Moving Picture World (Dec 1917)

1946 THE MOVING PICTURE WORLD December 29, 1917 66 *g_g^fg-g' <& jg ^jgjgLg^ fjj jS jg C'5^1^ '^ -3 »JS ^jg-^'> '-^j* Egg °^ g -y| 6 Conducted by CARL LOUIS GREGORY, F. R. P. S. Motion Picture Photography . Inquiries. QUESTIONS in cinematography addressed to this department will receive carbon copy of the department's reply by mail when four cents in stamps are inclosed. Special replies by mall on matters which cannot be replied to in this department, $1. Manufacturers' Notice. It is an established rule of this department that no apparatus or other goods will be endorsed or recommended editorially until the •xoellence of such articles has been demonstrated to its editor. A Model Motion Picture Laboratory. Ask any movie fan where the celluloid drama, the food that makes the movie giant grow, is produced, and he will doubtless tell you in California, New Jersey and New York. He has read his motion picture magazine and he picks up a lot of press agent gossip in the newspapers. You can't tell him much about Los Angeles in the West or the important studios in the East. He knows them as well, by name at least, as he does the bright and hectic features of Broadway's Rialto. Tell this same movie fan that one of the greatest plants in this extraordinary great industry is in Detroit, Michigan, and no doubt he will experience some surprise. He knows about Detroit's automobiles, pills and stoves, but he has never associated the City of the Straits with moving pictures. Yet had you told him so, you would have told the truth. Detroit has one of the finest equipped and most productive motion picture plants in the country ; and, curiously enough, it is merely a part of the organization that is making and selling one of Detroit's famous motor car? — the Ford. And what have the movies to do with Ford cars? Just this — they are used as one of the important mediums to disseminate the Ford idea in a very big and broad way — the Ford idea in manufacture and social and industrial welfare. And, incidentally, they instruct and entertain by putting the public in touch with world events. Just how much of a factor in the movie world the Ford Motor Company's moving picture department has grown to be is indicated in the following facts : Four million people are now viewing the Ford Animated Weekly every week in the year in 2,000 of the 20,000 or more theaters in this country. As it is estimated that about 35,000,000 people attend moving pictures each week, the circulation of the Ford weekly is eleven and threesevenths per cent, of the whole. All this has developed in two years and the department is growing faster than the proverbial weed. It was in April, 1914, that the Ford Motor Company determined to organize a moving picture department. It started with one man, and no equipment — merely a desk in a corner of the advertising department. Now the department has a staff of 24 men and stretches for several hundred feet along the fourth floor of the plant, direetly back of the administration building ; equipment for taking pictures and manufacturing films the equal of any in the country and better than many of the great film concerns familiar to the public; and a distribution that any of the great exchanges might envy. The principal product of the Ford's moving picture department is the Ford Animated Weekly. This consists of a brief film, running from 10 to 15 minutes, which is made up of miscellaneous topi.-al events and an occasional picture of a Ford scene or Ford feature. The interesting events of the hour, wherever they may happen, are filmed for this weekly. Fires, parades, races, athletic events, the laying of a corner stone, the President opening the baseball season, the launching of a ship — any event that is important, interesting or picturesque, is sought for the Weekly. Camera men are constantly on the road securing the pictures ; and the equipment of the department includes an especially constructed Ford car for the carrying of motion picture apparatus used in the taking of news events in and around Detroit. One hundred and ten of these Weeklies are now made each week and distributed directly to 2,000 theaters. The miscellaneous films, which are being made constantly and amount to about 200,000 feet a year, consist of industrial subjects, examples of educational work with employes and the "Safety First" idea as carried out in the Ford factory. The Ford idea, if only suggested in the name and the radiator design on the Weekly title, is thus brought before millions of people every week— most of whom have not had and never will have an opportunity to visit the factory. As the Ford cinema executive says, it's a "circulation" 100 per cent good, because not one of the millions misses It, unless he goes to the movies to sleep. As a matter of fact, the Ford Weekly alone has a circulation larger than that of any national publication. In the distribution of the Weeklies large posters are used to advertise them on billboards and in theater lobbies. In addition to covering the United States from coast to coast the Weeklies are now being circulated in the Hawaiian