Page:Pictorial beauty on the screen.djvu/162

 which have stopped fluttering, or the garments which have stopped flapping. We will observe the sudden change in the weather and forget the state of the story.

With this argument we ourselves shall pause, in order to summarize the principal ways in which pictorial motions, working singly or together, can produce the greatest impression on the spectator with the least expenditure of his mental energy. Here is the list: A thing in motion is normally more emphatic than anything at rest in the same picture. Of two motions the one which is the more surprising or fanciful gets the chief attention. Slowness or slightness may sometimes by contrast be more emphatic than great speed or volume. A moving spot or a line flowing along its own length has a tendency to carry attention along with, or even ahead of, itself in the direction of movement. Two or more movements along well-marked lines, whether converging or diverging, focus attention on the point which these lines have in common. Lines moving in circles away from a common center hold attention on that center. Repetition can work for emphasis without monotony, provided it be a repetition with variety of circumstances. Contrast between two simultaneous motions or between a motion and an abrupt rest may be double-acting, that is, may emphasize in both directions.

Our discussion of motions at work in a picture has not been exhaustive. The list might easily be made three times as long as it is. But it is long enough to illustrate the evil which motions may do if they are turned wild on the screen, and the good which they may work if they are harnessed by a director who