Here's my transcription of the article:
The Filmed-TV Trend
Upsets Noted Producer
IT'S ALWAYS nice to find someone who agrees with you; and thus it was a double pleasure to talk the other day with Felix Jackson.
Jackson is head of the dramatic-television department of Young and Rubicam. This advertising agency produces much television. We saw Jackson on the set of "Four-Star Playhouse," a filmed series which is seen on alternate weeks on WHAS-TV.
The famed producer, who won several awards when he was executive producer for "Pulitzer Prize Playhouse" on A.B.C. Television a season or so ago, is not happy over the trend toward filming television shows.
"There can be no complaint over integrating film in to a TV program," he said. "Or, for that matter, into the whole structure of television. Film has its place."
Fears Stifling
But, he went on, "I do feel that too much filmed television will stifle the growth of the medium. It certainly will hold it back in its struggle for artistic maturity."
Jackson says television has values and problems which set it aside from any other medium -- theater, motion pictures or the printed word. In order for television to reach its greatest heights, he figures, these differences must be explored and studied. Only through experimentation can television reach its greatest heights.
"But when programs are filmed," he went on, "that inventiveness and experimentation are lost. Motion pictures have very set and inflexible rules as to how effects are created, how techniques are perfected.
"In television, there are no such set rules. No one knows. Thus an individuality was achieved by various programs. The producer was able to tell his own story at the same time he felt for the method of telling it.
"In films, these situations have all been met before. There are rules. The producer does not experiment, He has set techniques to guide him."
Thus, Jackson feels, as the swing to film has been speeded up, the originality and indeed the growth of television as a medium of expression new and different from any other have been retarded.
"On our 'Pulitzer' series," Jackson said, "we did mostly live shows. And we evolved a whole new system of physical properties and stage settings. On the later shows in our series, these sets were better, easier to handle and more economical. Television needs different stage sets. They must be simpler, because detail is lost on the small screen.
"Yet now on film we use sets in the traditions of the movies. On filmed shows, the experimentation is not being done. Television will have to wait longer for its own type of sets and staging."
Shortage of Ideas
He hopes that the educational telecaster, either on his own channels or on the programs he develops for commercial outlets, will carry on the experimenting with the new medium which he feels it must have to come into it own.
Jackson says there is a shortage of ideas in television, as there always has been in the arts.
Jackson, a native of Hamburg, Germany, was a city editor in Germany at 21, then a dramatic and music critic, and helped manage three theaters in Berlin. He joined Joseph Pasternak as a producer in Budapest in 1933, and came with him to Hollywood. He has been with Young and Rubicam since 1946. ###
Jackson with wife Deanna Durbin in May 1947.
"There can be no complaint over integrating film in to a TV program," he said. "Or, for that matter, into the whole structure of television. Film has its place."
Fears Stifling
But, he went on, "I do feel that too much filmed television will stifle the growth of the medium. It certainly will hold it back in its struggle for artistic maturity."
Jackson says television has values and problems which set it aside from any other medium -- theater, motion pictures or the printed word. In order for television to reach its greatest heights, he figures, these differences must be explored and studied. Only through experimentation can television reach its greatest heights.
"But when programs are filmed," he went on, "that inventiveness and experimentation are lost. Motion pictures have very set and inflexible rules as to how effects are created, how techniques are perfected.
"In television, there are no such set rules. No one knows. Thus an individuality was achieved by various programs. The producer was able to tell his own story at the same time he felt for the method of telling it.
"In films, these situations have all been met before. There are rules. The producer does not experiment, He has set techniques to guide him."
Thus, Jackson feels, as the swing to film has been speeded up, the originality and indeed the growth of television as a medium of expression new and different from any other have been retarded.
"On our 'Pulitzer' series," Jackson said, "we did mostly live shows. And we evolved a whole new system of physical properties and stage settings. On the later shows in our series, these sets were better, easier to handle and more economical. Television needs different stage sets. They must be simpler, because detail is lost on the small screen.
"Yet now on film we use sets in the traditions of the movies. On filmed shows, the experimentation is not being done. Television will have to wait longer for its own type of sets and staging."
Shortage of Ideas
He hopes that the educational telecaster, either on his own channels or on the programs he develops for commercial outlets, will carry on the experimenting with the new medium which he feels it must have to come into it own.
Jackson says there is a shortage of ideas in television, as there always has been in the arts.
Jackson, a native of Hamburg, Germany, was a city editor in Germany at 21, then a dramatic and music critic, and helped manage three theaters in Berlin. He joined Joseph Pasternak as a producer in Budapest in 1933, and came with him to Hollywood. He has been with Young and Rubicam since 1946. ###
Jackson with wife Deanna Durbin in May 1947.
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