“You dare to come here, now that I've found you out?”
Scene 48—Interior Ballroom. Closeshot
Richard and Mary. Richard completes title. She looks at him with scorn. He rages on a few moments and then exits.
Scene 49—Interior Ballroom. Full Shot
Mary turns to John who leaves host and hostess, and the couple make their way across the dance floor.
This, of course, is but a section of a script. Moreover, it is as technically perfect as anyone could desire. And yet here the scenario writer has Richard denouncing Mary in a closeshot, denouncing her quite savagely, and right on top of this, in the next scene, she is walking serenely on with her partner, neither he nor any of the others in the crowded room having noticed the previous scene.
This, of course, is an exceedingly obvious instance of how the ability to visualize comes to the director's aid. Yet there are many more subtle errors and superficially more realistic, that are ever lurking in a manuscript, lurking so securely as to sometimes escape notice.
You may choose to say again, “Tush, the scenario writer lacked common sense when he wrote the above sequence of scenes.”
And so he did. After all, common sense when applied to the art of directing is none other than “picture sense,” the power of visualization. And so we arrive back at the beginning of the chapter.