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December 25, 1920
EXHIBITORS HERALD
173
Kinema, Los Angeles, Presentation Policy Illustrates Improvement General in Field
A male quartette in Northwest Mounted Police costume for presenting "Nomads
of the North."
The trend of presentation during the year drawing to a close has been from the complex to the simple, which implies from the amateur to the professional, the crude to the finished and effective.
Exhibitors everywhere have made great progress in their development of presentation policy. The practical has supplanted the fanciful. In the performance of the past twelve months there is great promise for the future.
As indicative of the exhibitorial field at large the presentation policy of the Kinema theatre, Los Angeles, is here discussed with particular reference to two recent prologues tliat represent the most modern thought in prologue stagecraft.
IT is now general practice to rely for the most part upon music, vocal and instrumental, and dance for prologue purposes, rather than upon dramatic features involving dialogue. Accordingly, the Kinema used musical features in presenting "Peaceful Valley" and '"Nomads of the North," First National attractions both, in re cent engagements. Accompanying illustrations show the stage settings used.
For "Peaceful Valley" a rural scene was depicted, with a typical farm house occupying the right half of the stage, one side being left open to disclose the action within. The feature opened with a male singer who entered from the left, paused by a set well while he sang "The Old Oaken Bucket," and then passed into the house, lighting the lamp and starting a grate fire.
A moment later a girl entered from the same quarter, a professional whistler giving bird imitations. As she entered the house she started an old fashioned talking machine which played a violin solo, after which she took up her own instrument and played a fitting number. The picture followed the thorough establishment of the rural atmosphere.
In behalf of "Nomads of the North" the interior of a cabin in the North Woods was represented, and a quartette attired as members of the Northwest Mounted Police provided entertainment of genuine merit apart from its purpose as introducing the atmosphere proper for the reception of the picture.
Both of the Kinema prologues are of such nature as to be readily approximated by practically all exhibitors. The stage setting is the only â– natter that should cause difficulty, ind it should not bedifficult to proluce a satisfactory semblance of the original under the most adverse cir
cumstances. Where no stage of any kind is available it is possible to employ the singers to good advantage without the settings, the characteristic song numbers having the proper relationship to the screen story.
This laner aspect, this adaptability, is the outstanding phase of presenta
tion as it exists today in the" motion picture theatre. It is in practically all cases simple, in almost every case effective, and few, indeed, are the prologues used that cannot be readily adapted to the pictures concerned by exhibitors operating under less advantageous circumstances.