"... Aaaaand It's Back"

And it has been for some time.

Ideas and concepts never seem to totally die.  Including the bad ones.  But I won’t write about that today.  Or possibly ever.  Because no matter how bad those ideas are, somebody thinks they’re terrific and then I’m in trouble.  Feel free, however, to think of your own examples of ideas that never totally die (“Creationism” “Supply-side economics” – just priming the pump) and we’ll leave it at that.

As for me, I shall focus of attention to television.  “Informative yet harmless.”

Let’s go!  (Proclaims a Founding Member of Wimps ‘R Us.)

During the early years of televised sitcomality, half-hour comedies were filmed like truncated movies – the short story versus the novel, offering both entities unearned elevation.  (As Mel Brooks emphatically opined when I once interviewed him decades ago, “Best is a book.  Why?  Because a book does not have ‘Herman Shumlin Presents’ in the front of it.  Translation:  A book is “all you.”)

“Filmed like a movie” means that a single camera is employed to record the action, followed by subsequent “takes” – known professionally as “coverage” – in which the same scene is re-shot from various angles, distances and points of view.  (And probably other reasons I don’t know anything about.)  Depending on time and budget, you can shoot the same scene dozens different ways, and then “mix and match” the completed footage later in “Editing”.  

This is similarly what they did – at least in a limited version – when they shot sitcoms.  Why did they do it that way?  Because the half-hour comedies were produced by movie studios and that’s the way movie studios did things.  They already had the cameras and the expertise, so why not? 

(Note:  On Best of the West, I had a Director of Photography who, under more auspicious circumstances, had once collaborated with Alfred Hitchcock.  When I wrote in a script: “Int. Cabin – Dusk”, the gentleman judiciously set me straight, saying,  “We’ve got ‘Day’ and we’ve got ‘Night’.  That’s it.”) 

The “single-camera” format itself did not make the content bland and innocuous.  That was the networks’ – and their overseers, the sponsors’ – handiwork.  The primary objective back then was to please the largest possible viewership, making the controlling “Corporate Powers” err consistently on the side of “tapioca”.  It wasn’t censorship, exactly.  (Although, effectively, it was.)  Overhanging the creative process was the admonishing warning, “We’ll get letters.”  (Implying no risk-taking “encouragement letters” saying, “Stop boring us.”)   

The consequent result:  Father Knows Best, The Donna Reed Show, My Favorite Martian, and Mr. Ed (a talking horse who could offend no one, since, if there was an actual talking horse in the audience, what were the chances they could not only talk but also write?)

An expanding “wrinkle” in the sitcom filming process was the introduction of the “multiple-camera” process, purportedly invented by bandleader Desi Arnaz, allowing his then genius/spouse Lucille Ball could work her comedic artistry in front of a live studio audience. 

You can understandably not include a “live studio audience” when filming “single-camera”.  Shooting the same scenes over and over in front of them would inevitably dull their enthusiasm, dampening their willingness to laugh.  That’s if the shows were funny in the first place, which, with the exception of Leave It To Beaver, beyond tepid chuckles, they weren’t.

During the sixties, technological advancement delivered videotape, which was cheaper than film for reasons too tedious to go into, in which, again, numerous cameras ran simultaneously, the “booth-anchored” director editing the consequent “coverage” on the fly. 

“Tape” was generally the “medium of choice” of independent production companies:  Norman Lear (All In the Family, Good Times, Maude), Witt-Thomas (The Golden Girls, Blossom), the guys who produced What’s Happening?  Not being film studios, the companies had to rent their equipment, and, their eyes cast assiduously on the “bottom line”, their “medium of preference” was understandably tape. 

Being the cheaper alternative, videotape threatened to drive “filmed” comedies out of existence.  Although some independent production companies like “The Mary Tyler Moore Company” remained loyal to “film”, because that was their original reputation, and besides, the finished videotaped product “looked like a game show” – The Price Is Right, with punch lines.  Or so they haughtily asserted. 

Filmed comedy was given “The Last Rites.” 

And it has been for some time.

Ideas and concepts never seem to totally die.  Including the bad ones.  But I won’t write about that today.  Or possibly ever.  Because no matter how bad those ideas are, somebody thinks they’re terrific and then I’m in trouble.  Feel free, however, to think of your own examples of ideas that never totally die (“Creationism” “Supply-side economics” – just priming the pump) and we’ll leave it at that.

As for me, I shall focus of attention to television.  “Informative yet harmless.”

Let’s go!  (Proclaims a Founding Member of Wimps ‘R Us.)

