Motography (Jul - Dec 1915)

August 28, 1915. MOTOGRAPHY 413 NEW YORK OFFICE. 1022 LONGACRE BUILDING Forty-second Street and Broadway Telephone Bryant 7030 Editors: ED J. MOCK, PAUL H. WOODRUFF Associate Editors Nelt G. Caward Thomas C. Kennedy John C. Garrett Charles ft. Condon Advertising Manager: ALLEN L. HAASE This publication is free and independent of all husi?iesa or house connections or control. No manufacturer or supply dealer, or their stockholders or representatives, have any financial interestin Motograpliy or any voice in its management or policy . THE MOTION PICTURE TRADE JOURNAL PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY ELECTRICITY MAGAZINE CORPORATION MONADNOCK BUILDING CHICAGO, ILL. Telephone: Harrison 301-1 — All Departments NOTICE TO ADVERTISERS Changes of advertising copy should reach the office of publication not less than fifteen days in advance of date of issue. Regular date of issue, every Saturday. New advertisements will be accepted up to within ten days of date of issue, but proof of such advertisements can not be shown in advance of publication. SUBSCRIPTION PRICE Per yejr S3. 00 Canada Per year, ForBign Per year, Single copy FOR SALE AT ALL NEWS STANDS NOTICE TO SUBSCRIBERS Remittances — Remittances should be made by check, New York draft or money order, in favor of Motografhy. Foreign subscriptions may be remitted direct by International Postal Money Order. Change of Address — The old address should be given as well as the new, and notice should be received two weeks in advance of the desired change. Volume XIV CHICAGO, AUGUST 28, 1915 Number 9 The Question of Efficiency in the Studio EVERY big business, sooner or later, gets around to the subject of efficiency. In spite of our American extravagance, we have a thrifty instinct. If that wasn't true we wouldn't have the money to be extravagant with. Whenever we see overhead expense mounting to the skies, even if we have no trouble in taking care of it, we begin to fuss. We imagine we could get the same results with half the expense, if we had time to study the situation. Not having time, we hire an efficiency expert. There is a lot of waste in a big motion picture studio. Most efficiency experts would call it a stupendous waste, a calamitous, destructive waste. There is a waste of negative film that totals a respectable sum in a year; but it is the waste of time that is most impressive. The things that are done over and over again before they are right; the things that are done and never used; the time that is spent in doing nothing, just waiting — these would drive an efficiency advocate to apoplexy. Those efficiency experts are beginning to cast covetous eyes at the motion picture business. They see what they take to be a wonderful field for their services — a virgin territory for their occupation. Soon they will be swarming down on the producers' studios like a bunch of old-fashioned housewives on a bachelors' tenement. And they are persuasive talkers, these efficiency men. They can convince you in ten minutes that the money they can save you will amount to more than your earnings. • They could show any big film manufacturer that he was throwing away a million dollars a year, more or less. More than that, they could demonstrate — on paper — that they, personally, could save him all this discarded value with a dose of SYSTEM. Now, in arguing along this line to business men in a good many kinds of industry, the efficiency men would be absolutely right — or at least right less a discount for the exaggeration of enthusiasm. But the motion picture business, the studio end of it anyway, is something else. We do not mean to say that the average motion picture studio might not respond to a vigorous application of system. Rather we think it would. Probably there is a good opportunity there for really remunerative work. But the man who does that work, the efficiency expert who is turned loose in the studio, MUST BE A MOTION PICTURE MAN. The fellow who has reduced costs seventy per cent in a boiler factory and fifty per cent in a bicycle shop and thirty per cent in an insurance office will not do. His talk may be convincing ; but trust him not. Oh, he can reduce costs, all right. There isn't any limit short of a hundred per cent to the amount he can cut off the expense sheet. But unless he is himself a producer of experience he will play more hob with the product of the studio than an intoxicated camera man. Motion picture production is a purely commercial proposition — OUTSIDE THE STUDIO. Commercialism INSIDE the studio is fatal. Make Gabrielle d'Annunzio punch a time clock and pay him by the hour; install an accounting system in Sarah Bernhardt's