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Old 11-05-2018, 03:18 PM
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maxhifi maxhifi is offline
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Scopitone was a special jukebox, those films are actually printed in reverse, to accommodate the rear projection scopitone jukebox. If you showed one with a normal front projection projector, it the image would be flipped. I don't believe they were available for rental.

You could rent "soundies" though, which were more or less one song on a 400 foot reel. I've got a bunch of them from the 40s, most of them are pretty cornball stuff, some are surpsisingly good. Singing cowboys, silly fake romantic scenes, etc. I'm not sure what the venue was, but I would imagine dances, or something to show before a movie. The animated ones can be pretty creative. Others are over the top silly, like singing cowboys. Lots of big bands too. Another common 400 foot reel was magic shows. Castle Films produced music reels, as did other vendors. The quality is decidedly "B", the performances, performers, and even the film and sound leave a lot to be desired next to something produced by major Hollywood studios.

I even have some rather naïve by today's standards "bachelor" films, the ones I have, are heavily censored, having some scenes cut out, and are embossed "Approved by the Province of Saskatchewan" right into the film, with a Dymo style embossing machine. Those have the same format of a soundie, with music playing, and some modest nudity. Who knows what was cut out, it's lost to time!

Another common rental format is the 20 minute short movie. Lots of those were made, with quality extremely variable. More or less a TV show. Some were stand alone films, others part of a "serial". A serial being a movie made in many parts, like a TV show would be once TV was introduced. I have a few of those, in 10 - 15 parts. The idea was you'd play one episode each week, before a feature movie. They always end with a cliffhanger, to make you come back - and are written in such a way you won't be totally lost if you miss a few episodes.

I personally think running 16mm movies at home is kind of a bad idea, for most people. The films and projectors require special care and handling, and are extremely expensive. Rental films are often all scratched up and spliced, because of rough handling and being screened on poorly maintained projectors. The average joe just isn't going to invest the kind of effort necessary to keep a film in top shape, let alone the projector.

To support my film hobby I have a special desk set up with manual rewinds, a film splicer, a perforation repair machine, and some cleaning supplies. Also it's a good idea to have a bunch of extra reels. A bent reel can damage a film, and they're quite delicate. The projectionist motto is "inspect before you project", and if you don't go through a whole film and inspect it before use, you can be almost totally sure that a bad splice, bad sprocket, or damaged section of film is going to stop the show at some point. I do this only with something I paid decent money for, but it's wise to do this tedious job with anything you're showing to a group of people.

Last edited by maxhifi; 11-05-2018 at 03:21 PM.
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