CHAPTER XII

THE USE AND ABUSE OF LEADERS, LETTERS AND OTHER INSERTS

A full reel contains approximately one thousand feet of film. The ordinary five-reel feature is therefore somewhat less than five thousand feet in length. With far less stress laid upon the admonition to "Make your leaders and inserts brief" than formerly, the writer still must keep in mind the fact that the major portion of a five-thousand-foot film must be devoted to _scenes_--to action which the spectator merely watches--and that the inserts, of whatever nature, must never be allowed to crowd this action-part of the picture.

At the same time, any story with the average amount of plot-complication can be told--the action-portion, that is, can be fully worked out--in from 3,800 to slightly over 4,000 feet; which means that something less than one thousand feet of film may be, and frequently is, given up to the various inserts.

This matter of footage is one which demands the attention of both director and cameraman. On the side of the motion-picture camera is an indicator, by which is computed the exact number of feet exposed each time the cameraman turns the handle. At the conclusion of each scene the director cries "Cut!" The cameraman stops turning, looks at the indicator, and announces "Seventy-five!" or whatever the number of feet used. In some cases it is necessary to take the scene again, altering the "business" slightly or hurrying the action a little to reduce the footage consumed in a certain scene. A point worth noting is that the director can seldom figure in advance the exact amount of footage a certain scene will require--even after it has been rehearsed and timed several times; whereas he _can_ always tell the exact number of feet he must give to each of the various inserts, because "insert footage" is reckoned in advance, a certain number of feet being allowed for each word.

Photoplay audiences have gradually been educated up to an appreciation of sub-titles, or leaders, when they are all that they ought to be (a point which we shall presently discuss); and less attention is paid to the rather selfish cry of the illiterates in the audience who insist that "they came to look at pictures, and not to read a book." As one of the most prominent theatre managers in San Francisco recently said in the _Motion Picture News_: "In many pictures the big scene is 'put over' by a sub-title. The wording of a sub-title in a big situation can make or break a picture, and it is therefore false economy to allow this work to be done by any person other than one with real literary talent, who is thoroughly conversant with the art of expression."

We have already pointed out that in most studios the work of writing leaders and inserts is now attended to by one specialist--the "sub-title editor," as he is usually called. Just as much care is put into the preparation of everything in the nature of an insert as attends the making of the scenes of the picture.

_1. Why Inserts Are Used_

Before the advent of pictures of five and more reels, with their consequent greater room for inserted matter in addition to the necessary scenes, the general opinion was that the perfect photoplay had no leaders and needed none. Certainly, such a picture would be ideal if a photoplay were to be a motion picture and nothing more than that, since it would be so perfectly acted and so self-explanatory that no inserted explanation of any kind would be necessary. Practically, however, the only photoplay that can be made without the aid of at least a few leaders or other inserts--that is, that can be nothing but pictured action--is one on the order of the Vitagraph Company's one-reel release of several years ago, "Jealousy," in which the entire picture was made in a single set. In it Miss Florence Turner was the only actor, telling the whole story clearly, coherently, and with strong dramatic force, and making every phase of the plot clear, the only outside assistance she received being the momentary appearance of two other hands than her own--a man's and a woman's--through the curtains covering the doorway. This, of course, was pure pantomime, and most artistically performed; the woman's every thought, so to say, was portrayed, and understood by the spectator as if the play were accompanied by a printed synopsis of the story.

But it would seem to be impossible to produce a photoplay having changes of scene, plot complications, from six to a dozen or more characters, and lapses of action-time between the different scenes, without employing any inserts. Even in a small group of scenes it is often extremely difficult to make a certain important point in the

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the characters as the scene is worked out. In such a case, even though the scenario as planned by the author does not contain an insert at that point, the director may deem it advisable to introduce one to make the situation clear. The use of inserts, then, is necessary.

_2. The Over-Use of Inserts_

The over-use of them, on the contrary, is not only entirely unnecessary but a positive drawback to the director, and frequently one of the reasons why an unavailable manuscript is returned to the writer. A good rule is to employ inserts only when it is impossible to progress and still make every point of your plot clear and effective without their aid. This need for an insert of some sort at a given point may be inherent in the material and therefore desirable as well as needful, but do not admit such a necessity without serious thought. Ingenuity accomplishes wonders. Remember, the use of a leader is in most cases a frank confession that you are incapable of "putting over" a point in the development of your plot solely by the action in the scenes--you must call in outside assistance, as it were. A scenario written by a novice often contains many leaders which he considers necessary to tell his story, yet the same plot in the hands of a trained writer could be made into a photoplay with many less sub-titles. Like fire, the leader is a good servant but a bad master. Once you discover that you are getting into the habit of introducing an explanatory insert before almost every scene, it is time to remodel your idea of what constitutes proper technique.

