Writing the Photoplay Part 1

Writing the Photoplay.

by J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds.

CHAPTER I

WHAT IS A PHOTOPLAY?

As its t.i.tle indicates, this book aims to teach the theory and practice of photoplay construction. This we shall attempt by first pointing out its component parts, and then showing how these parts are both constructed and a.s.sembled so as to form a strong, well-built, attractive and salable ma.n.u.script.

_The Photoplay Defined and Differentiated_

_A photoplay is a story told largely in pantomime by players, whose words are suggested by their actions, a.s.sisted by certain descriptive words thrown on the screen, and the whole produced by a moving-picture machine._

It should be no more necessary to say that not all moving-picture productions are photoplays than that not all prose is fiction, yet the distinction must be emphasized. A photoplay is to the program of a moving-picture theatre just what a short-story is to the contents of a popular magazine--it supplies the story-telling or drama element. A few years ago the managers of certain theatres used so to arrange their programs that for four or five days out of every week the pictures they showed would consist entirely of photoplays. On such days their programs corresponded exactly to the contents-page of an all-fiction magazine--being made up solely to provide entertainment.

The all-fiction magazine contains no essays, critical papers, or special articles, for the instruction of the reader, beyond the information and instruction conveyed to him while interestedly perusing the stories. Just so, the all-photoplay program in a picture theatre, at the time of which we speak, was one made up entirely of either "dramatic"[1] or "comedy" subjects. Films cla.s.sified as "scenic," "educational," "vocational," "industrial," "sporting," and "topical," were not included in such a program.

[Footnote 1: The photoplay has come to have a language of its own, which we must observe even when, as in this case, we lose somewhat in finer word-values. In their lists of releases (photoplays released or made available for public presentation at a specified date), manufacturers usually cla.s.sify as "comedy" subjects all photoplays which are without any serious dramatic moments or situations. Thus, in the lists of releases published in the various trade journals, what are obviously "comedy-dramas"--some of them, such as certain of the Douglas Fairbanks productions, even bordering on farce--are cla.s.sed as "dramatic" subjects, and this, apparently, because they are strongly dramatic in certain scenes. Thus, again, genuine farce (as distinguished from "slap-stick" comedy), social comedy, burlesque and extravaganza are all cla.s.sed under the head of "comedy," just as comedy-drama, tragedy, melodrama, and historical plays are cla.s.sed as "dramatic." These two broad cla.s.sifications will be used throughout this work except where finer distinctions are needed in order to treat varieties of subjects. The regular spoken play naturally invites these distinctions more than does the photoplay, at least at present. In preparing your ma.n.u.script, however, you will be taught to follow the accepted form among photoplaywrights and, in writing the synopsis, after the t.i.tle, specify the cla.s.s of subject, as "dramatic photoplay," "farce," "comedy-drama," "historical drama," "society drama," etc.]

True, a genuine photoplay may contain scenes and incidents which would almost seem to justify its being included in one of the foregoing cla.s.ses. One might ask, for instance, why Selig's film, "On the Trail of the Germs," produced about five years ago, was cla.s.sified as "educational," while Edison's "The Red Cross Seal" and "The Awakening of John Bond" (both of which were produced at the instance of the National a.s.sociation for the Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis, and had to do with the fight waged by that society against the disease in the cities), were listed as "dramatic" films or photoplays. Anyone who saw all three of the films, however, would recognize that the Selig picture, while in every respect a subject of great human interest, was strictly educational, and employed the thread of a story not as a dramatic entertainment, but merely to furnish a connecting link for the scenes which ill.u.s.trated the methods of curing the disease after a patient is discovered to be infected. The Edison pictures, on the other hand, were real dramas, with well-constructed plots and abundant dramatic interest, even while, as the advertising in the trade papers announced, the princ.i.p.al object of the pictures was "to disseminate information as to what becomes of the money that is received from the sale of Red Cross stamps at holiday time." So we see that the distinction lies in the amount of plot or story-thread which each carries, and that a mere series of connected pictures without a plot running through it obviously cannot be called a photoplay any more than a series of tableaus on the stage could be accurately called a play.

