WEBVTT

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I'm sure that they did otherwise they wouldn't keep him all the way.

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Well they kept him then really until the studio closed, is that right?

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Right here, yeah.

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And that last picture that, I think I showed you that picture, he's a photograph on the

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screen with Bert Clearup that later became president of SVE.

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Now you know you talked about this processor and the fact that Selig wanted wooden, not

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wheels but spindles in there instead of rubber.

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What was the problem with Selig that he would interfere?

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See, for so many years Selig like all the other motion picture labs were using reels

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that they wound the film on and those were made out of wood, hard wood and they were

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saturated with paraffin I think if I remember correctly, so they were more or less waterproof.

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And I think that's where the argument came.

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He thought that if you use them in a tank why shouldn't you use them in a developing,

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I don't know if this is true sir but I just imagine that was the reason and then said

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no we have so many of them side by side and continuously in chemicals and continuously

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in some are of course those that were drying didn't make any difference.

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So what was this called?

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This was portable to be used in the army, correct?

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Yes, there's supposed to be a lorry built by government where they would put this thing

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in there.

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And it would be used on the field?

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On the field, yes.

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And can you describe it was a continuous processor but what was involved in the processor?

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Drying you said?

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That was all in one.

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Developing and washing and fixing and drying.

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Right and did it was ever delivered on time or not or was it delayed?

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I don't think they ever finished it.

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But it had been ordered by the government?

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Uh huh.

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Okay is there anything that you would really like to say about this because you're really

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among the pioneers, the film pioneers and was it a fascinating industry or was it something

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that people did not really care for until a certain time?

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In other words there were a lot of people who saw it but were they audiences who perhaps

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went to the theatre too or not?

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What were the audiences like?

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Well for us it was a very fascinating thing.

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To us especially those that were born in Europe living pictures were something.

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We heard about them but only reading about them in a newspaper that's not enough.

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No one was able to explain to us what that is.

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It's awfully hard to understand.

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We saw a picture, we can't imagine how a picture can live.

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But that was very good that way and to many of our town people that came in to see the

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project that's filmed about that size, they looked at it, they marveled at it but I don't

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think they understood it anyhow.

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There was a lot of things involved.

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And the interest in movies were quite great everywhere.

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I went to movies a lot and the interest was so great that people started to think about

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using motion pictures for education and I think Victus was one of them.

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The only man that I remember, besides changing films from 35mm to 28mm which were stock plays,

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a man came in to SNA and said Mr. Victus send me that you will take this negative of mine

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and make me a film from it, a 28mm film.

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His name was Stefan Habos and for many years I read that name, Stefan Habos in Chicago

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here.

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But I can't, I was going to, now that you brought this subject, I was going to look him up, see

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if it's the same Habos that called himself a shepherd of Galilee.

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He brought in negatives from there and we turned it into a lecture that was intended

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for churches.

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And he was one of those people that had a set mind about doing something and when I

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was making titles for him he had things written, this is a tree and so and so.

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I tried to tell him Mr. Habos you don't have to say this is a tree, all right.

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But he didn't like that, he wanted to show it on a screen.

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But then it didn't make any difference to me and I left him and I left one story of

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Moses that somebody brought in unfinished, I left it there at SNA.

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I just wrote Mr. Victor, Mr. Victor I'm going to Europe to make a movie, a long movie and

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he wrote a letter and said well I'm sorry you're going and I wish you the best of luck.

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And when we got back from Europe I didn't hear anything about 28mm film anymore.

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That's phased out.

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But 16mm appeared or Pathé had one that was another.

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Pathé had another size and Pathé also had a safety film long before Eastman did but

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they couldn't market it for some reason or other.

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Whether Eastman was a monopoly or not.

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About that 16mm film, while we were at Rotheger Film Company,

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First National bought so many positive prints from their negatives, 200, 300 and with this

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machine they had four deep view printers already which were better, not any better than shoestacks.

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They had Bell and Howell and they had Deep View.

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They didn't have any shoestacks at all.

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Alright, those printers then could handle a thousand feet.

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Yes, but the film was always printed at Rotheger on 400 foot roll.

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It was, even though the others had a thousand.

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It was developed on these reels.

