SCREEN WRITING

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 141, 11 December 1935, Page 17

SCREEN WRITING

AN .INTERESTING INSIGHT

An interesting insight into the screen writing section of the motion picture industry was given by Miss Elsie Wilkins, who returned to Sydney by the Monterey after an absence of nine years, states the Sydney "Morning Herald." Much was being done in Hollywood, Miss Wilkins said, to give the screen writer the- same prestige enjoyed by dramatists.

Miss Wilkins is the executive secretary of the Screen Writers' Guild in Hollywood, which, she said, decided the writers' credits. In the adapting of a motion picture story from a book, six writers might be employed, one would make a synopsis from the book and others work on story, camera angles, and dialogue. By the time the screen story was finished it might in no way resemble the original version, and the writer or writers who were responsible mostly for the actual version that was filmed were given credit on the screen, and it was the business of the guild to determine this. It was a most important matter to the writers, Miss Wilkins said, as their salaries were determined by their credits. After a story had been rewritten and rewritten there might be nothing of the original story for which rights had been purchased but the title. The guild also protected the rights of producers, for in film work particularly. Miss Wilkins said, it was so easy to plagarise unconsciously.

Miss Wilkins is visiting her father, Mr. Robert Blake-Wilkins, at Epping, and she will remain in Sydneyfor five weeks.