(EXAMPLE 18.) “.... Annie reads letter, a great joy breaking over her face: INSERT LETTER.... “Dearest—Come with me to the city at daybreak.”
In which the letter is presented for our perusal with the same care that it would be inserted in a story at the proper moment. It is part of the story.
In the same manner a calling card, an inscription on a grave-stone, a monogram on a ring, a miniature photograph, may be brought, as it were, close to our eyes. The illusion is ingeniously preserved by the presence of the character’s trembling or tracing fingers following the emotion in his soul.
The close-view, however, may take a step farther than merely photographing an inanimate object; it may dramatically emphasize a segment of exquisite action.
(EXAMPLE 19.) INSERT CLOSE-VIEW of title page of “Cinderella,” Annie’s trembling hand tracing first word .... INSERT CLOSE-VIEW of Annie’s face, she closes her eyes, her lips move with a smile of ecstasy.
The close-view is indispensable for acute emphasis; for peculiar dramatic effect; for discernment of some essential object too small to be sufficiently noted or noticed otherwise; for the display of the finer and more subtle emotions; for the revealment of some otherwise hidden object or action important in unfolding the scene and developing the action. The last named takes the same latitude as fiction in bringing in essential data beyond the discernment of the human eye. The optical process, too, of looking at distant objects thru a strong glass is effectively reproduced by the close-view. A rather bizarre use is made of the same device by showing a sectional view of some inclosure:
(EXAMPLE 20.) The hero may be eavesdropping on the villain and be concealed in a box or a barrel; this fact is disclosed by means of the sectional view. Or a man crawling thru a tunnel and shaking the earth beneath the scene of action.
The close-view has no equal for breaking dangerously long scenes in a manner so natural and potential that oftentimes it makes a brilliant presentation of something that would in all probability have become tedious.
The vision insert is treated more particularly later on, under other captions. Suffice it to say, that the vision insert simulates the more subtle mental processes of thought and fantasy—such as reflection, introspection, dreams and hallucination—that have a simultaneous dramatic bearing on the conduct of the character and on the psychological development of the story.
(EXAMPLE 21.) CAPTION .... AFTER FIVE YEARS WITHOUT HER.