Business screen magazine (1946)

paradox BY STANFORD SOBEL PARADOX: In lakiiiK :i piihlii stanci', \«c l■lllllll^i:l^ticall\ support c\(.'r> iiiiporlaiil IcchnoloKical iid«aiicc or innovation . . . Bl I , at Ihc same linic «f sccri'tl> fiar and distrust the illi-cts of such inin»>alions upon our ()\>n special area of filniiiiakint;. Videotape has changed my life several times. It has altered my perspectives . . . affected my creative freedoms . . . and even helped to determine where I live. Furthermore, it has done all these things, not in any one or two indirect and isolated manners, but in direct, specific, important, and powerful ways. Because of its influence and its technological effects upon writing techniques, 1 have several times been forced by videotape to make a choice between the two horns of a dilemma, both of them undesirable. It's no particular surprise that new developments sometimes seem to be threats rather than oppi>rtunities. After all, we have to adjust ourselves to some kind of predictable routine in order to survive, and if we're constantly having to reprogram our mechanisms of adjustment, the results can be very insecure and upsetting. I cherish with some nostalgia those days of live TV drama when corpses would sometimes get up and walk offstage, brushing their backsides free of dust. Or great actors of stage, screen, and radio would forget their lines and fail to take up their sjieeches on cue. They just stood there, sort of squinting at the idiot boards which they could not see because of their refusal to wear glasses on camera. Anil in live TV commercials, who can forget the cigarette spots where the MC took a long, enjoyable drag of his favorite cigarette, and promptly went into a cougliing fit before he could deliver his lines of ecstatic enjoyment of the smoothness and mildness and pleasure. Everyone has his own favorites, of course, but my own personal fa vorite live TV commercial was done for a famous, nationally advertised beer. (Jne of the great personality announcers of the fifties poured himself a tall, bubbling froth of the pilsner, took a small sip. and then uent into his pitch about its fresh, invigorating flavor, the delicious natural carbonation, and all ihc rest. A few seconds after he finished, the camera cut back to him in error, and there he was, pouring the rest of the glass into a slop bucket, which was bad enough in itself. What really made this particular spot my favorite boo-boo of live television was the expression on his face. It was pure disgust, an exquisitely pained grimace of total abject rejection, the same expression you sometimes see on a hospital orderly performing the duties he sometimes has to perform. And the way the announcer held the exquisite crystal glass by the ends of his two fingers reminded me of the way I held an oppossum by the tail the first time I ran over one and had to remove it to the side of the road. Those were some of the obvious problems which were solved, first by films and then by videotape. But of course there were far more important creative problems which videotape helped to solve in the days of "live" TV drama. Videotape in drama first began to affect the writer's structure of his script at the time of the "Playhouse 90" series. That was the first dramatic series on TV which, for example, permitted flashbacks. During the days of live TV, if you wanted to show a flashback, or a scene of the major character at a different time, place, or periixJ of his life, you had to figure out some kind of a transitional scene to cover the passage of time. And, ilurini; this transitional .scene (which \sas usually extended by the commercial), the actor could change costumes, be made up to look ilifferent, and pick up the new props he needed for his entrance. Since these transitional scenes were obligatory, but usually had no other dramatic rationale, it was extremely difficult to structure them into the drama so Us to maintain the forward dramatic thrust of the action. In fact, one of the underlying causes for the leisurely pacing of these early live TV dramas was the inclusion of the scenes required for prop, make-up, scene, and costume changes. But with the advent of videotape, the writer was freed from the strictures of the classical Greek unities of time, place, and plot. You could have a scene of a man in the prime of life followed immediately by a dream sequence of him ten years previously, or thirty years from now, ^ or brawling with an ad\ersary. That was a liberating force directly affecting the writer's creative freedom. It goes without saying, however, that it did not automatically and immediately result in better^ writing, or more original pla\s, or anything of that kind. But it did allow the writer greater latitude and mobility of time and space. Perhaps the most important thing that was ever said to me about the advent of videotape was a conunent of Walter Lowendahl's, which I'm sure he dtx'sn't remember, but which established a new attitude on my part — an attitude which has served me well through the changing times of tape, supcr-8, cassette, cartridge. FVR, and what have you. Regular readers of this column are aware that I make a practice of never mentioning anvone by 20 BUSINESS SCREEN