Film Advertising in Early Cinema: Part 2

This is the part two of an article from the March 1917 issue of Moving Picture World about the early years of movie advertising. This section focuses on the development of more sophisticated advertising techniques such as the campaign, or press book, and the emergence of the serial in American film. Click here for Part 1

What did you think of the article? Has movie advertising really changed in the past 100 years?Let me know in the comments.
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TEN YEARS OF FlLM ADVERTISING by Epes Winthrop Sargent - PART 2

Perhaps no greater contrast may be found than to compare the work ten years ago with that of today. Then the advertising man — where there was any — was generally the editor as well. He looked after the scripts and advertising, and still had a little spare time. One company, for example, demanded each week copy for a quarter page advertisement in one paper and a half page in another. Twice a month a sixteen page bulletin release was got out and each week three or four squibs were sent out to the trade papers.

One or possibly two cuts had to be made for each one reel subject, and later the editor also sent out the still pictures to the lithographer.  That was all that was done or could be done. Today the large organizations have extensive staffs of writers. Not all of them are good, perhaps, but they help to keep up the high cost of white paper.

In addition to preparing advertising copy the press room supplies weekly several thousand words of press stuff, ranging from three lines to several typewritten pages. Cuts of one and sometimes two screens are prepared, often more than one cut of a subject and in one, two and three column measures. Ready set advertisements are prepared and often may be had in matrix form for inexpensive mailing.
 

Pressbooks first appeared in
1913 for the Italian epic
Quo Vadis?

There are elaborate special stories of each release and the usual synopsis, and there is paper of all sizes as well as a stock of portrait cuts and postcards. It is in the serial, however, that the greatest advancement is shown. For these most companies now prepare elaborate campaign books.

These may list a hundred or more sheets of paper, ranging from the half sheet to twenty eights. There will be a careful teaser and followup campaign planned out, a series of stunt suggestions,  perhaps a number of novelty advertisements, such as buttons, pins, pennants, puzzles and the like, from fifteen to fifty cuts ranging from thumbnail to half page layouts, copy for advertising for each installment and special press stories for the preliminary campaign and each chapter.

Advertising novelties and paper and cuts are supplied about at cost. The rest is all free, and yet three or four  years ago the first suit of press stuff for a feature brought  five dollars for about twenty typewritten pages - and was  worth it. Today the campaign book is free and is frequently backed up by elaborate newspaper campaigns, the most ambitious and unique being the recent Pathe campaign, though the most persistent advertising is that done in the Hearst newspapers for the International pictures.

The Universal has got out a number of remarkable books and Bluebird issues a four page sheet for each release that gives the exhibitor all he needs in the way of publicity material. All he has to have is the sheet, a pair of shears and an advertising account with the local papers. The smallest releasing organization today does more for the exhibitor than did all of the companies combined ten years ago, and does it more intelligently.

On the exhibiting end the change has been even more marked. The exhibitor not only makes use of the material given him, but he improves upon it. Ten years ago he had nothing but stock paper with which to work.  There was no true to film paper. He bought of the show print concerns paper of defunct theatrical productions.

*Poster for a multi-part serial
by film pioneer William Selig, 

this one for 1913's
The Adventures of
Kathlyn, also recognized as
the first cliffhanger serial

Some of this was positively vicious and contributed in no small degree to the demand for a censorship. Reformers did not go into the theater to see how bad the films were.  A glance at the lobby display was sufficient.
A Selig* release, for example, showed a girl jumping off a bridge. It was a sixty foot bridge, and that in itself was a real thriller for those days. She just jumped off the bridge and towed the hero to land. One house dug up a one sheet for this showing two men in a boat bearing down on a girl and a man struggling in the water. One of the boatmen was shooting at the man in the water and the other was preparing to beat the girl over the head with an oar.

It was a gross libel on a well written picture, but people looked at the paper and not at the film and decided that the pictures must need reforming. Take fifteen or twenty sheets like this, plastered over the front of a converted store, dark, filthy and odorous in the extreme, and the passerby was scarcely to be blamed for being unwilling to risk his health and pocketbook in so unsavory a place. 

END OF PART TWO

A Century of Movie Posters: From Silent to Art House

More Treasures from American Film Archives 1894-1931

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Film Advertising in Early Cinema: Part 1

This is the first part of an article from the March 1917 issue of Moving Picture World that provides an insightful and sometimes humorous look into the early years of movie advertising. In today's age of multi-million dollar movie ad budgets and sophisticated social media campaigns, it's a fascinating first-hand account of the relatively simple origins of what has become a very complex discipline.

Due to the article's length, I'll be dividing it into three parts for this week. My own comments and context of the article are in bold.

