Motography (Jul - Dec 1915)

October 9, 1915. MOTOGRAPHY 721 Your Show and the Continued Photoplay BY D. J. SULLIVAN* EVERY exhibitor can take a lesson from the history of the magazine publishing business and the development of the continued story. Look the field over and you will discover that the majority of the successful magazines make the continued story an important part of every issue. The reason is simple and obvious. The continued story awakens interest and carries it right along. It is "sold" to the reader when he gets the first installment and he buys the rest of the installments automatically. He doesn't have to be re-sold on every chapter. Now, another comparison — in the grocer's business. Any successful grocer will tell you that his business depends on certain staple articles, the things that keep his customers coming back time after time. He cashes in on the repeating value of his line of established goods. Now, how would you as an exhibitor like to have just as steady and reliable a trade patronage as the grocer or butcher? The tradesman knows pretty accurately what every week's business is going to bring him. He can standardize his methods and trim his costs, because he has a regular business. No doubt you have given consideration to this possibility and probably have tried in some way to work out a scheme for doing the same thing for your motion picture business. You have thought about a regular clientele and wondered just how to get it. You are just as truly a business man as the successful merchant is and the methods by which he has won success are available to you. You can use them with the same certainty of results that he enjoys. The tradesman who makes a marked success is he who handles the best brands of goods and lives on the favor earned by the excellence of his brands. The same thing is true of your business. Put this down to remember, right now: The continued photoplay is a staple article. It is an article which you can utilize just as surely as the grocer uses his best advertised and best known brand of flour or canned goods. I might cite you thousands of examples and comparisons to show you that the best interests of life and business are sustained interests, continued interests, tut this is hardly necessary. You may have already proven it to yourself in your own theater. The success of the "Diamond From the Sky" shows that a great many exhibitors have demonstrated this truth to themselves. Going back to the grocer's shop for a moment, the grocer knows that the brand that flashes once from his show window or in his advertising will never build a trade for him and support his business. It is equally obvious also that no short single film ever made a theater or established a permanent patronage. But right here in the records of my office is plenty of proof that the connected film story, each chapter complete in itself, satisfying within its reels the curiosity it excited, but with the thread of the main plot sustaining and exciting further interest has made the *Of the North American Film Corporation. theater and has established exhibitors in successful business. It seems to me that there can be no question but that the secret of the success of the good motion picture serial is the same as that of the good novel running in any magazine, which means that each chapter shall be plausible, probable and possible, arousing curiosity and then nearly satisfying it — taking the edge off of this curiosity but leaving much to be learned about the general plan of the plot and leaving the theater patron pleased, but still anxious for more. There are many similarities between the publishing business and the motion picture industry and no where do they run more closely parallel than in the continued story of the printed page and the screen. This is given a particular pointedness because of the fact that the printed story is being released to the public simultaneously with the story in films. Thus each chapter, where in type or films, carries the same sustained interest, the same major and minor plots and the same elements of success. The production of a successful continued photoplay calls for an artful handling beyond any of the requirements of the shorter productions. The matter of climaxes, for instance, comes in for a lot of consideration, and unless they are properly placed the film is going to leave the audience unsatisfied and unhappy. But still caution must be observed, because with the public growing more and more sophisticated it asks that something be left to conjecture. It is essential that always something be left to be learned. When you get to the top of a hill you lose interest in getting there. It's always the effort to get there, with all its ups and downs and uncertainties, with the goal always just ahead, that is interesting, and that is the way of the continued story or photoplay, from beginning to end. You have known people who spoiled the reading of a book by turning first to the last chapter "to see how it turns out." That is rather a frequent trait. In the continued photoplay you capitalize just that kind of interest and without the possibility of the patron turning ahead to discover how it comes out — because it can't be done, and so this patrons has to some back to your house every time to get the next installment and to ultimately find out , as in the case of our picturized romantic novel, "Who gets the Diamond." The short film is pleasant. It is the breeze that cools you on a hot day, but the serial film is the life of your business. If you once establish a good one it keeps you going happily. There is a sort of assurance of sustained patronage that gives the exhibitor more peace of mind, just like money in the bank. There is a business aspect of the continued photoplay that must appeal to every exhibitor as important. Continued advertising is sure to win. With a single picture there is no cumulative effect except as it may impress your audiences with the general quality of your bookings. After the single picture is run, all the advertising you have done on that particular picture has quit working. But the advertising and promotion effort made