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THE FILMIC COMPONENTS 147
London's Tower Bridge and Trafalgar Square, New York's Times Square— these and thousands of other similar scenes have been used so often in pictures that they establish audience identification the moment they are flashed on the screen.
Title-card transitions. To make doubly certain that this identification identifies, many film makers insist on superimposing a title card over the scenic shot, with the word "London" or "Paris" on it. Just why this should be necessary, especially in such easily identifiable shots, is incomprehensible. At best, title cards are crutches that should have gone out when sound came in. The more creative old-time film producers realized their shortcomings and tried to avoid them, as did Chaplin in his Woman of Paris. In present-day picture making, title cards serve only to betray the writer's lack of ingenuity.
Gratuitous title cards. Title cards are especially gratuitous when used to furnish introductory comments just before the picture starts, especially the rolling title card superimposed over a scenic shot from the picture.
In the original script of Gaslight, for example, Scene 3 read: "We SUPERIMPOSE the following words:
PIMLICO SQUARE, LONDON,
1865
The words FADE OUT and we: CUT TO:"
In the finished picture, however, Scene 2 ended with a dissolve through to a close-up of a sampler being embroidered with the words "Alice Barlow, 1865." Then came a cut to Scene 4 of the original script, of a close-up on the old lady at work on the sampler. Evidently someone realized the static quality of the suggested title card and insisted on the more graphic, more cinematic version instead.
With apt writing, with creative know-how, there is absolutely no reason why the ideas and information usually given in the foreword cannot be made implicit in the picture itself. Such forewords are usually added after the picture has been completed, when doubts begin to beset the producer as to whether certain important points