A KINEMATOGRAPHIC WIZARD

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 193, 4 January 1913, Page 2

A KINEMATOGRAPHIC WIZARD

FLOWER GROWTH AND FISH LIFE ON THE FILMS. The ''kinematographic wizard" who produced some of the most fascinating of the wonderful pictures which were shown to members of the London Education Committee at the Seala Theatre is Mr. Percy Smith, a quiet young mail, who was a clerk in the offices of the Board of Education until the stagnating monotony of :the work made him ill. "A great and preliminary difficulty in that case," he said recently, ''was that, as it was necessary to keep 011 photographing by night as well as by day, it had to be done by artificial light." "'From Bud to Blossom' occupied 18 months in the taking. The handle of the camera was turned continuously for long periods by a very small motor; and it was only a matter of magnifying the speed at whicli the pictures were shown to enable people to see the process by which flowers grow. "It all wants extraordinary patience, of course, and one has to be resigned to repeated failure. To take the picture of the hooked trout lighting for its life, which I arranged with Dr. Francis \\ ard at Ipswich, an observation chamber was sunk into the pond, with the top just above water. In the side, under the water, is a window 01 thick, plate-gtess. "It is difficult in water to estimate the conditions 0 £ life, but for .some reason kinemacolor has the peculiarity of giving a perfect rendering of liquids. We even caught an otter killing a pike —though we never expected him to go so far as thai.

"Nothing has given me more trouble, I think, than my attempt to ki 110111a10graph 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 avoid 'fringing,' or red and green lliekering. I once took a full-face picture of a mouse in which the whiskers shook to such an extent that he appeared to lie ema nit ling red and green fire. "We: are flunking of doing a series showing e lie mica I action. Half the experiments in chemistry depend upon color 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 dves."