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The scene is the next subdivision of the entire space of the motion picture. Its length is not determined by any physical necessities but solely by the needs of the story. It can be composed of many shots or only of one or two.
The story is an uninterrupted flow of developments. But the scenes of a motion picture represent only certain events from among this continuous stream. We must consider the motion picture a story of which certain events are told and others are not told. The former are contained in the scenes, and the latter take place between scenes.
The scene can be defined as a section of the entire story in which a certain happening occurs. Now every happening occurs at a certain place and at a certain time. Consequently, place and time become elements of major importance to the motion picture.
The novelist is bound neither to time nor to place: he can go backward and forward in one sentence; or, in describing the thoughts of one of his characters, he can take us to many places without actually settling down to a scene.
The theatre, however, is closely tied to the conception of the scene. But its number of scenes is so limited that place and time cannot become a major influence. Let us assume that the classical play has about three to five scenes and that the average motion picture has about thirty scenes: we realize at once that place and time gain a new importance in the picture since their effects are multiplied.
A scene in the motion picture is not determined by its content of action, nor by entrances and exits of actors, but by a change of place or a lapse of time.
With regard to time, we must consider its two aspects in the motion picture: the running time of the scene and the lapse of time between scenes. The running time of a scene is identical with actual time; but the length of the lapse of time is not defined.
In view of the new significance of place and time in the motion picture, we shall examine each factor separately.
Place
The important role which place plays in the motion picture results from the fact that the camera can go to any location in this world. Without any delay, it can show a scene in Africa, following it up with one in Asia. It can show a scene in an airplane and the next one under the earth in a coal mine.
The theatre is limited in this respect. It cannot go to the places where certain events occur, but must try to bring these events into places which can be represented on the stage. The amount is limited through the technical restrictions and the difficulties of shifting the scenery. Because it cannot go to the places where certain people are likely to be found, but must force these people to appear in a limited number of sets, their entrances and exits, as well as the entire story line, very often seem artificial.
The motion picture is free in this respect. But soon our joy over these immense possibilities is dimmed by the question, to which places should we go with the camera?
As in the decision concerning the choice of shots, we can say that we should go to those places where something important occurs. If we don’t, it may be disturbing to make reference to some important event which has taken place somewhere else without actually showing it. This is a vital difference between the picture and the theatre. Very often, a certain event — for instance, a dispute between two opponents — can occur without any necessity for a definite place. In that case the writer is confronted with the problem of choosing the right place for this event.
The freedom to go anywhere results in the demand for the best choice of place.
We must realize that certain characteristics are connected with every place. These characteristics affect the events which occur there. Consequently, the correct choice of place means that these characteristics add to the events; an indifferent choice of place means that they have no relation to them and faulty choice of place means that they contradict them. Actually, we find an indifferent choice of place in most mediocre pictures, faulty choice in bad ones. The good picture, however, makes the correct choice of place an essential contribution to the values of its story.
In Born Yesterday (1950) William Holden sets out to teach July Holliday the workings of democracy. The stage play could only dramatize his efforts by dialogue and props — the books he gave her to read. But in opening up the picture, that fine master George Cukor actually showed the pair amidst the monuments of democracy, such as the Lincoln Memorial and the Capitol dome. Thereby the lesson was visually represented. However, Mr. Cukor emphasized to me that in opening up the stage play a proper balance must be preserved — lest the cohesion of the drama be disrupted.
Director Rob Reiner, in The American President (1995), in a scene with Michael Douglas and Annette Benning — also filmed beneath the Lincoln Memorial, accomplishes very much the same opening-up effect.
The characteristics of place consist of:
the type — (for example: office, ranch, hospital)
the kind — (crowded or new or cheap)
the purpose — (art museum: to exhibit paintings; factory: to manufacture goods; jail: to imprison people)
the relation to one or more persons — (A wants to buy a certain house; B waits in the library of his enemy; heroine’s dressing room)
the location — (restaurant in a summer resort; shack in the desert; hotel room in San Francisco)
Each of these characteristics can strongly affect a scene.
