This series of articles covers the history of the Kinemo films produced with the Watch Tower Society’s approval. They are:
1.
Three
travel films issued in 1922 (which have survived).
2.
The
Cedar Point Ohio convention film (which at time of writing is missing).
3.
How
the films have survived to this day.
4.
An
amazingly inaccurate contemporary review of one of them.
First, the travel films of 1922.
The
September 13, 1922 issue of Golden Age carried the following advertisement for
the Kinemo Kit Corporation. They had produced three films (and a projector to
match) which could be bought by Bible Students to show films in homes and small
gatherings.
The
managing director of Kinemo was George Chester Driscoll (1858-1941). He had
previously managed the Pastor Russell Lecture Bureau and was one of the Bible
Students involved in the Mena Film Company’s film Restitution (1918) that
featured on this blog a few weeks ago.
In
the August 15, 1920 Watchtower, it was announced that after a month long tour
of Britain, J F Rutherford would visit Europe, and then “he will also go to
Palestine and Egypt, and will be accompanied to Athens, Palestine and Egypt by
Brother Driscoll and other brethren with a moving picture apparatus for the
purpose of making moving pictures of actual scenes of...things of Biblical
interest.” The results would be used for witnessing, and readers would be able
to purchase both films and special projector in due course.
The
October 1, 1921 Watchtower announced that the films had been duly made and
exhibited in standard format at a number of locations, and now the Kinemo Kit
Corporation (with Driscoll as manager) would handle orders for films and
projectors. The Watchtower commented: “While the Society cannot engage in the
manufacture and sale...yet it is the desire of the Society that every possible
means for teaching the truth be employed.”
There
was then quite a delay - nearly a year - before the above advertisement for
films and projectors appeared in the September 13, 1922 Golden Age. Public showings
in 35mm had obviously continued in the meantime because according to a report
in the New Era Enterprise for May 30, 1922, a 5-reel version of the Palestine
film and a 3-reel version of the Imperial Valley film were shown to a full
house of 1500 at a convention session at Moose Hall, Philadelphia, on April 14,
1922. At the famous September Cedar Point Ohio convention the films were shown
out of doors in the grove on a large screen, along with a tantalizing
supporting feature. According to the New Era Enterprise for October 31, 1922:
“The pictures included views of the Bible House and other organization
buildings and offices in Brooklyn, the Bethel Home, etc., the printing and
binding of booklets and pamphlets etc.” Now that would be footage worth discovering.
(See the second article in this series).
When
the Golden Age advertised the Kinemo films and projectors, George Driscoll
wrote a two page article in the same issue about the project entitled
“Visualizing Fulfilled Prophecies”. Most of the article is about technical
issues. The films were on safety stock rather than nitrate, which meant you did
not need a fireproof booth for the projectionist, and there was little danger
of an audience being burnt to a cinder in the privacy of their own homes.
It was planned to add further films to the initial three, but nothing more appeared in the Watchtower or Golden Age, and only one more advertisement appeared in the pages of the Enterprise. In the October 3, 1922 issue the Instructo Cinema Services of Chicago offered a 400 foot reel of highlights of the Cedar Point convention, to be used with the Kinemo equipment. The advertisement was reprinted in the November 28, 1922 issue. (See again article two in this series).
Below are some frames from the original Kinemo films. First is the film on Imperial Valley, California. This was a travelog of Imperial Valley showing what had been done to the area to make the desert blossom. Because it was not filmed as part of JFR’s foreign tour it was initially thought that he did not appear in it, but there is a Hitchcockian cameo in it.
Second
is a film on Palestine, which concentrated on the Jews returning to the land,
and, as they believed, fulfilling prophesy.
Then surveying the horizon
...and visiting an estate manager's office.
And
next some frames from the film on the Great Pyramid, showing J F Rutherford
exiting from the pyramid. It was obviously rather hot.
