NEW ZEALAND SINGER

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXX, 23 May 1936, Page 9

NEW ZEALAND SINGER

EXPERIENCES OF TELEVISION “Thrilled to bits!” exclaimed Gladys Lorimer, a New Zealand singer who has achieved operatic stardom abroad, when she was asked in Christchurch how she enjoved her experiences of televising for the. 8.8. C. “You feel that you are going right through .to your audience, so that it is more like being on the legitimate stage again.” Television had brought a set of new and different conditions for artists, Miss Lorimer continued. Certain types of faces did not televise well. Clearcut features photographed best, broad features and sunken eyes tending to produce undesirable shadows on the image. . , Miss Lorimer is the first artist to 'visit New Zealand who has been televised by the 8.8. C. There are now 25,000 television-receiving sets in England, she said, and three times a week the 8.8. C. transmits programmes for a radius of thirty miles around London. The television set is like an ordinary radio set with a panel of frosted glass on top. MADE UP LIKE A ZULU Similar to a first-class Zulu was how Miss Lorimer described the make-up necessary for television, the whole effect having to be black and white—a flesh-colour foundation which comes out white; eyebrows outlined with white; a wide ridge of white on the nose, shadowed with black; eyelids royal blue and lips the same. Costumes also had to be black and white. The studio was plunged into complete darkness, continued Miss Lorimer, and in order to provide a clear picture it was necessary to stand about two feet from the glass partition between the studio and the camera. A disconcerting vertical beam of light was switched on which was painfully intense and played in a flickering wave across the performer. When a dancer was being televised different arrangements were made. Whereas it was necessary for a singei to confine her attention to movements of the hands or arms within the narrow beam, a dancer was allowed freedom of movement, the beam and the camera following the performer bout. * * # V

A dramatic critic is a guy who surprises the playwright by informing him what he meant. —Wilson Mizner.