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A practical manual of screen playwriting : for theater and television films (1952)

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WRITING THE SCREEN PLAY 185 Build with details. In the same way, and for the same purpose of building the shots within the scene for the most dramatic impact, scenes should be built up with significant details. A catastrophe scene, for instance, could be built up so as to develop it to its fullest interest and understanding and to its peak of dramatic intensity. This is done with cut-ins and cutaways; with reaction shots of spectators in close-up; with pan shots of whatever moving vehicles would be racing to the scene; with shots of suffering; with action shots of valiant rescues; and with shots of the smoke and flames, or of the flooding waters, or of whatever the catastrophe may be. Remember this— first try to build interest and understanding for the audience. Then go into the main line of the story. In Carol Reed's picture The Third Man, in order to build to the startling shock of showing the porter being carted out dead to a sidewalk ambulance— and also to reveal this fact slowly to Cotten and his girl friend, who are approaching the scene— Reed inserted a series of shots of various people looking anxiously out of high windows at what is going on in the street below, together with shots of other people running out of doors and houses. So that when the pair finally come up to the scene of the ambulance, the audience interest and curiosity have been so piqued that the revelation of the fact that the porter is dead comes with an immense dramatic impact. Build-up between scenes and between sequences is achieved by means of suitable transition devices. Only with an effective build-up is it possible to present a picture that follows the most important dictum of motion-picture rite— make it move! Building the components You may have observed a peculiar repetition occurring throughout the preceding material— an insistence on "flowing continuity" and on "making certain that a shot flows smoothly out of the previous shot and into the succeeding shot." You will note them even more frequently in the following material.