It need hardly be pointed out, however, that letters
and other written messages must not be introduced except for logical
reasons. More than one case has been known in which the scenario
submitted to an editor specified that one character was to write and
hand to another a note which the second character was to read--the
note, of course, was to be shown on the screen--when the contents
were simply the words which, on the regular stage, the first actor
would speak to the other! Of course, no director would allow such a
thing to take place in his picture. In a situation where the story
could actually be advanced by showing the beholder what a certain
player was supposed to be saying to another, it would be only
necessary to introduce a cut-in leader, as previously described.
We have spoken of substituting a newspaper item for a letter. Wherever
this can be done, it is well to do it; the newspaper item, being
printed, is at least readable. One or two of the studios use letters
in which the handwriting is so poor that before all the spectators
have read the contents of the letter it has disappeared and the scene
has been resumed.
Let us suppose that Edith--not knowing that her friend Eleanor has
fallen in love with Jack Temple, whom they met at a resort the
previous summer--writes Eleanor a letter in which she says:
On screen, letter.
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