This movie still was taken from the silent film short documenting the release of the major motion picture The Birth of a Nation in 1915. Art Smith, The Bird Boy of Fort Wayne, was hired by Epoch Productions, the film’s distributor, to advertise its release and grand opening in Los Angeles with this display of the new skywriting. D. W. Griffith, the director of The Birth of a Nation as well as its documentary short, is considered a pioneer of American cinema and an inventor and innovator of many film techniques including panoramic long shots, iris effects, night photography, color tinting, panning, and staged battle sequences where hundreds of extras are made to look like thousands. He was impressed upon hearing of Art Smith’s creation of the aerial effect of skywriting and was anxious to use it in his film’s promotion and to film the actual event of its application. The short documentary, now lost, is thought to be the first filmed evidence of skywriting as it is being written.