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.
^5 ^9
The Art of Story Telling — A Plea for Progress
THE art of story telling per se is explained in detail in other portions of this chapter by the leading writers for the screen, successes not only financially but artistically. The plea which I believe is most necessary to broadcast is an explanation of the one great step forward which must come about in the scenario field.
Strictly speaking, there is no such person as the original screen dramatist; and until we get him, we shall have no great screen drama, as there are great stage dramas.
He who has an idea to express on the screen, writes it out in the form of a narrative which he submits to the producer. If this narrative is acceptable, its inherent idea, plot or fable, is then transferred to a distinctly different medium: a motion picture scenario. This operation is usually performed by a second person, a specialist, designated as a scenarist or continuity-writer; and this scenarist is under the supervision of the producer, the director and, should there happen to be one, the star.
Now — the technical requirements of a narrative and of a motion picture scenario are vastly different. Consequently, in the transference from one medium to the other, the force of the original idea is largely lost; for what is effective in narrative is often ineffective in drama, either for the stage or for the screen.
Suppose, for example, playwrights like Ibsen or our own Eugene O'Neill, had to submit their plays by merely outlining them in brief narrative synopses and then the finished product had been evolved by play-hacks analagous to our usual continuity writers — for at best that is all the continuity writer is. Imagine the result!
The nearest approach to the screen dramatist today is the continuity writer, who adapts the original stories of others to the films. The time required for this operation ranges from twenty-four hours to two months the average is about three weeks. For this work, he receives from five hundred to five thousand dollars; and the average here is about one thousand dollars. Thus the continuity-writer is really little more than a
385