The independent-reporter. [volume] (Skowhegan, Me.) 1909-1955, 1911-10-19
WONDERFUL WORK OF MAKING MOVING
PICTURES
The Man That Turns the Camera Crank is The
Most Versatile of All Boys

The man who turns the crank that
takes the pictures that make the
moving picture show Is one of the
most versatile of all men in the
world. He is a stage director, dra-
matte critic, war correspondent, a
landscape artist, a sea-faring adven-
turer, an explorer, teacher, scien-
fist, a historian and a preacher.
He points his camera daily at hun
dreds and hundreds of things-this
morning at a fake Indian plotting the
murder of a phony cowboy in spuri-
Gus ranch in the Bronx; this after
noon he catches the maneuvres of a
handful of steel findings animated by
the attraction of an electro magnet.
Tomorrow he will catch a gigantic
derrick working to remove the deb
ris of a disastrous railroad wreck,
and the next day his camera will. at
intervals of three or four hours, rec
ord the bursting of rosebud in some
botanist's greenhouse.
His brothers are at work in every
part of the world. The moving pic
ture camera man is busy in the sub
urbs of Paris making pictures of
be on the warpath in Wyoming and
in Bound Brook, N. j., another cam
era man is taking pictures of Oliver
Cromwell and his Roundhead SOL
diers, pictures destined to be exhibited
under the actual shadow of that
minaret of Westminster Abbey where
Cromwell's grinning skull was once
exposed.
q oil haf
grandeur that was Rome have
breathed and burned again in Flat
bush, Brooklyn, for the delectation of
millions of men there represented by
the yicariouS camera man. The Troy
of Helen and the Carthage of Dido
have been rebuilt and repeopled in
Hoboken for the moving picture man;
the dignited Washington and the sor-
rowing Lincoln have been resurrect-
ed to enact again great deeds in the
cameras mouth.
But not alone in the mimic world
does the camera man find his field.
The Emperor of Germany, the Car
Of Russia, and the King of Spain are
everywhere accompanied by official
photographers who record
their every public royal act for their
contemporaries and for posterity.
When the telegraph flashes the news
OF disaster the ACKNOWLEDGMENT
ers PUSHES to the scene with all the
haste of the newspaper correspon-
dent. If there is a great military
parade, a meeting of notables, a
naval review, or anything that is out
OF the ordinary and that is capable
OF INSTALLATION, 1t is there that the
camera man must go to respond to
the demand of the public for moving
pictures. The moving picture cam
era man has cranked his machine
WITHIN the sacred confines of Lhassa
IN Tibet, he has leaned over the edge
OF a CRATER to take the picture of an
actual hell, he has invaded the frozen
businesses of the Arctic circle. and
mas brought away, to be the prize of
every eye, the mysterious secrets OF
the densest Jungles of darkest Africa.
II may be that sometimes he is
vulgar, that often he is crude, that
occasionally he is immoral but it is
also true that with his camera and
us crank he has focused upon the
space OF canvass screen the photo
graphic presentment of the entire
human race at work and at play.
Inc reader is invited to fare forth
INTO the farthermost reaches of the
Bronx, half a dozen blocks beyond
the northern terminus of the Third
avenue Il" and there to go into a
great theatre with three stages, but
lacking proscenium arch and hay-
Ing no boxes, parquet, balcony or
gallery. High over the stages is a
glass roof through which the sun
shines brightly. One stage is cur
tanned off on four sides and above
with Opaque canvasses, and within
under the glare of electric lights of
$4,000 candle power, is being enacted
an incident in the life of an Eskimo
the aurora borealis being substituted
for the too brilliant Bronx sun. On
another stage, with a Fourteenth
Century cathedral for a background,
Jack Cade and his ruff1ans are begin
nlng again the Wars of the Roses.
but to these we must close our eyer.
On the third stage is discovered
tne interior of the general post office
ana store of a frontier mining camp.
real letters are in the post office
poXes, and the real sides of bacon
nang from real rafters. 1t Is an ana
=, lhdt udb obChpeQ l0e eye OF
the busy director, but a real box of
real breakfast food leans against the
real encounter. There, In wide hats,
hannel shirts, and leather breeches,
made up with fearsome mustaches
and barrels of grease paint, are a
dozen frontiersmen-as true to life
as the imagination Of a New York
theatrical manager can make them.
And there also Is the villain, with
sleek leather puttees and waxed
mustaches, tempting the beautiful
siri of the golden west with a present
Vi silver mounted riding crop. 1t
matters little that the silver was ap-
pied to the riding crop from a can
Vi aluminium paint after all the rest
vi the scene was set. 1t Is all the
same In the picture. A burly west
erher with a cockney accent rides
tturlously up to the door on a broncho
out lately graduated from a butchers
.arI and throws the mailbags into
the room.
there are lines to be said and they
are spoken Just as IL there were a