Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1916-06-03
Lesson Number How to
Find the Plot for Your
First Moving Picture

TN WRITING q series of articles dealing
with scenario construction, or more
properly speaking, photoplay construction,
q ia necessary to define some of the tech
pical terms employed. This will be done
from time to time as the series progresses.
Before getting into an actual discussion
of the scenario or photoplay, we must 60
hack and get at the origin Of our screen
productions.
Where do they come from7
who supplies the idsasT
This can be answered in a general way,
nv saving that outside contributors and
staff writer's supply MOST of the plots for
the program companies, and staff writer's
make book and play adaptations for the
majority of the feature productions. BY
nrogram companies, we refer to those COM
nanIes producing subjects of short length
for release on certain days of each week.
The field for the outside writer is. there
fore better at the present time with the
companies making shorter SUBJECTS. Ihe
old order is changing, however. The day
of the hacls-writer Is past, and the day or
the scenario writer has arrived. 1t Is for
the benefit of those who would seek TO
supply the photoplays OF the future, who
are earnestly endeavoring to create screen
dramatic, that these articles are Intended.
How many people, going to theatre and
witnessing O picture show, come away be-
lieving that they are capable of writing
somethinE better than the screen produc-
tions they have just witnessed2 Perhaps IN
your own life you have remarked: well,
I couldn't do better than that 1 wouldn't
write at all"
Perhaps you've had some experience,
which you and your friends have thought
extraordinary, and you or they have said:
1T would make fine picture play; GER
tainly better than some we've SEEM.
Unfortunately this is rarely true. What
ia vital to you is many times of no inter-
est to the outside world. Your experiences
while odd and queer, IL produced would be
"drvel to persons who had no interest In
the incidents.
''The baby did the cutest thing today"
is your wifes greeting, as you come home
in the evening. Or, II had funny expe-
rience yesterday" you remark to Jones, as
YOU come down in the street car with him.
It's uour baby or Jour experience, and
IL comes close to home, but first-class
scenario writer could sit down and imag-
inc something for your baby to do that
would be very much more out of the or
binary, or an experience that befell you
which would be far more Interesting to
the multitude who visit the moving picture
shows.
A test that you might apply is this: Wit
ness a nOtlOn-plCluEe SHOW, anu youI
attention upon some one picture. When you
have come out, analyze the situations, the
harbreadth escapes the villainy, the sacrt-
flee. Imagine such things happening in real
life The newspapers would be full Of II.
Would the incident of your baby the
experience that befell you occupy an inch of
space in any newspaper, II 1t got hold of
It? The chances are not.
This points to one moral: Beware of the
story that is true to life, particularly II 1t
comes close to you. Your perspective is
almost certain to be ruined and you are
quite unable to jadge the dramatic values.
In the old days most of the photoplays
were highly improbable. AS the natural
consequence of improvement In the busi-
ness the standard is much higher today.
That brings us to one of the basic prin-
ciples of photoplay writing. Make your
ideas probable Your subject may be i'm
possible. but your treatment of It must be
such as to give 1t an air of probability
that will carry 1t over 1t Is best, of
course. to make it not only possible. but
highly probable.
Mr.. Sargent, who has written a very ad-
mirable book on photoplay writing, cites the
case of missionary in Africa, who per-
formed an operation in major surgery on
himself. without an anesthetlc, and recov-
cred. II we were to picture that on the
screen, everybody would laugh 1t is SEEM
ingly quite impossible and absurd-yet 1t
actually happened.
There is a very fine distinction here,
which every photoplay writer must learn;
you must convince your audience of one
fact: that what they see actually could