James White and the Kinetograph Department
Given the often problematic, if large-scale, activities of the Edison licensees, production under James White continued to be of importance. One difficulty in discussing the Kinetograph Department and its accomplishments, however, is determining what White produced and what was produced by the licensees. This is complicated by irregular copyright practices, little production information, and lack of a regular Edison-affiliated exhibition outlet through much of 1899. By early August 1898 the Edison Company had adopted a practice espoused by Sigmund Lubin and was staging reenactments of military actions for the camera. This may have begun with Shooting Captured Insurgents and Cuban Ambush (both © August 5, 1898), which featured Spanish atrocities and cowardice. Both were somewhat perfunctory and used the same location and camera setup. Although White may have been too ill to participate in these efforts, he had recovered by early October. Perhaps for this reason, William Heise withdrew from filmmaking that month (he left Edison's employ only to return a year later in a nonfilm role).[149] White was responsible for Battle of San Juan Hill and Charge of the Rough Riders at El Caney , made in late 1898 or early 1899. These were not copyrighted, however, and do not survive. White was soon focusing on America's counterinsurgency in the Philippines, staging and filming such pictures as Advance of Kansas Volunteers at Caloocan (© June 5, 1899) and Capture of Trenches at Candabar (© June 10, 1899). These avoided the expense of sending a cameraman to the Far East and allowed White to show the heroic actions of American soldiers—something unlikely to be filmed in the midst of a guerrilla war. These one-shot scenes, often shot through underbrush or from a camera position low to the ground, used more credible staging and smoke effects to heighten the scene's realism. The practice of using National Guard units to play the American soldiers likewise added credibility. These films, too, could be sequenced into a series.
The Edison policy of filming reenactments continued in 1900 with the Boer War. By now the scale and level of spectacle had increased-along with the accompanying risks. On April 11th, White was taking a series of these films, including Boers Bringing in British Prisoners and Charge of Boer Cavalry . While filming Capture of Boer Battery , the cannon fired prematurely and wounded the Kinetograph Department manager (see document no. 7). A few days later, White returned to complete the series with Mason Mitchell, an actor who had fought with Roosevelt's Rough Riders during the Spanish-American War, organizing the battle scenes. The participants, said to number two hundred, were primarily members of a local militia. They received $2 each for the day's work (after briefly striking for a 75¢ raise), a $400 investment by the Edison Company.[150]
DOCUMENT NO . 7 |
INJURED IN SHAM BATTLE |
Brick Church, N.J., April 11— Two men were injured this afternoon in West Orange at a sham battle in reproduction of the famous engagement at Spion Kop, in South Africa. James H. White, General Manager of the Edison projecting kinetoscope business, had arranged it. The scene was on the rocky side of the eastern slope of the second Orange Mountain, near the Livingstone line. About 200 men had been engaged, half of them in Boer costume posted on the top of the crest, while the remainder attired as British stormed the heights. A good sized cannon was used to heighten the effect and the kinetoscope was placed in position to take the moving pictures. Through some blunder the cannon was discharged pre- |
(Text box continued on next page)
maturely, and Mr. White and one of the men, William McCarthy of 33 South street, Orange, were struck by the wad and burned by the powder. McCarthy's injuries were trivial, but Mr. White was badly lacerated as well as burned, and his condition tonight is reported as serious. |
SOURCE : Philadelphia Ledger , April 12, 1900, clipping, NjWOE. |
White improvised another group of one-shot, acted films over the course of 1899 and 1900, the "Adventures of Jones Series." The first were shot in Llewellyn Park shortly after a February snowstorm. Jones' Return from the Club and Jones and His Pal in Trouble show the inebriated protagonist (possibly played by White)[151] wrestling with a policeman. In one, Jones is the victor, in the other the cop is. Exhibitors had a choice of alternative endings in which either the law or pleasure would prove triumphant. Subsequent films were shot in the Black Maria. In Jones Makes a Discovery , Jones's pal consoles the drunkard's wife with intimate affection—only to be discovered by Jones and tossed out the window. Later subjects include Why Mrs. Jones Got a Divorce (© January 17, 1900), in which Mrs. Jones finds irrefutable evidence that the cook has been embracing her husband (telltale handprints on his jacket). Frustrated by his continued denials, she covers him with a panful of flour and discharges the help. Clearly, all is not as it should be in a proper Victorian household, as pleasure and desire exceed their proper boundaries.
