Movies for TV - Early Television Foundation

MAKING FILMS FORTY 229
many feet away. How many people in the audience these days
take opera glasses with them to a play? Not very many. Quite
frequently, one sees the greatest number of glasses used in the
"Gods," as the highest and cheapest part of the gallery used to be
called. Why? Because they are too far away to see the plays of
expression and details of the actors' faces, and they cannot hear
the dialogue all the time. The motion picture camera takes the
scene, be it a close-up or long shot, and enlarges it onto a screen
where all can see and hear. Any overacting will be as false and
phony as a "plugged nickel." However, both have one thing in
common they are effectively playing to a large house, either on
celluloid or live. But in television, our actors are playing to two
or three people in their own living room. The atmosphere of the
theatre is not present. It is intimate, and the very mild form of
mass hypnosis or hysteria which grips us in the theatre is absent.
Producing for television, either film or live productions poses a
very great strain on the director's ingenuity and capabilities. In
one very severe way, it imposes great difficulties of scenic com-
position. The radio director has no troubles of this kind his
audience builds their own imagined sets entirely to suit themselves.
Each listener can put his hero where he pleases. But woe
betide the hapless television producer who comes to the viewer
with a set different from the one the viewer thinks is appropriate.
The producer may come from a different part of the country and
merely by a small difference in usage or custom mar an otherwise
perfect set. The importance of details like this is well realized by
the big men ; in fact, that is how they become big through paying
attention to details. When Walt Disney put Mickey Mouse into
color, he spent many very anxious months trying to decide what
color to make his pants! A very small detail maybe, but millions
had seen him in black pants for so long that an inharmonious
choice of color to go with his personality would considerably
prejudice his popularity. In the end his pants remained black!
But the attention paid to this detail is justified by his acceptance
and success.
Detail is the secret of success as a director and the basis of a