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.
126 A PRACTICAL MANUAL OF SCREEN PL AY WRITING
or medium shots of the pair in conversation, significant close-ups of eyes, mouths, hands, etc., or cutaways to props or reaction shots of others in the vicinity. There may also be a combination of these various shots.
Such reverse angles, with the terseness they engender because of the nervous cutting involved, are ideally suited for scenes which must be presented with a staccato beat. In Wyler's The Heiress, for example, the long-running scene between Dr. Sloper and Morris dragged considerably because it was played as a long-running take in a medium shot. Alternate, reverse-angle intercutting could have given this dramatic scene the proper tempo.
It may be enlightening to explain how these reverse angles are shot. Although they will be indicated in the screen play in sequence, actually, on the stage, they will be shot out of sequence. Each person will run through all his lines while the other character feeds him his cue lines. Then the second character will be shot in a close-up for all his lines, while the first person feeds the cues. These are then sent to the film editor, who cuts up the shots and reassembles them alternately, and intercuts with medium shots and cutaways.
Regardless of how the reverse-angle close-ups are shot, the screenplay writer should indicate how he believes they should be edited. He may desire, for example, that certain lines from one character be heard as an overlap— that is, while we see the close-up of the first character, we hear the second character's voice.
Such voice overlaps, however, should be indicated only when it is necessary to show the reaction of the first person to what the second person is saying. And if that reaction is highly important to the story— to develop character, to advance the plot, to top a scene that has been deliberately built to a climax— it is advisable to indicate that a close-up be used, so as to exact its full significance.
Reverse-angle action. Except for the above ruse, though, reverseangle shots are frowned upon in most studios. The belief is— and often justifiably so— that such shots, necessitating a sudden wrench in point of view, disorient the audience from the locale of the action. This may be true, especially when the action is static. But when the scene is replete with action— action that is identifiable in itself — locale orientation can be retained. When there are identifiable props in the scene, orientation can also be retained, despite a sudden