Giant Screen Used for New Film Invention

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 774, 21 September 1929, Page 31

Giant Screen Used for New Film Invention

Third Dimension On Enlarged Proscenium HAILED AS REVOLUTION Third dimension motion pictures on a giant screen, as large as a theatre proscenium, were triumphantly hailed by a specia. l audience in the New York Rivoh Theatre recently, according to information just received by John W. Hicks, Jnr., managing director of Paramount in Australia. 2'/ie invention, he claims, is comparable to the advent of dialogue %iictures. QABLED information to Mr. Hicks stated that the demonstration included stereoscopic scenes of the seashore and country road, as well as a four-reel talking and singing picture. It was attended by an audience of 300 newspaper publishers, editors, hankers, scientists and motion picture executives. The pictures, photographed on 56millimeter film, were projected on a screen 40 feet wide and 20 feet high. Standard film is 35-millimeters and the normal size of a screen is approximately 18 feet wide and 14 feet high. Mr. Hicks says that the new stereoscopic film may be expected in Australia shortly. The New York demonstration was the climax of experiments which were begun 15 years ago by Adolph

Zukor, president of Paramount Famous Lasky Corporation. In 1914, Mr. Zukor and Edwin S. Porter, now consulting engineer for the International Projection Company, began experiments toward stereoscopic effects on the screen with the view to eventually developing a wide film which would give greater depth of focus than the regular film in use. The results of the experiment were burned in a fire that destroyed the first Paramount studio in 1915. Later the experiments were continued.

The picture of stereoscopic effects on the Paramount "Magnafilm” was “We’re in the Army Now.” featuring Johnny Burke, and is scheduled for release throughout the world shortly. The Invention of the Magnascope screen and the new Magnafilm with stereoscopic effect was the work of Lorenzo Del Riccio at the Paramount studios In Hollywood and New York. The sound track on the new Magnafilm remains the same size as on standard film. The equipment for the new Magnafilm Is manufactured for simple attachment to the standard projection machines now in general use In the theatres.