Origins

Understanding the television commercial’s evolution from its inception to the late 1950s illustrates how it was influenced by the classical Hollywood style, and that its very adoption of that style into a brief running time meant that it necessarily had to alter the style as well, particularly in terms of editing. The result meant, that even as the commercial borrowed conventions from Hollywood feature filmmaking, the two forms quickly became involved in a dialogue, with the television commercial influencing feature filmmaking, and vice-versa. Chapter 1 initiates the book's exploration of these issues by focusing on early commercials and using the work of Gerald “Jerry” Schnitzer as an important case study. Schnitzer is the essential linking figure between the initial postwar broadcast commercial’s direct appeal to the audience and its later, stylized evolution.