By the latter part of 1899 James White and the Kinetograph Department were offering exhibitors multishot subjects in a few unusual circumstances. Boston Horseless Fire Department (© September 15, 1899) showed "the entire horseless fire department of Boston accompanied by the old style apparatus which is drawn by horses running at terrific pace down Batterymarch Street." The Edison catalog then noted: "Another view on the same film shows a portion of the Boston fire department making a quick hitch in the engine house and the running out with the horses on a gallop."[152] These linked scenes suggest a thematic relationship: the horseless carriage is on its way to the rescue while the horsedrawn engines are still coming out of the firehouse. This contrast, which is only implicit in the film and would have had to be drawn out by the exhibitor's lecture, apparently justified selling the two scenes as part of the same film.
Shoot the Chutes Series (© September 23, 1899) was called "positively the most wonderful series of pictures ever secured by an animated picture camera." It looks at the same subject from three different vantage points:
The first scene is taken from the pond of the chutes, and shows a number of boats laden with gay Coney Island pleasure-seekers coming down into the water in rapid succession. The next scene is taken from the top of the incline, showing the boats being loaded, starting away, running down the chutes and dashing into the water. The next
and most wonderful picture was secured by placing the camera in the boat, making a panoramic view of the chutes while running down and dashing into the water. 275 ft.[153]
The camera explores and penetrates the space of this "attraction"; moreover, it was the spatial relations between shots—the ability to introduce multiple perspectives—that provided the necessary justification for the selling of these scenes as one film. As with the proposed combination of The Black Diamond Express and Receding View, Black Diamond Express , the spatial world portrayed is complex, while the temporality remains imprecise or underdeveloped. (Was this supposed to represent the same action repeatedly from three different perspectives or simply similar actions?) Other multishot actuality films were unfortunately not copyrighted. This includes Foot-ball Game , which was taken in Orange on November 30, 1899, and "shows many exciting plays, kickoffs, touchdowns, rushes, etc."[154]
The Edison Company's appropriation of editorial responsibility is also evident in two fiction films: The Astor Tramp (© October 27, 1899) and Love and
War (© November 28, 1899). White, a singer who made several records for Edison's National Phonograph Company, used his position as head of Edison's Kinetograph Department to produce these "Picture Songs," which were then billed as part of Edison's ongoing efforts to synchronize sound and image. "We have at last succeeded in perfectly synchronizing music and moving pictures," declared Edison catalogs. "The following scenes are very carefully chosen to fit the words and songs which have been especially composed for these pictures."[155] Similar efforts to adapt motion pictures to the song-slide format had already been tried at the Eden Musee and elsewhere. In White's case, the production company provided the narration/song as well as an editorial construction.
The Astor Tramp was a "side splitting subject, showing the mistaken tramp's arrival at the Wm. Waldorf Astor mansion and being discovered comfortably asleep in bed, by the lady of the house."[156] In the second scene, which the Edison catalog does not mention, the tramp is back on the street: he grabs a paper from a newsboy and reads about his recent escapades, gesturing to the audience as he struts around the stage-like set. In fact the film was based on an incident that had received widespread newspaper attention five years earlier.[157] Adopted by popular culture, the episode spawned a skit at Tony Pastor's entitled "The Pastor Tramp." Despite this notoriety, the Edison catalog urged exhibitors to use some kind of verbal clarification to motivate the character's actions and the relationship between the shots: "The music and words accompanying are explanatory and can be either sung or spoken."[158]
The catalog description for the 200-foot, six-scene Love and War also reveals a narrative coherence not apparent from simply watching the film. It was "an illustrated song telling the story of a hero who leaves for the war as a private,
is promoted to the rank of captain for bravery in service, meets the girl of his choice, who is a Red Cross nurse on the field, and finally returns home triumphantly as an officer to the father and mother to whom he bade good bye as a private."[159] Here again, the title and story line were familiar ones.[160] Only four scenes were copyrighted under this title, but two other films, including the concurrently made Fun in Camp , were apparently added to Love and War to fill out its advertised length. For both "song films" the careful fit between words and picture required the production company to exercise a high degree of creative control. However, both films lacked the spatial and even temporal complexity of the multishot actualities.
These precocious, though still tentative moves toward multishot films coincided with important developments in motion picture practice. First, the technology of projection was improving. The Edison Company had incorporated Albert Smith's reframing device into its projecting kinetoscope.[161] This enabled the projectionist to reframe the image when it jumped out of registration without having to stop the projector and manually reposition the film. In the past, this problem had been reduced by showing short lengths of films interwoven with slides. Projection quality was also improving, encouraging longer subjects. Secondly, it coincided with the move toward permanent exhibition outlets in vaudeville and the emergence of more established exhibition companies. Commercial stability encouraged longer subjects, in part because larger units were more efficient to work with. Production efficiency was matched by representational innovation. Subjects shown from multiple viewpoints, picture songs, and narrative sequences were often operating within narrowly defined genres. The 1899 Shoot the Chutes Series treated the same subject as the 1896 Shoot the Chutes (and its many imitations)-but in a new way. Boston Horseless Fire Department was likewise an elaboration of the overused fire run.
