Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1916-06-26
BY HARRY o. HOYT
Head Of the Metro Scenario stan

As rule do not use dialogue In sub.
"a titles Nine times out Of ten, wher
there is a question and answer in a
dialogue subtitle the question can he
omitted. AS an example we may wish to
convey the following in subtitle.
John-"will you marry me?"
Mary-"Yes."
No subtitle or leader would be ncces-
sary, as rule, to get this over The audi
ence will not mistake the action But we
viii suppose that John is not right mind
ed young man. His previous actions might
lead us to think that he is speaking with
an ulteror motive in mind. Hence we
may wish to accent the fact that John
wants to marry her. There is no necessity
for the question, Mary can say, NO,
John, cannot marry you" In her re-
fusal she implies that he asked for her
hand in marriage. Another example that
is perhaps more difficult is this:
John.-"Has Major Jones been here to-
night2"
Mary-"Hc was here but left few
minutes ago
If Mary says, Major Jones was here,
but he left few minutes ago we avoid
the first subtitle We can see John ask
ing her some question and her reply eN-
plains it all Dialogue sub-ttles are most
tion and an answer. Most of these can
be avoided. but some times when there are
several people I'm n scene and two or more
speak. 1t is necessary to pick them out of
the crowd and get the meaning over.
If we go into a Closeup" Of the person
speaking we do not need dialogue rs the
character talking is planted. Then II there
is more to be said we can take closeup
of another character speaking and flash an
other subtitle as spoken by this character
Remember that as rule the dialogue
form of subtitle Is a confession OF weak
ness. Either you are unable to tell your
story in picture action or the director uh-
able to make the action clear, has fallen
back upon the spoken word. We go to
pictures to see pictures and not illustrated
sub-ttlcs No rule is hard and fast In the
picture business and this rule admits of
certain exceptions. but we have written
several hundred scenarios and have never
had to resort to dialogue subttles.
on the other hand we know of cases
where the dialogue subtitle has been used
with good effect notably in Julius Caesar
and productions of this order, where
something of the ma iesty of the language
helped make the photopay a success. Try to
avoid dialogue and you cannot go wrong
Subtitles should be natural. Stilted
speeches on the stage destroy the Illusion,
stilted subtites spoil good photopays
~
allowed latitude Of expression and char
acterization. If your character speaking Is
a Yankee you naturally fall into Yankee
dialect. An iliterate character Will speak
illitcrately and you can use an ungrammati-
cal title. 1t keeps your character in the
atmosphere.
Most beginners make their suhttles too
long They use 90 to 40 wards to express
something that could he said in five. Studios
average from one and half to two feet of
film for every word in n subtitle. Twenty
words are about all you can get on the
screen in readable type. This means per-
haps 40 feet of film.
Some times this Is necessary, but as n
rule. it can be avoided When you have
to use 40 feet of film to get over an idea
you have either n very difficult story
perhaps too difficult to make a good picture
or you are not telling 1t properly.
Sometimes you must put Incidents into
your story In the first or second reel to
explain an incident in the last reel without
the aid of subtitles For example, we
will say that you want to use the following
subtitle: Mary, born with horror of
blood, refuses to join the ambulance service,
although desirous of serving her country"
This title is taken from a script recently
submitted to me. 1t is clumsy in construc-
tion. If the author had shown some little
incident early in the picture that planted
her aversion to blood such as having the
hero cut his finger and Mary evidencfng
her weakness at the sight then there would
have been no difficulty in getting the rea-