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SCENE FROM A PRIZE WINNING CLUB FILM
Alfred Fontana and Beatrice Traendly in "And How!" which Won the 35MM Award of $500.00 in the Photoplay
Magazine Amateur Contest for the Motion Picture Club of the Oranges.
AMATEUR CLUBS
A BAY STATE REPORT
By R. K. Winans
WHEN a bunch of ambitious and ignorant amateur movie fans get together, something is bound to happen. That sentence accounts for "Plenty of Jack," the two-reel comedy production of the Movie Club of Western Massachusetts.
This club now boasts an active membership of fifty-five dyed-in-thewool fans. They opened their season's festivities with a banquet; then for several meetings they rather concentrated on viewing amateur comedies and dramas produced by other clubs and groups which generously loaned their films. When this voluntary board of censorship could find no more amateur productions to tear to pieces vocally it was considered appropriate to announce that they could better anything they had seen. They then proceeded to make good on the boast.
With great enthusiasm the various mechanical and other departments of a dramatic division were appointed, elected and drafted. A boiler-plate scenario was secured, a great hurrah was raised — but nothing happened. Later another false start was made.
Came a club member with an idea for a scenario, who collaborated with another member in writing it out in
390
Edited by Arthur L. Gale
workable form. A cast was quietly brought together one Sunday morning and work was actually started on filming the epic of laughs. Despite the speed with which the scenario, the cast and, in fact, the whole project was thrown together and worked out, things ran smoothly from the start.
THE SMALLEST MOVIE THEATRE
In Philadelphia is Visited by the Amateur Motion
Picture Club of That City.
The scenario deals with a youth who aspires to the hand of a fair lady, but is told to go peddle his papers until he proves himself a hero and is admitted to the Heroes' Club. The girl, who really loves him, conspires with her brother and other members of the hero organization to
put Jack through his paces on a fake stunt. Here the thing becomes involved with a desperate gang of criminals, and by a curious twist of fate Jack rescues the entire Heroes' Club, captures the thug gang, gets a big reward in cash, not to mention the girl.
Jack's "car" gave an opportunity for comedy action. While he is calling on his girl, for instance, her fiveyear-old brother does some mechanical research work, almost completely dismantling the car at the curb. The juvenile star, the baby son of A. F. Smith, director of the dramatic division, proved a find of the first water.
Much of the production was a problem of interiors. For these a club member's home was used. A camera equipped with an /1.9 lens was used with bright sunlight coming through the windows and one arc light. Some of this action was not well lighted and was retaken, using four arclights, at night in order to avoid unpleasant back lighting from the windows.
No small contribution to the finished film will be art titles by Andrew Phillips, club member. These Mr. Phillips hand-lettered and embellished with skeleton cartoon figures. His method may interest other clubs. Ordinary sign card stock was cut 11 by 14 inches, painted black with Duco and the lettering and sketches put on