Movie Makers (Jun-Dec 1928)

THIS is a talk to infrequent movie makers. If you don't fall into this class please pass this on to someone who does. •I Not so long ago you invested a fair amount of cash money in equipment for taking and showing personal movies. Admitting that you responded to the good salesmanship of your photographic dealer, the desire to make movies had been growing slowly with you before your dealer had his innings. You had determined that there was a solid satisfaction to be gained from this absorbing recreation. C| You had the good sense to know that an amateur movie outfit was something more than a toy, that it had the two essentials of a good hobby — a need for care in using it and fine results, if you used it rightly. Having got far past the child's attitude of wanting a continual series of new playthings, you do not invest in something unless you intend to get a reasonable return from it. <]J You did not go into personal movies blindly. You checked over your other recreations first and made a place for movie-making in your pleasure budget. You considered it as a possible hobby and not as a temporary time-killer for a month or a season. You were willing to give it a place with your reading, your golf, your motoring, your hunting and fishing, your hiking, your music, your cabinet-making, your drawing or whatever your other hobbies might be. <I If your equipment had cost you a total of ten or fifteen dollars you might have acquired it unthinkingly but — like a sensible man or woman — you did not make a cash purchase of camera and projector without depending on it for future recreative returns. ^ This does not mean that you got the advice of your lawyer, your clergyman or your doctor before you undertook the weighty step of movie-making. The editors of MOVIE MAKERS are not blinded to reasonableness in considering the activity round which the League and this magazine are built. We know that most camera owners are busy people with a good number of interests and activities. It stands to reason that movie-making is one of your several avocations and that you do not, as we do at League headquarters, spend most of each twenty-four hours thinking, talking or doing something about it. t]j But we'll bet our next month's ice bill against yours that you bought your movie equipment, like you buy anything else of a permanent nature, with the definite intention of using it. Cfl Between then and now something has happened. <J Granting that you are a common-sense person not given to ephemeral crazes, here are some of the things that could have happened: Your pictures are poorer than those at your movie theatre. You have taken the family, the kids, the last motor outing and the Shriners parade and you don't know what to take next. You over-exposed, under-exposed, fogged or "pammed" all over the scenery and concluded that the "plaguy contraption is all wet." It takes too much time. The family think you're a "nut." You are waiting for autumn (or winter or summer or spring) . <j| The Amateur Cinema League is much more interested in seeing every unit of movie equipment used steadily and pleasurably than it is in seeing more equipment sold. The value of a human activity liesin its depth and not in its extent. This League was organized not to bring more and more people into movie making so much as it was organized to serve as a sensible and practical insurance to those already in so that they would get the most out of their cameras and projectors. It is an association of users not of sellers. <J If your pictures are poorer than those at your movie theatre so is your golf poor compared to Sarazen's or Hagen's. That does not keep you off the links; in fact you use the fellows near perfection as a yardstick to measure your own progress. If you have exhausted your inventiveness, you have only to read each issue of Movie MAKERS carefully to find plenty of new ideas. If you have done all the "don'ts" and have omitted most of the "do-s" in your filming you should have convinced yourself that movie making is a real hobby that needs honest effort and thought and is not merely an idle amusement. You win on the time argument, if you can prove that you don't waste a number of precious hours each week in casual activities that carry on their backs about one-tenth of the solid pleasure filming does. The family will kid you about something else if they manage to bluff you out of movie making. There is something for your camera to do every month of the year. Again, read MOVIE MAKERS for new ideas on seasonal filming. *J If we have not hit on the reason for your dusty camera, we should like to have you write to us and give some new ones. <J If we have hit on the reason and have not answered it fairly and sensibly, we wish you would ask us to try again. <J If we have hit on the reason and have answered it fairly, we ask you to accept this challenge to your ability to take a first-rate hobby and get a decent return on your investment in it. •I Get the camera out; stock up with film: give your equipment a decent chance to prove its worth. •J Above everything — give the League a chance to help you when you're stumped. —R. W. W. 499