The type of place can influence the action. For instance: amputation of a leg aboard a small ship.
The kind of place can characterize the owners: tasteless furniture, indicating newly acquired wealth.
With regard to the purpose of place, we find that a business conference should be held in an office, that work should be done in a factory. But beyond that, the purpose of place has no effect upon the spectator. For a long time it was thought that the insertion of nightclub scenes would help to entertain the motion picture audience. It is true that the purpose of the nightclub is to entertain its guests. But it is not logical to conclude that a nightclub scene will entertain a motion picture audience.
The contradiction of the purpose of place and event is frequently amusing. Let us assume that two people try to talk business in an overcrowded subway. The purpose of the subway is to bring people to their destination, not to provide privacy. This contradiction can result in many funny incidents since the two businessmen are trying to be undisturbed while the other passengers may interfere with their discussion. Or, another contradiction: a cow in the kitchen, instead of in the pasture.
The relation of a place to a person may set an entire scene in a different light. For instance, a detective sips a drink at a bar. If we know that this bar is owned by a gangster, the scene gains meaning.
The location may be important not only by itself, but also in relation to the location of another place. The lover may be in New York and his girlfriend in San Francisco, or they may live next door to each other. If a man drives from one place to another, the location of the two places lets us understand the distance between them and consequently the approximate time at which we can expect his arrival. This may be important because it can be an hour, a week, or a month.
Knowing these facts about place, we have to learn how to apply them to the story.
Let us choose a place for the following scene: A man informs the father of a girl that his daughter has just eloped with someone whom the father despises.
Indifferent choice of place: the father’s office. The place has no connection with the scene. As a consequence, the scene will stand entirely on dialogue.
Correct choice of place: The street in front of the father’s house. The man calls the father to the window, informing him that the daughter is no longer in the house. All through the scene, the house, from which the daughter has been taken stands as a silent witness, as in Act I of Othello. The excitement of the scene is further emphasized by the hour — in the dark of night — when the daughter’s departure becomes known.
Many of the foregoing definitions of the motion picture point to William Shakespeare as being the first screenwriter. This is borne out by the fact that quite a few of his plays have been adapted for the screen and been the basis for important films. For instance: Kiss Me Kate, from The Taming of the Shrew and the various film versions of Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, MacBeth, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Comedy of Errors and, of course, Othello.
A superb master of construction, Shakespeare knows the importance of the place wherein a scene occurs, again, as in Othello, which has been repeatedly filmed over the decades: with Paul Robeson, Orson Welles, Lawrence Olivier, Lawrence Fishburne, plus Franco Zeffirelli’s film of the opera, Otello.
Here is another example: A father is informed that the hit-and-run driver who ran over his little son is his next-door neighbor. The information can be given to him:
at the police station, where the aspect of criminal prosecution will be stressed;
at the hospital, where the boy is undergoing critical surgery, thereby emphasizing the emotional impact on the father;
in his backyard, where across the hedge he sees the neighbor’s children playing happily while his own youngster is on the verge of dying.
In each instance, the dialogue can be identical. Yet a different content will be projected. The father may even be shown with his back to the camera, and still everyone in the audience will grasp the thoughts that pass through his mind. His face need not express his emotions: much of the burden will be taken away from the actor and put upon place.
We know that a theatre has curtains, spotlights, sets, seats. We know that a hotel lobby has an information desk, telephone booths, various exits, and elevators. If the place is correctly chosen for the action of a scene, it follows with necessity that these props or objects can be put to active use in the scene. The benefit is twofold: first, we gain added material for the scene, and second, we get a more vivid realization of the place if the props or objects are typical. Goethe said, “The vivid feelings of the circumstances and the faculty to express it, this is what makes the poet.”
The famous barber scene in Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator (1940), represented correct choice of place as well as full exploitation of its values. The barber is a very human necessity and therefore contrasts the conceit and superhuman manners of the dictator. Having placed the scene in this locale, Charlie Chaplin made use of the fact that barber chairs can be elevated higher and higher. Thereby he gained an almost philosophical effect for his story.
