Exhibitor's Trade Review (May-Aug 1925)

Page 46 Exhibitors Trade Review PA THEX WINS RECOGNITION Practical Little Projector Makes Strong Bid For Popularity The projector — handy and complete, has but one adjustment. PRINT YOUR OWN A practical and unique printing equipment is now on the market, manufactured by the Globe Type Foundry of Chicago. It enables small moving picture houses to produce their own house programs and announcements in their spare time, and any other printed material not furnished by the distributors of film. Wide awake managers of small-town theatres are finding this type set valuable, again and again, in keeping down printing costs and preparing advance information for their patrons and newspapers. The latest development in motion picture musical circles and perhaps the greatest boon for showmen yet devised, has begun to create widespread interest and approval among theatre owners and managers throughout the country. It is "THE SYMPHONIC COLOR GUIDE" created by Ernest Luz, the musical director of the Loew Theatrical Enterprises. The principles of the new Luz symphonic color guide are embodied in a handsome booklet published by the Music Buyers Corporation of New York and its contents is chock-full of pertinent and money-saving facts for exhibitors. Many years of intense research and study of motion picture musical presentation on the part of Mr. Luz led to the discovery of a simplified device, employing colors as its basic principle. When used in conjunction with the thematic music cues in use up to the present time, it is possible for the management of a theatre to render invaluable assistance to its own music departments. With the symphonic color guide, and without any particular musical training or lengthy study of musical detail, managers are enabled to further the cause of better and f\ NE of the most important developments ^-^ in recent years in the field of motion picture equipment has just been announced with the release on the market of a new camera and projector designed exclusively for nontheatrical purposes. The handling of each machine has been so simplified as to be almost automatic; and because of this facility of operation, the invention is expected to accomplish much in the popularizing of the motion picture in such circles as have not already been won to the screen. The American sponsors of the invention have been organized as the Pathex, Inc., which is a subsidiary of Pathe Exchange, Inc., one of the oldest established companies in the motion picture industry. Pathex, Inc., is promoting the new camera and projector in America under license from Pathe Cinema of Paris, the patentees. The invention has already been demonstrated to be a positive success in France and other European countries, where many thousands of the Pathex sets are being sold monthly. The invention comprises a motion picture camera and projector so small as to be enclosable in a small sized handbag, the combined weight of both machines being about five pounds. Both camera and projector are the acme of scientific construction and engineering technique and represent the fruits of over twenty-five years of continuous study and experimentation. The specially manufactured film stock to be used in this apparatus is an innovation in the American market and is declared to be vastly superior to the slow-burning stock now available for non-theatrical uses. The entire Pathex set including motion-picture camera, projector closer musical synchrony to screen action. It is the intention of the Symphonic Color Guide to be a device wherewith success in photoplaying would be assured to the capable and advanced musician in every community, regardless of the lack of what is termed "showmanship." In these days, the public expects symphonic or operatic form in Musical synchrony to photoplay all of which is unnecessary when the Symphonic color guide is put into use. To give a symphonic or operatic impression, the music score must have as a basis, correct themes or motifs, properly placed and (Continued on Page 48) Mr. Exhibitor: Ask at the Film Exchanges for the It's little to ask for, but it's the only reliable aid you can give your musicians to help put the picture over. Nothing could be simpler than shooting with this camera. and accessaries, is procurable at less than $100 retail. The Pathex camera is 3^ inches long, 4^ inches high, and of an inch wide. The lens is an £3.5 nonadjustable fixed focus anastigmat. Close-ups of objects in motion can be made at five feet, and the camera can be used immeditely thereafter to protograph distant views without any focus adjustment. A calibrated lens adjuster permits the operator to vary the diaphragm opening in accordance with light conditions. A chart, simplified for the use of the amateur, indicates i at a ^glance the proper lens adjustment to be. employed. A view finder is conveniently located on top of the camera. A footage indicator on the side of the camera shows automatically how many feet of film have been exposed and how much remains in the film magazine to be used. The film stock employed in the Pathex camera and projector is of the reversible variety; that is, the negative film exposed in the camera is reversedby a special process to a positive. Accordingly, the same film is used in" the projector that has been previously exposed in the camera. The film magazine contains thirty feet of film, is light-proof, and can thus be inserted in the camera in full daylight. The individual frame is by y% of an inch, and there are 1,100 such frames in the thirty-foot reel, making the Pathex reel equivalent to 69 feet of standard film. A special feature of the Pathex film is that the perforations are located in the center of the film strip between the individual frames instead of on the edges, as in the case of the standard film. A pull-down claw, seated directly in front of the 'film track and below the lens, engages and disengages in these perforations as the crank is turned, thus drawing the successive frames of the film in line with the lens aperature. The film magazines can be procured at any Pathex agency at less than $2 each When the entire thirty-foot reel has been exposed, the film magazine is removed from the camera and forwarded to the Pathex laboratory, where the film is developed and returned at no extra cost to the owner in a ready-to-use reel for the projector. The Pathex projector, like the camera, (Continued on Page 47) Theatre Musicians Hail New Symphonic Color Guide YEARS OF RESEARCH AT LAST PROVE FRUITFUL