" The effect on the screen is wonderfully like what
a long-range photograph of such an actual event would show. All that
was needed to produce the scene was a tank of water with a miniature
barge pushed along by a tiny tug-boat, the latter steaming up very
realistically. When the toy barge and tug-boat were right in the
middle of the "stage," three or four toy freight cars were allowed to
slide off into the water. Above the tank, as a background, was hung
some white or light colored cloth, making everything from the
waterline up a white blank. Against this blank was superimposed, by
running the film through the camera twice, a picture of the New York
sky-line as seen from the Jersey shore. The unruffled surface of the
water in the tank--so unlike the wavy North River--was almost the only
thing to show certain of the spectators that the scene was not the
real thing. In another episode of the same serial, after the German
spies have caused an Allied grain ship to be loaded on one side only,
so that she will turn turtle as soon as released from her moorings,
another very realistic scene shows the ship actually turning over, as
much as the comparative narrowness of the slip will let her, after
they have cut the ropes holding her to the dock. Here, again, a model
vessel in a built-up miniature slip supplied the means of obtaining a
startlingly realistic effect.
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