Movietone Bulletin (August 1928)

MOVIETONE | BULLETIN Published | in the interest of the Movietone Projectionist by Fox CASE CORPORATION 460 WEST 54™ ST., NEW YORK VOLUME 1, NO. 32 GSP 495. AUGUST 11, 1928 Movietone Projectionist T IS the desire of the Fox Case Company that movietone projectionists have and feel a personal interest in movietone. The company wants you to feel that you men who place its product before the public are looked upon as a part and parcel of the organization, even though you may not be directly employed by it. We want you to feel, as we feel, that movietone is by far the best apparatus now before the public in sound-synchronizing motion pictures, and that we may all feel a justifiable pride in it. We want you to feel that being a movietone projectionist really means something. It is something more than mere projection. It is something which requires the exercise of judgment and application of high grade knowledge and skill. It is something that keeps the projectionist ‘on his toes,” but repays the added effort with real appreciation and applause by audiences, part of which the movietone projectionist can justly feel is his own due. We naturally take pride in the splendid results we have been able to place on the film. We hope and believe you take a very real pride in so projecting our product that theatre audiences will receive the full benefit. If you do that we welcome you most cordially as one of what we like to call the “movietone family.” Moreover, we want you to feel that the Fox Case Corporation is willing to do and will gladly do any reasonable thing to help you make good as a movietone projectionist. (Signed) COURTLAND SMITH. Clean Film Essential S ANY movietone projectionist very well knows, it is impossible to produce a clear, sparkling picture except with clean film. We all knew that if movietone or any other screen image is to be placed before audiences at 100 per cent. of its dramatic and amusement value, the films themselves must be clean. We all know, too, that the receipt of dirty or oil-spotted film from exchanges is the rule rather than the exception. That last is not said in criticism. It is made as a statement of a well known fact. Movietone projectionists like to place a_ perfect screen image before their audiences. They cannot do it with oily or dirty film, and are fully justified in making vigorous protest both to the theatre management and to the exchange when oily or dirty films are received. It may, I think, be fairly assumed that exchanges in effect contract to deliver to the projectionist films in as nearly as may be perfect physical condition. I believe that were the matter made the subject of court action, any court would interpret the contract to mean that between exhange and theatre most emphatically oily or dirty film is not in “as nearly as may be perfect physical condition.” It is not even in good condition. It must be remembered that a beautiful, clear, sparkling screen image will, in the long run, bring to the box office decidedly greater revenue than will a consistently splotchy, dull image such as we get from dirty or oily film. Exhibitors will do well to ponder that last statement. It means cash money to them. Movietone producers can and do give you productions from which a beautiful, sparkling screen image may be projected. If you permit their injury by oil or dirt—well, that is a matter between you and your exchange. The producer has done his part. If you think projection worries are too trying and you lead a hard life and there is no relief from the strain, just consider the poor bungalow. It only gets plastered once in a lifetime.