THE PHOTODRAMA

THE PHILOSOPHY OF ITS PRINCIPLES, THE NATURE OF ITS PLOT, ITS DRAMATIC CONSTRUCTION AND TECHNIQUE ILLUMINED BY COPIOUS EXAMPLES

TOGETHER WITH

A COMPLETE PHOTOPLAY AND A GLOSSARY

MAKING THE WORK

A PRACTICAL TREATISE

BY

HENRY ALBERT PHILLIPS

Author of “The Plot of the Short Story,” “Art in Short Story Narration,” Formerly of Staff of Pathé Frères, Successful Contestant in Vitagraph-Sun Contest

INTRODUCTION BY

J. STUART BLACKTON

Pioneer Manufacturer and Producer and Secretary of The Vitagraph Company of America

(SECOND EDITION)

THE STANHOPE-DODGE PUBLISHING COMPANY

LARCHMONT, NEW YORK, U. S. A.

Copyright, 1914, by

HENRY ALBERT PHILLIPS

(Published September, 1914)

The William G. Hewitt Press Brooklyn, New York

TO ALL LITERARY WORKERS WHO STRIVE TO ELEVATE AND DIGNIFY THE PHOTODRAMA I DEDICATE THIS LITTLE VOLUME

CONTENTS

[Pg ix]

INTRODUCTION

AS one of the pioneers in the most wonderful art-science of the age—the motion picture industry—the writer feels doubly qualified perhaps to throw some light upon a subject equally interesting to author and producer.

A few years ago to the uninitiated “moving pictures” spelt little more than pantomime, buffoonery or sensational catch-penny device. To-day, there are few who maintain this view, and they are the unenlightened; for to the vast majority of those familiar with the art and interested in its progress, the word has become symbolic of things important and far-reaching.

Literature is literally the basic foundation upon which the already gigantic edifice of picturedom has risen.

Ten or twelve years ago picture manuscripts were unknown—office boys, clerks, camera operators, any one with an “idea” furnished the material from which motion pictures were produced. Plot was unknown,[Pg x] technique did not exist, and literary and constructive quality was conspicuous by its absence. The art, however, developed rapidly. It was found possible to do more than portray outdoor scenes of moving trains and other objects, or simple pantomimes with exaggerated gesture à la Française. Methods were discovered and evolved whereby powerfully dramatic scenes could be reproduced, subtilty of expression in either serious or humorous vein could be communicated to numberless people—their emotions played upon, laughter or tears evoked at will—in other words, the Silent Drama was born.

Classic and standard literature was then reproduced in photodrama. Shakespeare, Dickens, Thackeray, Scott and Hugo became known to millions of people whose previous acquaintance with their famous works was either very slight or non-existent. It was at this stage, when literature was combined with other arts allied in picture production, that the real impetus was given and the triumphant onward march of the world’s greatest educator and entertainer commenced.

To-day, millions are invested in great industrial[Pg xi] plants for the creation and manufacture of the wordless drama; thousands of people rely upon it as their sole maintenance and profession. Millions upon millions of men, women and children all over the world look upon this form of entertainment as their principal recreation and, incidentally, are being unconsciously educated to understand and appreciate the higher forms of art.

Bernard Shaw says: “The great artist is he who goes a step beyond the demand and, by supplying works of a higher beauty and a higher interest than have yet been perceived, succeeds after a brief struggle in adding this extension of sense to the heritage of the race.”

There is no doubt that the works of higher beauty and interest accomplished by the real artists in the motion picture profession have been widely productive of the “extension of sense” above quoted.

All this brings us to the practical purpose of this discussion—the dissemination among those who write of the intelligence that a new and fruitful field is open for the works of their pens. The short-story writer who gets from one hundred to five hundred dollars[Pg xii] for magazine stories can get a similar amount from the picture manufacturers; the authors of international fame, who make thousands in royalties, can make thousands more from picture royalties—and in every case without interfering with their magazine or book rights. In fact, the greatest advertising a novel could receive would be a preliminary exhibition all over the world in pictures.

