of the room. Then, show a scene in his bedroom, where he is
contentedly removing the studs from his shirt. Suddenly he remembers
that he has left the water running. With an expression of dismay, he
jumps up and runs out of the room. Flash back to the bathroom scene.
The tub has overflowed and the room is filling with water. As the
excited man opens the door, the flood pours out into the hall. The
short scene in the bedroom makes the leader unnecessary. Better
fifteen feet of film showing the bedroom scene than five feet of
leader.

Again, after the lumberman had started to chop down the tree, you
might flash a short scene showing a couple of other men at work in
another part of the forest. All at once they both stop work and
register that they have heard something that startles them. One speaks
excitedly to the other, and both run out of the picture. You then show
the scene with the man lying beneath the fallen tree. Presently the
two men who heard his cries for help come running up to him.

_5. Cut-in Leaders_

One very effective form of the leader is the cut-in, described in
Chapter X. It takes the form of the speech of one of the characters,
being written in quotation marks. This device of throwing on the
screen the supposed words of a certain character at the moment of
action enables the photoplaywright to tell all that is necessary much
better than he could by a long statement of what is going on--a point
that is well worth remembering. Directors are now using the
explanatory cut-in leader as much as possible, to the exclusion of the
ordinary one which merely states facts. This does not mean that they
are trying to substitute "dialogue" leaders, but that wherever the
newer form can be used to advantage it is less objected to by the
audience than is the bald statement-sub-title--doubtless because it is
in line with the illusion of reality in using the player's words, and
is not merely an insertion by the director or the author, as other
inserts evidently are.

For the reason that all leaders more or less interrupt the action of a
scene, some directors prefer decidedly not to use cut-ins more than is
necessary, their argument being that for a few seconds following the
right-in-the-middle-of-the-scene leader, the mind of the spectator is
engaged with the import of what he has just read on the screen, and
the action immediately following the leader is at least partially
overlooked.

Yet a cut-in leader is usua