Watching motion-picture screens is my hobby, and, incidentally, my business. Four times a week do I combine business with pleasure, and it is these on-the-spot investigations that have given me good grounds for asserting that the average exhibitor does not appreciate the fact that there is an art in showing your slides to the best possible advantage. He seems to imagine that they can be thrown in any slipshod way, so long as he can claim to have shown them according to arrangement.
He does not realize that he is under an obligation to you, represented on his theater screen by paid advertising. Were the local paper you favor to print your ad. full of typographical errors and badly blend the type faces, or place your ad. in the most inconspicuous portion of the paper, you would, naturally, be offended and be likely to transfer your advertising account to the rival publication. This is why I advise you and your friends to frequent the theater that carries your advertising and see if you are getting value for your money.
At a certain motion-picture theater in Brooklyn about thirty slides are shown at the end of every performance. You have only got to look at the faces of the spectators to realize the resentment caused by the bad practice. That number of slides at one time is entirely too many. The exhibitor of this type is attempting to cram the stuff down the necks of his patrons, whereas he should accomplish it in an unforced manner. The latter is easily gotten over by showing only several slides at the end of each reel. They are thus spread out and have a far greater chance of sinking in, because picture-play-goers are not called upon to memorize a lot at one gulp, so to speak. In this way the patience of patrons is not overtaxed. The exhibitor can never tell, when he puts over his all-at-a-time slide stunt, whether or not he is sending spectators away to his competitor a few blocks up the street. I have personally known exhibitors who have been unable to account for the falling off of attendance, yet the whole root of the trouble was the slide dodge.
It is typically American to shirk telling openly anything that displeases, so that offended patron says nothing and is never seen inside the theater again. This rebounds on you, for these offended folks become your mortal enemy and lay the blame on the ads. themselves.
Even at those halls that follow the commendable methods outlined, spectators often see the entire performance through without witnessing all the slides. The mistake made by the exhibitor in this case is to project one of his own slides first to tell what the next photoplay will be. This serves to reveal to patrons that they have seen the reels over once, so they rise and leave the show right then. Instead, why not tell your exhibitor to hold back this condemning slide until the last, in order to have the audience sit out the others? Besides, the one advantage of this form of advertising is that there is no competition in commanding attention simultaneously. Each slide is projected separately, and it is advisable, if only for the reason stated, to run only a few at a time instead of the whole bunch.
As the provider of this extra revenue for the movie showman, it is up to you to see adequate treatment for your investment.