Islands, France, Italy, South America, England and Australia. Industrial films, which show factory scenes, processes and methods, are now being made with Spanish titles and "leaders" for use in South America and Mexico. Many of the miscellaneous films go to schools, colleges, various societies, and Y. M. C. A.'s, and recently quite a distribution has developed in penal institutions. In the series of studios, dark rooms, laboratories and work shops that confront the visitor to the Ford moving picture department, certain features stand forth prominently — notably cleanliness, order, system, fire protection and lighting arrangements. The production of moving pictures demands a high degree of manufacturing efficiency. Extreme care is taken by the Ford management to keep the motion picture department neat and orderly and to provide every possible means for fire protection. At every hand are steel receptacles for scrap. Moreover, the floors are kept scrupulously clean, and every day at six o'clock the scrap is carried outside of the building, where it is burned. Numerous steel cupboards and cabinets hold stock and finished products. Radiators are covered with wire mesh. Fire extinguishers are easily accessible and there is a chemical fire station with hose and complete apparatus just outside the door of the department. Moreover, the staff is drilled to respond to a system of fire alarms, so that at the given signals every man knows instantly what to do and where he is expected to be. Like all the Ford factory, this department is thoroughly equipped with automatic fire sprinklers. Discipline, order and system prevail everywhere and the department thus presents an excellent example of modern industrial good housekeeping. In some sections of the department a great deal of light is needed ; in other sections there can be scarcely any, and that little only of a certain kind. In the studio where interior pictures are taken are large movable batteries of the Cooper-Hewitt mercury vapor lights. These give an intensified light of great power and they provide the light for all the shop interiors, being moved about as needed. Usually a photographer's dark room is literally dark, so that it Is impossible to read a printed page. Not so in the Ford dark room. This department is illuminated by a safe light which has no actinic effect, and after one becomes accustomed to the peculiar radiance it is perfectly easy to read and write in this room. The effect is attained by placing an orange and red filter over the light, which is then thrown against the ceiling to be diffu ed indirectly. There are about thirteen main sections to the Ford moving picture department. These are arranged in order as follows — Administration, Studio and Art, Stock, Enlarging Room, Developing Room for 8x10 still pictures, Laboratory, Title-Making, Printing of Films, Perforating, Developing of Films, Drying Room, Assembly Room, Shipping Room. Interior scenes of considerable elaboration can be taken in the studio. All art work is done in this room and the art staff includes an experienced cartoonist, who makes the animated cartoons that are now a feature of Ford Weeklies. The Photographic Department also prints all its own titles. As far as possible nothing is left to chance and the human element is eliminated in the making of Ford moving pictures. This is illustrated in an interesting manner in the title-making department. The titles of films are printed in an ordinary manner in white on a black cardboard. These must be filmed as though they were moving objects. If the filming were left to the judgment of the camera operator he might crank off too many feet for one title and thus waste footage, or he might not run off enough. Moreover, his speed would necessarily vary with each title. The filming is therefore done automatically and according to a standard scale. An electric motor operates the camera at a uniform rate and the operator has a schedule that tells him how many feet to grind out for a certain number of words. Some pictures are taken in a very bright light, others with less light. This must be considered in printing the positive films, for the light exposuremust vary from heavy to light according to the needs. Previous tests have been made to determine the various degrees of exposure required for certain results desired. These are worked out in chart form and the printing machine produces the exposure desired by means of a special punching device operated by means of the arbitrary chart. All the film used by the Ford plant is perforated on their own perforating machines. In the developing room the tank system is used, and as the temperature is accurately controlled development is not done by inspection but by the more accurate method of timing according to standards fixed by previous experiments. One of the features of the laboratory is the system of silver recovery from spent hypo. (To be continued.) •Copyright, 1917, by the Chalmers Publishing Co. The largest staff of experts in all departments makes the MOVING PICTURE WORLD the one paper in the trade that fully fills the requirements of every reader.