Therefore, learn to think of a photoplay as being a story prepared for pantomimic development before the camera; a story told in _action_, with inserted descriptive matter where the thought might be obscure without its help; a story told in one or more reels, each reel containing from twenty-five to fifty scenes.

The spectator at a photoplay entertainment must be able promptly and easily to discover who your characters are, what kind of people they are, what they plan to do, how they succeed or fail, and, in fact, must "get" the whole story entirely from what he sees the actors in the picture _do_, with the slight a.s.sistance of a few explanatory leaders, or sub-t.i.tles, and, perhaps, such inserts as a letter, a newspaper cutting, a telegram, or some such device, flashed for a moment on the screen. The more perfect the photoplay, the less the need for all such explanatory material, as is the case in perfect pantomime. This, of course, is not to insist upon the utter absence of all written and printed material thrown on the screen--a question which will be discussed in a later chapter. It is enough now to emphasize this important point: Dialogue and description are for the fiction writer; the photoplaywright depends upon his ability to _think_ and _write_ in action, for the postures, grouping, gestures, movements and facial expressions of the characters must be shown in action, and not described as in prose fiction.

_Action_ is the most important word in the vocabulary of the photoplaywright. To be able to see in fancy his thoughts transformed into action is to have gained one goal for which every photoplay writer strives.

CHAPTER II

WHO CAN WRITE PHOTOPLAYS?

In almost everything that has been written up to the present time concerning the technique of photoplay writing, considerable stress has been laid on the statement that, notwithstanding preceding success in their regular field, many authors of popular fiction have either failed altogether in the production of acceptable photoplays or have had almost as many rejections as, if not more than, the average novice in short-story writing. That there is much truth in this cannot be denied; but that a trained and inventive fiction writer--particularly a writer of plot- or action-stories--after having once learned the _mechanics_ of photoplay construction, should fail of success in photoplay writing is, obviously, not at all necessary. A discussion of this point should help to impress on the student just what sort of preparation will be of the greatest a.s.sistance to him in the work he is taking up.

_1. Experience in Fiction Writing Valuable to the Photoplaywright_

Let us consider the case of a man born with a talent and love for music. As he grows up, he learns to play upon the violin--learns as hundreds have done, by first taking up the most simple exercises and constantly working up until he becomes more proficient. As in all other occupations, practice eventually brings skill, and he at last becomes a master of the violin. He may have been born a genius--it has always been in him to become the exceptional performer upon the instrument of his choice. Nevertheless, the hard work was necessary, as that maker of epigrams saw when he said that genius was an infinite capacity for taking pains.

To carry the simple ill.u.s.tration a step further: geniuses are few, so it is certain that our artist has become a master of the violin because he is a man who, loving his work and putting his whole soul into it, daily improved in technique and quality by intelligent labor.

If he is a concert performer, he feels his art becoming more perfect with each new recital. He has learned _how_ to play, and now there remains nothing but the necessity for keeping constantly--note the expressive phrase--in practice, and improving the quality and style of his playing.

Let us suppose, now, that this musical artist is offered an exceptionally good salary to appear in vaudeville with another musician, who performs equally well upon two or three, or even more, very different instruments. He accepts the offer; he and his partner "open" in the act; and, after a week or two, in order to "build up"

the act as well as to become capable of playing another kind of instrument, he decides to take up the study of the cornet. The violin and cornet are, of course, widely different in construction, and they produce very different effects. Besides, the methods of producing those effects are totally unlike, since one is drawn from the violin with the aid of trained hands and fingers, while the other is produced by the skillful operation of the human lips, tongue and lungs, with only minor a.s.sistance from the fingers. Yet the tones of these two instruments may be equally harmonious and pleasing when each is skillfully played. So, in the course of time, the violinist becomes almost, if not quite, as accomplished a player upon the cornet as he is upon the instrument whose study first engrossed him.

And now a question--one which certainly should not admit of much difference of opinions in the answering: Of two men, both possessed of a natural talent and love for music, which would be likely first to learn to play upon the cornet correctly and with pleasing expression--the man who had previously learned the technique of violin playing, together with the meaning and value of musical terms, or the one who, without any knowledge of music or of how to perform, should suddenly determine to learn to play a given instrument?

