2013 | 4 | Hidden Professions of Television

We know little about the ‘behind the scenes’ of television. While the booming field of production studies has been shining a light on the work processes and the personnel in production spaces, there is still a lot to be learnt about the ‘hidden’ professions of television. This issue of VIEW provides a rich but fairly eclectic series of contributions based on the theme. The articles presented here bring under scrutiny the ‘behind the scenes’ activities of television and their hidden, often unrecognised and uncelebrated personnel and processes. They engage across a wide range of organisational, administrative and technical activities that have played their understated, often ‘invisible’ part in the historical formation and development of television.
Just like in the previous issues, articles in this issue are divided across two separate sections: ‘Discoveries’ that zoom into the ‘behind the scenes’ of specific programmes and broadcasters and use innovative and original sources; and ‘Explorations’ that shine a light on different professions of television: from the continuity announcers, to the 1st AD, to the TV retailer or audience interpreters.
Co-edited by Andy O'Dwyer and Tim O'Sullivan

Now showing 1 - 11 of 11

Editorial
O'Dwyer, Andy; O'Sullivan, Tim (2013-12-23) , S. 1-2
We know little about the ‘behind the scenes’ of television. While the booming field of production studies has been shining a light on the work processes and the personnel in production spaces, there is still a lot to be learnt about the ‘hidden’ professions of television. This issue of VIEW provides a rich but fairly eclectic series of contributions based on the theme.
Invisible Mediations: The Role of Adaptation and Dubbing Professionals in Shaping US TV for Italian Audiences
Barra, Luca (2013-12-23) , S. 101-111
With the increasing global circulation of media products, professionals devoted to the process of audiovisual translation and ‘national mediation’ for foreign ready-made programmes have gained a central role in contemporary TV. Presenting the results of an ethnographical study, this essay explores the ‘invisible art’ of TV adaptation and dubbing, explaining its procedures, traditions and challenges. Adaptation has to consider both the technical necessities of the audio-visual and cross-cultural aspects of translation, while dubbing involves extremely intricate production routines, professionals with different skills, written and unwritten rules, a range of different workplaces, economic investments and traditions. The result is a new text, modified following contrasting linguistic, cultural and professional goals.
Writing Games: Continuity and Change in the Design and Development of Quiz Shows in Italy
Fiacco, Axel; Scaglioni, Massimo (2013-12-23) , S. 112-123
As in the United States and in many countries across Europe, the quiz show was a founding genre for Italian television as far back as the 1950s: because of their broad appeal, such game shows as Lascia o raddoppia and Il musichiere contributed strongly to television’s burgeoning popularity during the subsequent decades. Since then, the quiz show has traversed different eras of television history, with partial and gradual changes to its textual features, aesthetics and narratives, as well as its production routines. Since the 1980s, with deregulation and the advent of commercial television, the Italian game-show market has become more international and more reliant on formats. In the genre’s long history, the ‘hidden profession’ of writing TV games exhibits elements of both continuity and change. The needs of format-adaptation have highlighted two main areas of “localization”: question-writing and casting. This essay explores the profession of game-show writer in Italy and how the role has evolved. It adopts a historical framework to illuminate the continuity and change in the profession, in relation to a broader history of both the genre and the television medium, while also seeking to outline both the specificity of the Italian TV context and its connections with an international environment.
Behind the Scenes: Costume Design for Television: There are Many Things you Don't Know About the League of Gentlemen
Toylan, Gamze (2013-12-23) , S. 15-26
Focusing on the award winning costume designer Yves Barre’s work for The League of Gentlemen (BBC, 1999-2002), this article explores the role of the costume designer in television production. Using an anthropological method that combines original interviews with Barre, Steve Pemberton (one of the writer/performers) and Jon Plowman (the executive producer) as well as second hand material such as DVD extras, the article provides insight into the show’s creative process. The underlying objective is to shed light on the costume design process – an understudied stage of television production.
Doing it Live! Planning and Preparing for a Live Drama Episode: A Case Study of The Bill (ITV, 2005)
MacDonnell, Joanna (2013-12-23) , S. 27-44
Over the last decade there has been a move towards live episodes of popular television dramas and soap operas in the UK being used to celebrate programme and channel anniversaries. This paper, written by a member of the production team is focused on the ‘behind the scenes’ preparation and subsequent broadcast of the live episode of British police drama The Bill on September 22nd 2005. This live episode became a landmark broadcast as it was the first time that dramatic stunt sequences had been performed live. This article will be supported with examples from the original planning documentation and rehearsal photographs and will examine the production culture in the planning and preparation of the episode. It will also reveal some of the trickery used to execute the stunts, will discuss the difficulties experienced during the live episode and how problems were overcome.
