Motion picture industry

“ For the making of reels that will carry information for students, that will take truth and wisdom to whole generations of scholars, is an honorable and conscientious undertaking. With money profitably invested in motion-picture ventures of this new, and inevitable, kind, the whole motion-picture field will take on a new aspect, and attract the more intelligent dollars, the more honorable dollars, that will in turn gradually lift the character, and the quality, and the products, and the results, of the entire industry. ”

“ The next few years of the industry’s history is the tale of numerous patent suits that wound in and out of the courts. The legal battles accentuated the naturally bitter competition to be expected in exploiting the new wonder. But the public had given a hearty welcome to the latest form of entertainment, and the picture-makers waxed prosperous, despite the handicap of internal strife. Theaters in all the big cities were showing the pictures as novelties, and traveling exhibitors were frequent. ”

“ The time is now close at hand when motion-picture investments will rank much higher than formerly, so that intelligent dollars may come in without losing their self-respect. When the industry is regarded as quite as honorable a field for investment as in the case with, say the newspaper or book-publishing business, we shall have far better pictures. ”

“ As the representative of leading producers and distributors of American films, I can say that in no industry or art will be found men and women more earnest to progress in the right way. With a full sense of our responsibilities, and an ardor toward perfection, we are at work to do the best possible things for the motion picture and its world-wide audience. ”

“ Next, let us turn to the beginnings of the motion picture industry. We find the same conditions that made possible sudden wealth and sudden death, hold-ups and hangings in the Kern River valley, seventy-odd years ago.
Impossible? Let us see.—First, who goes to the gold country, anyway, in the first mad rush?
Not the fellows with steady jobs, who have already made good in their own particular field. They have too much at stake. ”

“ This may seem a little rough, when we apply it to the great movie industry, but it is the truth. That is, it is the truth about the movie beginnings, the first years.
For instance, there were a couple of men who did reporting, off and on, for a Los Angeles newspaper. They drifted into motion-picture work when the first studios came into Hollywood—because they had no steady jobs to keep them from trying out this new gamble. But the star reporters and the influential “desk” men on the paper didn’t have any time to fool away on the new wildcat schemes. ”

“ The public can be deprived of a point on which to focus a demand. Exhibitors can no longer say, “I want this or that,” even within the narrow margin they recently had; they will have no choice because there will be no choice; the business will be a standardized “industry.”
These, then, are some of the facts of the American motion picture world. They are not all the facts, but each of them is important. Not one can be overlooked by students of the influence of the theater. Many a perplexed observer of everyday affairs will find in these facts a key which explains many things. ”

“ In the New York Evening Mail we renewed our acquaintance with Director Brennan one night by reading the following ad:
GET INTO THE WONDER INDUSTRY OF THE WORLD.
The motion picture producing business. Hundreds of fortunes have been made and are being made in it. Successful motion picture playwright and director offer part ownership in a series of powerful, emotional plays for the screen, entitled “When Dreams Come True,” “Time Will Tell” and “Inspector Flynn.” ”

“ Here we have this great instrument, the motion picture, the fourth largest industry in the United States, attended daily by ten million people, and in ten days by a hundred million, capable of interpreting the largest conceivable ideas that come within the range of the plastic arts, and those ideas have not been supplied. ”

“ Every attempt, however, of the exuberant creator, filled with the urge for deeds, to perform aesthetic experiments on the motion picture avenges itself; such experiments cannot be carried out with impunity. For the applause of a small circle of the elect is not going to prevent bankruptcy on the part of the film company that supports these experiments. Film art without economic success is quite unthinkable. ”

“ Motion-picture publicity is so pliable that arranging with movie theaters to put on a film of your product in the making and equipping salesmen with a reel and apparatus to demonstrate before prospective customers does not exhaust its uses.
I have unearthed a New York manufacturing concern in a large way of business who have fathomed the all-important matter of deriving the fullest value from their movie-advertising investment. They utilize their film to teach salesmanship to the employees. ”

“ To the amateur the ideal manner of staging a motion picture is, of course, to handle every detail of the production within the organization, merely going outside to rent a camera, purchase film stock, and finally for the factory work of developing and printing the film. The pleasure of “doing everything yourself” is almost too great to be resisted, but if a successful production is to be assured it is wise to call on professional help in other branches. ”

“ In this dilemma the progressive manufacturer has joyfully hailed the advent of the motion picture film which enables him to display every step in the manufacture of the machine or articles, and every phase of its operation. ”

“ Our American motion-picture producers are specializing on candy, because—for the moment—more people want it. But they’re over-doing the thing. If they want to hold the world leadership in movie-making, they must turn out more roast beef. ”

“ The business organization of the motion-picture field can find no counterpart in any other line of commercial activity. In some of its aspects it is akin to the theatrical world, in others it resembles publishing, but there are many points distinctly unique. The commercial organization is an evolution peculiarly adapted to picture conditions, and it is still in a state of transition, continuous and even more radical than that evident in the producing methods. ”

“ One way of gauging the precise lines you should pursue is by keeping track of what the ordinary motion-picture producing concerns are doing. This is why I advise frequent visits to the theaters, in which you can combine pleasure with business. If these producers have experienced the fact that enterprise pays, after long and diligent study of what the fickle public wants, it only goes to bear out my assertion that users of motion-picture advertising should emulate their example. ”

