Writing the Photoplay Part 20

_3. The Danger of Over-Compression_

In cutting, do not go too far. Use enough words to be clear and definite. Vagueness is an abomination and confusing p.r.o.nouns make an author as ridiculous as his scene is unintelligible. Remember that the leader is shown on the screen for only a moment, and it is for you to a.s.sist the spectator by making your leader so plain "not that it _may_ be understood," as Quintilian used to say, "but that it _must_ be understood."

It is quite as possible to use too few inserts, especially leaders, as it is to use so few words in them as to mar their meaning. Young writers are often more eager to follow the advice of their mentors than they are bold to use their own common-sense; and having had the importance of brevity well pounded in, they produce scripts with the double fault of not having enough action to make the plot clear, and not enough inserts to help out the action.

As an example of this tendency toward over-compression, take the script of one amateur writer. It contained a scene in which Mary, the heroine, constantly abused by a drunken step-father, steals out of the house at night as if about to start for some other town where she can make her own living and be free from the step-father's abuse. In Scene 7, Mary, carrying a suit case, leaves the farm-house where she had always lived. Scene 8 shows her "plodding wearily" along the road leading to town. Then in Scene 9 we are back in the kitchen at the farm-house. "The room is deserted. (Everyone supposed to be in bed.) The door opens and Mary enters, carrying suit case, which she puts down just inside the door. She staggers to the rocking chair and drops wearily into it, as if completely fatigued." And so on.

On reading the script, one's natural supposition is that Mary has thought it over while "plodding wearily" toward town, and, remembering the comfortable bed which awaits her at the old home--even though the next morning will bring more ill treatment at the hands of the step-father--has returned to make the best of it. After reading three more scenes, however, we learn that Mary had not only reached the town, but had gone so far as "the big city," from which she had returned after a fruitless search for work. Scene 9 is really supposed to take place two weeks after Scene 8!

Now, laying aside the fact that no scenes are introduced to show what happened to her after she went to the city, the script does not even give a scene showing her boarding a train to go, so there is nothing even to hint that Scene 9 did not take place on the same night that Mary left home.

The point of all this is that, had this script been accepted at all, and even had not the producer chosen to introduce any scenes showing Mary in the city, a leader of some kind between Scenes 8 and 9 would have been absolutely necessary. This, of course, was an amateur script, and the whole story was impossible from the standpoint of logic and the sequence of events; but in more than one picture that has been shown on the screen we have noticed the omission of a leader at a point in the action where one was very necessary, as a consequence of which the spectator was left--for the s.p.a.ce of two or three scenes at least--to guess at what was what.

It is worth remembering that you are not an accomplished photoplaywright until you can produce a story that is thoroughly understandable _all the way through_ by action and inserts. You are a clever writer, undoubtedly, if you can produce a "leaderless" script.

But it is no indication of cleverness merely to _leave out_ a leader--only to find, when your story is produced, that the director has found it necessary to add what you have simply cut out or never put in. He is a foolish and short-sighted writer indeed who gives any director such an opportunity to doubt his knowledge of photoplay technique.

In this connection, let us quote Mr. Frank E. Woods, who, besides being well known as a critic, photoplaywright, director and supervisor of productions under Mr. David W. Griffith, is an acknowledged expert in editing motion pictures.

"Many a picture," says Mr. Woods, "has been ruined by inadequate sub-t.i.tles. The makers of the picture have a.s.sumed that because _they_ understood the meaning of every action, the spectators should also understand, forgetting that the spectators will view the picture for the first time. The moment a spectator becomes confused and loses the sense of what he is seeing on the screen, his interest is gone. While he is wondering 'What are they talking about now?' or 'Who is the chap in the long coat?' or 'How did he get from the house in the woods?'

the film is being reeled off merrily and the spectator has lost the thread of the story. Going to the other extreme and inserting sub-t.i.tles where the meaning is perfectly obvious, or telling in sub-t.i.tles that which is to be pictured immediately after, should also be avoided, although pictures are sometimes criticized for having too many t.i.tles when in fact the keen-eyed critic is the only one who finds them too many. The average spectator is none too alert.... The sub-t.i.tle should be in complete harmony with the story and should never divert interest from the story. It should never be obtrusive. It should be there only because it belongs there. Therefore all sub-t.i.tles should be couched in language that harmonizes with the story. Every word should be weighed. Nothing should ever shock the spectator out of his interest in the picture by its incongruity, extravagance or inanity. Too much in a sub-t.i.tle is as bad as too little--like seasoning in a pudding. The function of the sub-t.i.tle is to supplement and correct the action of the picture, to cover lapses in the continuity, and to supply the finer shades of meaning which the actor has been unable to express in pantomime."[22]

[Footnote 22: "Editing a Motion Picture," by Frank E. Woods, in _The Moving Picture World_.]

