Wednesday, September 25, 2013
NY vs HW, live vs telefilm
1950s television critics characterized New York-based live broadcasts as superior to Hollywood-based program forms for a variety of reasons. Considering these reasons (discussed in lecture and in "Live Television"), compare a live program to one of the telefilms we've viewed in class, to make an argument with or against the critics.
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Early television critics considered the television an in-home extension of the theater. With that in mind, shows often tried to act as a better version of theater. They focused on characters, and tried to take the audience at home to the theater. They tried to be intimate with the viewer, and would often use close ups to bring the viewer more in touch with the character. This was not something available in the theater. The ideas of taking the audience to the theater and making the audience more intimate with the characters led to live television. The George Burns and Gracie Allen show is a good example of this, where everything literally takes place on a stage, and George Burns often breaks the fourth wall to interact directly with the viewer.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I would argue that television as simply and extension of theater is a very narrow minded view. Television provides the opportunity to present material in a completely new way, and presenting material live limits that. In the George Burns and Gracie Allen show, the episode viewed in class ends with George and Gracie going to the football game with their neighbors. It has to end on this note because presenting live limits the setting to the home. Were the show not filmed live, the setting of the football game could have provided new comedic opportunities. Think if a show like I Love Lucy was limited only to Lucy's home. The most famous scene with Lucy wrapping the chocolate candies would not have been possible, nor would the episode viewed in class where Lucy filmed a T.V. commercial. A show like Marty is able to provide more emotional depth because of the various settings it's filmed in.
I think that you cannot say which is better because both of them have two very different potentials. If a one is looking for acting skill, a sense of hyper-realness, and a sense of communal audience enjoyment, then the live teleplay is obviously the best choice. A television actor in a live teleplay is obviously faced with a much harder task of getting in character and staying in character. In Marty, for instance, all of the actors had to be totally committed to their parts without making mistakes. We can see this commitment through their hyper-realistic performances. This form of television allowed for hyper realistic performances because of the close ups and sound that could be used, as opposed to the theater, which demanded over-acting. Also, watching Marty live would have definitely carried a strong emotional weight do to it's communal viewing. People would feel like they were in the room with Marty and with the other viewers, watching his sad life. I'm sure this was very touching and is not something we get from television today.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, a telefilm is much better for delivering precision. In the I Love Lucy episode we watched, her attempt at being the ad girl but getting drunk was done excellently, but I will bet that many there were many takes of that to get it so perfect--as I would also believe with the chocolate factory scene. The timing and style of these scenes were so important to provoke the comedy that the precision art a telefilm can execute was crucial.
Overall, I would say that the telefilm is best for telling spatially and temporally complicated stories and the live teleplay is best for triggering a touching response.
In the 1950s, television was still relatively new. It was still seen as an advancement of the mediums of radio and live theater. Therefore, people and critics were still more inclined to favor what they were familiar with. In this case, they were more familiar with live television because it more closely represented live theater and radio. I disagree, however. I say that Hollywood-based telefilm programs were superior to New York-based live broadcasts. For my argument, I will compare Texaco Star Theater and I Love Lucy.
ReplyDeleteTexaco Star Theater was a wildly popular live broadcast. It was so popular because of its entertaining acts, the frequent appearances by the stars of the day, and the host’s “quick-on-his-feet” comedy and banter with the audience. It brought people together to view the live performance and people felt they could relate to the stars as real people since it was live. However, since it was live not every aspect of the show went off without a hitch. Dropped lines or mistakes in the acts could turn into awkward moments if the actors were not quick to recover. Also with frequent interruptions by the audience members, the host would often lose track of his train of thought and would have to repeat jokes if he did not get an appropriate reaction the first time. This created a discontinuity in the program and made it hard to be fully invested in the show.
I Love Lucy, however, did not have these problems. Due to it’s telefilm nature, scenes could be shot multiple times to ensure that the lines and the performances were correct when shown to the audience. Also there wasn’t audience interruption so the actors were not distracted and the story kept a rhythm consistent throughout the episode. The fact that it was prerecorded also allowed for shooting in various locations. The actors may not have been interacting with a live audience but they were more accurately representing the lives of people watching so they were able to relate to them in that way. I believe the biggest advantage of telefilm over live broadcasting was that telefilm could be rerun. Therefore shows like I Love Lucy could frequently be everyone’s home and even if you could not view it when it initially aired, you would not be left out. As a result, telefilms could be enjoyed and experienced by everybody, not just those available at the time it aired. Better distribution means better reception and a more desirable product in a lot of cases.
I believe that the transition from NY to HW was a form of commercial evolution. The ability to edit, reproduce, and distribute are incredibly important even beyond that time period. In class finding episodes of I Love Lucy is much easier than finding a poor quality copy of Texaco Star Theater. However, in terms of quality I believe that critics are correct in calling this age of live television the Golden Age of Television. My reasoning is that the best of live-TV is more impressive than the whole of telefilms even though the easiness of creating telefilms raised the standard of TV programs in general. When criticizing live-TV it is easy to look at the example of Captain Video. The low-budgeting, poor acting, and horrible timing all make the show pretty unbearable to watch. If the same program came out a decade later under similar circumstances it is probable that the show would only be the product of low-budgeting and poor acting with spot on timing. In this sense the overall quality of television increased in the age of telefilms.
ReplyDeleteRegardless, it is my opinion that a good episode of 'Burns and Allen' is better than a good episode of 'I Love Lucy', because it reflects the talent of the actors and actresses more than in filmed and edited sketches. As for the random viewer, the perfection of jokes in ‘I Love Lucy’ such as the craziness of the chocolate scene was probably more entertaining. The editing combined close-ups with medium shots to focus on the center of comedy in the best way possible. Though similar combinations of shots could be done in the three-camera live-filming, it is most likely cut in a cleaner fashion with telefilms. Critics, however, would probably account for the impressiveness of successful live-TV, which is why the move from NY to HW seemed like a downgrade for the talent of television.