We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
Chapter XII CUTTING AND EDITING
WITH the gratifying general progress of events toward a higher standard in motion picture art comes the necessity for scrupulous and painstaking care in every detail and department of production and finishing. Methods that once were the result of a naive scramble for wealth in an "easy money" market are obsolete. The old timers were relegated to the background. The old order gave place to new methods, new systems and new men. And in the great struggle for the survival of the fittest success depends upon the perfection of every detail.
It is gratifying to note that titling, that most important detail in the making of a picture, is receiving more and more attention from producers. They realize that more effectiveness as well as considerable saving in expensive crowds and settings can be gained by collaboration with a titler who is an expert literary craftsman.
Producers soon came to recognize the fact that a title serves but one purpose. It expresses a definite idea in words. When it has done this its purpose is accomplished, but when it is accompanied by an excessive amount of rococo ornamentation, it defeats its own purpose in diverting attention from the idea expressed by the words, to the decoration (?). For this reason the obtrusive ornamentation has been discarded and the present trend is toward a plain title, relieved, perhaps, by an artistically designed initial letter and a background with an unobtrusive, all-over decoration in tapestry or similar effect. The best commercial title, is plain white lettering of good design, upon a plain black or dark gray ground.
A more important question is: How improve the literary value of the writing of the titles? Here is a field as wide as the industry itself. The old-style running commentary on the picture, with its crudities, barn-storming heroics, cheap platitudes and abortive attempts at fine phrasing, is doomed. It cannot withstand the ever-increasing pressure of an elevating competition. Those who write these titles must either mend their ways or find other occupation in keeping with their limitations.
199