y many miles away, and on an entirely
different railroad line, with the permission of the company and
possibly at a slight extra expense, they take the other railroad
scenes--perhaps a week after taking those at the scene of the wreck.

[Footnote 24: "Company," as here used, refers to the group of players
working under a certain director, several such groups making up the
stock company maintained by the film manufacturing concern.]

Thus the unthinking amateur writer, seeing the result of the
producer's efforts on the screen, takes it for granted that the
company has gone to the expense of buying up several old coaches and
an engine or two and producing an actual wreck merely for the sake of
supplying some thrilling situations in a railroad drama. True,
head-on collisions have been planned and pictured, box-cars have been
thrown over embankments, automobiles have been burned, aeroplanes have
been wrecked, and houses have been destroyed, to furnish thrilling
episodes in the pictures produced by various companies, but unless the
story itself fully justified the additional expense and trouble, it is
safe to say that the company, having the opportunity to purchase some
old engines and coaches cheap, took advantage of this to write and
produce a picture in which their destruction could be featured--that
is, the photoplay was the result of the special scene, and the scene
was not made specially for that particular plot.

To repeat, in introducing scenes that call for additional expenditure
on the part of the manufacturer, the question to ask yourself is,
_will the resulting effect really justify the added cost of
production_?

As a striking example of how unusual and--from the standpoint of what
may be artificially arranged--seemingly impossible scenes may be used
in photoplays, consider the following--and then avoid the introduction
of such scenes unless you know _absolutely_ just how your effect may
be obtained.

The Vitagraph release, "A Wasted Sacrifice,"[25] more fully described
in the next chapter, contained a scene in which a young Indian woman,
stepping upon a rattlesnake, was bitten, and died. One scene showed
her walking along, with the papoose on her back, all unsuspecting of
the danger that threatened. Then came a close-up showing the rattler
coiled with head raised. The next full-sized scene showed the woman
just about to step upon the snake concealed in the grass. In the
second close-up which followed, sho