The art of sound pictures (1930)

28 THE ART OF SOUND PICTURES value of the episodes. Do not hope to sell stories about a given event solely because it is played up prominently in the news. The event must have some intrinsically human appeal. Best of all are those broader trends which crop out in a thousand and one news items, year in and year out. We refer to such things as the jazz age and the crime wave. These are not single events. They are streams of events. They disturb millions of people for a long time. You recall how, around 1918, there developed an intense moral issue over the jazz age. Older people rebelled against this and endeavored to suppress it. Young people ran wild. As for the crime wave, all of our better citizens have been aroused to the dangers growing out of the vast corporations of gunmen, dope peddlers, and rum runners that run our large cities. Why are such trends better than big news stories of the ordinary sort? Simply because they have been influencing people in many ways for a long time before you, the writer, present a story about them on the screen. The public has built up a solid background of attitudes and emotions. This spares you the hard necessity of educating millions in the subject of your story. A word to sum up this most intricate of all writing problems. What do people want? The practical problem is far removed from the theoretical one that is usually attacked by psychologists. Otherwise, every large industry would long ago have perfectly organized its sales departments and its selling campaigns. Strictly speaking, we must get back to the individual and to some place and time. It is unscientific to ask what