Many of the best modern authors have already gone into this field and many more will. For the day has arrived when, in addition to producing well-known plays and successful books, there is a need for big original features, especially written for pictorial presentation.

The motion picture has narrowed the field of the playwright, but there is another and broader pasture awaiting both the play and fiction writer when he has mastered the technique of the “life portrayal.”

It is the writer’s belief that a gripping, compelling story, hitherto unknown and unpublished, properly picturized and bearing the name of one of the best known writers of modern fiction, would be a greater success[Pg xiii] artistically and financially than a revived popular play or “best seller.” The words “properly picturized” emphasized above are significant.

The motion picture manufacturer stands to the author in the position of publisher—he needs you—you need him. There are good and bad publishers. You, whose name is an asset, would not deal with a publisher of questionable methods; ergo, when seeking out a market for your work, deal with none but the highest class and best and old-established motion picture concerns.

Picturedom is looked upon by many as the New Eldorado. Many misguided fools are rushing in where experienced angels fear to tread. Many theatrical concerns are now “going into the moving picture business,” and they blithely announce their intention to uplift the motion picture and show the public some real stage productions done in pictures. The few that have come to light so far have been very sad affairs, as is but natural. The average theatrical man makes about the same brand of pictures as the average picture producer made five years ago. To quote again[Pg xiv] the invaluable Shaw, “Vital art work comes always from a cross between art and life.”

The art of the picture is to convey an impression of absolute realism in a manner artistic. The theatrical stage manager has been proven to be utterly useless in picture production until he has unlearned all traditions of the stage and acquired an entirely new technique. It is unfortunate that many stock-jobbing, security-selling schemes are being offered to investigators and the public under the magic “movie” name. Many royalties are being promised that will never be paid and of many of these cardboard houses great will be the fall thereof. “A word to the wise is sometimes money in pocket.”

All summed up in a paragraph, the answer is, without a story motion pictures would be what they were styled at their inception—a novelty or a fad. So literature is indissolubly linked with the future and success of the greatest of the allied arts. The “life portrayal” or “thought visualized” is perhaps better than all “literature realized.”

J. Stuart Blackton.[Pg xv]

The coarse passion of the Crowd constitutes “What the public wants” in the way of productions; the refined emotion of the artist must discipline, guide and gratify it by his appealing creations.

FOREWORD

WRITERS of fiction and dramatic literature have been less apt to respond to the call of a new literary vocation, than a world-wide public has been ready to flock to the appeal of a new dramatic art.

A wonderful event has come to pass in the annals of dramatic literature thru the development of cinematography. So wonderful indeed was this new addition to the art of effective dramatic expression, that even after a decade of existence, scarcely a dozen successful writers of literature had realized its potentiality and had allied themselves with the new drama.

The public’s first recognition of cinematography was as a novel diversion. People flocked to see these presentations that crudely[Pg xvi] reproduced not merely static likenesses, but moving realities, just as they had appeared before the camera. In those early days only the elemental reproduction of moving objects was attempted. The photography was miserable; the presentation itself a blurred, eye-racking ordeal.

Luckily for the waning novelty, the possibilities for the trick picture were suddenly realized and cinematography took on a new lease of life. But once the wonder, amazement and speculation that surrounded the unnatural phenomena of these animated photographs wore off, they became deadly monotonous for the mature mind. Once again cinematography hovered near the abyss of oblivion.

Something significant, however, had transpired: the trick picture had blundered, as it were, into the realms of misadventure and laughter. Slap-stick farce supplemented and finally succeeded the trick picture. Cinematography as an entertainment acquired a tremendous commercial impetus immediately. In less than a year the puling infant became a healthy youngster, and the five-cent theater[Pg xvii] began to take its rightful place as “the poor man’s playhouse.”

