“White Light for Motion Picture Photography”

Abstract

The famous psychologist, Professor Munsterberg, wrote a few years ago a book on motion pictures, and he there asserted that the production of motion pictures by the best companies had graduated us an Art to rank coequal with painting, sculpture and music. By attention to mode and variation of lighting, many new psychological appeals can be made, including the portraying of the thought images in the minds of the characters of the play in a way that cannot be duplicated on the theater stage. Besides being one of the fine arts, the motion picture art has become the greatest educational institution in the world. Very special lighting is needed for scientific films, for ultra-rapid motion picture work, and for the several new color processes in motion picture production. Not only is the moving picture industry the greatest educational institution, but it is also one or our foremost industries. Since Edison's and Jenkin's invention of motion picture devices of only a score or so years ago, the industry has leaped to fourth place in the United States. There is spent annually three to four hundred million dollars by the people of the United States for the privilege of attending the motion picture theaters. The daily attendance is said to average between ten and twenty millions of people. Of the fifty thousand motion picture theaters in the world, there are about twenty thousand in the United States, and as a producing center, the United States is the greatest in the world. The sunshine of California has built up a major producing center in and near Los Angeles. (In this center, over $12,- 000,000 arc annually spent for motion picture production, and this gives employment to about 25,000 people.) Again the importance of light in relation to expense of production may be judged from the following statement made by Mr. G. McL. Baynes (of the English Hepworth Mfg. Co., see Moving Picture World, page 2334, December 25th, 1915); “As to photographic difficulties encountered in outdoor work in England, it is ridiculous to say that they cannot make pictures there. It is true, production is more expensive, perhaps twice us much because we have to wait for the Sunshine.” Thus in foggy England, the difficulties are much greater on account of poor light than in the West or East of the United States. The invention of the high amperage white flame are lamps and carbons and of other artificial light sources such as the daylight gas filled tungsten lamps and the mercury arc lamps, have eliminated these expensive waits for sunshine. The home-center of the motion picture industry in the East is again building up rapidly. These new studios are especially to be found in or near New York City, and to a lesser degree near other large centers of population, as for example, Chicago, Philadelphia, Cleveland, etc. Scenic interest, such as at Ithaca and in Florida, is another industrial factor in the location oi motion picture plants. The increase in artificial light facilities lias been an important economic factor in this Eastern movement which is being accelerated by the continual increase in the extraordinary salaries which are paid the motion picture artists. The cost of production of an average negative of one reel is said to be about $1,000, and of this it is certainly economy to spend one or two per cent. on securing the best lighting.