Editing In the Land of the Head Hunters (section)

==Original release==
Curtis had earlier experimented with multimedia. In 1911 he created a stage show with slides, a lecture, and live musical accompaniment, called ''[[The Indian Picture Opera]]''. He used [[stereopticon]] projectors, where two projectors dissolved back and forth between images. This was his prelude to entering the motion picture era.<ref name=":0" />

The film opened in [[New York City]] and [[Seattle, Washington]] in December 1914, with live performances of a score by [[John J. Braham]], had access to [[wax cylinder]] recordings of Kwakwaka'wakw music, and the promotional campaign at the time suggested that his score was based on these; in fact, there were few snatches of Kwakwaka'wakw music in the score. Curtis hoped the film would be successful enough to fund the completion of ''[[The North American Indian]]'', a multi-volume history of every indigenous tribe on the continent he had been working on since 1906.<ref name=":0" /> Although critically praised, the film was a commercial failure.<ref name=program>Aaron Glass, Brad Evans, Andrea Sanborn, Project statement, p. 2–3 of the program for presentation of ''In the Land of the Head Hunters'', Moore Theatre, Seattle, Washington, June 10, 2008.</ref> Curtis spent approximately $75,000 to make the film, but it only earned $3,269.18 after a year in theaters. He was so disappointed with the film's financial performance that he sold all the rights to the film to the [[New York Museum of Natural History]] in 1919 or 1920. When the museum lost Curtis's donated material, the film was considered lost until 1947.<ref name=":0" />