picture. A fireman starts to mount, and finally disappears
overhead. The scene changes, and we see the upper windows of the
building and the upper portion of the ladder. Suddenly the fireman's
head appears as he climbs up (into the picture), then his whole body
comes into view, and presently he climbs in at one of the windows.

These are written in as two separate scenes, though it is plain that
in real life they are actually one, and in the photoplay they are not
separated even by an insert of any kind, thus seeming to be one, as
intended.

But now suppose that when the fireman starts up the ladder the
cameraman "follows him"--tilts his camera so that the result is a
"shifting stage"--the eye of the spectator following the fireman as he
goes up and until he reaches the top of the ladder and climbs in at
the window. That, of course, constitutes only one scene--the swinging
of the camera to follow the progress of the actor simply enlarges the
stage, as it were. Such scenes as this second one are frequently seen
in photoplays--an aeroplane leaving the ground and rising in its
flight, a band of horsemen riding "across" and eventually "out of" a
picture, a man climbing down the side of a cliff, and the like. But as
a rule they are simply arranged by the director's instructing the
cameraman to swing his camera as described--the writer of the script
does not introduce an actual direction to the director to obtain the
effect in this way but writes them in as two scenes.

In taking such panoramic scenes as those just described, the tripod of
the camera remains unmoved. Even in a railroad drama, where we see an
engine run down a track for a quarter of a mile or more, the camera is
mounted on another train, which closely follows the one seen in the
picture, and hence it is plainly, from a technical standpoint, only
one scene, though while it is being shown on the screen the background
is changing continuously. It is the _abrupt_ shifting from one
locality to another that constitutes a "change of scene" in the
photoplay.

This being so, it follows that each change of scene must be given a
separate scene-number in your scenario. We have examined dozens of
amateur scripts in which scenes would be found written thus:

8--Library, same as 2.

Tom looks on floor, fails to find locket, and then goes into
one room after another searching for it.

This, of course, is impossible. Even though the director were willing
to