In the years immediately preceding the organization of this group of the biggest concerns, the picture itself was not progressing. There was no longer any novelty in seeing people in motion on the screen, and the inane subjects shown offered little more than that. While the pessimists, who, as a matter of fact, had never taken a deep interest in the motion picture, were predicting its early demise, the manufacturers set about to find means of renewing the interest. Short dramas and comedies were written, and players drafted from the stage. The public responded readily, and once more Fortune smiled upon the picture-men, never again to desert them. Until about 1911 the average motion picture was approximately one thousand feet long, and occasionally two or more distinct subjects were included on a piece of film this length. The reels on which the film is wound for easy handling will hold one thousand feet, so that in the United States a picture of this length came to be known as a “single-reel” picture. In England and on the Continent this term has not come into general use, the practice being to state the approximate length of the film in feet or meters. Though Richard G. Holloman’s three-thousand-foot or three-reel production of “The Passion Play,” in 1905, had proved most profitable, the American manufacturers did not heed the indication that audiences would welcome stories longer than one thousand feet. Foreign producers were quicker to see the possibilities of the longer picture, but as recently as 1912 their productions of greater length than two thousand feet were offered without response on the American market. Then came the success of “Quo Vadis?” an Italian multiple-reel picture, exploited in this country by George Kleine, of Chicago, to whom credit must be given for the rise of the long production, with its results in placing the picture in the best theaters in the country. “Quo Vadis?” earned a fortune, and was followed by a scramble on the part of buyers to get the long-neglected foreign productions, while the American manufacturers turned their attention to the staging of multiple-reel pictures. To-day the short picture, though still forming the bulk of the output, is somewhat neglected, for the quickest way to the public’s fancy seems to lie in the big production that rivals the stage-play. In Europe the long picture is declining in favor, and the picture of one and two thousand feet returning to popularity. In the United States, however, it would seem that the future of the motion picture lies in the production that gives an entire evening’s entertainment, offering, as it does, opportunities for the exercise of artistic effort that are denied by the fifteen or thirty minute picture. II THE STUDIO--THE MECHANICS OF PICTURE MAKING AND SHOWING