The Moving picture world (May 1922)

May 27, 1922 MOVING PICTURE WORLD 423 PROJECTIONISTS Build Your Own Radio Outfit Build One for the Theatre and Sell It to Your Boss IT'S EASY We will tell you how to go about it — if you'll write us. ROBIN ENGINEERING CO. 203 West 49th Street New York Moving^ Picture Machines Complete Equipments — Supplies of All Kinds Exhibitors' BEST Friend CUT RATE PRICES Monarch Theatre Supply Co. 228 Union Avenue 724 So. Wabash Ave. Memphis, Tenn. Chicago, IIL est protest, I am free to say passeth my understanding. Probably it is because they (a) are used to taking anything handed them and (b) they have never worked with a decent observation port, hence do not reahze the hardship inflicted by the small one, or the damage it does to their work. No Excuse Anyhow there is absolutely no excuse for such a restriction on the size of ports. If there is I shall be delighted to have you name it. To keep noise out of the auditorium? Nothing doing. You can do it better by covering the port with glass, as is done even now with some of the knot holes you are now using. To reduce danger? Honestly you make me laugh ! Let us see. Will a shutter 12 inches high by six wide drop any quicker than one twelve inches square? It will NOT! Will a shutter twelve inches square be more certain and to all intents and purposes as quick in covering its port than one six inches high by twelve wide? It most certainly will. But, you say, the heavier shutter will make more noise in falling ! To which I reply by saying that if you use a bit of common sense and pad the grove bottoms with felt or rubber, as directed in the handbook, and many times in this department, shutters will make no noise at all, regardless of weight. "But," you say, "there will be more chance of fire and smoke being visible through the large opening than through the smaller one." PURE PIFFLE, provided, again, that you use common sense, which you most emphatically are NOT doing now. We may accept it as a statement of cold fact that ANY PORT SHUTTER FUSE SYSTEM WHICH WILL NOT ACT WITHIN FIVE SECONDS AFTER THE START OF A FIRE IS WORSE THAN USELESS. I say "worse than useless" because the projectionist is in any event, in the intense excitement of the moment, or instant rather, that a fire starts, apt to forget to drop the shutters manually, and if they be fused he is more likely to do so because he naturally depends on the fuses to some extent. Not One Efficient Fuse During the past ten years I have visited many Massachusetts projection rooms (miscalled "booths" by the Department of Safety) and do not remember having seen one single port shutter fuse system which was efficient. Most of them are worthless, insofar as concerns the matter of safety. To be efficient and effective it is absolutely necessary that port shutter fuses be located within a distance not to exceed three inches of the probable seat of any film fire, which means the aperture of each projector, the rewind table and the film storage tank. It is all a matter of a properly installed master cord and fuses, and it is very simple and practical. A master cord, either of fuse wire run over pulleys, of chain over pulleys, or of stout cord run through harness rings, must be run from a headless spike beside the projection room door, to which it is attached by a harness ring, up to the ceiling, across and down to each projector, to the rewind table* and the film storage tank. If a drain or cord be used, at each projector there must be two fuses, viz., one of metal and one of a two or three inch piece of fuse, the latter held to the cord or drain by suitable clamps. The projector fuses and cord holder must be held by an arrangement which will not interfere with slippage of the cord on one projector when the fuse on the other lets go. The exact location of projector fuses will of course depend upon what projector is used, but it is an easy matter to work out, and a very simple one. too. With such a master cord and properly placed fuses to both types they may be depended upon to drop the shutters on all ports within five seconds of the time a fire starts. Of course some of the building inspectors who inspect projection matters will elevate their hands in holy horror at the very idea of exposing a total of perhaps a foot of film used for fuses. Pure piffle, gentlemen ! You are doing a lot worse things right now. // Real Safety Is IVantcd If Massachusetts really wants safety (which is NOT safety from fire, but from fire PANIC) and does not mind making a lot of "inspector" jobs, now held by political henchmen, rather unnecessary, let my suggest that you (a) Get your newspapers interested in publishing statements in all their Sunday issues for two or three months to the effect that there is really not one particle of danger to audiences from film