Documentary News Letter (1947-1949)

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DOCUMENTARY FILM NEWS 10< The Stuff of Documentary (Continued from page 100) and you need a reconstructed covering long shot after the real action is finished. You watch for position and obvious continuity. On any story you might need to work out how a sequence of six scenes on a long cut story can say the same thing in only three of the scenes if the story has to be cut short. You learn your savers, but you try to economize on footage, because no magazine editor has time to think about a two thousand foot rough assembly for a two hundred foot cut length story. Once in a while, there's the story "on margin. Deadline for everything — one day. You went down to a factory with a cameraman: investigated, scripted and lined up for lamps in a couple of hours. Script okayed by telephone. When the lamps came in two hours later you shot the story. In the tea-break you telephoned a commentary to the crew standing by the microphone — final comment. u\ session for the issue. No time for opticals; you did the fadein in the camera. Two days later with the issue mixing on time you were on another story. . . . You pleased the editor that time because every set-up was used and nothing was missing. It was not an epic it was just an eighty-foot magazine item. Editing Dick, who puts the pieces together in the cutting-room at lightning speed, is an old newsreel man. He has your continuity sheets and a script, but could work without either. If it's on film he knows what you're after. If it's not there he'll tell you — and if you want to learn you'll listen. There is a logic to this sort of film that you learn by painful experience when the producer and editor see your rushes. You can't use those long beloved pans, all of twenty feet a time. That complex sequence on a simple action between three people must go in two sixfoot cuts or be left on the floor. The finished itei.. is something like two hundred feet — remember?— and if you shoot in thirty-foot key scenes there will be sore heads. This sort of film is like a Time news-story. In a script of twenty-three odd shots, with commentary, music and effects, everything counts. If it's not essential why put it in? No room to spread yourself on high-falutin' buildup. No room for commentary cliches. It finds you out. You can't get by with a brush-off job. You have to feel it and mean it. That line about "Hard work? — yes! — But these men are doing a great job' or '. . . these women are doing a man's job'. The machinery sequence that reads: 'From rough castings the cones are machined to specification. Great care is needed in checking these cones because they house the alli.nportant lens.' Out! The magazine item has a form and balance all its own. In journalism the key phrase, the right adjective. In film, the right image married to the essential word. Of course, when you've created a masterpiece it's hard to have a sponsor fiddle with the commentary on the final check-up before recording. If you weren't on a magazine film it might keep you awake at nights composing a DFN article about what's wrong. It can be has delivered during the month of September Member of the Federation of Documentary Ftlm Units MINING REVIEW: 2ND SERIES: NUMBER 2 Miners on the Land: Davy Lamp on a Training Course: Children's Gala: Sinking a new Pit SCOTTISH UNIVERSITIES A film for the Scottish Home Department, directed by Francis Gysin, photographed by W. Suschitzky BRITISH STEEL A second progress report on the Steel Company of Wales' Development Scheme for showing in South America PROBATION OFFICER A thirty-minute story to recruit new Probation Officers, directed by J.B. Holmes, photographed by James Ritchie, written by Budge Cooper DOCUlfl vi fcBYTECHNK LANS ALLIANCE LTD -21 SOHO SQUARE Wl GERHARD 2826 hard when the telephones of three Government departments converge on one sheet of foolscap while the commentary session ticks awa) and the recordist gets impatient. But the arts and crafts oJ film direction don't begin and end on location. And a sense of proportion is the first part of your film conscience. \;ter eight months of this, where are you going? I built a coal mine in South Wales. I sunk a shaft at Nottingham. Between twenty locations I counted a few sequences; I lost ten feet at Derby. By way of Victoria and St Pancras I captured sight and sound of many men working; King's Cross and Paddington carried a pattern of words. By night train to Scotland I crossed a border of thought. What's the next assignment? On the train, you hope this one will be a straightforward polic) story that will run so sweetly that nobody will niggle. Because you know in the last corner of your mind that if a story is good enough — if it is observed, imagined and recorded with that spark of art which the cameraman, editor and director who share the creative experience are too embar rassed to mention — then it speaks for itself. It's the raw stuff of documentary — the image of life and truth in a pin-sized magazine story. But this evening, just after birth, it will look very raw and naked on its clean sheet of foolscap, and very tempting to play with. It has godparents— producer and sponsors — who will have their own ideas about education. . . . Can you move them.' But certain problems are not your affair, al though you should know about them. Two organizers and a producer hatch this magazine at weekly conferences with the sponsors. There is a plan of work and a policy line on every item. You may not believe that the weight of the gap between fact and film lies elsewhere than in this smoky railway carriage— but have we ever let you down yet? Investigation one das. including travelling; scripting — same evening or next day; laid on for shooting tomorrow or the day after. Four items a month. Other films can boast an eight to twelve week investigation; a. theme with social implications and high policy. Not for the magazine the paper thought and political negotiation, the firm stand and protracted compromise. Good, bad or promising the item is shot, and next week — perhaps tomorrow — you will be making another journey. This way a young technician learns in film — writes in celluloid. Paper is something shed in the dead files two days later. In the train . . . wondering whether the old magic will work. That little tinge of apprehension that you pray to keep, compounded of excitement, curiosity and imagination. This is screen journalism. On the job again, you are playing with the raw material of documentary the making of a magazine item. Document dry Film Xiirs H 'ret that it has been necessary to produce Sept-Oct at -.ilarly, i numbei the re mainder of the \ear. Monthly [uibh will begin again in Januc