Motography (Jan-Jun 1918)

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S. ROYAL TUPPER General Manager NEW YORK OFFICE: 1022 LONGACRE BUILDING. Forty-second Street and Broadwai Telephone Errant 7030 CHARLES W. BRENNArl, Advertising Manager LOS ANBELES OFFICE: 6411 HOLLYWOOD BLVD. MABEL CONDON, Western Representative NOTICE TO ADVERTISERS Changes of advertising copy should reach the office of publication not less than fifteen days In advance of date of Issue. Begular date of issue every Saturday. New advertisements will be accepted up to within ten days of date of issue, but proof of such advertisements can not be shown In advance of publication. ,^T77> THE MOTION PICTURE TRADE JOURNAL PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY ELECTRICITY MAGAZINE CORPORATION E. R. MOCK, President and Treasurer PAUL H. WOODRUFF, Editor in Chief. E. M. C. Publications MONADNOCK BUILDING CHICAGO, ILL. Branch Telephone Exchange: Harrison 3014 Entered at Chicago Post Office as Second Class Mail Matter. Canada Foreign Single copy SUBSCRIPTION PRICE Per Year $3.00 Per year $4.00 Per year 5.00 .15 NOTICE TO SUBSCRIBERS Remittances — Remittances should be made by check. New York draft or money order In favor of Motography. Foreign subscriptions may be remitted direct by International Postal Money Order. Change of address— The old address should be given as well as the new, and notice should be received two weeks in advance of the desired change. This publication is free and independent of all business or house connections or control. No manufacturer or supply dealer, or their stockholders or representatives, have any financial interest in Motography or any voice in its management or policy. Volume XIX CHICAGO, FEBRUARY 23, 1918 Number 8 The Free Lance Source of Scenarios REALLY competent comment on the gentle art of scenario writing is always welcome. When C. Gardner Sullivan deigns to analyze, even the busy producers stop, we imagine, and turn to listen. For Mr. Sullivan is a very successful scenario writer, whereas most writers are very unsuccessful and do not know why. The subject of criticism is the typical free lance scenario — which is almost the same as saying the typical unsuccessful scenario, because writers whose stuff assays high do not remain in the free lance class except by resisting the offers of covetous producers. The consistent writer of screenable stories soon gets on someone's staff at a good salary. That is the condition, but it is not entirely a healthy condition. The publishers of typed fiction find it better to depend upon the free lance, and the writers of such stuff find it better to remain free lances. Only the frankly cheaper classes of magazines rely wholly on fiction ground out on their own desks. This condition is almost reversed in the publishing of motion pictures. Theoretically, the free lance scenario writer has a broader field for material, a bigger market, a more generous experience. Practically, the opposite is true. The staff writer has all the advantage and does nearly all of the acceptable work. And the whole simple reason for this state of affairs is a matter of detail. The writer of printed fiction need not know anything at all about printing, about type-setting or make-up or press-work. The writer of screen fiction must know something — at least the fruit of intelligent observation — about the studio, the players, the director, the properties, the settings, the camera, the screen itself. So the scenario man must really have more shop knowledge than the magazine writer. To offset this, it might be imagined that the screen writer needed less grammar, punctuation and literary style. But that is not true. Almost inevitably those qualities go with the storytelling ability. It is very difficult to put a story together properly and usefully without the knack of putting words together. There are exceptions ; occasionally good scenarios have been constructed by untrained and even illiterate persons. But they could not repeat. Theirs were single performances which were strong enough to produce themselves. Successful scenario writing demands a lot more from its aspirants than successful fiction writing. It demands thorough literary training — that ability to construct logical situations and sequences that comes only with the study of WORDS — even though, paradoxically, words seem of slight importance in the finished work. It demands, too, understanding if not intimate knowledge of studio procedure — understanding, that is, of the things that make a screen picture different from a printed page. The sharpened powers of observation of the trained writer, his trained intelligence, make it possible for him to deduce the technical details of production from the screen. It is not, or