Moving Picture News (Jan-Jun 1913)

"THE CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE ABE COPYRIGHTED" W)t jWobmg future i^etos INCORPORATING jfftootng future Calcs AMERICA'S LEADING CINEMATOGRAPH WEEKLY PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY The CINEMATOGRAPH PUBLISHING COMPANY, 30 West Thirteenth Street, NEW YORK CITY Telephone, 4092 Chelsea ALFRED H. SAUNDERS, Editor (20 years Expert in Cinematography). This newspaper is owned and published by the Cinematograph Publishing Company, a New York corporation. Office and principal place of business No. 30 West 13th Street, New York. Alfred H. Saunders, President: John A. Wilkens, Secretary, and W. M. Petingale, Treasurer. The address of the officers is the office of the newspaper. SUBSCRIPTION: $2.00 per year. Postpaid in the United States, Mexico, Hawaii, Porto Bico and the Philippine Islands. ^3gsB3g55£sv Canada and Foreign Countries: $2.50 per year. All communications should he addressed to The Moving Picture NewBs ^SSJPggsHp^ 30 West Thirteenth Street, New York City. ADVERTISING RATES: $60 per page, $30 J-page, $15 J-page, single columi ^*sbsSS^ |20) S2 per incll Discounts, 20% 12; 10% 6; 5% 3 months. Entered as stcond-class matter in the New York Post Office Volume VII May 17, 1913 Number 20 EX-CATHEDRA TO BE, OR NOT TO BE? PARAPHRASING Shakespeare in Hamlet's soliloquy I want to say "'To Be or Xot to Be." That is the question, whether it is easier to build continuous moving machines or to use those already on the market, to experiment ; ah, there's the rub. From this experimentation what vast sums of money may be lost gives us pause. I have on my desk several letters, asking my opinion regarding the utility of a continuously moving film projecting rnachine. I have also received visits from several men who have been approached to put money into an invention of this kind. I have received inquiries from two banks asking the possibility of such an invention on the market. Talking with some prominent manufacturers in the industry with a view to obtain their ideas of such a machine, they all agree with me that such an invention to-day is absolutely useless for any practical purpose of projection. Why? Simply because it would create chaos out of order. Joseph Bianchi in 1901 obtained a patent on a continuously running film using prisms and reflectors in the projection, and this patent will cause an interference of any other like device that manufacturers may try to make, or inventors try to invent. Xot only is such an invention useless at the present day, but anyone investing money in such a scheme is bound to lose the same in experiments which will practically come to naught. Let me pause a minute and argue the point. The main object of such an invention is to get away with any patent that may be in existence on the projecting machine, doing away with the Prosch shutter, the Latham loop, the sprocket wheel, and all such like devices. The film runs in a continuous band and the prisms do the rest. Not only is there a great loss of light by this process, but there is also a blur in the continuously running picture ; and while rcme of the flicker may be eliminated, the result is not worth the extra work entailed upon the machine, or the operator and the manufacturer. Again, every camera with the exception of the Bianchi camera is made to take pictures intermittently, each picture being divided by a white line of space, or it may be a black one. This, with the shutter, causes the intermittent flicker and cannot be eliminated entirely with the present type of machines, but at the same time the machines have been made almost flickerless, acting in conjunction with the camera that takes the film, and further every film made by any camera on the market is capable of being projected on these machines. Films cannot be made to project on a. continuous running machine that are taken by such cameras, and those who are trying to invent a continuously running film projector must also build a continuously running camera, and I very much question if any manufacturer is going to be so foolish as to revolutionize his own manufacture for the sake of getting a continuously running film ; this would be an isolated instance, and rather Don Quixoticlike, butting against a windmill, or, in other words, butting against a condition that has grown up with the industry, and for which condition every camera, and every projecting machine, has been designed for the sole purpose of giving clear pictures and steady projection. To the investors above I have said, "Do not waste money on such wildcat schemes for the simple reason that it will never be returned, unless every manufacturer adopts a camera to take the film for such projection. Again, how extremely foolish for an inventor to think that he is going to put every camera at present in existence and every projector now manufactured upon the shelf or the junkheap. The industry is not ready for any such radical move, and so I caution my readers, as well as any of the investing public against such losses. Having disposed of the projecting end, I want to touch upon a very moot point troubling the exchange man today, and as it would be an exceedingly difficult matter to get an exchangeman, or an exhibitor, to adopt such a scheme as the above, why not look at the regular releases of film of to-day in the same light? Why should an exchange be compelled to buy certain films, on a certain day, and bind himself to accept "a pig in a poke" as the manufacturers at present compel them to do. They would not buy machines simply because the manufacturers said they have got to have them. Why should they be compelled to buy films simply because certain manufacturers have