Thus we have arrived at the beginnings of a need for a literature to provide for the screen portrayals. What had previously been the device of a moment or the conception of an hour, on the part of some ingenious—or ingenuous—director, together with the combined aid of all concerned, now became a matter of serious consideration in order more nearly to meet and to co-operate with the mechanical requirements of length of film, speed of operation and duration of projection. All products were “home-spun” and in no way belied their crude sources. In a very short while it was discovered that there were surprisingly few funny ideas and situations in real life. The comedy personalities of clever actors were worked to death trying to put something new into old, frowsy and threadbare saws.

But a world-old, child-young desire had been awakened. The now vast audiences wanted to be told a story—logical, dramatic, gripping, living! They did not quite realize—as they never do—what they were clamoring[Pg xviii] for, and the producers had paused aghast, as tho conscious of the new and Silent Drama that stood at that moment on the threshold of cinematography.

The first cinematograph stories were humorous. Most of them were pathetic—which is the case when any but a story teller tries to tell a funny story. The serious story was attempted with even worse results. The arrogance of the trained writer of fiction or of drama and the price of the producer were still beyond conciliation.

The first borrowings may have come in taking excerpts from history to make the modest spectacles that gave a new note to cinematography. Suffice it to say, that soon familiar masterpieces of fiction and dramatic literature began to appear. The moment that the exhaustless stores of literature were opened to the needs of cinematography we may say that the photodrama really had its inception. In the voracious search for a story, borrowing became more general, descending from the greater to the lesser lights. At first, borrowings were looked upon by both authors and publishers almost good-naturedly. Not until[Pg xix] the intrinsic commercial value of literary work, from a photodramatic point of view, became obvious was the virtue of the copyright called into effect.

Several successful suits by publishers brought the fear of the copyright into the producers’ hearts. The scenario editor and the photoplaywright became a power from that time on.

All said and done, a large percentage of the photoplaywrights developed in the mechanico-commercial atmosphere of the early days of cinematography were bound to be limited in their range of vision, in their conception of artistic drama and in their ideas of the needs of the ever-widening audiences. From the five-cent show, with its audiences of crude farce- and melodrama-loving people of small or limited education, had sprung the million-dollar theaters, including the rich and poor, the learned and the ignorant, the young and the old in their vast, changing throng of patrons, demanding something always better.

Is it any wonder—with the heads of the companies becoming wealthy magnates by the hour—that many of them gave little thought[Pg xx] to anything else but the income end of their wonderful business, forgetting the output almost to the point of killing the goose that laid the golden egg? Many of these men had not the slightest conception what the word drama meant; altho their employees had grown up with the business, yet they knew nothing of those more cultured professions of literature and drama. Drama to them meant only the production of so many feet of “pictures.”

On the other hand, the consummate handlers of plots, the trained writers of fiction and dramatic literature, who had made writing their profession and had given years of their life to demonstrating their ability to make men laugh and cry and wait, by means of dramatic pictures on page or stage—they had stood aloof. The studio-bred photoplaywright smiled indulgently as tho an insuperable barrier separated these literary mastodons from their preserves; the writers scanned the field arrogantly as tho viewing the common herd. Neither was giving the other his due.

It is true, many well-known writers have failed as photoplay technicians; but it is even[Pg xxi] more true that most photoplaywrights would fail as writers of fiction or stage drama.

Thus we arrive at our point: photoplay writing is a new profession, for the simple reason that the photodrama is a new form of dramatic expression, tho in many ways like, yet in even more ways differing from, either fiction or stage drama.

The studio-bred photoplaywright needs just as much to study and to learn the valued art of choosing, developing and completing the dramatic idea artistically, as the writer of fiction or stage drama needs to master the difficult and effective technique of the photoplay.

The photodrama is more sophisticated than either the writer of other forms of literature, who dabbles with it, or the studio-bred photoplaywright, who struggles with it, at first suspects. Each new test of illusion that is put to it has been met effectively, maintained realistically and completed convincingly—providing it has had the artistic co-operation of director, actors and appropriate scenic effects.

