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Tel evi s i o n
CINEMATOGRAPHY
SHOOTING a scene for "The Big Story" which later was integrated with live action scenes staged in the television studio. Directed by Charles E. Skinner, film scenes were photographed by cameraman George Webber.
PROPER coordination between cameraman, lab and TV lighting personnel insures successful integration of filmed scenes with live action says Charles E. Skinner, shown here at far left directing a scene for "The Big Story."
"Integration”
Pioneer
By CHARLES E. SKINNER
Reprinted from “ The Screen Director,” publication of the Screen Director’s Guild, New York City, N. Y.
Film and live action are integrated
with outstanding success in the production
of "The Big Story" for television.
Already familiar enough to hold a place in the world of the facile cliche, today’s arguments in the great debate on “Film versus Live Action in Television” can be looked upon as an inevitable development in a period of raucous transition. Among the argu¬ ments one hears is that film can’t be integrated with live-action without the TV audience’s being painfully aware of where the film leaves off and the live action begins. After more than two years of integrating film with live action on Bernard Prockter’s “The Big Story,” I submit that this just “ain’t necessarily
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Indeed, so many people, even ex¬ perienced film men in Hollywood, have paid so much attention to the question
362 • American Cinematographer
of which parts of our show were on film and which parts were live action that I sometimes have wondered whether any¬ one cared whether the program was any good dramatically. (The continuing popularity of “The Big Story” on Friday nights would seem to prove that this was a needless worry.) Our success in cutting from live to film and back again in the middle of dramatic action and dialogue leads many people to believe that the entire show is on film.
Since there are factors in our successful film-live matching that we do not care to disclose, I shall not dwell on our methods in detail, but I would like to describe some of the paths we took in meeting the problems of integration.
I would like to say right off that there
• September, 1951
is no great mystery about our success with integration : the balance in cutting from live to film and back again is de¬ pendent on a technique which does not ignore, as do so many television shows, the all-important art of motion picture editing.
Anyone who plans to integrate film with live action is faced immediately with the bugaboo of poor film repro¬ duction on television. But this problem can be solved if the proper coordination is developed between film cameraman, laboratory and TV lighting personnel. In addition to the usual film reproduc¬ tion bugaboo, we had another problem : Our type of story had to integrate and match cuts, even to closeups, from film to live and from live to film. This was absolutely necessary if we were to be successful in meeting the challenge put to us by Sullivan, Stauffer, Colwell & Bayles, agency handling the account of Pall Mall Cigarettes. After three suc¬ cessful years with “The Big Story” on radio, Pall Mall, they said, was interest¬ ed in putting the “Story” on TV — pro