Suffice it to say that the pictures of the players in
motion are taken on a long celluloid strip of film, just as one picture
is taken on a square of celluloid in a snap-shot camera.

This long reel of film, when developed, is a "negative." From it a
"positive" strip of film is made, and this is the one that is run
through the projection machine throwing the pictures on the white screen
in the darkened theatre. The pictures taken are very small, and are
greatly magnified on the screen.

So much for the mechanical end of the business. It may interest some to
learn that the photo-play, as seen in the theatre, is not taken all at
once, nor in the order in which the scenes are seen as they are reeled
off.

When a play is decided on, the director or one of his helpers goes over
the manuscript and picks out all the scenes that take place in one
location. It may be in a parlor, in a hut, on the side of a mountain, in
a lonely wilderness, on a battlefield, on a bridge--anywhere, in fact.
And several scenes, involving several different persons, may take place
at any one of these places.

It can be understood that it would involve a great deal of work to
follow the logical sequence of the scenes. That is to say, if the first
scene was in an office showing a girl taking dictation from her
employer, and the next showed the same girl and her employer on a
ferryboat, and the third scene went back to the office, where some
papers were being examined, it would mean a loss of time to photograph,
or film, the first office scene, then take every one involved in the
act to the ferryboat, and then back to the office again.

Instead, the two office scenes, and possibly more, are taken at one
time, on the same film, one after the other, without regard to whether
they follow logically or not. Afterward the film is cut apart, and the
scenes fitted in where they belong.

So, too, all the scenes pertaining to a hut in the wilderness, on a
bridge, in the woods, in a parlor--it makes no difference where--are
taken at the same time. In this way much labor and expense are saved.

But it makes a queer sort of story to an uninitiated person looking on;
and sometimes the players themselves do not know what it is all about.

So Mr. Pertell wanted to get all the scenes centering around the shed at
the same time, though they were not in sequence. And Ruth and Mr.
Switzer and the others in the east went through their parts with the
shed as a backg