Reel and Slide (Jan-Sep 1919)

REEL and SLIDE Seasons and Ad Films A:\1IDDLE WESTERN manufacturer of ladies' garments produced a series of fashion pictures last year which he aimed to distribute through his many dealers. The campaign was successful, but he says he struck one snag. The fashions of today change too often. The film of three months ago is worthless now. Perhaps the user of billboard and newspaper space found the same "snag" a few years ago. But he found a way out — he changed his "copy." If the thing is worth doing it is worth doing properly. Why not change the scenes and the garments ? Which raises the question, How is a national advertiser going to tell whether or not his pictures are making good? This question was recently answered by the advertising manager of a big Chicago house with 10,000 dealers. After three years of experience this man said : "We know our films have been a good investment because, of our 10,000 dealers, 7,000 of them used the films and have voted to maintain them." That is enough. The dealer is the man upon whom the manufacturer and jobber must depend. If the greater percentage of dealers vote to continue a film service — and the greater burden rests on them — it is a courageous jobber who will cut films from his annual appropriation. The Image in Perspective THOSE things to which the eye is unaccustomed are not missed. In the early stages of its development, the defects and shortcomings of the moving picture went unnoticed. People knew of nothing better. The thing itself was so novel and unusual that the laity accepted the motion picture as a finished product until, one by one, the most apparent shortcomings were rectified, as competition demanded more and more serious experiment on the part of the producers. Thus, studio lighting, crude and unnatural in the early pictures, today is a science ; there are men in the industry who have spent many years studying its possibilities. The result is that today a poorly-lighted picture, or one deficient in qualities of excellence, is unusual ; the people have learned to criticize in the more technical details of production, though they know not the whys and wherefores of their judgments. TDespite all this, moving pictures are far from finished products today — even the best of them. The producer, whether he will or no, must compete in the race for pictorial quality if he would stay in the business. And, while production has always been considered beyond the ken of the theatergoer, literary qualities and dramatic standards have been molded surely and rapidly by those who pay their money at the box office window. Film men do not speak above a whisper concerning the possibilities of getting the element of perspective on the screen. Yet, when this is achieved in a practical manner, one of the most important strides in the art will have been made. The fact that the screen presents a flat surface, that it eliminates absolutely the element of perspective, and thus deprives a picture of one of its fundamentals, passes unnoticed by the picturegoer. As long as people are satisfied to witness events in a "flat world" it behooves the film maker to say nothing about it. Perspective is possible in the old-fashioned stereoscope, the ancestor of the moving picture ; perspective has been achieved in moving pictures, too, but the processes are not yet practical for general adaptation. Experimentation is constantly going on ; the goal will be reached as surely as anything. Then the public will realize what an amazingly important element has been missing all these years. Incidentally, perspective on the screen will be of untold value in teaching. Combined with natural colors there will be no element missing except sound, and even sound may come in time. It is pleasant, at any rate, to think that films will seriously enter the scheme of the pedagogue at a time when they are at least nearing a state of mechanical perfection. All of the pioneering, as it were, will have been placed upon the shoulders of the commercial entertainment group. J. R. Bray ONE of the very interesting characters in the film world is John R. Bray, the very youthful father of animated cartoons. And if ever a man were entitled to be proud of his offspring, it is this self same J. R. Bray. It is doubtful if many men would have had the bulldog courage to have plugged through the obstacles that Mr. Bray encountered. By every sound and sensible reason he should have dropped his experiments long before they developed into anything at all. His very existence at that time depended upon his ability to deliver drawings to the comic publications. Every single friend advised him to drop his foolish attempts as an inventor and even those in the film world saw no chance for success. And yet, immuned in a tiny attic room on his farm in Ulster County, New York, and with only his wife to give him encouragement, he struggled on, overcoming every obstacle, and they were many, until he won out. The animated cartoon has won international fame for Mr. Bray. His name is almost a synonym for cartoons. He has given the amusement loving public something to be thankful for and yet he is still on the sunny side of forty and quite as free from egotism and vanity as he was in the days when he went from publisher to publisher with his drawings under his arm trying to eke out a living. A humorist per se, Mr. Bray has greater ideals than that of tickling the risibles of movie fans. His ambition is to bring things worth knowing before his public. This he is doing in a masterly way by means of an educational release known as Paramount Bray Pictograph, "the magazine on the screen." This magazine on film has given him opportunity to scour the world for material of general interest which shall carry a message worthy to be told to the millions who attend the theater. Under his supervision, Mr. Bray has a highly trained editorial staff, whose function it is to find things of interest and to put them into simple, easily understandable language. And because many of these subjects must be photographed in distant places, Mr. Bray has cameramen in all of the important centers ready to film any "story." Already the Bray Studios, Inc., of which Mr. Bray is president, have brought new angles into the production of educational and industrial motion pictures that have made their productions markedly different and which have placed them in the front rank. Those who know Mr. Bray realize that the motion picture is going to fulfill its greatest purpose, that of educating, more quickly and more fully, because of Mr. Bray, just as he has helped it to become the public's greatest entertainment factor by virtue of his earlier efforts.