Writing the Photoplay | Page 5

with an imaginative mind and the native ability to see how an idea or a plot-germ would evolve itself into a climacteric and coherent story, and provided he has the dramatic sense, he can actually learn the rules of construction and produce salable photoplays even if he has by no means the literary ability to write a salable short-story. But he must be a person of ideas--no book and no instruction can supply that lack.
We have gone so far as deliberately to try to discourage anyone who is so foolish and so undeserving as to enter the field of photoplay writing without the fullest intention of doing his best to win for himself the very highest position in that field to which his talent and ability to work can advance him; and we have no apologies to offer. Few who have not followed the progress of the moving-picture industry realize the enormous changes that have taken place in the last four or five years. This is especially true of the branch of the business having to do with the preparation of the script. To those who have been in constant touch with the work, it seems only yesterday that the professional photoplay writer, outside of the producing plants, was an unknown factor. At last came the time when the manufacturers started to advertise for ideas on which to build their plays. "Ten to one-hundred dollars paid for motion picture plays," these advertisements read. They were alluring enough even to the man who already had a steady position in another line of work. They told him how he could add from "ten to one-hundred dollars" a month to his regular income. At least, they seemed to promise that, especially when coupled with the assurance that "no previous literary training" was required. These advertisements looked attractive, also, to the man whose income was not regular. Small wonder that within a few months' time scores, hundreds, rushed blindly into a field where even writers of established reputation would have failed--and did fail--without preliminary technical training. Even those who succeeded in getting their efforts accepted by the producers found that the check was more likely to be for ten dollars than for any amount in excess of that.
4. Advance in Requirements
The real change has come within the past ten or twelve months. A sort of weeding process has been carried on by the various manufacturers, and as a result they recognize certain writers as being capable of supplying them, at more or less regular intervals, with the kind of scripts they want, quite as certain magazine editors have lists of story-writers to whom they look for the bulk of their fiction. Gradually this list of trained and capable, and consequently successful, writers for the screen is growing larger, for daily some new writer is demonstrating that the freshness, brightness, and ingenuity of his ideas warrant the editor's putting him on the list of those from whom good material may be expected.
5. The Demand for Photoplays
Is there not, therefore, it may be asked, a probability of the field's becoming overcrowded?
Hardly. The best proof of the opportunity that is held out to the capable outside writer, new or old, is that the staff-writers, whose duty it should be to make adaptations of plays and novels and write the scenario, or continuity, for stories bought from free-lance writers in synopsis form, are kept pretty busy writing so-called "original stories" for certain stars, or stories that may be "done" in certain parts of the country at a particular season of the year. If enough thoroughly good stories could be purchased on the outside, staff writers would never be called upon to write stories to order; only what might be called "inspired" stories would be accepted from them. Furthermore, if plenty of good, original stories, written directly for screen presentation, could be purchased by the editors, the practice of making screen adaptations of popular novels and stage plays would be cut down by more than half.
"Suppose that the staff writer suddenly gets the 'flash'--the inspiration needed to write a Western story with a plot that is infinitely bigger and more dramatic than anything that he has done in a great many months. Thinking it over, he gradually becomes brimful of the theme and its plot-possibilities. He wants to feed the paper into his trusty typewriter and start pounding out the scenario before a single bit of the suddenly inspired plot can get away from him. But he cannot; his company does not make Western stories; nor does it permit its staff writers to sell their work to other firms. Even if it did, he is far too busy to give the time to the writing of a story not intended for the use of his own particular studio.
"So the