Better to illustrate these points, we reproduce a paragraph from an article by Mr. R.R.  Nehls, manager of the American Film Manufacturing Company: 

“Ordinary judgment should tell a writer about what is possible in the way of stage equipment to carry out a plot.  We can provide almost anything in reason, such as wireless instruments, automobiles, houses of every description, cattle, etc., but we cannot wreck passenger trains, dam up rivers, and burn up mansions merely to produce a single picture.  There is no rule to guide you in these matters save your own common sense.”

Now, the foregoing paragraph was written by Mr. Nehls some six years ago.  We include his opinion in this volume, however, because it is absolutely necessary to consider expense when planning a story for the screen.  On the other hand, it must be said for the benefit of the new and talented writer who really has or can evolve big situations for his stories that never in the history of the motion picture have manufacturers been so ready to do the big thing in a big way as they are now.  That is to say—­and this whole statement should have your most careful consideration—­the only thing that a manufacturer considers today is the question of whether or not a certain effect, scenic, mechanical, or whatever it may be, is worth the money which would have to be spent to obtain it.  It would be folly to say that train wrecks, burning houses, destroyed bridges, and the like, are “impossible” in a film story, after every patron of the picture houses has seen on the screen everything from the wrecking by earthquake of a whole village to the burning of a huge sailing vessel—­have seen, in very fact, almost everything that it is possible to see on the earth, above the earth, or in the waters under it.  We have indeed reached a period of amazing spectacular effects, produced, in most cases, at enormous cost.  And yet today a far closer watch is kept on the cost than ever before.

How are we to reconcile these two apparently conflicting statements?  The answer is simple:  Nothing is too costly if it pays for itself—­as reckoned by the sale of prints when the picture is placed on the market.  If, for example, “The Birth of a Nation,” “Civilization,” “Cabiria,” “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea,” and ever so many other super-features that have been made since these were produced, had cost twice as much as they actually did, they would still have been exceedingly profitable ventures for the ones who put them out.  If you have the story to justify the big scenes and effects you will unhesitatingly be provided with all the effects the story calls for.  Today, economy is practiced after the story has been purchased; the unusually good plot is not persistently returned because of the expense attached to putting it into film form.  Ways and means are found within the studio to produce, for every thousand dollars paid out, an effect—­a result—­such