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

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ON FILM TECHNIQUE 17 scenario ; the same applies to the expression " refusals everywhere. " What is said here is not being pedantic about a word. It is important to realise that even in the preparatory general treatment of the scenario must be indicated nothing that is impossible to represent, or that is inessential, but only that which can be established as clear and plastically expressive keystones. To express externally the character of a scene showing direst poverty, to find acts (not words) characterising the relationship of Andrei to Natasha —this is what will provide such key-stones. It may be argued that work on plastic form belongs already to the next stage and can be left to the director, but to this I emphasise once again that it is always important to have the possible plastic form before one's eyes even in the general approach to the work, in order to escape the possibility of blank gaps in the subsequent treatment. Remember, for example, the word " often," already mentioned as one entirely unnecessary and incapable of plastic expression. Thus we have established the necessity for the scenarist always to orientate himself according to the plastic material that, in the end, must serve as form for his representation. We now turn to the general questions of concentration of the action as a whole. There is a whole series of standards that regulate the construction of a narrative, of a novel, of a play* They stand all, undoubtedly, in close relation to scenario work, but their transcription cannot be compressed into the narrow limits of this sketch,5