ON THE SPOT

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 654, 4 May 1929, Page 25

ON THE SPOT

Movietone Manager Outlines His Plans NEW ZEALAND TALKIES News of Fox talking picture plans for Australia and New Zealand is brought by Mr. Stanley S. Crick, managing director of Fox Movietones, Ltd., who is due in Auckland to-morrow. He arrived from Sydney on May 1. Production of talking and sound films will soon be undertaken in Australia and New Zealand, he says. He expects that a complete Movietone equipment will arrive at an early date. This will be mounted on a special truck and will tour everywhere making talkies of special events. “There is an immense field to be

explored and I think that this new idea will considerably benefit Australia and New Zealand,” declares Mr. Crick. “Australasian audiences will not welcome the tone of an American’s voice in inappropriate settings, and it would be ridiculous to hear an Australian bushman speaking with a Yankee accent. The same applies to New Zealand. "The policy of my firm will be to take subjects and produce talking pictures on the spot. “At present we have an Australian engineer who is studying the process in New York. He will return in three or four months. “We shall begin with Fox Movietone News pictures, which will correspond to the gazettes which are shown at present, but with sound effects added.” Mr. Crick considers the advent of the talking pictures makes possible as a commercial enterprise the filming of short Australian studies. A story like those given in many of the poems of “Banjo” Patterson could be interpreted in a manner not possible out of Australia. Such a production would have the first element of success, because the atmosphere w'ould be perfectly natural.