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REEL and SLIDE
Use Films in Good Roads Campaign Work
THE Illinois Highway Improvement Association has invaded the movie field in its campaign for a $60,000,000 good roads bond issue.
A two-reel film, "Through Illinois Over Unchanged Roads in a World of Change," has been released after months of preparation and arrangements are being made to have it shown in every photoplay theater in the state if possible before the November elections.
The novel bit of propaganda is not pure preaching. It contains enough of a story to hold the attention of the average movie fan and at the same time pokes good natured fun at the backwardness of a state that sends motor trucks over the same sort of highways as were traveled by stage coaches and prairie schooners.
Illinois roads provide the scenes, the players having covered a considerable part of the state in enacting the picture. Early Illinois history comes in for a good deal of attention, as is appropriate in centennial year.
Gov. Lowden helped make the film, which reaches a climax in what the prospectus describes as his "earnest appeal to the people of the state to begin preparing for the day when our boys come home." The governor has given his assurance that the bonds, if approved by the voters, will not be issued nor any of the road work done until after the war.
Officials of the association declare that this is "the first time in the history of the United States that the widening uses of the highway have been told in a motion picture story, with the various types of vehicles passing in review before the spectator."
The picture goes to theaters, schools and colleges without charge. All they have to do is to ask for it.
Tractor Co. Makes Educational Picture
THE Illinois Silo and Tractor Company of Bloomington, 111., has or■ dered 2,000 feet of film taken showing the educational, financial, residential and industrial parts of Bloomington where the products are made, and a camera man from the Vernard Company of Peoria was on the job recently shooting the main buildings and prominent persons. These pictures will be shown in the local picture houses later and will be used by the company to exploit their products at other places.
Mothers May ' ' Check' ' Babies
MANY exhibitors have trouble with babies crying in the theater. Manager H. M. Thomas, of the new Rialto Theater in Omaha, has overcome this difficulty by establishing a comfortable children's playroom, where babies may be "checked" in the care of an expert attendant while the parent views the film. The mother is given a check, and the number is attached to the child.
Should the child begin fretting, or for> any other reason make it necessary to call the mother, the number appearing on the tag is thrown on a small screen at the front of the stage by a special stereopticon, and in this manner the parent is notified the child needs attention.
A Close Up of the House Fly — from a Subject Controlled by the Exhibitors' Booking Agency
Famous Johnson South Sea Films Soon Ready
ARRANGEMENTS have just been completed whereby the RobertsonCole Company of New York have taken over the world rights, including, of course, the United States and Canada, for Martin Johnson's series of pictorial adventures "Among the Cannibal Isles of the South Pacific." In all over fifty thousand feet of film is involved in the transaction.
It is the intention to put this feature out as an entire evening's entertainment in the legitimate houses of the country at $2 top prices. Other parts will be cut into different lengths for educational and scientific purposes, and several reels will shortly be released as one-reel scenics. After the feature has played a season in the big houses it will be available for the smaller picture houses of the country.
Mr. Johnson is already planning another trip to the South Sea Islands.
Films Teach Aviation to Men in English Camps
THE moving picture is being widely used in the training of American pilots in England. The young flying officers who are sent to the armament school to acquaint themselves with the use of airplane guns and gun-gears find their three weeks' course a most interesting one, owing partly to the large share which the moving picture machine plays in the instruction.
The pupil is not required to sit out a lengthy lecture read aloud from the notes of an instructor. Instead, the various branches of gunnery training, such as the stripping and assembling of guns, and the various points to be observed before, during and after flight, are demonstrated by films, accompanied by concise explanations by competent officers.
Frequently a film is run over the screen several times at different speeds so that the pupil gets a very intimate idea of the process being illustrated. Monotony and complexity find no place in this method of training.
Woodmen Official Carries Lantern Slides
A A. BURKE, chief of the order of Modern Woodmen, Rock Island, • Illinois, is making a tour of the country, armed with a stereopticon and motion picture machine. Burke is showing the work being done at the Woodmen sanitarium and the last big meeting of the order. The Woodmen report excellent success with the screen.
Dept. of Agriculture Movies Produced for Fairs
UNCLE SAM will show himself as a war worker to those of his nephews and nieces who gather at some 35 state fairs in 23 states during the fair season which is just with us. The presenttation will be made through motion pictures taken by the Government, and developed and printed in its own laboratories.
These pictures show military work in the activities of the army engineers constructing heavy pontoon and spar bridges, mining and demolishing enemy defenses ; the types of horses and their training needed for cavalry and artillery ; and the logging and milling of timbers for ship construction.
Federal road building as another part of the development of transportation facilities shown in various stages from foundations to the final crowning of the road.
A large part of the films will show the part played by the man behind the man behind the gun — the producer of food and clothes and shelter. Such films portray poultry and hog raising, the grazing of sheep and cattle on the National Forests for the production of wool, leather, and meat. Even now one of the camera men of the Department of Agriculture is getting harvest scenes in the Northwest for later use at other fairs.
The general supervision of these pictures is in the hands of Don Carlos Ellis, who looks after the motion pictures of the Department of Agriculture, the first of the Federal departments to produce its own pictures and to develop and print films in its own laboratories.
Vast Labor Spectacle to Aid Winning of the War
ONE of the most far reaching and important industrial productions on record is being produced under the personal direction of Harry Levey, manager of the industrial department of Universal, in the labor spectacle which has as a basis President Wilson's sentiments on the war labor question : "Will you cooperate or will you obstruct?"
Says Mr. Levey: "Long ago I realized that the day would come when such a production as this would prove necessary and be the final and most convincing medium in bringing about that co-operation and teamwork so necessary in the successful prosecution of the war; and it was my idea that a thoughtful visualization of the labor problem in all its ramifications and its direct relation to the man in the frontline trench would speed up and stimulate production all along the line. It was my idea to make the picture so big and powerful in its appeal that every last man, woman and child here at home would understand this to be a war which labor must sustain; that this is 'Labor's war !'
"To this end, one group of cameramen have been busily engaged these last several months, under special governmental permit, in photographing the workings of every essential industry, while another has been at work on the military counterpart of the operation.
"Officials of the Federal Department of Labor have been enthused to lend their names and assistance in the preparation of the scenario.
"Among others, such imposing men as Charles M. Schwab and Theodore Roosevelt have offered their' personal services and will appear in the picture.
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