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.
190 WRITING THE PHOTOPLAY On screen. Flash two or three feet of Tom's letter, same as in 6. Back to scene. It is unnecessary for us to comment at length upon the ridiculous practice of many studios in having all their letters in films written in the same handwriting. A note written by a schoolboy, another penned by a society woman, and a letter laboriously spelled out by a tramp, all appear, to judge by the handwriting, to have been written by the same person. Few in an audience will object to the introduction of letters, telegrams, newspaper items, and the like — pro- vided there are not too many such inserts — because these seem to fit into the picture as a part of the action, and are not, like leaders, plainly artificial interpolations by the author. It need hardly be pointed out, however, that letters and other written messages must not be intro- duced except for logical reasons. More than one case has been known in which the scenario submitted to an editor specified that one character was to write and hand to another a note which the second character was to read — the note, of course, was to be shown on the screen — when the contents were simply the words which, on the regular stage, the first actor would speak to the other! Of course, no producer would allow such a thing to take place in his picture. In a situation where the story could actually be advanced by showing the audience what a certain player was supposed to be saying to another, it would be only necessary to introduce a cut-in leader, as previously described.