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Naturally, the next step will be a combination of colour, wide film, and sound. From reports
current as this is written, it seems likely that, outside of New York City, the “high, wide and
handsome” pictures will not be shown for some time. The reason is that the "big four” of the
industry – Fox, Paramount, RKO, and Warner Brothers – as yet have not agreed on the exact
width of the enlarged pictures. Such agreement is essential. because presentation of the big
movies will force the theatres to acquire new equipment, such as projection machinery and
screens. In many cases introduction of wide films would even entail the remodelling of the stage
or the entire house.

The Fox organisation, the first to release a wide picture, insists on a 70 millimetre film. On the
other hand, the Spoor-Bergren film, controlled by RKO, is 65 millimetres wide. What width the
other two concerns favour is not known: but their opinions, too, seem to be divided. Moreover,
the big producers are reluctant to saddle the additional cost of wide picture equipment on the
exhibitors, many of whom are carrying heavy financial burdens due to recent installation of
apparatus necessary to present sound pictures.

For the time being, probably the only novelty at your favourite movie house, unless you happen
to live in New York City or in Hollywood, where one theatre also is equipped for the showing of
Grandeur features, will be colour pictures. To be exact, it will be the only development you will
be able to see from your scat in the theatre. But “behind the screen" – or, rather, in the studios
and laboratories – new tricks of movie magic are being introduced to improve photoplay quality,
and, by cutting the cost of production, increase the number of fine pictures.

The Bell Telephone Laboratories in New York City, which were the greatest factor in making
sound pictures possible, having developed two of the three principal talkie devices now in general
use. are seeking constantly to improve their products. Their latest step was the installation of a
large, complete sound stage, where conditions prevailing in actual production practice may he
duplicated. It is fully equipped with microphones, camera motors, and all other apparatus
necessary for the taking and finishing of talkies.

Of the studio innovations, the most important is the Schufftan process, the invention of Eugen
Schufftan. a German artist, through which German and English producers have been enabled to
make “million-dollar" pictures at trifling cost. Recently the first Schufftan unit of two experts
arrived in Southern California. As a result of their work there, you soon may see “super-features"
with impressive sets and foreign backgrounds, such as great cathedrals, mediaeval castles.
majestic mountain scenes, which have been produced inside a Hollywood studio at an outlay of
a few dollars.
Demonstrated at a meeting of the Kinematographic Group of the Royal Photographic Society in
London recently, the process amazed experts by its ingenuity and simplicity. Described briefly,
it is a method of combining real sets with small models, or combining photographs with small,
inexpensive sets in such a way as to blend the two into a whole and make detection by the
spectator impossible – So perfect is the illusion that, when the finished picture is thrown on the
screen, Schufftan technicians themselves cannot tell where the set leaves off and the model or
photograph begins. Yet all that is required is an Optical mirror and a large lens, plus a knowledge
of angles and a highly developed technique of film lighting.

With such simple equipment Schufftan has been able to show on the screen foreign scenes,
including the Colosseum in Rome and the Vienna Opera House, without leaving the UFA studios
in Berlin, using photographs instead of costly sets imitating these huge historic buildings. In

34 REEL DEALS March 2024