Screenland (May-Oct 1929)

fOT SCREENLAND TALK News and Views from the Sound Studios "hat was hailed by a specially invited audience as another revolutionary development in mo' tion pictures, comparable to the advent of dialog films, was a demonstration by the Paramount Famous Lasky Corpora' tion at the Rivoli Theater in New York, of the Paramount Magnafilm, which threw a picture on the screen that filled the entire width of the stage and for the first time gave proof that the efforts of scientists to develop commercial stereoscopic pictures were near fruition. The demonstration, which included scenes of the seashore and a country road, as well as a four-reel talking and singing feature, lasted for more than an hour, and was attended by an audience of three hundred publishers, editors, bankers, scientists and motion picture executives. The pictures, photographed on fifty-six millimeter film, were projected on a screen forty feet wide and twenty feet high. Standard film is thirty -five millimeters and the normal size of a picture shown on the regular screen at the Rivoli is seventeen feet, four inches wide and thirteen feet, six inches high. _ This demonstration of Paramount Magnafilm climaxed experiments ' which were begun fifteen years ago by Adolph Zukor at the old Twenty-Sixth Street studio of the Famous Players Company. In 1914 Mr. Zukor and Edwin S. Porter, now consulting engineer for the International Projecting Company, began experiments toward stereoscopic effects on the screen with the view to eventually developing a wide film which would give greater depth of focus than the regular film in use. The results of the experiment were burned in the fire that destroyed the studio in 1915. The exigencies of the situation at the time forced Mr. Zukor to give up, tem porarily, his plans for the development of a wide film that would give a full stage picture. However, Mr. Zukor did not give up his dream that some day he would be able to show motion pictures on a wide screen which would give greater stereoscopic values than those obtained in the present 35 mm. film. Now he has realized the fulfillment of his plans made fifteen years ago. Public attention was focused on the increased entertainment value of the large screen on the night of December 6, 1926, when Paramount introduced the Magnascope in connection with the showing of "Old Ironsides." The effect on the audience at the premiere of that picture was electrifying when suddenly the screen filled Every Roth matt for himself! Frank Ross, Virginia Bruce, Lillian and Phillips Holmes lunching while on location. the entire stage width. The increased size of the picture through Magnascope was obtained by the use of magnifying lenses and from an increased film width. It was then that Mr. Zukor had Lorenzo Del Riccio, who invented the Magnascope, begin intensive work on wide film. Work was carried on by Mr. Del Riccio and a staff of assistants at the Paramount studios in Hollywood and New York. Just as they were perfecting their cameras and lenses for this wide film the new clement of sound projected itself into the picture. This brought forth an entirely new problem. To meet this Mr. Zukor had Mr. Del Riccio equip a new laboratory across the street from the Paramount studio in Astoria, L. I., and there for the last two years he has been perfecting the Magnafilm. Wide film in itself is not new, having been used 3 3 years ago, but Paramount Magnafilm is the first wide film to be developed along commercially practical lines. # * * A wide film was shown to the public for the first time in New York in 1896 when Professor Latham projected film two inches wide by threequarters of an inch high at the old Daly Theater, Broadway and Twenty-Eighth St., according to Mr. Porter. Also the Corbett-Fitzsimmons fight at Carson City and the PalmerMcGovern fight at Tuckahoe in 1898 were photographed on wide film but on account of the special machines that had to be built none of these earlier experiments were commercially successful. Being mindful of these aspects to the early work on wide film Mr. Zukor set down three points to be given first consideration by Mr. Del Riccio in his experiments. First — There must be no change in sound equipment through the use of wide film; second, the screen must not be so high that the balcony in the average theater would cut off the view of the top of the screen; and third, the change in projection equipment should be kept in minimum so that the use of wide film would not put an expensive burden on the exhibitor. With these stipulations in mind Mr. Del