During the spring of 1900, White and the Kinetograph Department made a bona fide attempt to produce synchronized sound motion pictures. This was for New York City's Board of Education under the supervision of Associate Superintendent Alfred Theodore Schauffler. The resulting program lasted an hour and included the following scenes:
1. A ride through the Ghetto.
2. School assembly, foreign children.
3. Dismissal to the class rooms.
4. Kindergarten games.
5. Recess games, boys.
6. Recess games, girls.
7. A workshop in full operation.
8. Classroom gymnastics.
9. Grace hoop gymnastics drill.
10. Rapid dismissal to the street.
11. Ballgames. Foot ball, etc.
12. Assembly in an uptown school.
13. Rhythmic ball drill to music.
14. Cooking class in operation.
15. Marching salute to the flag.
16. Indian club swinging, High School Girls.
Accompanying these films were phonograph recordings of the children performing recitations and songs, as well as of the music to which they executed their exercises.[162] According to a member of the Schauffler family, these films were made on the roof of a New York high school so that the scenes could be filmed in sunlight. The superintendent's greetings, the pledge of allegiance, the national anthem, and piano music were recorded first, with people speaking and performing directly into the big horn attached to a phonograph. Then the cylinders were played back and the students and teachers executed their activities to the recordings, mouthing their parts when appropriate.[163] White then traveled to the Paris Exposition, where he was present at the rehearsals for the display that opened at the Social Economy Palace on June 29, 1900.[164]
A Storm at Sea , taken by White in mid June on his way to the Paris Exposition, shows a storm from the bridge of the Kaiserina Maria Theresa in two shots—an establishing view and a close view notable for its visual heightening of the storm's violent effect. A cut-in like this one or a cut-out like the one in Razing a Factory Chimney ,[165] which was made in England at about the same
time, continued earlier screen practices with their well-developed spatial relationships. It would be a mistake, however, to consider this cut-in as an attempt at a match cut: temporality was a difficult and persistent problem in early cinema. Its underdeveloped nature can be explained in large part by the severe limitations on temporal specificity in traditional lantern shows. Significantly, from their first appearance such two-shot constructions were listed and sold as a single scene. Cut-ins and cut-outs were the type of editorial strategies over which producers had easy and relatively uncontested control.
While in Europe, White (along with an as yet unidentified colleague) filmed Paris and the 1900 Exposition, using a riotous array of camera movements. Panoramic View of the Champs Elysees was taken from the front of a moving vehicle and Panorama of the Paris Exposition, from the Seine from a boat. For Panorama from the Moving Boardwalk , the camera was placed on a "Platform Mobile." Either on their way or shortly after arriving in Paris, the photographers acquired a more sophisticated panning mechanism, which allowed their camera to follow action more smoothly. This is evident in Champs de Mars , in which the camera plays cat and mouse with two women. Panning right to left, the camera follows them until they move behind an arch. It tries to pick them up again, but the women foil the operators' expectations. For Panorama of Eiffel Tower , the camera tilts vertically, moving up the tower and then back down—at which point the American showman Lyman Howe peers into the lens and smiles broadly. These subjects proved popular with a large number of exhibitors (including Howe, who appeared more discreetly in other scenes) and were usually combined into sequences that gave American audiences a rich impression of the event.[166] When Panorama of the Moving Boardwalk , for example, was followed by Panorama from the Moving Boardwalk , one the reverse angle of the other, a clear spatial world was constructed, although the temporal relationship between shots was only proximate and nonspecific.
On his return to the United States, White quickly employed the mobile tripod head to shoot sweeping panoramas of well-known locations. His peripatetic lifestyle continued with Circular Panorama of Atlantic City, N.J., Circular Panorama of Mauch Chunk, Penna.; Circular Panorama of Niagara Falls ; and Panoramic View of the White House, Washington, D.C. These films revelled in the camera's newfound ability to present spectacle on an unprecedented scale. In the process, narrative concerns appear temporarily forgotten. Such pictures can be contrasted to earlier "panoramas" which involved the camera moving through space, usually on the front of a conveyance. These earlier efforts were easily incorporated into the narrative flow of a travel program and so proved popular. Even if included in longer programs, White's circular panoramas tended to interrupt any narrative progression. Although there were some exceptions, this technique was used most frequently to represent awe-inspiring
scenery or large-scale devastation (Panorama of Wreckage of Water Front, Galveston ). The new panning capacity, however, was perfect for following action and keeping subjects in frame when making news films.