An interesting discovery that has come with the success of these “photographic” pictures, that show what actually happens as pure entertainment, so interesting that you don’t think of its being instructive, is that ordinary dramatic movies can be made vastly more interesting and worth while if a good “reality” element is introduced. The Germans were on the trail of this when they had wit enough to plan their historical pictures based on fact and actual historical personages, that would appeal to people of almost any civilized nation on the globe. So good was their example, that we have followed suit, here in America, with “Orphans of the Storm,” and the big Douglas Fairbanks pictures, and a whole lot more. But now, we have gone a step farther, a step that adds to the danger and difficulty in picture making, but that shows more and more the wonderful possibilities of the screen. Take “Down to the Sea in Ships.” A writer named Pell who lived up near New Bedford, Massachusetts, where the old whaling industry used to center, in the days before steam whalers carried the business—or what there is left of it—to the Pacific coast—had an idea. He wrote a story about a hero who turned sailor-man and went to sea on a whaler, and harpooned a real whale. They make some wonderful motion pictures in Hollywood, but they don’t harpoon many whales there. When you’re a motion-picture actor, harpooning a real whale is a good trick—if you can do it. Pell took his story to Mr. D. W. Griffith, famous ever since “The Birth of a Nation.” But Mr. Griffith didn’t have time to play with it, so he turned it over to a director named Elmer Clifton, who decided that a picture of a real whale would make a “real whale” of a picture. He got a company together and went to work. [Illustration: _Courtesy W. W. Hodkinson Corporation._ CAPSIZED BY A REAL WHALE. Remarkable picture, taken during the cruise of the _George W. Morgan_, of a whaling-boat attacked by a wounded whale. (See page 62.)] [Illustration: _Courtesy W. W. Hodkinson Corporation._ AIDING NATURE BY A SKILFUL FAKE. In the original of this picture the boat appeared much as in the photograph above. Added dramatic value has been given by “retouching” or painting in the imaginary flukes of the whale, as he _might_ have raised them if he had been more accommodating. (See page 62.)] [Illustration: _Courtesy W. W. Hodkinson Corporation._ REAL DANGER ON THE HIGH SEAS. Imagine working to right an overturned whale boat in shark-infested waters, with a dangerously wounded whale still cruising about in the vicinity, just for the sake of a motion picture! (See page 62.)] [Illustration: _Courtesy W. W. Hodkinson Corporation._ THE SECOND STEP TO SAFETY.