Read Ebook: Pictorial Beauty on the Screen by Freeburg Victor Oscar Ingram Rex Author Of Introduction Etc

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But that is an ideal to be dreamed of. And, meanwhile, we "movie fans" can enjoy the best that is being produced by collaborative methods, and we can help toward the achievement of still better things by developing a thorough appreciation of what is pictorially pleasing, at the same time that we train ourselves to detect and talk out of existence the common faults of the movies.

EYE TESTS FOR BEAUTY

Do the movies hurt your eyes? Some say "yes" and some say "no." Why is it that photoplay scenes sometimes flash and dazzle, but have neither radiance nor sparkle? Why is it that the motions sometimes shown on the screen get "on your nerves"? Why is it that you look at so much on the screen and remember so little? These questions can be answered by making certain eye tests for beauty, and, having answered them, we may proceed to a detailed discussion of pictorial composition in a great variety of cases.

In order to understand how the pleasure of pictorial beauty comes to a spectator, we must analyze the processes of looking and seeing. These processes consist partly of eye-work and partly of brain-work. That is, the physical eye must do certain work before the brain gets the visual image. Now if the physical eye has to work too hard, or bear a sudden strain, or undergo excessive wear, it will not function well; and, consequently, the brain will have to work harder in order to grasp the picture. All this causes displeasure, and displeasure is in conflict with beauty.

Let us state, once for all, that motion pictures need never hurt the eyes--quite the contrary. Yet we have often seen photoplays that did hurt the eyes. Some of the reasons for this will be given in the following paragraphs.

A familiar operation of the physical eye is the contraction and dilation of the pupil. We know from childhood that the pupil grows large when the light is weak, and small when the light is strong. We also know that the eye cannot make this adjustment instantly. If a strong light is suddenly flashed on us, for example, when we lie awake in a dark room it dazzles us, because our pupils are adjusted for darkness; it even hurts so much that we defend ourselves by closing the eyelids.

In exactly the same way our eyes are shocked by the movies when a dazzling white light is flashed on the screen where a somewhat darkened scene has just vanished. The pupil is caught unawares, is not instantly able to protect the eye, and, besides, must use up a certain amount of energy in adapting itself to the new condition. Such a shock once or twice during the evening might easily be forgiven and forgotten, might, in fact, be hardly felt at the time; but fifty such shocks in a five-reel photoplay would certainly weary the eye, and a play of that sort could hardly be called beautiful.

The fault which we have just named lies in the joining of scenes. But it is not, as a rule, necessary to connect scenes or sections of a film so that there is a jump from the darkest dark to the whitest white, or vice versa. This can be avoided, of course, by the device of "fading out" one scene and "fading in" the next, which gives the eye time to adapt itself, or by "fading down" or "up" just far enough to match the exact tone of the next picture. The shock can also be avoided by joining various sections of the film in a series of steps of increasing brightness or darkness.

The eye is hurt, we have said, by a sharp succession of black and white. It is also hurt by a sharp contrast of whites and blacks lying side by side on the screen. Such extremes are avoided in paintings. The next time you are in an art museum please compare the brightest white in any portrait with the white of your cuff, or your handkerchief, or a piece of paper. You may be surprised to discover that the high light in that painting is not severely white. It is rather grayish or yellowish, soft and easy to the eye. Observe also that the darkest hue in that painting is far from the deepest possible black. The extremes of tone are, in fact, never very far apart, and are therefore easily grasped by the eye without undue strain.

And while you are thinking of this practice of painters, you might compare it with the similar practice of composers of music. Your piano has many keys, the highest one in the treble being extremely far from the lowest one in the bass. Yet if you examine the score of any single piece of music you will discover that the highest note in that piece is not so very far from the lowest note in the same piece. It might have been possible to use the entire keyboard, but the composer has been wise enough not to try it. His extreme notes are so near together that the ear is able to catch them and all the subtle values of the music in between, without being strained by the effort.

It seems, therefore, that in artistic matters moderation is a good thing, is, in fact, necessary to produce real beauty. But moderation in the movies is not yet a widely accepted gospel. Too often we find that the dazzling flood of rays from a strong searchlight blazes over several square yards of the silver screen, while at the same moment, on adjoining parts of the same screen hang the deep shades of night. The contrasts are sharp as lightning, not only in the scenes, but also in the sub-titles which are cut in between. Our eyes gaze and twitch and hurt, until it is a real relief to step out and rest them upon something comparatively moderate, like the electric signs on Broadway.

