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.
the dissolve or fade would have been a waste anyway. In such work the timescale of the story-film simply does not exist, and often a trick of phrasing or a turn of speech can convert a meaningless group of shots into a smooth effective sequence.
At this stage of production there must necessarily be a great deal of to and fro adjustment between the requirements of the visuals and the commentator's intentions. The two must be fitted to each other as closely as possible before the commentary is recorded. The script-writer sees the roughly assembled sequence and it suggests a way of commentating it : a character is conceived. Keeping a very close watch on the images, the writer then prepares the commentary. Finer points which have developed in the writing are met by inclusion of extra material, trimming of existing shots and rearrangement of the continuity to tighten the complete effect. When this is done, the commentary is recorded and the visuals are again trimmed to fit it exactly. This final stage is largely a matter of taking a few frames off here and adding a few frames in another place ; it is, as we shall see in the examples quoted below, a most important operation.
Here is a sequence showing how the compilation technique is applied to a simple descriptive passage.
THE PEACEFUL YEARS1 Extract from Reel 2
A compilation of newsreel material covering events between the two wars. The extract quoted is preceded by shots of the turbulent events taking place in Russia, Italy and Germany round about 1921. The key commentary (by Emlyn Williams) is, both in content and delivery, formal but sympathetic. By contrast, the Cockney (James Hayter) is down-to-earth.
F.S. Speaker standing on platform right, addressing a large crowd in Trafalgar Square. Camera pans slowly left across a large mass of people listening.
LS. Another speaker left, addressing large meeting.
Crowd voices.
Key Commentator : And in victorious Britain, economic events were proving that in modern war victor and vanquished suffer alike.
Commentator : (Cockney)
Plenty of people hadvthe answers— of course. The trouble was they were all different. Higher wages ! — ■
— Lower wages ! Longer hours ! —
Ft. fr. 27 12
3 14
1 Producer and Editor Pathe, 1948.
Peter Baylis. Writer : Jack Howells. Associated British
198