Talking pictures : how they are made and how to appreciate them (1937)

Talking Pictures Of course a producer must know their dramatic values, for they provide his livelihood. To insure this, the "story conference' ' was evolved. It frequently follows a breakfast attended by the associate producers. Mrs. Corbaley sits in the center of a ring of men. She takes each story and tells it, not as it was written in its original form, but with suggested variations that might make it particularly acceptable for pictures. She has a finely trained, well-modulated, low voice. Through long practice she knows the best selling points of each story and she stresses them. By this method she exemplifies what the minstrels knew centuries and centuries ago, that for storytelling the printed word is inferior to the human voice. Long before the art of printing was developed, people received their information from the few who could read. Often these men went from court to court and told the news of the day or sang of some heroic achievement. In ancient Greece the early poets sang to the accompaniment of a lute. In the Middle Ages, the troubadours of France, the minnesingers of Germany, and the strolling minstrels of England entertained the courts with their songs and stories. They served as a means of communication. Even the few nobles and priests who could read preferred to get their daily news and fiction from the strolling minstrels. The work of the modern studio storyteller carries out in twentieth-century form the psychology which made the work of these early minstrels so popular and so effective. The dozen men who listen to Mrs. Corbaley are all specialists. Each is an authority in a different line. One [52]