Page:Pictorial beauty on the screen.djvu/115

 But when you look at a stereoscopic motion picture it is absolutely impossible for you to "see around" the objects any farther than the camera has done, no matter how much you shift your position. The other sides of all the objects and figures might as well be missing. Your point of view is fixed absolutely in the stereoscopic picture, just as it is in the ordinary "flat" picture. But perhaps there are other ways in which the Teleview and similar inventions can provide new opportunities for the cinema artist. That remains to be shown by experimentation, and, of course, such experimentation is welcome and should be encouraged.

However, for all purposes of pictorial art a sufficient illusion of depth can be produced in the "flat" picture. This can be done by the simplest instruments and means of picture making, even by the use of a lead pencil and a piece of paper. There are only two secrets of perspective. One is to render parallel lines, that is, lines which are actually parallel in the subject, so that they converge in the distance and, if continued, would meet at a "vanishing point." The other is to render objects with increasing dimness as they occupy positions at increasing distances away from us.

One might suppose that in a photograph these problems of perspective would take care of themselves. But they do not, as may be seen by turning to the "still" of the conservatory scene, facing page 100. There we find a jumble of stuff apparently all in the same vertical plane. Why does the standing woman wear a palm leaf in her hair? Why does the man wear the top of a doorway upon his head? And why