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Rotheger never had an automatic developing option.

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Alright, prior to the 400 foot printer, and you went to work in about 1916, am I correct,

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alright, prior to that, how were films assembled?

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There were not the 400 foot printers then.

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When did the 400 foot printers come in?

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Probably the time you arrived, is that correct?

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Because the others were put together, women at spools would put one scene together and

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splice it, another scene together and splice it and this was not, these were not the negative

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cutters, these were the positive assemblers.

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Where did you get that story now?

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At Selig we already had a long roll, not any longer than 400 feet, but something between

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100 and 150.

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That's what I'm trying to track down, when that came in, because prior to that there

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were positive assemblers.

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Yes, but we still had to have positive assemblers.

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Because of the what?

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Because there was only 150 foot scene or even in the first national.

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So here's what I'm trying to say is, there would be a 150 foot scene, then there would

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be a title that would have to be spliced in.

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It already was printed in and inserted in a negative.

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All right, now.

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The only titles that were inserted in the story as far as I remember at Selig are in

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a news reel that had a future showing and that was printed along with negative.

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The only title that were inserted was like the one that I mentioned.

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Well the scenes were then still positively assembled, were they not?

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In other words, there would be a scene in a positive, that's what these women were

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doing with their little white gloves and so on.

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They were not negative cutters.

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They would, they would, see I have quotes from Hazel Budemeyer who worked as a cutter,

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a positive assembler over at SNA.

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In 1908 and 1909 and 1910, and she said that those scenes,

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there would be a whole lot of them in the positives.

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Maybe in 1910 or 1911.

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I came in in 12.

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So the 400 foot printers came in maybe 13 or 14, up to 16, because they were there then.

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And then the 1000 footers came in the late part of the teens.

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When the processing machine were started.

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Now it's kind of hard for me to answer that question because I have never seen that done

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that way.

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The only time that we inserted titles were with...

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Well how many scenes, let's put it this way, were in a positive?

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How many scenes had splices in them in a positive 1000 foot reel?

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Let's put it that way.

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How many splices in a 1000 foot reel, since you had to run them off,

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how many splices were there?

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There were only splices between 100, 150, or 25, or five feet or something like that.

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But there were splices.

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There were maybe a score of splices in a positive film.

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I'm not talking about a negative, I'm talking about a positive.

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Well, that depended on a special scene.

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Now I'll have to explain it to you this way.

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Even as late as 1921, 22, 23, when I come back to Rathacker again after we got back from...

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Even then we had to insert five foot scenes sometime.

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When we were cutting in a night scene into a day scene or something like that, or recalling

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something.

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Once in a while we had those inserts in positive, but usually not.

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They were run off in the same tint, either black and white or yellow or whatever.

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If there was an insert, there was a space for it, and that was put into a reel.

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That wasn't done very much.

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The normal 1000 foot reel would have a number of splices in it.

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Oh, yes.

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All right, that's what I wanted to know because in the continuous 1000 foot printer,

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they could take a negative that had been properly cut and there would be no splices in it.

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That's what I'm trying to say.

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But when you had the 400 foot printer, you were still assembling your positives with splices.

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Not all the way through, depending on what the scenes were like.

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Well, that's what I was trying to determine.

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When we started to tone and dye films, we had to do more assembly of positive than we did when

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we had only black and white film.

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All right.

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The landing of Columbus, coming of Columbus was in most versions was completely colored,

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not just tinted, it was colored.

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Hand colored.

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According to what I have learned, it was done in Europe.

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They did it perhaps with a stencil process.

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Have you ever heard of a stencil?

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How was that done?

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They stayed within stencils.

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Was it Pathé or Lumiere or who did it?

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Pathé is the one that Dan talked about.

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He was interested in that process for a long time, but

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they couldn't figure out anything practical that would apply, for instance, sky for such a length.

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Flesh tones and so on.

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Make matrixes of some kind to imprint the thing in here.

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That wasn't very practical.

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So hand colored film was still cheaper in the long run.

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There wasn't as many prints made, but I've seen some of them.

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We tried some of them at Sea Lake and we gave it up.

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It wasn't profitable.

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Well, I saw the hand colored print of the 1911 landing of Columbus.

