The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine (May 1913): Vol. LXXXVI. New Series: Vol. LXIV. May to October, 1913Various
History
The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine (May 1913): Vol. LXXXVI. New Series: Vol. LXIV. May to October, 1913
Various
Periodicals
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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