Moving Picture World (Jul-Sep 1914)

THE MOVING PICTURE WORLD 565 A Human Document. Often the experiences of the outside writer are more Important than the writings of the veteran and we believe that the average reader will derive both profit and comfort from this letter from the Rev. Clarence J. Harris, who wrote in some time ago to tell how he had mastered the two reel Idea. He says : It has been so long since I invaded your sanctorum. I am taking the liberty to write you. with many thanks for what you and the "Moving Picture World" have been to me. I realize nothing can be done with photoplays outside of work. I am visited and written to by a good many, since I received several friendly, well-meaning writeups. I probably see one to your scores, yet I see enough to convince me that tot> manv expect to icritc photoplays icithout icork. "Why. that's work I" gasped a woman one day as I showed her a carbon copy. She acted real provoked with me and failed to understand why one had to put so much technique Into the work. The last visitor, a young man. I asked to leave my study three times, and then I had to open the door and say good-bye twice ; yet he. not knowing enough to go home when told, expected to write dramas that would keep an audience of thousands from going home. Here is what I have done during the past four weeks, which I tell you to show l am working and if work can do anything for me, I shall "get over" some time. I worked seven years before I placed a single drama, as I have told many ; but the seven years were spent in the study of story writing. But back of that I had twenty years of literary and ministerial work. During the past four weeks I rewrote a novel of 50.000 words Wrote one five-reel photoplay. One three-reel from a MS. story. Four two-reels. Three one-reels. Rewrote five two-reel stories with new plotting. Gave one lecture, "Relation of Art to Literature." One lecture on Browning. Preached every Sunday. I have read every moving picture paper available here, which includes most of them I think. I always buy at least fifteen literary and story magazines a month, read two daily papers and my church papers. I always attend the motion picture theater at least five times a week, and when my own pictures come here I see them usually several times, study my carbon and if there is a change, find out why it is there. I have a large family and many social duties. I do not work nights and I am growing fat and thcy tell me tup preachinf/ and lecturitif/ has doubled in value and my audiences seem to bear out the statement. / consider my greatest returns from photoplay writing in my increased worth as n preacher and lecturer. Everything relating to writing seems changed. My sales are very satisfactory and many encouragements come to me from various sources. A New York editor who knows how to encourage wrote me yesterday, among other things : "I selfishly wish you'd send me all of your scripts because I enjoy reading them, whether we can use them or not. They are good because them ^gl ways carry a message." This pleased me greatly and doubled my zeal and ambition. One thing I determined not to do : to let no produced picture of mine be a standard and with every sale, I study the sold article and then re-write all I have on hand. Three times out, unsold, if properly submitted means rewriting for me, and my best sales have come from rewritten stuff. You do. not know it. but one two-line paragraph of yours in the "World" set me right several months ago ; I rewrote every drama I had written after reading it. It related to the author's position with the audience. I could never tell until then how far to take the audience into my confidence and how to keep up a suspense. You say tell all. show all and let the audience enjoy the suspense of the characters and not have to worrj over what it did not know itself. I could tell you a good many things I have learned from the "World" and your "Technique," for all of which I am grateful. I keep a great deal of stuff ahead : one drawer full. Often I "feel" more like writing in one line than another; often several dramas are nearing completion at the same time. A two-reel drama a week does not seem like over-doing it. but in re-writing I find I get help for new plotting. A mailing day once a week I like, as suggested in your column. Looking a MS. over several times after it is ready to leave gives a chance for many changes of value. I work very hard over titles, and being a great reader and admirer of Browning, I draw heavily on him for inspiration and help in title making. Any one to read "Pauline" alone will get a great fund of material. Xo poet plays so beautifully with words as Browning, and strikes chords which, brought out in drama, are beautiful. Titles like these I got by such suggestion. "Treading the Purple." "The AfterGlow," "The Morn-Blush," "The Help-tune." "The Shadowy Third," "The One Word." "The Crag's Sheer Edge." "The Sun Road." and a limitless number of others are in this great poet's work. I have taken a good deal of your time and promise not to write again for a good while. I read my "World" from cover to cover everj Tuesday morning with religious precision, but strange as it appears, though many have called on me and written me, I haven't found any of the over-zealous yet who have seen the "World" at all and I tell every one I will talk only after "Technique" and the "World" are in his hands. I am a student, and