Motography (Apr-Dec 1911)

238 MOTOGRAPHY Vol. VI, No, 5; exchanges, the rule going so far as to exclude even actual exhibitors who also were connected with exchanges. It is not improbable, if this league succeeds in enlisting a majority of the exhibitors of the country, that it will make open war in behalf of the principle of the open market. There is a sharp difference of opinion in the trade as to whether or not the open market would benefit the business as a whole, but there is no doubt that it would greatly change its present status. It would transfer the power nowlodged in the manufacture into the hands of the exhibitor. The industry would be dominated by the showmen, and they would dictate the policy of manufacturers. The relations of licensor and licensee would be changed to those of buyer and seller. While it is generally agreed that this would benefit the exhibitor, it is by no means certain that it would result in a general improvement of the motion picture art. It is said that exhibitors now complain that the manufacturers send out too many serious films and refuse to supply the popular demand for "comics." Exhibitors in some cities stick to this idea, despite the fact that popular opinion expressed in ballot competitions has shown a preference for travel and educational pictures; despite the fact that these same exhibitors take in more money at the box office for "special releases" of the classical character than for their beloved "comics.'' Basing their argument upon this attitude of many exhibitors, many disinterested students of the business have declared that to restore the exhibitor to the position of supreme power would mean quick deterioration in the quality of films produced and exhibited. On the other hand, it is argued that as the manfacturers now compel the exhibitors to take such films as they make, regardless of quality, that if the market were thrown open the manufacturers would be forced to compete for quality, and that the result would be a general improvement in the films. Films are leased by the exchanges to exhibitors for varying prices, based upon the quality of the picture, and upon its age. A "first run" film, that is a film that has not been exhibited before, is highest in price. The next lower grade is the "second run," which means that the film is supplied from two to seven days after the date of its original release. "Third runs" are from one week to four weeks old. "Thirty-day" films are those a month old. All pictures, after one month, are called "commercials," and these are the lowest in price. In practice an exhibitor arranges for his films on a weekly schedule. If he has a "four-reel house"; that is, if he exhibits four reels daily, he probably will arrange for one first run, one second run and two commercials. For this service of supplying him with a daily change of program he agrees to pay the exchange a certain amount weekly. Schedules of release dates for the films issued by all the companies are published weekly in the trade papers and by bulletin, and the individual exhibitor is permitted, within certain bounds, to book such pictures as he selects. Then the pictures are thrown on the screen and it is up to the public to decided whether they are good or bad. FUTURE OF FILMS. In no other business, perhaps, is there so much speculation as to what the future holds in store as in the moving picture business. Measured in terms of dollars taken in and paid out, in terms of men employed, in terms of patrons catered for, the moving picture business is by all odds the largest commercial amusement enterprise ever known. And yet, men who are in it and of it are not agreed as to what the future will bring to it. It is the opinion of far-seeing men in the business that two more triumphs of mechanical invention are required to place the moving picture beyond even the remotest fear of ultimate disaster. The first of these is already in sight — namely, an apparatus that will produce moving pictures in the colors of nature instead of in the dead white and black of the photograph, or the artificiality of the hand-painted films. The kinemacolor process successfully reproduces in moving pictures on the screen the natural colors of scenes taken in the open, where there are great masses of color to be seen. It is not, as yet, so successful in interiors or at close range, but there is little doubt that it will yet overcome all these difficulties. In making kinemacolor pictures the photographs are made with a camera specially constructed to take pictures at the ordinary rate of thirty-two a second, instead of sixteen. In front of the lens is revolved a color filter, made like a three-blade propeller of three wings of transparent celluloid, one red, one blue and one yellow — the three primary colors. When the films are made they are exactly like any other films in appearance. When the pictures are projected, another color filter of the same kind is revolved in front of the lens of the projecting machine. Thus one picture is thrown on the screen all red, the next all blue, and the next all yellow. The pictures are changed so rapidly that the eye is deceived and all the objects in the picture appear to be in their natural colors, which are combinations of the three primary colors. It is the three-color process of color plate printing adapted for the moving pictures. The second thing to be desired from the inventors of the future is a satisfactory combination of the cinematograph and the phonograph, to the end that the pictures on the screen of the bi-dimensional theater not only will move but will talk. Attempts have been made to synchronize the photographic film and the photographic record so as to produce talking pictures, but as yet these experiments have met with indifferent success. The necessity of changing cylinders or discs on the talking machine more frequently than the reels on the moving picture machine, together with the necessary interruptions in the course of the moving picture occasioned by the intermittent movement of the film, have thus far defeated successful synchronization. The hope of the future appears to lie in the possibility of a machine which will take the pictures and make the photographic record on films to be played off simultaneously. The fact that the photographic film must have an intermittent motion and that the phonographic film must have a continuous motion, and that the sounds produced must appear to be in exact time with the picture projected, appears to raise unsurmountable obstacles in the way of efforts in this direction. But the prophets among the moving picture men refuse to believe that anything is impossible. Two or three years ago there was considerable cause for pessimism in respect to the future of moving pictures. It is true that the showmen had then appeased the opposition of the greater number of retail business men by abolishing the _ phonographs at the entrances to the . theaters, and by banishing the barker with his megaphone, but at the very time when this menace from the retail merchants was removed, a much more dangerous opposition was encountered. This new opposition came, oddly enough, from the churches and the saloons. Both objected to the movng picture show, the saloon because its business was being hurt in dollars and cents, and the church largely because it had not as yet studied the problem. Then came the national board of censorship, and an era of marked improvement in the moral tone of the pictures, until now comparatively little objection to moving pictures is heard among churchmen or social workers, and most of what is heard comes from men who remember the moving picture show as it was four years ago, and who have not seen the pictures lately. Now that, in the main, the church and social worker* have determined to help uplift the motion picture and to use it as an instrument for good rather than to oppose and antagonize it, not so much is heard from these quarters in opposition to the "movies," as they are known among the street gamins. Much more serious, in a strictly business way, is the enmity of the retail liquor dealers, who have, in some cities, harassed and hampered the moving picture exhibitors by the use of political influence. The saloons object to moving pictures because the theaters now get nickels that used to go for beer. The working man who formerly went after his supper to "the poor man's club," to drink two or three glasses of beer, now takes his wife and child and goes to the moving picture show. There can be no doubt that the wife and child approve' the change. Another feature of new but rapid development, wherein the moving picture is worsting the saloons in competition for nickels is in the noonday rest. The lunch hour is now_ a rush hour for the moving picture theaters in downtown districts. A man who has twenty or thirty idle minutes during the lunch hour now drops into a moving picture show, where he actually rests and is amused and entertained. Formerly he walked about the streets, stood on the corner, and often