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While two motion picture companies are said to have adopted the Douglass lens, a technical man
predicted to me that its application would not prove highly successful. Due to excessive
magnification of the silver grains, he explained, the enlarged picture on the screen would be
marred by coarseness and lack of detail.
And how does the Schufftan process work? Like many other discoveries, it is so simple that the
fact that no one ever thought of it before is a matter of amazement. An optical mirror, with its
silvering on the front instead of the back, does the trick. Let us suppose that the scene to be taken
is to represent a cathedral interior, showing the organist and choir. All that is built are two
inexpensive sets, made of the usual canvas or plaster of Paris, depicting the immediate
surroundings of the organist and the choir. In these settings the actors “do their stuff." An ordinary
movie camera is used. Before it the mirror is placed at an angle of 45 degrees. At one side a
transparency model, or photograph of the cathedral interior is set up in such a way that the mirror
reflects its image into the lens of the camera. But the silver surface of the mirror in front of the
camera lens blots out the two small sets and the actors. Before the scene is shot an expert scrapes
off enough of the silvering to let actors and real sets appear through the glass.

The sets, photographed at a much greater distance than the image of the model or photograph of
the cathedral interior, appear on the film in exactly the same proportion. Thus, the action on the
film seems to occur apparently in the proper places inside the cathedral. A large, thin lens
resembling in appearance and action a huge spectacle lens is placed between the transparency,
photo, or model of the cathedral and the silvered mirror. It is ground so as to correct the focus of
the nearby cathedral picture and make it seem, to the camera lens, to be as far away as the actors.

This trick method of focusing sharply objects at different distances from the camera is responsible
for the success of the Schufftan process.

Models were used in the early days of the movies, but it was difficult to photograph actors at the
same time. An improvement was a method somewhat similar to the Schufftan process in which
the upper parts of a cathedral, for example. were painted on glass and placed in front of the camera
in such a manner that they appeared to be a continuation of the lower parts, which were actually
built.

What will be the next revolutionary, change in the movies? Obviously, it will be practical
three-dimensional pictures – that is, movies with true stereoscopic effect, in which images have
length, breadth, and depth as well. A few weeks ago Dr. Donald Clive Stuart, professor of
Dramatic Art in Princeton University, went so far as to declare that the present generation would
see them. When I repeated his prediction to a motion picture engineer, he shrugged his shoulder?
and smiled. "Perhaps," he said. “Who can tell?"

This article was supplied by Peter Wolfenden

It has been reprinted from Popular Hobbies Magazine July 30, 1930.

Some of the early techniques mentioned have gone on to be a regular
part of film production.

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