Writing the Photoplay Part 24

What applies to animals applies equally to child actors: it is always best, before submitting a story in which a child plays an important part, to be reasonably certain that the company has such a juvenile player, or that they can procure a child with the necessary ability to perform the part. Several concerns have as members of their stock companies child actors of marked ability. In some studios, however, the director finds it necessary to "send out" for clever children of whom he may know--sometimes the child has acted under his direction before; sometimes he has heard the reports from directors of other companies--and if there is doubt in the director's mind that the child can handle the part, your story may be rejected as a result.

_6. Costume Plays_

In the chapter on "What You Should Write" we discuss the question of writing historical dramas, which come under the head of costume plays.

It should be said here that, merely as an economical consideration, you should always avoid sending scripts calling for special--and therefore expensive--costuming to any company unless you know that they are in the habit of producing plays of that nature. By studying the pictures you see on the screen you can easily learn what companies go in for costume or historical plays; such companies are always glad to receive really strong and interesting stories of this character from outside writers.

_7. Lighting_

We have already touched upon the use of special lighting arrangements in special scenes, but it is well to say again that it is best to let the director decide how a scene shall be lighted. He will consider the matter from the standpoint of practicability and expense; you are very likely to think only of the effect. Don't be too ready to write scenes calling for verandas hung with electric lights in supposed night scenes, j.a.panese lanterns at garden parties, unique moonlight effects, and similar things that will make for expense--even if they are practicable.

Finally, economy should always be the guide followed by the author in writing his story. If, after it has been accepted, the director chooses to stage it with more than ordinary care and expense, so much the better. But the director and not the author will be the one to decide how it is to be staged. If the story is good, it will not be slighted in its production.

CHAPTER XVI

WHAT YOU SHOULD NOT WRITE

_1. The Work of the Censors_

From the time that you begin to write moving-picture plays, one important fact must be borne constantly in mind: The National Board of Censors.h.i.+p inspects and pa.s.ses on all films before they are permitted to be released, and this Board will not pa.s.s any subject it considers objectionable. It is not our province to discuss the methods of the censors in making decisions, though in some sections the local board carries the censors.h.i.+p idea to extremes, even barring some subjects that have already pa.s.sed the National Board. It is safe to say, however, that the folly of hacking to pieces a film portraying Shakespeare's tragedy of "Macbeth," on the ground that it contained too many scenes showing murder and other crimes, will soon become apparent even to over-zealous police and other censors of certain cities. As Mr. W. Stephen Bush writes in _The Moving Picture World_: "A very small and a very short-sighted minority of motion picture manufacturers, together with occasional lapses of National Censors.h.i.+p," are responsible for the exceedingly silly and presumptuous system now existent in some localities.

It is because of this "small and short-sighted minority" that we offer this advice: Write as your conscience and a sense of decency as an individual and as a good citizen dictate. The chances are that then your photoplay will meet with no serious objection. Do not introduce a crime-scene into your picture simply because when you saw a similar scene in a photoplay it aroused a moment's thrill among the spectators. The fact that it pa.s.sed the National Board and the local censors.h.i.+p committee--if your city has one--does _not_ mean that it is the kind of picture the better cla.s.s of theatre patrons want, and the better cla.s.s ought to be set up in your mind as the judges of all you write. A bad example will not justify you in writing a play containing objectionable scenes. The safe ground is the best ground because it is right.

The following list of features disapproved by the National Board of Censors.h.i.+p gives a good general idea of the things that may be regarded as under the ban, not in one or two special cities, but throughout the country. It is not a copy of an official list, as, to the best of our knowledge, none such is sent out; it is merely a draft prepared by Mr. John F. Pribyl, then with the Selig Company, after he had had a conversation on the subject with the Secretary of the National Board, Mr. Walter Story, and courteously transmitted by Mr.

Pribyl to the authors of this volume.

DISAPPROVED BY THE NATIONAL BOARD OF CENSORs.h.i.+P

_The Unwritten Law:_ The Board does not recognize the so-called unwritten law as a justification for the killing of any being.

_Crime:_ 1. When crime is the obvious purpose of the picture--that is, when the whole story hinges on the perpetrated crime.

2. When the crime is repulsive and shocks the spectator.

3. The shooting in "cold blood" of any being.

4. Any crime that portrays a unique method of execution.

_Suicide:_ The Board will not pa.s.s a picture in which there is a suicide or any suggestion of a suicide, with incidents leading thereto. The purpose of the Board is to prevent all suggestion of self-destruction to those who are morbidly inclined.