It was but a natural consequence that years of dearth of play material and practical apprenticeship should have brought to the surface[Pg xxii] many promising photodramatists from among the studios. While there have been a limited number of plays effective from a purely artistic standpoint, and depending thruout on emotional situations, there have been thousands upon thousands of productions, startling because of dynamic spectacles, with scarcely a dramatic suggestion outside of outlandish peril. The clash of souls is lost sight of in the orchestral crash of falling buildings; the climax in the struggle of a heroic spirit is hidden behind locomotives coming head-on and smashing themselves into junk; the pathetic twilight closing over some wonderful character depiction is lost in the glare of a bona-fide fire advertised to cost thousands of dollars. These are melodramatic sensations, not drama.

Just as the average person can seldom appreciate a startling sensation except for the first time, so we find producers, directors and audiences clamoring for something new and surpassing all that has gone before, resenting repetition or spectacles that are keyed below the highest pitched sensation they have already witnessed. One visit to the circus a year suffices[Pg xxiii] most people; tho few of us are contented with a weekly attendance at the theater with the promise of a good drama. Dramatic revivals are always welcome.

And so we see the feverish daily change of program, and films that flare for a day and then, like the reams of cheap reading trash of the hour, are literally thrown into the waste-basket and justly perish.

Many problems have been met with wonderful facility in this new art. The actor, for instance, has had to mould himself to new requirements, demanding of him oftentimes a more exquisite art than the spoken drama comprehends. A vast number of actors have acquired something near perfection.

A power has risen in the production of the photoplay, however, that has often hampered the progress of the new drama. All authority, in too many instances, has been given to the director. Even tho the meaning of the word classic was as remote from his understanding as the study of astronomy, yet all manuscripts were subject to his interpretation, alteration and elimination, from “Lucile” to “Lear.” Too often actors en masse have had no[Pg xxiv] further intimation of what they were doing than the vociferous bellowings of a director beyond the camera. Thus was the writer deprived of his most necessary ally in the interpretation of his finer dramatic ideas. If many directors cannot “see,” and possibly perceive every scene and situation of a manuscript with all their five senses, they have been known to return it to the author as “impossible for production.” In true drama our five senses—in photodrama but one, sight—merely act as the agent of the emotions, the real participant in the drama.

The photodrama is bound to be taken seriously in the end. We have theaters, we have actors, manufacturing plants, we have a world-wide audience—but no vital drama worth mentioning yet. When we are supplied with good plays the millennium of the photodrama will begin, which, in its universality, will eclipse anything known in the realms of artistic expression. The photodrama needs thinkers, not tinkers. There must come writers with ideas as well as methods. The future has room only for swayers of world-wide emotion, and not mere footage producers.[Pg xxv] The trained writer has only a slight advantage over the untrained writer, because he must reject all his well-grounded rules of fiction and dramatic technique. The novice has a better chance in photoplay writing than in any other field of expression, providing he is mentally and temperamentally equipped to take it up.

Photoplay writing is bound to become a dignified profession despite the obloquy that seemed to rest upon it for so long. But the photoplaywright must elevate himself thru his artistic product and thru a demand for recognition of meritorious work by appropriate compensation and also by credit of his name to appear on the screen as author of his plays.

It is to further these high aims in the realization that the photodrama needs students earnest in their desire to become honest artisans and true artists—that this book has been written by an ardent student of the new art.

Henry Albert Phillips.

May 18, 1914.

PART I

THE PRINCIPLES OF THE PHOTODRAMA

The writer of the Silent Drama must portray emotions that may be felt by all mankind, and create heartbeats that may be heard round the world.

CHAPTER I

A New Medium of Artistic Expression

THE PREMISE OF ALL ART; THE BATTLE OF NEW STANDARDS; THE DRAMA OF THE EYE; NOT “MOVING PICTURES”; ALL THE WORLD’S THE STAGE; A FIELD WITHOUT LIMITATIONS.

IN all expressions of true art we find the portrayal of a message from the soul, mind and emotions of one man to those of his fellows. The message may be graven in stone, wrought in iron, blended in color, soaring in song, poured thru a pen, or spoken from the stage. If it be art none may pass by without[Pg 28] a portion of it entering his soul and enriching his experience.