Tp" THE EVENING LEDGER PHOTOPLAY SECTION, SATURDAY, JUNE 12, 1915. 3- LUBIN FORECASTS FUTURE THE PHOTOPLAY OF OF MOTION PICTURES THE DAYS YET TO COME Pioneer Photoplay Producer Predicts Perfection in the Art Declares Home Cinematography Is at Hand. What His Company Expects to Accomplish. By SEEGMUND LUBIN A New Art and a New Audience in the Making' Coming Co-operation of the Drama and the Photoplay. Popular Amusement Must Not Be Expensive. NO INDUSTRY In the world has, within such a comparatively short time, ex panded as rapidly as the making of mo tion pictures. Marvelous things have been accomplished in the past, but this will be as nothing to what will ba achieved In the future. We, of the Lubin Company, are working with ono end In slsht per fection In motion pictures, and I think we may say. with due modesty, that we are accomplishing better results all the time, not alone in the production of plays, but in the experimental and inventive work we are carrying on constantly In our lab oratories. In the old days pictures were crude, few players had good acting ability, our me chanical apparatus was poor and the theatre-loving people at least the big major ity of them passed by without the slight est Interest our little "shows." Compare those conditions with what la being done today. Over in New York they are show ing "The Sporting Duchess," one of my feature pictures, which cost mo thou sands and thousands of dollars to pro duce. In Madison Square Garden, with a seating capacity of 12,000 Today we are combing the world for the greatest writers, the greatest players and the greatest plays, and to secure them and get a production that will appeal to the big picture-loving public we never hesitate a minute over the cost. Never before has the Lubin Company been mak ing more pictures than It is today. At our factory In Betzwood we are printing mora than a million and a half feet of film each week, and our studios, situated In different parts of the country, are working six days In the week producing not only dramas, comedies and farces, but various kinds of educational, industrial and medical pic tures. My payroll Includes more than 2000 people at present and this does not include the army of extra people we use. I am continually asked what the future of the motion picture will be. I answer, it will be marvelous. There will be many readjustments and revolutions, naturally, but all will be for the betterment of pic tures. For Instance I predicted some time ago that the average person would soon be able to go to his photographer and instead of a still picture of himself or his family would have motion pictures made and would show them at home himself to his relatives and friends Home Movies Coming After many years of experimenting 1 have completed a little house apparatus through which regular film can be shown. No electricity is needed to run it. and pictures can be shown in either day or artificial light. This machine weighs less than five pounds, can be placed on a chair or table, and Is very simple to run. The cost of it, when put on the market, will probably be between 12 and $15. which will enable almost any one to be his own exhibitor. I have also perfected a new motion picture camera for the use of portrait photographers. It will not be very Ions before every photographer will be equip ped with one of these cameras, and then every one can have motion pictures made of themselves, developed, and shown at home through my little house apparatus. How much better It will be to see our relatives and friends In motion pictures than by looking at them In still pictures or oil paintings. We are rapidly approaching the time when exhibitors will specialize In the type of pictures they show. Ono tnea tre will show nothing but big feature productions, another win devote Ms pro gram exclusively to comedies and farces, others to travel. Industrial and educa tional pictures and so on. There win also be theatres devoted entirely to little folks, where fairy stories and all the wonderful tales we were told when we were children win be shown on the screen. In co-operation with a number of dis tinguished specialists we are doing1 splen did work at present with medical and surgical moving pictures. Unusual phasea of medical and surgical work are photo graphed, and these films are shown ia hospitals and medical colleges all over the world, and one can readily understand how valuable these pictures are to the profession In the splendid work beinr done today by the medical world In pre venting disease, we are doing all we can to assist. The Educational Field The time ia rapidly approaching when motion pictures will be used In every school and college In the land. All over the country at the present time schools are using pictures as an aid to instruc tion and getting splendid results. Edu cators are coming to realize that the sense of sight Is a most Important factor to deal with and that impressions gath ered through sight are always more last ing. The motion picture Is revolutionizing the business world, too The modern drummer no longer travels with a lot of big. heavy trunks. He takes a few samples of his goods with him' in a small case and demonstrates what he has to sell with motion pictures. The man who sells clothing, shoes, hats and various' other lines does not have to take a lot of goods with him now for the films demonstrate everything In detail. To the manufacturer of heavy machines and other big goods, the motion picture has been a great aid. for agents can travel all over the world with a few reels of film and demonstrate every phase of his products from the time it la as sembled until It is doing the work for which It was designed. Along dramatic