FOREWORD
Motion pictures are still changing so much, in their development from year to year, that any survey of this vast, chaotic new industry is in danger of being out-of-date long before its time. With this in mind, I have attempted to stress those phases of movie-making, and of the story-telling that underlies each photoplay, that do not change. A generation hence, the fundamental problems confronting the makers—how to show real people, doing interesting things in interesting places—will be the same.
Grateful acknowledgment is due Walter P. McGuire, of “The American Boy,” where much of the material embodied in this book first appeared in article form, for his assistance in planning the original articles, as well as in editorial supervision of the work as it progressed. If there is good entertainment, aswell as instructive value, in these pages, and interest for old minds as well as young ones, much of the credit is due to him.
John Amid.
August 23rd, 1923.