In pa.s.sing, let us note one point of considerable moment.

Notwithstanding the fact that many pictures are shown in which a leader immediately follows the t.i.tle, it is much better not to arrange it so. Let your t.i.tle be followed by a scene--by action--even though the scene be a short one. Then, if necessary, introduce your first leader. If when the photoplay opens the t.i.tle is flashed upon the screen, and immediately a leader is shown, there is a chance that, having taken in the t.i.tle almost at a glance, the spectator may momentarily divert his gaze and so miss your first leader, only turning his eyes toward the screen again when he notices that a scene is being shown. Again, even though he may be watching closely, the spectator is seldom quite so attentive to an explanatory insert which is shown before the opening scene as he is to one introduced later, when he has already become interested.

Most critics are also agreed that the use of leaders introducing the princ.i.p.al characters (usually accompanied by a few feet of film in which the character named is also pictured, perhaps in the act of bowing to the audience, or in some pose characteristic of the part he plays) is a mistake, when such "introducing" is done before the first scene of the story has been shown. Undoubtedly _anything_ coming before the first scene is really out of place--so far as its being part of the story is concerned. Again Mr. Sargent stated a fact when he said that "What goes before the first real scene of a story is no more a part of that story than the design-head is a part of the fiction story. No magazine editor expects the author to be his own artist and supply an ill.u.s.trated t.i.tle. Start your story with the first scene of action, and let the director supply the preliminary scenes [close-ups of the princ.i.p.als] and leaders to suit himself."

As a matter of fact, though, the very best reason for not introducing from three to six or eight characters before the opening scene is that by the time the story has advanced a little many of the spectators have forgotten "who is who," whereas they have a much better opportunity to fix a character's name and occupation--so to speak--in their minds if that character is briefly but properly introduced at the point of his first entrance into the action of the play. Only the fact that we were already familiar with the faces of the contemporary historical characters shown in such features as Amba.s.sador Gerard's "My Four Years in Germany" made it possible for us to keep track, during the first few scenes in which each one appeared, of the persons shown. No one could possibly have memorized the "panoramic" leader giving the cast, with its thirty or more names of characters and players.

_4. Four Special Functions of Leaders_

Properly used, leaders can accomplish four results very satisfactorily: (a) Mark the pa.s.sage of time; (b) clear up a point of the action which could not otherwise be made to "register;" (c) "break" a scene; and (d) prepare the mind of the spectator to enter into the scene in the right spirit.

_(a) Marking the pa.s.sage of time._ In the amateur script previously discussed, we found the need for this use of the leader. The introduction, between scenes 8 and 9, of a leader telling the spectator that the events in Scene 9 were supposed to happen "Two weeks later" than those taking place in Scene 8, would have gone a long way toward clearing up the plot of the story. In this case, of course, it would have been necessary to add to the statement concerning the pa.s.sage of time another statement as to what had happened in the interval, the complete leader reading: "Two weeks later, Mary returns home after failing to get work in the city." Or, better still: "After two weeks of fruitless search for work in the city, Mary returns to her old home."

Try to get away from the monotonous use of the "Next day," "The next day," and "Two years later," style of leader. Say: "The following afternoon," "After five years," "Later in the evening," or "Six months have pa.s.sed." Even though you find when your story is produced that the director has seen fit to omit altogether the leader that you "wrote in" at a certain point of the action, you have the satisfaction of knowing that, _had_ he used one there, he could not have improved upon the one you wrote.

_(b) Clearing up a point in the action_ is too obvious a use of the leader to require much discussion. Some things mere actions cannot express, and some explanations must be verbally made because pantomime suggestion is inadequate. To take their proper place in the photoplay all such leaders should be more than merely explanatory: they should have genuine dramatic value--just as much as an important speech would have in a "legitimate" dramatic production. In the pictured drama the leader really fills in a significant part of the plot which could not be portrayed by wordless action.

Miss Lois Weber, a well-known photoplay author who has also produced some very fine feature photoplays, says in _The Moving Picture World_: "Often the right words in a leader or other insert are the means of creating an atmosphere that will heighten the effect of a scene, just as a tearful conversation or soliloquy, at a stage death-bed will move the audience to tears where the same scene enacted in silence would leave it dry-eyed. Naturally, the wrong words may have the opposite effect, but that is no argument against the leader; it only argues that the wrong person wrote it."

