Year book of motion pictures (1925)

a temporary shack suffice for financing and equipment. We all remember when the department store was heralded as the successor to the specializing druggist, dry goods houses, suit dealer, furniture man and grocer. Vet, since then, though the department s ore has prospered, there have grown •up in each of the separate lines it handles, chain Institutions which are equally successful. And right along with the other two is traveling the alert, progressive, neighborhood dealer whose buying capacity is small bu; who successfully meets the competition of price with service. The immediate development — the coming year's contribution to our progress — is but an incidental consideration. Personally, I believe we may reasonably expect one of the most successful years the industry has known. But it is becoming now a matter more of business-like utilization of income than of actually counting the dollars which motion pictures bring from a liberal public. GREATER TRIUMPHS TO COME The past year has been marked by many noteworthy achievements in the motion picture industry. Of these the most outstanding advances have been made in the highly specialized science of the developing and printing of motion picture film. Through the expenditure of vast sums of money for experiment and research made possible by the combination of the four foremost film printing laboratories in the country into one centralized organization, the Consolidated Film Industries, Inc., technical perfection has been attained. The unifo m high quality of every print is now absolutely guaranteed. Every requirement of the producer for speed and accuracy without sacrifice of quality is now being met. The safety and careful handling of the valuable negatives is placed in the hands of experts and secured by the resources of a strong organization. The hap-hazard methods of earlier days have been replaced by scientific processes ; and automatic machinery now does with great economy, work formerly done imperfectly by hand. The art of the cameraman, the skill of the director are now accurately cunveyed from camera to screen by Certified Prints. The progress already made, and improvements constantly undertaken, point the way still greater triumphs in the artistry of the motion picture productions of the future— H. J. YATES, Consolidated Film Industries, Inc. LESS DIRECTORS 1925 KEYNOTE To produce better pictures in 1925 there should be fewer persons involved in the making of a picture. In the last year I have seen many big directors of the past reduced to the position of beginners. In their dealings with so many beginners producers have forgotten what it is to rely upon the men of experience and ability. In consequence thereof we have producers whose prime interest is to outline how a picture should lie directed, long before they even think of how it is going to be distributed. So prevalent is this custom of telling incompetent directors what to do and how to do it that even scenario writers formulate ideas on how a scene should be directed and append footnotes demanding that the scene be done no other way. If the title writer happens to strike a good idea, it seems to have become his prerogative to go' to the director and have him shoot a particular scene to fit the title. Instead of the director telling the art director what to do, the custom is reversed. The propery man and the wardrobe mistress have been heard from but faintly, but stentorian Maurice Tourneur minimization of the director may also come from them. What a falling off was there! Failing in the execution of his own ideas, the director, the real man to whom the making of a picture should be intrusted, becomes listless and disinterested in his work. And how can we have good pictures under such conditions? It is like three or four people giving a sculptor their ideas on how he should mold the statue of his own creation. 1925 must see the director reinstated as the man who gives, not takes, orders — or it will see bad pictures. And in order to keep the industry healthy, we must do the Spartan thing of weeding out the hypochondriacs ! FEWER "FACTORY" MADE PICTURES From a production standpoint, I shou'd say that the outlook for the coming year is an opti mistic one, with variety the keynote. The next twelve months I believe, will see an array of pictures, more varied in plot, with more novelty in treatment and construction than in the pictures produced during the same period just closing. To keep the public Earl J. Hudson coming to the box-office we must put more attention to siory — a fact which I feel is appreciated by every producer in the business. During the coming year, the industry will break further away from the "formula" and "factory" type of picture for I think that every producer, writer and director in the business realizes that the screen is starving for originality and novelty. Perhaps the public will welcome a picture now and again in which the hero doesn't get the girl. Perhaps we shall be given a heroine who does not suffer persecution through six reels to finally be rewarded in the seventh. And what is more, the jaded public might even be treated to a picture without even a hero, heroine or villain. MORE LAUGHS COMING Short comedies this year, as never before must have hearty laughs to stand up against the feature length comedies and against the slapstick which has been injected of late into the more sen ous type of dramatic pro ductions. That is why our com pany, for one is going in for broad hokum and . . slapstick laughs, not Al Christie necessarily the pie-sling ing style of slapstick, but more the type of comedy which has what we call "spot" laughs, guaranteed laughs, which will amuse the kids and the grown ups too. In order to insure himself of getting just this kind of two-reeler, the producer previews every comedy which goes out, usually four or five times, with different types of audiences, to keep in the big laughs and to throw out the slow-moving stuff unless it is absolutely necessary to put over the comedy story. The clever directors who are making dramatic productions today have stolen the slapstick maker's methods. They are injecting gags and slapstick in their pictures to insure themselves of laughs. Therefore, the two-reel comedy maker now has to step out and beat them at their own game so the comedy on the bffl will have bigger laughs in it than the feature. 379