Reel and Slide (Mar-Dec 1918)

M A G A Z: I N E iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiniiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiin^ INDUSTRIAL FILM SECTION SEMI-OFFICIAL ORGAN. SCREEN ADVERTISERS' ASSOCIATION OF THE WORLD Ho^v Can I Get My Product in the Movies merchant enterprise (Copyright 1918.) J HERE are two aspects of any commercial enterprise which bear importantly on any form of advertising whatsoever, but especially do these two aspects concern the manufacturer or who contemplates filming his for pictorial presentation to mixed audiences. It is mixed audiences we are concerned with in these articles, since the experience of national advertisers of widely used articles lies in that direction. The use of films for special audiences and for limited and special exhibition, such as vocational training will be treated subsequently. These two broad aspects are, one, as the advertiser sees his business ; two, as the public or his prospective customers see it. Hence, there is the absolute necessity at the beginning to discard your own viewpoint arid determine what will be of interest to the outsider. It has been quite common in examining the "cold corpses" of certain screen campaigns to discover the absolute unwillingness of the advertiser to discard his own pets and hobbies, his personal interests and beliefs in order to substitute material that will appeal to the people his film is designed to reach. Importance of the Survey Time was when the camera man was sent out with orders to film 1,200 feet of scenes in a certain factory, shop or property, grinding away upon anything that attracted his attention and stopping when his set length had been attained. To the studio this old fashioned camera man usually brought 1,200 feet of miscellaneous, conglomerate footage which was boiled down and interspersed with meaningless title?, the whole making a 20-minute exhibition that, to say the 'least, was disjointed, confusing and nearly always unconvincing. In nearly every case the camera man was imbued with the customer's viewpoint and half of his footage was consumed in picturing those scenes which glorified the success and flattered the vanity of the "old man," but which today would only serve to empty the house for the theater man. Graduallv, this slipshod system has fallen Into the discard. Certain producers with vision have succeeded largely in cutting out the pet ideas of the man whose money they are spending, and going ahead along lines that will produce results. There are still a few of the old time "footage kings," but they are now in the minority. Advertising men who have added films to their No. 1 — Surveying Your Business From a Pictorial Standpoint — Preliminary Data — Sources — Preparation and Arrangement of Plan (This article, and those to follow, are the result of considerable investigation. They represent, not the views or experience of one man. Rather, they are based on the experience of many advertising men who have actually used films in advertising. An effort is made to generalize so that the inforrnation may be of service to advertisers in all lines of business.) By Lyne S. Metcalfe uiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiniiiiiiiiiiiiiiii^iiiiniiiminniiiniiiiiiiiiiiiniiiiiiiiiiniiiiiiHiiiira plans all realize the absolute necessity for eliminating from their pictures historical records of the property, scenes of the old man on the job, and all four sheet sign boards extolHng the merits of the product. But to discover just what may be included in a motion picture of your proposition, it is absolutely essential that you make, or have made, a complete survey. This survey should be made far in advance of the camera work — far in advance of even the preparation of the working salesscenario. In fact, the survey represents your ability to forget your own aspect of your property and to take the viewpoint of the man whose attention you want to hold for an hour or two in hundreds, perhaps thousands, of exhibition rooms in all parts of the United States. People pay money to see movies. If you can offer them an interesting picture — an instructive picture, they will not object when you mention the fact in the main title or, on all your titles, that the picture was filmed in your factory or on your property _ and this should be remembered in making the survey. Preliminary Work When it has been decided to perpetuate and distribute the merits of your product or the merits of your plant to the public via the screen, immediately begin a survey. Your producer, if he knows his business, will likely do this of his own accord, though very often he meets with a rebuflf when he suggests it. The survey should answer the following questions : a. What is the historical importance of your line of work, as a whole, and not merely in relationship to your own plan*-? What are the unusual and most interesting phases of its development, if any? 29 b. What are your visitors most interested in seeing when they come to see vour property? c. What general educational values can you discover in your industry which could furnish the school teacher an opportunity to explain? d. What are the striking features of your operations? e. What interesting innovations are there that could be shown in pictures without the necessity for lengthy titles? f. What "human interest" phases are there that would have the appeal of a newspaper story? The data in question a, would naturally corne from your own knowledge of your business, and from a careful reading up in the reference room of a library. The answer to question b, would result from a discussion with the individual whose business it is to show your place to visitors. (Ten to one he could tell you some interesting facts in this connection!) A _ discussion with your high school principal would furnish material for the answer to question c. And so on. Advertising Comes Later Up to this point, leave out all thought of advertising your product. That job should be left to the man who constructs your sales-scenario which, in turn, is written on the basis of the survey. It is difficult, at times, for the advertising man to disregard his habit of thinking in terms of words and phrases in order to express what he wants to say in the form of pictures. Many arguments which would be good selling talk in a booklet or circular, should not and cannot be adapted to the niotion picture screen. On the other hand, pictures will offer arguments more convincingly in many other cases than any printed word could do, and this discrimina■tion must begin with the preparation of the survey. In preparing it, attention must constantly be given to pictorial value, since in the sales, scenario you will have mighty little space for words and what space you have cannot be consumed in "selling talk" unless you are readv to have your picture fall flat before the audience and antagonize the exhibitor. Ford recently produced an interesting industrial entitled, "How a Newspaper is Made." The finished product was shown pouring out of the big printing presses. To state in cold type that the capacity of these presses is one hundred thousand or two hundred thousand copies an hour does not give the audience as good an idea of