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PRESIDENTS ADDRESS
October 8, 1917.
Gentlemen :
This is our anniversary gathering. The Society of Motion Picture Engineers is just a year old. From a haudful who met in Washington a year ago in July to prepare for its consummation in October, this Society has grown by the addition of other men earnestly and unselfishly laboring for the good of the industry. This growth has been an accelerating one as the honestly skeptical became more and more convinced of our integrity of purpose and solidity and permanency of organization.
May I also remind you of a fact of which I am likewise proud, i. e., that our meetings have been harmonious, doubtless because only gentlemen have been in attendance. All discussions have been constructive. No criticism has been made at any session which was not at once followed by constructive suggestions. No one impuned a wholly selfish motive in the remarks of any speaker. The apparent purpose of each member in attendance has been to take action of value to the industry as a whole. This is well, for along that line only is progress, and growth, strength and respect for our Society.
We have accomplished much already and will do a great deal more. But if we had done nothing further than establish a standard frame line it would have been worth all the time and tffort and expense attendant thereupon.
Let me illustrate: Some time since the Federal Government sent two camera men into our great National Parks to take motion pictures of the beauties and wonders therein, the sfiant geysers, lofty waterfalls, mirror lakes, and the like. I was asked to a private showing of these pictures, and found the photography of both men so good that the work of each was spliced into that of the other without a discordant tone, but the ensemble as a whole was horrible, for one camera framed on perforations and the other between. The projecting machine man, at first, tried to frame as fast as these misframes occurred, but soon gave it up as impossible and the audience was the loser. A beautiful picture ruined, and much time and money wasted, all because two cameras with different frame lines were used on the same work. Let us hope the pictures made of this ^reat war by Government photographers may not be like that. Perhaps they will respect our recommendations and adopt a standard frame line in all their cameras.
As a Society we can only recommend ; we are not either a legislative, executive, or judicial body. Nor is our Society trying to compel anybody to do anything. For example, it is not trying to legislate a given film speed, or to require every mechanism to be run at this speed. It has no such power and no such desire.