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"Writing the Photoplay"

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.


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