If there were some mechanical difficulty which made this clashing effect of the motion pictures necessary, we could never hope for beauty on the screen; for no art can achieve beauty by producing pain. But we know from the work of such directors as James Cruze, D. W. Griffith, Allan Dwan, Rex Ingram, and John Robertson, that the moving picture camera is capable of recording light gray and dark gray, as well as steel white and ebony. They have shown us that it is possible to produce sub-titles with light gray lettering against a dark gray ground, and that such a combination of tones is pleasing to the eye. They have shown us that it is possible to screen a lady of the fairest face and dressed in the snowiest gown so as to bring out the softest tones of light and shade, yet show nothing as dazzling as snow and nothing as black as ebony.

Thus far in this chapter we have discussed only a single operation of the eye, namely, the expanding and contracting of the pupils under the effect of darkness and brightness, but it is easy to understand now how such an apparently slight thing may seriously affect our enjoyment of the movies. Let the reader, when he is next displeased by a picture, test it for sharpness of contrast between white and black. He will probably not have to seek further for explanation of its ugliness.

Another operation which the eye-machine performs is the accommodation to color. It is somewhat similar to the accommodation to distance, which we shall describe, if the reader will help us by making an experiment. Close one eye and look steadily with the other at an object across the room. Now, without changing your gaze, hold up your finger in line with this object and about a foot away from your eye. The outline of the finger will be indistinct as long as you keep the eye focused on the remote object. Now, still keeping one eye shut, look at your finger until you can see the little ridges on it. The eye has changed its focus, and the remote object is now indistinct. What happens is that the lens within the eye changes its shape, bulging more for near objects and flattening again for distant objects. This work of the eye, called accommodation, is done by certain delicate muscles. A little of it may be stimulating, but too much will make the eyes tired.

Now it is a strange thing that certain colors affect the eyes in the same way as distances. Painters knew this fact for hundreds of years before the scientists were able to explain the reason. They knew that blue seemed farther away than red, and arranged the colors in their paintings accordingly. All artists have learned the trick, even some of our commercial artists, who make advertising posters for street cars. Blue makes the background fall back; red makes a figure stand forward. The reason for this illusion is that when the eye looks at red it adjusts itself exactly as if it were looking at a near object, and thus deceives the brain, so to speak; and when it looks at blue it adjusts itself as if it were looking at a distant object and again deceives the brain. Or, to state the fact more completely, a color from the red end of the color scale seems nearer to the eye than one from the violet end, even though the colors are all placed equally distant from the eye.

Now we shall see that, although these effects of color are useful in a painting, they may be harmful in a motion picture. When we behold a painting in which colors ranging from red to yellow are contrasted with colors ranging from violet to blue, we may, indeed, get a pleasant sensation of the eye because of the stimulating activity in the work of accommodation. There is to most people a distinct pleasure, for example, in shifting the gaze from orange-yellow to blue, because those colors are felt to be "complementary." But it must be remembered that the circumstances of looking at a painting are entirely different from those of looking at a motion picture.

Two differences are especially notable. The first difference is that when we look at a painting we ourselves are practically the choosers of when and how long to look at any spot, line, shape, or color. In other words, we ourselves practically decide on how much and what kind of work our eyes shall do; but when we look at a motion picture we never know at any instant what we may be called upon to do the next instant. That makes us nervous. We need to be constantly braced for the shock and, if we are not so braced, we must suffer when the shock comes.

The second difference is that everything in a painting is always actually at rest, while nearly everything in a motion picture is always in motion. If a painting, which does not move in any of its parts, can suggest movement to our imagination, or can make our eyes perform actual movements of vision, such movements, actual and imaginary, are pleasantly stimulating. The eyes enjoy the natural activity of their work, and we feel that there is life in the painting. But the motion picture, by its very nature, has as much life as it needs. It naturally gives the eyes all the work they can stand. Hence, if they need any stimulating change at all, it is rather the change from movement to repose.

