The educational screen (c1922-c1956])

Page 54 The Educational Screen from headquarters, and to attend to shipments. Their compensation and in- centive for all this are the opportuni- ties to make influential friends and to develop sales prospects for themselves. Offhand it may seem that three hun- dred existing centers should be ample to supply non-theatrical users with films of any desired type, but there are disadvantages in this system as in vir- tually any other. First of all, it is not practicable for each center to have a complete library, or even a full set of needed subjects. Ovi^ners of the production negatives would not be jus- tified by sales and rental possibilities in paying for so many prints. There- fore copies are to be found only where the demand for them seems sufficient. One heard complaints in the early days as now, that the better known libraries, such as those of Bray Products and Kineto, had their prints scattered piecemeal over the country; but who is to foot the bill if each center is given a full collection? Any non-theatrical library which serves the entire country altogether from one central place has serious disadvantages in zonal shipping rates and time lost in transit. Beyond a certain time and space the nominal rental usually quoted does not pay the distributor; and it may be found that, depending vk-here he is situated, he will restrict his service to "States east of the Mississippi," "the Pacific Slope only," or "a thousand-mile radius of Chicago." The Y. M. C. A. Motion Picture Bureau, proud of its claim to national service, met this particular diffi- culty by opening a Chicago branch of its New York headquarters to serve the country west of the Mississippi, and, in due course, exchanges also in San Fran- cisco and Dallas. Ideal Pictures Corpo- ration, with headquarters in Chicago, makes its vast library of non-theatrical films nationally available through nine additional branch offices located in Los Angeles, Memphis, New York, Denver, Dallas, Atlanta, Portland (Ore."), Miami, and Richmond. If a self-centered, complete library cannot afford a branch office, an ob- vious solution is to have a few im- portant distributors take over the other areas—the Northwest, the Mid- dle West, the South and so on. Not the entire three hundred distributors— just a few. That cannot mean so very many prints. As a matter of fact, with certain reservations, this has been done. But there are many complaints that that independent, contracting distributor, agreeing to represent a picture owner elsewhere, has other axes to grind. He naturally will give preference to pictures the rental of which brings him greatest return, or to the product of companies which do the largest gross business with him over the year; or it may be that he will use the picture as mere bait to attract buyers of projectors. Then again, in assembling a program for a customer, he may throw this picture into the bar- gain just to swing the deal, a familiar practice in theatrical exchange work. There are all these substantial tears. But there are also (praise be!) reasons to have confidence in the business honesty of most of those who serve. Without the im|)lied factor of good faith on both sides, no agreement is worth the paper it is written on or the breath required to utter it. Possibly because of a distrust of the system, or perhaps merely that a pic- ture owner does not wish to wait tor a long period of rental for the return on his investment, or maybe even just be- cause he thinks it more profitable, the producer may decide to sell outright. He has open to him, then, the plan of split- ting his property rights into several parts, and selling each to a different distributor who will thereafter have the privilege of obtaining prints from the designated laboratory where the nega- tive is held, and will hold supreme con- trol over showings in a specified area. This regional franchise plan corresponds with the so-called "State rights" sys- tem in theatrical booking. Within his own geographical frontiers, then, the franchise holder may usually book the film in any place of exhibition he chooses—school, church, club, or any- where else not exceeding the privileges of the original owner. To all intents and purposes, within his area, he is the owner. That is one of the drawbacks to out- right sale. The owner of a print is dif- ficult to restrain, and the possibilities of holding him to certain forms of rental, even when he has promised in a contract to conform, are remote. He just has to be trusted. One skeptical producer friend of mine, concluding that virtually no weak human being will resist temptation, assumes that mere promises of this sort will not be kept, and, omitting them, holds up the opportunities which he is satisfied that the customer will take any- way, as extra inducements to buy. That seems to me to be at least astute. The "block" method is as expedient in non-theatricals as in theatrical cus- tom. There is just as inucli merchan- dizing effort and expense in selling one picture as in disposing of a set. .so effi- ciency experts usually prefer to con- centrate on selling the set. Moreover, with a customer known then to be using a number of films over a period of time, additional .services may be better planned and business at headquarters more flexibly run. Also, if delivery of the full set is to be gradual, as succes- sive pictures are required, it may be that the money advanced to cover the later subjects may be made to finance their production. The law is generally stern about the "sale" of non-e.xistent prop- erties in this manner, but the act is JB'Oi/C/IT/O^ nevertheless commonly performed and frequently without disaster because the contract is ultimately fulfilled. There are many ingenious schemes of block selling. One of the "Chronicles of America" rental plans is, I believe, to organize forty students to take a course of study based on the exhibition of fif- teen historical pictures, each member paying five dollars for the privilege of attending the series. Robert Glasgow contemplated a plan in which a salesman would station himself at a county .seat and remain there until he had sold to all the school systems in the area, seek- ing principally to induce wealthy philan- thropists to purchase full .sets and do- nate them as memorials to local educa- tional institutions. .'\t least a small part of this scheme was realized. Some of the endowed sets are therefore in active service. Some are not. I know of one which has lon,g been in the possession of a large carpet manufacturing company for the patriotic stimulation of its em- ployees, and never used because the com- pany had no means of showing it and no idea of what else to do with it. One of the most ingenious sales pro- jects I have ever known in non-theat- ricals is the plan which A. P. Hollis devised for De Vry's picture library in 1924. With his characteristic, practical accommodation of service to market conditions, he concluded that one way to do business with the schools would be to encourage their desire to assemble their own film programs. Having made such assemblies, naturally they would wish to own them. So Hollis, in this instance, instead of assembling his ma- terial into reels, kept the individual items in 3Smm negative rolls of about fifty feet each, inviting teachers to order and purchase prints therefrom as they wished. It may be that the picture owner pre- fers not to sell, and at the same time believes that no distributor is abler to handle his film than himself. He may also be of the opinion that the extra time and expen.se of reaching the nation's re- motest users from one central library are not prohibitive. Think of the case of Davis & Geek, of New York City, makers of surgical sutures and anaes- thetics. They have their own advertising films to demonstrate their products (pro- duced mainly by Caravel), and manage their own distribution. But their expe- rience is unique. It is said that they employ no regular field representative and use no advertising other than these reels. The pictures are sent to a dealer who is naturally interested in their prod- ucts, screened by him and held until he receives a forwarding address to an- SOC//11 C/P<S4/V/-?>/7>W/*' r ^ 5cHooLFiLns VlMX.\9\t^}^ ni»nssioNAL .SOC)AI.<SE:RVICt Gov£w*fiENr TtAcHCR Classroom 5cm/nahy Insphutiomal P»*eTiri<»N«J« Stvdfnt cSse Pu#tic Rccoru Public TJtWKiHo APPAMTUS VixsroKi RewTiowa inrmmation The wide scope of the non-theatrical field of motion pictures is clearly shown by this provisional breakdown into its varied uses. Under four broad headings each