Mostly, we’re all of us so sure of things, that we saw or heard or thought or remember, that we just know we’re right, about this or that, and can’t be wrong. If we know a little bit about surveying, we feel we can tell surveyors how to survey, and so on. And the less we know about a thing (as long as we do know something about it) and the more indefinite that thing and the knowledge about it are, the more we think we know about it. Take stories: when you read one, you know whether you like it or not; but could you tell how it would be apt to strike other people? It’s easy to think you can do that—and most motion-picture producers and financiers are sure they can. But as a matter of fact, an editor, trained for years in the selection of stories, could probably do a lot better. In motion pictures, the man who puts up the money for a production has to be pretty wise to realize how much less he probably knows about motion pictures than the men he hires to make the pictures for him. As yet, few owners or producers of motion pictures know enough to keep their hands off all the things that they ought to leave to their employees. Well, to get back to this particular movie. We got another director, and then decided to give him an assistant after all. And we got another camera man—and then gave him an assistant. We got a cast, and started off to the city where most of the work was to be done. I say “we.” That is correct. The owners insisted on “sitting in” on everything, so that each decision was a compromise, instead of being the best judgment of the one they had hired to make that picture for them. When we came to taking the first scenes we made a discovery. Our hero was a sissy. He looked like a regular fellow—we had every reason to suppose he was at least as much of a regular fellow as most actors can be. But he threw a baseball the way a girl does. He couldn’t even throw a custard pie. Luckily we didn’t want him to. But we did want him to look and act like a man’s man, and mostly it was mighty hard for him. He had fifteen or twenty different suits, but no sign of a tennis-racket, or baseball glove, or golf-stick. He couldn’t drive an automobile. But he was supposed to be a wonderful actor—just the man to play a hero! Then, along came the property man. You will remember that a chain is no stronger than its weakest link. A motion picture, that is made by the combined efforts of a whole group of people, all pulling together, is much the same way. If any one of the group, on whom some particular duty depends, is ignorant, or inexperienced, or lazy, or pig-headed, the defects of his work will mar the finished film. If the actors can’t act well, the picture will be laughed at; if the camera man is poor, the photography will be poor, and so on.