Film technique and film acting : the cinema writings of V. I. Pudovkin (1954)

4 PUDOVKIN scene and thence, following the scenario, proceed in order right up to the last. The reason is simple. Suppose, for argument's sake, you build a required set — it nearly always happens that the scenes taking place in it are spread throughout the whole scenario — and suppose the director take it into his head, after shooting a scene on that set, to proceed immediately with the scene next following in the order of the action of the developing scenario, then it will be necessary to build a new set without demolishing the first, then another, and so forth, accumulating a whole series of structures without being able to destroy the preceding ones. To work in this way is impracticable for simple technical reasons. Thus both director and actor are deprived of the possibility of continuity in the actual process of shooting ; but, at the same time, continuity is essential. With the loss of continuity, we lose the unity of the work — its style and, with that, its effect. From this derives the inevitable necessity of a detailed preliminary overhauling of the scenario. Only then can a director work with confidence, only then can he attain significant results, when he treats each piece carefully according to a filmic plan, when, clearly visualising to himself a series of screen images, he traces and fixes the whole course of development, both of the scenario action and of the work of the separate characters. In this preliminary paper-work must be created that style, that unity, which conditions the value of any work of art. All the various positions of the camera — such as long-shot, close-up,