British Kinematography (1953)

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.

July, 1953 THE USE OF FILM IN TELEVISION PRODUCTION 15 they soon concluded that a judicious increase in the number of sets was often the key to a better television version of a stage play. Television, then, needs less dialogue than theatre, but more than film. Hence television needs shots of longer average duration than film or (since cameras are relatively cumbersome devices and change of angle is not a quick process) a repetition of the same shots at shorter intervals. How should these individual shots fit together ? What is the grammar of television ? A brief comparison between television and film may lead to a conclusion for, though different in purpose and in form, the two media have similarities which are more than merely apparent. Both can cover a wide field from epic drama to the lesson in school and both do it by means of moving pictures with accompanying sound. These pictures are directly comparable and in this context their possibilities and limitations are virtually identical. Order and clarity of exposition must come first and other attributes can only be admitted when these two are achieved. It may be said that television has special properties which must in time create their own style and method, but this does not invalidate the argument that the far larger proportion of shared properties demand a common usage. Television then should use the grammar of the film. Established rules of cutting, movement, dissolve and fade apply. Any differences should be those of style rather than of grammar and will be due to the way in which the actor's performance is presented on the screen. The fact that the performance is continuous and that time in its inflexibility and indivisibility is an enemy rather than a friend to the television director is the most obvious and the most formidable problem of television. For this reason space also becomes possessed of devilish attributes calculated to frustrate the television director. On film to dissolve from the leading man in plus-fours on the golf course to the leading man in a dinner jacket in the night club, or to cut together successively shots of two people taken from the same camera position are matters so commonplace as to be beneath consideration. In television both are impossibilities. Further, you cannot dissolve from the leading man in one set to the leading man in another set even if he does wear the same suit of clothes. Nor can you cut from one shot to a reverse showing the previous camera position. Now these facts lead to a style of presentation which should be followed if we are to marry a filmed sequence skilfully and unobtrusively into a studio production. Completely reversed shots are rare in television because the number of cameras and hence the number of simulatneous camera positions available is limited. That is to say the side angle which leads to and from the reverse shot can seldom be provided. The fourth wall is rarely seen. When it is seen, the betting is that the first or third wall will be invisible for that particular sequence. Many similar considerations are instantly apparent if the problem of shooting a scene from start to finish in its actual playing time is considered. The method dictated by the hard facts of television production produces in viewers a subconscious expectation and habit. If the unexpected occurs at a moment when a dramatic shock is desired all well and good. If there is at the moment in question, however, no dramatic point to make, the unexpected merely causes a momentary withdrawal of concentration and a quite unexplained and indefinable feeling that all is not well. The film calculated jump-cut to make a story point is good. A cut which jumps for no dramatic reason is bad. Summarizing then, in making film sequences for television one must so place the camera and restrict camera angles as to conform with a possible live camera lay-out. This is by no means as hamstringing as it sounds and a little ingenuity will usually produce a satisfactory plan. It is advisable to avoid the apparent presence of a character in two places at once even in a dissolve and to allow the character to clear one picture before entering another. This is a problem to be sorted out when the shooting script is planned and affords little hardship if recognised in advance, preferably in the scripting stage. One further point with regard to the complete film sequence : on the small screen it is advisable to introduce new charac