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146 FOOTAGE was necessary to have some clear understanding as to what was to be taken. It was necessary that the exhibitor who booked a three or four reel show should know about how much he was to receive, and the ex- change men, who had to pay for film by the foot, should know how. many feet they should be called upon to pay for, so the reel of one thousand feet was established, because that was about the length of film that could be contained in a projection machine in those days. With the coming of the feature and the arrival of the open market^ this standard was retained as a convenience rather than a business necessity. The man who contracts for a five-reel subject knows that he will get about five thousand feet, and not much under or over. This is what reel means. 3. But you can measure film by the yard, though not action. Film is passed through the camera at the rate of sixteen frames a second. A frame is a single picture on the film. It is one inch wide and three- fourths of an inch high. Naturally there are sixteen frames to the foot. Film is made to be shown at the rate of sixteen frames a sec- ond. Unless the operator is in a hurry to get out early to meet the lady of his choice or the manager wants to get rid of one audience to make room for others, the film is passed through the projection ma- chine at the rate of a foot a second. It follows that "foot" and "sec- ond" become interchangeable. 4. This is where exact estimate stops. You cannot tell that a giv- en number of scenes will give you a reel of film. You may have a play with one scene or with one hundred and twenty and have a thou- sand feet. Some scenes have been made so short that you can barely see them, as they pass. The shortest on record was six frames. The longest ran about the length of a full reel, for there have been several plays produced as novelties that have been done in a single scene and even in a single scene with a single person. With a difference of more than nine hundred feet between extremes of length, it is obvi- ous that the length of a film may not be measured by the number of scenes shown. Reference to Example A in the Appendix will show, that the first reel runs thirty-one scenes. The second reel gives fifty- one. Both are about the same length in action and may be produced within the thousand foot length. 5. It is not even possible to average up and say "about" so many scenes of average length will make a reel. Some directors work their actors more rapidly than others. Some want swift, sharp action. Oth- ers play more deliberately. Two directors working the same script will bring in a footage that may differ by as much as a thousand feet to the reel. For that matter a director making the same script twice, using the same people and sets, may vary three or four hundred feet in the two productions. Very evidently with so wide a variance there can be no average length of scene, so that the scene in no way sug- gests or indicates the length of the subject. 6. One exception might be made to this. Many directors say that the story with two hundred scenes can be made into a five-reel play.