_(c) "Breaking" a scene_ with a leader may be explained by an ill.u.s.tration, which at the same time will serve to exemplify how the mind experiences a more or less unconscious _(d) preparation for the ensuing scene_.

Suppose you have a comedy scene showing a bathtub gradually filling with water because the faucet was left open. In the time required to fill the bath and cause it to overflow, five or six hundred feet of film would be used up if the scene were not changed. Instead of this waste of film, you could, after registering the fact that the running water was rapidly filling the bath, introduce a leader: "Ten minutes later--the tide rises."

Such a leader prepares the spectator for the funny scene that is to follow; and when the next scene is shown, in which the water is overflowing the bath and turning the bathroom into a miniature lake, the spectator realizes what has happened in the ten minutes which, according to your leader, has elapsed since the last scene was shown.

Or, in your story, a lumberman may be injured by having a tree that he is chopping down fall on him. To show the whole process of felling a good-sized tree would take too long--it would consume too much footage, and be monotonous to the spectator. Also, it is the effect and not how it is obtained that makes a picture of this kind successful. For these reasons the man should be shown as he starts to chop down the tree. Then after he has made some perceptible progress you might introduce a leader. "The accident;" and, following the leader, show the man pinned to the ground by the fallen tree; then proceed with the succeeding action. You may be sure that the audience will understand that the man has been knocked down by and pinned under the tree as it fell; it is only necessary to show these two scenes.

A leader, however, should never be employed to "break" a scene unless there is absolutely no chance to introduce in its stead a short _scene_, the showing of which will help the progress of the plot; or unless a leader will serve the double purpose of breaking the scene and supplying the audience with an explanation that is important just at that time.

Taking the two examples just given, in which a leader is used to break the scene, there is scarcely any doubt that, were you writing these scenes in scenario form, you might easily subst.i.tute scenes that would help the action of the story and allow you to dispense with the leaders altogether. For instance, you could show the scene in which the absent-minded man leaves the water running into the bath and goes out of the room. Then, show a scene in his bedroom, where he is contentedly removing the studs from his s.h.i.+rt. Suddenly he remembers that he has left the water running. With an expression of dismay, he jumps up and runs out of the room. Flash back to the bathroom scene.

The tub has overflowed and the room is filling with water. As the excited man opens the door, the flood pours out into the hall. The short scene in the bedroom makes the leader unnecessary. Better fifteen feet of film showing the bedroom scene than five feet of leader.

Again, after the lumberman had started to chop down the tree, you might flash a short scene showing a couple of other men at work in another part of the forest. All at once they both stop work and register that they have heard something that startles them. One speaks excitedly to the other, and both run out of the picture. You then show the scene with the man lying beneath the fallen tree. Presently the two men who heard his cries for help come running up to him.

_5. Cut-in Leaders_

One very effective form of the leader is the cut-in, described in Chapter X. It takes the form of the speech of one of the characters, being written in quotation marks. This device of throwing on the screen the supposed words of a certain character at the moment of action enables the photoplaywright to tell all that is necessary much better than he could by a long statement of what is going on--a point that is well worth remembering. Directors are now using the explanatory cut-in leader as much as possible, to the exclusion of the ordinary one which merely states facts. This does not mean that they are trying to subst.i.tute "dialogue" leaders, but that wherever the newer form can be used to advantage it is less objected to by the audience than is the bald statement-sub-t.i.tle--doubtless because it is in line with the illusion of reality in using the player's words, and is not merely an insertion by the director or the author, as other inserts evidently are.

For the reason that all leaders more or less interrupt the action of a scene, some directors prefer decidedly not to use cut-ins more than is necessary, their argument being that for a few seconds following the right-in-the-middle-of-the-scene leader, the mind of the spectator is engaged with the import of what he has just read on the screen, and the action immediately following the leader is at least partially overlooked.

