The Moving Picture World (Apr-Jun 1913)

THE MOVING PICTURE WORLD 157 hi > . m ■ 1 m m &? PHOTOPLAYWRIGHT ^g. Conducted by Epes Wimthrop Saboekt p^ iin wm& \m^&m^mK^' ^% Add These. HERMAN E. L. BEYER adds to the collection of plots for the prohibited list started lately, and a couple of photoplay editors write that they will make additions presently. Come in yourself with your most detested bromide. Remember that these plots are not strictly barred, but unless you can give them a brand new twist it is better not to write them. Mr. Beyer cites an exception to his own No. 8 in "The Trail of Cards" an American release, in which the twist is new. 7. Baby's shoes. Edison, Majestic, Reliance and other companies have worked out all the sentiment attached to them. Bannister Merwin, Robert E. Coffey and other authors have reunited separated couples by means of baby's tootsie-wootsies. Give them a rest. 8. Two suitors for the hand of a girl. They go to one of the parents to decide, or she decides to give them a common task to perform. One wins by foul means. He is found out, and she marries the other. (To be continued.) Paste This Up. We've done a lot toward making blondes and bnmette.s out of red-heads, and mostly they've thanked us. Here is a letter from a recent correspondent that tells its own story. Read it and then paste it over your desk to read again when you feel like writing murder into a letter. I must write and thank you for your kind advice through the columns of the Photoplaywright. Some time ago I wrote you very indignantly, of the marring of a script suumitted the Majestic company and called on you for a means of redress. You very calmly told me to take the matter up with them in a nice way and they would probably pay for toe recopying. I rewrote the script, and in doing so saw where I could vastly improve it. I then wrote Mr. Hopp Hadley a letter, saying that I knew from the appearance of the script on its return that he had intended producing it and had changed his mind, and begged him to give it another look over in its improved form. Answer today, offering me forty dollars for it, which I immediately accepted. I see now if I had "painted for war" and gone ghost dancing at the company I would, in all probability, have had the script returned without a reading. Verily, a mild letter getteth the goods. What Happened to Jones. Marc Edmund Jones, until recently head of the Chicago Circle, came on to New York for the photoplay writers' dinner, and is not going to use the return half of his ticket for a while. He finds that he can learn more in New York in a week than in a year in Chicago, for this is the fountain head of production for a majority of the companies. He has been visiting the offices and the studios and he has come upon a point that throws a light on the complaint of the novice who thinks the story he has had turned down so much better than the one he sees on the screen. This is what h« found out: In visiting the studio of probably the largest concern producing pictures I was surprised to find the same condition of affairs as exists in the other studios, I have visited. The editor told me of picture after picture that had been spoiled by poor direction — in fact, poor direction seemed to be almost the rule rather than the exception. And this in spite of the fact that a director in this studio is not allowed to change a script in any particular without an O. K. from one of the heads. This, then, was the first point. A picture in a studio, whether of the leading concern or another, is very apt to be poorly directed. The second thing that I discovered was that here, as well as elsewhere, a picture is very apt to be overtaken, and that 1,400 feet is not unusual. This means that 400 out of 1,400 — or really 500, as the leaders have to be put in — that over a third of the business of the picture has to be cut out after it is taken, not rarely, but very often. And so a picture not only is apt to be poorly directed, but is apt to have about a third of its action cut out. That covers what the director can do to it. Then there is the Censor Board, who, in, the case of another concern, cut out a little over half of the total footage submitted to them. The picture which has been b dly cut has cost too much money to throw away, and so, while there are sometimes retakes on some of the scenes, the break is usually patched up with leaders. And then there are the leaders. In this particular studio the script calls for the least possible number. One of the heads will view the picture and order leaders in at various points. The Censor Board often will order in a leader here and there to make a point clear which they figure will be obscure. And then, when ' ever there is a break, due to a cut-out, the editor is ordered to write a sub to cover it. The net result of all this, and the point at which I drive, is merely this: The screen is no criterion of the standard demanded of the author before his script will be purchased. After visiting a good many studios, and talking with a good many of the editors, I believe that the average script turned over to a director is of a pretty high standard. But the standard of direction is very low, and the manufacturer is not so much in need of director-proof stories as he is of directors who can put a story on the screen as well as it is written; who can compute footage, and who is familiar with the type of presentation that will "get over" with the censors, the critics and the public. The screen should be the criterion for the author's work, but it certainly is not at