Movies for TV - Early Television Foundation

CHAPTER 20
SCENERY AND PROPS
Rhythm and motion have as much place in the setting of a production
as they do in the music for an extravaganza. Although
one is heard and the other is seen the effect of the visual medium
is just as important; in fact, it should be said that it is more im-
portant since the eye
is so much more critical than the ear.
When the stage was in its infancy, scenery was not used and
the players performed before bare walls. Since that time the art
of stage dressing has made tremendous strides and anything is
possible today. Television, a medium that is still finding its feet,
has been a vehicle for many kinds of productions using all varieties
of scenery, including none at times. The influence of movies on
the growth of television is natural and as inevitable as gas engines
in autos. Scenery considerations are dealt with in this chapter to-
gether with abstract and concrete discussions of usage. Television
has infinitely much to learn from the motion picture, and for all
intents and purposes of stage direction and mechanical operation
television is motion pictures by radio.
Everything we have learned about scenery placement and
usage in movies should be applied to television with, of course,
some slight modification, as, for instance, the elimination of most
long shots. Even so, limitations such as these are really only tem-
porary and will vanish with improvements in the technical aspects
of the art. Certain conditions do not hold for film operation which
are confining for live television. The logical path for television to
follow is that of the movie, always with the guiding principle in
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