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THE TRUTH ABOUT THE MOVIES
I would say, "Keep your minor characters down to the limit." But you must have some. Those that pass the acid test are very vital to your story in their capacity as scavengers, removers of waste material in the way of the plot's progress.
Take Lois Wilson's baby boy and her mother in "Manslaughter." You see the boy but twice or three times — and yet he provides the motivation for all of the tense drama which sourround's the mother part and he does it with very little waste of "footage."
The boy's grandmother you see but once, but that one time saves us half a dozen titles and keeps the audience from worrying about the child for three reels, by showing us that the boy is being kept well and happy while his mother is in prison. The grandmother is an excellent example of the manner in which a minor character may keep debris from cluttering a plot.
Cecil B. De Mille has me read this first synopsis to him. But he does not allow me to relate the story as I have written it. He forces me to condense the flower of my imaginative wTiting into plain, unadorned description of the dramatic action. His reason for this is that he does not wish to have his dramatic sense clouded by the imaginative fervor of my first rush into the story.
Then comes the "one-line continuity," Each scene is written in one or two lines. It is the "clearing house" of the story, for here we are concerned with straightening out the structure and the motivation. Everything is eliminated that is not essential to the building of these fundamentals.
Then I start my second continuity. In this continuity I am through with the problems of building structure and drama. My sole concern is with the precision and accuracy with which my characters move, the determining of whether it would be better for a certain player to die in the sitting room or the bedroom, etc.
But a scene that sounds great on paper may fail to hit when the camera cranks upon it. And back it comes for revision, and it is changed until the minutest detail holds water.
Finally the picture is finished. >