The Cine Technician (1939)

THE CINE-TECHNICIAN The Journal of The Association of Cine-Technicians Editorial and Publishing Office: 145, WARDOUR STREET, LONDON, W.l. Telephone: GERRARD 2366 & 4669. Advertisement Office: 5 and 6, RED LION SQUARE, LONDON, W.C.I . Telephone: HOLBORN 4972. Volume Three, Number Thirteen DEC-JAN., 1937-8 Price Ninepence TELEVISION by " TELE-TECHNICIAN " THE recent presence of the B.B.C's. mobile television unit at Pinewood, Denham and Elstree, has aroused amongst the film technicians of those studios a marked curiosity as to how the television wheels go round. It is not within the scope of this brief article entirely to satiate thai curiosity a simple explanation of the design and operation oi a television transmitting and receiving station can be found elsewhere* but rather I want to outline briefly the difference in technique between making a motion picture and broadcasting a television programme. The most salient point to be appreciated is that, apart from the film transmission which is radiated every morning from Alexandra Palace, the studios there actually produce nearly two hours' screen timt ever^ day —as opposed to a film-unit's twenty minutes' "rushes," out of which may emerge three to four minutes' actual screen time. I deliberately say "nearly two hours" because, of these two hours radiated each day, some ten to fifteen minutes are taken up by film transmission (either news-reels, cartoons or interest shorts) to fill in the few minutes necessary to strike the sets used in the tirst part of a programme, and civet Mini dress the sets for the succeeding part of the transmission. An individual item may run for five minutes or for an hour (vide "Journey's End." which was televised on Armistice Night), which means that the actors have to memorise their lines and action to an extent wholly unknown in motion picture production. Technicians (by which I infer the assistant-director, camera operators ami boom swingers), on the other hand, while working under the same conditions of prolonged strain as the artistes. have the advantage oi wearing headphones which arc connected to a microphone in the monitor-room, and b\ means of which they receive from the producer running instructions as to the operation of their equipment — ". . . cue the butler in now, please . . . pan left slightly, number three camera ... I am coming over to you in a moment, number one . . . you'll have to give me a little more head room . . . I'm mixing you now, number one . . . track forward i\\ b lower the mike as number one comes m * "The London Television Station, Alexandra Palace," published by The British Broadcasting Corporation, Broadcasting House, London, W.i. Price i,/-. sound ..." is the sort of thing they hear, thanks to the ia.t that the producer sees on the main screen the picture from the camera which is actually in use. and on pre-view screens the pictures from those other cameras which he will next he using. I'hc cameras (known as Emitrons) employ no film of any sort, being entirely electrical, and their outputs terminate on a, panel similar in appearance to the soundmixing panels so familiar in film studios, where they can be faded, cut, dissolved or superimposed at the discretion ol the producer; in addition, the "electrical output" of one or more special film [known as Telecine) projectors can be mixed m with the camera outputs to obtain special effects. From which it will be observed that all the edit ing is done while' actually broadcasting or shooting, and the director or producer has to go on the floor knowing exactly where Ins cuts, fades and dissolves are going to take place an unusual experience lor the average film director producing a television show for the first time' Scripts are substantially the same as motion-picture scripts but more detailed (see Fig. 1), and in order to avoid chaos must be adhered to fairly rigidly; 1 use the word "chaos" because it must be remembered that in television production the expressions "Cut" and "Let's have another take" are non-existent, so that failure on the part of either artistes or technicians to follow the script closely may lead to severe complications, in that a lot of the mechanics are dependent on dialogue word cues. Errors l>\ the technical crew can be immediatelj rectified by the producer via the headphones already referred to, but once a transmission has started the producer cannot contact the actual artistes. Summing up, then, so far as the producer, the artistes and the technicians are concerned, a half-hour transmission (and -ibis is a very frequent length for a television play or revue) tan be likened to a situation unheard of in a film studio one take, 2,700 fee< long. When film technicians have digested the above, they will perhaps he less prone to draw comparisons unfavourable to television between what the\ see on a television screen and what they see in a motion-picture theatre. Finally, a few words as to the size oi the television picture. Film technicians, in particular, seem to bi