Screenwriter

“ INTRODUCTORY NOTE TO PART II Whether you desire to break into the movies as writer, actor or director, your most important consideration will be the scenario. In the scenario you will find all the elements of the photoplay; everything is built upon that as a foundation. The actor or director who sincerely desires to do good work studies his script assiduously. The ambitious writer analyzes not only his own photoplays, but those of other people.
It is exceedingly difficult to talk technique to anyone who has never read a scenario. ”

“ The ideal screen story will, I think, always be written by the director or directed by the writer, the only difference here is in the words. The man who creates the mood of a story is the author of it, no matter by 226what name you call him. I have nothing but admiration for the director who can write a story or for the author who can direct one, but at present all directors without exception change and re-write every story they handle and there are one hundred and eight active directors in Hollywood. ”

“ As the kinetoscope thirty years ago begot a novel form of amusement, so is its successor, the movie screen, bringing into being a new type of dramatic technique. The scenario-writer is something besides a combination of story-teller and playwright. He is experimenting in a youthful artistic medium, whose resources and possibilities are as yet only partially revealed, and he has become a pioneer in a realm that belongs to a kind of specialist bearing resemblance to both the novelist and dramatist but differing from them in ways peculiarly his own. ”

“ In writing for the screen dialogue is a lost quantity. It is action which is required, because the spectator has to follow the play from what he sees, and not from what he hears. Accordingly the requirements of action must be kept in mind. In the average studio the actor either extemporises dialogue to fit the part or situation, or else the producer prompts him. ”

“ Unless you are already a successful fiction writer when you first determine to write photoplays it is not going too far to assert that you have never yet really watched a motion picture. You have witnessed many, but only the playwright and the theatrical man may be said to watch plays, whether on the stage or on the screen, with every faculty alert and receptive, ready to pounce on any suggestion, any bit of stage business, any scenic effect, or any situation, that they may legitimately copy or enlarge upon for their respective uses. ”

“ A long scene may be broken effectively by the insertion of a Close-view. All of these constructive possibilities must be resorted to in building the effective plot. In other words, we must test each scene by visualizing it before we write it out. Our rough draft is our plot, that may be changed to meet, create and strengthen dramatic exigencies. Remember that we must suggest even more than fiction, since we must tell the director and actor what must be done, as well as show the audience a moving drama! ”

“ Today, among the more successful writers of action-stories for the magazines, there exists the feeling that it is a criminal waste of time to write originals for the screen. Their method is deliberately to plan their fiction ... so that it will actually contain abundant photoplay material, while yet being properly balanced up with the necessary word-painting and dialogue which good fiction demands. In other words, they systematically plan their fiction to make its picture possibilities ‘hit the producer in the eye’ the first time he—or his scenario editor—reads it.... ”

“ The arrogance of the trained writer of fiction or of drama and the price of the producer were still beyond conciliation.
The first borrowings may have come in taking excerpts from history to make the modest spectacles that gave a new note to cinematography. Suffice it to say, that soon familiar masterpieces of fiction and dramatic literature began to appear. The moment that the exhaustless stores of literature were opened to the needs of cinematography we may say that the photodrama really had its inception. ”

“ On the one hand are countless men and women besieging the studio doors in the hope of starting a [pg 2] career in any one of a thousand capacities, from actress to scenario writer, from director to cameraman. There are people with plots, people with inventions, people with new ideas of every conceivable variety, all clamoring for admission. And, on the other hand, there are the men who manage the movies sending out all manner of exhortations, appeals and supplications to just such people to come and work in their studios. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Time is too valuable when eight or ten stages have to be kept going. The staff is fully occupied upon the work in hand, and cannot wade through pages of often indecipherable hand-writing. The method of this particular producer in the case of an ordinary play is to have an abstract, prepared by the retained scenario writer, indicating the scenes, their sequence, characters, and other details, with a brief synopsis of the plot, the whole being set out upon a sheet of foolscap. ”

“ The great demand to-day is for sane, wholesome stories of modern American life, wherein character is the paramount interest rather than eccentricities of the plot or camera.
Send your story in synopsis form to the scenario editor of the studio which employs the star for whom you think the story is best suited. Send with it a stamped and self-addressed envelope for the return of your script, if it is not suitable for their use. Keep on sending it; don't be discouraged by rejection slips. You may write dozens of stories and then sell the very first one you wrote. ”

“ In approaching the conclusion of the first half of this series of articles which has given, inadequately and sketchily, a bird’s-eye view of the past and present of the movie as a purveyor of amusement, the writer finds himself turning to other fields of endeavor in which the screen is pushing forward as a pioneer with the hope in his heart, amounting to a certainty, that the screen drama in America is upon the threshold of a great and glorious future. Revolutionary changes in the photo-drama are being brought about by methods arousing intense scientific and technical interest. ”