this writing. There are a few studios, notably that of the Edison company, where the length of each scene is pre-determined, where the scene that is given 50 seconds must be turned in 50 feet and is rehearsed and cut down or built up until it does, but in a majority of cases the picture is made first and measured after, and the gaps must be bridged with leader, and this does not always make for interest, but just the same we have small sympathy for those who know their stories are better without having seen them screened. Mr. Jones supplies a solution we have offered before, but be states his case plainly, and so we're passing it along. Naughty Mr. Beyer. We are a little bit ashamed of Herman E. L. Beyer, who runs a coupl* of weekly papers in Newark and runs a couple of photoplay department* in that couple of papers. In a late issue he writes in answer to an inquirer: We never heard of any comedy being improbable. If the scenario editor tells you that, he ought to go to night school. We're going to run a small night school for Mr. Beyer's benefit. There was a time when nothing was too absurd or improbable for filming. We were overrun with inane stories of love potions and powders, laughing powders, crying powders, miraculous transformations and all the stale devices of ten years ago. Then the real photoplay came and with it an audience _ of a higher intelligence and a more discriminating taste. -It quickly tired of pills and potions, it grew weary of water throwing and senseless chases. It wanted something with some idea to it, and it led to the establishment of a higher standard of comedy ideas. Broadly speaking Mr. Beyer is right. Nothing is too improbable if intelligently handled. Improbability would bar from literature Anstey*s Vice Versa and kindred stories, the whole range of Fairy tales and the imaginative work of Verne, Wells and others of that school. But is must be remembered that these men write creative matter. As a general thing the pictured action differs from the printed book in that greater reality is now demanded. When we read of men and women we use solely the imagination, falling in with the mood of the author, but when we see the photographic images of actual men and women on the screen there is a jarring note struck when they do things that persons of flesh and blood would not naturally do, and so, unless in a palpably evident fairy story, a certain degree of probability is demanded even in farce, where there is greater latitude than in comedy. Unless you have the genius of a Wells and can create a realistic atmosphere of unreality and maintain it throughout the run of the film, you must make your people do the things that people could do. You must adhere with reasonable closeness to probability. If you write a story of a henpecked inventor who invents a flying machine to take him to the moon to escape his shrewish wife, and play most of your scene on the surface of the satellite, then you are not too improbable, since you advertise the fact that you are dealing in improbabilities and impossibilities, but where you hold to the atmosphere of daily life yet turn out a story that is so wild and improbable that no one can grasp your viewpoint, then you have turned out a comedy that is too improbable for a story of daily life and yet not sufficiently fantastic to claim a place among the unrealities, and it does not take an extended course in night school for the photoplay editor to realize that the story would be an absolute failure on the screen. We hope that these few lines will find Mr. Beyer well and that be'U get the point. It's one of the causes of failure with so many writers that they think that any old idea, no matter how silly, will do for comedy. For Mr. Brewster. Eugene V. Brewster jumped on William Lord Wright instead of us in the last issue of the Motion Picture Story Magazine, but we still remember that he said he knew little or nothing of the schools he defends. Here ia an extract from a professional man in Birmingham, Ala., who knows what he is talking about, because he sells plays himself. He writes: I also wish to congratulate you upon your fight on the fake schools. While I have not been one of their victims, I know a woman here who has separated herself from $50 to one of these charlatans. Your stand on this question is a parallel with the fight made by Collier's and the Ladies' Home Journal on patent medicine frauds. Mr. Brewster makes the suggestion that we direct our efforts toward making the schools good instead of discouraging them. You can't make a fakir a teacher by encouragement. Listen to this, regarding one of the so-called colleges: I have finally got the goods on . Ke suddenly abandoned his college (located in Ohio) and skipped to St. Louis. Those taking a three months' subscription offer have nothing in return. One woman in California sent in $30 for a course of lessons, got five in six months, and can get no further information. I have taken up the matter with the Postoffice Department and I think I'll put him out of the business. Another school is already suffering from the attentions of the postoffice inspectors and narrowly escaped a fraud order. We fail to see that encouragement is what they need. Further Up the Street. Russell E. Smith, photoplaywright and former editor of the photoplay end of the Magazine Maker, has gone further up Main Street and is now assistant editor of the Cavalier, of the Munsey string. He writes that they are in need of humorous short stories — which will be good news to the photoplay writers who also dabble in fiction.