Writing the Photoplay

by J. Berg Esenwein; Arthur Leeds

4. Four Special Functions of Leaders

Properly used, leaders can accomplish four results very satisfactorily: (a) Mark the passage of time; (b) clear up a point of the action which could not otherwise be made to "register;" (c) "break" a scene; and (d) prepare the mind of the spectator to enter into the scene in the right spirit.

(a) Marking the passage of time. In the amateur script previously discussed, we found the need for this use of the leader. The introduction, between scenes 8 and 9, of a leader telling the spectator that the events in Scene 9 were supposed to happen "Two weeks later" than those taking place in Scene 8, would have gone a long way toward clearing up the plot of the story. In this case, of course, it would have been necessary to add to the statement concerning the passage of time another statement as to what had happened in the interval, the complete leader reading: "Two weeks later, Mary returns home after failing to get work in the city." Or, better still: "After two weeks of fruitless search for work in the city, Mary returns to her old home."

Try to get away from the monotonous use of the "Next day," "The next day," and "Two years later," style of leader. Say: "The following afternoon," "After five years," "Later in the evening," or "Six months have passed." Even though you find when your story is produced that the director has seen fit to omit altogether the leader that you "wrote in" at a certain point of the action, you have the satisfaction of knowing that, had he used one there, he could not have improved upon the one you wrote.

(b) Clearing up a point in the action is too obvious a use of the leader to require much discussion. Some things mere actions cannot express, and some explanations must be verbally made because pantomime suggestion is inadequate. To take their proper place in the photoplay all such leaders should be more than merely explanatory: they should have genuine dramatic value—just as much as an important speech would have in a "legitimate" dramatic production. In the pictured drama the leader really fills in a significant part of the plot which could not be portrayed by wordless action.

Miss Lois Weber, a well-known photoplay author who has also produced some very fine feature photoplays, says in The Moving Picture World: "Often the right words in a leader or other insert are the means of creating an atmosphere that will heighten the effect of a scene, just as a tearful conversation or soliloquy, at a stage death-bed will move the audience to tears where the same scene enacted in silence would leave it dry-eyed. Naturally, the wrong words may have the opposite effect, but that is no argument against the leader; it only argues that the wrong person wrote it."

(c) "Breaking" a scene with a leader may be explained by an illustration, which at the same time will serve to exemplify how the mind experiences a more or less unconscious (d) preparation for the ensuing scene.

Suppose you have a comedy scene showing a bathtub gradually filling with water because the faucet was left open. In the time required to fill the bath and cause it to overflow, five or six hundred feet of film would be used up if the scene were not changed. Instead of this waste of film, you could, after registering the fact that the running water was rapidly filling the bath, introduce a leader: "Ten minutes later—the tide rises."

Such a leader prepares the spectator for the funny scene that is to follow; and when the next scene is shown, in which the water is overflowing the bath and turning the bathroom into a miniature lake, the spectator realizes what has happened in the ten minutes which, according to your leader, has elapsed since the last scene was shown.

Or, in your story, a lumberman may be injured by having a tree that he is chopping down fall on him. To show the whole process of felling a good-sized tree would take too long—it would consume too much footage, and be monotonous to the spectator. Also, it is the effect and not how it is obtained that makes a picture of this kind successful. For these reasons the man should be shown as he starts to chop down the tree. Then after he has made some perceptible progress you might introduce a leader. "The accident;" and, following the leader, show the man pinned to the ground by the fallen tree; then proceed with the succeeding action. You may be sure that the audience will understand that the man has been knocked down by and pinned under the tree as it fell; it is only necessary to show these two scenes.