Theatre Design & Technology - Spring 1981 - 40

(. .. continued from p. 25)
the last--equally important-is light, with its unlimited expressive possibilities.
All these expressive means are available to a television designer while designing a production. The most frequent misconception about television design, which, I must say, is held
by some people in television (including many producers and
directors), is the tendency to perceive, or recognize, the design only in fragments; for example set design, costume design, graphic design, lighting design, etc. The most important
factor is frequently ignored-production design as a whole.
It is also more than obvious that in this conceptual part of
design, the ability to express ideas visually in some tangible
form-the visual communication-is equally required in the
design process for all audio-visual media. Therefore, designers who are talented and properly educated (trained) in the
area of translating ideas into audio-visual forms through the
application of scenography, are and should be of potential
benefit to all three media.
The existing separation between these three media, from
the design aspect, is perhaps understandable from the historical point of view-and artificially inflated by the non-detachable business world-but absolutely unacceptable by artistic
and cultural principles.
If so far I have been trying hard to convince you that there
are no differences between conceptual design methods or the
application of scenography in the three audio-visual media,
now I will try even harder to point out the differences between
theatre and television when it comes to the so-called design of
conditions to realize the already designed concept of production.
The obvious difference stems from the way we convey the
idea to the audience, and the final form of the idea as perceived by the audience. The three-dimensional form in
theatre, as opposed to the two-dimensional images in television, represents the need for the fundamental difference in
design approach. The most significant requirements for designing a TV production are the ability of a designer to pre-visualize the production through audio-visual images, and the
knowledge of the technique involved in the process of achieving them.
With these principal differences, how can one designer
possibly function adequately in all three media?
As a parallel, am I saying that a musician must be able to
play three different instruments to be considered a musician?
Of course the answer is no. It is no because the progress of
design in the last two decades has significantly changed the
role of designers. Using the parallel, designers have gone
from musicians to composers. And a composer must be able
to compose for all instruments. This qualitative change in the
designer's role in general must influence-and it is influencing-the process of educating a television designer.
Teaching television design is not, and should not be considered as an isolated process, but rather as an extension toward the ability of applying scenography to a different, but related medium. Television design cannot afford to ignore the
thousands of years of theatrical traditions, of theatre design,
which fought for its recognition within the visual arts, going
through a long tunnel of "isms", to reach the light at the end
of it in the form of scenography.
Let me demonstrate how far we have come, by using the
fight scene from Romeo and Juliet as an example. There was
a time when we felt strongly that the creative limit in representing this fight was to have an excellent illusion of the
streets of Verona and two groups having a mock fight with
prop swords. But imagine a version of the same scene today:
Only one group is onstage, they turn their backs on you, the
audience, and begin throwing real stones and bricks into the
deep darkness at the invisible enemy. Stones hit metal sheets
somewhere in that darkness, creating a barrage of violent
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sounds with echoes and sparks. You as an audience feel
guilty for passively participating in the violence, by simply sitting behind them. What a demonstration of scenography! No
design, in any audiovisual medium can ignore this.
I said, at the begining, that we must take a hard look at the
medium of television and its design. Let's take a hard look.
Television design, in its relatively short lifetime, has gone a
different route than in theatre. Its desperate, narrow-oriented
attempts at realism, have absorbed almost all the energy of
the television designer, leaving very little, if anything at all, for
creativity. The pressure of time on designers in the TV medium--especially in the large networks-the required speed
and quantities, absorbs the creative ability and potential
sooner, which results in declining of the artistic quality.
Should we be proud-in television--of achieving a better,
so called realistic look of sets, better and also more expensive
craftsmanship, a technically clearer picture and colors, a
larger picture, a smaller picture? Or, should we be proud of
participating in the creative process of how to deliver the author's idea to the audience, and using the medium to its fullest
force and potential.
Being involved with the medium for all my professional life,
there are no doubts in my mind as to which way television design should go; the kind of designers we will need in the future
in television seems obvious. Let me emphasize again that I do
not see the teaching of television design as a separated process, but as an extension of ability to apply a visual concept to
the specific medium.
If we add to a scenographer the ability to pre-visualize a
television production in audio-visual images and the knowledge of the television medium from technical and psychological aspects-by this I mean knowledge of elements which influence the design of conditions, like lenses, their effects on
the perspective, their perspective distortion, their relation to
light and focus, the electronic principle of TV images, the
multi-camera shooting of sequences, the studio equipment
etc.-we will have a television designer with the ability and
potential to bring the medium where it belongs and hopefully
keep it there. 0
Val Strazovec is an award-winning television scenographer and
founder and co-director of the
Institute of Scenography for TV
and Film in Toronto.

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USITT /Spring, 1981

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