fire in a motion picture theatre. One publication will not suffice. This is a matter which rjjust be drilled into the heads of the people. (b) Require all motion picture theatres to display on their screen, just before the commencement of each show, for a period of say three months, and once or twice a week thereafter, something like the following: TAKE NOTICE THE PROJECTION ROOM OF THIS THEATRE IS THOROUGHLY FIREPROOF. SHOULD A FILM CATCH FIRE THEREIN IT IS ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE FOR ANYTHING EXCEPT POSSIBLY SOME SMOKE TO ESCAPE INTO THE AUDITORIUM. THERE IS NOT THE SLIGHTEST DANGER TO THE AUDIENCE FROM ANY FIRE WHICH MIGHT OCCUR. THE DANGER ALL COMES FROM SENSELESS PANICWHEN SOME ARRANT COWARD SEES A BIT OF SMOKE, SHOUTS FIRE AND BOLTS FOR AN EXIT. The above wording is only suggested, of course. By the end of three months of newspaper work and running of above slides at every performance every one will have it pretty well drilled into them that there really is no danger to them from a fire. But you should go further. (c) Establish vent flues of ample dimetisions — not less than eighteen inches in diameter, and have them equipped with not merely one. THE CINEMA NEWS AND PROPERTY GAZETTE 30 Gerrard Street W. I. London, England Has the quality circulation of the trade in Great Britain arul the Dominions. All Official Notices and News from the ASSOCIATION to its members are published exclusively In this Journal. YEARLY RATE: POSTPAID, WEEKLY, $7.25 SAMPLE COPY AND ADVERTISING RATES ON REQUEST Af>f>ointed by Agreement Dated 7/8/14 THE OFFiaAL ORGAN OF THE CINEMATOGRAPH EXHIBITORS' ASSOCIATION OF GREAT BRITAIN & IRELAND. LTD. LA CINEMATOGRAFIA ITALIANA ED ESTERA OfTlclal Organ of the Italian Cinematograph Union Published on the 15th and 30th of Each Month Foreign Subscription: $7.00 or 85 francs Per Annum Editorial and Business Offices: Via Cumiana, 31, Turin, Italy "THE BIOSCOPE" The Representative Weekly Journal of the British Film Industry Of Special Interest to All Who Buy or Sell Films OFFICES: 85, SHAFTESBURY AVENUE LONDON, W. 1. Specimen Copy Free on Request Foreign SubscrlpUons : One pound ten shllUngB (gold) but two fans. Do not establish these fans in the flue itself, but entirely outside the projection room. Have them pump air through a four or six inch diameter pipe, the same entering the vent flue and discharging upward near the upper or outer end of the flue, the idea being to be sure the draft throiigh the vent pipe is always in the right direction. The vent pipe will then act something as does the feed pipe to an injector. Under this plan the fans will keep right on working through the worst possible fire, and if the vent pipes be large enough and the port shutters properly closed YOU MAY BURN HALF A DOZEN REELS OF FILM IN THE PROJECTION ROOM WITHOUT THE AUDIENCE KNOWING ANYTHING MORE THAN THAT THE SHOW HAS STOPPED. The draft will be upward through the vent flue and inward around the cracks around the port shutters and door. No smoke mrill show. The idea of the vent flue air jet is to enable the locating of the fans entirely out of the way of possible harm. Very likely the building inspectors will attempt to pick holes in the foregoing, instead of trying to apply it, but it is very difficult to find real faults in a plan founded on plain common sense. The Harmful Small Port As to the harm the small observation ports do, why it is just this. If the port is only six inches wide it compells the projectionist to jam his face right into the opening in order to see his screen with anything like distinctness, in which position he is in some measure out of touch with his projector, which certainly is UNSAFE from the fire hazard viewpoint. Again, he cannot and will not watch his screen as he should and must in order to give really good results and artistic projection. Still again, it is utterly impossible to judge any too accurately of the focus of a picture a hundred or more feet away under the best of circumstances. Hampered by a silly little hole like that it , just cannot be done at all, and an out-of-focus ; picture is hard on eyes. It sets up eyestrain, ^ and eyestrain which is entirely unnecessary. If you make the ports twelve inches wide . and six inches high, then you should breed men of standard height for projectionists. In : fact you might try breeding men with one eye, or with their eyes very close together in order to accomodate your six-inch-wide pearl of wisdom. Sharp criticism, yes, but it is nothing less than an outrage to hamper the motion picture industry with such entirely nonsensical restrictions, when they do great damage both to the industry and to the eyes of the people, without the slightest benefit in return. Next week I will tell you something of what I found in Massachusetts projection rooms.