Broadcasting Telecasting (Jul-Sep 1953)

HOW TO USE IT By Frank C. Lepore Manager, Film & Kinescope Operations, NBC Film Division Live or filmed TV shows can be brightened with the proper touches of authentic film sequences which would cost a fortune to get if they weren't already in the can. YOU are shooting a motion picture or a full-minute TV film commercial spot, or maybe producing a live television show. You suddenly find you need a film sequence of an Arab riding on a camel through the desert at high noon, looking very hot. Do you go into the desert to shoot? It would cost a fortune. Do you hire a Pinkerton man to track down the necessary footage? No longer necessary. TV producers, motion-picture producers, advertising agencies, industries both light and heavy, and many other organizations and individuals are gradually discovering that a library of stock film footage can save them time, money, headaches and worry. Suppose you are the program manager of a new television station. You have some time to fill, and you want to do it inexpensively as well as attractively. A music school in your city has excellent performing talent. You can avail yourself of this talent, but you also know that a purely musical show on television might be visually static. To enliven the program, appropriate film clips to accompany the music will do much to rivet the attention of the TV audience. For Local Programs Entire local programs can be, and have been, built with stock film footage. Sports shows, quiz programs, panel discussions and educational shows can be based on film. A popular local announcer, using film clips for his material, can run a quiz program. A locally televised football game can be preceded by a sports show on film. The same is true for other games. Local commercials, composed of stock film footage, are highly effective. Many local events, which may have been covered briefly by an NBC newsreel cameraman, make fine local special-events programs, with the footage suppUed by the NBC FUm Library. The visit of a celebrity during a campaign trip, a pancake-eating contest which took place in the city — there is always more footage available on these subjects than was originally shown on the network news program for which the film was taken. A local little-theatre group may want to do a production on your station. A film library has every kind of scenic background for rear projection. A live dramatic production, furthermore, can be given polish and authenticity with the use of stock film footage, interspersed between live scenes, to denote passage of time, transition and travel. Or you may have made time for an educational program. A local authority on nuclear fission is scheduled to deliver a talk on the atom bomb. You can illustrate his lecture with fascinating film footage about atomic energy (the "Atom Bomb" category in the NBC Film Library includes everything from "cyclotron" to "secrets stolen"). By the same token, a local discussion program can be given another dimension with the use of appropriate films — whether the subjects range from conservation of natural resources to military preparedness, or from beauty contests to zebras in Africa. A tire manufacturer may want to produce a film commercial about the rubber industry. A soft-drink distributor may want to take the TV audience inside a bottling plant. A refrigerator manufacturer needs to make his potential customers feel cool on a hot summer night with pictures of winter sports at Lake Placid. All of these clients can obtain the right footage in a stock film library. The producer of an entire TV film series can save vast amounts of money by submitting his scripts to a film library, which can supply more stock shots than he ever dreamed existed. Located at 105 East 106th Street, New York City, the NBC Film Library, with 17,000,000 feet of minutely cross-indexed film, is the world's largest library of stock film footage especially adaptable to television. Eighteen people, working under the supervision of Irving Traeger, keep abreast of the new film as it comes in, at the rate of 240,000 feet a month, primarily from NBC's newsreel operation. Nine years ago, NBC began cataloguing and cross-indexing the film it had on hand, then about 2,000,000 feet. Today the 17,000,000 catalogued feet of film are broken down into more than 18,000 subjects ranging from "Academy" to "Zululand." The most completely cross-indexed library of specially photographed film for television use, the NBC Film Library is composed primarily of closeups and medium closeups, with a minimum of long shots. The library is home grown to the television industry, built from the ground up as an important by-product of TV's dynamic growth. The sub-classifications are so carefully broken down that the "Food" category includes everything from "anchovies" to "zabaglione" and the "Personalities" file runs from "Acheson" to "Zacharias." The library services the mystery-drama field with such subject headings as "blood," "corpses," "coffins," and "mortuaries." Public service plugs are augumented with every kind of "drive" from "bonds" to "tuberculosis." Many NBC-TV shows use the Stock FUm Library on a regular or parttime basis. Supplied are fashion and food shots for women's shows; scenic background for rear projection; round-the-world coverage for travel programs; boat, train and plane shots denoting passage of time or plot action to heighten the impact of dramatic shows. Now available to local stations and outside producers, the NBC Film Library helps to solve many local programming and production problems. Examples of other demands made on the library are calls for such shots as a montage of parades to illustrate martial music on Voice of Firestone, various scenic backgrounds for Your Hit Parade (Las Vegas gambling tables for "Wheel of Fortune," shrimp boats for the song of that name). When station KTXL-TV came on the air in San Angelo, Tex., recently, the program manager wanted to present films of the tornado which had struck that city. We supplied the film for the station's premiere program. Handbook of Service The NBC Film Library handbook — the first such guide ever published by a film library — is a detailed booklet listing all the major subject headings (over 2,200 of them) and giving complete, easy instructions on how to obtain exactly the footage a producer needs in the shortest possible space of time. The booklet indicates that a written request for a specific shot will be answered immediately with file cards giving fuU descriptions of the film which incorporates the shots or sequences desired, and a price list. Some users of the library have acquired the habit of sending in entire shooting scripts, because they know that the library can supply a large amount of the footage required. The Library was established to make available a wide variety of subjects for immediate use to avoid the expensive alternative of sending a camera crew out on location to obtain the same shot. Broadcasting • Telecasting July 13, 1953 • Page 101