We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
FALSE CHARACTERIZATION
Again the student is urged to substantiate this statement by his own experience. Watch the screen and note what badly drawn characters may do to a play. Whenever a character makes an untrue move — untrue to itself as a characterization — you will shrink with somewhat the same feeling experienced when a false note is struck in a musical performance. If the characters continue to be sacrificed to the situation you may stay to the end of the film, but you will be bored. When you leave the theatre you will talk with your companion on some other topic than that of the photoplay you have just witnessed. It has not stirred in you enough interest to hold your thoughts ; already you have forgotten it.
False characterization can never carry any situation to a satisfactory conclusion. The real thrill, the "punch" grows only out of the true. When out of the conflict of real characters grows a situation of gripping truth, the spectator does not come out of the theatre talking about something else. He has been caught in the grip of an emotion too great to allow him to forget what he has seen. He tells of it eagerly to others, and urges them to see this particular production. That is why the really true things live. For no matter how much a production may be exploited by attractive publicity, unless it portrays some human experience with truth, it is bound to die a natural death.
DRAMA OF CHARACTER
Of course, plays that are weak in drama and characterization have been given entertainment value — been "put over" — by good photography, clever art-titles, and picturesque ensembles— well dressed ball room crowds, gay cabaret parties, big barroom gatherings, or bodies of men on horseback. But this is spectacle, not drama. It has values which our students will be taught. But you are first being taught to write drama, the thing most vital to the future life of the picture art. And strong consistent characterizations are drama's life.
What is character? Briefly, it is the individual's physical, mental and spiritual expression of himself. In common parlance we speak of our character as ourselves. We talk of being ashamed of ourselves, of expressing ourselves, of educating our
[33]