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THE STAR SYSTEM 93
unconsciously achieved its first great victory over all film rulers, and encouraged by this triumph it inspired many remarkable advances in its own form of entertainment within the next few years. Each forward step was won over the great obstacles erected by the conservatism of most manufacturers, distributors, and theater owners. Screen entertainment had been fixed, apparently permanently, on the system of a program of assorted subjects providing an hour or two hours of exhibition, and the maximum length of any one item seemed to be anchored at one reel (twelve to fifteen minutes).
Here and there, throughout the country, a few exhibitors, keeping closely in touch with patrons, insisted that sections of their audiences were reaching out for something better. In the studios were men who knew that carefully developed stories, presented by selected casts of players, with intelligent direction and good settings, would result in pictures whose quality would be superior to that possible in one-reel films; two reels would accomplish much and three reels would permit great advance. But production of these longer, better films would materially increase manufacturing expenses. The standard cost of one-reel negatives was fifty cents to a dollar a foot, or five hundred to a thousand dollars; two-reelers might add fifty cents or more per foot, and three-reelers might cost two dollars or more. As the earnings of pictures were definitely limited by the daily change of program, standard price system, under which one reel was the maximum possibility, trust producers who wanted to experiment with longer forms were pretty sure to lose money, if, indeed, they could succeed in persuading General Film to release the long picture.
The length of a picture was itself an obstacle of real importance. Exchanges and theaters alike were organized on a one-reel basis; a change to two reels would necessitate important modifications in business methods and exhibiting practices. And, moreover, most men in the industry were firmly committed to the belief that anything longer than a dozen minutes on the screen would throw such a burden on the mental capacity of