were introduced with most convincing effect, while the action of the story was in no way interfered with on account of the change.  The scene described, of course, was made in the studio, with a specially built deck scene.  Had there been other scenes aboard ship needed in the story’s working out, the director would undoubtedly have secured permission to take all the scenes needed aboard one of the ocean liners always to be found in the port of New York.

So it is that hundreds of pictures released every year contain thrilling, unusual, and beautiful effects which the author has never dreamed of writing into his scenario, but which have been supplied by a careful director with a memory for what the company has made in the past.  And the thing to be remembered, of course, is that while it is very easy for a director to use something which is already made and in the company’s possession—­or readily procurable from another company—­it is not so easy, at times, to make the big scene or effect that the novice introduces into his story.

Leaving aside the staff-writers, in almost every company[24] there are one or two photoplaywrights; in many cases the leading man is also the director of the company, writing and producing a great many of the plays they turn out.  Where this is so, that company is in a position to take advantage of any unforeseen happening or accident.  Being in the vicinity of a railroad wreck, they hurry to the place and take the scenes they need.  Then, probably many miles away, and on an entirely different railroad line, with the permission of the company and possibly at a slight extra expense, they take the other railroad scenes—­perhaps a week after taking those at the scene of the wreck.

[Footnote 24:  “Company,” as here used, refers to the group of players working under a certain director, several such groups making up the stock company maintained by the film manufacturing concern.]

Thus the unthinking amateur writer, seeing the result of the producer’s efforts on the screen, takes it for granted that the company has gone to the expense of buying up several old coaches and an engine or two and producing an actual wreck merely for the sake of supplying some thrilling situations in a railroad drama.  True, head-on collisions have been planned and pictured, box-cars have been thrown over embankments, automobiles have been burned, aeroplanes have been wrecked, and houses have been destroyed, to furnish thrilling episodes in the pictures produced by various companies, but unless the story itself fully justified the additional expense and trouble, it is safe to say that the company, having the opportunity to purchase some old engines and coaches cheap, took advantage of this to write and produce a picture in which their destruction could be featured—­that is, the photoplay was the result of the special scene, and the scene was not made specially for that particular plot.

To repeat, in introducing scenes that call for additional expenditure on the part of the manufacturer, the question to ask yourself is, will the resulting effect really justify the added cost of production?