Technique of the photoplay (1916)

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CHAPTER LX 301 scenes in which they appear. Here it is sufficient to indicate the parts in which they are to be used. The third division lists the still smaller parts as Incidental Characters Three Nautch girls—1-3. Five priests—1-2-3. Fifteen to twenty soldiers in 1-2-3-4. In this last list must appear each person not named in the preceding lists who appears in one or more scenes in any one part. This com- plete cast is useful to the director and will be required by him only when it is fairly certain that your action will be followed with reasonable closeness. Where this is the case it will be helpful to the director in his casting of the parts. He will know from this list who must be retained to the end of the series, who can be used and dispensed with quickly and who will not be required for some time. 18. It is the present practice to make a few parts of a serial and then begin to release while the other parts are being made. If a story is to run thirty parts it will scarcely pay a manufacturer to wait until he has made sixty thousand feet before he starts to re- lease. More than this, the reception given the opening parts may suggest the need for an entire change of plan in the later parts. A serial written ,by an author whose fame rested upon the fact that one of his novels had invited the attention of the police wrote a serial under contract. By the time the fifth installment had been reached it was clear that the venture would be a failure if his script was followed. His story was thrown away and a dime novel writer completed the run, supplying action where the novelist had offered words. In the same way another series story done by another man, equally ignorant of photoplays, was not only rebuilt in its later chap- ters but new scenes were sent out to the exchanges to be joined into the early reels already released. 19. It follows that the manufacturers of serials prefer to do busi- ness with tried authors who can be relied upon to change and im- prove in accordance with the public's verdict and that it will not pay the. writer not known to a studio to offer a serial idea. It will scarcely receive full consideration. 20. Serials should be undertaken only by those so well grounded in the writing of multiples that it is a comparatively easy matter for them to handle the story. It is no simple proposition to lay out a series of stories that shall keep the interest at a proper point for two to four months, or even longer. It calls for a particularly nice sense of values, for skill in handling crisis and particularly for an ability to preserve such a pace that interest constantly increases with the increasing speed of the story and yet the story advances at a speed that does not attain its limit until the last installments are reached. 21. Before passing on, it is well to note the fact that many of