The third method used in the studios is one which actually changes a wide-angle view into a close-up without breaking or interrupting the action in the slightest degree.  This is accomplished by mounting the camera on a specially built platform on wheels—­on a truck—­which as a rule is operated on wooden tracks previously prepared to suit the action taking place in that set or location.  Take for example the Babylonian setting (the principal Babylonian setting, that is) in the D.W.  Griffith production, “Intolerance.”  When this scene is first thrown on the screen we see an immense open court, surrounded by banquet halls and long corridors, with walls reaching up to tremendous heights, the walls themselves banked with huge figures of heathen gods and images and great elephants, compared to which the human figures participating in the scene are mere pygmies.  At the back of this enormous setting is a flight of steps, perhaps a hundred feet or more in width, upon which are probably a hundred girls going through the graceful motions of a religious dance.  We are permitted, for several feet of film, to view the immensity and the grandeur of ancient Babylon in this wide-angle view.  Then, smoothly and steadily, we approach the back of the set—­the great flight of steps, with the dancing figures.  Hundreds of details of architecture and sculpturing are unfolded as we draw nearer, and when the truck suddenly stops, we have a close-up of part of the steps with the dancing girls just finishing their performance.

The point is, simply, that if a mere close-up of a certain character or group of characters is all that is desired, either of the two methods first explained is used.  But if the director has an unusually beautiful and imposing setting which he wishes to show off, the moving truck, with the constantly turning camera, gives him exactly what he wants to show.  Close-ups of this type may be likened to the more frequently used panoramic scenes—­“panorams”—­obtained in open-air work by mounting the camera on a train, an automobile, or some other moving vehicle.  Another point is that the ordinary close-up, produced as first described, is the one most used because it does away with the footage consumed in the gradual-approach method.

Suppose, now (following up the previous example of the use of the bust), that having shown Maud’s hand holding up the broken-off point of what she believes to be her brother’s knife, we go back to the wide-angle view of the room and show the two sisters together, and Maud casting the knife-point from her in horror.  Let us imagine that they are supposed to suspect some other character—­their brother, in fact—­of having used the knife of which this is a part, to commit some crime.  This character now comes into the room.  We want to register certain expressions and, what is equally important, we want to isolate one character’s expression from that of another, so that the eye and mind of the spectator will not be confused by the wide range of vision employed in the full—­or wide-angle—­scene.  We show the brother as he comes into the room and stops, seeing the eyes of the two girls fixed upon him.  How shall we isolate him?  Not by the use of the bust, for the bust is now employed only to give a close view of an inanimate object.  We use the close-up, and we write the scenes thus: