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“ A complete script is composed of three parts: Synopsis, Cast of Characters, and Scenario, or Continuity—and sometimes a fourth part, called the Scene-Plot.
Serial: A photoplay serial, as the name implies, is a film totaling, say, 30,000 feet in length, and divided into fifteen "episodes," each episode being made up of two reels, or parts—2,000 feet of film. The production covers one long, continued story, each episode planned to end with a thrilling climax, with a "To be continued in our next," so to speak, tail-piece. ”

“ Proceeding upon the assumption that a photoplay is a screen drama which must be unrolled before an audience within a specified time limit, it is clearly necessary to give concentrated attention to the important matter of beginning the story. We are dealing with a situation—a dramatic crisis or a correlated series of situations or dramatic crises. The start must not be too far in advance of the climax, for in that case there will not be sufficient time or film footage to logically and consecutively arrive at such climax. ”

“ To reiterate what was also pointed out in the definition in Chapter III, you must bear in mind that while the end of each separate reel in an ordinary feature need not end with a forward-looking climax, the end of each episode in a photoplay serial must be a climax of a most thrilling nature, or, at any rate, must be such a climax as will greatly excite the interest of the spectator and insure his coming to the theatre when the next episode is shown. The serial photoplay is exactly like the well-written and carefully edited serial story of fiction. ”

“ By alternating the picture of a man and the check he is forging, we have his soliloquy. When two people talk to each other, it is by lifting and lowering objects rather than their voices. The collector presents a bill: the adventurer shows him the door. The boy plucks a rose: the girl accepts it. Moving objects, not moving lips, make the words of the photoplay.
The old-fashioned stage producer, feeling he is getting nowhere, but still helpless, puts the climax of some puzzling lip-debate, often the climax of the whole film, as a sentence on the screen. ”

“ This is often demonstrated on the stage of the spoken drama, when, for example, the leading lady who speaks slowly and in low tones holds our interest better than her attendants who chatter in high pitch. The beauty of her speech is emphasized by its contrast with the ugliness of the others. So in the photoplay there may be more power in a single slight lowering of the eyes or in the firm clenching of a fist than in a storm of waving arms and heaving chests. ”

“ In setting about to write a photoplay, we are dealing with persons, places and things of which the audience has no previous knowledge. Therefore, right at the start we must introduce our characters to the spectators, familiarize them with the environment in which the story is set, tell them of such past occurrences as have a direct bearing upon the story that is to follow—and interest and entertain them from the very first moment. ”

“ PICTORIAL MOTIONS AT WORK All the movement which you see on the screen may be enjoyed, we have said, as something which appears beautiful to your eye, regardless of its meaning to your mind. But if that movement, beautiful in itself, also carries to your mind some significance, if it serves the dramatic plot in some positive way, then the picture will be so much the richer. Acting, of course, is visible movement that delineates character and advances plot. It is pictorial motion at work. And acting, curiously enough, is not limited to people and animals. ”

“ By means of the condensed method and rapid action of photoplay drama, we may often get a three-act play into a single reel of photoplay action, while a solid evening’s entertainment may include several short plays, and one long one, equivalent in itself to a meaty drama. ”

“ The impression that the perfect play is the one which can dispense [Pg 49] with any of the legitimate devices, no doubt comes from a misconception of the precise potentialities of these artifices. It is true, if they do not serve as a means to an end; an integral part of the play; units in the development of the story; then they not only may, but should, be dispensed with, by all means. We employ nothing—property, actor, scene, spectacle, spoken word, insert, incident or device—in the perfect photoplay that has not a bearing on the climax of the play. ”

“ Cut-in, or Cut-in Leader: A sub-title which cuts into or breaks the action of a scene instead of appearing before the scene opens. Cut-ins are therefore the sub-titles giving the words spoken by one or more of the characters in a scene. They constitute the "dialogue" of the photoplay.
Cutting: It happens not infrequently that from 5,500 to 7,000 feet (or even more, if the director is inclined to be wasteful) of negative film is exposed, or used up, in taking the scenes intended for a five-part (5,000-foot) "feature." ”

“ Experience alone—combined with the study of the pictures seen on the screen—can teach you just what scenes are really necessary and which may be avoided; the point to remember is that you should not waste footage on even the shortest scene that can be eliminated without detracting from the interest or breaking the logical sequence of the events in your story. In other words, make it your hard and fast rule to write nothing into your scenario that does not aid materially in telling your story and making your meaning clear to the spectator. ”

“ A novel may be largely a study of character; a short-story may deal with action which takes place wholly unseen in the soul of man; a play or a musical comedy may be chiefly a series of scenic pictures or tuneful caperings; but a true photoplay must act out [Pg 31] a story—a story with a big central point, supported by contributing points, or situations.
The story, then, comes first—in more than one sense. It is the bait you hold out to the editor of the photoplay company. If he can be interested in your story, the script is half sold. ”

“ Now, while your photograph is being taken from the few rays of light which pass into a camera, you see that we might place hundreds of cameras one above another, and if they were all pointed at you they might each take a photograph of you at the same instant—the same as one thousand different persons in an audience with their two thousand eyes all look toward the speaker and see him at one and the same instant. ”

“ The spectator at a photoplay entertainment must be able promptly and easily to discover who your characters are, what kind of people they are, what they plan to do, how they succeed or fail, and, in fact, must "get" the whole story entirely from what he sees the actors in the picture do, with the slight assistance of a few explanatory leaders, or sub-titles, and, perhaps, such inserts as a letter, a newspaper cutting, a telegram, or some such device, flashed for a moment on the screen. ”

