Moving Picture World (Jan-Feb 1927)

Celling the Picture to the Public J Ofiis Department Was Sstabtisheci September 23, 1911 bi j its Present Sditor^ &pes Winthrop Sargent Begin the New Year Right by Starting A Scrap Book to Keep Your Qood New Ideas EVERAL thousand exhibitors are losing money through losing ideas. If you are among that number, why not make the start of 1927 the inauguration of a new year of prosperity by starting a scrap book or, better still, a series of books. Perhaps “series” sounds too formidable, but really a series will add very -little to the cost and nothing at all to the work, and books in series will classify better and last longer. Put a few dollars into the original investment and enjoy the greater convenience that will come a few years from now. t If you do not care to incur the expense of purchasing several books, start with one, but divide the pages into sections for the various uses. Don’t try to sort too closely. A few general heads are better than a lot of subdivisions, since so many of the stunts overlap. Perhaps the best classifications would be “Inside,” “Lobby,” “Street,” “Newspapers,” “Contests.” You might add one more for “Seasons,” but it would be better to make this just an index. The best books to use are common “invoice” books, which have allowance made for pasting in invoices. These come in various sizes, but it is a mistake to use too large a book. Get one not much larger than the size of this page rather than one the size of a half sheet. The smaller books will handle easier, and this will encourage their use. Give each book a number and letter, on the back the title. If you have four books, number from one to four. If your “Lobby” book fills up first, make your second “Lobby” book number 5, and so on. You can cut the numbers from a calendar pad and varnish to prevent dirtying. Select Your Items When you read the trade papers, mark the items you want, and after the paper has gone to all who should read it, turn it over to the box office girl. If she is a Dumb Dora it might be well to mark the number of the books into which the items should go, but as a rule a girl with sense enough to sell tickets and make change will be able to sort and paste without this aid. Into the “Inside” book goes everything pertaining to advertising in the house back of the doorman. This inclosed foyer advertising, stage and screen advertising, prologue advance ads, music stunts or anything that is done to sell the patron. In the <fLobby” book you paste all stunts relating to advertising to the public whether this is done in the lobby, on the marquise or at the curb. This will include cutouts, mechanical effects, false fronts, built-in box offices and lobby demonstrations. Some of these stunts will overlap. They will be as useful inside the theatre as in the lobby. Briefly index these in the “Inside” book as : “Serve afternoon tea. 2-15.” That suggests to you that you can serve tea to the paying patrons instead of using this for a lobby stunt. The “2:15” tells you that you can find the details on page 15 of book two. Similarly you classify stunts for the street, newspaper hook-ups, newspaper cir culation schemes, various contests, (which may be equally good for the house, the lobby or the newspaper), and all other items. The seasons book should have several pages for each holiday and should be indexed by item and page and book number, as shown above. The advantage of using an index instead of a special book lies in the fact that by pasting the items in the other books they may often give you an idea apart from the season. Where an idea is equally good for more than one holiday, put it under each heading. For example, you will put the potato matinee under Thanksgiving, under Christmas, when you may specify toys, and under Easter and Memorial Day for flowers. While you are doing the buying, it would be an excellent idea to get one more book for especially atractive advertising examples and ideas. When you start to figure exploitation on a picture and ideas do not come, reach for one of the books, turn the pages, and you are certain to find something that will either be useful as it stands or give you the idea for a variation. Pull the books down in spare moments and just run over the pages, to keep your ideas pepped up. Paste for six months and you never will be without an idea. In a couple of years you would not sell your books for a hundred dollars. You forget the old ideas after a while and they will be lost to you when you perhaps will need them most. L armour Invents a Rope Spinning Rig Two animated stunts did much toward putting over The Last Frontier at the National Theatre, Graham, Texas. You probably will recall that one of M. W. Larmour’s standard rigs is a bicycle wheel with a weighted rim which is used for circular motions. He made a series of Indian cutouts which were mounted so that they extended up through slots in the floor of a display representing the desert. There was a painted cyclorama and in the center a real prairie wagon with a little group of defenders. The cyke was cut through so that it hung over the slotted track and the Indians seemed to gallop past the emigrants in an endless parade. Cutout Cowboy This miniature was flanked on one side by a poster and on the other by a cowboy spinning a rope. The cowboy was cut out and mounted a couple of inches in front of the compo board panels, blocks being used to get the distance. The lariat was made of stiff wire, bent into a circle of proper size and then one end carried down to the center of the circle, with a right angle extension which ran through a hole drilled in the cowboy’s hand and the block beneath. On the other side of the panel it was provided with a pulley, which kept the circle revolving. The wire was bound with fine brown twine to represent the rope, and the illusion of a spinning rita was decidedly realistic. Mr. Larmour supplemented the regular window cards with some block tack cards made from old window cards. He has his poster take up all old cards when putting new ones out. This not only gives him a supply of emergency stock, but keeps his displays fresh. When you see a card in a window in Graham, you know it is a coming show and not a forgotten hasbeen. A MILL LOBBY FOR MEN OF STEEL— RIALTO, FT. WORTH The false building lies flat against the lobby wall, with openings for the doors, and took up no extra room and offered no fire risk. It helped put over the Sills drama. All bouse employees were in overalls.