It is clear that the realization and the feeling of the place depend more on the exploitation of the factors connected with it than on the realism with which the set is built. This realism is necessary, however, because the camera has destroyed the “symbol substitute” of the theatre. In the theatre it is enough to hang a curtain on stage to represent a wall; a chair can symbolize a fountain, a bench a bed. The imagination of the spectator can transform these symbols into reality. From the motion picture we expect more realism because the sharp-eyed camera gives us a photographic representation of the world.
We should not conclude, however, that very elaborate sets contribute to the dramatic value of the motion picture. To the contrary, they attract attention and therefore distract us from the story. They, by themselves, are not interesting to us because they have no life. They only interest to the extent that they characterize the human beings living or acting in them.
Some places have atmosphere and others have not. Artists like Ingmar Bergman have been wonderfully successful in evoking the mood of a locale, as was Clint Eastwood in The Bridges of Madison County (1995). To capture the atmosphere of a place goes beyond mere technique; such concepts are too volatile to be defined. But it may be offered, nevertheless, that any place used or frequented by a characteristically distinct group or class of people is likely to have atmosphere. For instance, a place which sells utensils to fishermen who have been fishermen all their lives has atmosphere. However, if it is only a section in a department store, selling utensils to businessmen who go fishing on Sundays, it is likely to have no atmosphere.
Time
In the examination of place we were guided by concrete appearances and material facts. But now we have to study an element which is entirely abstract. Time is invisible, which has led many a screenwriter to think that it can be disregarded. But time, though invisible and abstract, has many concrete ways of assisting or damaging the motion picture narration.
The fundamental difference between place and time is that place remains more or less the same while time never stays the same, not even for a second. The bedroom is the same after a day or after a week, but time has progressed from minute to minute. Because place, generally, remains constant throughout the story, it represents a connecting principle, while time, which always progresses, represents the forward movement and change.
On the other hand, we can have many different places which are separated by distance. No matter how great the distances between them, the time is the same for all of them at a certain given moment. The period of one hour is the same in all these different places. Because time is identical for different locations, time represents an excellent means of linking dispersed pieces together.
This means that an action which occurs at a certain time in one place can stand in a relation to an event which occurs at the same time in another place. The means of connection is the identity of time. For instance, a wife flirts with a young flier at home while her husband recites Hamlet on stage.
Time always moves and this movement is always forward. The scenes in a motion picture are assumed to represent a forward movement. This flow can be altered, however, but such alteration must be handled expertly to avoid confusing the audience. A quick and salient exposition should mark the reversal or jumping ahead of time. Prolonged and/or frequent leaps in time tend to slow the dramatic progression; unmotivated jumping of time is likely to rattle the audience, thereby breaking their illusion that they participate in the lives of the characters. The resulting loss will not be compensated by admiration for the virtuoso effects on the screen.
The total time represented by the motion picture story is unlimited. It can vary from two hours to two hundred years. But it must be realized that within each scene one second of running time represents one second of actual time. A scene which lasts five minutes represents five minutes of actual time, no more, no less. In other words, in a picture which covers in two hours a period of two hundred years, we see only two of the thousands of hours contained in this long space of time. The rest is contained in the lapse of time between scenes. Whereas the running time of a scene is identical with actual time, we can cram a period of five or ten years into the split second needed to change from one scene to another.
This means that a scene which continues for too long will appear slow because the uninterrupted flow of time will appear slow in comparison with the periods we can traverse in the lapse of time. The screenwriter can interrupt his scene by imposing another one. Later he can return to the first scene. But he must realize that in the meanwhile time has progressed. He cannot take up the first scene where he has left it, but must take it up at a later moment which as a minimum represents the time that passed in the interposed scene. It can be longer however, because the time which passed between scenes is not determined.