Now let us go to the movie theater. Very likely before the show is over we shall be treated to a rapid shifting from the blue of some exterior scene in the moonlight to the orange-yellowish glow of some interior scene in lamplight. Our eyes, therefore, must accommodate their lenses to one of these colors again and again, only to receive a sudden demand for accommodation to the other color. We have no choice in the matter except to get up and go out. Our eyes, already busy enough, do not need the stimulation of any more activity, and our minds, already active enough, would prefer the relief of something more reposeful.

If the director must have this shifting from blue to orange to blue, etc., he might, at least, give us some warning, some softening of the shock, so to speak. For example, if there is to be a sudden shift from a yellowish lamp-light scene to a bluish night scene, a hint might be given by attracting our attention to a window, through which the blue of night is shown. And similarly in a bluish night scene our attention might be attracted toward the warm glow from a door or window as a warning that the next scene is to be flooded with that color. Thus in either case we would have a chance to prepare our eyes for the shift, and we would sense a better continuity of movement.

The subject of color in the movies will be discussed again in following chapters. It may be remarked in passing that, since color movies are still highly experimental, it is only to be expected that mistakes of many kinds will be made. Doubtless the leading directors can be trusted to learn from experience. Yet it behooves us who sit in the theaters to be as disapproving of new faults as we are exultant over new beauties.

It is not discouraging to discover a fault, so long as we see that it is one which might have been avoided. We want to make it plain in this chapter that, although the movies sometimes hurt the eyes, it is never due to any necessity. It is a fact that pictures on the screen, when properly made, are always pleasing to the spectators' eyes. And he who does not accept this as a fundamental proposition can hardly come by any large faith in the future of the photoplay as art.

But we must make a few more eye tests for beauty. If you face a wall about twenty feet away, you can, without changing the position of your head, look at the left side or the right, at the top or bottom, or you can look at the four corners of the wall in succession. These three different kinds of movements, vertical, horizontal, circular, are controlled by as many different sets of muscles.

When we look at pictures, especially large pictures, these muscles are constantly busy directing our line of regard from one point of interest to another; and, whether there are definite points of interest or not, our eyes will range over the lines and shapes as we try to discover what they are meant to represent.

Now a certain amount of eye-movement does not hurt the muscles; it is, on the contrary, rather pleasant, because their business is to attend to those matters. But the eye will become fatigued by a great amount of movement, especially when it is forced upon us at unexpected moments, just as any other part of the body will become fatigued when it is forced to perform a great number of sudden, unexpected tasks.

A simple experiment will illustrate this further. Suppose that we are sitting in our door-yard, gazing across a valley at a group of trees a mile or so away. It is more restful to look at those distant trees than at a single tree only fifty feet away; and the reason is simple. When we look at any object our eyes have a tendency to follow its outline. Now, of course, it requires more rolling of the eyes to follow the outline of a tree near by than one in the distance. This rolling movement involves muscular work. And, if we look first at the near, large object and then shift to the distant, small ones, we immediately experience the restfulness of reduced work. There are other reasons why distant objects are restful to the eyes, but they do not concern us here.

Have you ever noticed the pleasing effect in the motion pictures when the thing of interest, say, a train or a band of horsemen disappearing in the distance, narrows itself down to a small space? All images on the screen are, of course, equally distant from the spectator; yet there is a sense of restfulness, as we have just explained, because the rolling of the eyes decreases with the diminishing of the image and its area of movement on the screen.

Flash to a close-up of a Mexican bandit, etc., etc. And our eyes get busy again mapping out the whole subject from hat to hoof, from bridle to tail. Exciting! Oh, yes, indeed, and interesting too, but not as art; for those little muscles up there are jerked around too much, they are working overtime, and soon get weary.

"Oh, well, I reckon I can stand the strain," says some heckler, who "don't quite, you know, get this high-brow stuff." Of course, he can stand it. We have stood the mad orchestra of the elevated trains, and the riveters, and the neighbor's parrot for years, but we do not call it music.

The difference between noise and harmony is a physical difference. If this were not true, no one could ever tune your piano. Jarring, clashing, discordant sounds displease the ear. Just why noise displeases is not for us to say. But we have already explained three reasons why bad motion pictures hurt the eyes. Let us remember them. First, sudden shifts from dark to bright pictures shock the eye. Second, sudden shifts from a picture in a "cool" tint to another in a "warm" tint, and vice versa, over-work the eye. Third, a series of quick close-ups or other pictures in which the frame is filled with the subject demands too much eye-movement.

