1910s

Why the 1910s look like this

By the 1910s the cinema was an industry. Studios moved to Hollywood, Chaplin found the Tramp, and features stretched to an hour and more. The film itself had changed less than the business around it. It was still orthochromatic 35 mm on a flammable nitrate base, still exposed by a camera operator turning a crank, and still roughly sixteen frames a second. Operators sped up or slowed down by feel, a frame or two either way, and the exposure breathed with them.

Films were seldom shown in plain black and white. Laboratories dyed whole scenes amber, blue, green or rose. Many feature prints of the decade carried tinted scenes. Color photography of the real thing was rarer. One two-color process filmed alternate frames through red and green filters and projected them the same way. The eye blended them into a picture with warm skin and fresh greens but no true blue. Anything that moved between the red frame and the green frame grew colored fringes along its edges.

The Great War put cameras near the front. Newsreel operators worked with heavy tripod cameras in bad light and guessed their exposures. Their films are high in contrast, uneven in brightness and often a little shaky. At home, private film was still a rich family's hobby. In 1912 a home projector arrived that ran 28 mm film on a non-flammable acetate base, so a reel could be shown safely in a living room. Most of what people watched at home were printed copies of commercial films, a little soft and grey from duplication.

In still photography this was the decade of the pocket camera. A folding vest-pocket camera of 1912 took 127 roll film and fitted in a coat pocket. Soldiers carried it to war, and its small, soft pictures fill the albums of the period. From the middle of the decade, autographic cameras let you open a flap on the back and write on the film's backing paper with a stylus, and the note printed in the margin of the negative. Real photo postcards were at their peak. The color plate of starch grains was still the only easy way to photograph a garden in color. Panchromatic material, sensitive to red as well, was on sale but rarely used by amateurs. Newspapers printed photographs through a halftone screen, as a grid of tiny dots.

What the camera rebuilds

The 1910s technologies run at a 16 fps cadence, held inside your iPhone's 24 fps file (how frame holding works). The base is a little finer and steadier than the 1900s: orthochromatic black and white with heavy grain, flicker, gate weave and soft corners. Variable Frame Rate runs a 17 fps cadence with stronger flicker. Early Travel Footage adds a handheld shake. Great War Newsreel raises the contrast and makes the exposure wander.

Two-Colour Process builds the picture from red and green records only, so blues turn green-grey. Along edges, red and green fringes swap sides from one frame to the next. Tinted Silent Film dyes the highlights a warm amber. Preserved Silent Film is the restored archive print, with finer grain and almost no flicker or weave. Safety Film Home Print is the soft, flatter duplicate you would have projected at home.

In STILL, the base is a 7:5 folding-camera print with a white border, toned warm black. Vest Pocket Snapshot crops to 3:2, a little softer, with darker corners. Handwritten Margin Note prints the date on the picture in cream italic type, even with DATE STAMP off. Newspaper Halftone turns the picture into a dot screen on newsprint texture. Panchromatic Portrait renders red as a natural grey instead of black. The starch-grain plate, the box camera's square and the postcard shape are all here, and Faded Great War Album brings the fading, yellowing and silvering of a hundred years.

With SOUND on PERIOD, your audio goes through an acoustic disc recording: about 180 to 3,200 Hz, a horn resonance, shellac crackle and hiss, and a gentle wow. Nobody recorded sound with a home film camera in the 1910s; it is the gramophone of the decade playing along.

Shooting tips

• Find the fringe. Two-Colour Process shows its character on movement. Film someone in a red or green coat walking across the frame, and leave the sky out, since blue will not come back.
• Report from the field. Great War Newsreel at DEGREE 9 on a grey day, filmed from a low, fixed position, looks the part. Keep each take short, as newsreel operators did with expensive film.
• Write on the film. Handwritten Margin Note stamps the date in italic type; use it for something you want to remember the day of.
• Go dark indoors. Underexposed Indoor Snapshot is a stop under, with motion blur. Use it by a single window in the evening and let the room fall into shadow.
• Print the news. Faces with strong side light read well as a Newspaper Halftone. Try DEGREE 4 for a crisper page or 10 for a softer, grainier one.

Next come the 1920s, when home movies finally became a hobby people could afford.