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296 SERIES AND SERIALS We do not believe that the excessive use of visions suggested by the learned writer will materially aid in creating new effects, but he hits upon a mighty truth when he points out that the further we progress from the dramatic stage the fuller is the opportunity for originality of thought and expression. From the very first the photoplay has had the advantage over the stage in a freedom of motion not possible to the spoken play, but more can be done, not through the use of visions, of dissolves and fades, but from new uses and new combinations of these effects. Here lies a comparatively untrodden field for the writer of photoplays. 8. It will be noted that comedy has not .been mentioned in connec- tion with feature work. This is because through its naturally rapid action it is not possible to give comedy a steadily advancing action through four or five reels. Now and then a play will be advanced as a great comedy feature, but it will be found that it is either a comedy drama in which the melodramatic features are used to hold the sus- pense and interest or that the action strikes a dead level along in the second reel after which it becomes first tiresome and then tedious. You cannot, as in the drama, start off with comedy and pass through farce to knockabout. You must either spend your shot too soon or trust to melodrama to keep up the interest in the plot. Neither will be found worthy of the footage. For all practical purposes the five reel feature comedy does not exist. CHAPTER LX SERIES AND SERIALS SERIES and serial pictures differ slightly, though both are serials in that they are presented in weekly installments. Serial pictures present sections of a continuous story where the series presents a less intimate relation between its various parts. 2. The oldest form of the series story is one in which each section or installment presents a story wholly complete in itself, absolutely inde- pendent of the others of the series, yet united to these through its application to the general theme. Probably the earliest example of this form was the Gaumont series presenting in a series of distinct plots the petitions of the Lord's Prayer. No two stories used the same characters nor the same locale. Each might have been released without reference to any of the others, but as a whole they formed, in series, a set of plays. 3. Another form is that in which each story has a definite bearing upon a common problem, but a distinct entity. One of the earliest examples of this form was the Pathe-Balboa "Who Pays?" in which each story answered this question in some form, but each was a story distinct in itself and dealing with an individual social problem. In