Films for Television

Abstract

sent out by television cameras as they are performed,' films made especially for television, and old motion pictures no longer in theater release. Motion pictures, though popular with viewers, are not ideally adapted to the television screen, save in being visual and in being, if we are not too literal about it, entertaining. The television play is a new thing and the television film bears a much closer kinship to the live show than it does to its parent theater film, as marriage is presumed to be a closer relationship (among adults) than that of children and parents. There are, certainly, family resemblances among all three forms, as well as differences. The live television play imitates many of the traits of the theater film, but it and its filmed counterpart set out to serve a new and special medium, whereas the theater film was made originally to serve a different purpose and to reach its audience differently. The theater film uses film as a medium; the television film uses it primarily as a facility, for the format of the television film is that of the television play, as are many of its techniques. Producers of television films in their use of the camera, their sets, lighting, direction, and acting imitate the procedures of the television studio, not those of the film studio. The reasons for this are in part economic, but only in part. The screen of the television receiver is the real determinant, and economic factors in television production grow out of the inherent nature of the medium. These considerations became immediate to me in December,