A KINEMATOGRAPHIC WIZARD.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXV, Issue 5, 31 December 1912, Page 7

A KINEMATOGRAPHIC WIZARD.

FLOWER GROWTH AND FISH LIFE ON THE FILMS.

The “kmematogrphic wizard” who produced some of the .most fascinating of the wonderful pictures which were shown to members of the London Education Committee at. the Scala Theatre is Mr Percy Smith, a quiet young man, who was a clerk in the offices of the Board of Education until the stagnating monotony of the work made him ill. Eighteen Months’ Work. “A great and preliminary difficulty in that case,” ho said recently, “war that, as it was necessary to keep on photographing by night as well as by day, it had to be clone by artificial light.” “ ‘From Bnd to Blossom’ occupied 18 months in the taking. The handle of the camera was turned continuously for long periods by a very slow motor ; and it was only a matter of magnifying the speed at which the pictures were shown to enable people to see the process by which flowers grow. “It all wants extraordinary patience, of course, and one lias to be resigned to repeated failure. To take the picture of the hooked trout fighting for its life, which I arranged with Dr Francis Ward at Ipswich, an observation chamber was sunk into the pond with the top just above the water. In the side, under the water, is a window of thick plate-glass.. “It is difficult in water to estimate the conditions of life, but for some reason kinemacolour has the peculiarity of giving a perfect rendering of liquids. We even caught an otter killing a pike—though wo never ex : pected him to go so far as that. Fiery Mice. “Nothing has given me more trouble, I think, than my attempt to kinematograph real untamed mice. You can’t get them used to the conditions of light, and the movements of a mouse are so rapid and jerky that it seems impossible to avoijl ‘fringing,’ or red and green flickering. I once took a full-face picture of a mouse in which the whiskers shook to such an extent that he appeared to be emanating red and green fire. ' “We are thinking of doing a series showing chemical action. Half the experiments in chemistry depend upon colour changes. There are such ■things, for example, as a complete series of tests for known 'poisons—the whole process for the detection of arsenic, say. If the chemist looks through the spectroscope you will see what he sees.. Then there are the details in the manufacture of aniline dyes.”