Indian Cinematograph_1938
Source: Indian Cinematograph Yearbook, 1938, p. 500
Courtesy: NFAI
We get a slight hint as to how these cameras and other kind of projection equipment were both important as well as the subject of government reports and advertisements etc. in the early 1930s. Although this advertisement is from 1938, and is extremely telling in terms of the work of the manufacturer of this equipment as well as the kinds of qualities that were important for a sound-on-film recording camera: noise-control levels; the additional equipment to the camera and film (the truck, the waxing machine etc.) All of this is of course a way of trying to maintain and further increase one's own revenue and interestingly, since it is the retailer/ middleman's advertisement and not the company, W. Vinten Ltd. But, given the overt nationalistic calls that existed during the late 1930s (this is less than a decade before Independence and in the midst of an on-going nationalist struggle). In that event, perhaps, this advertisement may be positioned in two ways: 1. The retailer, Evergreen Pictures, drawing upon the transnational brand of W. Vinten Ltd. for its own ends or 2. W. Vinten Ltd. recognising the mood of the moment, opts for surrogate advertising by using a retailer. Either way, possibly it was a two-way profitability.
Another intersection between the advertisement for this sound-on-film camera might well be in the context of projectors. The sound films were played to the audience, on different kinds of projectors, as seen from the excerpt below, from a report on the Survey of situation regarding Non-Theatrical Cinematograph Apparatus and Films dated September 1934 from the British Film Institute, which comments upon the kind of projectors in the market overall (50 in number) but divides the film projectors as per the kinds of film into other categories to be found apart from the 16mm and 35 mm Sound on film, Sound on disc and Silent ones. For instance, the 9.5 mm one could be used only for silent or Sound on disc and 17.5 mm for Sound on film (p. 2) and later, it did suggest the possible adaptation of different kinds of projectors for sound films and deemed it “…possible to adapt silent projectors with Sound on Disc and with such adapted machines to use home-made sound records and commercial gramophone records. On the other hand, discs are rather cumbersome and breakable and the whole apparatus more complicated than the Sound on Film apparatus” (pp. 4 – 5) since they concluded that “silent 35 mm. entertainment films are rare and becoming rapidly rarer…” (p. 3).
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