Amateur Movie Makers (Dec 1926-Dec 1927)

Some SECRETS of SCREEN MAGIC By Dv^igkt R. Furness I F motion pictures were called "action pictures" their name would give the amateur movie maker more of a hint of the secret of screen dramatization. Motion is characterless. Action is the soul of drama. Motion the physicist can describe with formula and graph. Dramatic action involved a subtle analysis of human motives and emotions. The stage relies largely on the "lines" of the players. Diologue is reenforced with suitable action by the players. The plot unfolds both to the eye and the ear. The screen must tell its story to the eye alone, yet with such reality that the ear unconsciously interpolates its part. Action in drama is not alone the stage business of its characters but the sum total of its theme. It is the slender thread that runs through the continuity and reveals through scenes, settings, characters, and titles the story the producer has to tell. To capture this elusive quality and lock it safely in the dancing silver grains of cine film, the producer must watch his scenes carefully. Backgrounds must be made to collaborate with the players. Settings can suggest the sunlit happiness of childhood, the full noon contrasts of maturity, or the lengthening shadows of old age. Locations should be selected with careful consideration of what is to take place before them. COSTUMES, too, should suit action as well as the character. Not that they should be obvious, but they should reveal through inconspicuous detail Twenty-six their contribution to the unfolding plot. The tobacco pouch tag hanging from a cowboy's shirt, the carefully folded handkerchief protruding from the dandy's pocket, the knitting in the grandmother's lap are the touches that unconsciously contribute to the general ensemble of a costume. The amateur producer will be fortunate if his photographic experience includes a knowledge of pictorial composition such as the preparation of prints for exhibition calls for. To the uninitiated the arrangement of a picture may not be satisfying yet the reason not apparent. The amateur pictorialist can analyze defects of composition and find remedies for them — an experience that will stand him in good stead in the filming of the scenes for his screen drama. Monotony of action is sure to doom the cine story to mediocrity. David Wark Griffith has pointed out the importance of the tempo in screen dramatization and coined for cinema terminology the word "pace" to describe the speed with which action moves along. It is through this secret of screen .magic that the producer controls the pulse beat of his audience. THE pace of a motion picture, as might be expected, reveals itself in the cutting room. Comedies in which the action is brisk will have many short scenes — some mere flashes that keep the light changers on automatic printers clicking at a lively rate. Love scenes, abetted by fade ins and fade outs, move at a more leisurely pace. Lest what has been said make the reader feel that producing an amateur drama is too serious a task, let him remember that amateur rank carries with it full liberty for self expression. His ideals are unhampered by the restrictions of "what the public wants," which the box office hangs over the professional producers head. So, if in his production the amateur movie maker seeks harmony between action and setting, correlation between player and background, pleasing composition, flawless costuming, it is for his own satisfaction when his drama or story is retold to his friend on the silver screen. SWAPS (Continued from page 15) and show films taken by another. My reason for writing this letter is to suggest a somewhat different, additional, service which the League could render to its members : This is the lending of films, not merely for showing purposes, but so that duplicates may be made of a fellow-member's film, to fill in and complete one's own pictures. One or two examples may make clearer my meaning : a) A member, let us say makes a camping trip in one of the National Parks, and takes several hundred feet of pictures of his party in camp, on the trail, and of the scenery which they see. Lack of film, a bad storm or some other cause prevents his getting any pictures of the scenery along one or two days' trails, leaving a gap in what can otherwise be edited into an interesting and complete record of the trip. Thru the League, he might borrow a film taken by some other member who visited the same Park, have a duplicate printed of that part of the film: which covers the section which he missed, splice it into his own film — and the gap is filled! b) A member visits some important athletic contest — say, the Yale-Harvard football game; and takes movies of the game. Thru the League, he might bor (Conclnded on next page)