Moving Picture World (Oct-Dec 1914)

634 THE MOVING PICTURE WORLD THE PHOTOPLAYWRIGHT Conducted by EPES WINTHROP SARGENT Vocation and Avocation. THIS is not very different from other letters constantly received, but it states matters more clearly. The writer asks : I have several scripts which some editors have pronounced good, and yet I do not seem able to find a sale for them. Is there such a slump in the present demand that if a promising playwright has another means of livelihood he had better take advantage of it? Now there are two sides of the answer to this. The most important one is this : There is not now and has never yet been a sufficient demand for photoplay scripts from the general market to warrant any writer in seeking to gain a livelihood from photoplays alone unless he has what virtually amounts to a contract. Until the writer has (or some time gained from photoplay writing an income in excess of that accruing from his daily employment, it is an error to throw aside the vocation for the avocation. This has been the case, and always will be the case, in photoplay as it is in fiction. There are comparatively few persons who derive a satisfactory income from writing fiction stories alone. There are fewer who can accomplish the same result in photoplay, because the market is smaller. And the more experienced the writer, the less apt he is to trust to one medium alone. Let us consider the photoplay market, a moment. It is, first of all, useless to reckon with the feature film companies. Most of their work is done in the studio or by writers who are told precisely what to write. They are not in the general market, for their needs are few and peculiar. This leaves perhaps 'JO to 125 subjects a week released on program. Of the Licensed releases, there are four companies largely served by staff writers, though practically all will purchase from the outside if good stuff presents itself. Universal trusts largely to the scheme of hiring directors who write their own productions. The market here is very small. Most of the Mutual companies are in the market, though some of them make but few purchases from outsiders. It is a liberal estimate to say that thirty to forty scripts are purchased from the outside each week. There are a hundred or more writers who regularly produce purchasable stuff. Many of them must take turns. When writers work up to a certain standard they are either put on staff or what virtually amounts to a staff position. Until that time they cannot command a steady income. It is foolish, then, for any writer, to abandon a steady income for a precarious one. Just as a matter of fact few regular writers not actually on salary (in opposition to staff writers who are paid by the script) have not some work that brings them a regular income. One brilliant writer gives a couple of hours a day to an advertising agency looking over their material and giving a final revise. Another is in the Railway Mail Service. William Lord Wright runs a daily paper and does special work. Roy McCardell has only lately given up all but his "Jarr" and syndicate stuff with the New York World, and at that he still has a dozen irons in the fire. -One man is a printer, another a physician, a third a dentist. All, in spite of their staff position, do other and more certain work. The same holds good in a more general sense in fiction work. Not more than two per cent, of the writers look to fiction alone for their incomes. They know the uncertainties of the work and they are well assured of a permanent success before they cut loose from their other work. E. W. Matlack probably makes more money from scripts than he does from train dispatching, but he knows the latter job will last year after year. Now to get to the second point, the selling : An editor may pronounce a script to be good and yet not buy it because it does not suit him. A second editor may find another point of objection, and so it goes until a good script has been the rounds unpurchased. It is still a good script, but not an available one. At this moment the market is somewhat contracted because of the foolish war scare, but at best the author is at the mercy of fewer than fifty persons. He must suit one or more of them or make no sale. It is still a precarious business. Editors are but human and have their likes and dislikes. The good script is apt to land eventually, but it must be a really good script and not merely one the author likes and one editor says is good. The business is and always will be a survival of the fittest, and it is up to each writer to make himself one of the fittest, and not only that one hut one of the leaders. What was good a year ago is moderately poor now, and what was considered good four years ago would be regarded as hopeless now. The business progresses, and while it is growing bigger and broader, it is also growing more exacting. One must keep up with the procession. Until you can be certain of making at least $3,000 a year, because that was what you made last year, stick to the little old job that pays off regularly and make photoplay, or fiction or dramatic writing your avocation. You'll eat more regularly and have a greater peace of mind. If a man who earns between $8,000 and $10,000 a year with various forms of fiction and photoplay can still cling to cigar advertising, you do not have to feel that you must cut loose the first time you make five or six sales in one month. That Telegraph Contest. Roy L. McCardell won the first prize in the Morning Telegraph prize comedy script contest. Miss Elaine Sterne, who won the first