Film and TV Technician (1957)

May 1958 FILM & TV TECHNICIAN 251 TWENTY-FIVE YEARS YOUNG By Anthony Asquith \ DELIGHTFUL old lady I knew was left to play with a small boy of four by his mother who murmured apologetically something about his being " very young ". The boy overheard the words and was puzzled by them. " Are you very young too? " he asked my old friend. " Yes," she answered, " but I've been very young for a very long time." To be able to say this with perfect truth, as she was, seems to me a most desirable thing not only for people, but for organisations. The recent duplication of its final " T " ensures that A.C.T.T. remains the youngest union affiliated to the T.U.C. But even without the help of our splendid new tail feathers, we have been very young for twenty-five years — a respectable span in the life of any union. And I think we can claim without immodesty that we have stayed young without ceasing to grow with extraordinary rapidity in physical strength, but also, I believe, in the capacity which is the fruit of the ability to learn from experience. Our is not — and must never be — the youth of arrested development, where a huge unwieldy body pathetically and flabbily encases a pin-head of intelligence. Nor, when the next twenty-five years have passed, may our youth have become that " second childhood " due to the hardening of the imaginative arteries, which springs from the meticulous preservation of the letter of tradition, without in the least understanding their spirit or intentions. A living tradition is ours which continuously renews and changes its outward expression. It is an oxygen tent not a strait-jacket. There is nothing more tragic, than when a living stream is fossilized into a stalagmite. It may be beautiful but you cannot drink from it. Now I do not believe that A.C.T.T. is in danger of its youth suffering from either of these perversions as long as we remain what our title proclaims us to be, an association of technicians, a comradeship of craftsmen, each of whom in his own way is contributing to produce the same unique thing. It is true that our " end-product " may fall into many different categories, ranging from the three-hour feature film to the thirty-second advertisement " snip ", from the full-length television play to the usually depressing weather forecast. But all these have one thing in common — visual and aural communication, indeed our craft, and only ours, is concerned with the most powerful and, with the possible exception of music, the most universal medium of communication yet devised by the mind of man. Because of this, as a Union we bear a double responsibility — a responsibility to our members for their pay, their conditions of work and their general well-being, and a responsibility to our craft and, through it, to Society as a whole. The value of our end product varies as greatly as the forms it takes. Very occasionally we produce something which can justly claim to be a work of art, something, that is, which is of lasting value. Quite often we produce good entertainment I in case of misunderstanding I would like to emphasize as strongly as I can that I believe the common distinction between art and entertainment to be utterly false. A work can be entertaining without being a work of art, but no work can be a work of art without being also entertaining. The difference is that the passage of time does not diminish, it may even increase, the power of the true work of art to entertain, i We also produce works which, though essential, are by their very nature of only temporary significance, news items, topical discussions, etc. And alas ! we also produce a large amount of unspeakable tripe. As an individual craftsman, it must be the pride of each of our members to do his particular job as well as he can. But as a union it should just as surely be our duty, not only to safeguard and enhance the material well-being of our members, but to use all our influence to see that their skill is used on something worth doing. This has always been a guiding principle in A.C.T.T., and as long as it remains so, I believe that we will, in the best sense of the word, go on being very young for a very long time. Sir Michael Balcon on Features . Page 252 Desmond Davis on Television . . Page 268 Thorold Dickinson on U.N. Films Page 265 Bert Craih on the Laboratories . Page 271 Sir Arthur Elton, Bt., on Documentary . Page 262