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WRITING THE SCREEN PLAY 193
conform with as little variation as possible to the length he feels necessary to the shot. This, in turn, he knows should conform to the inner patterns of pacing, timing, and rhythm that he has tried to work into the shots within the scene, the scenes within the sequence, and the sequences within the finished picture.
There is no reason why this cannot be accomplished by the screenplay writer. It demands knowledge, experience, and the know-how of filmic techniques. But these can all be learned. And if to this knowledge are added the ingredients of esthetic discernment and artistic integrity, the quality of the finished picture will be enhanced tremendously.
Directors often find themselves in a similar predicament. For any number of reasons, they may discover that they are directing a picture in which their ideas are at odds with those of the writer, the producer, or the film editor. In such cases, the director photographs his shots so that they can be cut in only one way— his way. One method at his disposal is to shoot the individual shots with little or insufficient overlap, in picture or in sound. Without overlaps— which are the tag ends and beginnings of each shot, both in picture and in sound, that can be matched perfectly to continuing action or sound in a preceding or succeeding shot— the film cutter is forced to splice the bits of film in the order in which the director originally shot them, without being able to intercut from long shots to closer shots in the way and at the time he, the film editor, feels necessary. By neglecting to shoot cutaways, the director makes certain that his long-running shots will run as long as he deems necessary. These methods of assuring themselves of having their finished pictures cut in their own way are termed by directors "cutting in the can." They practice them consistently.
There is nothing to prevent the screen-play writer from "directing and cutting in the script." To yield more and more to producing only the bare bones of a picture, with a master-scene screen play, is tantamount, for the screen-play writer, to relinquishing his inalienable esthetic rights. If he is to fulfill all the potentialities of his creativity, he must add the sinews and flesh and surface patinas, so that the finished product is his as he originally created it.
Only in this way can the screen-play writer negate the destructive influence of "too many cooks," now rife in the motion-picture in