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64 TECHNIQUE OF THE PHOTOPLAY street suggestive of the suburbs. In such a case ask for precisely the sort of street you want. Say it is a "business street," "resi- dential street/' "street in suburbs," "village street," or whatever you want, but when you have just a street and any street will do, the producer will naturally pick a place where he is making the rest of the exteriors. We have cut sixteen words down to one, but that is just as a starter. It is not important that Jack swings his cane or even that he carries one. Maybe he will have one and perhaps the pro- ducer will tell him to swing it, but if he doesn't swing the cane or even have it, it will be just as good a scene. In a story you tell ,about the swinging cane because it helps to create in the mind of the reader the picture of Jack coming down the street, but here you have a real picture. You see Jack coming down the street with the eye and not with the mind. It is not necessary to cre- ate the mental picture as it would be in fiction, because you have here tlie physical and not merely the mental picture. Suppose that the director used your stage directions and had them talk "a couple of minutes." How much of a picture do you suppose he would get if the whole play were planned along the same generous lines? With two minutes for a chat you would have half the audience asleep. That sort of stuff simply clogs up the script. Let's try and do better than that. 7- Street- Jack comes walking down the street. As he comes close to the camera Tom enters from the opposite side. They smile at each other, shake hands and chat. Tom suggests that they go down to see Harry. Jack is willing and they come toward the camera, passing out of the scene. That's a lot better because it is shorter, but it is not short enough yet. It should be possible to do even better. Let us study the script again. Let's find out just what this scene means. What we are trying to show is this: Jack and Tom go to see Harry. They do not deliberately plan to meet and go to see him. It happens that they meet and that Tom suggests that they go and see him. That makes what happens at Harry's stronger than if they had planned to be there. That is the reason why we show the chance meeting on the street instead of simply having them come to Harry's house. It is an accidental meeting. We can see that because one is not waiting for the other by appointment. They just happen to come together. Now that's all we need to tell the director. Let's tell him just that. He knows perfectly well how two men will act when they are walking along the street. He can do all that stuff himself, but he can't know that unless we