Movie Makers (Jun-Dec 1928)

'Vt o COME 5 te THE A/AATEUR. By Hiram Percy Maxim President Amateur Cinema League JULY 30. 1928. will go down into history as a very important date in amateur cinematography. It was on that date that Mr. George Eastman announced and demonstrated amateur moving pictures in colors. Mr. Eastman was kind enough to invite the writer to he present, and the latter takes this opportunitv to report the interesting occasion to his brother amateurs all over the world. It is worth while going back two years, to the luncheon at the Biltmore Hotel, in New York, when that little group of us who formed the nucleus of our present Amateur Cinema League met and organized. It was my privilege at that luncheon to quote from an eminent authority on amateur photography. He shall be nameless, but he said, "amateur cinematography is on the brink of great things. In a couple of years you amateurs will be taking perfect colored movies." It struck me at the time that this was a prettv brash statement. But, just as the two years roll around, colored amateur movies arrive. It was with this interesting memory in mind that I went to see what Mr. Eastman had to announce. Arriving in Rochester on a gloriously bright summer morning I repaired to the Genesee \ allev Club where I joined the following interesting group : Thomas A. Edison, the inventor of cinematographv; George Eastman, founder of amateur photography; General John J. Pershing. America's greatest living soldier: Frederick E. Ives, early American experimenter in color photographv: Michael I. Pupin. one of America's leading physicists: Owen D. \oung. chairman of the board. General Electric Co., Radio Corporation of America, etc.: E. F. t^. Alexanderson. leading radio engineer and one of the inventors of television : General James G. Harbord. President of the Radio Corporation of America: Yi . D. Coolidge. inventor of the Coolidge Tube, and physicist of the General t>A Electric Research Laboratories: Leo H. Baekeland. inventor of Bakelite: Sir James Irvine, Vice-chancellor of St. Andrews University, Scotland: G. K. Burgess, director of the L nited States Bureau of Standards: John J. Tigert. L nited States Commissioner of Education; Adolph S. Ochs, publisher of the New \ ork Times, and several other obviously distinguished men of whose identity I was not sure. My first thought, as I realized the make-up of Mr. Eastmans audience, was, "I'm jolly well glad it is not I who must run off these new films." Ones soul fairly recoiled at the thought of a broken splice in such a companv. And I suspected that Mr. Eastman was up against something considerablv more complex than a sixteen mm. splice. After breakfast we all moved out onto the beautiful lawn of the club into the brilliant sunshine. In a jiffv a tremendous horde of photograph ers descended upon us. They were armed to the teeth u ith Graflex, stills, enormous panorams, complicated news reel movies, our own little movie cameras and Kodak Model B"s, with queer looking colored glass in their fronts that fascinated and took one's mind off his troubles. It was very real trouble indeed. Imagine being brought face to face with an army of photographers, armed to the teeth, utterly devoid of any feeling of delicacy, who press their machines up under one's very nose, and then ask him to smile while they shoot. General Pershing, himself, quailed before the attack, and if he quailed the rest of us had a perfectly good right to take to our heels. But in Pershing s presence, and as Mr. Eastman's guests, we stuck and saw the thing through. SAGES OF THE CINEMA George Eastman and Thomas Edison Discussing Kodacolor, in Which the Dreams of Both Are Realized. It is my impression that these gentry kept us against the wall, popping away constantly for upwards of an hour. Mr. Edison was their favorite victim. They used monochromatics, panchromatics. coloromatics. rheumatics and pneumatics on him until I should have thought he would have ached all over. After using up what would appear to any amateur as a scandalous amount of film of one sort and another, we were led off to motor cars and taken to Mr. Eastman's residence. There in one of the main drawing rooms the lights were low and there were chairs arranged before screens so the guests naturally gravitated there. In the center was a large lantern slide projector, which always promises interesting things to me. On each side of the lantern slide projector was a familiar Series K Kodascope projector with a suspicious looking gadget on its lens. Bv this time we began to wonder. Mr. Eastman had volunteered nothing up to now and we were all guessing. After seeing the queer colored things in the lenses of several of the small Kodak movie cameras on the lawn at the club, I guessed "colored movies." After seeing more of the queer colored things in the lenses of the Kodascope projectors. I became downright suspicious. 559