Motion picture theater

“ Lillian Walker, for instance, is famed far and wide for her dimples, which are not without their publicity possibilities.
Do not adhere to any one particular player for too long a period, for each fan has his or her favorite, and if you make, say, a daily change, you eventually cover them all.
Obviously, the most effective advertising medium is the motion-picture theater. If the exhibitor rents out his screen to retailers, you should arrange to have a slide shown. ”

“ The motion-picture business has become one of the greatest enterprises of our day. In 1914 there were over 20,000 motion-picture theaters131 in the United States. The year before that three hundred million dollars was spent for films, and over five billion paid admissions were recorded throughout the country. The motion-picture has made possible the reproduction of the best plays, and they are offered to the people at a very low price. Five and ten cents will permit any one to be amused for a whole evening. The motion-picture theater possesses great educational possibilities. ”

“ MOVEMENT WITH PHOTOPLAY THEATER HELP
The spring and summer are the busy seasons for the nurseryman and florist, for the thoughts of the city folk fly in the direction of the open air. The garden being the first haven of refuge, the garden “outfitter,” if I may be permitted to coin a term, benefits financially.
The neighborhood theater is best suited to your purpose, as the majority of the patrons are located in residential sections. You approach them in the right mood, for one of the charms of the motion picture, as you are doubtless aware, is the natural backgrounds. ”

“ Equally important is arranging for the exhibition of your slides. Most theaters change their program daily, and only a proportion of patrons attend regularly. Some days the program does not appeal to them, so they favor the rival show. Therefore, if you were running a slide subject of the “to be continued” kind, you could not expect to have many follow it from beginning to end unless you took a system in charge.
Every now and then a motion-picture producer releases a serial or series. It is booked by the exhibitor, who arranges for its showing at his theater in weekly installments. ”

“ Sunday Movie Theaters destroy the rest and quiet of many people, especially those who live in the residential district of cities and in the neighborhood where such motion-picture theaters are located. ”

“ The manufacturer who intends adopting the motion picture as his advertising offspring for all time will find it necessary to install a private theater in his office building or manufacturing plant, according to what he may decide suits him best. This miniature theater can be made to serve three useful purposes. One is to try out each new advertising film before putting it into circulation and to be on guard for defects calling for improvement. The second is to give regular demonstrations before the employees, so as to keep them up to efficiency pitch. ”

“ The screen is not a retreat for hackneyed, broken-down plots that failed of a sale everywhere else, nor is it likely to pay you for the idea that you dash off in a few idle moments. True enough, you can see many mediocre stories, many trashy ones, when you attend the picture theater, but the aspirant for success should not take the worst specimens for his ideal. ”

“ For economy’s sake, you need only one copy of the positive in circulation. [Page 172] Now, if you approach local motion-picture exhibitors in the right spirit, they may not demand a fee for showing your advertising motion picture, as they realize too well the value of anything with a local appeal. You should arrange with the leading theater to have first run of the photoplay, say, for a week, after which you can loan it to the next on the waiting-list, until all have been covered. ”

“ The big advertisement has its place in filmdom if the story succeeds in maintaining the interest from beginning to end, but you must remember that a whole page magazine ad. can be read inside of two minutes, while a feature, its motion-picture counterpart, demands at least an hour of a fan’s time.
“But there is no room for the big feature in the regular motion-picture [Page 145] theater. If I am not mistaken, there will spring up a chain of photoplay theaters in the large cities to which the public will be admitted free. ”

“ The crowds on the streets as the three automobiles wove their way through the traffic were that curious mixture of workers leaving late for their homes and pleasure seekers coming downtown for the first performances at the motion picture theaters, which is such an interesting spectacle on Broadway, Spring, Hill and Main streets at twilight. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Thirdly, it is always available for giving shows for the edification of prospective customers.
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The authorities throughout the country are getting exceedingly strict anent the showing and storing of films, so the room selected for the purpose should be made as fireproof as possible, for films are mighty inflammable.
Although no actual case has come before my notice, it might be interesting to compare the example presented by the wealthy homes in Cincinnati. There are private motion-picture theaters there owned by the well-to-do. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Almost every motion picture theatre has its orchestra, pianist, or mechanical piano. The perfect photoplay gathering-place would have no sound but the hum of the conversing audience. If this is too ruthless a theory, let the music be played at the intervals between programmes, while the advertisements are being flung upon the screen, the lights are on, and the people coming in.
If there is something more to be done on the part of the producer to make the film a telling one, let it be a deeper study of the pictorial arrangement, with the tones more carefully balanced, the sculpture vitalized. ”

“ Over some fifteen years a growing number of minds have been more or less actively seeking a way towards a new type of theater. They have been abusing the picture-frame stage, stamping on the footlights, pulling out the front of the apron, pushing the actors into the loges, down the orchestra pit, onto the prompter’s box, out upon runways or up the aisles. They have even gone clear out of the playhouse and into circuses, open air theaters, and public parks. All to set up a new and mutual relationship between the actor and the audience. ”