in the Vitagraph contest, was second and Miss Caroline B. Wells (not the Fluffy Ruffles lady) was third. A second McCardell script was "in the money," but in fairness it was decided to accept the script at the third prize price and allot the third to Miss Wells. The winners have been paid and the other matters will be adjusted promptly The contest was decided in less than a month from the time of its closing. All three winners are practical and experienced writers. Mr. McCardell. the same week the contest was announced, also won the weekly award from Puck for the best contribution for that week. From the Prize Winner. It seems to be fashionable to print the remarks of the prize winner \vh..n a contest is ended. We neglected to get Miss Sterne's impressions on the Sun-Vitagraph contest, but a recent letter from Roy L. McCardell. winner of first prize in the Telegraph-Chartered Theaters contest is more interesting than a formal article would be, In congratulating Mr. McCardell on his new honor we added that we had seen none of his recent scripts and that a couple of staff men had declared that he had no technique at all. In reply he writes: I am afraid that the one or two who say my scripts are bad may be right. Of course I'll let you read or look over any of my home copies, but I would rather you took twenty minutes out of the first Sunday you spent with us, so I could have your opinion on some half dozen one and two-reelers sold. I have none unsold that I would now try to sell. As a matter of fact, I have very little if any "technique." I simply try to describe a story to be told in pantomime by actors before the camera — try to describe it as I see it in my mind's eye, so the director and actors can see it, and after they have seen and depicted it, that the audience seeing it on the screen will follow the story with such interest .that, despite the fact it is in dumb show, they will subconsciously think they are seeing and THINK they are hearing real people saying and doing real and interesting things. That's all and the only way I know how to write a pictureplay. Your department helps me, has always helped me. It has helped every writer who makes his salt at selling scenarios. I do not think it harms the boobs ; they would be wasting their foolish time at something else. My definition of a boob is the silly folk who want all the rewards without taking the pains to grow some brains first. The first foundation of any measure of reward in photoplay writing is years of reading and mind developing. All the technical instruction in the world will not supply the lack of those two things. At that, there are only about half a dozen M. P. companies on the level about buying mss. But better days are coming. I do not want to write a long letter, but have much to tell you when I see you. regarding the gentle art of photoplaywriting — it's rewards and it disappointments. Another good friend and instructor of mine is Commodore J. Stuart Blackton, who has done very much for me. He sometimes writes me several pages of constructive criticism. You bet he knows. He thinks and works. He not only writes himself but he is always on the job and he sees the efforts of himself and others in the studio and the result on the screen. I am proud of the fact that my work has been good enough to interest the real workers, the real takers and makers of pictures like Blackton. I realize THEY KNOW and am guided by them. I have been most fortunate in my instructors. My first teacher was Wallace McCutcheon, than whom there was none better in his day. B'itzer and Walter Marvin on the camera. Long, now of Kalem, but then the technical man of Biograph, later on Edwin Porter, of Edison and Rex and Famous Players and Blackton ! Besides all this, I study the pictures all I can. Kalem has some wonderful camera effects, and there is no gainsaying the great genius of David Griffith. His "The Avenging Conscience" and "Judith of Berthula" were masterpieces. And yet I know a supposedly noted scenario writer who boasted to me he "didn't need to go to see anybody's picture," and utterly refused to go to see "Cabfria" or any of Griffith's work! Can you beat it? B*ut I see his finish. He is a man touted as one of the best ever ! But he is NOT, and he is going back while you look at him. After he talked that way to me I looked him up in the M. P. World Film Reviews, for the past year. If his employers ever read it over they would blink a little. Well. I tried not to write you a long letter, but here it is again ! We disagree with Mr. McCardell on his proposition that there are so few companies really buying scripts, but we are with him on the definition of the boob, in fact it is the best definition of the genus that we have yet seen — the man who wants reward without work. Just in passing, Mr. McCardell has resigned his long connection with the editorial staff of the New York World and in the future will supply them only with his Mr. and Mrs. Jarr feature and his syndicate stuff The relief from the routine work of the Metropolitan section will give him time for his more important activities, but like all old timers he has clung to the harness long after the necessity was past. Chicago Open. The former coroner of the Inquest Circle in Chicago writes that he is going to conduct his organization independent of the parent body. There is an opening in Chicago for an Inquest Circle if any experienced writer wishes to qualify. Have you yet written stories Buy a bale of cotton, Be neutral, The baseball championship. The football hero, The war? If you haven't — don't!