Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Before there was television news, there were newsreels. They were short films shown in movie theaters between shows, ranging in length from five to ten minutes.
Newsreels provided American audiences with motion picture accounts of the important news of the day. Many of the events of the twentieth century etched in the minds of Americans came from newsreels. These include the takeoff of Charles Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis across the Atlantic in 1927, the explosion of the German dirigible Hindenburg, and the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
The newsreels were shot on film made of nitrocellulose, the same material Thomas Edison and others used when first developing motion pictures in the 1890s. The film burned easily. Nitrate was sensitive to the slightest heat, even the heat of the film projector lamp. In the USC collection there are eleven million feet of film, seven million on nitrate and four million on more stable acetate. With support from NEH, the USC film library is transferring the nitrate film to modern polyester to retain the quality of the original stock. "Using this process we can retain as much of the original as possible," says Singleton. "It will last hundreds of years if kept cool.
By 1929, Movietone--the name Fox created for its sound reels--had cameramen and representatives operating around the world, and its newsreels were available in twenty-two languages. Thomas Doherty notes in his book, Pre-Code Hollywood, that the newsreels were popular enough to sustain a dozen all-newsreel theaters in large cities. One of them, the Embassy Newsreel Theater, was a fixture on Broadway from 1929 until 1949. Using newsreels from Fox Movietone News and Hearst Metrotone News, the Embassy played a forty-five to fifty-minute program with fourteen showings daily. The theater was an immediate success, notes Doherty.
Newsreels provided American audiences with motion picture accounts of the important news of the day. Many of the events of the twentieth century etched in the minds of Americans came from newsreels. These include the takeoff of Charles Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis across the Atlantic in 1927, the explosion of the German dirigible Hindenburg, and the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
The newsreels were shot on film made of nitrocellulose, the same material Thomas Edison and others used when first developing motion pictures in the 1890s. The film burned easily. Nitrate was sensitive to the slightest heat, even the heat of the film projector lamp. In the USC collection there are eleven million feet of film, seven million on nitrate and four million on more stable acetate. With support from NEH, the USC film library is transferring the nitrate film to modern polyester to retain the quality of the original stock. "Using this process we can retain as much of the original as possible," says Singleton. "It will last hundreds of years if kept cool.
By 1929, Movietone--the name Fox created for its sound reels--had cameramen and representatives operating around the world, and its newsreels were available in twenty-two languages. Thomas Doherty notes in his book, Pre-Code Hollywood, that the newsreels were popular enough to sustain a dozen all-newsreel theaters in large cities. One of them, the Embassy Newsreel Theater, was a fixture on Broadway from 1929 until 1949. Using newsreels from Fox Movietone News and Hearst Metrotone News, the Embassy played a forty-five to fifty-minute program with fourteen showings daily. The theater was an immediate success, notes Doherty.
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