Motion Picture News (Jan-Feb 1922)

1290 Motion Picture News i m 1 * 1 *3 fv SSsfcfihJ 1 * [ntcrior of the lobby of A. H. Blani's Rialto theatre, Ohma, Nebraska. The lobby of a theatre impresses the prospective audience perhaps more than any other part of a theatre. Eastman Motion Picture Tells Story The picture tells the romance of film making from the cotton grower to the motion picture studio. Its theme is, therefore, of direct and vital interest to the movies. But along with the educational interest there is provided ample comedy entertainment in the form of animated cartoons from the pen of that clever film cartoonist, Paul Felton. These relieve the industrial features and make delightful every moment of the story’s unfolding. What the cartoon audience sees is exactly what the theatre audience sees. The locale is Kodak Park where we watch the arrival of a train laden with cotton of which the title informs the audience, “4,000,000 pounds are used annually.” We see the cotton unloaded and then passed through huge washers to remove vegetable and other impurities. Then through dryers to eliminate moisture and into moisture proof cans. The cotton, now pure white, is next fed through chutes into nitrating machines where the acids acting upon it render it soluble later. Then into huge vats where it goes through a period of washing and rinsing lasting several weeks, to remove every trace of acid. This cleansing completed, the cotton is fed to the solvent and a thick, honey-like substance called “ dope,” held up for our inspection, is the result. On highly polished wheels this dope is spread to form a sheet of film base 3 feet wide and 5-1000th of an inch thick. By way of contrast we are shown the little barrel which, with a twin brother, sufficed for all the “ dope ” made before the advent of motion pictures. A trip through the grounds of Kodak Park gives the audience some idea of the extent of this film industry, while a view of its private water pumping station and reservoir suggests the scale on which its manufacture is conducted. The capacity of this pumping station, pumping water direct from Lake Ontario, six miles away, the title informs us, is “ 12,000,000 gallons daily.” A great safe containing pure silver bullion, of which 3 tons are used weekly at Kodak Park, is then shown, followed by a graphic illustration of the actions of nitric acid on the silver in the process of reducing it to silver crystals. Then the mixing of these crystals with the potassium bromide and gelatine to form the light sensitive emulsion with which the film is coated. The processes of coating, slitting, perforating and reeling the film are then shown in order. Then, as a climax and to visualize the “ 147,000 miles of motion picture film annually turned out at Kodak Park, a huge rotating globe has been constructed and six strands of film apparently take their journey around it. These six strands leave Kodak Park and pass like telegraph wires over New York, across the Atlantic, through London, Paris, crossing Italy, Turkey, Persia, India, China, Japan and the Pacific, passing through Hollywood before their final leap across the continent to Kodak Park from where they started. Miniature architecture, typical of each of the cotuntries through which the six ribbons pass, is constructed upon the surface of this globe. Seating Capacity Doubled The seating capacity of the Majestic moving picture theatre, Fort Mill, S. C., has been doubled, and two new projecting machines have been installed. Improvements also have been made in the heating and ventilating systems. The Majestic was closed for several weeks while the improvements were in progress. — KEENEY.