making everything from the
waterline up a white blank. Against this blank was superimposed, by
running the film through the camera twice, a picture of the New York
sky-line as seen from the Jersey shore. The unruffled surface of the
water in the tank--so unlike the wavy North River--was almost the only
thing to show certain of the spectators that the scene was not the
real thing. In another episode of the same serial, after the German
spies have caused an Allied grain ship to be loaded on one side only,
so that she will turn turtle as soon as released from her moorings,
another very realistic scene shows the ship actually turning over, as
much as the comparative narrowness of the slip will let her, after
they have cut the ropes holding her to the dock. Here, again, a model
vessel in a built-up miniature slip supplied the means of obtaining a
startlingly realistic effect. The scene lasted only a few seconds, so
that little opportunity was given the spectator to see how it was
worked, but the effect of the brief scene was very convincing.

In scores of feature productions models or miniatures of various kinds
have been resorted to to obtain startling or novel effects, and have
saved the outlay of thousands of dollars in the production of certain
pictures. Double photography, or superimposure, is a ready ally when
the director wants to get an effect showing a specially arranged
fictitious scene played against a real and frequently well-known
background, as in the North River scene just described. In the same
picture, "The Eagle's Eye," the Whartons, who produced it, displayed a
new feature in photography--a genuine photographic device rather than
a trick--in what they described as "the triple iris"--three diaphragms
opening at once and disclosing the heads of Boy-Ed, Von Papen and Dr.
Albert, and then fading and showing a scene in which these three
characters were seen grouped in conversation.

Another effect which might, perhaps, be classed as a trick was used in
the Mary Pickford feature, "Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley." It was in
reality merely a clever scene intended to take the place of a leader,
while being also an improvement on a leader because of the fact that
to almost everyone in the audience it instantly "put over" the idea
back of the action at that point of the story. At the time that
Amarilly's good-hearted but socially impossible mother, with her
little brothers and sisters, are being entertained by the r