During the early years of televised sitcomality, half-hour comedies were filmed like truncated movies – the short story versus the novel, offering both entities unearned elevation.  (As Mel Brooks emphatically opined when I once interviewed him decades ago, “Best is a book.  Why?  Because a book does not have ‘Herman Shumlin Presents’ in the front of it.  Translation:  A book is “all you.”)

“Filmed like a movie” means that a single camera is employed to record the action, followed by subsequent “takes” – known professionally as “coverage” – in which the same scene is re-shot from various angles, distances and points of view.  (And probably other reasons I don’t know anything about.)  Depending on time and budget, you can shoot the same scene dozens different ways, and then “mix and match” the completed footage later in “Editing”.  

This is similarly what they did – at least in a limited version – when they shot sitcoms.  Why did they do it that way?  Because the half-hour comedies were produced by movie studios and that’s the way movie studios did things.  They already had the cameras and the expertise, so why not? 

(Note:  On Best of the West, I had a Director of Photography who, under more auspicious circumstances, had once collaborated with Alfred Hitchcock.  When I wrote in a script: “Int. Cabin – Dusk”, the gentleman judiciously set me straight, saying,  “We’ve got ‘Day’ and we’ve got ‘Night’.  That’s it.”) 

The “single-camera” format itself did not make the content bland and innocuous.  That was the networks’ – and their overseers, the sponsors’ – handiwork.  The primary objective back then was to please the largest possible viewership, making the controlling “Corporate Powers” err consistently on the side of “tapioca”.  It wasn’t censorship, exactly.  (Although, effectively, it was.)  Overhanging the creative process was the admonishing warning, “We’ll get letters.”  (Implying no risk-taking “encouragement letters” saying, “Stop boring us.”)   

The consequent result:  Father Knows Best, The Donna Reed Show, My Favorite Martian, and Mr. Ed (a talking horse who could offend no one, since, if there was an actual talking horse in the audience, what were the chances they could not only talk but also write?)

An expanding “wrinkle” in the sitcom filming process was the introduction of the “multiple-camera” process, purportedly invented by bandleader Desi Arnaz, allowing his then genius/spouse Lucille Ball could work her comedic artistry in front of a live studio audience. 

You can understandably not include a “live studio audience” when filming “single-camera”.  Shooting the same scenes over and over in front of them would inevitably dull their enthusiasm, dampening their willingness to laugh.  That’s if the shows were funny in the first place, which, with the exception of Leave It To Beaver, beyond tepid chuckles, they weren’t.

During the sixties, technological advancement delivered videotape, which was cheaper than film for reasons too tedious to go into, in which, again, numerous cameras ran simultaneously, the “booth-anchored” director editing the consequent “coverage” on the fly. 

“Tape” was generally the “medium of choice” of independent production companies:  Norman Lear (All In the Family, Good Times, Maude), Witt-Thomas (The Golden Girls, Blossom), the guys who produced What’s Happening?  Not being film studios, the companies had to rent their equipment, and, their eyes cast assiduously on the “bottom line”, their “medium of preference” was understandably tape. 

Being the cheaper alternative, videotape threatened to drive “filmed” comedies out of existence.  Although some independent production companies like “The Mary Tyler Moore Company” remained loyal to “film”, because that was their original reputation, and besides, the finished videotaped product “looked like a game show” – The Price Is Right, with punch lines.  Or so they haughtily asserted. 

Filmed comedy was given “The Last Rites.” 

Now look what’s back.  In format, if not in content.

Owing to “digital” technology, which is ostensibly – what do I know? – as cost-effective as “tape” was, the maligned and abandoned “single-camera” comedy has returned with a vengeance.  Videotaped production, which once threatened to “run the table”, is history.  As, with pockets of exceptions, is “multiple-camera” filming, which is both stylistically out of fashion and more expensive.  (Renting one camera costs less than renting four of them.)

You might believe – and I have – that the popularity of “single-camera” can be understood as being more in sync with today’s show runners’ heroes deriving less from the theater (videotape, in particular, was more amenable to “proscenium-like” presentation) than from cinema.  (Think: Judd Apatow and his self-savvy roster of characters.)

But the “single-camera” preference could just as easily be explained by “What’s cheapest?” 

It’s interesting, don’t you think?  The nature of an entire genre of entertainment being determined not by “creative enthusiasm” but by financial advantageousness?  (In America?  Really?)

An added bonus with “single-camera” over “multi-camera” productions:

Reduced network interference.

Why?  (In contrast to network executives attending numerous “multi-camera” runthroughs, offering subsequent “script notes.”)

NETWORK EXECUTIVE:  “We’d like to talk to you about Page 15.”

“SINGLE-CAMERA” SHOW RUNNER:  “We shot that yesterday.”

Thank you, “digital technology”. 

I may not know how it works. 

But I know what it prevents.