Documentary News Letter (1947-1949)

Record Details:

Something wrong or inaccurate about this page? Let us Know!

Thanks for helping us continually improve the quality of the Lantern search engine for all of our users! We have millions of scanned pages, so user reports are incredibly helpful for us to identify places where we can improve and update the metadata.

Please describe the issue below, and click "Submit" to send your comments to our team! If you'd prefer, you can also send us an email to mhdl@commarts.wisc.edu with your comments.




We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.

Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.

DOCUMENT \R\ NEWSLETTER 1(W FEATURE FILM MUSIC and the DOCUMENTARY By MUIR MATfflESON i mi influence of the documentary on feature film production has become increasingly significant during the last ten years. During the thirties this tendency was onlj slight, manifesting itself in pictures like the K.orda-1 lahertj film Elephant Boy. World War If resulted in a rapid expansion of the process, eventually producing pictures which were known simply as 'feature-documentaries'. The ads cut o\ such directors as Cavalcanti into the commercial studios brought about a liaison of fact and fiction that made this country's war films more realistic than those of, say, the United States, where no large independent documentary movement could be coopted to vitalize Hollywood output. It was on these early fictional-documentaries that the new British film industry was founded, with productions of the Forty-ninth Parallel and First of the Few calibre, giving our film makers the morale and prestige to attempt Henry V, The Way Ahead, and Men oj Two Worlds. Such is the debt that features owe to documentary During the present transition from war to a period of desperate economic recoverj the documentary influence remains. True, with the departure of Churchills and Spitfires the purely factual aspect becomes less spectacular but the lesson of the fighting days has not been forgotten. As Harry Watt prepares to follow through the triumph of The Overlanders with another outdoor story from Australia; as Ealing Studios dispatch cameramen to the Antarctic to secure backgrounds for Scott of the Antarctic; as Shepherd's Bush studios shoot Rescue, a film version of the factual story of the Dakota snowbound crash of a few months ago; so the value of a realistic setting to commercial productions is demonstrated far more clearly than it was before the war. Social problems of the day are more courageously tackled by film makers than before ; again the documentary influence leads the way. ft is also true that feature film music has derived considerable benefit from the realm of documentary . Apart from the fact that the raising of the general standards of intelligence and subject matter in British films has inevitably given more encouragement to composers to enter the industry and that, having taken the plunge, they have found dramatic material worthy of the finest possible musical creative effort, there are one or two special reasons why feature music is a debtor to documentary music. For good or evil, it has long been recogni/cd that music today falls into two strongly divided camps — the 'popular' music (dance music, jazz, swing, light 'numbers' I on the one hand, and on the other, serious music (symphonic music, chamber works, opera and ballet). Despite the fact that many more people are willing to change camps today than they were ten years ago, the two divisions remain— the 'Great Schism' as one very famous musicologist called it. This has meant that serious composers have tended to draw further and further away from the general trend, avoiding the musical pursuits of the millions and consorting with their fellow-intellectuals with music th.it the> and very often only they — understand. A 'vacuum' tendency set in. When a composer of serious music turns to the cinema the documentary film can be of tremendous value in bringing the musician face to face with reality. Documentarians as .1 race are realists: composing music for documentary requires realism. \ remember the case of Dr Ernst Meyer and Cavalcanti's North Sea, The film was about the sea and the fishing fleets. The directoi sent his composer into the fishing towns, where he went to sea with the trawlers and worked on board among the fish and the nets. It must have been a hectic business, but the result was the realistic score that the director was after. At Denham we have a similar instance at the moment, for William Alvvyn (for many years a documentary music expert) has recently been to Ireland prior to the composition of music for an essentially native production. Captain Boycott. The move towards personal contact between composers and modern society finds particular expression in the factual field, and in this respect the documentary aids the feature score by giv ing musicians a chance to find their feet on the terra firma of filmic reality before going on to the stringent requirements of the commercial cinema. The further point can be made here, that as features gain more and more from the ("actuals, realistic music becomes increasingly important. In Men of Two Worlds, for example, thousands of feet of native music were recorded in Tanganyika by Thorold Dickinson's location unit: this was brought back to this country and Arthur Hhss was able to spend man. absorbing hours in examining it before proceeding with his s^. of which was based on the native music. Thus he had the opportunity, through the influence of the documentary technique, to create realistic music which had lor its background the colourful sound of the jungle, vet w ithin the artistic conception of the film allowed him to write music that was satisfying to Western ears. Generally speaking, the opportunity which films oiler for the musician to avail himself of local folk tunes and to use them as a basis for his composition is a very desirable condition and one which, in its sphere. adds further to the documentary flavour of feature productions. As a field for musical experiment, the feature film maker again looks to the documentanan for a lead. There is so little time and money available in features for trial and error; everything must go to a schedule and mistakes mean serious delays. In documentary schedules are not so rigid and the composer is not swamped by dialogue; he has a chance to experiment, for the atmosphere of documentary is more congenial to the man vv ith new ideas than is the bustle ol the production people Irving to achieve a delivery dale for a publicized premiere. 1 or this reason a number of composers are seen at their best m factual {Continued page 1 1 \,foot col. 1) ETCETERAS ... 51 During the past 10 years, REALIST has made 20 films about Agriculture, 17 on Medical subjects, 13 on Health, 11 on Industry and 51 about a wide variety of other subjects, ordinary and extraordinary — 51 etceteras. All kinds of facts, theories and stories have been presented to audiences (ordinary and extraordinary) in almost every Country in the World. LIMITED 9 GREAT CHAPEL STREET, LONDON Wl GERrard 1958