Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 88.djvu/916

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��Popular Science Monthly

���Douglas Fairbanks has forsaken the regular stage

for such dare-devil "stunts" as this

��endangered to make a few feet of film, come and watch how it is done. Behold the locomotive with the engineer on the cowcatcher, Nellie in his arms. Observe that the train is moving slowly backward and that the camera man is grinding slowly. Papa lays Nellie carefully down on the track ; then walks backward to his cab. When the film, reversed, is run rapidly through the projector, there will be another thriller on the screen.

[N. B. — It is now considered advisable to use hard coal when doing this feat, since a keen observer in the audience once noted that the clouds of smoke were pouring into the stack instead of out of it.]

Did you ever notice the realis- tic manner in which a screen motor-car will bump its victim? It is so natural that you would imagine yourself witnessing an actual occurrence at Fifth Avenue and Thirty-fourth Street while the traffic policeman's back is turned. There are several

methods by which the operation may be performed without losing the bumpee's services for the next picture. The victim may lie down in the road, right up against the front tires and the car is started on the reverse

��with a most natural jump. Then the cameraman ceases turning while the car is brought to the other side of the prostrate one, with the back of the rear tires touching him this time. Quick throwing of the lever into speed forward produces another jump. The whole performance looks very tragic when it gets on the screen.

Another method is actually to bump and push the victim over and then to pass over him at slow speed with the camera-crank also turning slowly. A rather spare style of architecture is pre- ferred in the victim of this method, as clearances must be carefully considered.

But it is not all trick work,

however. There are actors of

the screen whose artistic sense

or pure dare-deviltry causes them

to yearn for a realism which lands them

alternately in the Hall of Fame and the

hospital.

Some time ago, Irving Cummings worked in a picture which called for a close crossing of an automobile and a railroad train. Picking his cross- ing, he timed a particular train from a given point to the exact spot selected for the crossing. Then, with a stop watch, he timed his car, from a start from which he could view the train reaching the fixed point. He averaged train and car for several days. At last he made

���Helen Gibson makes a safe landing on a horse from a crane on a moving wrecking-train

�� �