Movies for TV - Early Television Foundation

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FUNDAMENTALS
film libraries are now producing special television film prints.
These are printed one or two degrees lighter than films for projection:
thus, the details are in a wide range of grays rather than
the complete run of black to white. The important point to re-
member, and one which will be emphasized all through this book,
is that high contrast and poor detail go together. Even a print
made from an old high-contrast film, which could not possibly
produce good detailed pictures on the television screen, will provide
an astonishing wealth of detail which was not apparent on its
previous state if remade as a television print.
This chapter is concerned with the production of films for the
television screen, so it is expected that the reader will consider
the points mentioned in the preceding paragraph in relation to
what follows. As television progresses, and more and more cities
have stations, the demands for films will increase even more rap-
idly. It has been estimated that in 1948 the existing television
stations used over 6000 hours of film while Hollywood produced
only about 600 hours of class "A" pictures. This disparity has led
to the establishment of a number of new companies specializing
in the production of film for television. Many of those shoestring
companies will inevitably fail due to inexperience and lack of
sufficient capital. But those which remain and grow large will be
those which, even though they may not have much capital, have
the imagination to create television from the blending of screen,
stage, and radio.
The budding television film producer must realize that his
is a new medium and that very few people know even a little bit
about it. Every person, once he has been in television for a year
or more, is somewhat of an expert if he has only common sense
and powers of observation. To produce a successful film, stage
and screen technique must be combined. For instance, a stage
actor usually tends to overact slightly to get his part over to the
people in the rear rows where they may not hear perfectly all the
dialogue. A screen actor playing the same part does not need to
do so because he is playing to the camera, which can catch his
slightest change of expression from a distance of a few or even