Some things mere actions cannot
express, and some explanations must be verbally made because pantomime
suggestion is inadequate. To take their proper place in the photoplay
all such leaders should be more than merely explanatory: they should
have genuine dramatic value--just as much as an important speech would
have in a "legitimate" dramatic production. In the pictured drama the
leader really fills in a significant part of the plot which could not
be portrayed by wordless action.
Miss Lois Weber, a well-known photoplay author who has also produced
some very fine feature photoplays, says in _The Moving Picture World_:
"Often the right words in a leader or other insert are the means of
creating an atmosphere that will heighten the effect of a scene, just
as a tearful conversation or soliloquy, at a stage death-bed will move
the audience to tears where the same scene enacted in silence would
leave it dry-eyed. Naturally, the wrong words may have the opposite
effect, but that is no argument against the leader; it only argues
that the wrong person wrote it."
_(c) "Breaking" a scene_ with a leader may be explained by an
illustration, which at the same time will serve to exemplify how the
mind experiences a more or less unconscious _(d) preparation for the
ensuing scene_.
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