We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
CHAPTER XVII 53 the stack will be played in the studio or on the studio roof. Then dummies will be placed on the stack and the cameras will turn as the structure collapses. 6. One of the best railroad wreck stories was written as the director and his little company sped through the night in automobiles to the scene of the accident. The director heard of the smash late in the evening. There was no time to arrange for a special train, if, indeed, one could be had. He routed his players out of bed and wrote the story on the way to the wreck. As soon as the sun was high enough the camera recorded the wreck scenes and the rest was merely the usual studio w^ork. 7. No script was written in advance or purchased against the chance that a convenient wreck would occur, but the showing of a wreck picture or any similar novelty is generally followed by a shower of manuscripts along those lines. Some of these doubtless could be made with stock negative, but most companies prefer not to use stock material. 8. Stock pictures, or '"stock stuff" as it is generally called, is negative made as opportunity offers. This includes scenes at fires, at the race track, aboard ships, circus parades or any feature that might be required at some future time. A director may desire to produce a play with scenes laid at the race track. He takes a small company to the track some morning or when the track is not being used for racing. He makes close-up pictures of the grand stand, using just enough extra people to fill the field of the camera. When the film is assembled the story will be told in these small pictures, but a scene showing the villain (who stands in partnership with a book-maker) inducing the hero to bet his last dollar on the wrong horse will be followed by a flash of the betting ring on a race day with thousands of people. In the same way the grand stand close-ups will be sandwiched in between large pictures of the stands packed with a real audience. Xone of these large flashes will show the players, since the stock stuff was made with reference to no particular play, and this is the reason that only a sparing use of stock stuff is made. 9. From what has been written above it will be seen that it will scarcely pay the free lance to offer stories depending in any great degree on special effects. There is no reason why a story cannot be written showing a few scenes aboard ship while she is in dock, and it is possible to show a ship leaving her dock if it is not required that the players be distinctly seen, but a ship at sea or being blown up or sinking is not practicable unless it falls into the hands of a director who likes to make that sort of thing and who can persuade his employer to let him go to the expense. 10. Costuming forms another stumbling block. Each player sup- plies his own wardrobe for plays of today, but for the plays of yesterday and tomorrow as well as strange lands of the present and mythical lands of any time the company must supply the costumes.