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76 A PRACTICAL MANUAL OF SCREEN PLAYWRITING
with the happenings of a set of people within the limits of the running time of the picture.
In other words, the picture would have to concern itself with happenings that take place in an uninterrupted period of about twenty-seven minutes for a half-hour television drama, fifty-four minutes for an hour-length television drama (about an average of ten per cent of the time should be allotted for advertising commercials) and about seventy-five to ninety minutes for a theater feature film. Hitchcock's The Rope attempted this with its longplaying single scenes in which the camera roved at will around the big set. But even Hitchcock was forced to break up his scenes with cuts because of the limited amount of film his camera could hold, thus destroying the utter realism he strove for. For real life does not operate like a series of film cuts cemented together by a film editor.
The omnipresent camera. To be pure realism a picture must, of necessity, follow its characters around from set to set, from the beginning of the picture to the end, without resorting to such filmic tricks as cuts, wipes, fades, montages, and dissolves. This, however, is a physical impossibility. Hence the need to temper pure realism with filmic conventions— with expressionism, for all cinematic devices are nothing but expressionistic representations of the real.
Candid realism. The purely realistic film would also have to be shot in newsreel style— candid camera, as it were, with little consideration being given to lighting, camera movement, and make-up. The semi-documentaries Boomerang and The House on 92nd Street followed the techniques of the March of Time, and attempted a form of candid-camera shooting— quite successfully, it may be added. But they did not go whole hog with the method, for many of the scenes were studio-mounted and shot. The result was that in blending the unreality of the studio scenes with the reality of the candidly shot scenes the former suffered by comparison, and a sustained sense of realism was frustrated.
Infinite details. The purely realistic film must also be all-inclusive. Although the screen-play writer's sense of selectivity should continue to be operative, at the same time he should not slough off