In the case of the close-up, or any large picture where the points of interest are scattered all over the field of vision, the eyes, as we have said, become strained by too much rolling, a muscular effort which is necessary even though the separate points of interest may themselves be fixed, as fixed as the four corners of the screen itself.

But when the points of interest are moving things, as they generally are in the movies, new causes of strain often arise. Sometimes the object we are trying to look at moves so fast that we can hardly follow it. Quick movement is generally desired by the directors because they think that briskness, or "pep," makes the dramatic action more intense. Consequently people in the movies walk, march, dance, fight, and carry on with terrific speed until our eyes become tired in the attempt to observe all that is happening. The cure for such pictorial hysterics is simple moderation, the elimination of jerky movements wherever possible, and the choice of movements so easy to follow that the eye may perceive them with the least muscular effort.

We do not say that you who worship speed shall not have your express trains, your racing cars, your airplanes, your cow-ponies, and your Arabian steeds. You may have them all, because they can be so photographed that an actual run of two or three miles may be presented on the screen as a movement of only two or three feet.

We find, too, that there is something pleasing about the apparent slowness of actions that are moderated by distance. On the far horizon, therefore, the fleetest things seem retarded to a stately pace that claims our restful gaze. But when a quick movement takes place in the foreground of the picture, too near the camera, ugliness results, because the demands on the eye-muscles are too severe and unexpected. Thus a sudden gesture, or the waving branches of trees or bushes, or a motor car driving up in front of a house, or even such intended grace as the movement in dancing, may spoil a picture by being too near the camera.

Another thing which makes close-up movements ugly is the flicker, which cannot be entirely eliminated. Our readers are doubtless generally aware that what we see on the screen is simply the blending of a rapid succession of still pictures falling on different spots in an order and a direction which gives the appearance of motion. If you examine a film you will find that there are in fact sixteen little photographs, or "frames" to every foot of ribbon. The negative runs through the camera, and the positive film through the projecting machine, at a rate of about a foot per second. Now let us suppose that we have a screen sixteen feet long and that we throw upon it a picture of a car running at the rate of ten or eleven miles per hour. If the picture is a close view the image will move across our screen in just one second of time, for the speed we have assumed is at the rate of sixteen feet per second. But, since there are only sixteen frames in that foot, or second, of film, we know that only sixteen flashes of the car have been thrown on the screen during that second. Therefore, whatever particular part of the car we are looking at has fallen on sixteen different spots of the screen, and each spot is just one foot to the side of the previous one, because the screen is by assumption just sixteen feet wide. Now these separations are so wide that the eye cannot help noticing them even in the fraction of a second; there is not sufficient blending of images to form smooth motion; and the so-called flicker results.

However, if the car is photographed going obliquely away from us, the entire motion may occupy only a small area of the screen, no matter how far or fast the car goes; consequently the images fall much closer together and the flicker becomes so slight that we scarcely notice it. Also, since the field of movement is smaller in extent, the rolling of our eyes in ranging over the subject is less, and the fatigue of the muscles is so slight that we scarcely notice that either.

We have been arguing that large violent movements on the screen hurt the eyes, and we hope that our readers agree with us. But if any one is doubtful we invite him to make the following test. Go to any movie theater and sit down in the seventh or eighth row. Then after having seen about half of the picture, move back to the last row, or stand behind the last row. The picture will immediately seem more restful to the eyes, because the distance has made the screen seem smaller and the motions slower, two changes which, of course, make less work for the eyes. Now stay in the new position until the program is finished, and then see that part of the picture which was at first seen from the front seat. It will appear much more pleasing to the eye than it did the first time.

But we cannot all sit in the back row of a theater, and besides, even when screen motions are reasonably slow and limited, they may still fail to produce the effect of beauty.

Now, before we go further into this discussion of beauty on the screen, let us recall, that, as we have already said, the process of vision is partly eye-work and partly brain-work. These two factors are so closely connected in fact, that scientists cannot definitely separate them.

From the results published in scientific periodicals it may be learned that visible ugliness does not always make the physical work of the eye more difficult. This is not to contradict what we have already said in this chapter, but merely to state that there may be certain kinds of ugliness on the screen which apparently do not hurt the eye at all. And yet ugliness does affect the mental phase of vision. It will be worth while giving a page or more to the testing of this statement; and the discussion may lead to a useful definition to keep in mind when criticizing the movies.

