Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This clip shows workers at the Sydney Morning Herald overseeing the mechanical process of folding and compiling newspapers. Once compiled, the newspapers are transferred onto trays on a mechanical hoist and transported to the distribution room. An intertitle, 'MECHANICAL HOIST TAKING THE PAPERS TO THE PUBLISHING ROOM’, is used to explain the stage of production in this silent black-and-white clip.

Educational value points

• The clip shows an aspect of the production of the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper in 1911, specifically the process of folding and compiling newspapers. Although advances in technology have improved the process, newspapers are largely still compiled in a similar way. The individual pages are cut and folded in sequence, using a large piece of machinery called a 'folder’. Depending on the composition and the number of pages in the newspaper, various arrangements of the rotating mechanisms are possible. Today technologically advanced rotaries can process approximately 500 m of newspaper per hour, which translates to approximately 80,000 newspapers.

• The footage is from an industrial documentary produced for the Commonwealth Government and made when cinema was becoming a mass medium for information as well as entertainment. Industrial documentaries such as this one were intended to show the progress Australia had made since European settlement. Intertitles, which were frequently used in silent cinema, were particularly useful in industrial documentaries, where the audience may not have been familiar with the technology or process being shown.

• The Sydney Morning Herald began as the Sydney Herald in 1831, when it comprised four pages and had a weekly print run of 750 copies. John Fairfax bought the newspaper in 1841, beginning a legacy that lasted almost 150 years, and it was Fairfax who renamed the newspaper the Sydney Morning Herald. The newspaper went into receivership in 1990 with debts totalling $1.7 billion. After changes to its ownership structure, the Fairfax group was relisted as a public company on the Australian Stock Exchange in 1992.

• The 35 mm cellulose nitrate film used to shoot the documentary has become damaged over time. This kind of film was first used as a base for photographic film by George Eastman in 1889, and was used for 35 mm motion pictures until the 1950s. Nitrate film is highly flammable and, as partially decomposed nitrate film can spontaneously ignite at temperatures as low as 49 degrees C, archival material shot on 35 mm nitrate film needs to be stored in controlled conditions and handled carefully in order to be preserved. Many films shot on cellulose nitrate have been lost or damaged.

• The original Pathé logo of a crowing rooster, which features at the beginning of the clip, was used at the beginning of film reels to identify Pathé as the producer. The company was founded in France by the three Pathé brothers, and became the largest film equipment and production company in the world. It was listed on the Paris Stock Exchange in 1897, and in 1902 acquired the Lumière brothers’ patents to design its own improved film equipment and produce its own stock. The company captured a significant portion of the international market and expanded its production facilities and chain of cinemas to other cities throughout the world. It is estimated that prior to the First World War (1914–18), 60 per cent of all films were shot with Pathé Equipment.

This clip starts approximately 16 minutes into the documentary.

In this silent clip workers watch on and make adjustments as the folding mechanism of the newspaper printing machine folds the papers. An intertitle reads:

Mechanical hoist taking the papers to the publishing room

A worker then loads newspapers on to the mechanical hoist.