on the peaceful
hills of Orange, New Jersey, ready to enact before the camera the stirring events told by
the cable from the seat of hostilities. These conflicts were essentially harmless, except in
one case during the battle of Spion Kopje, when "General Cronje," in his efforts to fire a
wooden cannon, inadvertently dropped his fuse into a large glass bottle containing
gunpowder. The effect was certainly most dramatic, and created great enthusiasm among
the many audiences which viewed the completed production; but the unfortunate general,
who is still an employee, was taken to the hospital, and even now, twelve years
afterward, he says with a grin that whenever he has a moment of leisure he takes the time
to pick a few pieces of glass from his person!