But while the material was abundant, it soon became rather
insipid to see parades and processions and orators, and even where the
immediate interest seemed to give value to the pictures it was for the
most part only a local interest and faded away after a time. The
coronation of the king or the inauguration of the president, the
earthquake in Sicily, the great Derby, come, after all, too seldom.
Moreover through the strong competition only the first comer gained the
profits and only the most sensational dashes of kinematographers with
the reporter's instinct could lead to success in the eyes of the spoiled
moving picture audiences.
Certainly the history of these enterprises is full of adventures worthy
to rank with the most daring feats in the newspaper world. We hear that
when the investiture of the Prince of Wales was performed at Carnarvon
at four o'clock in the afternoon, the public of London at ten o'clock of
the same day saw the ceremony on the screen in a moving picture twelve
minutes in length. The distance between the two places is two hundred
miles. The film was seven hundred and fifty feet long. It had been
developed and printed in a special express train made up of long freight
cars transformed into dark rooms and fitted with tanks for the
developing and washing and with a machine for printing and drying.
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