“ As a means of supplying drama to America as a whole our commercialized professional theatre has broken down. The reasons need not concern us here. They are many, no doubt. One, of course, is the rise of the motion pictures, which are cheaper to present and to witness, 57and which enable the local theatre manager to keep his house open six or seven days in the week. ”

“ An example of the amazing lack of artistic co-operation in the movie world is furnished by the following press notice, sent out from one of the largest moving picture theaters on Broadway. “Audiences who see a film projected on the screen at the —— Theater, seldom take the details connected with its showing into consideration. It is a well-known fact that a photoplay is seldom presented at the —— in the form it is received from the manufacturer. ”

“ The scenario writer sits down in the morning and works out a scene; he wakes up the director, who packs some actors and a cameraman in an automobile, together with a picnic lunch, and goes out to make the picture on some lovely hillside. Then, having finished the photoplay, they take it around to your local theater and exhibit it at twenty-five cents a seat.
As a matter of fact, the movies, now the fifth national industry in the United States, has as many phases, and as many complexities as any other industry in the world. ”

“ The people in the motion picture audience total about two hundred, any time, but they come in groups of two or three at no specified hour. The newcomers do not, as in Vaudeville, make themselves part of a jocular army. Strictly as individuals they judge the panorama. If they disapprove, there is grumbling under their breath, but no hissing. I have never heard an audience in a photoplay theatre clap its hands even when the house was bursting with people. Yet they often see the film through twice. When they have had enough, they stroll home. ”

“ It must bring the artist to bear upon the work. At the moment it is merely a combination of the photographer and the stage-manager or producer. The latter is not always an artist, though he is clever at making existing facilities suit his purpose. The theatre is holding its own principally because it respects the artistic side of the issue. Individuality is encouraged. The photo-play stage will have to follow the same line of action. Directly this is done the picture palace will become a spirited rival of the theatre. ”

“ The theater is on the eve of a revival, and the movie will continue to flourish. For one cause or another it has captured a certain audience that the stage may never recover, but its bulwark is the vast new audience it has created. The throngs in the picture houses to-night are, most of them, persons who did not attend a theater once a year, if ever, and a certain proportion of these will graduate into the public of the speaking stage if the stage presents them with the opportunity. ”

“ Both as a form of entertainment and as an educational force the motion picture now merits consideration in the front rank of the world’s activities. Conservative estimates state that twelve million persons attend the picture theaters of the United States every day. Were figures available for Europe they could not add any to the amazement of those who remember that the motion picture’s strides to its present popularity have been taken in a period of less than twenty years. ”

“ It is a serious mistake to have a slide thrown upon the screen of the least desirable theater in your neighborhood. You make matters a thousand times worse if you allow it to be shown at every performance for months, until it gets cracked, dirty and faded, all in turn.
To begin with, the folks whom you are addressing must be carefully considered. They step inside the photoplay theater to be entertained with attractive films, though this is not to say that advertising [Page 196] in connection with same is entirely out of place. ”

“ The successful motion picture expresses itself through mechanical devices that are being evolved every hour. Upon those many new bits of machinery are founded novel methods of combination in another field of logic, not dramatic logic, but tableau logic. But the old-line managers, taking up photoplays, begin by making curious miniatures of stage presentations. They try to have most things as before. Later they take on the moving picture technique in a superficial way, but they, and the host of talented actors in the prime of life and Broadway success, retain the dramatic state of mind. ”

“ The white whirr of the movie machine takes on a special significance. In the murky gloom of the theater you can watch row on row of backs becoming suddenly enthusiastic, necks growing suddenly alive, heads rising to a fresh angle. Turning around you can see the stupid masks falling, vacant eyes lighting up, lips parting and waiting the smile, mouths opening waiting to laugh. ”

“ Whenever the photoplay is mixed in the same programme with vaudeville, the moving picture part of the show suffers. The film is rushed through, it is battered, it flickers more than commonly, it is a little out of focus. The house is not built for it. The owner of the place cannot manage an art gallery with a circus on his hands. It takes more brains than one man possesses to pick good vaudeville talent and bring good films to the town at the same time. The best motion picture theatres are built for photoplays alone. ”

“ No other art, not even music, contains so great a number of varied parts as the motion picture. To fuse all of these parts into a single harmonious whole requires knowledge and skill and happy inspiration, yet fusion must take place in the cinema composition itself in order that the spectator may be spared the143 annoyance of trying to unify in his own mind the ill-adjusted factors on the screen. ”

“ Assuming that each spectator pays only ten cents, this represents an intake of $1,200,000 daily and, as is well known, the prices of admission in many theatres range from 25 cents up to $1.00 and more. The artistic possibilities of the motion-picture play are obviously limited—it can never hope to rise to the emotional heights of the legitimate drama—but they are none the less considerable. ”

“ This is at the Grand Central Palace in New York.
If you don’t care for the comedy on the screen to the left, you can look at the romantic play in the center screen, or at the thriller on the screen to the right.
The chief advantage is that when you go in to see your favorite hero of the movies, who is billed on the posters outside, or go in to see a certain comedy, you aren’t compelled to sit waiting through a program of pictures you don’t care about particularly. It is an arrangement for busy folk who drop into a movie theater at the noon hour. ”