“ We'll pick a good staff, select our stories with care, get the best men to write our scenarios, and gather round us a group of actors, like those who have made the Continental cinema what it is today, more interested in their work than in themselves, willing to take their chances of scoring in fine ensemble acting instead of insistent that every story shall be distorted, every scene directed, every picture cut to throw a so-called star into prominence. ”

“ It is the director who is more truly the picture maker than any one of his collaborators in the work. Ideally, he should prepare his own scenario, just as the painter makes his own preliminary sketches, and the fiction writer makes his own first draught of a story. Ideally, too, the plot should be devised by the director (who might then truly be called a cinema composer) , devised especially for motion pictures, and with peculiar qualities and appeals that could never so well be expressed in other mediums. ”

“ The comparatively few "outside" writers who have "made good" with serials follow the plan of writing the synopsis of the first four or five episodes (which in film form would mean eight or ten reels) , which they submit for the editor's approval in the regular way. If the editor likes the idea, or theme, of the story, and thinks it would make a successful picture, he will commission you to finish it. ”

“ The scenario writer sits down in the morning and works out a scene; he wakes up the director, who packs some actors and a cameraman in an automobile, together with a picnic lunch, and goes out to make the picture on some lovely hillside. Then, having finished the photoplay, they take it around to your local theater and exhibit it at twenty-five cents a seat.
As a matter of fact, the movies, now the fifth national industry in the United States, has as many phases, and as many complexities as any other industry in the world. ”

“ The novice may attach little or no importance to this initial move in the creation of a photoplay, but study and the experience that comes with practical analysis and the actual work of plot-building will lend emphasis to the statement that no single consideration demands more careful and thoughtful attention. Let us assume that when the drop-curtain rises in a motion picture theatre and the shadow action commences, the audience is looking, not at figures projected upon a screen, but through a window into the private lives of fictitious characters around whom the plot is woven. ”

“ It is a fact that many novels have been more or less successfully adapted to screen use, but almost invariably it has been necessary to reorganize and rewrite them into the form of dramatic action. In some few cases novels have been photographed in their full and original order, but these have almost invariably been failures as screen productions. In dealing with the photoplay as the drama of the screen, I am assuming that the time is not far distant when practically all photoplays will be the original work of successful students of screen craft—photodramas created by trained photodramatists. ”

“ When novels and magazine stories are to provide fare for the screen the producer entrusts the work of adaptation to one of his staff who has a more intimate idea of what is required, and will perform the task far more satisfactorily than the ordinary contributor. ”

“ From this brief survey, you can see that the avenues for breaking into the movies are almost unlimited. You can be an actor, director, cameraman, scene builder, cutter, titler, scenario writer, or anything else if you will begin at the bottom and learn the game. All of these positions are highly paid and all require a high knowledge of motion picture technique. ”

“ There is much that is worth serious consideration in the above quoted opinion of one whose professional welfare depends upon the keenness of his judgment regarding the trend of public opinion in connection with the screen. Somewhat quaintly he gives expression to the conviction that the movie and its clientele react upon each other and that the general tendency of this mutual action and reaction has been toward the elevation of the screen and the enlightenment of its patrons. In this elevation of the screen the continuity writer has, of course, played a leading part. ”

“ Such changes are not infrequent, for a director will often see ways to strengthen his story while the players are enacting it before his eyes.
We are ready to start to work. It is nine A.M., or perhaps even earlier, for the picture producer does not care to lose any more of the precious daylight than he has to. This is one of the biggest surprises of screen work to the player from the stage. He is accustomed to matinée performances at two in the afternoon, twice a week, but as a usual thing his work is from eight to eleven in the evening. His life is run after the sun has set. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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? ”

“ Almost all motion picture producers are now showing the cast of characters on their films, and it is only [Pg 32] a matter of time when every manufacturer will follow their lead, for this is a natural step toward the effect of reality. For this reason, as well as because it has been accepted as following the proper form of photoplay script preparation, your cast of characters should immediately follow the synopsis, and be distinct therefrom. ”

“ In the New York Evening Mail we renewed our acquaintance with Director Brennan one night by reading the following ad:
GET INTO THE WONDER INDUSTRY OF THE WORLD.
The motion picture producing business. Hundreds of fortunes have been made and are being made in it. Successful motion picture playwright and director offer part ownership in a series of powerful, emotional plays for the screen, entitled “When Dreams Come True,” “Time Will Tell” and “Inspector Flynn.” ”