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20 TECHNIQUE* OF THE PHOTOPLAY "How much is it worth ?" asks the Editor, pointing to your first page where your author has neatly typed the fact that you are offered for sale for $100. "Offer him ten dollars," suggests the producer with a laugh. "Any man that don't know better than to ask a hundred for a script like this will be glad to take anything." "Make it fifteen," suggests the Editor. "He'll learn after a while." Being a script and not a person you know that's because five or six years ago the Editor used to do the same thing and has a fellow feeling, perhaps, for your author. You go back into the director's pocket marked "Hold" and the author gets a letter making the offer and enclosing a release slip. This slip, stripped of its legal phrasing, is an assignment of copyright and all other rights and the flat statement that the author is the originator of the work. In the event of a proven theft it is also an admission that the signer has obtained money under false pretenses. The slip is returned signed and witnessed. Some companies might have sent a slip that must be sworn to before a notary. Notice that the copyright and all other rights pass to the com- pany. Possibly, being also a short story writer, you have re- served the fiction rights. In that case you will make no sale be- cause most companies want the right to the fiction form of the story since many magazines now use photoplay-fiction stories. The fiction rights are not worth much, at best. Photoplay audiences will accept the visualization of a story, but the gen- eral run of magazines do not want the fictionized photoplay be- cause they have found that only in magazines printing little else than this form of story will such matter be found acceptable. Some time ago Bannister Merwin arranged a test with the. Munsey Company which printed some of his stories from the Edison photoplays. They were resented by many readers. This does not apply to the What Happened to Mary series, be- cause these were printed just before the photoplay was released. The check is sent and you have become the property of the company. You are rather glad of it. You have traveled thou- sands of miles and have spent from one day to six weeks in practically every studio in the country. Now the producer starts to reconstruct you. He takes your best scenes and builds up around these. He puts in the punch you have so sadly lacked, he builds up and he tears down. In some studios this reconstruction might have been made in the Editor's office, but the process is the same. The good idea is taken and a real story is built on the wreck of the old.