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.
110 TECHNIQUE OF THE PHOTOPLAY Failing an influence, there would be the incident story in which Mr. Buttin or Mrs. Nosey went from place to place meddling with other person's affairs and always getting the worst of it, or there was the frankly chase picture. A baseball was batted out of a picture and for the rest of the film, it went upstairs and down- stairs, climbed fences and trees and did all sorts of impossible things while the actors rushed through the scene in a mad chase, overturning animate and inanimate objects and perpetually falling over fences, other obstacles and each other. Such things once formed the bulk of the comedy production and still would be regarded as humorous by quite a large per- centage of photoplay adherents, but there exists, on the other hand, a well defined demand for something better and the Euro- pean market will not absorb the chase picture nor will it take much incident comedy. Today the photo-comedy must be a comedy idea told in hu- morous action. In the stage comedies the idea is exploited through humorous situation and cleverly written lines. In photo- play we may have the situations, but lacking the dialogue, some- thing must be found in its place. Since action takes the place of dialogue in photoplay, it follows that in the action must be found this missing element of comedy dialogue. In the stage comedy it is the dialogue that keeps the audience laughing, in the photo- comedy, the funny action must keep things going while the comedy idea is unfolded. And mind you, the action must be funny not merely grotesque. A man slipping on a banana peel may be funny of itself to some minds, but if the man in falling trips up the stern father who pur- sues the eloping lovers, the action is funny to all because it leads to something. It is no longer an isolated act; it has become a part of the story. There is this difference between comedy and drama that creates the differing conditions. In drama the story is strong and ab- sorbing. It starts from a definite point and if properly written at once claims the interest of the spectator. Each action advances the story toward the climax and so the suspense is maintained. In comedy the climax is merely a joke. It lacks the grip of the big dramatic idea, and so the path from the start to the exposition of the climax joke must be made interesting through the comedy of action. As has been said in an earlier chapter, the comedy script does not have to be funny in itself; indeed, the script that reads hu- morously is justly regarded with suspicion by the editor, for it is almost always found that the humor has been put into the script instead of in the action. The point aimed at is a story that