_2. Photoplay Writing Requires a Separate Training_

Apply the same reasoning to the question of who should _become_ the most successful photoplaywright--the trained and experienced fiction writer, or the ordinarily intelligent and imaginative follower of some other vocation, who is suddenly struck by the idea that he could, and filled with the determination that he will, write a photoplay. We accentuate the word _become_ in order to emphasize the fact that even the professional writer _must_ learn the _technique_ of photoplay construction before he can hope to produce a script that will not only be accepted by a film manufacturing company for production, but will be produced exactly as he has written it, _without the need of drastic revision or rewriting_. This, however, is very rare today.

This last point is important. While, as we have said, it is improbable that an experienced fiction writer would fail in the field of photoplay writing once he had learned to put the plot together in proper form and had mastered a knowledge of the limitations of the moving-picture stage, it is also just as unlikely that the most famous writer living could legitimately sell a photoplay that was essentially faulty in construction and absolutely lacking in screen quality. If the idea were a good one and the writer were to submit it to the producing company under his own name, the chance is that the company would accept it, and, after using his idea to construct the photoplay in proper form, produce and even feature it--on account of the big name won in the field of fiction writing. If, on the other hand, he should submit it under a pen name it is possible that, provided the plot, or even the fundamental idea, proved to be exceptionally good, he might be offered a moderate sum for the plot or for the idea alone, to be worked up and produced as the director thought best. In making him the offer, the company would probably explain quite frankly that the script was not suitably constructed; that it would require rewriting in the studio; but that the idea was worth the amount offered. Here, then, is one point upon which the novice may congratulate himself: he, as an untrained writer of photoplays, is not alone in having to learn the secret of what will suit the screen, for until the famous author learns that secret, he, too, is an untrained writer--of photoplays, and his "prices" will suffer accordingly.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Producing a Big Scene in the Selig Yard. See Cameras on the Right]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Film-Drying Room in a Film Factory. The Films are Rolled Around the Racks which are Suspended from the Ceiling and in the Hands of the Operators. Moist Warm Air is Introduced through the Large Pipes]

Now, however, after both have acquired this knowledge of screen requirements, the trained fiction writer and the untrained photoplay writer cease to be on common ground. The writer of novels and short-stories has the advantage of years of--training, is the best word, meaning, in the present instance, both experience and special education. He has a tutored imagination; he has the plot-habit; he has an eye trained to picture dramatic situations; he sees the possibilities for a strong, appealing story in an incident in everyday life that to ninety-nine other people would be merely an incident seen for a moment and in a moment forgotten; he has at his command a dozen different ways of a.s.sisting himself to discover plot-germs for his stories--he is, in short, a workman knowing exactly what to do with the tools already in his possession, and when he acquires new tools he can, after some practise, use them with equal proficiency and skill.

Furthermore, there can be no doubt that, once each has mastered the working rules of photoplay construction, the chances for quick and continued success are quite evidently in favor of the trained fiction writer--notwithstanding the fact that one man in a thousand without any previous knowledge of writing may become extremely successful.

_3. What Chance Has the Novice?_

Should the foregoing fact discourage the novice who has not had this previous literary training? The answer is, emphatically, YES! It should, it ought to--_unless_ (and this is the secret of it all), unless he has ideas, and is the kind of novice who vows with every grain of determination in his make-up that he will soon cease to be a mere amateur, and will be recognized as one of the successful ones.

Remember, every writer was once a beginner.

The reader may think, having read this much, that undue stress is laid upon the question of the previously successful writer and the ambitious but inexperienced amateur; it is this very insistence on the comparison, however, that should cause the earnest and determined aspirant to photoplaywright success to a.n.a.lyze more thoroughly the difference, and profit by a knowledge of how he may quickly advance himself to the position where the previously successful author will have little or no advantage over him.