and comedy lines the Lubin Company has big things planned ahead, and I have engaged some of the best-known artists and artistes In the world to appear In our productions. By KENNETH MACGOWAN Dramatic Editor of the Everting Ledger WHEN yon see the words "Shubert Feature," "Oliver Morosco Photo play Company" or "William A. Brady Picture Flays Inc."; when yon read of Lawranco D'Orsay and Frank Keenan with the Universal or of William Faver sham's work with the Metro; when you see far yourself David Belasco s share in some of the Lasky productions. It means another blow for that foolish old notion that the drama and the photoplay are natural antagonists. The movies have caused a good deal oc trouble for the theatres. But the losses are the sort that come with any new ex tension of mechanical or artistic ingenu ity. They are disastrous to the average American manager only because his busi ness 13 conducted on such unsound eco nomic principles that he can't make the necessary readjustments. The future is going to be different. The photoplay and the drama will go forward side by side, co-operating financially and technically, and even collaborating- artisti cally. Undoubtedly the managers and pro ducers whose talents are better suited to photoplay or acted drama will cling pretty close to his best field. But there win nevertheless be a very large co-operation on the producing and financial sides. There will, of course, be a very much larger Interchange of help via the actors. Signs of artistic collaboration, of the creation of a new art-form wedding photoplay and drama, are already In. sight. The forerunner of a new sort of theatrical entertainment was "The Battle Cry." the play Augustus Thoma3 staged. In which episodes of the- drama were connected fay nlma of Incidents happening la between. New York has just seen, in "The Alien," an entertainment In which George Beb&n appears both on the screen and In the flesh. In the alliance of 01m and play there ia a large field for artistic exploration. Of course, the photoplay Itself is going forward toward the coal of a very beau tiful and moving art. The really notable fi'm productions, from "The Inferno" through "Quo Vadis" and 'ablria" to "The Birth of a Nation." show what the trend seems certain to be. The photoplay Is going to develop the spectacular, the picturesque, the plastic and the purely beautiful to an extent that the stage can never equal. The theatre has always had two ten dencies, the realistic or critical, and the poetic or spectacular. The photoplay can never touch the first of these to any ex tent until the synchronization of mechani cal speech Is perfected, and until that day It win never render the poetic drama as the theatre can by means of dialogue. But. meantime, it can far outdistance the stage in the production of scenes of beauty, romance and adventure. It can do this so splendidly that, even though speech is added to the films, the photoplay will still find its richest field In the spectacular. There it can do with its scenery everything' in the way c novel and beautifully designed back grounds that the "new stagecraft" of Germany and Bussis. has mads possible In the theatre. But It can add to this a whole world of wonderful settings that the theatre must forego. All the most spectacular and lovely of nature's beauties are at the command only of the camera enowy mountains, wind-swept clifts and pounding; sea, water caverns, great forests and winding valleys. Into this superb setting the human may b thrown in endlessly dramatic and sig nificant ways. Ships and marching' armies, wide-ranging- battles and the tre mendous excitement of the cross-country chase, the loneliness of far peaks, are all famnim. to the patrons of the photo play. Add to this the endless opportunities for beautiful and miraculous camera- work the tricks or the trade which leave nothing human or superhuman impossible and the future of the photoplay art la hard to Umit. The theatre Is going to learn something from all this; and it Is going to devote Its energies more closely to the fields where it may ba truly great psycholog ical and social drama, critical comedy and the poetic play eschewing more and more the melodrama and spectacle in which the photoplay excels. But it Is going to profit even more by the audience which the photoplay Is edu cating. Frankly, the modern $2 theatre Is not democratic. The theatre Is not a popular amusement. Its art has left mil lions untouched, the big mass of man kind. The photoplay has brought a form of art Into lives that have gone without. The picture house Is not only drawing audiences the theatre has never touched. It Is drawing these people and the casual playgoer with them, night after night, playing steadily on their artistic sensi bilities. The photoplay audiences are achieving the basic fact in artistic devel opment, experience, at a most grati fying rate. The more contact a man has with any art. the sooner the cheap palls, the sooner he must have something better. Already the progress of this educative factor In the films la evident nough. Out of the photoplay theatre of the future will come a really democratic au dience of trained lovers of their art. de manding a finer type of film. And which la the most important thing to the man whose chief Interest may be la the spoken drama this audience will turn naturally to the sister art of the photoplay for a form of theatrical en tertainment that the films don't quite give. The photoplay Is going to do some thing for the drama that the aristocratic theatre of our day la Impotent to achieve. But it Is going to do far more for the people who patronize it. THEN AND NOW!
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