Curiously enough, the muscular movement of the eye when ranging over a single jagged, irregular line is practically the same as when ranging over a graceful line of similar length and direction. Scientific experiment shows that we move our eye-balls in a jerky, irregular manner, even when we view the most graceful line that can be drawn. Yet it is commonly said by all of us that one line delights the eye and the other does not. Evidently, therefore, the difference must lie in that function of seeing which the brain performs. But the brain, too, is a physical organ. It, too, can become fatigued, and it finds certain kinds of work less fatiguing than others.

Psychologists have suggested that a graceful line is pleasant to look at because the regularity and smoothness of its changes in direction make it easily perceived as a complete unity. Thus in the diagram facing page 39, lines A and B are pleasanter to look at than lines C and D, because their character as lines can be grasped by the mind more quickly and more easily than the character of C or D. And, for the same reason, lines A and B taken together make a more pleasing combination than lines B and C or lines C and D.

Now, if you will shut the book and try to draw any one of these four lines, even in your imagination, you will discover that you remember A and B almost perfectly, while you can hardly remember a single part of either C or D. This proves that in your own case the business of seeing has been more successful with graceful lines than with ugly ones. And, of course, successful effort is always more pleasing than failure.

Our working definition of good pictorial composition, offered in the preceding chapter, may be adapted here. Let us put it this way: A beautiful line or combination of lines is one in which we can see and feel much with ease, while an ugly line or combination is one in which we cannot see or feel much except with great difficulty. The terms "ease" and "difficulty" apply both to eye-work and brain-work.

Now let us apply these principles of continuity and repetition to the lines in a picture. If you turn to Paxton's "Daylight and Lamplight," facing page 39, you will observe instantly the beautifully curving line of the woman's back and also a balancing line down the side of the urn. That sweep of line gives at once the key to the arrangement of the picture. In other words, you can see much of that picture with ease, even in a glance. Now if you examine this picture more in detail you will find much continuity of line and many parallelisms of line and shape, all of which tend to make the arrangement simple, without reducing any of the actual contents of the picture.

Out of fairness to the painter it must be added that this canvas, as the title indicates, is also a study in the balancing of cool and warm colors.

The "much" which we can see in a beautiful line includes such things as its meaning or use in the picture, its fitness for that use, its power to suggest associations, its interestingness, etc. But we shall not take up those phases of beauty in this chapter; we are now merely arguing that pictorial beauty economizes the work of the eye and brain, while visible ugliness does not.

What we said, a moment ago, regarding the value of continuity and repetition in fixed lines may also be applied to moving lines and objects. The great appeal of the screen lies in the showing of vivid movement, the flow of forms, the subtle weaving, through soft play of light and shadow, of fanciful figures that melt like music while we gaze, and yet remain in our minds like curves of a strange melody. When such glimpses of beauty come, our eyes and brains surely do not feel any friction or strain in the process of looking. But when ugly motions are presented the eye must perform excessive movement, and the brain must exert excessive effort.

What is an ugly motion? To answer this we must observe one or two facts concerning the visual process of seeing motions. We must admit the fact that one can perceive the motion of an object without following it with the eyes. Any one can test this for himself by fixing his eyes steadily on some spot on the wall. Without shifting his glance he may have knowledge of motions going on at other places many feet away from that spot. But it is also a fact that he will immediately feel an inclination to shift his eyes in order to see any one of these motions more clearly. In making that shift he will, of course, have to move his eyeballs. Now, if that moving object changes its place, his eyeballs will continue to make the movements necessary to follow it. And, if the attention continues directed toward that object, his eyes will have to make great or small movements, according as the object makes a great or small change of place.

An interesting theory, which scientific tests support, is that, although the eye has to make a series of irregular, jerky movements when following any moving object, these movements become fewer and smaller as the smoothness and regularity of the observed motion increases.

What we have just said about eye movement explains, at least partly, why the aimless crawling of a house fly over a window pane is ugly, while the graceful flying of a sea gull is beautiful; why the clambering of a monkey is ugly, while the swimming of a fish is graceful, and why the zigzag falling of a sheet of paper thrown from a window is displeasing, while the smooth spiralling of an airplane is pleasing.

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