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.
138 A PRACTICAL MANUAL OF SCREEN PLAYWRITING
The same can be said of the many other time lapse cliches: the piled-up milk bottles or newspapers left by canny, though undiscerning, vendors; the waves washing interminably against a seashore; the same waves washing away footprints in the sands of time; the roast turkey dissolving through to a gleaming turkey skeleton; the "you can't do this to me!" last line dissolving to "look what they done to me!"; the window darkening from day to night and vice versa; the hourglass with the sands trickling down; the new pair of shoes dissolved through to the same shoes worn out— these and a multitude of variations on the same theme. They were once fresh conceptions invented by adroit writers, which, through overuse, have since bred contempt. They have all had their day in pictures.
Use cliches as springboard. In avoiding these trite but true devices, however, the screen-play writer should not ignore them completely. Rather, he should use them as springboards suggesting other, fresher versions.
In On the Town, for example, time lapses were indicated by superimposing a running light-bulb sign across the bottom of the frame— like the Times Building sign at Times Square in New York— which flashed on the time of day at those intervals where it was necessary to establish it. This superimposure was daring but it was effective because it stemmed from the spirit of the picture's locale. This subject will be discussed shortly.
In the British picture The Seventh Veil, the girl's visits to the cabaret were shown to take place over an extended period of time by the simple device of opening each scene in the sequence of cabaret shots with a close-up of a different liquor bottle on the table, beginning with soda pop, then going through "cyder," wine, champagne and, finally, an impish and surprising carafe of water.
In The House on 92nd St., the passing of the girl's stay in jail— a year— was shown by superimposing the shadow of a pendulum swinging across a continual change of newspaper headlines, these shots being interspersed with shots of the girl languishing in her cell.
Integrate time lapse with cliaracter. For time lapses to be most effective, it is absolutely essential that they grow out of the character of the action, the locale, the characters, or all three. It is quite sim