write photoplays it is not going too far to assert that
you have never yet really watched a motion picture. You have
_witnessed_ many, but only the playwright and the theatrical man may
be said to _watch_ plays, whether on the stage or on the screen, with
every faculty alert and receptive, ready to pounce on any suggestion,
any bit of stage business, any scenic effect, or any situation, that
they may legitimately copy or enlarge upon for their respective uses.
This keen attitude is partly a matter of inborn dramatic instinct, but
it is even more a matter of training and habit--therefore cultivate
it.

Not only does the professional photoplaywright remain wide
awake when watching real photoplays, but he often finds as much
plot-suggestion in other classes of films as there is in the
story-pictures, for plot-germs fairly abound in scenics, vocationals,
microcinematographics, educationals, and topicals, as these several
sorts are called by the craft. A certain successful writer has sold no
less than thirty photoplays, all the plots of which sprang from
scenics and educationals. One, for example, was built upon an idea
picked up in watching a film picturing the making of tapioca in the
Philippines.

At the outstart you must admit to yourself that to see every release
of every company is impossible, and even if it were possible it would
be unnecessary. In the big cities, for example, it is often difficult
to locate a theatre that is exhibiting the particular picture you are
anxious to see, either on the date of its release or later. Nothing is
more common in a moving picture studio than to hear one actor say to
another: "Tonight such and such a theatre is showing such and such a
picture [one in which they have worked]; let's go over to see it." And
if the actor is anxious to study acting through watching the work of
himself and others on the screen, how much more should the writer be
willing and anxious to study the technique of the photoplay by paying
frequent visits to the picture theatres? Try, then, to see as many
photoplays as your time and means will permit, for purposes of study.
Nor do we recommend seeing only pictures that the critics have
praised, for it is possible, at times, to learn as much from a poor
picture as from a good one. You must teach yourself, as you watch the
screen, what to _leave out_, as well as what to put in; we may learn
much from the mistakes of others.

One point especially worthy of noti