British Kinematography (1953)

July, 1953 13 THE USE OF FILM IN TELEVISION PRODUCTION Ian Atkins* Read to a meeting of the Television Division on January 28, J 953 r~MLM may be used in relation to television [^ in many different ways. Let us consider and discuss the different techniques of film and television and the different demands on the units involved. The Complete Film The main differences between the cinema and television lies in the audience for which each is intended. The television audience of three people at home is very different from the cinema audience of three hundred or more similar people out for the evening ; it is a more difficult audience than that with which the film director or stage producer has to contend. When a person decides to go to the theatre or cinema, he wants to " have an evening out " in company with several hundred other people and he intends to enjoy himself. In fact he is prepared to go half-way to meet the people on the screen or the stage who have set out to entertain him. The television audience is less easily moved to loud laughter and far more easily embarrassed and shocked at home than in the cinema. Self-consciousness in front of one's family, and without the example and support of several hundred others, is the basis of this difference which must be allowed for in making television programmes. Comedy style mustbesuitablymodifiedand emotional scenes carefully watched against over-emphasis. Above all, a guard must be taken against a very natural tendency to trade on the undoubted fact that the television audience has very quick perception, which is shown in their reaction to comedy. An audience can be greatly amused without bursting into audible laughter and, because this laughter is not momentarily reducing concentration it will take the point of a joke much more quickly than would be expected. It will see an unskilfully prepared joke a mile away and at its intended climax will be impatiently waiting for the next. Comedy on television must be played so much faster than on the stage that it is often difficult to persuade established actors to keep up what is to them such an unprecedented pace. To engage an actor to play a comedy part in television which he has already played in the theatre is most dangerous. This quick perception of the television audience does not excuse bad story-telling. Points of plot and character will be grasped with surprising ease if they are made clearly and in correct order and context. It is in the production of thrillers and detective stories that, next to comedy, the greatest problem is presented. If one tries to give the viewer all the clues available to the " Great Detective " one can easily explode the mystery far too soon by being slightly over-emphatic or selfconscious about some minor piece of evidence. The television audience spots it quickly and the " magnificent brain " is reduced to clottish stupidity by being some 30 minutes late in getting his man. The purely technical problems of television films are diminishing. The small screen is gradually growing larger and the rules of to-day will be out-moded by to-morrow. To-day the medium shot is the most difficult to use. A long shot has its own pictorial composition and action to sustain it and make it interesting. The close-up reveals thought and motive clearly and dramatically as does to a lesser degree the medium close-up. But the medium shot can easily be too far away to show interesting detail while providing no compensation in composition or action. To put the problem of television pictures, " Watch the mid-shots, and the rest will take care of themselves." The quality of the negative and print for films in this category need give no worry. The Central Telecine Room, which would transmit such a pro * British Broadcasting Corporation