CHAPTER II

Differentiation

HOW PHOTODRAMA DIFFERS FROM STAGE DRAMA IN CONSTRUCTION, TECHNIQUE AND EXPRESSION; ALSO FROM FICTION CONSTRUCTION AND NARRATION IN GENERAL AND THE SHORT STORY AND THE NOVEL IN PARTICULAR.

THE very first impulse that comes to the photoplaywright, as a true exponent of literary art, must be stifled—he cannot clothe his message in glowing words that will ravish the ear and please the eye of an esthetic public. Rather, he must construct a silent, technically wordless picture. He must smother his vocabulary under a mass of technique. He must hide the light of his diction under a bushel of “business.”

Nevertheless, there must be the message to radiate, the story to tell, the gratifying material for entertainment. Granted an idea worth artistic exploitation, there remains the exercise of one of the most difficult processes known to literary or dramatic construction.

A photoplay is composed primarily of mechanical units, technically termed reels. A full reel consists of 1,000 feet of film and occupies approximately twenty minutes to display its contents upon the screen. By contents, we mean to include everything that is projected: trade-mark frame of manufacturer, including title of play and name of the author; cast of characters, with Board of Censorship notice at the end. The foregoing take approximately two minutes of valuable time and are merely incidental to the play. They concern the writer only in so far as they act as limitations. The essential photodrama itself includes portrayal of dramatic action of the characters; printed words contained in captions and inserted dialog; close-views for the purpose of emphasis; inserted printed matter bearing upon the unfolding of the story.

We find a distinct advantage in the constructionof the short stage play over that of the short photoplay in the fact that the former permits us approximately as long a time for its single scene as we are allowed for the entire photoplay composed of from 25 to 60 scenes! Again, the short stage play is merely episodical in an intensive sense, developing a single dramatic situation to an immediate and effective climax; while the short photoplay is usually expansive in character, comparable to the wider boundaries of the short story in selecting a supreme dramatic moment in the life or lives of characters and portraying even the remote cumulative incidents that began, contributed to and compelled the climax, and possibly containing many situations, tho of lesser power than the climax itself. Aside from the incidental employment of a mob now and then, we may say that a vital characteristic of the short stage play is economy, often two and seldom more than five characters appearing in the play. Because of its multiplicity of scenes, however, the short photoplay normally includes the employment of many extra characters who establish and naturalize settings, and seldom employs less than five importantcharacters, for the reason that frequent change of scene is necessary to photoplay development and effect.

(EXAMPLE 1.)In a short photoplay it may be necessary for our hero to visit his club, to gamble and to lose the money that he is holding in trust. While he and the villain, his opponent in the game, are the two principal characters, it is essential to introduce many others to make the club-setting natural. We might call these “setting characters.”(EXAMPLE 2.)We must always take into consideration those scenes that act as a foil for those in which our principal characters appear in their important situations. Photoplay scenes without the prop of dramatic dialog begin to lose power after being sustained for two or three minutes. New power is provided by reverting to another scene that has a direct cumulative bearing upon the scene in hand. With but two characters, or only a small group that must be kept together for effect, quick changes would keep the characters moving unnaturally fast.

(EXAMPLE 2.)We must always take into consideration those scenes that act as a foil for those in which our principal characters appear in their important situations. Photoplay scenes without the prop of dramatic dialog begin to lose power after being sustained for two or three minutes. New power is provided by reverting to another scene that has a direct cumulative bearing upon the scene in hand. With but two characters, or only a small group that must be kept together for effect, quick changes would keep the characters moving unnaturally fast.

An examination of the three-act, or long, stage play and a comparison with either short or long photoplay, likewise disclose some advantages in favor of the stage drama. Each act of the long play allows the playwright approximately forty minutes in which to attaina desired effect, or about one hour and twenty minutes of combined action in all. By means of the condensed method and rapid action of photoplay drama, we may often get a three-act play into a single reel of photoplay action, while a solid evening’s entertainment may include several short plays, and one long one, equivalent in itself to a meaty drama.

The great advantage of photodrama over stage drama, however, lies in the playwright’s privilege to fill in all essential action of the most infinitesimal character in exactly the order and degree of its occurrence, so that the spectator gets everything first-hand and not thru hearsay. Furthermore, the photoplay begins at the beginning of things essential.

(EXAMPLE 3.)Stage drama, thru the use of a few well-chosen phrases, will often make clear to the audience the relationship between characters and the cause for the struggle that is the basis of the play. Photoplay construction takes us back to the causal act, tho it may have happened months before the opening of the bigger situations.

The great problem that confronts the photoplaywright is how to make his story convincing without words, how to interpret everyemotion into pure action. He must learn the truth of that axiom which states that “actions speak louder than words.”

With fiction construction and expression, the photoplay has much in common. The short photoplay, as we have pointed out, is expanded to practically the same degree as the short story, while the multiple-reel, or long photoplay, has within its scope the complete and satisfactory dramatization of the novel or many-volumed literary work, thus enriching the dramatic field with new forms of surpassing material which must forever have been denied millions of people who abhor reading even the glorious treasures of fiction literature.

The two fields—of fiction writing and photoplay writing—diverge into opposite directions the moment we discuss the narration of one and the visualization of the other. In fiction narration, we resort unequivocally to words to express our inmost vision and weave our story; in the photoplay our words merely indicate the line of action. The effectiveness to be gained thru descriptive writing is barred to us; we must confine our description to a line at the head of each scene. Fineparagraphs on introspection, or mental agony, or deep feeling are helpless, unless they have their counterpart in vivid action. Artistic narration is a handicap; expressive vocabulary is essential. We must express ourselves, then, in terms of action rather than in periods of rhetoric.

But does not the absence of the spoken word make it easier to give expression to the universal language of the heart? All motives and emotions must be made to appear on the surface. Even sounds must be silently, yet effectively, portrayed. The music artist peoples the imagination of his audience with a glorious phantasmagoria. There is a music of vision that delights the beholder of motion and action, typifying life, health and sanity. We have only to give photoplay art its premise and we may find it ranked among the muses. In artistic photodrama we perceive with the ears of the heart and the soul, gifted, it would seem, with a new soul organ. The day of the skilled spectator must follow the dawn of the art of the ideal interpreter.

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