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Having directed "The Indian Massacre" and Across the Plains" the year before, Thomas Ince during
1012 directed the films "The Invaders" (three reels) starring its co-director Francis Ford and Ethel Grandin and "Custer's Last Fight" (three reels) for the New York Motion Picture Company and "Shadows of the Past" for the Vitagraph Company of America.
It is often acknowledged that
Thomas Ince was the first director to use a shooting script. These were detailed shooting scripts, known to be meticulous in their planning, where plotline would emerge as having precedence over action and spectacle.
Author Kenneth MacGowan notes that Thomas Ince "strove for theatric effect", but only with scripts that were "direct and tight" and used intertitles to advance character action dramatically relating to events as a technique of exposition.
Silent Film
D. W. Griffith
Scott Lord on Silent Film Hollywood, Lost Silent Film, Swedish Silent Film, Danish Silent Film.