“ Many of you boys have probably seen them in special lectures on other subjects, for they can be used to show how people live and work in every part of the world and how the various commercial products that so largely govern our lives are made."
170 But the motion-picture man, he explained, is not at all dependent upon what really happens for his films, because if he cannot train the eye of his camera on some occurrence that he desires to transfer to a film, he reproduces it in a studio, spending thousands and thousands of dollars, if necessary for actors, scenery and stage fittings. ”

“ The possibilities of making a motion picture at comparatively little expense were first drawn to public attention five years ago when two young men, both of whom have become well-known directors, made a saleable photoplay in their own back yard. These boys had many theories about what a movie should and should not be, but they could never find a company willing to give their theories a trial. ”

“ At its present rate of progress, the cinema will soon become more powerful as an influence upon the minds of the masses than are the newspaper, the novel and the play taken together.
For the sun never sets upon the screen! Day and night, in all parts of the civilized, and an increasing portion of the uncivilized, globe the motion picture is making its imprint upon the minds and souls of countless millions of men, women and children. ”

“ And sooner or later we will have a straight-out capture of a complete film expression by the serious forces of civilization. The merely impudent motion picture will be relegated to the leisure hours with yellow journalism. Photoplay libraries are inevitable, as active if not as multitudinous as the book-circulating libraries. The oncoming machinery and expense of the motion picture is immense. Where will the money come from? No one knows. What the people want they will get. The race of man cannot afford automobiles, but has them nevertheless. ”

“ Motion pictures are still changing so much, in their development from year to year, that any survey of this vast, chaotic new industry is in danger of being out-of-date long before its time. With this in mind, I have attempted to stress those phases of movie-making, and of the story-telling that underlies each photoplay, that do not change. A generation hence, the fundamental problems confronting the makers—how to show real people, doing interesting things in interesting places—will be the same. ”

“ If yours is a high-class store, it naturally will not do to have your film shown at a nickeldrome attracting the poorest of the working classes. I would especially advise you, before putting your motion picture into circulation, to make a tour of the photoplay theaters in your territory. It is not enough to judge by the outside appearance—mingle with the audience—and size each one up from the point of view of your proposition. ”

“ The barrier between real writers and the studios is, I am convinced, the greatest obstacle to the advance of motion pictures and the real trouble I can sum up in one sentence: “The picture stories are not written by authors, they are written by executives!” ”

“ Film art is expensive, and no gratuitous distributor of private funds is going to give one penny which will not bear him interest. If there be anyone so blind as not to be able to grasp this simple principle, he is unable to grasp the underlying principle of the motion picture as an art. To fail to recognize commercial success as the basic condition on which film art rests is to call down upon one’s head the irritation that ensues from ineffectual grumbling. ”

“ When the motion picture was taken up in earnest in the United States, the world stared in astonishment at the apparent recklessness of the early managers. The public responded, however, and there is hardly a hamlet in the nation where there is not at least one moving-picture house. The most popular actors have been drawn from the speaking stage into the "movies," and many new actors have been developed. ”

“ It is not every day that a new and reliable advertising medium is unearthed, and it was decidedly a good day’s work when the selling powers of motion-picture publicity became known.
You appeal to the public at their leisure and there is no competition to fear, as exhibitors will not show more than one ad. film on a single program. You also enjoy a monopoly of the audience’s attention, for folks can only see one thing at a time in the darkened hall. ”

“ The advertising powers of the motion picture have been fully realized by the large manufacturers of this country, but the average retailer has confined himself to the slide.
With a film, however, you can cause a small-sized sensation in your town, for folks will look upon your effort as a home product. You can not, of course, live upon publicity, and the true test will be the extra amount of business it brings. Once the interest of people is aroused, there can be no doubt concerning the latter. ”

“ This all means that cinematography has become a gigantic industry, giving employment to hundreds of actors, photographers, and the army of men and women engaged in making and showing the films, to say nothing of the thousands of picture theatres that have sprung up in every city and town in the country. ”

“ Although it then referred to the legitimate stage, as it does now, it can to-day apply aptly to the motion-picture theater. A good story is, also, the ideal vehicle for film advertising.
The twenty million movie fans in this country frequent their favorite form of amusement to be entertained, and some greatly resent the pure advertising or semi-educationals which they often have to sit out. ”

“ Creating a demand for your wares in new lands is, as one is well aware, a far harder task than is capturing fresh business at home, so, if the desired volume of trade is to be obtained, there must be no stinting on the advertising campaign expenditure. It is doubtful whether there is any publicity outlets that can outshine the versatile motion picture in the all-important capacity of a results bringer. ”

“ Once upon a time—and it was not so far back, either—it was a comparatively easy matter to coax a motion-picture exhibitor to take an advertising picture for one or more days’ showing, but nowadays it is hard work to do so, for there are now ten manufacturers to every one that adopted film advertising as part and parcel of its publicity campaign in the past. ”

“ It’s easy to think you can do that—and most motion-picture producers and financiers are sure they can. But as a matter of fact, an editor, trained for years in the selection of stories, could probably do a lot better.
In motion pictures, the man who puts up the money for a production has to be pretty wise to realize how much less he probably knows about motion pictures than the men he hires to make the pictures for him. ”