Chapter XVII
. A great many excellent detective-story films have been produced, either from original synopses or as adaptations of the work of fiction writers. In these, there has been no hesitation on the part of the director and sub-title editor to use just as many words in a leader as might be necessary to make every point of the story entirely clear and interesting. Paramount's "The Devil Stone," showing the train of tragic events that followed the stealing by a wicked Norse queen of the great emerald belonging to a certain Breton priest, was one example of an intensely interesting detective story in which sub-titles supplied much more than a third of the story--and supplied it, apparently, quite unobtrusively. Here, again, only common sense and experience can show you what to do.
Before leaving the subject of leaders let us say once more that you must seek to find the golden middle ground between the leader that is too flowery in its language and the other that is too stilted and prosaic. Again, in connection with the length of leaders, study the two following from Universal's feature, "The Kaiser, the Beast of Berlin," the first of which contains only seven words, while the second contains fifty-five.
Joy died, Hope fled. Desolation became supreme.
Then came the Master crime. An unoffending people was ground into extinction beneath an iron heel. A nation was destroyed. The Crime against Belgium being completed to its fullest, the Prussian stalked onwards with his twin comrades, Frightfulness and Horror. A new blotch of infamy--the _Lusitania_--was added to the Black Name of the Beast.
Notice, also, that as is being done with many feature pictures of this or similar type today, the producers have adhered throughout to the past tense in wording their sub-titles.
_6. The Use of Letters, News Items and Similar Inserts_
The great thing in using inserts other than leaders is to be able to tell what would be most effective in scoring a point of the plot at an important place in the story. You may start to "write in" a letter and then suddenly get the idea that the same point might be better explained if a newspaper paragraph were used. But no matter what other kind of insert you employ, it will doubtless seem to be more a part of the action than will a plain leader. For this reason it is best, whenever possible, to use a letter, telegram, news item, or some similar insert, in place of a leader. A carefully worded letter introduced at just the right time will sometimes tell the audience as much concerning the complications of the plot as would five or six scenes.
Letters should be short and to the point, but they should also tell as much as possible of _what can not be told in action_. Better a single letter of thirty-five words which tells everything than two or three notes of a line or two each that only suggest what the writer means. Some of the so-called "letters" which are seen on the screen are simply ridiculous on account of their very brevity. If it is a mere note that is dashed off and sent to one of the characters, or a note left where it will be found by someone after the writer has gone away, its brevity is allowable; but when a "letter" is written by a man to an old friend of his--a friend who, he is told, is living in a distant city, when for years he has supposed him to be dead--and contains but seventeen words, it is likely to make the spectator doubt the strength of the former friendship.
It is not always necessary actually to write a long letter; but it is best in such instances to _suggest_ that a long letter has been written. This may be accomplished in two ways: You may either show a paragraph in the body of the letter, with a line or two just before and just after it, thus:
On screen, letter.
and it was from him that I learned the truth.
I'll leave for Wheeling on the first train tomorrow, and hope to clasp your hand again before Monday night.
Honestly, old man, it seems too, etc.
or you may write out the ending of the letter in such a way as to suggest that much more has been said in the forepart of the message, thus:
On screen, letter, folded down to show only this:
so I'll leave for Wheeling on the first train tomorrow, and hope to clasp your hand again before Monday night.
Honestly, old man, it seems too good to be true. I won't be able to believe that what Morgan told me _is_ true until I see you with my own eyes.
Until then, believe me to be
As ever, your sincere friend,
Stephen Loring.
To illustrate the way a letter will consume footage, we reproduce one for which fifteen feet were allowed.
Lord Cornwallis:
Am now within forty miles of Charlottesville. Thomas Jefferson and the entire Virginia Assembly will be my prisoners today.
Tarleton.
As we know, a letter will sometimes be written by a character in one scene, but the spectators will not learn its exact contents--though they may know just about what he is writing--until a scene or two later, when the letter is delivered to and read by the one to whom it is addressed. On the other hand, we sometimes see an actor write a letter, immediately after which, as he reads it over, it is flashed on the screen. Then, later, we see it delivered, but although the one receiving it is seen to read it, it is not flashed upon the screen again, because the beholder has so recently been shown what it contains. But it sometimes happens that more than one letter enters into the development of the plot at a certain point, and hence there may be some slight confusion caused by the spectator's not knowing which of two letters the player is supposed to be reading. It is to avoid this confusion that directors generally flash a few feet of the letter a second time, simply to identify it. Thus, if the letter that Tom wrote to Nelly in Scene 6 is delivered to her together with one from her friend Kate in Scene 8, you may write:
Postman hands Nelly two letters. She registers delight upon noticing handwriting on one envelope. Opens it immediately and reads:
On screen. Flash two or three feet of Tom's letter, same as in 6.
Back to scene.
