[Leader]: A sub-title used before a scene to assist the spectator in getting a clear idea of what the picture is to portray.
Location: When the setting for an action is out of doors, and takes advantage of some natural environment, such as the front of a house, a barn, or a lane, or a lake, it is called a "location." So, while any environment for action is broadly a "setting," one usually refers to an interior setting as a "set" and an exterior setting as a "location."
Multiple Reel: See [Reel].
Negative: The original emulsated film used in the camera when the actions of the participants in the photoplay are recorded.
Plot: The original idea worked into a compact number of scenes and individual situations, all of which in a series carry out the general idea. Sometimes this "plot" is referred to as the "skeleton" of the photoplay. "In its simplest, broadest aspect, plot is the scheme, plan, argument or action of the story."[3] Henry Albert Phillips calls it "the 'working plan' used by the building author."[4]
Positives: The copies printed from the negative. These positives bear the same relation to the negative as "prints" do to a photographic plate.
Prints: The "copies" or "positives." The profit to the manufacturer lies, of course, in selling as many prints as possible to the exchange managers of the world.
Producer: See [Director].
[Reel]: A full reel of film contains, approximately, one thousand feet. Sometimes two pictures of five hundred feet each, or of different lengths, may constitute a full reel, and it is then termed a "split reel." If a photoplay is produced in two or more reels, it is put on the market as a "two-reel" or a "—— -reel" subject and becomes a "multiple-reel" subject. The term "feature" is usually applied to a picture of five parts and upward. When referring to a multiple-reel play, photoplaywrights now favor the use of the word "part" instead of "reel" and say "two-part," or "three-part" story or play. Incidentally, it is well to use "picture" in place of "film" as much as convenient. Earnest workers in the photoplay-writing profession are anxious to eliminate the old atmosphere of cheapness.
Register: To register an effect is to "show" it to the spectators in a way which cannot be mistaken. It is sometimes said that an effect, a bit of "business," or an emotion which an actor is endeavoring to portray, "will not register," meaning that it will not be understood by the audience in the way intended by the director. Very often a lighting effect does not "register" as it was thought it would. Again, an actor may wish to "register" disgust or hatred, and yet he may convey the idea that he is portraying only fear. The word covers various meanings. In writing your story in action (in the scenario or continuity), if a character is hiding behind a curtain, watching an exhibition of cowardice in another character, instead of saying "Tom shows by his actions that he considers Jack an arrant coward," thereby using twelve words, you may write, "Tom registers disgust at Jack's cowardice," which uses only six words; but do not use this technical term too frequently in this manner.