The Film Renter and Moving Picture News (Jul-Aug 1922)

6 THE FILM RENTER & MOVING PICTURE NEWS. July 29, 1922. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF EXPLOITATION: How the Essential Fact is best sought for, _ Garnered, and Presented. | NE of the most interesting things about words is the way in which, when they are used in different connections, they develop shades of meaning not in exact accord with an interpretation already accepted. For a time the word means one thing and one only; then used carelessly in a different connection, the secondary meaning gradually assumes a more prominent place until the original interpretation occupies a lower position, or even becomnes obsvlete. Such an instance is that of the verb prevent, ** to go before,” which originally suggesting going before, to lead, has come to mean going before, to obstruct or hinder. INTENSIVE CULTURE. A word which has become one of the stock expressions of the kinematograph trade is ‘‘ exploitation,” a ‘noun which, with many other words from the verb ‘‘ to exploit,’’ has become one of the chief counters in the verbal currency of showmanship.: To exploit now means to develop to the best of one’s power, to make a success of the thing exploited, to seize upon every point of interest or popularity in a given subject and by concentration upon it to make the most of it. In other words, it is to apply the process known to agriculturists as intensive culture to entertainment matters; to sce to it that the public mind is kept, as agriculturists again say, “in good heart,’ 60 that it may be in the right condition to receive the carefully chosen and attractively presented seed thought, which, lighting upon the prepared arca, may produce the result desired. GRASPING ESSENTIAL FACTS. In using the word in this sense the showman has perhaps unconsciously restored to the word its ancient meaning, from which during recent years it has been divorced. To exploit, in the language of the Socialist orator, means to treat unjustly for the purpose of gain, and suggests a base form of what men know as sweating. Harlier it meant something done; an act performed. By using it in its showman’ sense men are getting back its ancient Latin meaning, which was to unfold, to open out. But to know the origin of a word is not to be able to act upon its meaning, and this demands a habit of mind that is not always easy to acquire. There are some men with minds 30 acute through intuition or by upplication that an essential fact springs to the mind at once and its communieability to others becomes a matter of course. Such a habit of mind is not the gift of everyone, and, if absent, must be cultivated if the showman is to make the best of the thing he is handling. THE NEWS SENSE. A phrase used by Sir Marshall Hall, which made the text of a leader in the Fina RENTER a few weeks ago, sums up onc of the essentials of exploitation, viz., ‘* the common jury mind,” meaning the way in which a case may be presented to the intelligence of the average man go that his interest and sympathy may be elicited. But important as this presentation in un attractive form is, something more than this is needed if exploitation is to achieve outstanding success. Tt is what, in journalism, is called ‘* the news sense,"’ the knowledge or experience or both together which enables a man to select from a mass of seemingly unimportant matter something relative to an event oceupying the publie mind, or something upon which the public eympathy will fasten, When this important point or connection or associa Google tion has been discovered it must be made the most of. To this matter this article returns later. THE NECESSITY OF KEEN OBSERVATION. As hinted above, it is not everyone to whom this news sense is given. It is often said that So-and-So has a genius for exploitation, as though it were a gift impossible to acquire; as though exploiters, like poets, were born and not made. = One person Inay possess # natural aptitude in a particular direction, but it has to be remembered that in the words corrupted from Carlyle : ‘Genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains,’’ or as he wrote it, ‘a transcendent capacity for taking trouble first of all.’ But to return to our news sense analogy. The journalist is not content, having found the jewel among the lumber, merely to give it a rub and leave it. He recuts it, and even they. does not leave it to attract by the chance angle of light falling upon it. He sces to it that the light falls upon it at the right angle by the use of an attractive headline, and thus focuses attention upon it. WHEN EXPLOITATION SHOULD BEGIN. The question remains, when should exploitation begin? An educationist was once asked when a child's education should begin. = *t Twenty years before it is born,”’ was the answer. In much the same way exploitation should begin long before the feature to be exploited is due to arrive. From the trade show or the review the showman should gather whether or not a picture is the picture for his patrons, and having decided that it is, might make notes of points of particular appeal, allowing his mind to play continually around the subject. Uneonsciously, or subcomsciously, events of Joeal or national importance will arrange themselves in his mind around the subject of his notes to be called into the conscious mind when the main subject becomes the object of his mental concentration. Exploitation must be made an important department of showmanship, not by haphazard, but by an ordered and careful method. KINEMA’S £10,000 LOSS. Meeting of Creditors. T a mecting of the creditors of Super Cinemas (WellingA borough), Ltd., the liquidator submitted a statement of _ affairs showing a trading loss of £953 up to April 1, and since of £399. Ordinary creditors, including £700 loancd by the directors. claimed £1,681. preferential creditors £249, and the London City and Midland Bank had a mortgage on the property for £7,815. The main asset of the company was £17,481 for cost of property and equipment. The present-day valuation was £7,569, so that the claim of the bank would make a dividend of any kind for the creditors impossible, and the shareholders would lose their entire investment of £9.140. Apart from the less of capital, there appeared a loss affecting creditors to the mmount of £2.168. There seemed to be no prospect of affecting a sale that would be likely to provide anything for the ereditors, and the shareholders themselves must lose close upon £10,000.