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It's absolutely beautiful.

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But the colors jump around, but it's a beautiful thing.

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That was done on the Indiana side of the lake.

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Is there anything that you would like to add or remember or recall?

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If you want to just think about it for a while, I could come back later, of course,

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and go over this with you.

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Well, after you listen to this tape yourself,

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if you have something on your notes that you wanted me to talk about,

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why don't you jot it down and I'll do the same thing.

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I'll send you a tape.

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Marvelous.

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The other thing is, what about a time clock?

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Did you punch a time clock?

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At SNA, they had to.

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I was just wondering if Seelig...

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Yeah, at SNA, they did.

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At Seelig, too.

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I didn't stop punching clock until I...

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I punched clock until I started at Roethwicker.

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And that Dewey was the kind of a manager that told whoever it was in charge that,

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I don't want Jerry to punch clock.

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And I told him, well, I don't mind.

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He says, no, I don't want you.

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He said, I want you to remember one thing.

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An ordinary man gets paid by an hour.

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The other man gets paid by the week.

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The better man gets paid by the month,

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but it takes the big guy to get paid by the year.

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Remember that.

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And from then on, I never punched clock.

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Even the actors and actresses and the directors punched a clock over at SNA.

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I don't know.

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Yeah, they did at SNA.

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I know that.

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All right, I don't want to keep you anymore,

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but I know there's a lot more to add to this.

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For instance, your wife, she had acted in some of those...

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She had not been acting.

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Did you use her in films?

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No.

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You did not?

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I didn't even use any of the members of our theatrical society in films that I worked at.

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No.

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They were commercials, though.

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They were really the first theatrical commercials.

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That's right.

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They were, and they had to tell the story in that short time.

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Some were clever, some were just an ordinary scene.

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Where did you learn composition?

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Because your film, the Slovakian film is beautiful.

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Where did you learn your composition?

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That's what I like to know because it was very, very well done.

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Well, had you learned that to a certain extent at Selig's or how?

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Because...

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No, no.

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You see, the man that I got to know later on, a commercial artist by the name Maka,

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told me what every artist and photographer has to know is lines, focusing point, and so on.

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Tried to remember to do this and that.

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He himself went to Czechoslovakia in 1920 and made a movie of an athletic event there.

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I learned a lot from him and I learned a lot from the other members of the Bohemian Art Club.

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Because you really have it.

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It's a beautiful film.

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Have you been able to get those frames?

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I'm very concerned about it.

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Are you getting those frames replaced that were destroyed?

240
00:16:27.100 --> 00:16:28.920
When you tried to show it.

241
00:16:29.140 --> 00:16:31.940
Is there any way you can get the completed thing for yourself?

242
00:16:32.160 --> 00:16:33.300
No, it's all right.

243
00:16:33.520 --> 00:16:34.620
Our film is good.

244
00:16:35.840 --> 00:16:37.000
Fix the projector.

245
00:16:37.180 --> 00:16:38.140
There's nothing wrong with it.

246
00:16:38.160 --> 00:16:41.380
No, but I'm saying the burnt frames, can you get those replaced?

247
00:16:41.440 --> 00:16:43.700
Because that's too good a film not to have it.

248
00:16:44.080 --> 00:16:46.320
No, that one or two frames don't make much difference.

249
00:16:47.340 --> 00:16:48.760
Well, I don't know about that.

250
00:16:48.800 --> 00:16:50.500
You better get those frames replaced.

251
00:16:50.540 --> 00:16:51.560
That was a beautiful film.

252
00:16:51.600 --> 00:16:53.180
What I saw, I'd love to see the whole thing.

253
00:16:53.200 --> 00:16:54.120
You should see this.

254
00:16:54.160 --> 00:16:55.460
I kind of like it myself.

255
00:16:55.480 --> 00:16:56.280
It's a beautiful film.

256
00:16:56.600 --> 00:16:57.600
It really is.

257
00:16:58.080 --> 00:17:01.240
And it should be, of course, they're preserving it in Europe,

258
00:17:01.300 --> 00:17:03.840
but it should also be preserved here.

259
00:17:05.520 --> 00:17:09.280
The only other thing that I have to ask you is, and I can turn this off.