What did you think of the article? Let me know in the comments.
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TEN YEARS OF FlLM ADVERTISING by Epes Winthrop Sargent

APPROXIMATELY ninety five per cent, of the history of film advertising has been written in the past ten years (1907-1917) and more than fifty per cent, of the whole in the past five. Although it is twenty years since the motion picture was brought forward as a public entertainment, it is only within the past five years that the pictures have been handled as an amusement proposition should be.

The first movie poster ever made is believed to be an 1890 French lithograph printed by renowned illustrator Jules Cheret to promote the short film program"Projections Artistiques." Early film posters were merely stated the film's name and showtimes, with the imagery focusing on the live theatrical acts which made up most of an evening's bills.

Poster for the 1895 film L'arroseur Arrosé

The first known poster to promote a stand-alone movie was for 1895's L'arroseur Arrosé, also considered cinema's first comedy. Shot by early cinema pioneer Louis Lumiere,  it is also the first poster to depict an actual scene from a film.

Looking at the final film below, it's clear that despite its crudeness by today's standards, at least the poster is accurate as to what viewers would actually see, unlike some of today's misleading film posters and ad campaigns.

L'arroseur Arrosé (1895)

Film Advertising falls naturally into two parts, advertising to the exhibitor on the part of the manufacturer of film and the exhibitor's efforts to reach an enlarged public. The manufacturer was the first to perceive the value of printer's ink in its various forms.

Back in 1896 little or no advertising was done on behalf of the film. Later the Clipper, then the chief organ of the exhibitor of amusements, was used as a medium, and this was followed by direct appeal to the exhibitor through circulars or bulletins. It was all limited in scope and, for the greater part, rather amateurish. At the start there was not much to be advertised, to tell the truth. Production was comparatively small and decidedly irregular.

The adoption of the release by dates helped somewhat to regulate advertising on the part of manufacturers, but there seemed to be small need for great endeavors. There was a demand greater than the supply, sales were good and intensive methods were not yet needed. The condition was much the same as that which confronts the pioneer farmer working the virgin soil. The rudest sort of cultivation brought rich returns.

But these returns were too great to escape the observation of the speculator. Companies multiplied and in proportionately larger ratio than the demand increased. More advertising had to be done to sell the same amount of film, but this advertising was largely written by someone untrained to the work and much of it was crude, though better than nothing.  

Even so late as 1909 things were dormant. The manufacturer used the trade mediums, he got out a more or less ornate bulletin, but there he stopped. He did not even realize that there was another and more productive form of advertising which has come to be known as "service."

With the formation of the Motion Picture Patents Company, which controlled nearly the entire output of film, there was adopted a rule that no manufacturer should give to the exchange or exhibitor any advertising matter of any description.

Most of the units of the company went further than this and even where exhibitors were willing to pay for cuts of scenes or for still pictures from which cuts might be made, the request was looked upon as a nuisance and this service denied.  It was not until 1910 or 1911 that the Edison company began to seek to accommodate the live wires with cuts, generally electros of the cuts in their publication.

But one concession was made in that in 1909 arrangements were effected whereby the A. B. C. Company, of Cleveland, got out a one sheet for each release. This paper cost fifteen cents a sheet, but even at that it represented a considerable loss to the companies since a certain edition had to be purchased outright, the stuff being sold to the exchanges or exhibitors on behalf of the manufacturer.

It was not until the advent of the multiple reel that this advertising through service really began. Here was something that could be advertised to advantage. It paid the maker to have his release boomed by the exhibitor, and there began the change that reached its climax in the present national advertising on the part of the manufacturer.

Just how valuable this national advertising is to manufacturer and exhibitor is more or less a matter of personal opinion, though it would seem that the return is more general than specific. It has helped, however, to break down the barrier of the business office and to give the films their proper place in the reading pages.

Ten years ago few papers mentioned the pictures, though  there were a few which made a practice of writing up the pictures and then holding up some company for payment. Seven or eight years ago, for example, a New York paper sent around a page story and asked a certain company a four figure sum for its insertion.

This arguably reflects the perception of the media and upper classes in the early 20th century of films as a lowly undesirable diversion. Many theatre actors who performed in early films did it solely for the money and felt that the work was far beneath their abilities.These methods do not obtain today to any marked degree. Public interest in the pictures is too great to permit them to be ignored, and the house advertising satisfies the hungriest business office, but the manufacturer contributes indirectly to this work a greater sum weekly than he was occasionally asked to pay some paper. Also he gets more for it.

END OF PART ONE

A Century of Movie Posters: From Silent to Art House

: The Movies Begin - A Treasury of Early Cinema, 1894-1913