been responsible for the falling-off in interest among countless former photoplay “fans.”  They have gone into the theatres expecting to see a “big star” in a “big story”—­and have come out after having seen only the “big star.”  Just who is responsible for this very unsatisfactory state of affairs it is sometimes hard to say.  Occasionally the story, if written by an “outside” writer, is lacking in plot-material in the first place, and, having been purchased on account of its having, none the less, several good situations, is allowed to go into production without being built up in plot (which is quite another thing from “padding”) by one of the studio staff-writers.  Or it may be that, the logical length of that particular story being five thousand feet, the director lets it run on for another reel, or even two, in order to be able to work in several hundred feet of quite unnecessary close-ups of the female “lead,” who chances to be his wife, and whose popularity he is naturally anxious to maintain.  This actually has happened; but even a conscientious and otherwise artistic director may occasionally “stretch a picture out a little” in order to take advantage of the beautiful natural locations of the part of the country in which he is working.

All these things being so, it becomes more and more the duty of the author to see that his story has plenty of story.  Give the director a strong, well-developed plot and he will have far less opportunity and much less excuse for introducing anything that will be in the nature of padding.  Moreover, so evident is it that photoplay audiences have come to recognize the padded story when one is shown, that the producers have started to call a halt on this foolish practice, and as a result stories accepted from the outside are closely scrutinized to see if they are full length in actual material.

So far as any special rules in connection with the writing of the feature picture is concerned, there are really none—­unless the admonition to try to make a five-reel story five times as interesting and five times as cleverly plotted as a one-reel story may be called a rule.  In other words, the writer who can turn out a salable synopsis for a one-reel story ought to be able to write an equally good synopsis for a five-reel feature; and similarly, if you can write the continuity for a one-reel story—­if you can write a single-reel scenario of the kind that would have been acceptable in any studio a few years ago—­you undoubtedly can write a five-reel continuity that is up to the technical standard demanded by those companies that accept complete scripts today.  And of course the same applies to the “synopsis only” script.