The “scene plot,” compiled by the production department, lists the number of interior settings and exterior locations required by the picture and after the description of each scene in the scene plot a row of numbers, each indicating a separate scene to be played in the set or location, follows. Thus a section of a scene plot may read:
LIVING ROOM: Scenes 19, 20, 21, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 159, 160, etc.
DINING ROOM: Scenes 1, 2, 3, 4, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 291, 292, 293, etc.
Of all the settings required let it be said that the living room contains the majority of the action to be photographed. In all likelihood, then, this set is the first one to be erected by the studio production department and as a result the director begins his first days work with scene No. 19 and follows it with scenes No. 20 and No. 21, which disclose closely related action.
Let us say that these early scenes have to do with the first happy days of a young married couple. They discover the little joys and hardships of housekeeping, etc. Well and good. But immediately after producing these scenes the director is forced to jump ahead to the sequence beginning with scene No. 81. Here is a point considerably further advanced in the story and so the director is obliged to mentally leap the action intervening between his first sequence and his second. Whereas Mary and John may have been perfectly contented in scene No. 19, they may have grown two years older and separated altogether in scene No. 81. Inasmuch as he “shoots” No. 81 immediately after No. 21 it must be seen that the director is obliged to adapt his own mood to this peculiar state of affairs created by the ramifications of studio organization. He must live two years in half an hour or less. Such procedure requires mental gymnastics that are more difficult than the act of the vaudeville contortionist.
It is needless to add that this jumping hither and thither and back to hither again, requires a minutely adjusted sense of continuity on the director's part. To keep his whole story and the comparative values of certain sequences straight in his mind, is no easy matter. Further complications enter when it is realized that a sequence of exterior scenes may follow immediately after a sequence of interior scenes, these exteriors being closely identified with the interiors and requiring the same mood. But yet again the plan of work mapped out by the production department may postpone these scenes to the very last day of work. Thus the director is forced to jump back into the early mood of his story after he has rehearsed himself and become thoroughly satiated with all the other moods, a task imposing seemingly insurmountable difficulties.
Time was when it used to be the boast of some directors that they could produce a picture in this jumping about fashion just as well as if they had been permitted to “shoot” their stories in actual continuity. The method is still followed but the boasts aren't as audible.
This method of production gave a fine opening to those critics who cried out that the motion pictures would always remain in the cheap state so well described in the word “movie.” Really artistic results could never be secured with this eternal jumping from 4 to 11 to 44, they said. They added, quite rightly too, that a consistent, well developed, psychologically ascending character was impossible of achievement under this plan. Inasmuch as actors often had to play their climaxes first and then go back and play a scene that led up to the climax, there was considerable point to the arguments of the critics.
A very few directors have now managed to arrange their work so that they can actually make their pictures in continuity, beginning with scene No. 1 and proceeding straight through, with but slight deviations, to the end.
Among these directors and leading them all in results attained, stands William C. De Mille, a director responsible for such artistic successes as “The Prince Chap” and “Conrad in Quest of His Youth,” both with Thomas Meighan, and “The Lost Romance” and “Miss Lulu Bett,” with casts very nearly approaching the all-star state.