So
what happened to Kinemo? There is evidence that Driscoll ceased fellowship with
the IBSA at some point. But probably the biggest problem was the size of film
used. Kinemo used a special system of 17.5mm film stock – basically standard
35mm split down the middle. (Much like the amateur gauge of standard 8mm was
16mm stock split down the middle with extra sprocket holes added.) Kinemo films
needed their own special projector to show them. And in 1923 the 16mm gauge was
introduced for small audience projection, which soon took over and blew 17.5mm
out of the water. (Between 1923-1925 the Enterprise ran a number of small ads
from Kinemo owners who were now trying to sell on the equipment and films.)
When Pathe in France tried to reintroduce 17.5mm film in the late 1920s, it was
not compatible with earlier versions, and soon died the death again. And by the
1930s the Watch Tower Society was no longer teaching that literal Israel or the
Great Pyramid fulfilled prophesy, so the subject matter would only appeal to
Bible Students outside of the IBSA.
Moving
pictures bring the past to life. The three Kinemo films can be seen today (see
links in the third article) as early attempts in the wake of the Photodrama to
use the medium of film to spread their message.
Brian (who rescued the Kinemo films) has sent some details for all you technical buffs out there.
ReplyDeletePerhaps it is an unnecessary detail, but the Kinemo films had descriptive titles which could not possibly be read if the film was run at a constant 16 fps. The intention was to have the projector operator stop the film on one of the "title" frames and allow the audience to read it. Frankly, this was dangerous because the film was a "safety film" form of Nitrate, or slower burning Nitrate. 16 mm film was the first to be produced exclusively with an Acetate base. I suspect that the projector operator would slowly crank the film from frame to frame so that no one frame would overheat and either melt or catch fire. For example, there might have been only 9 or 10 frames (less than 1 second's worth of film at 16 fps) with a description of three or four lines of text - hardly enough time to read the whole thing.
Also, the lamp wasn't bright enough to project the film tens of feet. It was probably viewed in a living room or parlor.
(In these descriptions, I limited my comments to the Imperial Valley film, but the principles of what I am describing apply to all three of the films.)
Technically, these are dual-frame reductions made to a single frame of 35 mm wide film with only half of the width of the gate open and half of it blocked. If you were to look at the film without having it in a projector, you would see a narrow frame line between two pictures, then a wider frame line, then the next picture. In other words, pairs of the original film's frames were copied to a single 24 mm tall frame on the "17.5 mm wide" film.
[I did this type of copying of the Photo Drama's Introduction to Part 2 on a copy stand to a 35 mm still camera in 1977. It is technically a very difficult thing to do as the size of two of the original frames (and their frame lines) must be precisely the same size as a single frame of the new copy's film including its frame line. This is hard to describe in words.]
In the case of the Kinemo films' duplication, the area of the duplicate had to be precisely 1/4 the size of the original film's area! Instead of 24 mm for each frame's height, each frame had to be 12 mm tall. Since two original frames were shot onto a single 24 mm tall frame of film, the size of the frame line would be different between successive photos, thin, thick, thin, thick, etc. because the duplicating camera had a thicker frame line. Unfortunately, they didn't quite get the scaling right. This is why the frame jumps up and down - every other frame. (This might also be a reason these films weren't popular - you can get a *headache* watching these jumpy films!)
If you look closely at the films, as "projected" in my animations of the still frames (I shot one frame of each original Kinemo film frame), you will see the top and/or bottom of the frame flicker a little taller or shorter. Notice this on all of the sections of moving images in the Imperial Valley film. You can see the bottom of the image going up and down, with the thinner frame line becoming visible along with the top of the next film frame. This is not bad "framing" on my part. If the flicker didn't happen at the bottom, it would have happened at the top of the frame, as it does somewhat at 5:24. I could have cropped the film in software to hide this flickering, but if I had, it wouldn't represent the true appearance of the film. Also, video "motion smoothing" could have been applied in software to reduce the film's vertical jitter, but this would again, have removed the authenticity of what the people actually saw on the screen.
BTW, Rutherford is also visible at 11:46 in the Imperial Valley film, just left of center, looking up at the sign. It only lasts for part of a second. Again at 13:08, for another 6 seconds, and again in the last scene of the film after a couple of title slides.
Hello,
ReplyDeleteVery interesting read. Where could I acquire the films?
Probably the only way is to find them on YouTube and then download them from there.
ReplyDelete