We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
are shown in each reel and they must be carefully balanced to interest the largest proportion of spectators. Having chosen his topics, the producer must get together his unit — cameraman, editor, script-writer and sound-crew — and discuss with them the way in which the selected item is to be tackled. (In a newsreel unit the man in charge is generally referred to as the Editor, and the man who does the actual assembling in the cutting room, the Cutter. We will use the term Producer for the former and Editor for the latter — the appropriate titles which would be used in any other unit — in order to maintain a consistent terminology throughout this book.)
A newsreel must be planned as accurately as possible in advance to save time and footage, and to ensure that the whole unit is working for the same effects. If the planning is not done beforehand the cameraman may come back with the wrong, or at any rate inadequate, material ; the editor will have to compromise by producing a makeshift continuity from the material available ; time — a most important factor — will be wasted, and the opportunity for getting the best material will have gone. You cannot send a man out to get retakes of the Grand National. In practice, of course, the producer will try to gather around him a team of experienced cameramen who can visualise the complete story while they are shooting. Material which is not designed to fit anywhere in particular will often fit nowhere at all.
From the moment the negative arrives in the cutting rooms, the predominant consideration is speed. Some of the things newsreel technicians do in an effort to save time would appear outrageous to any other film technician. The rushes are seen and subsequently cut in negative form, partly to save time and partly to save printing costs on the footage which will not be used. They are seen by the producer and editor who decide roughly how much footage will be devoted to the item, and the negative then goes to the cutting room to be edited.
The editor's main job is to produce a reasonably smooth continuity and to place emphasis on the points which need it. He will decide how much time he wishes to devote to showing his audience the Ascot fashions, how long he need spend over his joke about the bookies, and how much he will leave for the race itself. Often he does not have time to concentrate on making smooth transitions from one shot of the action to the next, and will use the cut-away to give an appearance of smoothness. He knows that the audience will see his reel in conjunction with what
185