TELEVISION MEANS FILMS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 25, Issue 650, 14 December 1951, Page 10

TELEVISION MEANS FILMS

) The second of two articles |

by

GORDON

MIRAMS

on

the developing relationship between television and the cinema.

HAT needs to be specially borne in mind about television, as distinct from tadio, is that the new medium depends fundamentally on the pro‘jection of moving images and their reception on a screen. For various reasons these moving images are usually recorded on cinematograph film before being transmitted; and this is frequently true even in the case of "direct" telecasting of sports events and other major "news" items. These are facts of even more significance to New Zealand than to larger countries. For television is a peculiarly voracious medium-it uses up programme material at a much faster rate than radio. And this is largely so because of another special quality arising from the very nature of the new medium: its appeal to the eye rather than to the ear. It is a characteristic of aural memory that it is less responsive and less accurate than visual memory, So, to put it briefly, there is much music we never grow tired of hearing but very few films we can enjoy seeing more than once, Thus TV not only demands films but demands a very great number of them. Even in America, where an enormous quantity of "live" talent (or so-called talent) is offering, TV schedules cannot possibly be kept running on direct studio performances alone. To produce, say, a telecast version of a full-length play requires an outlay in money, time and trouble equivalent to that required for bringing it up to performing stand? ard for a full theatrical season, and almost equivalent to producing a feature motion-picture. As a general rule, such outlay can only be made possible by recording the performance on film, so

that it becomes available for subsequent ‘transmissions by other TV stations. This applies also to sporting and other news items. In New Zealand this problem must be magnified by our comparative shortage of local resources and talent. Therefore, even for TV programmes occupying at the outset only a few hours daily (or even weekly) from a limited number of stations, there will have to be a preponderant use of material already recorded on film. By the time TV is being introduced here, it can be taken for granted that a large supply of this material will be available for importing from Overseas producers. Special Factors in N.Z. At this point another special factor’ enters into the local situation. Because the film industry in New Zealand is at present a fully licensed and to a large extent’ a protected one, wrapped around, by a complex pattern of Acts and Regulations designed not only to provide censorship ‘supervision over all film-exhibit-ing but also to protect the industry itself against uneconomic competition, the advent of television is likely to. bring to the fore some»problems of a kind ‘not known in (for | instance) America, where the film business is subject neither to overall statutory censorship nor to licensing control. But while the whole subject of film censorship may have to be looked at in the light of the new conditions created by TV, the licensing of exhibitors, distributors, and theatres will . possibly need even closer examination. For it is, of course, on the exihibiting and distributing side of the film business, not the producing ‘side, that the full impact of television makes itself felt. While TV demands the making of more, —

not fewer, films than before, it does not-and’ probably will not-demand theatres for them to be shown in-cer-tainly not to the extent that the movie industry at present needs theatres. Already the effect of this is to be seen in the closing of some thousands of movie houses in the United States. In some of ‘these cases, TV may have been the’ decisive factor rather than the whole cause: ‘but ultimately a similar effect can scarcely be avoided in New Zealand: In the Age of Television there may still be a place for the smaller, more intimate type of movie theatre, Yet it is probably not fantastic to suggest that in ten years’ time many of our big "picture palaces" will have been converted into factories and warehouses. ‘. Social Consequences On the social and educational side, TV seems destined to have far-reaching effects on the community at almost all levels and ages, causing changes and adjustments in home and family lffe, in methods of teaching and in homework for children, in reading habits, in social attitudes, perhaps even in _ physical make-up. "Nothing in a hundred years has so drastically affected the American home as has TV," said the Holly~ wood Reporter recently, with a degree of exaggeration which may be smiled at. Yet the implications of this statement cannot be laughed away. At a conference of Post-Primary Teachers of English held in Wellington at the end of August, consideration was given to SS

the urgent need for improving the film taste of children and developing their discriminatory faculties; but those present were warned that if the cinema at present constituted a challenge to the teaching of English and other subjects, the coming of television would offer an infinitely greater one. When Dr. Margaret Mead told The Listener that television amounted to _ bringing movies into the home, she added that it was bad only to the extent that the things on it were bad. But may not the very form of the new medium give rise to a, problem of profound social portent? For ' whereas, in adjusting itself to radio’s invasion of the home, the human organism seems to have developed a kind of de-fence-mechanism which’ enables many people to listen without actually hearing, and so to. continue other activities during broadcasts ("music while you work," and all that), it is doubtful if our organ of sight can be so conditioned that we shall be able to see without looking.