EDUCATIONAL MOTION PICTURES IN 
NATURAL HISTORY 
By Raymond L. Ditmars 
HE growth of the educational motion 
picture rather parallels that of its dra- 
matic ally. There was a time when a 
moving picture of a railroad train was con- 
sidered a novelty and from that time the 
product for the theatres has grown steadily 
in elaboration until superb dramatic produc- 
tions of five and six thousand foot lengths are 
in use in every civilized part of the world. 
When I first considered the practicability 
of showing the habits of mammals, reptiles, 
amphibians and insects by means of motion 
pictures, I was confronted with the immediate 
decision that an especially constructed labo- 
ratory would be necessary and this would 
probably involve much originally designed 
apparatus. The latter point proved to be 
of prime importance. It was fully a year 
after the construction of the studio that con- 
tinual experimental work demonstrated the 
best available apparatus. Experimentation 
had been difficult and so costly that I was 
called to a halt for five months in preparing 
“nyopular”’ educational films for theatrical 
use in order to cover expenses to purchase 
the necessary apparatus. 
The studio was finally lighted with a com- 
bination battery of mercury vapor lamps and 
arc lights. It was necessarily arranged to do 
all the photographing by electric light owing 
to daytime duties at the Zodlogical Park. 
Switchboards, light housings and supports, 
all stagework, backgrounds and general acces- 
sories were built at the studio. A projecting 
room was arranged for the immediate testing 
of all films, an automobile provided with ap- 
paratus for collecting and a number of tanks 
and cages provided for specimens. Actual 
work in preparing a systematic series of nat- 
ural history films was begun in August of 
1913. With the reopening of the free lec- 
tures of the Board of Education of New York 
City in the fall of 1913, the first of these films 
was used for educational purposes. 
The work of photographing mammals, rep- 
tiles and insects demands much varied in- 
genuity. Some of the mammals large enough 
to be dangerous took many liberties in the 
studio and at times did considerable damage. 
In order to avoid any trace of cagework in the 
pictures, the subjects had the free run of the 
place and were enticed upon the stages with 
food or by rock shelters built for them. The 
promptings of a hungry stomach were found 
to be the most effective in the stage manage- 
ment of this theatre of nature and many of the 
pictures were made at the period of feeding 
time. The prowling of a hungry ocelot or 
tiger cat is a good illustration of animal man- 
agement. For several days this creature’s 
food had been concealed in different locations 
of the stage— sometimes hidden among the 
rocks or concealed in the branch of a tree. 
The picture was taken as the cat started to 
search for the food, crouching, scenting and 
alertly peering about, in characteristic actions 
of the wilds. 
With the scenes of poisonous snakes strik- 
ing, where there was the necessity of taking 
the photographs very close to the reptiles, 
the camera was run by an electric motor. 
This relieved the human operator of the 
grave danger of standing within a few feet of 
an infuriated fer-de-lance or cobra. In pho- 
tographing the ring-necked cobra or Spugh- 
schlange of South Africa, the camera was 
peppered with drops of poison, as this snake 
voluntarily sprays its venom a distance of 
six to eight feet, its object being to blind the 
enemy. The snake was induced to face the 
camera by projecting a spot of light on a 
white semaphore directly under the lens. 
The development of the eggs of frogs and 
toads was obtained with a camera set before 
a Bohemian glass jar and from the same posi- 
tion recording a few feet of film each day. 
One of these cameras did such duty for a 
period of two months, thus placing this in- 
strument hors-de-combat for all other labora- 
tory work. The life history of several spiders 
was obtained in like fashion. The story of a 
large species of Lycosa, or wolf spider, was 
recorded throughout upon the same “‘field’’— 
a gravelly hollow six inches square. After 
each photograph the enclosure was covered 
with a bell-glass and wet sponge to provide 
the proper moisture — for many spiders are 
particularly delicate as captives. 
The care of this spider was more laborious 
than that of a large animal. Soft-bodied 
grubs were hunted for her and she received 
drinking water by permitting miniature drops 
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