Documentary News Letter (1947-1949)

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DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER 155 «#b5&9*tf UOMC|tlCt!S ^Department THIS IS THE FILM TREATMENT FOR PLEASE MAY WE HAVE YOUR COMMENTS QU1CKLYIF POSSIBLE WITHIN Film productions have to be made to a schedule. Any delay means idle time for technicians; and idle time means that the technicians lose their enthusiasm, and the Government loses money. DNL has long thought of organizing a Bouquets Department. What more appropriate time to start than the Xmas issue? Particularly when the Central Office of Information has risen to the occasion with the brand new folder reproduced alongside. This is not to say that DNL will not very hastily organize a Kick-in-the-Pants Department for any future occasion when blame may be more applicable than praise. When we look at the COI folder we like to think of all the people who will in future receive COI treatments inside its beautifully striped cover. We like to think of them creeping like snails unwillingly into their offices one cold, raw, austerity winter's morning when a delicious, tasty fog has settled happily down on their Monday breakfast of household milk and inadequately reconstituted egg — we like to think of the new energy which will spring from their chilblained fingers and their frost-bound brains when they find the latest COI treatment lying happily on their desks in all its attractive black, white and yellow splendour. They will read the pep-talk at the foot of the folder — they will analyse it phrase by phrase as they have been trained to do. They will learn that "film productions have to be made to a schedule' ; they may wonder I low?' and 'Why?' and 'What schedule?" and 'By whom?' — but that's neither here nor there. They will realize that "any delay means idle lime for technicians'; Ideas for the Occupation of the Idle Times of Technicians will flash through their brains— Knitting Woollens for Export out of Camera Tape, Making Celluloid Collars for Film Magnates out of dud Film Stock and many other profitable and timeconsuming occupations. They will ponder on the fact that 'idle time means that the technicians lose their enthusiasm' and may be constrained to consider a Memorandum (or even Memoranda) on Occupational Therapy for the Return of Enthusiasm to Technicians. And then, with a jolt, they will come to the crux, the coup d'etat of the whole matter . . . with horror dawning on their faces and fright suddenly dispelling the remnants of the dried ind the tasty morning fog, they come to the last, the fatal statement 'the Government to money', Seriously, though. />.\/ welcomes the innovation both as a means ol hurrying on matters which tend to stagnate and as a * ol can show originality in idea ,\rA design. \Nc love the Unemployed I*echnicians and we like the whole conception M.r. it prove in worth in results. \