Picture Play Magazine (Oct-Nov 1915)

Record Details:

Something wrong or inaccurate about this page? Let us Know!

Thanks for helping us continually improve the quality of the Lantern search engine for all of our users! We have millions of scanned pages, so user reports are incredibly helpful for us to identify places where we can improve and update the metadata.

Please describe the issue below, and click "Submit" to send your comments to our team! If you'd prefer, you can also send us an email to mhdl@commarts.wisc.edu with your comments.




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.

30 PICTURE-PLAY WEEKLY and the Fox service has a feature that satisfies and makes money. It is the same way with serials. "The Diamond From the Sky" is my first serial. Its success is due to the fact that I have carefully prepared the scenario and the most efficient and enthusiastic organization is behind me, from the director, W. D. Taylor, to the experts in the Chicago laboratory of the American Film Company — not to mention a wonderful cast of young screen stars — not old, hidebound mummers, of the now defunct speaking stage. I would never do a serial previous to "The Diamond From the Sky," although I have several outline scenarios for serials — because the pay offered would have been scorned by a ragpicker. I have to smile at the many letters I receive, which allude to my "great success," and which also state, "of course, you being on the inside, can sell all you write, and get prompt action on all your work, and the biggest prices." It is to laugh, not alone smile ! Until recently every experienced writer who can write, and who has endeavored to write for the moving pictures, was up against the most disheartening conditions at most of the big studios. For years I have endeavored to get such writers of my acquaintance as Albert Payson Terhune and other leading American authors to write directly for the screen. When they attempted to do so, the unpleasant and exasperating treatment and delay — not to mention the pitiful prices they were offered, almost queered me with them. A writer who can write has worked at and studied his profession for years. He has invested heavily in his tools and instruments— his library. To write scenarios with any degree of efficiency entails the same care and training that it takes to write fiction successfully. I do not write a one-reel scenario that does not cost me twenty-five dollars. My expenses, the expenses, past and present, of any trained, educated, and practiced writer, are heavy. Because a surgeon gets five thousand dollars for an operation or a lawyer may win twenty thousand dollars in one fee is no reason that would lead a writer to try to perform a major operation or plead a great case in court. It is time the film manufacturers learn, and I think they have learned, that only trained and experienced writers can write convincingly for the screen. It is idle for the film companies to purchase the picture rights to successful old plays or new books and magazine articles, and then expect these to be made into good scenarios by incompetent "scenario editors." Much could also be said about the jarring effects of old stock-company stage business and settings. Moving pictures are a newer and higher art. The fustian and claptrap of the speaking stage killed the speaking stage — and now old stage actors and old stage directors are flocking into moving pictures and presenting this same fustian and claptrap for the screen ! The screen depicts life ! The camera is unsparing of age and stilted action and emotion. It must have youth and naturalness. If an actress, for instance, is depicting a character, be it Orphan Annie or Marcia van Style, the heiress just out of Vassar, the actress must be these characters from life, not a grimacing stock-company soubrette, with a vapid grin and a mop of false curls. Moving pictures is the new art and the true art. In its every phase it makes for sincerity, and again sincerity — sincerity in comedy and drama alike. And this sincerity must permeate the story and the depiction with lifelike fidelity. And it is all so simple. We do not need "hokum," as our stage friends would say. All we need to do is to pay the easy and earnest tribute of naturalness to "The Gods of Things as They Really Are." VISION SCENES. When one scene fades from the screen as a character thinks, and another one fades in and then fades out to the original again, the amateur is generally puzzled as to just how to handle it in his script. There are many different ways, in fact, almost a different way for every company of prominence, but we think the best way for the amateur to do is to make it clear enough for any editor or director to understand. This can be done by simply writing out the fact that you intend to fade into a scene at the point where the fade takes place ; then, by sliding in the next scene with a separate number. The reason for the separate number is that the scene has to be taken separately, and is handled as a scene in itself until the time to unite it to the other scene is at hand. When the vision scene is fin ished, another statement should be made telling that the scene dissolves back to the original. It is not a question of having an elaborate set of technical words ; it is a case of being able to explain, via written words, to the men who are to make your plot into a motion picture, just what ideas you have in mind about staging the production. The more concise and clear your language is, the easier it will be for them to understand what you are talking about. There is no reason why vision scenes should prove a stumblingblock to amateurs, if they will sit down and think out the matter for themselves. The trouble is, you see, beginners do not seem to realize that the sole purpose of a scenario is to give the producer directions about making your plot into a picture play, and that "technique" is nothing but skill in doing this. 3IG THEMES. An article written by Russell E. Smith and published in Pictures and Picturegoer, a London motion-picture magazine, some time ago, treats the subject of big themes by photo-playwrights. We have been impressed by the lack of big original screen productions, as has almost every one else who studies the screen closely. There seems to be an opportunity for some enterprising concern to come along and make truly big films, written originally for the screen by capable writers, and which will last in the history of the silent drama instead of being merely a feature for a few months, and then a discard. Mr. Smith's article reads as follows : "Many photo-playwrights are complaining that the fiction author of note is taking in more money for his plots, in proportion, than the strictly photo-play writing author. "Aside from the advertising value of said fiction author's name, there is another reason : The average photo-playwright is lacking in the big idea — the big theme. The fiction author who has won his spurs in his line of literature has long been in the habit of writing big themes — he has to. in order to turn out a long, salable novel or four-act play. "The average photo-playwright does not seem to be able to furnish the producer with really big ideas or themes ; at least, he doesn't do so. Whether he cannot or whether he doesn't find it worth