But when a leader can be used to advantage, do not hesitate to insert it--it has a distinct value and that value must not be despised. True, _any_ leader halts the action because it destroys the illusion to some extent, and diverts the attention from the picture to the explanatory words. But it is also true that it puts the mind of the spectator in a mood to accept and appreciate the action which is to follow. Therefore, use the leader, or any other insert--_discreetly_.

We have repeatedly advised the would-be photoplaywright to study the pictures as he sees them on the screen, and to gain therefrom a knowledge of what is required by the manufacturers. At this point, however, we would warn writers _not_ to copy the example of certain companies whose pictures are nearly always overloaded with sub-titles which appear to have been introduced for no other reason than to afford the sub-title editor an opportunity to do some clever writing.

Many critics have asserted--not entirely without cause--that the type of photoplay comedy-dramas originated by Douglas Fairbanks are less than one-half action, the rest being merely clever but often unessential sub-titling. While this criticism is rather severe, it cannot be denied that certain stories of the kind mentioned, featuring this star and others, have been far too dependent for their appeal to the spectator upon the humorous, epigrammatic sayings of the characters. True, it is usually after leaving the theatre, and reviewing the picture in retrospect, that the spectator realizes that the accent has been too definitely on the sub-titling and not enough upon the action, but when he does realize it, he feels disappointed--and watches the next release featuring the same star to see if it will be repeated. More than ever before, in this day of feature photoplays, there is a constant opportunity to use leaders and other inserts with telling effect. The point simply is that with more leeway than the writer has ever been given before, you should learn to take advantage of every shining opportunity to work in a really effective sub-title, while constantly guarding against the temptation to introduce one on the slightest excuse.

Let such inserts as you do use be phrased in clear, terse language. The old example in the schoolbook, that it is simpler and therefore better to say, "A leather apron" than, "An apron of leather," holds good with inserts, and especially leaders. Short, clean-cut sentences strike the eye and penetrate the mind the most quickly and effectively. If you doubt this, look at a good advertisement. So do not only dispense with every needless insert, but cut out from each insert every needless word.

_3. The Danger of Over-Compression_

In cutting, do not go too far. Use enough words to be clear and definite. Vagueness is an abomination and confusing pronouns make an author as ridiculous as his scene is unintelligible. Remember that the leader is shown on the screen for only a moment, and it is for you to assist the spectator by making your leader so plain "not that it _may_ be understood," as Quintilian used to say, "but that it _must_ be understood."

It is quite as possible to use too few inserts, especially leaders, as it is to use so few words in them as to mar their meaning. Young writers are often more eager to follow the advice of their mentors than they are bold to use their own common-sense; and having had the importance of brevity well pounded in, they produce scripts with the double fault of not having enough action to make the plot clear, and not enough inserts to help out the action.

As an example of this tendency toward over-compression, take the script of one amateur writer. It contained a scene in which Mary, the heroine, constantly abused by a drunken step-father, steals out of the house at night as if about to start for some other town where she can make her own living and be free from the step-father's abuse. In Scene 7, Mary, carrying a suit case, leaves the farm-house where she had always lived. Scene 8 shows her "plodding wearily" along the road leading to town. Then in Scene 9 we are back in the kitchen at the farm-house. "The room is deserted. (Everyone supposed to be in bed.) The door opens and Mary enters, carrying suit case, which she puts down just inside the door. She staggers to the rocking chair and drops wearily into it, as if completely fatigued." And so on.

On reading the script, one's natural supposition is that Mary has thought it over while "plodding wearily" toward town, and, remembering the comfortable bed which awaits her at the old home--even though the next morning will bring more ill treatment at the hands of the step-father--has returned to make the best of it. After reading three more scenes, however, we learn that Mary had not only reached the town, but had gone so far as "the big city," from which she had returned after a fruitless search for work. Scene 9 is really supposed to take place two weeks after Scene 8!

Now, laying aside the fact that no scenes are introduced to show what happened to her after she went to the city, the script does not even give a scene showing her boarding a train to go, so there is nothing even to hint that Scene 9 did not take place on the same night that Mary left home.

The point of all this is that, had this script been accepted at all, and even had not the producer chosen to introduce any scenes showing Mary in the city, a leader of some kind between Scenes 8 and 9 would have been absolutely necessary. This, of course, was an amateur script, and the whole story was impossible from the standpoint of logic and the sequence of events; but in more than one picture that has been shown on the screen we have noticed the omission of a leader at a point in the action where one was very necessary, as a consequence of which the spectator was left--for the space of two or three scenes at least--to guess at what was what.

