The screen writer (June 1947-Mar 1948)

CAN SCREEN WRITERS BECOME FILM AUTHORS? Miss Beranger tells me that France has an Institute of Advanced Film Studies where students have the use of a large library pertaining to film making. If other industries like radio and television, not to mention electronics, steel and chemicals, can spend large sums each year training young men in research and special crafts, why can't Hollywood start a modest experiment along the same lines? I think it would pay off. The suspicion still remains with me that even after college training and the study of scripts, the only practical way of learning the screen writing trade is to get on the set with a picture and stay with it up to and through the night of the sneak preview. Many writers who have been in the industry twenty years have never done this, but I believe it is a capsule that contains a complete educational program. If it doesn't work nothing will. NORMAN KRASNA: T GOT your flattering wire and I sat -* myself right down and began to write three hundred words on "How newer writers can — etc., under present conditions?" I was going along pretty good too, until it occurred to me I don't know much about present conditions. I haven't been a contract writer for about ten years, and the few pictures I've done since have been at home and out of town. The basis of my piece was going to be on learning film technique by working for people — different people — you admire. Not the same person — even if he's a comfortable director to be teamed with — but with men from whom you can learn something new. Cast yourself carefully, like actors. But, do those conditions prevail now? Can a young writer get a job without being tied to a long term contract ? I don't know, and f rankly, I wouldn't want to advise so carelessly, to the possible damage of some budding career. P.S. I think your magazine is wonderful. D ELMER DA FES: TN 1942 I was assigned to direct my -* first picture, Destination Tokyo. After fourteen years of screen writing I thought I had mastered the craft, — but I was destined for a sharp lesson in humility. The lesson was learned alongside the camera where the muted sound of the sprockets whirling keeps pace with the dialogue and action taking place in front of the lens. The film itself is cheap, a few cents a foot, — but the scenes being photographed represent an enormous investment in thought, energy, hope, labor, capital, careers, eagerness and despair, buoyancy and exhaustion ; what is being photographed takes the combined efforts of dozens of departments, thousands of people, now channeled down to the hundred who may be on the shooting stage for the sole purpose of transferring your script or my script to film. Formerly, I took these things for granted, I don't any more. Writing a script at home or in my office I was too remote from all of this to think in these new terms. My first lesson in humility came as I began photographing scenes I had written, — and everything I had written was literally under the spotlights on the set. I could hear the film racing through the sprocket holes, twenty-four frames a second, ninety feet a minute, and I soon realized why, on my sixty-day shooting schedule, an average of ONLY TWO MINUTES OF COMPLETED FILM PER DAY WAS PUT IN THE FILM EDITOR'S LONG ROW OF FILM CANS ! Figure it out for yourself; sixty days of shooting, one hundred and twenty minutes of previewed film. What has this to do with screen writing? Be patient. Let's take a look at the budget: one million dollars — sixteen thousand, six hundred and sixty-six dollars per day. Then two minutes of film should be worth that much in money. $8,333.00 per minute. Now, please add this to the second paragraph and you will begin to get the reason for my first embarrassed lesson : what I had written wasn't worth this overwhelming amount of human endeavor, it wasn't worth $8,333.00 per minute. The realization comes as those sprockets whirl beside your ear — the actors are saying your lines, making your motions, and both are recorded on film racing through the camera, ninety feet a minute. Then and there is where I learned that the words had to be better, the action exactly right; the whirr of the sprockets taught me the lesson of the over-written scene. I could almost hear the sprocket holes groan : "You're saying this twice — it's taking twenty feet to get that jerk out the door — I've heard this before, every word of it — this scene was over twenty feet ago — this gal's been talking for over one hundred feet, but the yadada-yadada — goes on and on ... it took her one hundred and eighty feet to say what she could have said in ten ! One hundred and eighty feet? That's two minutes! That's a day's work!" It's easier to over-write, we all know that. I used to indulge myself in long scenes, long scripts until I learned this added lesson: I have yet to see more than one hundred and twenty five pages of script represented in a finished film of normal feature length. All over that is trimmed out or cut out in chunks, even whole sequences — and until you realize the tremendous combined effort that goes into every foot of the film on the cutting room floor you won't realize the sin of over-writing. We cannot indulge ourselves, we must learn a lesson on this score from the playwrights in New York: THE PLAY MUST BE OVER AT ELEVEN O'CLOCK! When you're ready to turn in your final script, give it the "sprocket hole test" — is every word of every page worth the combined efforts of thousands? If it isn't, edit it or write it over. And watch some of your script being shot, sit near the camera, listen for the sprockets turning frame by frame, foot by foot. After your film has been edited for release, ask the film editor to lend you his cutting script and compare the released version with your original script. See what was cut — even if you disagree with the cutting you may learn that very rarely is a scene cut because it played well ! The director quickly learns that he cannot "coast" through one foot of film, that one badly shot scene, even if it represents but twenty feet of film, will stand out to mar the effect of the whole. Now I know that the same truth 37