Revealing Television's Analogue Heroes
Jackson, Vanessa (2013-12-23) , S. 3-14
In this article I will argue that we need to create new archival models in order to preserve and share knowledge of historical, ‘hidden’ television professions and production cultures. Oral history traditions of recording life stories give us a useful starting point. Engineering ‘encounters’ between skilled television technicians, and the now obsolete equipment they operated in the 1970s and 80s, is challenging for a myriad of reasons, but videoing the interaction of man and machine provides us with a rich insight into how analogue television was produced and broadcast. Social media enables us to disseminate these histories in new and innovative ways.
Whatever Happened to Vera?
Henderson, Jo (2013-12-23) , S. 45-50
The road to technological progress is littered with unsuccessful prototypes and their inventors. In British television there is perhaps no better example than John Logie Baird, universally recognised as the successful inventor of the technology, but not of the successful business model. Another, lesser known, casualty is the Vision Electronic Recording Apparatus (VERA), developed within the BBC Design Unit between 1952 and 1958. VERA had the potential to change the production and working practices of British television, in ways yet to be imagined or apparent, but just as it reached completion it was superceded by an American import.This article, based entirely on secondary sources, seeks to illuminate and narrativise some of the threads in the hidden, or certainly largely unexplored, history of video in British television, to identify a pathway for further development of this research, notably at the BBC Written Archive at Caversham.The start date of 1955 recognises the ending of the BBC’s television monopoly and the changes and shifts that the BBC had to adjust to as broadcasting became a duopolistic and unionised industry. The end date reflects a point where the quality of ‘non-broadcast’ video technology reached the standard that had previously been set as the broadcast minimum by the broadcasting unions.
In-Vision Continuity Announcers: Performing an Identity for Early Television in Europe
de Leeuw, Sonja; Mustata, Dana (2013-12-23) , S. 51-67
Female in-vision continuity announcers have played central – yet understudied and ‘hidden’– roles in early television history. Through their performances on and off the screen, they mediated the identity of the televisual medium in the 1950s and 1960s, popularizing it as a medium of sound and vision, a domestic and gendered medium as well as a national and transnational institution. Focusing primarily on Dutch and Romanian female in-vision continuity announcers in the 1950s and 60s and making comparisons with other countries in Europe, this article illustrates how these early professionals of television performed as part of a European-wide phenomenon, defining the identity of the new televisual medium.
Rational Wizards: Audience Interpreters in French Television
Bourdon, Jérôme; Méadel, Cécile (2013-12-23) , S. 68-78
This paper will tell the story of the small group of people who, in France, have been in charge of the measurement and the appreciation of television audiences, and had to invent audience research. They had to organize it and to communicate its results to ‘clients’ who depended on it much earlier than usually assumed. These ‘clients’ were: television managers and professionals, public authorities, and, last but not least, advertisers. The paper will explore how the professional origin and training of measurers has changed over the years: from having an almost literary background to having a formation in sociology and semiology. It gives insights into how the roles of measurers changed from assessing viewers’ satisfactions, preferences and viewing habits from 1949 until the mid-60s, to producing audience figures from the mid-60s to the mid 70s and more and more to providing daily, detailed, and quickly produced figures of the audience through audiometers by the mid-80s and afterwards. Despite these changes, the need for effective mediations existed all along.Those mediators - the figures and reports - played several roles. Particularly - and this is true today - they provided channel managers with a source of ‘para-democratic legitimacy.’ For the ‘profession’ of measurers, this means that they have always played an important role, as spokespersons of the audience, equipped with an almost magical kind of knowledge: they had the power to ‘read’ the will and whims of a mysterious, anonymous mass of viewers.
An Unknown, but Key Player in the Television Market: The Television Retailer and the Case of Black and White TV Sets in France (1950-1987)
Gaillard, Isabelle (2013-12-23) , S. 79-88
This article offers insights into how black and white TV sets were sold in France from 1948 to the mid 80s. During this period, the black and white television set shifted from being an expensive and breakable technical object to a commonplace, mass consumer durable good. The article illustrates this process.
Hid(ing) Media Professionals: Constructing and Contesting the 1st AD
Ashton, Daniel; Jeune, Nic (2013-12-23) , S. 89-100
This article addresses the hidden professions of television production through examining the role of the First Assistant Director (1st AD). Drawing on ‘industry talk,’ this article examines the ways in which the role of the 1st AD is understood as central to the film and television production process but regarded as overlooked or lacking in status and visibility. Examining how 1st ADs position themselves and are positioned as both invisible and visible is an opportunity to examine competing understandings of production hierarchies and how 1st ADs can challenge their status as hidden professionals.

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