Now the length of the lapse of time has an effect upon the story. One of the essential effects of passing time upon our minds is the fact that it makes us forget. It heals wounds, it makes us smile at past angers. One hour after we have been insulted, we are still furious. A year later, we may have forgotten the incident altogether. If two scenes are separated by a lapse of one day, all the happenings of the foregoing scene are still acute and vividly represented in the mind of the spectator as well as in the minds of the actors. If a year has passed during the change from one scene to the other, the events are still vividly present in the spectator’s mind, because he lived only through one second, but not so in the minds of the characters represented in the story. For them the long lapse of time has effaced the momentary effect of fury, anger, joy, or sadness. Only the most fundamental emotions and situations can survive a long period of time. A picture with long lapses of time between scenes becomes epic instead of dramatic. It can only become dramatic sporadically, that is, in those blocks of scenes which are not separated by long intervals of time.
We spoke of the purpose of a place, but with regard to time we should rather speak of its customary use. The twenty-four hours of the day are divided into certain sections and customarily used in a certain manner. The day is primarily used for work and other normal activities, the evening for rest and pleasure, the night for sleep. This routine is universal for all mankind. Therefore it forms an excellent basis for dramatic effects, particularly if it is contradicted.
For instance, a man is asleep in his bed at night. His action is normal. But if a man is asleep in daytime, his action stands in contrast to the customary use of time. This discrepancy may imply that he works on a night shift, or that he was kept up during the night because of some special happening.
Another example: A man wants to inform someone of most important news. If he makes his visit in daytime during office hours, there is nothing to show the specific importance because the time is normal for such purposes. If the writer wants to stress the importance of the message, he will have to do so entirely by dialogue. But the skillful writer will choose night as the correct time. If the man breaks into a house at night and wakes the other man, he must have a very important message. Otherwise he would not have found it necessary to disturb the other man’s sleep. We do not need a word of dialogue to stress the importance of the message.
A clerk who sits in the office in daytime represents a normal action. The same clerk in the same office at night represents a discrepancy. Something is wrong: either he is catching up with some work or he wants to falsify figures or he is trying to confuse a computer — as Peter Ustinov did in Hot Millions (1968; screenplay by Ira Wallach and Peter Ustinov).
A scene of jealousy can take place at any nondescript time. But if the jealous woman stays up most of the night until the man returns from an unexplained errand, time adds heavily to the quarrel.
Every action requires time. Every development needs a certain amount of time. Every accomplishment implies a certain lapse of time. To bake a cake or to boil water requires a certain amount of time. And if you find the water boiling, you know that it must have been heated for a certain time. The measure of time contained in an action depends upon the kind of action. Some require more, some less. This means that you can foresee how much time will be needed if you know what action has been started. It means also that you can estimate how much time has passed if you see the accomplishment of an action.
In my screenplay Hurricane Carla an SOS called several ships to the rescue of a fishing boat. The time limit was defined by the sinking vessel. The time required to reach the survivors might be longer than the deadline. The suspense was contained in this question: Will any of the ships arrive in time to rescue the drowning people?
Almost every action picture contains this problem: Will the hero arrive in time to save everything? For instance, a saboteur wants to blow up a dam. He must plant the dynamite, prepare the explosion. The protagonist has to drive to the dam. Which action demands less time? The same problem exists when a train drives toward an undermined bridge while a guard rushes along the rails to warn the engineer. Or when a jockey who has been delayed rushes toward the stable while the other jockeys are mounted and prepared to start the race.
Thus time has very powerful effects upon the story.
Exposition of Place
Each scene occurs in a certain place and at a certain time. From this we can derive the rule that the audience ought to know the place and time of a scene.
For one thing, the omission of this exposition would impede our understanding of the scene because we would lack the knowledge of two vital factors. Also, we would be deprived of all the advantages which place and time can contribute to the scene were we unable to recognize them.
Except for screen titles, which are hardly ever used anymore, the motion picture lacks even the primitive exposition, such as that found defining time, place and setting. Furthermore, we find that the average picture has about thirty scenes. This multiplies our difficulties. It is obvious that any kind of exposition takes up space. If we have to expose place and time for about thirty scenes, the space available to the motion picture begins to dwindle before our eyes. No wonder that many a writer in his desperation or through lack of knowledge of the requirements of the motion picture neglects the exposition of place and time.
