World Film and Television Progress (1937-1938)

RADIO AND TELEVISION Television by George Audit IN a recent issue of World Film News I complained that the figures on the television screen were much too small. If you want to follow the movements of your favourite ballerina it is exasperating to have to peer at a figure only four inches high which appears to be about thirtyfeet away. Actually the television camera may only be about ten feet from the subject but the image — when seen on a screen no bigger than a sheet of quarto paper — looks much more remote. In the theatre you may use glasses to get a better view of the actor but with television you are helpless to approach the subject. The television close-up was first used with Gracie Fields' appearance a few weeks ago and was an immediate success. The subject may now be approached until her face more than fills the screen. The focusing is perfect so that the closeup makes a better picture merely from a photographic point of view. The odd and beautiful effects of light and shade obtainable in a television picture — so different from film equivalents — are not lost with the close-up, in fact they make it the more interesting. The tiny size of the screen is a handicap. Projection, if only to twice the present size, would make all the difference. No doubt projection will have its problems and we shall be wondering whether to retire to bed and project the picture on to the ceiling for want of wallspace, and so on. But some enlargement of the present Lilliputian scale is absolutely essential. The volume of production at Alexandra Palace is obviously too great for present staff and equipment. You can see the makeshift in every programme. A single backcloth or no scenery at all. A wooden camera that does not follow its subjects unobtrusively but makes them approach it. Under-rehearsed or impromptu introductions and dialogue. A ridiculous slide of Alexandra Palace on a foggy morning for an interval sign. These criticisms are not necessarily any reflection on the present television staff who are making the best of a bad job. The fact is that the pressure of one programme on the heels of the next cuts out any possibility of thorough productions. Television simply has not got the money it needs. Television now receives about £200,000 a year from the B.B.C. To develop it properly for the South of England alone would cost £1,000,000 a year. That sum would take all the B.B.C. s programme appropriation, and is therefore out of the question. It can expect no aid from the Radio Manufacturers' Association who are not yet in a position to make a television receiver cheap enough to ensure mass sales. It would, therefore, seem that circumstances will compel television to remain in an experimental stage until the Treasury opens its pocket to the tune of a million or more a year or a new licensing system is initiated (the more likely of the two) and the manufacturers can put a set on the market for something under £20. It is interesting to notice that the United States is finding it even more difficult to develop television within the limits of the sponsored programme system. Apart from the enormous initial expense of installing new equipment in the stations and laying out an entirely new network of wires, television is a more costly medium than radio in the programme stage itself. For television, scripts must be memorised, positions and movements of the actors must be carefully rehearsed, and settings provided. All this costs a lot of money and the rich American patron is not prepared to foot the bill until he is assured of a bigger audience than is yet possible. * * * * The relays from Wimbledon were something quite new in quality of reproduction and in the placing of the shots. The trouble with so many film versions of the tennis tournaments has been that the camera has tried to keep pace with the ball, and in switching from one player to another has ended in a confusion of strokes and dashes with the ball invisible. The television version had one camera commanding the whole playing area of the court and another to interject close-ups of the scoreboard, one of the players or an occupant of the Royal Box. The general view of the court was so clear that you could see the tiny white ball flash from one side to the other quite distinctly. Unfortunately the figures on this scale were so small that one had to approach to within a foot or two of the screen to see them distinctly. But at this proximity the image was so distinct that you could follow every detail of the strokes. I have seen the Centre Court play in the newsreels and through television, and I can say that the latter was by far the closest approximation to the real scene, and incidentally more enjoyable. Technically the Wimbledon relay was most important because it was the first recording of the mobile television unit. This unit consists of a scanning apparatus with an Emitron camera and a radio transmitter. The scene is scanned and broadcast on ultra-short waves over the twelve miles to Alexandra Palace. The experiment was a complete success and it now only remains to be seen whether the unit is able to range further afield. * * * * It is encouraging to notice that the B.B.C.'s Television Department is displaying the same vitality and critical powers that were once the characteristics of its parent organisation. It is obvious from the recent behaviour of the television camera that its directors are thinking about the scope and limitations of their medium. They have dropped panning altogether. Bad panning in some of the early programmes produced the funniest effects, especially in a game like table tennis, where the unfortunate viewer often felt like the man in the Shell advertisements. Sound commentary is still a difficulty. This was particularly noticeable in the Wimbledon relays. In radio commentaries the speech is always a few seconds behind the action of the game, but that does not worry the listener at all. Such commentary is obviously useless when the listener watching the scene at the same time as the observer. The B.B.C. tried the old method with laughable results. At Wimbledon the ob server often attempted to anticipate the actions of the players in what he said — again with amusing results. It seems that television will have to abandon any attempt to run a continuous commentary on every stroke of a game, and develop its sound more on the lines of critical comments on the actions that have gone before, much as an experienced observer in the stand might be remarking to his companion in the next seat on the progress of the game. The reactions of the crowd will also have more value as broadcast material when the cause of their comments is being seen. Radio is Changing Us — by David C leghorn Thomson (Watts, 2/6) Those who read Cleghorn Thomson's sketch of Sir John Reith in the last issue of W.F.N, will have caught something of the informed and penetrative qualities of his book. Behind him he has eight years' experience as a B.B.C. official. His directorship of the Scottish Regional was marked by a boldness of programme policy and a tenacious struggle for regional autonomy which enlisted no small measure of support both in his own district and outside. His resignation was one of the more unfortunate examples of the B.B.C.'s failure to understand and exploit creative capacity. Mr. Thomson views broadcasting achievement from the standpoint of the professional ; his chief interests lie in the internal shaping of policies and programmes. On the basic issues of the formation of taste, propaganda, monopoly, sponsorship, and relation to government he blesses the B.B.C. and finds it good. On the programme side he finds imagination, creative ability and, with the possible exception of the Talks Department, a progressive grasp of the opportunities of the medium. It is to the administration that he traces the root troubles which make the B.B.C. a "not yet happy ship" carrying "the heaviest crew of isolated intellectuals of any vessel in British waters." The charges against B.B.C. authority on this score are common knowledge. Initiative has been stifled, constructive criticism repressed, creative effort hedged about with regulations and red tape. As a critic of the B.B.C, free from the restraints of immediate loyalty yet deeply concerned for broadcasting, Mr. Thomson is first-rate. But at the end of the book, though radio is seen to have changed the B.B.C. — and, incidentally, Mr. Thomson — it has not changed us. In 1933 Hilda Matheson published a short but admirable survey of broadcasting in which she foreshadowed the principal directions in which radio might affect society. She brought up a host of speculative questions concerning the probable action of radio on politics, citizenship, education, art and war. Mr. Thomson writes from the microphone, not from the loud-speaker. With the wisdom of caution he bases his interpretations on present trends and past achievements. But a measure of speculation from the listener's end would not have been out of place from one so well equipped. S.L. 37