8.  Managing Changes of Scene

In preparing the scenario it is important to remember that if a leader is introduced before a scene, the leader should be written first, and followed by the number and description of the scene.  And in describing your scenes you should study the convenience of the director:  where more than one scene is to be done in a set, refer back to the original scene number.  Thus if Scene 5 is the sheriff’s office, and the same background is used for scenes 7, 9, and 14, when writing Scene 14 say: 

     14—­Sheriff’s office, same as 5—­

No matter how many times that setting may be used as the background for a scene of your story, write it out every time just as you did at first.  Do not merely say:  Same as 5.  Follow the scene number, whether it be 7, 9, or 14, with:  “Sheriff’s office;” then add the “same as 5.”  Also, do not forget what was said in Chapter VI regarding the writing of your scene-number at 0 (or 0 and 1, if there are two figures) on the scale-bar of your typewriter.  In this way, if 5 is your left marginal stop, you will have almost a half-inch space between the number and the description of the scene.  Bridge this space with the hyphen or short-dash character, and you will be sure that the director’s attention is quickly drawn to each change of scene.

It is extremely important to remember that in telling your story in action even the slightest change of location means another scene.  Let us make this point perfectly clear: 

Suppose you have a scene in which a fire ladder is placed against the wall of a burning building, only the lower part of the ladder showing in the picture.  A fireman starts to mount, and finally disappears overhead.  The scene changes, and we see the upper windows of the building and the upper portion of the ladder.  Suddenly the fireman’s head appears as he climbs up (into the picture), then his whole body comes into view, and presently he climbs in at one of the windows.

These are written in as two separate scenes, though it is plain that in real life they are actually one, and in the photoplay they are not separated even by an insert of any kind, thus seeming to be one, as intended.

But now suppose that when the fireman starts up the ladder the cameraman “follows him”—­tilts his camera so that the result is a “shifting stage”—­the eye of the spectator following the fireman as he goes up and until he reaches the top of the ladder and climbs in at the window.  That, of course, constitutes only one scene—­the swinging of the camera to follow the progress of the actor simply enlarges the stage, as it were.  Such scenes as this second one are frequently seen in photoplays—­an aeroplane leaving the ground and rising in its flight, a band of horsemen riding “across” and eventually “out of” a picture, a man climbing down the side of a cliff, and the like.  But as a rule they are simply arranged by the director’s instructing the cameraman to swing his camera as described—­the writer of the script does not introduce an actual direction to the director to obtain the effect in this way but writes them in as two scenes.