Few spectators will object to the introduction of letters, telegrams, newspaper items, and the like--provided there are not too many such inserts--because these seem to fit into the picture as a part of the
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by the author. It need hardly be pointed out, however, that letters and other written messages must not be introduced except for logical reasons. More than one case has been known in which the scenario submitted to an editor specified that one character was to write and hand to another a note which the second character was to read--the note, of course, was to be shown on the screen--when the contents were simply the words which, on the regular stage, the first actor would speak to the other! Of course, no director would allow such a thing to take place in his picture. In a situation where the story could actually be advanced by showing the beholder what a certain player was supposed to be saying to another, it would be only necessary to introduce a cut-in leader, as previously described.
We have spoken of substituting a newspaper item for a letter. Wherever this can be done, it is well to do it; the newspaper item, being printed, is at least readable. One or two of the studios use letters in which the handwriting is so poor that before all the spectators have read the contents of the letter it has disappeared and the scene has been resumed.
Let us suppose that Edith--not knowing that her friend Eleanor has fallen in love with Jack Temple, whom they met at a resort the previous summer--writes Eleanor a letter in which she says:
On screen, letter.
and I'll send it in my next letter.
By the way, I heard a report that Jack Temple--the fellow that you thought was so bashful--was seriously injured in the wreck of the Buffalo Express last week. I
Back to scene.
The expression on Eleanor's face, as she reads this, would be the same as if she had picked up a newspaper and read:
at the time of the collision.
Among those reported injured are James T. Appley, Syracuse, N.Y.; Lloyd W. Stern, Boston, Mass.; Mrs. Geo. P. Rowley, Bangor, Me.; and John Temple, New York City.
Conductor Thomas Hammond told a _World_ reporter that as soon as the report
Of course, at some point in the action previous to the scene in which Eleanor reads this report in the newspaper, you will have made the spectators familiar with the hero's name by means of a leader or some other insert.
"Where the information is brief," says Mr. Sargent,[23] again, "it may be better displayed as a newspaper headline. A two-column display head is better shaped for use on the screen than the deeper single-column head. A deal of information may be conveyed in a headline and the spectator seems to read the item over the character's shoulder rather than to have been interrupted by a leader."
[Footnote 23: Epes Winthrop Sargent, _Technique of the Photoplay_.]
Mr. William Lord Wright, author of "The Motion Picture Story," has this to say on the subject:
"Nearly all photoplays now contain a flash of newspaper headline. It's a good way of putting over the information essential to the plot, but it is suggested that the headlines be properly written. Perhaps the author of the playlet was a novice in writing headlines, or maybe the director was a know-it-all. If not a newspaper man and a headliner, we would advise the author who wishes to use headlines in his action to get some newspaper man to write them for him. Some of the would-be newspaper heads we have read on the screen lately are not impressive or well written. Headlining is a difficult art."
If you have occasion to use a will, mortgage, or other legal document, in telling your story, you will realize that the property man in every studio has the blank forms on hand for anything that you may introduce. It is therefore only necessary to show, say, the back of the mortgage on the screen, with the names of the principals written upon it. Then, later in the scene, or in some other scene, you can show the body of the mortgage. But if you show the body of such a document in Scene 10, after having shown the outside in Scene 4, it would be well to flash the outside, or cover, again in 10, before displaying the contents--for the purpose of identifying it, as in the case of the letter.
In passing we may mention the letter or other document which is actually written by the actor who is _supposed_ to write it. Such a piece of writing, of course, must be, and is, not an "insert," but rather a part of a close-up scene. It might appear in the scenario thus:
27--Close-up of upper part of Allison's body, right hand writing in pencil on one of Enderby's letterheads. He writes:
It took eleven years to get you, Enderby, as I swore I would, some day. Now that I've kept my oath, I'm ready to pay the price, and you will
It is comparatively seldom, however, that this kind of close-up is made use of--usually because the actor or actress does not write a sufficiently clear hand for satisfactory "screening." More often the player will be seen starting to write the note, and then the close-up of another hand, _supposedly_ that of the player, will be shown, writing the words designed to be read by the spectator. In either case, they are close-ups, but the wording must be given in full, just as if you were writing an ordinary letter or other insert to be shown on the screen _after_ it has been written. But do not confuse what we have just said with the fact that, nowadays, nearly every letter that is screened is shown in what is literally a _bust_ picture, the letter or document being held in the hands of the player as he or she reads it. This is merely an additional realistic touch added in the studio; the writer supplies his insert in the regular way.
The proper use of leaders and other inserts is a part of the technique of photoplay writing that is best learned by practise. Be sure to keep a carbon copy of your script. Then, if your story is accepted and produced, when you are watching it on the screen note the leaders carefully, comparing them with the ones you originally wrote, and profit by what you see. If the producer has seen fit to make changes of any kind, there is a reason, and it is generally safe to assume that it is a good one.
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