Motography (1912)

March, 1012. MOTOGRAPHY 111 On the Outside Looking In By the Goat Man WHEN you are on the inside looking out you can go bankrupt ami it outs no ice. What business on earth can offer a better example than The Powers Company, a bankrupt : J. P, Chalmers, a petitioning creditor, carrying the Powers advertisement; Pat himself with outstretched hands as the illustration of the advertisement which carrie the brazen caption, "Delighted!" (Mi. consistency. But Pat isn't broke. He is far from it. lie isn't even bent, lie is just ducking. And an item like $50,000 is something to duck if you can get away with it. I'm betting that Pat can and it me — oh. 1 won't tell. It would be coarse work, and I'm on the outside. * * * New York is a big center for the marketing of films — a monster clearing house. 1 use that won I monster with full knowledge oi it meaning. All General Film sturT clears at 200 Fifth avenue. There are forty-six branches — forty-one in the United States and five in Canada. Licensed films may be shipped from the maker direct to the branches, but the bills are rendered against Xew York headquarters. The Sales Company insists on the films themselves. The fifty-four exchange of the United States which deal with the Sale Company, 111 East 14th street, look to that one place for supply. Five exchange of Canada have no other source outside the junk market. The bills are made against the SaleCompany, which is maintained on a footage seal]) and the shipments go out from there usually on a C. (). D. basis. It may jar the sensibilize iu an ordinary business man to learn that a manufacturing member of this selling inization will -hip his entire product from anywhere New Y.irk : wait ninety day for settlement and in the meantime buy his own stuff back fur his film exchange, making no objection to the C. O. D. shipment! Rut then, our point of view is narrow — we're all on the outside ! * * * Then there is that Xew York "third movement'' thing — the Disturbing Company. I have been reading its advertisements in my contemporaries and I'm impressed. Not favorably, however. Xo. Lucy. I can' that it has a look in — not even a peek. I'm well informed that the first angel, a nice. "Id philanthropist who has fallen for th< ap. refuses to go any further. And believe me. when \ a 1110,000 and make up your mind, you ought to -tick. Few of us could go that far. Those of us who flit around the outside, always hoping. ng our wing singed occasionally — a hundred or two here and a hundred [jet a little tun a we dong; but a hundred thousand plus — zowie! Xix. nix. nix. Poor old philanthropist! lie says that he'll lie low and take his money back out of the profits. Really. I feel sorry. The third movement will now be enacted. It will go out and dig up another angel. That thing has cost me — but. there, there. Sylvia, it was only a fewlittle dabs and hope is eternal. Even an LJllman may recant. * * * Rut they do say that the Disturber ha some really excellent films and that an open market might afford the public a chance to see them. Rut even with Gaumonl out in the open the open market looks to me like a closed door. Yet nobody on the outside know-. ]oc 1 lopp. very much on the inside, is strong enough in the faith to declare for it while wholly surrounded with Chicago exhibitors and Dutch lunch. * * * Who -aid Big Bill Sweeney for treasurer of the Motion Picture Exhibitors' League of America: 1 did * * * I was drilling around in the ice and zero weather i^\ Minneapolis for a few days last month and while taking refuge in a nice, warm office, a friend wanted to know what 1 was doing. 1 told him that 1 wasn't doing much o( anything — that 1 was being done in a perfectly illogical manner in my effort to establish a high-grade motion picture magazine — one that would contribute a -hare in making a better motion picture entertainment, lie came right back with: "Have you been to the Lyric?" I asked him what he knew about the Lyric and he was quick to inform me that he knew all about it — that he loaded his family into his limousine twice a week and never missed a change in the bill. This would be just ordinary if this man wasn't the kind that you always guess wouldn't go to a picture show on a bet. Of course. I would go to the Lyric. I wasn't in Minneapolis for much more than that very pleasure, but the boss of the Lyric wasn't at home that day, and 1 would surely see him tomorrow. So I went to the Lyric. There wasn't anything from the street to suggest that here was the threshold of the best motion picture theater in the world. Hip Pocket Essays TH1C PROJECTING MACHINE. Tlic projecting' machine was never invented'] it was wished on ■an unsuspecting public It constitutes thi first of a number of similar chances .allowing "Saunder's fat friend" to put his hand in your pocket and ext your roll. It is made of a few brass and iron castings anil a number of big words whose meaning is more or less apparent, such a "optical center." "geneva wheel," "link and pin." "spherical aberration," and other meaningless terms obtained from the original Greek or some other guy like that. I!\ means of a young electric light plant, a tlat. bo oned thing called a rheostat, a condenser, a compensarc, a transformer, a -beet iron tank called a lantern head and about fifty-seven varieties of intermittent gears, wheels, pinion-, sprockets and guards which you turn with a handle, you are enabled to pull the film through a series of fire rollers behind a shutter, over an aperture plate, under a ten-ion spring, and while you an 11 tin the -butter get ..ut of the way often enough to lit some light through and if the "throw" is long or short enough with the framing up hickey working correctly the result is a picture on rem. Clear, isn't it ? Frankl) speaking, tli tion machine is where the exhibitor spends the money he bro lefl after paving film rental-. Parts are obtainable from any film exchange and business i so good they don't ha. advertise. When using a projecting machine it is necessarj to speak low and tak mr hat. Otherwise the ma chine may get angry and chew up some libit. . buck. jump, tremble, or fall over. \ friend once -aid he lost a finger in