I am working hard, I am astonished with my financial returns bnt most gratified over the general uplift the work is to me in my profession. Mr. Harris is by no means the only minister who has found the scrt-en helpful, but he Is one of the few who also helpH to make the screen helpful by giving to the Rcreen what will help the pulpit. What that Ik Ih this: It Is stories that carry a lenson in the guise of an iittnictivv story. Most mlniHiers who try to write scriplK try to wrlti Hcrmons. SermonK an* all well enough in the pulpit, but the lews a screen story looks like a sermon the mort* helpful It Is apt to be. He does not write stories "with a moral." He writes stories that arc morals and yet not preachments, and editors welcome his output. And read what he said about work. That In Itself Ik a story with a moral. Like all who have arrived, he has arrived through work. Working from Synopses. All methods of working are intere-sting. Here Is what Is a new Idea to us ; Would you kindly advise me through your columns (f you consider the following plan practical for acquiring technique? I am In a position to secure the "Vitagraph Bulletin* each month, and this paper, as you know, gives a very full synopsis of each play. Now, would It be a good plan to take the synopsis of a stor>* and write a script from it, keeping to the plot as given and then when the film is released, compare your script with the one turned out by the author (as far as It Is possible to do so), seeing where you have fallen down In suspense, new business, etc. In the future the errors made in that script could be avoided and another one built up and compared the same way. One writer need not be used altogether, but a different one could he used each time, so that there would be no danger of acquiring a style which In itself might not be very good. Of course. It is not Intended that the idea or scripts so handled ever be offered for sale. I have been writing for the past five months, but have confined myself to plotting and synopsis, never venturing to turn out a finished script. I wrote one, my first one, one-half hour after ! had learned the form scripts should be submitted in. I hope that when I send in my second It will not make the trip to and from New York in five days as the first one did. This scheme, in a sense, will be helpful in determining the value of the student's plot development, but it does not seem to us that It will possess great value. The trouble is that what is needed to be studied at the first Is less the development of the idea than the creation of an idea. The Vitagraph synopses run pretty full. They give a reasonably good idea of how some author has treated a certain theme. It may be valuable to see how close you can come to the author's treatment, but it would be of infinitely more use to try and do something wholly different. Take the Vitagraph comedies and make them into dramas and vice versa and more good will result than an effort to see how closely one can copy the Vitagraph author's style. One man has made a real name for himself in photoplay by copying as well as he could the stories he saw. writing in the business of each scene, the inserts and leaders, but he has a prodigious memory, and this scheme is to be commended principally as a study of form. It would be better, we think, if our correspondent took his Vitagraph bulletin and instead of studying the development tried to study^out just what it was that made the story a story and not a failure, and for this the back part of this paper each week provides much more material than the publication of any company. Plots. Did you ever hear the old stor> of the man who was to die unless he told a story that would last forever? He started in by telling of a granary w^ith a knot hole in the room and a locust came and took a grain of corn "and another locust came and took another grain of corn," and so on for about eleven nights when they found out he was going to build another granary as soon as he had emptied this one and so they put him to a horrible death. Lots of alleged plots run the same way. They can be cut off into a thousand foot lengths or run on to a million feet without getting anywhere. The thing to do is to Jciwv: where you are going to stop before you start. If every script sent into the studios was a plot and not merely a collection of incident, the percentage of acceptance would be vastly larger. If Uncle John started to drive Aunt Mary from Hick.^ville to Hohokus and got robbed on the way. it Is not a story. If he knew he was going to be attacked by robbers and took means to defeat them, it is the story of how he defeated the robbers, and the interest lies in exact proportion to the , charm with which you invest Uncle John and the suspense you use in telling the story. Technique of the Photoplay (Second Edition) By EPES W. SARGENT Not a line reprinted from the first edition, but an entirely new and exhaustive treatise of the Photoplay in its every aspect, together with a dictionary of technical terms and several sample scripts. One hundred and seventy-six pages of actual text. Special chapters on Developmg the "Punch. Condensing the Script, Writing the Synopsis, Multiple Reel Stories, Talking Pictures, Copyrights, etc In cloth, two dollars. Full leather, three dollars. . , . , By mail postpaid. Add ten cents if registration is desired. Address all Orders to THE MOVING PICTURE WORLD 17 Madison Avenue, New York City