SCENARIOS
On the legitimate stage nearly every actor at one time or another writes
a play. In the same way, in the movies nearly every actor tries his hand
at scenario writing. In fact, many of the most successful playwrights
and photodramatists have had stage or screen experience as actors.
For this reason, although this series is designed more for those who
wish to act than for those who wish to write--and although we have
already one book on "How to Write Photoplays"--nevertheless, a chapter
on scenario writing is not out of place.
There is a fine career for any writer in scenario writing if the writer
will only take the trouble to study it seriously. There is technique in
writing plots and still more technique in adapting those plots to the
screen, by writing them into scenario form. Studio experience is of vast
benefit to anyone who wishes to write movie stories; and that is where
the actor has the advantage over the outsider who tries to write
scenarios with no practical knowledge of how movies are really made.
First write your plot into a five hundred or thousand word synopsis,
just as you would write it for a magazine. Make it brief and clear. Be
sure it is based upon action, mental or physical, and try to give real
character to your plot people.
In choosing your story be sure it has the dramatic quality. It must not
be rambling; and it must have an element of conflict between opposing
factors--a man and a woman, a woman and her Destiny, or simply Good and
Evil--which leads up to a crisis in which the matter is fought out and
finally settled. Stories which have not these qualities are suitable for
novels, perhaps, but not for plays.
It is, as a general rule, inadvisable to try historical stories or
stories which require elaborate scenes. Battle stories and stories of
the Jules Verne or H. G. Wells type are also difficult to place. The
great demand to-day is for sane, wholesome stories of modern American
life, wherein character is the paramount interest rather than
eccentricities of the plot or camera.
Send your story in synopsis form to the scenario editor of the studio
which employs the star for whom you think the story is best suited. Send
with it a stamped and self-addressed envelope for the return of your
script, if it is not suitable for their use. Keep on sending it; don't
be discouraged by rejection slips. You may write dozens of stories and
then sell the very first one you wrote.
If the studio buys your story it is well to ask for an opportunity to
help write the "continuity," or scenario form. This is a highly
technical but very well paid task, and one which every screen author
should learn. The chance to enter the studio and help work out the
scenario of your own story is worth trying for.
[Illustration: Testing Make-Up and Expression.
Every make-up must conform to the part. Here the authors, John Emerson
and Anita Loos, are helping their director, Victor Fleming, to make a
test of Basil Sydney and May Collins, who played the leading roles in
"Wife Insurance." The tests are usually taken in some corner of the
studio under the best possible lighting conditions.]
Scenarios to-day are more in demand than ever before; but producers are
still chary of taking chances on untried amateurs. The amateur author's
greatest success is when he sells his first story. The road is
comparatively easy after that.
Original plots for five-reel pictures sell from $1,000 to $20,000,
depending upon the reputation of the author and the standing of the
company which buys them. Of course, some of the smaller companies pay
less than this, and two and three reel features sell for less.
Published stories and novels, and plays which have had a run, bring
enormous prices. Griffith recently paid $150,000 for the film rights on
a play. Fifty and seventy thousand dollars are frequently paid for
similar plot material, but that is because of the advertising value in
the names of the plays or books, or the reputation of the writers, which
assures the producers that the story is almost sure to make a good
photoplay.
The highest paid workers in the movies to-day are the continuity
writers, who put the stories into scenario form and write the "titles"
or written inserts. The income of some of these writers runs into
hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. It is extraordinarily
interesting work and well worth while learning; but unfortunately the
technical training for this sort of thing takes as much time as the
training necessary to enter any other profession.
Scenario writing does not require great genius. It does require a
dramatic insight and certain amount of training. It is the latter factor
that most amateurs overlook. If you are to write scenarios, you must
take your work as seriously as you would if you were trying to write
music or paint pictures.