But once let appreciation of art values become part of a people’s understanding, and the glories of a new and more wonderful world is opened to them, which brings us to the conclusion that there is a division of opinion regarding even the Fine Arts—some of which are patronized by the few, others are participated in by the many. Among the latter we find the devotees of fiction and dramatic literature far outnumbering all others. The reason, without doubt, for the wider popular approval of these two mediums of artistic expression lies in their portrayal of a segment of life with all the vicissitudes, settings, characters and contributing elements that lead to its dramatic climax, as opposed to the single static incident that the artist has limned in stone or wood or on canvas.
Stage drama takes even a step in advance of fiction literature in its approximation of realistic illusion. The characters of the play become the breathing, living, walking and talking persons conceived by the playwright and anticipated by the audience. Audiences laugh and weep, rejoice and sigh, despite themselves, wherever good stage drama is offered.
Thus we come to the inception and introduction of a new medium of artistic expression that is destined to be numbered among the Fine Arts. While the Photodrama is closely allied and dependent upon both Fiction and Dramatic Literature, yet it has a construction, an expression, and a production so uniquely its own that it is even more unlike than like its allied sources. The Photodrama is notable, too, in being science’s first contribution to the Fine Arts.
The Photodrama has had to fight its battle of the new standards. The day was when we scoffed at the possibility of a mere animated photograph making an artistic appeal to us sufficient to stir our emotions. The conquest of the lighter emotions is already a reality, as any one may learn who will take the trouble to step into a photoplay theater while a good comedy is being run. But the supreme test of the appeal of art—the drama that loosens the treasured tears of a self-conscious, conservative audience—is still the unattained, but attainable, goal of the new profession.
Too often the message of fiction or stage drama is limited, by the printed or spoken word, to the understanding of one’s own people; but the drama of the screen is told in terms of world-wide action, spelt in a tremor of world-old emotion, and writ in the simple language of the human heart—regardless of culture or color, clime or creed. He who has eyes to see may readily understand.
In Photodrama, as in real life, we are never permitted to reverse the hand of Time and relive the deeds of yesterday—except we pass thru the gateway of visions and dreams.
CHAPTER II
Differentiation
HOW PHOTODRAMA DIFFERS FROM STAGE DRAMA IN CONSTRUCTION, TECHNIQUE AND EXPRESSION; ALSO FROM FICTION CONSTRUCTION AND NARRATION IN GENERAL AND THE SHORT STORY AND THE NOVEL IN PARTICULAR.
THE very first impulse that comes to the photoplaywright, as a true exponent of literary art, must be stifled—he cannot clothe his message in glowing words that will ravish the ear and please the eye of an esthetic public. Rather, he must construct a silent, technically wordless picture. He must smother his vocabulary under a mass of technique. He must hide the light of his diction under a bushel of “business.”