The art of sound pictures (1930)

FEELINGS AND EMOTIONS 135 old man or woman, and especially when the child is crippled and the old man has to sell papers to buy medicine. The audience feels the alliance between these characters and also perceives the points in which each is controlled by the other. There is one thing to remember, however, and that is that prolonged situations of this kind lose their effect and, sooner or later, our characters must triumph over some obstacle, or else their submission becomes ineffective. How People Express Their Emotions While it is not strictly the writer’s task, in building screen plots, to describe the action expressive of personality or emotion in any great detail, nevertheless it is extremely valuable for him to have these actions definitely in mind. Such knowledge will not only add realism to the characters whom he portrays, but it may definitely affect the action sequence. People influence one another by the behavior resulting from the emotions they feel far more than they do in any other way. It is very important to keep the action of the characters truly expressive of the emotions which they are intended to show. A first-class screen story, in fact, is written largely in action terms, both the plot and the characters being thus depicted in a concrete way which brings home the picture values of the story to editors and to audiences. Many writers seem to believe that a given emotion may be expressed in only one way. Fear is a classic example. It seems to be a popular delusion that this emotion always expresses itself in running away or in a withdrawal action of some sort. This is far from being the case. Fear may express itself in quite the opposite way. In The Drake