It is worth remembering that you are not an accomplished photoplaywright until you can produce a story that is thoroughly understandable _all the way through_ by action and inserts. You are a clever writer, undoubtedly, if you can produce a "leaderless" script. But it is no indication of cleverness merely to _leave out_ a leader--only to find, when your story is produced, that the director has found it necessary to add what you have simply cut out or never put in. He is a foolish and short-sighted writer indeed who gives any director such an opportunity to doubt his knowledge of photoplay technique.

In this connection, let us quote Mr. Frank E. Woods, who, besides being well known as a critic, photoplaywright, director and supervisor of productions under Mr. David W. Griffith, is an acknowledged expert in editing motion pictures.

"Many a picture," says Mr. Woods, "has been ruined by inadequate sub-titles. The makers of the picture have assumed that because _they_ understood the meaning of every action, the spectators should also understand, forgetting that the spectators will view the picture for the first time. The moment a spectator becomes confused and loses the sense of what he is seeing on the screen, his interest is gone. While he is wondering 'What are they talking about now?' or 'Who is the chap in the long coat?' or 'How did he get from the house in the woods?' the film is being reeled off merrily and the spectator has lost the thread of the story. Going to the other extreme and inserting sub-titles where the meaning is perfectly obvious, or telling in sub-titles that which is to be pictured immediately after, should also be avoided, although pictures are sometimes criticized for having too many titles when in fact the keen-eyed critic is the only one who finds them too many. The average spectator is none too alert.... The sub-title should be in complete harmony with the story and should never divert interest from the story. It should never be obtrusive. It should be there only because it belongs there. Therefore all sub-titles should be couched in language that harmonizes with the story. Every word should be weighed. Nothing should ever shock the spectator out of his interest in the picture by its incongruity, extravagance or inanity. Too much in a sub-title is as bad as too little--like seasoning in a pudding. The function of the sub-title is to supplement and correct the action of the picture, to cover lapses in the continuity, and to supply the finer shades of meaning which the actor has been unable to express in pantomime."[22]

[Footnote 22: "Editing a Motion Picture," by Frank E. Woods, in _The Moving Picture World_.]

In passing, let us note one point of considerable moment. Notwithstanding the fact that many pictures are shown in which a leader immediately follows the title, it is much better not to arrange it so. Let your title be followed by a scene--by action--even though the scene be a short one. Then, if necessary, introduce your first leader. If when the photoplay opens the title is flashed upon the screen, and immediately a leader is shown, there is a chance that, having taken in the title almost at a glance, the spectator may momentarily divert his gaze and so miss your first leader, only turning his eyes toward the screen again when he notices that a scene is being shown. Again, even though he may be watching closely, the spectator is seldom quite so attentive to an explanatory insert which is shown before the opening scene as he is to one introduced later, when he has already become interested.

Most critics are also agreed that the use of leaders introducing the principal characters (usually accompanied by a few feet of film in which the character named is also pictured, perhaps in the act of bowing to the audience, or in some pose characteristic of the part he plays) is a mistake, when such "introducing" is done before the first scene of the story has been shown. Undoubtedly _anything_ coming before the first scene is really out of place--so far as its being part of the story is concerned. Again Mr. Sargent stated a fact when he said that "What goes before the first real scene of a story is no more a part of that story than the design-head is a part of the fiction story. No magazine editor expects the author to be his own artist and supply an illustrated title. Start your story with the first scene of action, and let the director supply the preliminary scenes [close-ups of the principals] and leaders to suit himself."

As a matter of fact, though, the very best reason for not introducing from three to six or eight characters before the opening scene is that by the time the story has advanced a little many of the spectators have forgotten "who is who," whereas they have a much better opportunity to fix a character's name and occupation--so to speak--in their minds if that character is briefly but properly introduced at the point of his first entrance into the action of the play. Only the fact that we were already familiar with the faces of the contemporary historical characters shown in such features as Ambassador Gerard's "My Four Years in Germany" made it possible for us to keep track, during the first few scenes in which each one appeared, of the persons shown. No one could possibly have memorized the "panoramic" leader giving the cast, with its thirty or more names of characters and players.

_4. Four Special Functions of Leaders_

Properly used, leaders can accomplish four results very satisfactorily: (a) Mark the passage of time; (b) clear up a point of the action which could not otherwise be made to "register;" (c) "break" a scene; and (d) prepare the mind of the spectator to enter into the scene in the right spirit.