Let us investigate, therefore, the manner of exposition. The information can be given to us beforehand, at the very beginning of the scene, or later during the course of the scene. Each of these methods is practicable as long as we know the effect of this timing upon the story and the audience.
In the first case the place where a following scene is going to occur is prepared beforehand. When we actually arrive at this scene, we already know where it is taking place. For example, one man says to another: “Let’s go to Dick’s house.” The effect of preparation of place upon the audience is the arousing of interest. The spectators expect to be shown a place for which they have been prepared.
Several methods can be used to expose place at the beginning of a scene. In most cases the set can be easily identified. All that the director has to do is to show the complete set in a long shot at the beginning of a scene.
If a prop or an object is typical enough, it can be used to expose place. A menu can identify a restaurant. A photograph with an inscription can identify the home of a friend. Surgical instruments can identify a hospital. Such identification is particularly useful if, for economical reasons, only part of a set is built on the stage.
Place can also be exposed through dialogue or sound-noise or through the actions of a person.
All these sources of information can cooperate in the task of exposing place. It is even likely that they will, because the camera cannot concentrate indefinitely upon a prop or an object, but will shift from set to actor or from actor to prop and so on. This is particularly important because our full understanding of place depends not only on the knowledge of one factor but of several. Therefore the set can expose the place, for instance, a living room. Then a prop such as a precious marble bust can expose the kind of place, in this case a dignified living room; then the behavior of an actor, such as his offering drinks, can explain that the living room is his home. Dialogue may be added if necessary.
Now, it is not necessary that all the facts about place be exposed at once, or at the very beginning. The essential factor is the kind of place because it reveals at the same time its purpose. The other information may be given when it is advantageous.
This means that we can give one or two factors through preparation of place. Later we may add others through exposition in the beginning of the scene and complete the details in the course of the scene.
But the total neglect of the necessity of exposing place can have detrimental effects. No matter how interesting the action of a scene may be, our understanding could be hampered until we know where we are. Whether we realize it or not, our curiosity is aroused. We ask, where are we? The writer is allowed to create this curiosity by withholding the information about place in the beginning, but only on condition that he give us this information at a later moment.
A most effective device was used in the picture Cavalcade (1933). There is a love scene on a boat. The two young people are standing on deck, making plans for the future. At the end of the scene, they walk away, making visible a life preserver behind them. The inscription on the life preserver is “Titanic” … the famous ocean-liner which was sunk by collision with an iceberg. This exposition of place had a shattering effect.
It is sufficient to identify a certain place once, because place remains the same. If several scenes during the course of the story occur in the same place, it is only necessary to identify place the first time. Subsequently, the locale will be easily recognized. This means that we are less and less confronted with the necessity of exposing place toward the end of a picture as the same places reappear. The benefit derived therefrom results in our undivided concentration upon the action because we are not distracted by exposition or lack of exposition of place. Not so in regard to time. Time, which is forever changing, must be constantly exposed.
The need for a precise exposition of time is less severe than for place. Except for a specifically indicated flashback, we know as a matter of course that each consecutive scene takes place at a later time. Our only question is, How much later?
The answer can be given in two different ways: either we expose the time of the first scene and the time of the second scene separately, whereby we define the lapse of time between them, or we expose the time of the first scene and the length of the lapse of time before the second scene. Obviously, this exposes the time at which the second scene takes place.
In this manner we obtain an uninterrupted relation of the time for all the scenes in a picture.
In view of this fact, we need a starting point: we must know the time of the very first scene. The fashions, clothes, sets, props will help reveal the year in which the first events take place. If it is a historical picture, the costumes inform us about the period. Often it is helpful to make reference to an event which represents a definite mark in the flow of time through the centuries. For instance, the invention of the automobile, the Civil War, the World Wars.
