All our directors are not great. There would be no fun for the picture audiences if they were. Fans would be deprived of that greatest of all pleasures; writing to the magazines to point out that Marie wore silk stockings going in the door and lace filigreed hose coming out of it. But in the rank and file of directors whose work appears with regularity on the screen there are many capable and skilled men—each one, perhaps, merely waiting the chance or opportunity to step into the limelight with a pictorial masterpiece.
Most of these directors are noted as “specialty men.” One can do comedy-drama well, another excels at straight romance, a third has a particular turn for handling the intricacies of farce. These men are skilled artists but not great artists. Potentially great, perhaps, but the full extent of their emotional arcs has not as yet been tested.
What then, a student of the screen has a perfect right to ask, determines the ability of these men? The answer is, that uncanny sixth sense necessary to become a director, “picture sense” or more technically, the power of visualization.
The picture sense is latent in every embryo director. It can be developed, but no amount of study will acquire it. It seems to be born in some men just as a perfect tenor voice is born in some men. Study brings each out but cannot create either one.
The “picture sense” is the art of seeing in the mind's eye, or rather the mind's picture screen, every scene of the scenario writer's typewritten manuscript. Readers will probably recall that this accomplishment has also been set down as the scenario writer's fundamental groundwork of learning. Thus the writer and the director have much in common. And this is one reason why so many scenario writers have become successful directors.
It may readily be seen that this picture sense, this ability of visualization, is constantly being used by the director. When he first reads his script he is visualizing it every moment of the way. To himself he says, “Scene one will look like this, scene two will follow like this.” He then conjures up before his eye what sort of a set he will work in, what properties it possesses, how his people will dress, where they will stand when they go through their emotions, how they will enter and exit from the scene, and a hundred and one other details.
If, during this process of visualization, the story or one of its various scenes rings false, then the director is prepared to talk it over with the scenario writer and see what can be done to set it right.
So right here it may be divined that a director with this sense of visualization developed to the utmost is a most valuable asset to any producing company. If, on the contrary, he has to wait until he sees a scene actually screened before he can detect its flaws and, seeing them, prepare to take it all over again, the waste time runs into money lost.
IN “SENTIMENTAL TOMMY,” DIRECTOR JOHN S. ROBERTSON SUCCEEDED IN RETAINING THE CHARM OF SIR JAMES M. BARRIE'S ORIGINAL WORK