_(a) Marking the passage of time._ In the amateur script previously discussed, we found the need for this use of the leader. The introduction, between scenes 8 and 9, of a leader telling the spectator that the events in Scene 9 were supposed to happen "Two weeks later" than those taking place in Scene 8, would have gone a long way toward clearing up the plot of the story. In this case, of course, it would have been necessary to add to the statement concerning the passage of time another statement as to what had happened in the interval, the complete leader reading: "Two weeks later, Mary returns home after failing to get work in the city." Or, better still: "After two weeks of fruitless search for work in the city, Mary returns to her old home."

Try to get away from the monotonous use of the "Next day," "The next day," and "Two years later," style of leader. Say: "The following afternoon," "After five years," "Later in the evening," or "Six months have passed." Even though you find when your story is produced that the director has seen fit to omit altogether the leader that you "wrote in" at a certain point of the action, you have the satisfaction of knowing that, _had_ he used one there, he could not have improved upon the one you wrote.

_(b) Clearing up a point in the action_ is too obvious a use of the leader to require much discussion. Some things mere actions cannot express, and some explanations must be verbally made because pantomime suggestion is inadequate. To take their proper place in the photoplay all such leaders should be more than merely explanatory: they should have genuine dramatic value--just as much as an important speech would have in a "legitimate" dramatic production. In the pictured drama the leader really fills in a significant part of the plot which could not be portrayed by wordless action.

Miss Lois Weber, a well-known photoplay author who has also produced some very fine feature photoplays, says in _The Moving Picture World_: "Often the right words in a leader or other insert are the means of creating an atmosphere that will heighten the effect of a scene, just as a tearful conversation or soliloquy, at a stage death-bed will move the audience to tears where the same scene enacted in silence would leave it dry-eyed. Naturally, the wrong words may have the opposite effect, but that is no argument against the leader; it only argues that the wrong person wrote it."

_(c) "Breaking" a scene_ with a leader may be explained by an illustration, which at the same time will serve to exemplify how the mind experiences a more or less unconscious _(d) preparation for the ensuing scene_.

Suppose you have a comedy scene showing a bathtub gradually filling with water because the faucet was left open. In the time required to fill the bath and cause it to overflow, five or six hundred feet of film would be used up if the scene were not changed. Instead of this waste of film, you could, after registering the fact that the running water was rapidly filling the bath, introduce a leader: "Ten minutes later--the tide rises."

Such a leader prepares the spectator for the funny scene that is to follow; and when the next scene is shown, in which the water is overflowing the bath and turning the bathroom into a miniature lake, the spectator realizes what has happened in the ten minutes which, according to your leader, has elapsed since the last scene was shown.

Or, in your story, a lumberman may be injured by having a tree that he is chopping down fall on him. To show the whole process of felling a good-sized tree would take too long--it would consume too much footage, and be monotonous to the spectator. Also, it is the effect and not how it is obtained that makes a picture of this kind successful. For these reasons the man should be shown as he starts to chop down the tree. Then after he has made some perceptible progress you might introduce a leader. "The accident;" and, following the leader, show the man pinned to the ground by the fallen tree; then proceed with the succeeding action. You may be sure that the audience will understand that the man has been knocked down by and pinned under the tree as it fell; it is only necessary to show these two scenes.

A leader, however, should never be employed to "break" a scene unless there is absolutely no chance to introduce in its stead a short _scene_, the showing of which will help the progress of the plot; or unless a leader will serve the double purpose of breaking the scene and supplying the audience with an explanation that is important just at that time.

Taking the two examples just given, in which a leader is used to break the scene, there is scarcely any doubt that, were you writing these scenes in scenario form, you might easily substitute scenes that would help the action of the story and allow you to dispense with the leaders altogether. For instance, you could show the scene in which the absent-minded man leaves the water running into the bath and goes out of the room. Then, show a scene in his bedroom, where he is contentedly removing the studs from his shirt. Suddenly he remembers that he has left the water running. With an expression of dismay, he jumps up and runs out of the room. Flash back to the bathroom scene. The tub has overflowed and the room is filling with water. As the excited man opens the door, the flood pours out into the hall. The short scene in the bedroom makes the leader unnecessary. Better fifteen feet of film showing the bedroom scene than five feet of leader.

Again, after the lumberman had started to chop down the tree, you might flash a short scene showing a couple of other men at work in another part of the forest. All at once they both stop work and register that they have heard something that startles them. One speaks excitedly to the other, and both run out of the picture. You then show the scene with the man lying beneath the fallen tree. Presently the two men who heard his cries for help come running up to him.

_5. Cut-in Leaders_

One very effective form of the leader is the cut-in, described in

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