There is calendar making software available that lays out the
month-tables and drops in standard holidays and whatnot. We would add
the birthdays of silent film stars and the dates of important film
conventions. There are a number of collectors of film stills on the
group. We get thirteen collectors to each supply one high-resolution
scan of a favorite film publicity still. One coordinator makes sure that
they aren't all the same nude picture of Louise Brooks. Stars will be
assigned to their birth month where possible (if Ogle and Snitz are born
in the same month we'll need to shift one), or to a seasonable spot
(Lillian on the ice floe goes in January, with apologies to the
antipodeans).

I would propose -- at least for the first year -- doing it in black and
white at a quick-print shop where it can be run off in batches of 20 or
so, so the person fronting the cash doesn't get stuck with boxes of
unsold calendars (nothing loses value so fast). I see that Kinko's
offers calendars "starting at $8.99" for color, but by shopping around
we can probably get it lower than this. This will not be high-end glossy
art-magazine quality, but I doubt any of us is willing to invest several
hundred dollars upfront when we don't know what the demand will be. I
propose black and white, with either a stapled binding or perhaps spiral
binding if it's not too expensive. In the future we could consider some
pages -- sheet music fronts and Photoplay magazine covers -- in color.

I'll need to get an estimate on production costs, but I'd like to keep
it to $12 per calendar plus a few dollars for shipping, with proceeds to
go to UCLA's restoration of THE TIME LOCK SAFE restoration project (if
they still need some money for that, I never heard a final report).

I'm willing to offer a nice publicity shot of Mabel Normand towards the
effort, or the Valentino/Alice Terry still that we used on CINEMA.
Although I don't have calendar software I do have some experience with
production and printing that I'm willing to put towards the cause. It
would need to be done fairly rapidly, as the time for buying new
calendars is approaching.

If anyone has a still from THE TIME LOCK SAFE, let me know. And if
anyone has a concatenated list of birthdays of major silent film stars,
and FIRM dates for Cinecon, Cinevent, and Cinewhatnot for 2003 that
would be a great help.