2.  Photoplay Writing Requires a Separate Training

Apply the same reasoning to the question of who should become the most successful photoplaywright—­the trained and experienced fiction writer, or the ordinarily intelligent and imaginative follower of some other vocation, who is suddenly struck by the idea that he could, and filled with the determination that he will, write a photoplay.  We accentuate the word become in order to emphasize the fact that even the professional writer must learn the technique of photoplay construction before he can hope to produce a script that will not only be accepted by a film manufacturing company for production, but will be produced exactly as he has written it, without the need of drastic revision or rewriting.  This, however, is very rare today.

This last point is important.  While, as we have said, it is improbable that an experienced fiction writer would fail in the field of photoplay writing once he had learned to put the plot together in proper form and had mastered a knowledge of the limitations of the moving-picture stage, it is also just as unlikely that the most famous writer living could legitimately sell a photoplay that was essentially faulty in construction and absolutely lacking in screen quality.  If the idea were a good one and the writer were to submit it to the producing company under his own name, the chance is that the company would accept it, and, after using his idea to construct the photoplay in proper form, produce and even feature it—­on account of the big name won in the field of fiction writing.  If, on the other hand, he should submit it under a pen name it is possible that, provided the plot, or even the fundamental idea, proved to be exceptionally good, he might be offered a moderate sum for the plot or for the idea alone, to be worked up and produced as the director thought best.  In making him the offer, the company would probably explain quite frankly that the script was not suitably constructed; that it would require rewriting in the studio; but that the idea was worth the amount offered.  Here, then, is one point upon which the novice may congratulate himself:  he, as an untrained writer of photoplays, is not alone in having to learn the secret of what will suit the screen, for until the famous author learns that secret, he, too, is an untrained writer—­of photoplays, and his “prices” will suffer accordingly.

[Illustration:  Producing a Big Scene in the Selig Yard.  See Cameras on the Right]

[Illustration:  Film-Drying Room in a Film Factory.  The Films are Rolled Around the Racks which are Suspended from the Ceiling and in the Hands of the Operators.  Moist Warm Air is Introduced through the Large Pipes]