“ But a photoplay is often robbed of pictorial continuity long before it reaches the exhibitor. The “title-writer,” who frequently combines his office with that of “cutter,” is at best, a dangerous collaborator173 on a photoplay. Words in the form of titles, sub-titles, dialogue, comments, etc., are rarely in place on the screen. ”

“ With fiction construction and expression, the photoplay has much in common. The short photoplay, as we have pointed out, is expanded to practically the same degree as the short story, while the multiple-reel, or long photoplay, has within its scope the complete and satisfactory dramatization of the novel or many-volumed literary work, thus enriching the dramatic field with new forms of surpassing material which must forever have been denied millions of people who abhor reading even the glorious treasures of fiction literature. ”

“ This was rather a pretentious drama, and called for really good acting, the nature of which appealed to the veteran player.
It was really a delight to watch him, for he gave a finished performance, and the loss of his voice was no handicap here. He could whisper the words, or utter them in a low tone, so that the motion of his lips might be seen by the audience.
If you have ever seen motion pictures, and I am sure you all have, you know that often you can tell exactly what the characters are saying by watching the form of their lips. ”

“ And even those who select this volume as their first venture in becoming acquainted with our heroines must well know how the film pictures look from the front of the screen.
To the uninitiated I might say that in making picture plays a company, somewhat like a regular theatrical organization, is gotten together. The play is decided upon, but instead of the acts taking place before an audience they are enacted before a camera and a man who acts as director, or manager. ”

“ Half a score of actors and actresses moved quickly to their appointed places, while overhead, and at the sides of them hissed powerful electric lights, and in front of them stood a moving picture camera, ready to be operated by a pleasant-faced young man. ”

“ In selecting a point of attack or beginning, the photoplaywright is confronted with the task of skillfully forming a link between the outside occurrences that have gone before and those which are witnessed by the audience as integral parts of the photoplay itself. He must decide at just what time and place and under exactly what circumstances the audience may commence snooping into the lives of the characters whose dramatic relations carry them through smiles, tears and suspense for an indefinite period. ”

“ There was a hazy recollection of copter-cabs and surface-cabs, of smiling, vapid faces and other smiling faces, not vapid, when the video-cast appeared on a television screen in one of the bars and there he was, squinting against the flash-camera glare, the rain seeping through the roof of umbrellas and rolling down his long, gaunt face and off the thin, long, drooping nose. ”

“ A full reel consists of 1,000 feet of film and occupies approximately twenty minutes to display its contents upon the screen. By contents, we mean to include everything that is projected: trade-mark frame of manufacturer, including title of play and name of the author; cast of characters, with Board of Censorship notice at the end. The foregoing take approximately two minutes of valuable time and are merely incidental to the play. They concern the writer only in so far as they act as limitations. The essential photodrama itself includes portrayal of dramatic action of the characters ”

“ Correctly applied only to that part of the photoplay manuscript which describes the development of the plot, scene by scene and situation by situation; the complete story is swiftly outlined in the synopsis, but in the scenario it is told—that is, worked out—in action. The continuity of action; often called "the continuity."
Scene: A scene is so much of the action of a photoplay as is taken in one place at one time without stopping the camera. ”

“ Thus a sudden gesture, or the waving branches of trees or bushes, or a motor car driving up in front of a house, or even such intended grace as the movement in dancing, may spoil a picture by being too near the camera.
Another thing which makes close-up movements ugly is the flicker, which cannot be entirely eliminated. Our readers are doubtless generally aware that what we see on the screen is simply the blending of a rapid succession of still pictures falling on different spots in an order and a direction which gives the appearance of motion. ”

“ Just between the intolerable accompaniment by printed or spoken words on the one side and the perfectly welcome rendering of emotionally fitting music on the other, we find the noises with which the photoplay managers like to accompany their performances. When the horses gallop, we must hear the hoofbeats, if rain or hail is falling, if the lightning flashes, we hear the splashing or the thunderstorm. ”

“ Some day they will realize that the public really loves simple drama more than they do sensational spectacle.
3. THE MANUSCRIPT (a) Technique—In fiction the deeds need only be probable; in photodrama they must be actually performable, because the audience must see them. For the photoplay must show whatever is vital. Keep your captions down to 15 words at the most, and your inserts to 20, as every word means a foot of film. Tell how your characters shall act, leave to the director where and how they enter and exit. ”

“ How does the director of a motion picture make sure that pleasing motion will appear upon the screen? Does he alter, or select, his subjects? Does he choose his point of view? Does he patiently wait for the right moment? Or must beauty come by accident, as music might come from a cat’s running over the keyboard of a piano? ”

“ All the scenes that are to take place in one setting or location are made before the camera is moved an inch, and, in one way or another, according to the particular studio, the film is marked after each scene so as to show the number of the scene coming next. ”

“ Without the plot, the writer's script will remain forever a script, a mere piece of hand- or typewriting; it will never be transformed by the magic wand of the director into a film picture. Remember always that the photoplay is nothing but a series of scenes in action which make up a story. How can you expect to have action without a sufficient cause for every effect shown and the scenes arranged in such order as to produce a complete illusion of a connected, progressive, climax-reaching story? ”

“ But can we expect a motion picture director to stop and think of so small a matter as a ball thrown from one hand to another, to ask himself whether such an action is beautifully related, in direction and velocity, to everything else in the picture, fixed or moving? Yes, we can expect him to do so until he becomes artist enough to think of these matters without stopping. He should think about pictorial composition until he can obey its laws without thought. ”

“ Slender ribbon-like falls hang lightly from the brow of a sheer precipice or dash in foam down some rocky gulch, and the morning mists that linger on the wooded peaks veil in mystery the beauty beyond. One's desire to possess and perpetuate some scene of beauty becomes irresistible, when, out comes the camera — snap — and the thing is done! ”