_Burglary:_ There is no objection to a burglary scene in a picture so long as there is no actual demonstration of the act of burglarizing; for instance, the burglar may be shown entering through an open window, but must not be shown in the act of "jimmying" the window. He may be shown with his back to the audience, opening a safe and extracting therefrom money or papers, but he must not be shown opening the safe by any means known to the art of burglars.

_Vulgarity:_ All vulgarity and suggestion must be avoided. For instance, flirtations with women who are unmistakably of easy virtue.

Letters making appointments with such women are objectionable, as is any "rough-house" conduct with them.

_Mischief:_ The Board objects to pictures that will suggest to the mind of youth acts of mischief, such as mutilation or destruction of property for the purpose of perpetrating a joke on someone, especially playing jokes on invalids or cripples.

_Lynching:_ Lynching is only permissible when the incident happens in the days when Lynch Law was the only law, i.e., in the early days of the Far West when the Vigilantes were the only effective means of enforcing order.

_2. Other Objectionable Subjects_

The foregoing, of course, is not a complete list, as points are coming up continually. For instance, scenes showing kidnapping are forbidden by the police of many cities, and the introduction of that form of crime into a film story is frowned upon by the National Board. The point is that scenes of crime and violence are not absolutely barred, nor are offenses against the moral law, but where permitted these must not be presented offensively, and they must be _essential_ to the story, rather than the _purpose_ of the play. This is a difficult point which nothing but common sense and experience can perfectly interpret.

As an example, a story written about a murder or a robbery will not be pa.s.sed, but such an incident may be allowed in a story in which it is not the leading feature. In any event, the incident must serve to point a moral and not serve as a spectacle.

Another thing to remember is that--aside from the moving-pictures exhibited in the various "regular" theatres--dozens of incidents which are shown on the regular stage without being questioned in any way, would never be allowed on the screen. This is partly due to the fact that such a large percentage of the attendants of moving-picture theatres are children and undiscriminating adults. The writer of fiction entering the field of photoplay writing will do well to bear this further fact in mind: the very incident that might be the means of selling a story to a certain magazine might be the cause of a rejection if introduced into a moving-picture plot. The photoplay has standards all its own.

"One type of the unpleasant drama," says a writer in the _Photoplay Magazine_, "is the kind showing scenes of drinking and wild debauchery, where some character becomes drunk and slinks home to his sickly wife, beats her, and then, finally, after reaching the last stages of becoming a sot, suddenly braces up and reforms." The same writer also remarks: "The only time that murder should be shown, _and that very delicately_, is either in a detective drama or else in good tragedy, where the removal of some character is essential to the plot." "Every one of Shakespeare's tragedies tells of crime," says an editorial in _The Moving Picture World_, "but does not exploit it, and never revels in the harrowing details to produce a thrill."

It is not to be denied that careless and unthinking directors are responsible for a good deal of what is objectionable on the screen. At the same time--and this is especially true of comedy subjects--the director is merely, as a rule, carrying out the author's _suggestions_, if not his actual directions. The best way is not to give the director the opportunity to adopt objectionable features--leave even questionable incidents out of your photoplay.

For example, the elopement is legitimate moving-picture material, provided it is not introduced in such a way as to instill mischief into the minds of young men and women. At least one picture was produced a year or so ago which showed two high-school girls eloping with a couple of young rakes who in another part of the photoplay "registered" that they were by no means the kind of young men who would ever have received the sanction of the girls' parents to marry their daughters. Such a picture may have been conceived innocently enough, but as a subject that would be shown to thousands of young people all over the world it was decidedly deserving of censure. And yet some of the very incidents that served to make the picture doubly objectionable in the eyes of grown people, especially fathers and mothers, might have been the result of the director's unthinkingly adding certain scenes that served to portray young men in a bad light--incidents which were not even thought of by the author when he planned his picture of a youthful escapade. We sympathize with the lovers when Dorothy's father refuses to let her marry Jack, to whom she is plainly devoted. But when, in another scene, we see Jack wasting his time in pool-rooms or lounging in a saloon, we give the father credit for being a good judge of character, and not simply a harsh and stubborn guardian.

Writers should remember that even though a film is pa.s.sed by the National Board, if it gets into a city in which the local censors.h.i.+p board objects to one or two scenes, these scenes will be literally cut out for exhibition in that city. Afterwards, they may be put back; but if this happens in several communities, the film is likely to be shortened by many feet, since in cutting and re-splicing each cut means the loss of at least two "frames," or pictures, and even more if the operator does not know his business--not to mention the loss of the actual scenes cut out. Suppose that two or three of a writer's "strong" scenes are cut when his picture is shown--in Detroit, for instance--the result on the screen is more likely to become an illogical and incoherent jumble than the powerful "drama with a punch"

he had intended it to be. But "Censors.h.i.+p realizes," says Mr. A.W.

