Passage: Chaplin never spoke more than cursorily about his filmmaking methods, claiming such a thing would be tantamount to a magician spoiling his own illusion. Little was known about his working process throughout his lifetime, but research from film historians – particularly the findings of Kevin Brownlow and David Gill that were presented in the three-part documentary Unknown Chaplin (1983) – has since revealed his unique working method.Until he began making spoken dialogue films with The Great Dictator, Chaplin never shot from a completed script. Many of his early films began with only a vague premise – for example "Charlie enters a health spa" or "Charlie works in a pawn shop." He then had sets constructed and worked with his stock company to improvise gags and "business" using them, almost always working the ideas out on film. As ideas were accepted and discarded, a narrative structure would emerge, frequently requiring Chaplin to reshoot an already-completed scene that might have otherwise contradicted the story. From A Woman of Paris onward Chaplin began the filming process with a prepared plot, but Robinson writes that every film up to Modern Times "went through many metamorphoses and permutations before the story took its final form."Producing films in this manner meant Chaplin took longer to complete his pictures than almost any other filmmaker at the time. If he was out of ideas, he often took a break from the shoot, which could last for days, while keeping the studio ready for when inspiration returned. Delaying the process further was Chaplin's rigorous perfectionism. According to his friend Ivor Montagu, "nothing but perfection would be right" for the filmmaker. Because he personally funded his films, Chaplin was at liberty to strive for this goal and shoot as many takes as he wished. The number was often excessive, for instance 53 takes for every finished take in The Kid. For The Immigrant, a 20 minute-short, Chaplin shot 40,000 feet of film – enough for a feature-length.

Question: What type of premise did a good amount of early films begin with?
vague