Sprockets and Splices

WHEN pictures first began to be used for entertainment, the question of splicing and continuity was given practically no consideration whatever, and it was thought that all that was necessary to patch a film was simply to stick the two pieces of film together, and this was done in the crudest manners, without any knowledge on the part of the people who inspected the films of what was required of the film in the theatres. Furthermore, at the time which I mention, everybody was making so much money in the picture business that it overshadowed any damage to film, or damage to presentation through lack of proper handling of film. After everybody got a little experience and more education in the picture game, and profits were not so great, it began to dawn upon the distributors that film damage was causing them great sums of money, as prints were being returned to exchanges practically unfit for further use, and they immediately took the operators to task, (operators, now more properly called projectionists) for the film damage.

Print ISSN

0096-6460

Published

1923-10

Content type

Original Research

DOI

10.5594/jj00024