Documentary News Letter (1947-1949)

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44 DOCUMENTARY FILM NEWS Films and the National Coal Board by H. K. Lewenhak when the National Coal Board was set up ii could not go ahead and create a brand new industry of its own; it had to work with and on the materials it had taken over. The same is true about the National Coal Board's film side. It, too, inherited a number of readymade films and an incomplete film programme, together with a number of established connections. So, in formulating its film policy, the Public Relations Branch of the Board at no time had the ideal and idyllic opportunity of sitting down before a clean plate. In formulating its own film programme, it had to adapt and to make do. From the past, it took over a number of good popular instructional films which had been made under private enterprise and which, apart from being somewhat out of date from the technological point of view, did give the layman some idea of how a mine worked. We continued with these films and they were widely shown by Recruitment Officers, also forming the main items on the programme of our Mobile Cinema Vans. Valuable experience with these daylight vans as recruiting media had been gained while operating under the Ministry of Fuel and Power, and on this basis the campaign with them was continued and expanded. From the Ministry of Fuel and Power the Board also inherited a number of straightforward training films and one or two uncompleted documentaries. For the first nine months of their official existence, the Board also continued to operate under the Ministry of Fuel and Power's vote with the Central Office of Information, who made films for the NCB cost free, as an Allied Service. It was, however, open to the Board to commission any other films outside their arrangements with the COI, provided they bore the cost themselves. The Ministry vote ended in September, after which time the Board, like any other industrial sponsor, had to pay for all the films they commissioned. Limiting this, however, it was decided that, as recruiting to the mines is a question of national policy, all direct recruiting films should be made for the Board by the Ministry of Labour through the Central Office of Information. Out of this tangle of half finished films, previous commitments, etc., an attempt was and is being made to hammer out a comprehensive film policy. Before any film is commissioned, we take great pains to get quite clear to whom exactly the film is to speak and exactly what we want it to say. This may not be a startling innovation, but has often been omitted in the past. The most important of all is the question of distribution. What sort of distribution is desired is determined, to some extent, by the audience we are aiming at — tempered by the kind of distribution we can actually hope to get. A great deal of thought and time is spent on this question of distribution, because we wish to avoid the trap of making films and then finding, as has too often happened, that there is no ready means of getting them shown. Our film policy had a very definite eye to the market. We also found that working backwards, as it were, from audience and distribution, gave us a much clearer idea of exactly what kind of film we wanted. Our films have to fulfil a number of distinct and separate tasks: there are the films which are intended to inform the general public about mining, its problems and the progress being made to overcome them. .Secondly, there are the films intended primarily to recruit men to the industry, and thirdly, the training and industrial morale films for within the industry itself. These are three distinct functions, but films and film audiences cannot be divided into watertight compartments. For example, the miner, as a member of the community, obviously sees the film in which you are informing the lay public about the industry, and the way he features in such a film has an obvious effect on his morale. Similarly, films that are intended to be purely informative also have a recruiting 'bye-products', and so on. So that, while one's principal aims in films remain clear cut and separate, one has also got to see that the separate sectors are kept in line. For internal consumption, in addition to the training films, the Coal Board have started an industrial newsreel for which theatrical distri bution has been achieved in cinemas in mining areas. The aim of the reel is to keep the miner informed of developments in his own industry and to widen his sense of community from that of his own particular locality to the whole community. We have also tried, with some success, to interest Colliery Consultative Committees — the present descendants of the wartime Pit Production Committees— in our films, with the iesult that they are being shown in Miners' Welfare Halls, etc. We have made mistakes. The miner is a highly discriminating filmgoer, and we have received copies of Colliery Committees' Minutes, 'deploring the poor technical standard' of one or other of our earlier efforts. Such discrimination is, perhaps, one of the most encouraging features of the work. It means that the film producer working for such an audience need not fear that his finer nuances are being wasted on an insensitive audience. Films are expensive. The Coal Board is not a Government Department, with access to public funds, but a trading public corporation. The cost of all its films must be charged against revenue. It is against this rigorous financial background that the films are proving, and must increasingly prove, their effective worth to the industry. A Musician's Approach to the Documentary Film by William Alwyn a fundamental principle of artistic creation is that the artist should work within the limits of his medium. His expression is conditioned by his tools. The small canvas demands the miniaturist's approach — the Sistine Chapel, the grand manner. These limits may not only be defined by purely artistic requirements but by the more urgent and practical limitations of purse, the availability of suitable canvas and a possible world shortage in camel-hair. It is imperative in the musician's approach to the film that he should have a clear realization of the scope of his medium — that he should cut his coat according to his cloth and his clothing coupons. In the early days of Documentary the composer had a very clear idea of the conditions of his work; conditions imposed by a limited budget, the experimental nature and size of the recording theatre, and the imperfections of recording gear and reproduction. The budget for music was usually in the nature of pocketmoney and this naturally conditioned the size of orchestra; some instruments did not record well, and this conditioned the type of orchestra. But most important of all, the composer, together with the producer and director, realized that he was pioneering in the use of the sound track, that the field for experiment seemed boundless and he had a firm appreciation of the basic fact that the sound track should be a unification of commentary, sound effects and music. To mention but two of the early documentaries. Song of Ceylon (music by Walter Leigh) and Night Mail (music by Benjamin Britten), is to realize that in both cases composer and director were working with a complete understanding of the restrictions of their medium; working within its limits, and working with the enthusiasm of pioneers with fresh fields to plough. These films are over ten years old, yet by virtue of the intelligence of the technical approach they are vital and contemporary today, whereas the feature film of the period is too often a museum piece. Any art that depends on mechanism for its expression is bound to progress towards mechanical perfection (e.g. the art of flying, from the hazardous contraptions of the Wright brothers to the jet-propelled super-sonic plane of today). Ten years in the art of film music has led us from castles in the air to Cameron Castle at Beaconsfield, and by slow stages to Stage I at Denham. Better recording theatres lead to better reproduction; better music recording leads to bigger and better orchestras. One by one the mechanical limitations have been (Continued page 47)