Screenwriting Advice From The Past: Cutting The Picture [Part 1]

“Yes, you read that right. A studio. Calling in the writers. To cut the movie. After the director has shot it.”

If you are a screenwriter, you should know about Anita Loos. Loos was one of the most influential writers in the early stages of American cinema, associated with 136 film projects per IMDB.

Married to writer John Emerson, the pair wrote one of the first books on screenwriting in 1920: “How to Write Photoplays”. I have been running a weekly series based on the book. You can access those posts here. Today: Cutting The Picture [P. 79]:

While a feature photoplay usually contains from 4,500 to 7,000 feet of film, the director in making the picture, may probably take 70,000 to 100,000 feet by expanding upon ideas as they occur to him and by taking his scenes in several different ways for close ups, long shots, and so forth.

It is therefore obvious that some one must condense this fifteen miles or so of motion pictures back into the conventional commercial length.

The studio that calls you in to cut a picture will supply you with a hand projector, a mechanical device which enables you to grind the film into animation without the necessity of projecting it on the screen. A laboratory will take your orders as to sequence and length of scenes.

Yes, you read that right. A studio. Calling in the writers. To cut the movie. After the director has shot it.

I mean… Holy Shit!

For years, the WGA has been negotiating to bring the writer even slightly more into the production and post process. And here we were 100 years ago when writers — WRITERS!!! — would routinely cut movies.

Mind-boggling.

Then along came the auteur theory, directors became the Big Dogs, and the rest is, as they say, is history.

Well, I say screw that. The next few weeks, we will learn what these writers saw as essential knowledge in cutting a movie and how that relates to the writing process.

You can read “How to Write Photoplays” via Google books online here.

To read my entire series of posts on highlighting takeaways from the book, go here.

Next week, more screenwriting advice from a century ago.