Moving Picture World (Oct-Dec 1911)

534 THE MOVING PICTURE WORLD with the man. who essays on and with the moving pictures, because here the speaker must subordinate himself to the picture and must make the most of the few seconds or minutes, that are allowed to him in exjjlaining or emphasizing or reciting. If he does not talk in exact conformity with the picture, if he fails to seize the proper moment, if he goes the fraction of a second too slow or too fast the best effect is not produced. Dullness or dryness under the circumstances is therefore impossible. All must be swift, the words must move as fast as the picture. When the thing is well done, the combination of the moving picture and the living voice constitute a novel and very fine entertainment. In my next article I propose to go into the question of what pictures are most suitable to lectures and to what extent therefore the exhibitor will be able to avail himself of the benefits of such lectures. Stingy Leaders. By Epes Winthrop Sargent. TT is one of the accepted rules of photoplay writing that ••; leaders and letters must be cut down to the lowest possible number of words, and as a broad proposition the rule holds good, but there is danger that this economy of words will be overdone into stinginess of phrase. The photoplay public goes to the theater to see the pictures and it should be given pictures, but it wants pictures that may be understood, pictures that are clearly and carefully explained, and there are times when the lack of a few words of leader leave the spectator uncertain as to the exact meaning of the story. Each word means a foot or a second lost from the film, but it is better to take ten feet from the film that the story may be made clear than to give the spectator ten feet of picture additional and render the entire thousand feet uncertain and obscure. In this fad for trimming out unnecessary words some editors appear to have reached the point where they also eliminate the necessary words as well. The abrupt, uncertain statement is as irritating as the unexplained incident, and the clipped captions may hurt the play as much as the omitted scenes that sometimes are left out to condense the film into release length. The result is even more noticeable in the matter of letters. The letter is a useful mans of getting over an explanation and its use is less apt to be resented than the leader, because it appears to be a part of the action. It takes a little more film than the leader, but it is worth while, though not when the letter becomes more abrupt than the ten-word telegram. To cite a case in point in a film recently released, much of the action found its point in a letter appearing well toward the end of the play. The letter was concise and carefully worded, but sufiiciently ample to fully explain and so worded as to clinch the laughs. It ran perhaps 25 feet in the original, but it not only pointed up the other laughs; it brought a fresh laugh of its own. In the studio the space miser got to work on the letter. He gained ten feet of film, but he lost not only the laugh that was in the letter, but the cumulative effect of the earlier scenes and left the phrases clipped and barren. He saw only the ten feet saved. He did not realize that he had lost more than he had gained. Thirty or forty feet will be allowed a comedy scene that ends in a single laugh. Fiftj feet will be permitted the director for a purely explanatory scene that contains no laughs, but which serves to start the storj-. The twentyfive foot letter contained both explanation and a laugh. The condensed version neither explained nor entertained. It was merely a di.-^jointed series of sentences without effct that was palpaby a skeletonized film letter. If a laugh is worth thirty and an explanation fifty, is it not reasonable to argue that a twenty-five foot letter that is both explanation and laugh is really a saving of 55 feet of film and not the waste of ten? A producer may spend a couple of hours trying to make his script seem real. He may spend money for small details that add to the realism of a setting. His constant aim is to create an atmosphere of reality and then, when the picture comes upon the screen, the atmosphere is lost through the bobtailed leader and shorthand letters. Perhaps the letters are made still more unconvincing because they are printed from script type instead of being actually written or the letters of several persons may appear to be m the same handwriting and lose the last vestige of individuality through lack of variety. In one recent production a character writes an answer upon a letter just read Both letter and reply were in the same rounded hand, a hand easily and quickly read, but a penmanship unsexed — neither masculine or femenine. For the moment the atmosphere of reality was lost to gain perhaps five seconds through the supposed legibility of the handwriting. Such practices are absurd and hurtful. The terse, effective leader is greatly to be desired against the verbose explanation, but when the -leader is so exceedingly brief as no longer to be intelligible, then the leader ceases to serve its purpose and becomes worse than useless. \\'ith letters and inserts the situation is worse. It would mean some more work were the letters made to seem real, but the two and three line letters are irritations. When the woman of fashion sits at the dainty desk in her boudoir and dashes ofT the perfumed note that a moment later is seen upon the screen, it is something of a shock to find that she writes a hand like the office boy, writes the wrong way of a sheet of typewriter paper and expresses herself with a brevity that would disgrace a coded press dispatch. It would be a little more trouble to find some girl in the printing room who would write on a sheet of note paper of the fashionable sort, and it might be easy to plan a letter that would sound right and yet be brief, but the result would be well worth while. At least two companies type all of their letters upon a billing machine that does not even look like a typewriter, and this is done even though it is shown on the screen that the letter was written with a pen. This seems to reach the height of absurdity, but it is no more inconsistent than the letters of another company printed from type, or of still another in which everything from note to proclamation is spaced to exactly fill the frame. Why not return to the Elizabethan stage with its printed signs? If reality is desirable, why not have it extend to the letters and why not allow reasonable space for leaders that will not be so abrupt as to make a puzzle picture of the photoplay? It is time something were done, for these matters grow steadily worse as time passes. HOW THE PICTURE CAUSES JUVENILE DELINQUENCY. It is no agony to plead guilty to a fault which is the outgrowth of a misapplied truth. In an interesting article which appeared in a New York magazine recently, it was shown how it is possible for a gentleman leaving home in the morning, to become liable to heavy fines, even to a short term of imprisonment, before arriving home again in the evening; only by observing common practices of life with thousands of others doing the same thing. When the microscope of officialism, statistical detail, paid professional research is brought to bear on any person, persons or cause, it is easy to discover gross neglect if not positive wrong, making one remember certain words from a high authoritj' who, under the stress of such conscientious espionage, e.xclaimed, "O Lord, if thou art extreme to mark all that is done, who shall stand?" We have abroad in the land those who are extreme to "mark all that is done amiss" according to their little hobby. The truant who neglects school for the moving picture is teaching a lesson to his equally delinquent superior, for says one official, "That boy has shown us that the picture is more interesting than the school." This is a wise official, not in New Jersey, but in Nebraska; "let us put pictures in our schools and we turn truants into scholars." This is a splendid way of pleading guilty. To judge by a cause is wise, to judge and condemn only by an effect is not only unwise but an abuse of officialism which makes reports upon which reforms are sought." Is the boy who steals his mother's sugar a thief? Should he be so catalogued and the list of state criminals be enlarged? If so, put down every boy and girl as criminal, for they are all guilty of some such terrible crime. NO! emphatically, No! The moving pictures are not either increasing delinquency among juveniles or causing crime; they are revealing social conditions, and call loudly for the situation to be handled wisely and well. Every evil suggests an adjustment; every wrong a correction; even as every pain calls for relief and every disease a cure. Please, state-paid officials with the microscopic eye, stop criticising, but use your office to suggest causes and effects needing adjustments, and you will render public service.