Writing the Photoplay

by J. Berg Esenwein; Arthur Leeds

A leader, however, should never be employed to "break" a scene unless there is absolutely no chance to introduce in its stead a short scene, the showing of which will help the progress of the plot; or unless a leader will serve the double purpose of breaking the scene and supplying the audience with an explanation that is important just at that time.

Taking the two examples just given, in which a leader is used to break the scene, there is scarcely any doubt that, were you writing these scenes in scenario form, you might easily substitute scenes that would help the action of the story and allow you to dispense with the leaders altogether. For instance, you could show the scene in which the absent-minded man leaves the water running into the bath and goes out of the room. Then, show a scene in his bedroom, where he is contentedly removing the studs from his shirt. Suddenly he remembers that he has left the water running. With an expression of dismay, he jumps up and runs out of the room. Flash back to the bathroom scene. The tub has overflowed and the room is filling with water. As the excited man opens the door, the flood pours out into the hall. The short scene in the bedroom makes the leader unnecessary. Better fifteen feet of film showing the bedroom scene than five feet of leader.

Again, after the lumberman had started to chop down the tree, you might flash a short scene showing a couple of other men at work in another part of the forest. All at once they both stop work and register that they have heard something that startles them. One speaks excitedly to the other, and both run out of the picture. You then show the scene with the man lying beneath the fallen tree. Presently the two men who heard his cries for help come running up to him.

5. Cut-in Leaders

One very effective form of the leader is the cut-in, described in [Chapter X]. It takes the form of the speech of one of the characters, being written in quotation marks. This device of throwing on the screen the supposed words of a certain character at the moment of action enables the photoplaywright to tell all that is necessary much better than he could by a long statement of what is going on—a point that is well worth remembering. Directors are now using the explanatory cut-in leader as much as possible, to the exclusion of the ordinary one which merely states facts. This does not mean that they are trying to substitute "dialogue" leaders, but that wherever the newer form can be used to advantage it is less objected to by the audience than is the bald statement-sub-title—doubtless because it is in line with the illusion of reality in using the player's words, and is not merely an insertion by the director or the author, as other inserts evidently are.

For the reason that all leaders more or less interrupt the action of a scene, some directors prefer decidedly not to use cut-ins more than is necessary, their argument being that for a few seconds following the right-in-the-middle-of-the-scene leader, the mind of the spectator is engaged with the import of what he has just read on the screen, and the action immediately following the leader is at least partially overlooked.

Yet a cut-in leader is usually one that suddenly discloses an important point of the plot. It may be that one of the characters, when the scene is about half through, unexpectedly makes a statement which amounts to a confession of some crime. We read on the screen, "Judge, she said that to save me. That is my revolver!" No sooner has the cut-in been shown, and the action resumed, than the eyes of every spectator are fastened upon the face of the character in the scene who should, by all logical reasoning, be most affected by that confession. If a scene is important enough to require a cut-in leader, it is reasonable to suppose that it has the full attention of the spectator after the first few seconds of action. This being so, it would seem that the spectator is far less likely to miss a point of the action immediately following a cut-in than he is to miss what occurs at the beginning of a scene, following an ordinary between-the-scenes leader. It is a fact that a few directors drag the action of a scene for the first few seconds following an ordinary leader for the purpose of again centering the attention of the beholder on the action itself, before developing—in action—another point of the plot.

We have already referred to "panoramic" leaders giving long casts of characters, the leader moving upwards on the screen instead of sidewise as in panoramic scenes. Today, the panoramic sub-title, as well as the panoramic letter or other insert, is quite common, especially in feature pictures. Those directors who, notwithstanding all, still favor the use of introductory matter before the first scene, frequently resort to long panoramic sub-titles as a means of making the spectator familiar with the theme of the story before starting to tell it, just as Kipling has so frequently introduced an introductory paragraph of the same nature in his short fiction. To our way of thinking, a thematic sub-title of this kind, used before the opening scene, is far less out of place than the ordinary introductory titles merely having to do with the characters, because it really does help prepare the spectator for the kind of story he is about to view.

Then, again, it may be added that the present-day length of leaders greatly modifies what we say—as a sound guiding principle—in Section 7 of [Chapter XVII]. A great many excellent detective-story films have been produced, either from original synopses or as adaptations of the work of fiction writers. In these, there has been no hesitation on the part of the director and sub-title editor to use just as many words in a leader as might be necessary to make every point of the story entirely clear and interesting. Paramount's "The Devil Stone," showing the train of tragic events that followed the stealing by a wicked Norse queen of the great emerald belonging to a certain Breton priest, was one example of an intensely interesting detective story in which sub-titles supplied much more than a third of the story—and supplied it, apparently, quite unobtrusively. Here, again, only common sense and experience can show you what to do.

Before leaving the subject of leaders let us say once more that you must seek to find the golden middle ground between the leader that is too flowery in its language and the other that is too stilted and prosaic. Again, in connection with the length of leaders, study the two following from Universal's feature, "The Kaiser, the Beast of Berlin," the first of which contains only seven words, while the second contains fifty-five.