in a big way as they
are now. That is to say--and this whole statement should have your
most careful consideration--the only thing that a manufacturer
considers today is the question of whether or not a certain effect,
scenic, mechanical, or whatever it may be, is _worth_ the money which
would have to be spent to obtain it. It would be folly to say that
train wrecks, burning houses, destroyed bridges, and the like, are
"impossible" in a film story, after every patron of the picture houses
has seen on the screen everything from the wrecking by earthquake of a
whole village to the burning of a huge sailing vessel--have seen, in
very fact, almost everything that it is possible to see on the earth,
above the earth, or in the waters under it. We have indeed reached a
period of amazing spectacular effects, produced, in most cases, at
enormous cost. And yet today a far closer watch is kept on the cost
than ever before.

How are we to reconcile these two apparently conflicting statements?
The answer is simple: Nothing is too costly if it pays for itself--as
reckoned by the sale of prints when the picture is placed on the
market. If, for example, "The Birth of a Nation," "Civilization,"
"Cabiria," "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea," and ever so many
other super-features that have been made since these were produced,
had cost twice as much as they actually did, they would still have
been exceedingly profitable ventures for the ones who put them out. If
you have the story to justify the big scenes and effects you will
unhesitatingly be provided with all the effects the story calls for.
Today, economy is practiced _after_ the story has been purchased; the
unusually good plot is not persistently returned because of the
expense attached to putting it into film form. Ways and means are
found within the studio to produce, for every thousand dollars paid
out, an effect--a result--such as to make it appear that from three to
five times that amount has been expended. Sometimes, indeed, an
effect produced at comparatively trifling expense, often by trick
photography or by "faking" or substituting for some expensive
property, is even _more effective_ than the real thing would have
been. As an example, the effect on the screen of a miniature--a
"fake"--Zeppelin falling through the clouds, a blazing mass, was
convincing, thrilling and easy to produce, whereas from the
spectator's point of view it would have been well nigh impossible to