“If you need a close-up, write it in, numbering it as a separate scene.  If you do not need a close-up, don’t write one in, even though you see innumerable close-ups used.  Let the director make these as his fancy or judgment may dictate.  He can see just where and how the use of the close-up can help the pictorial quality of the picture.  You are apt to concern yourself only with the narrative value of the close-up, employing it only where it is necessary in order to get the story over clearly.  You cannot possibly imagine the scene exactly as it will be set up or played, therefore you cannot tell where and how pictorial close-ups or other effects will be useful.  Leave that to the director and he will handle the numbering according to his special system.  Number your own close-ups, because they are separate scenes even though they are in reality a part of other scenes.”

What this critic means by the director’s “special system” of handling the numbering of close-ups that he may decide to use after the story has been placed in his hands is simply that such added close-ups will be inserted into the working script in this manner (40 and 41 being your original scene numbering): 

40—­(a) Henderson steps forward to give his prisoner
    a better view of his face.

    (b) Close-up of Trask and Henderson.  In the
    stronger light, Trask recognizes his old enemy
    and his face is convulsed with hate.

    (c) Henderson steps back, laughs, and holds out
    the handcuffs, etc.

41—­This scene as originally written.

It will be seen that the action contained in (b) is the inserted close-up action.  In what remains (c) we get the end of the scene as written by the author.

13.  Visions, Memories, Dreams, and Other Devices

We have already referred to the old method of obtaining certain effects in so-called fairy-tale pictures by “stop-camera” work, or by simply stopping the character at a certain point just prior to the scheduled appearance of some supernatural visitant, having the other characters hold their positions while the witch or the fairy character walks into the scene and takes her proper position in it, and then starting the camera again, the result on the screen being that the supernatural figure stands, in the fraction of a second, where nothing of the kind appeared before.  Today, stop-camera work is used very seldom—­as a rule only to obtain ludicrously sudden and unexpected effects in certain types of “slap-stick” comedy.  A far more artistic effect, when it is desired to introduce visitors from other worlds, is obtained by “superimposure,” or by taking the picture twice, as it were.  On the first “take” the characters go through the business already rehearsed, and the director keeps careful track of just when each important move is made by counting while the cameraman turns the crank.  If, at the count of “Eleven!”