Writing the Photoplay

One automatically wonders what was entailed in the writing of photoplays when coming across the term "spot continuity". It was described during 1923 as a script writing technique of making a brief outline listing only the "big situations" or "highspots" in the storyline of a silent film. That year "continuity" was described as the indispensible "director's guide", a transcription of the story with division of scene indicated and specific shots, inserts, perhaps dissolves, being noted, as in a "continuity script". A continuity writer would be assigned to construct it from the scenario, which would be amended by a "scene plot", an itemized list of scenes designating their respective sets and locations.
A manual for the photoplaywright, written a year earlier during 1922, giving the scenario as being "a play in scenes" and the "continuity writer" as a dramaturgist, described "scenarist" as a generic synonym for playwright of screen dramatist. A "synoptist" was responsible for a detailed synopsis, the legnth of which was that of a short story, and it detailed the dramatic story without dialougue. Continuity and synopsis were the same, differing only in dramatic description, the former being scenario, the latter synoptic narrative.
The manual advised the photoplawright that complications should be limited when constructing underplots or cross plots in order to achieve a plot unity and a unity of structure.
Scenario credits, although more often than not having been given to a screenwriter, frequently were shared with the film's director or given solely to the director. Magazine advertisements in 1922 for the film "Notoriety" promoted the film by giving Clara Beranger credit for having written the story especially for director William De Mille. D. W. Griffith
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