Thomas, in the _Photoplay Magazine_, "as does every editor and author, that morality is to be desired, and to this end, crime or suggestion of crime is presented, as a rule, to convey the moral. 'Crime for crime's sake' is to be condemned. Sensationalism and forbidden themes are seldom seen nowadays."

Aside from murder and suicide, why is it that so many young authors imagine that to be strong a story must have at least one violent or tragic death-scene? That there are hundreds of gripping stories, pictures with the biggest kind of "punch," in which no death or suggestion of death is shown, is well-known to every photoplay patron whose mind and heart are in good working order. And yet editors are every day returning scripts in which a murder, a suicide, a death as the result of a duel, or a death arising from disease or accident, is shown--all for no other reason than that the writer imagines he is thereby producing a strong drama.

_3. Depressing Dramas_

Death in a picture is neither undesirable nor out of place--_provided it is necessary to the proper and inevitable development of the plot_.

But the mistaken idea that to snuff out a human life in a thrilling or a heart-rending manner, when there is really no logical necessity for it, makes a picture either strong or dramatic is responsible for scores of unaccepted scripts. Yet it would not be well to try to apply to all picture stories Mr. George Cohan's motto, "Always leave them laughing," for, as every intelligent exhibitor knows, and as a certain producer once said, "they come to weep as well as to laugh." The point that seems to have escaped many young writers is this: There is very often a more decided, a more convincing, and a far more welcome, "punch" in a scene which shows the saving of a human life than there is in one which shows a death, even of the most unworthy character in the cast. To have your villain nursed back to life by the man whom he has so persistently and cruelly persecuted, and then to have him show the change of heart that one would expect in him in the circ.u.mstances, will be far more dramatic and gripping in the eyes of an intelligent audience than to have your hero "hurl the black-hearted ruffian to his doom" over a cliff a thousand feet high.

There is a distinction, with a very decided difference, between the picture that fills the spectators with gloom and the one that simply allows them to have what many women would call "a good cry." "It is a great thing to be able to lift the spectators out of their seats with a big, gripping melodrama," remarks Mr. Sargent, "but it is a far more creditable thing to send them home with a tear in their eyes while a smile hovers about their lips."

_4. The Use of Deadly Weapons_

It is understood, of course, that the use of guns, knives, and other weapons is seldom objected to by the censors when they are employed in a historical picture, or one that shows pioneer life. The trouble is that some young writers, knowing that they are granted more license in this direction when doing "Western stuff," make the mistake of abusing this liberty. Mr. R.R. Nehls, of the American Film Company, says: "The most noticeable fault with ma.n.u.scripts dealing with Western life is the natural inclination to run too much to gun play, stagecoach robberies, etc. Please remember that we do not wish to distort conditions in the great West--rather we seek to portray it as it really exists today."

Mr. Nehls, it will be noticed, says "the great West ... as it really exists today." It should be apparent to any writer that in turning out stories of the present-day West there is even less excuse for promiscuous gun-play than in a story, say, of California in the days of the Forty-Niners. But Indian ma.s.sacres, soldier warfare, Indian and cowboy fights, usually come under the head of "historical" subjects and are therefore permissible.

_5. Plays Offensive to Cla.s.ses of Patrons_

It seems scarcely possible that any intelligent photoplay writer would introduce into one of his stories an incident calculated to offend the religious or political faith of any patron, and yet in the past different pictures of this kind have been the cause of more than one unthinking moving-picture theatre manager's losing some of his best patrons. People as a rule have no objection to being preached to in a mild and entertaining way when they go to a picture show, but they do object to having their feelings hurt. A man who is over-fond of drink may sit through a play on the screen in which the evil results of intoxication are depicted and come away filled with a determination to reform his way of living, but the man who after paying his admission is asked to sit through five or more reels of film almost every foot of which is a shock to his religious or his political sensibilities will come away filled only with the determination to avoid that theatre in the future, if not, indeed, to eschew moving-pictures entirely.

During 1911 and the early part of 1912 several pictures were released, both by European and American manufacturers, which were so objected to by Roman Catholic picture-patrons that not only were they suppressed but the whole film-manufacturing industry was aroused and put on its guard against producing more pictures of this kind. Here is a rule of photoplay writing that you must not violate: Do not offend the religious beliefs of a _single patron_ if you wish to retain the good will of the editors and manufacturers. And have you stopped to think how broad that statement really is? Have you taken into consideration the many different nationalities, with their widely different creeds and religious convictions, which see the pictures daily put upon the market? As one critic says: "The photoplay film goes to Europe and Australia and South Africa. Some of them even get to China; so you can realize that what may seem foolish to you may be sacred to someone else, and exhibitors have to be careful."