girls going through the
graceful motions of a religious dance. We are permitted, for several
feet of film, to view the immensity and the grandeur of ancient
Babylon in this wide-angle view. Then, smoothly and steadily, we
approach the back of the set--the great flight of steps, with the
dancing figures. Hundreds of details of architecture and sculpturing
are unfolded as we draw nearer, and when the truck suddenly stops, we
have a close-up of part of the steps with the dancing girls just
finishing their performance.

The point is, simply, that if a mere close-up of a certain character
or group of characters is all that is desired, either of the two
methods first explained is used. But if the director has an unusually
beautiful and imposing setting which he wishes to show off, the moving
truck, with the constantly turning camera, gives him exactly what he
wants to show. Close-ups of this type may be likened to the more
frequently used panoramic scenes--"panorams"--obtained in open-air
work by mounting the camera on a train, an automobile, or some other
moving vehicle. Another point is that the ordinary close-up, produced
as first described, is the one most used because it does away with the
footage consumed in the gradual-approach method.

Suppose, now (following up the previous example of the use of the
bust), that having shown Maud's hand holding up the broken-off point
of what she believes to be her brother's knife, we go back to the
wide-angle view of the room and show the two sisters together, and
Maud casting the knife-point from her in horror. Let us imagine that
they are supposed to suspect some other character--their brother, in
fact--of having used the knife of which this is a part, to commit some
crime. This character now comes into the room. We want to register
certain expressions and, what is equally important, we want to isolate
one character's expression from that of another, so that the eye and
mind of the spectator will not be confused by the wide range of vision
employed in the full--or wide-angle--scene. We show the brother as he
comes into the room and stops, seeing the eyes of the two girls fixed
upon him. How shall we isolate him? Not by the use of the bust, for
the bust is now employed only to give a close view of an _inanimate
object_. We use the close-up, and we write the scenes thus:

42--Living room, same as 15.

Maud comes in to find Ethel staring at an object lying on
the wind