The Cine Technician (1938-1939)

September-October, 1939 THE CINE-TECHNICIAN 77 BV ARTHUR ELTON instructional flavour. Sucb films were — and still are — inappropriate in programmes primarily intended for entertainment. So the Empire Marketing Board set out to build a distribution service of its own, designed to reach those people who were anxious to see films of a kind different from that offered in tbe theatres. The E.M.B. sought to show some of its films privately up and down the country wherever any groups of people were joined together for cultural or social purposes. Such groups included all kinds of organisations such as the Churches, Women's Institutes, Workers' and Adult Education Movements, and, most important of all, schools and educational groups, juvenile and adult. In this way the British documentary film came to be identified with public education, which is today the key to its success. The documentary movement has two pretty firm foundations, the non-theatrical educational movement and the dramatic presentation of everyday life and experience in the public theatres. Hard words are sometimes spoken by exhibitors about the non-theatrical movement. It is often said in the trade press and elsewhere that the non-theatrical movement is cutting into the business of the theatres. In one respect there may be some truth in this. For straight entertainment films are often shown free in public houses and other places. A method of dealing with this problem is in the hands of the producers and distributors themselves, the very people who make the complaints. If a feature film appears on 16-mm., it is quite clear that the rights have been sold to the non-theatrical distributors. The solution is simple — do not sell the rights. And such an arrangements works quite successfully abroad, for example, in Holland. Tbe documentary movement has never included the studio-made fiction film in its non-theatrical distribution for quite a simple reason. We claim that our films are self-sufficient in themselves ; they do not need the support of the fiction film. If we used fiction films in our nontheatrical distribution we should consider this a sign of weakness, if not of absolute failure. The documentary non-theatrical movement aims deliberately at a special audience or. if you like, an ordinary audience in a special frame of mind. We meet a need quite other than that met by the theatres. In so far as we compete we are unsuccessful. Indeed, we are doing the cinemas a good turn by tapping an audience who. if they did not come to our shows, might never go to a film at all. By our influence thev may be brought within the ambit of the public cinemas. T have talked a good deal about documentary films, but I have not attemnted a definition. Yet we have a very definite theory behind our work. Our films are made with the belief that a powerful factor in nearlv everyone's make-up is curiosity. People like to know things. They like to go behind the scenes. [Courtesy : Realist Film Unit Instruction, far from boring people, pleases them. And perhaps more important, the documentary film assumes that romance lies not only in elaborately conceived works of art, but also in the simple things of life, in craftsmanship, behind tbe routine of an office, in government and in the streets, in factories and shops. Documentary film makers believe that if you can only relate an office to the world it serves, if you can only explain the workings of a machine so that anyone can understand it, you not only arouse and satisfy curiosity, ycu also create a drama of everyday life. The fiction film caters for one need ; we cater for another. When documentary does turn to fiction, as in North Sea, it does not seek its plot in the fevered imaginations of the novelist. The script of North Sea was based on log books of radio stations. Such is the simple theory, and the popular success of documentary films in the public cinemas would seem to vindicate it. Though there is no doubt of the popular success of many of our documentaries in the theatres, their financial success is a different matter, and unfortunately not determined by popularity alone. If you look at the booking position of shorts in this country (I am excluding American shorts, including Disneys and the March of Time, and such English fiction shorts as are made), you will find that the average gross takings will work out at not more than £7.50. Of this amount the producer may reckon to get about £400, that is, 70% of the gross after certain deductions have been made for trade show, publicity and copies. And he may often have to wait for a year before he sees all of this. Though there have been exceptions, and some short films have grossed very much more than £7f>0. no shorts producer dare gamble on a higher figure. Tins brings us to the cold fact that a short film, if one treats it as a straight commercial proposition, cannot be allowed to cost more than, say, £400 at an outside figure, leaving £50 for profit. Now let us turn to the other side of the picture. Is it possible to produce a series of high quality short documentaries at production costs not exceeding £400? The answer is, I am afraid, "no." (Continued at foot of page 72)