Motion Picture News (Oct 1915)

48 MOTION PICTURE NEWS Vol. 12. No. 17. 1 HAS THE QUALITY CIRCULATION OF THE TRADE MOTION PICTURE NEWS EXHIBITORS’ TIMES Published on Thursday Every Week by EXHIBITORS’ TIMES, Inc. Copyright, 1915, by Exhibitors’ Times, Inc. WILLIAM A. JOHNSTON President and Editor HENRY F. SEWALL Vice-President E. KENDALL GILLETT Secretary H. ASHTON WYCKOFF Treasurer and Business Manager WENTWORTH TUCKER Ass’t Treasurer R. M. VANDIVERT Advertising Manager THEODORE S. MEAD Chicago Manager J. C. JESSEN Los Angeles Manager LESLEY MASON Managing Editor WILLIAM RESSMAN ANDREWS News Editor This publication is owned and published by Exhibitors' Times, incorporated under the laws of the State of New York. The offices and principal place of business are at 220 West 42 nd Street, New York City. The address of the officers is the office of the publication. Entered as Second-Class matter at the New York Post-Office. Subscription $2 per year, postpaid in the United States, Mexico, Hawaii, Porto Rico and the Philippine Islands. Canada, $3; Foreign, $4 per year. N. B. — No agent is authorized to take subscriptions for Motion Picture News at less than these rates. Have the agent taking your subscription show his credentials and coupon book. 89 Vol. XII October 30, 1915 No. 17 And Again — The Story ( Continued from page 47.) 1WIARKETING conditions are vastly changed today. The 1 1 English demand for prints is no longer the criterion it was. The novelty of the Western “thrilling'’ picture is worn off, and the English audience, like any other audience in time, wants fresh, strong stories. Again, at home, the program is not pulling along the weak picture as it did. "THE picture business is chaotic today. That is not 1 alarming. It is only to be expected and the end is yet far from sight. But many efforts now being made to correct baffling conditions are purely superficial. You cannot stimulate sales very well when the product is wrong. That is lifting yourself by the boot straps. The faults, when prints fall off, may be due partly to selling methods. But, ten to one, it is principally due to production ability. Pictures must be produced, like publications, with all the insight into public taste, all the initiative and determination to get the world’s best stories, all the editorial ability to judge good stories and their proper presentation. This is the acid test of the ten million reading circulation of the Saturday Evening Post. It will prove also to be the acid test of the ten or twenty or fifty million motion picture circulation. * * 4= E need photodramatists. Whether stories are created for the picture, which is best of all ; or whether plays and books are adopted, the need is just as vital. Fourthrate writers won’t do ; neither will first-rate writers with no knowledge of picture subtleties of expression. Inducements must be offered to the' world’s best writers to study the technic of the camera and the photoplay, just as playwrights must — to succeed — study the technic of the stage and the spoken drama. And over and above all, every producer who strives to lead needs within himself or within his organization the editorial ability that directs firmly and loftily the policy of the successful, popular publication. These are not new theories ; they are simply the proven policies of older and competitive enterprises. William A. Johnston. A Monopoly Gained By Merit Must Be Maintained By Merit JUST how the American manufacturer is going to readjust his export business to meet the somewhat staggering war tax that Great Britain has imposed on all imported film, raw, negative, and positive, is still to be decided. “Equalization” is the favorite word, at present, on the lips of those who have anything at all to say. That means no less than that the ultimate tax-payer will be the consumer— that is to say, the British buyer and renter of films. The American manufacturer will bear his share, but the fact that the British Empire happens to be at war with a European coalition will not prevail upon him to shoulder any more. He realizes that the English exhibitor and the English distributor must come to him for their pictures, tax or no tax, because their audiences demand American films. * * * "THE American manufacturer is not a competitor in the A English film market. He dominates it. Merit has .given him a monopoly. And this has only become accentuated since the war began, and the supply of continental film has been shut off. * * * YY/E are not crowing over our English cousins in makVV ing these statements. They are indisputable facts. It simply needs to be said that the greater anxiety should be with the Englishman, who must have at all costs, what the American manufacturer has to sell him. 'K '5' D IGHT here, it is just as well to remind the American producer that his pictures are superior only by comparison. They are far from being perfect — scarcely one a year deserves the title, “masterpiece” — and too often far from being satisfactory. And, because photoplay production has apparently become a neglected art in England, with the exception of a few prominent firms, the American producer should not make the mistake of thinking that it has become a forgotten one. * * * CPLENDID pictures have, in the past, come from Eng^ land, and though picture-making is at low ebb there just now, it is confidently to be expected that the English producer, 'will, before long, renew his old power and put upon the market pictures that will be able to dispute successfully the field with the American film. The present moment is his opportunity. He may be slow in seizing it. But that is all the more reason why the American manufacturer should coddle his export market and fortify himself in it with the best products of his studios. * * * HE is rapidly approaching the point, here in the United States, where he is beginning to surfeit his audiences with too much of the same thing — the same stories, the same thrills, the same monotonous prodigality of scenery and setting, unrelieved by a brightening story. Let him consider that English audiences are of the same flesh and blood as American — they have the same endurance, the same capacity for weariness and tedium. And if the export trade is as dear to his pocket-book as it is currently believed to be, let him be doubly solicitous for the freshness, the vital sustaining power of his productions. Table of contents will hereafter be found every week opposite inside back cover.