Journal of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (1950-1954)

"To those in the television business and to those in the motion picture business who look upon each other with distrust, suspicion and sometimes scorn, I would say forget your differences and accept each other because that is what you are inevitably going to have to do. To those in the motion picture business who say that television is simply an extension of the art of making motion pictures, let me say that you are wrong and that there will be no complete marriage of the two." Excerpts From Speech by Jerry Wald "Thirty-five years ago, you engineers joined up with a business which, primitive as it was, entertained an easily satisfied public, and made good money. "It would have been easy then to say, 'The public likes these cowboy and Indian thrillers, and custard pie tossing orgies, even though they shake like a shimmy dancer. As long as the customers cheer when the cavalry rides to the rescue, and howl when the comic takes a pratt fall, or receives a pie in the face . . . why bother about the shakes and shimmies, the flickers and the frequent blackouts? Let's don't throw a monkey wrench into a machine that turns out dimes and nickels, faulty as it is.' "Luckily, the inventive mind doesn't work that way. You engineers went to work on the machine, and you've been working on it ever since. As a result, you've got us one that turns out dollars instead of nickels and dimes. "The creative end of our business ... I don't like that term because if any people in this business are creators the engineers are . . . but I'll use it for want of a better one . . . has of course advanced with you. Sometimes I feel we've been pulled along. Again, the advances have been made by sheer inspiration, and, again, by careful plodding and intelligent planning." Mr. Wald went on to discuss the muchdiscussed health of the motion picture industry and expressed a robust optimism with the reminder that he and his partner Norman Krasna have recently launched a $50,000,000 production schedule at RKO, consisting of 60 motion pictures to be filmed over a five-year period. "With your continued magnificent technical assistance," he concluded, "we will achieve a future that will, by comparison, make the golden past seem like the dark ages." Following Jerry Wald's spirited address at the Monday luncheon, our Society's David SarnofF Gold Medal was presented to the initial recipient, Otto H. Schade, for technical contributions to television. A full story about this portion of the Monday program will appear in the December Journal along with a detailed account of several other awards including the Warner and Progress Medals which were presented during the Wednesday evening banquet. A complete and accurate list of all papers presented during the 70th Convention arranged in order of actual presentation and including the names of all authors with company affiliations will be the last item in the December Journal. Technical sessions Monday afternoon and evening at the Hotel and Tuesday evening at CBS' Studio A concentrated heavily on television. High-speed photography papers filled the Tuesday morning and afternoon sessions while on Wednesday a group of "high speeders" were guests of the Naval Ordnance Test Station at Inyokern, Calif. On Friday morning another group participated in a desert photographic experiment where atmospheric conditions were favorable and they could concentrate on certain philosophical rather than technical aspects of rapid motion photography. The Wednesday morning session at the Hotel was devoted to 16-mm film and its use in television and training. After a 1^-hour warm-up on formal papers there was a most enthusiastic panel discussion of the 16-mm emulsion position question. Difficulties have occurred in 496