Notes on film speed from F.H. Richardson and what he heard President Wilson say !
Randy Munro is a 3rd generation projectionist from Tempe, Arizona. His Grandfather opened the first Nickelodeon Theater in Hanover, Ontario, Canada in 1906 and later ran several movie theaters in Flint, Michigan. Randy has worked in almost every theater and Drive-In in Arizona and been chief projectionist for several film festivals. His abilities as a curator include restoration work not only on movie projectors, but also jukeboxes, radios, televisions, phonographs, telephones and Coleman camping and lighting equipment.
Power's Cameragraphs were once the standard of the Motion Picture industry. This machine is regularly used with Professor Hall's Silent Movies to show 35mm silent movies hand-cranked. Movies in the "silent" era were projected at speeds that varied according to the action on the screen. D.W. Griffith himself once said, "The Projectionist in a large measure is compelled to re-direct the Photoplay".
In 1912, F.H. Richardson wrote in his Motion Picture Handbook "Speed at Which the Film is Run is a matter deserving of the closest study and attention on the part of the operator. In this is involved one of the finer points of projection. It is which lifts the real operator out of the class of the ordinary mechanic and makes him something of an artist. Lack of perception in this matter, or lack of attention to it, stamps the ordinary operator as ordinary and advertises the fact to the world at large. It lies in the power of the operator to govern absolutely the speed of all moving things on the screen. He cannot change the actor's gesture, or movement, but he can vastly alter its speed, merely by altering the speed of his machine."
In 1916 Richardson followed up "Overspeeding the machine is an Outrage on the Producer, an Outrage on the Film Exchange, an Outrage on the Projection Machine Manufacturer, and an Outrage on the Operator himself. There is no excuse for it - absolutely none at all. If the house if full and a crowd waiting outside waiting to gain entrance it would be far better to cut out one reel than injure the whole performance."
In 1922 Richardson wrote about OVER-SPEEDING and U.S. President Woodrow Wilson ; "One of the cardinal sins of the theater is over speeding projection. Former President Wilson once said within hearing of the author : 'I have often seen myself in motion pictures, and the sight has made me very sad. I have wondered if I really do walk like an animated jumping jack, or move around with such extreme rapidity as I appear to.'"
If you don't know who F.H. Richardson was you are not alone, but you might know who Adolph Zukor was, and this is what he said about Richardson in 1935 ; "For more than a quarter century now F.H Richardson, author of this and the Bluebooks that have gone before, has been the philosopher, friend and guide of the projectionists. He began in the Nickelodeon days when the two-pin Edison projector was considered a wonderful machine, and he has continued, becoming himself an institution along with the developing art, into this day of the amazing complexities and large responsibilities of the modern projection room, with its maze of machinery and all the delicate, intricate devices that are involved in sound picture reproduction."
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Copyright 1999 George C Hall