Movies for TV - Early Television Foundation

356
THE PROGRAM ANGLE
(this is sometimes harder to find in a hurry),
there should not be
any special problem. Of course, it may be necessary to wait for three
or four days to get the right weather, and with a full cast standing
hell with the shoot-
by it can run into money not to mention playing
ing and production schedule.
Now we have mentioned just about all the things which come
into the picture. Of course, there are others, but these can generally
be classified under "miscellaneous." So let us return to the first topic
the budget. This is usually fixed for certain productions or else
supposed to cover special assignments for the production department.
In any case it will always be small, and it will either be utterly
too small and inadequate or it will be sufficient to do a good job.
This all depends on the station manager or sponsor. The lower the
film director can get and hold his budget, the more chance there is
of it being approved. It is not often that a film director will be given
the authority to go into film production on his own without a request
from the program department, so most of his efforts will be for in-
serts for live shows and a newsreel if one is used. This matter of
filthy lucre can be left here and we will proceed to the next prob-
lem.
Choosing a suitable location is not always easy. The script may
for the heroine to lean
say merely "street corner with a lamppost
against." Or it may say "the corner of 42nd and Broadway. 55
either case it may be simpler for the set to be built in the studio than
to use the real thing. If the set is the inside of a store at either of
these locations without any traffic or street scenes, then faking the
store background would probably cost less than taking a production
crew. Due to the unfortunate fact that the television system does
not transmit all the colors equally well and also suffers from the
problem of low definition and resolving power, one-dimensional
backgrounds, i.e., painted flats, are often undistinguishable from
the real thing. So it is quite possible that a painted row of shelves
containing cans, etc., will do as well as rows and rows of cans in a
grocery store.
If there is space to store the scenery and it is made in such a
manner that it can be dissassembled and is of unit construction so
In