PART FIVE: Television As A Creative Medium

Gene Youngblood gives a brief history of television and how it has impacted society in the creation of a new medium. Television that has expanded exponentially since its creation in the 1930s. Television has become the main source for ingesting media for decades. With all the frequencies and channels (VHF and UHF) provide an limitless amounts of varied programming for society to interpret in their own way. Some programming being artistic, others informational.

In this piece, Youngblood references television as a medium that not only produces an image of you but also looks deeper "inside" of you. Television as a creative medium has led to an extension to the man's central nervous system. This is also referred to as the "video sphere." He also dives into the aspects of video synthesizing as well as keying, chroma-keying, feedback, mixing, editing etc. Everything having to do with today's new and shows. They all use similar types of creative video synthesizing techniques. Editing being the most important for overall visual appeal. Editing for television has helped its audience to understand atmosphere behind the camera as well as creatively expressing video indifferently to the one-shot films created do document life in the early 1900s by Lumiere.




Today we see greenscreens in film, television and in most newscasts; whether it be imposing graphics, placing people or objects in fantasy or as simple as your local weather forecast. In terms of video synthesizing, television has become the canvas for visual artists. Even the simplest of news can be considered "creative" depending on camera angles, superimposition or chroma effects. Production values have been decreasingly dropping for some films because the use of a greenscreen and is more cost effective than other methods.




All in all, Youngblood has given us a perspective to see the expansion of television as a creative medium and how much television has evolved since the early days pre-synthesizing years. Much more audience appeal has resulted from the evolution of television. As a filmmaker, I watch television for its artistry and creativity.