RTV Theory and Practice - Special Issue

semantic strata are relegated to the background. They can be brought fonvard only by decoding the messages, of a direct-transmission TV presentation, provided the directon has been capable of creatively organizing the presentation and handling its symbolicsm; capable, in other words, of putting together a TV production. The factual TV message is entirely equal in substantive terms to messages communicated discursively, as the simple description of one ог another aspect of an event There is no attempt to enter into a broader ог deeper interpretation of the event In this case, the TV picture does not exceed its function of denoting reality. The tendency inherent in every pictorial representation, and the TV picture is no exception, to raise itseif from sensory analogue to simbolic imagery fails to prevail. There is no signaling or metaphoric suggestion of an event’s hidden meaning. And unless this inherent function of a pictorial representation finds expression within the context of the presentation - in this case the TV picture - the communicative value of the presentation remains denotative; a sensory analogue obtained by TV electronic transmission, a pictorial representation. It is a message devoid of the essential aesthetic component for establishing symbolic distance from the living event And without this dimension there is little possibility of transforming the TV event from reproductive-factual into a values-enriched, both aesthetically and politically, evocative message. Finally, the transformation sought from factual presentation to TV production must be by complex interventions to inject connotations into the message. The right interventions can impart ”extended significance” to the TV production and TV picture, and this means reproducing the factual data of a living event while at the same time associating its details in meaningful relationships. The transformation of the TV picture or more extended sequences achieves in this way the transformation of the TV event overall, and the sensory analogue can become a semantic representation in the conceptual sphere.

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