Almost all who have had anything to say upon the subject of writing for moving pictures, but especially the writers of the advertising copy for most of the correspondence "schools" that offer "fake"

courses of instruction upon the subject, have declared that there is "no experience or literary knowledge necessary" in order to become successful in the photoplay-writing field. One concern even advertises that the student "can learn this business in from ten to thirty days." If by this is meant that the mere correct form of putting the work on paper with the aid of the typewriter--the mechanical arrangement of synopsis, cast, and scenario or continuity--can be picked up in that many days, there is hardly room to dispute the claim. That, however, is not quite "learning the business." No previous "literary training" _is_ necessary, if by that is meant the mastery of English prose writing, or the actual technique of short-story construction or novel writing. We shall see, however, that the photoplaywright who wishes to succeed in more than one, two, or three flash-in-the-pan instances must really submit to a course of training, whether self-conducted or under competent instruction, and the more he knows of fictional and dramatic art the easier is his new work likely to be.

Nevertheless, there is a real sense in which the statement that no literary training is required by the student of photoplay writing is true. Provided he is gifted with an imaginative mind and the native ability to _see_ how an idea or a plot-germ would evolve itself into a climacteric and coherent story, and provided he has the dramatic sense, he can actually learn the rules of construction and produce salable photoplays even if he has by no means the literary ability to write a salable short-story. But he _must_ be a person of ideas--no book and no instruction can supply that lack.

We have gone so far as deliberately to try to discourage anyone who is so foolish and so undeserving as to enter the field of photoplay writing without the fullest intention of doing his best to win for himself the very highest position in that field to which his talent and ability to work can advance him; and we have no apologies to offer. Few who have not followed the progress of the moving-picture industry realize the enormous changes that have taken place in the last four or five years. This is especially true of the branch of the business having to do with the preparation of the script. To those who have been in constant touch with the work, it seems only yesterday that the professional photoplay writer, outside of the producing plants, was an unknown factor. At last came the time when the manufacturers started to advertise for ideas on which to build their plays. "Ten to one-hundred dollars paid for motion picture plays,"

these advertis.e.m.e.nts read. They were alluring enough even to the man who already had a steady position in another line of work. They told him how he could add from "ten to one-hundred dollars" a month to his regular income. At least, they _seemed_ to promise that, especially when coupled with the a.s.surance that "no previous literary training"

was required. These advertis.e.m.e.nts looked attractive, also, to the man whose income was not regular. Small wonder that within a few months'

time scores, hundreds, rushed blindly into a field where even writers of established reputation would have failed--and did fail--without preliminary technical training. Even those who succeeded in getting their efforts accepted by the producers found that the check was more likely to be for ten dollars than for any amount in excess of that.

_4. Advance in Requirements_

The real change has come within the past ten or twelve months. A sort of weeding process has been carried on by the various manufacturers, and as a result they recognize certain writers as being capable of supplying them, at more or less regular intervals, with the kind of scripts they want, quite as certain magazine editors have lists of story-writers to whom they look for the bulk of their fiction.

Gradually this list of trained and capable, and consequently successful, writers for the screen is growing larger, for daily some new writer is demonstrating that the freshness, brightness, and ingenuity of his ideas warrant the editor's putting him on the list of those from whom good material may be expected.

_5. The Demand for Photoplays_

Is there not, therefore, it may be asked, a probability of the field's becoming overcrowded?

Hardly. The best proof of the opportunity that is held out to the capable outside writer, new or old, is that the staff-writers, whose duty it _should be_ to make adaptations of plays and novels and write the scenario, or continuity, for stories bought from free-lance writers in synopsis form, are kept pretty busy writing so-called "original stories" for certain stars, or stories that may be "done" in certain parts of the country at a particular season of the year. If enough thoroughly good stories could be purchased on the outside, staff writers would never be called upon to write stories to order; only what might be called "inspired" stories would be accepted from them. Furthermore, if plenty of good, original stories, written directly for screen presentation, could be purchased by the editors, the practice of making screen adaptations of popular novels and stage plays would be cut down by more than half.

"Suppose that the staff writer suddenly gets the 'flash'--the inspiration needed to write a Western story with a plot that is infinitely bigger and more dramatic than anything that he has done in a great many months. Thinking it over, he gradually becomes brimful of the theme and its plot-possibilities. He wants to feed the paper into his trusty typewriter and start pounding out the scenario before a single bit of the suddenly inspired plot can get away from him. But he cannot; his company does not make Western stories; nor does it permit its staff writers to sell their work to other firms. Even if it did, he is far too busy to give the time to the writing of a story not intended for the use of his own particular studio.