Screenland (May-Jul 1926)

vsr*r*>. C[ "Dorothy Phillips in the 'Bar C Mystery' is an arresting personality." religious festival, natives of Tierra del Fuego elect officers of their villages — the news reel "sees all," and so do millions of U. S. citizens who would never take the trouble to read about these things in magazines. As a result, it goes without saying that you and I, while we don't "know all", at least know a heap sight more about the lives and customs of out-of-the-way people and about their countries than we would if we didn't go to the movies once or twice a week. And that brings up another point. Did you ever stop to think of this — that makers of the regular canned drama have to watch their step closer when filming a scene laid in a foreign country than they would if there were no such thing as the weekly news reel? So gradually that we haven't realized it, the news reel has educated us. We have seen with our own eyes intimate glimpses of everyday life in China, Siam, Arabia and the country of the Basques, not to mention the better known reaches of Europe. We have become pretty wise in matters of dress, customs and geography of nearly all the countries of the world, and the regular drama which treats these points in a slipshod manner or which tries to give us something "just as good" is certain to be looked upon as a counterfeit by a fairly large portion of the audiences which see it. It requires constant watchfulness to make one of these weekly digests of the world's doings. At least four great organizations are continually scouring the patient face of the globe, busily cranking in hundreds of scattered spots. One of these companies, Fox Films, has several hundred "correspondents" in this country alone. Only a score or so of these constitute the regular staff, the remainder being newspaper men, picture-house projectionists and just plain amateurs who like to tinker with a movie camera. These people are constantly on the look-out for interesting happenings, whether news or just items of general and timely interest, and they send in about twenty thousand feet of celluloid for every issue of the Fox news reel. As there are two issues each week, you can figure it out for yourself. As summer approaches, this footage gradually increases to nearly three times that amount. Out of all this material, the editor selects about fifteen hundred feet of film for each issue. But it's pretty apparent that he has a lot to choose from. The unused film is catalogued and stored away in vaults, on the chance that it will come in handy some time in the years to come. Br'er Fox also uses some ■ of the scenic shots in his regular dramas and comedies, and other producers also draw on the various news-reel makers for material of this kind. So the next time the introductory title reads, "Dawn broke over the towering domes of the Himalayas", and you see a fade-in of lofty mountain peaks among which glaciers cuddle, don't feel that you necessarily are seeing the Himalayas in their natural state. What you are looking at may be a shot of the Alps taken by some Cook's tourist and sold by him to a news-reel maker. Oh, yes, lots of tourists take movie cameras with them, and thousands of feet of unusual scenic shots are bought by the news reelers. Even pictures taken with the small portable cameras can be used, though as their film isn't standard size, the process of transferring it to the regulation film is laborious and costly. But if a man with such a camera happened to be on the spot when something unusual was occurring, he could get a good price for his non-inflammable celluloid. In the early pictures of the recent sinking of the Antinoe I even saw a "still", caught by a Roosevelt passenger with a regular kodak, reproduced in a news reel. Last month I spread a lot of ink on the subject of serials, and now comes a most interesting experiment along this line. Pathe has just put into circulation a picture in five reels called "The Bar-C Mystery", which is a condensed version of their new serial of the same title. As you can well imagine, this is quite an idea, but it's a question whether any good end has been served by it. In a serial, the thrills are spread over a period of some seven or eight weeks. Usually each chaper has a secondary thrill in middle and ends with the first-class, triple-A super-thrill which leaves you on pins and needles concerning the hero's safety until next week. When you boil all this down to five reels, (Continued on page 90) 59