Page:Pictorial beauty on the screen.djvu/80

 CHAPTER IV

PICTORIAL FORCE IN FIXED PATTERNS

Frequently while a director is rehearsing a photoplay scene he will sing out the command, "Hold it!" indicating thereby that the player has struck an attitude, or the players have woven themselves into a pattern, which is so expressive and beautiful that it deserves to be held for several seconds. What the camera then records will be shown on the screen as a striking pictorial moment, and, while it lasts, will appear as fixed as a painting.

But it is a peculiar psychological fact that such pictorial moments seem to occur in every movement, whether the actors have paused or not, the spectator seeing and remembering these arrested moments as though they were fixed pictures. This peculiar fact, that we remember fixed moments among continuous movements, has been discussed at some length in Chapter III of "The Art of Photoplay Making," and will, therefore, not be dwelt upon here. However, a single example may illustrate what we mean. Suppose we watch a diver stepping out upon a high spring-*board and diving into a pool. The whole feat is, of course, a movement without pause from beginning to end; yet our eyes will somehow arrest one moment as the most interesting, the most pictorial. It may be the moment when the diver is about midway be