Published in 1913, when motion pictures were still a wild frontier rather than an industry, this guidebook captures the electricity of a new art form finding its footing. Frederick Arthur Ambrose Talbot wrote for dreamers with hand-cranked cameras and trembling optimism: amateurs who believed they could capture stories the world had never seen. The book surveys everything from the mechanical fundamentals of the motion picture camera to the strategic business of selling footage to increasingly hungry studios. Talbot emphasizes novelty, urging independent cinematographers to hunt for stories professional studios would ignore: local tragedies, wildlife miracles, the ephemeral theater of daily life. Here is a window into cinema's adolescent years, when the technology was bewildering, the possibilities seemed infinite, and anyone with nerve and a decent lens might become a pioneer. For historians of film, technologists curious about roots, or readers who want to understand how everything began.
