Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 88.djvu/761

 The Screen Player's Make-Up

What the Camera Does to Your Face By Horace A. Fuld

��ANY textbook on light will tell you /-\ that white light is a composition of rays forming what is known as the spectrum, and ranging from violet and blue through green, yellow and orange to red. There are also rays and colors on each end of the spectrum, for instance, ultra-violet on the violet end, not visible to the human eye. The rain- bow is a common example of the spec- trum. When light strikes an object cer- tain of these rays are absorbed. The unabsorbed are reflected, and the pro- portion of the reflected rays gives the object its color. Therefore light is a question of absorption and reflection.

��will be responsible for a chemical change in the salt, the extent of the change depending upon the brilliancy of the object.

The film is almost as sensitive to vio- let rays as it is to white light itself. Blue diminishes the sensitiveness but little. With the greens and the yellows we be- gin to notice a decided diminution. In other words the film is most sensitive to the violet end of the spectrum and least so to the reddish colors. This explains at once why red hair photographs black, for the film is almost entirely unaffected by these reddish rays.

Two more factors influence the use of

���At left, J. Frank Glendon without make-up. Note the natural darkness of the skin. In middle, the same actor properly made up. Flesh tint lightens the tone of his face to the proper shade for motion-picture work. At right, the same make-up overdone, showing too much red on the face, eyes too heavily lined, eyebrows too black and too much red on the lips

��When light comes in contact with a brick all the red rays are reflected, which gives the eye the impression we call red. The corn flower, on the other hand, is blue because virtually all rays except blue and yellow are entirely absorbed. This, in brief, is the theory of color.

The ingredient common to every form of photograi)hic film is a silver salt, in emulsion form, si)read on a celluloid base. When white light is admitted through the shutter of the camera it strikes the iodide or bromide of silver and reduces it to a metallic state. Thus, in photographing a scene, light objects

��colors in camera work. These are re- flected light and intensity. When light strikes an object, so that some of it is absorbed while a portion is reflected to produce color, still another portion is re- flected, without any change, as white light. This is known as reflected light. Illuminating the object enables us to ])hotograph. as well as see it.

All these facts must be borne in mind by motion-picture actors. The colors that actors use in their make-ups differ. .At one studio, for instance, red in vary- ing shades is the favorite, with no special reason apparently ; at another, blues are

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