Time, being invisible and abstract, can only be exposed by its practical manifestations.
Since an action or a development always contains a certain measure of time, the lapse of time can be represented by the result or the progress of an action or a development. The result as well as the progress of action or development can easily be shown in the picture. In doing this, we expose time.
We can consider the change from day to night and from night into morning a development. The same goes for the change of the season. A scene in spring and a scene in fall will expose a lapse of at least a half year.
The evaluation of time is mostly a subconscious process. In order to understand the lapse of time which is exposed by an action, we must have knowledge of the measure of time necessary for the action. If a man says: “I shall go home after I have written this letter,” we have the knowledge that not too much time could have passed when he arrives home. But if a composer says, “I am waiting for an idea,” we lack any possibility of evaluating the time necessary, because we do not know how long he will need.
It is important to recognize the connection between time and action as a desired means of exposition as well as an undesired consequence. If we know that it takes a man an hour to get to his office, we cannot possibly let him appear there earlier, even though it may be desirable from a story point of view. We cannot let somebody call for a doctor and have the doctor appear in the very same scene; we would have to interpose a lapse of time and have the arrival in the second scene. This is particularly interesting if we have two different actions, each of which exposes a different measure of time. It would not be possible to let two men, converging upon the same destination, arrive at the same time if different starting points are implied. Things of this sort frequently represent serious obstacles to the story construction and very often — through neglect — result in actual absurdities.
If, instead of the lapse of time between scenes, we want to expose the time of the following scene, expressly and directly, we can do that by dialogue. The manner is similar to the information about place. The time of this scene can either be prepared beforehand or exposed at the beginning of the scene or withheld until later in the scene.
The Rhythm of the Lapse of Time
In certain instances, an action or a development taking place between scenes will give us an approximate idea of the lapse of time. But there are many instances when no action or development has been mentioned as having occurred in the change from one scene to another. We are tempted to search for ways and means to bring those lapses of time which are not defined into a relation to those which we somehow exposed.
The time of the first scene and the time of the last scene determine the entire lapse of time of the picture. It may be a period of twenty-four hours, or of several years. Within this total period, the thirty scenes of the picture are dispersed. We can represent the entire lapse of time of a motion picture story as a straight line:
In this line we can indicate the scenes as x. The space between these x’s represents the interval of time between scenes. If they were very irregular, our aesthetic feeling would be hurt, just as our understanding would be confused if the scenes in the picture were to follow each other in absolutely irregular intervals.
Instead, the idea of a certain pattern is suggested to us. This does not mean that in a story extending over a period of thirty years, the intervals between scenes ought to be one year each. There are different patterns to follow, and these patterns are a natural result of the story and the length of time it covers. If the total time is a period of a few days, a pattern of equal intervals may be very practical. If the period is long, we may establish several blocks of scenes with equal intervals between the blocks and equal intervals between the scenes within a block. Another pattern might have steadily growing intervals between the scenes. Or it may start out with long intervals which grow steadily smaller. We can even use two different patterns with the same picture. Here are some graphic representations of such patterns:
Obviously, these examples do not exhaust all the possibilities of patterns. But just look for a moment at the difference between the irregular arrangement and the aesthetic impression which results from the patterns.
Some kind of rhythm is absolutely necessary to carry the imagination of the audience along. If the spectator gets used to a certain pattern within the first quarter of the picture, he will anticipate the lapse of time between scenes for the rest of the picture. His understanding will go along smoothly.
If the author fails to establish this rhythm, he faces a dilemma: either he spends so much space on specific exposition of time for each scene that he has not enough space left for other things, or he disregards the necessity of exposing time and thereby throws the audience into complete confusion.
Looking back upon our own lives we find that the outstanding events took place in a certain rhythm of time. Events like birth, first efforts at speech, first day in school, graduation, first job, marriage, first child, divided the time of our lives into a certain pattern. If we consider the intervals between these happenings in measures of time, we find that the intervals at the beginning are much smaller and that they grow gradually. The longest intervals are in the second half of our life, with death being the final event.