Moving Picture Age (Nov-Dec 1919)

14 MOVING PICTURE AGE How the Screen Has Changed the Program of a Methodist Church in Michigan By Rev. W. M. Jones (Associate Pastor, First M. E. Church, Jackson, Michigan) MANY changes have taken place in the program of the First Methodist Episcopal Church in Jackson, Michigan, under the splendid and vigorous leadership of Dr. Frederick Spence, its pastor. One of these changes is the introduction of the moving picture machine. This was installed about the end of March of 1919. It was a tremendous innovation, for the First church had the reputation of being extremely conservative. The church's attitude was fine and they were willing to see it through if this new thing would meet a need in the life of the community. The latest model Powers was secured and the schoolroom adjusted to meet the requirements of the law, and we started showing the very best films it was possible to obtain. Time and experience have taught us many valuable lessons. Some of the observations we have noticed as far as our situation is concerned is that the people prefer a good feature program rather than a composite of five, six or seven disconnected reels. For a while our programs were of a composite character but our audiences were not as large as they were when we put on such a picture as "Uncle Tom's Cabin," featuring Marguerite Clark or some other popular star in a five or six reel feature film. We may say that along with the feature we always show a Ford educational film, which we have found always good and much appreciated. On our program we have such pictures as "Hit-the-Trail Holliday," "The Passing of the Third Floor Back," "Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch," etc., and the only difficulty we have to contend with now is our limited seating capacity. Our seating capacity now is between five and six hundred. The time may not be far distant when a parish house will be built at the rear of our present church building for modern church school purposes with an assembly room to seat 1,000, where we could permanently install our moving picture outfit. Our community movie night is also self-supporting. Expenses are met by a collection taken during the program and this end of the business is our least concern. This method of financing makes it possible for the family group to come together and we notice that this is done among a class who could not otherwise afford to go as a family group to picture shows. Another result of the moving picture in the church is that it is creating a taste for good clean pictures among the young folk. We have also observed that children are great movie fans. At first we made an extra showing at 4:15 especially for the children to save congestion at night. We are not making a practice of this, except when the film we show at our community movie is of interest to children. For instance, at 4:15 we showed "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm" to a crowded audience of boys and girls. For the children we have a Saturday exhibition at 3 o'clock and the attendance is growing every Saturday. Another feature of our screen programs is the Community Sing. Folks like to get together and sing. We have the best hymns, some illustrated and some with music, which we flash on the screen, and a live-wire song leader gets the best out of folks at these times. We are also finding that our young people want the moving pictures at their parties and social gatherings. The request comes for a one or two reel comedy to form part of their evening's fun and we are glad that we have the machine and can give them this wholesome fun without having to go elsewhere where sometimes objectionable features are introduced. Mapping the Weather on the Screen to Assist Air Commerce One may now watch the development and progress of a great storm, or of a cold wave, on the moving picture screen. The films used for the purpose are not pictures of the storm itself, but of successive weather maps of it, like those prepared by our Weather Bureau. The spectator sees a low-pressure area arise, expand, and move across the continent, as he watches, on the screen, the movements of the curves of equal air pressure on the map. It is claimed that this method of representation, invented recently by a French meteorologist, will be a great aid to the study of weather conditions, and that interesting facts regarding the general circulation of the atmosphere have already been deduced by its aid, says the Literary Digest. Now that aerial navigation has become an accomplished fact, this circulation will soon have a practical bearing on commerce, even greater than it possessed in the days of the sailing-shio. Of late its use has been limited to weather forecasts. We translate below the significant parts of an article contributed to La Nature (Paris) by Jacques Boyer : "The atmosphere, as is well known, is the seat of great circulatory movements, knowledge of which forms the basis of weather forecasts. To determine these movements each weather station makes diagrams whose results are condensed into the weather maps now familiar to most of our readers. These maps show the curves of equal atmospheric pressure over an extended region — -Europe, for example. The curves change their shape daily according to certain laws that are not easily revealed by usual methods. It is necessary to compare the successive maps of the whole region in question, to be able to draw conclusions regarding its atmospheric circulation. "Unfortunately the consultation of numerous maps, one after the other, is not without difficulty. Therefore Mr. GarrigouLagrange conceived the idea some time ago of reducing them to convenient form and superposing them in a sort of book whose leaves could easily be turned. He presented a certain number of these pocket zootropes, with a note on their use, at the international meteorological congress of 1900. Later he thought of the plan of' photographing the maps, one after the other, on a moving picture film, so that they could be thrown on a screen before an audience. He dropped these preliminary experiments, not having then a sufficiently clear method of representation nor a sufficiently numerous series of situations, to give the impression of actual movement. The Turn-Back System "The war gave an opportunity of taking up the question again, with the aid of the new data collected by the weather service attached to the General Headquarters staff, and with the kind assistance of the director of inventions. On its part, the Paris Academy of Sciences gave him an • appropriation for constructing the apparatus that he had devised. In general appearance this resembles the cinematographs in present use ; the only difference is in the relative disposition of the two reels. The object of the device is, as noted above, to be able to turn it back as often as desired in order to be able to examine any part of the film that has been shown, on its first passage, to possess special interest. "The gear invented by Mr. Garrigou-Lagrange enables either of the reels at will to be turned by motor, the other being freed at the same time. . . . By exhibiting his cinematograph on March 24, 26 and 28 last, in the Physical Research Laboratory of the Sorbonne, to a large number of professors and scientific men, Mr. Garrigou-Lagrange showed what a part it might play in meteorological study. "Two of the series of maps already filmed, one of Europe, the other of America, place in evidence a movement of the highest interest. They show, in fact that the low-pressure centers in these cases move along a trajectory, sometimes to the north of the 60th parallel, sometimes south of the 30th, so that the atmosphere seems to experience a sort of respiration over the regions in question. These phenomena thus follow a fairly clear law of periodicity, which, it is to be noted, recalls the analogous relations pointed out b'y Poincare in the case of the displacement of certain winds. Generally speaking, above the 30th parallel as well as below it, but with less clearness, the moon acts by drawing vast regions of the atmosphere into general movements. May Be Adapted to All Projectors "However this may be, the turn-back system applied by Mr. Garrigou-Lagrange to his picture machine will find other applications in the teaching of science by cinematography. The mechanism may also be adapted to all picture machines, of whatever power, and in case of exhibition before a large audience Mr. Garrigou-Lagrange has invented a device that enables him to stop the film without injury to it from the intense heat of the lighting system. Finally, the length of the films may be considerably reduced. We can, for instance, make up bands of different films fastened together, on such different subjects as natural history, geography, industry, astronomy, or medicine. "These fragments, only a few yards long, will present to an audience the life of an animal or a plant, the evolution of a star, the different phases of a manufacture or of any other phenomenon whatever, just as collections of 'selected pieces' give an idea of works of literature or history. The cinematograph will then have all the qualities required to play a greater and greater part in scientific instruction, and in education of all degrees — ■ higher, secondary, and primary." The Church Moving Picture (Continued from page 13) in and out of the church, whether we believe in plays or not, we can't afford to play with responsibility for the moral welfare of our boys and girls. Neither can we isolate them from a moving world. The best we can do for them and ourselves is to enter with them into wholesome amusements and recreations. A policy of "don'ts" means alienation and sorrow. Keep young, keep smiling, and laugh with the children now rather than cry about them later.