Yet a cut-in leader is usually one that suddenly discloses an important point of the plot. It may be that one of the characters, when the scene is about half through, unexpectedly makes a statement which amounts to a confession of some crime. We read on the screen, "Judge, she said that to save me. That is my revolver!" No sooner has the cut-in been shown, and the action resumed, than the eyes of every spectator are fastened upon the face of the character in the scene who should, by all logical reasoning, be most affected by that confession. If a scene is important enough to require a cut-in leader, it is reasonable to suppose that it has the full attention of the spectator after the first few seconds of action. This being so, it would seem that the spectator is far less likely to miss a point of the action _immediately following a cut-in_ than he is to miss what occurs at the beginning of a scene, following an ordinary between-the-scenes leader. It is a fact that a few directors drag the action of a scene for the first few seconds following an ordinary leader for the purpose of again centering the attention of the beholder on the action itself, before developing--_in_ action--another point of the plot.

We have already referred to "panoramic" leaders giving long casts of characters, the leader moving upwards on the screen instead of sidewise as in panoramic _scenes_. Today, the panoramic sub-t.i.tle, as well as the panoramic letter or other insert, is quite common, especially in feature pictures. Those directors who, notwithstanding all, still favor the use of introductory matter before the first scene, frequently resort to long panoramic sub-t.i.tles as a means of making the spectator familiar with the theme of the story before starting to tell it, just as Kipling has so frequently introduced an introductory paragraph of the same nature in his short fiction. To our way of thinking, a thematic sub-t.i.tle of this kind, used before the opening scene, is far less out of place than the ordinary introductory t.i.tles merely having to do with the characters, because it really does help prepare the spectator for the _kind_ of story he is about to view.

Then, again, it may be added that the present-day length of leaders greatly modifies what we say--as a sound guiding principle--in Section 7 of Chapter XVII. A great many excellent detective-story films have been produced, either from original synopses or as adaptations of the work of fiction writers. In these, there has been no hesitation on the part of the director and sub-t.i.tle editor to use just as many words in a leader as might be necessary to make every point of the story entirely clear and interesting. Paramount's "The Devil Stone," showing the train of tragic events that followed the stealing by a wicked Norse queen of the great emerald belonging to a certain Breton priest, was one example of an intensely interesting detective story in which sub-t.i.tles supplied much more than a third of the story--and supplied it, apparently, quite un.o.btrusively. Here, again, only common sense and experience can show you what to do.

Before leaving the subject of leaders let us say once more that you must seek to find the golden middle ground between the leader that is too flowery in its language and the other that is too stilted and prosaic. Again, in connection with the length of leaders, study the two following from Universal's feature, "The Kaiser, the Beast of Berlin," the first of which contains only seven words, while the second contains fifty-five.

Joy died, Hope fled. Desolation became supreme.

Then came the Master crime. An unoffending people was ground into extinction beneath an iron heel. A nation was destroyed. The Crime against Belgium being completed to its fullest, the Prussian stalked onwards with his twin comrades, Frightfulness and Horror. A new blotch of infamy--the _Lusitania_--was added to the Black Name of the Beast.

Notice, also, that as is being done with many feature pictures of this or similar type today, the producers have adhered throughout to the past tense in wording their sub-t.i.tles.

_6. The Use of Letters, News Items and Similar Inserts_

The great thing in using inserts other than leaders is to be able to tell what would be most effective in scoring a point of the plot at an important place in the story. You may start to "write in" a letter and then suddenly get the idea that the same point might be better explained if a newspaper paragraph were used. But no matter what other kind of insert you employ, it will doubtless seem to be more a part of the action than will a plain leader. For this reason it is best, whenever possible, to use a letter, telegram, news item, or some similar insert, in place of a leader. A carefully worded letter introduced at just the right time will sometimes tell the audience as much concerning the complications of the plot as would five or six scenes.

Letters should be short and to the point, but they should also tell as much as possible of _what can not be told in action_. Better a single letter of thirty-five words which tells everything than two or three notes of a line or two each that only suggest what the writer means.

Some of the so-called "letters" which are seen on the screen are simply ridiculous on account of their very brevity. If it is a mere note that is dashed off and sent to one of the characters, or a note left where it will be found by someone after the writer has gone away, its brevity is allowable; but when a "letter" is written by a man to an old friend of his--a friend who, he is told, is living in a distant city, when for years he has supposed him to be dead--and contains but seventeen words, it is likely to make the spectator doubt the strength of the former friends.h.i.+p.

It is not always necessary actually to write a long letter; but it is best in such instances to _suggest_ that a long letter has been written. This may be accomplished in two ways: You may either show a paragraph in the body of the letter, with a line or two just before and just after it, thus:

On screen, letter.

and it was from him that I learned the truth.

I'll leave for Wheeling on the first train tomorrow, and hope to clasp your hand again before Monday night.

Honestly, old man, it seems too, etc.