friday, november 10, 1978
daily nebraskan
page 1 1
arts and entertainment
Lincoln television production house serves Midwest
By Peg Sheldrick
Not many inhabitants are aware of it,
but Lincoln is the home base for an up-and-coming
TV production house whose
market spans the Midwest. What began as a
two-man basement operation in 1976 has
grown into a successful nine-employee
company with its own building and a
branch office in Los Angeles.
Smeloff TV Productions is located in a
modest, quiet-looking frame house on 27th
Street. Only the sign out front hints at the
sophisticated nature of the business that
goes on within. Much of the homey atmo
sphere has been retained inside. In the hall
way sits an antique television. Only one
room has been remodeled to accommodate
the video equipment. It is inside this room,
where lights blink, tapes falsh on the moni
tor, and talk runs rampant of dubbing and
mixing that you get a feeling for the com
plexity of this operation.
Lincoln had a need
Nick Smeloff formed the company in
December 1975. He had been working as a
producer and director for ETV, and per
ceived a need for this kind of production
organization in Lincoln. In July 1976,
Smeloff joined forces with Don Jacks, who
was working at UNL's Office of Univer
sity Information.
The company has had great success in
its relatively short history.
Even so, most passers-by have no idea
what the Smeloff organization does.
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Photo by Pablo
Joe Pass' "unequalled" style and technique earned him an acclaim of world's best
guitarist. He is scheduled to appear Saturday in Kimball Auditorium.
Polls call Pass best guitarist;
to appear Saturday evening
Joe Pass, one of the world's most
honored jazz guitarists, will appear this Sat
Saturday at 8:00 in Kimball Auditorium.
In the last year Pass has been named
World's Best Guitarist by the Down Beat
Reader's Poll, Critic's Poll and the 15th
Annual Reader's Poll of Swing Journal
entertainment
notes
Jon Sievert in Guitar Magazine said:
"Pass has developed an improvisational
style and technical virtuosity perhaps un
equalled in the instrument's history."
The Lincoln Jazz Society is sponsoring
Pass' appearance. Tickets still are available
for $6.00 at Dirt Cheap and the Kimball
box office.
The Sheldon Film Theater will be show
ing 1900, the four hour Bernardo
Bertolucci epic November 1 2 through 1 6 as
part of the UPC Foreign Films series.
The film, which stars Burt Lancaster,
Robert De Niro, Dominique Sandra and
Donald Sutherland, centers around two
boys born on the same day in 1901 , on the
same Emilian estate.
Olmo, the first born, is the son of a
peasant; Alfredo is the son of the padrone.
Olmo and Alfredo are set as children
against the backdrop of the peasant strikes
and rebellions of 1908, as young men just
after World War I, and through the rise of
Fascism and the Second World War. They
are seen again on April 25, 1945, Libera
tion Day, when the peasants of Emilia for
one day seize the land and Alfredo, the
new padrone, with it.
Finally, the film shows Olmo and
Alfredo set in the early 1970s-very old
men fighting the battle of history they've
been waging all their lives.
Screenings for 1900 are at 7:00 p.m.
only.
The Union Program Council-East, will
be sponsoring two showings of the films
The Goodbye Girl, and The Great Train
Robbery. They can be seen in The Great
Plains Room of the Nebraska East Union
at 7:30 p.m. Sunday, November 12, and at
9:00 p.m. Monday, November 13.
Also on Sunday, there will be a disco
dance after the show, until 1 1:00 pjn. It
is free with a movie ticket, 50 cents
without.
The Collegium Musicum of UNL, will
present a concert of early music on
Sunday, November 12 at 8:00 p.m. at the
Wesley House, 640 N. 16th St. In addition
to works of early instruments and of vocal
soloists, the program will feature early
choral music, sung by a newly-formed
choral ensemble.
"We are constantly asked if we make
house calls because someone's TV set is
broken," Jacks said. "People have no con
cept of a TV production company. They
don't think about where the programs
come from-they think they come from
New York and Los Angeles, not from Lin
coln, and they're very surprised."
Directs, records commercials
The company directs and records com
mercials and programs for clients. Among
their clients are Godfather's Pizza, National
Bank of Commerce, Old Home, Provident
Savings and Loan, and Ford dealers in
Omaha and Kansas City.
"We don't write them (the ads)," Jacks
explained. "We control to an extent the
kind of shots that go in."
The clients specify what they want on
the screen, and it's up to the director to
choose how it will look and how it will be
photographed. Sometimes getting the shot
is a simple matter, like shooting a loaf of
bread on a table. But it isn't always that
easy.
On-location operation
"Primarily we are an on-location opera
tion," Jacks said. The camera and micro
phones are suited for remote shooting,
which can mean anything from up in a
plane to down a mountain side in a ghost
town. The 150 pounds of equipment has
been "pushed and carried and dragged" up
bell towers and into balloons. They haven't
mastered underwater photography yet, but
that's about the only restriction on the
type of shots the Smeloff organizations
goes after.
Once the photography is finished, the
twenty-minute video tape cassettes are
returned to the office for editing. Tapes,
unlike films, are not cut and spliced.
Editing is accomplished by means of dub
bing the usable material onto a master
tape. Eventually sound and whatever other
elements are necessary are added according
to client specifications. The result is the
finished commercial or program.
Remote shooting busy
Remote shooting is a busy business.
"Right now we're going about 1 5 days a
month, which means we're becoming au
thorities on restaurant food and motels,"
Jacks said.
Last week, for example, the three-man
crew drove 450 miles, shot two series seg
ments in one day, shot ten more episodes,
drove 600 miles back, and were home by
Saturday.
"That's the only way you can do it," he
said of the intensive schedule that
produced two and a half weeks worth of
shows.
Continued on Page 13
Stewart reaches big time
without following formulas
By Jeff Taebel
The world of rock music is one of many
strange hybrids. Funk has united with
bubblegum to give us disco, jazz and rock
have merged to give us fusion and frustra
tion and alienation of the '70s have joined
with the musical simplicity of the '50s,
yielding punk.
album review
Somewhere in the midst of this confu
sion stands Al Stewart, who has hit the big
time without following any of the afore
mentioned formulas. Stewart's music has
always been a breath of fresh air on the
airwaves, providing an excellent antidote
to the monosyllabic mindlessness that is
continually foisted upon us by the powers
that be.
Stewart, like Paul Simon, Dylan and
precious few other songwriters can produce
a catch hit song that can leave the listeners
with more to think about than your
average AM fare.
Fine fillers
In addition to his commercial success in
the singles market, Stewart has continually
turned out fine songs to fill out his albums,
rather than being content to produce an
album which contains two hits and eight
throwaways.
As a matter of fact, many of Stewart's
more evocative pieces do not receive much
airplay, a perfect example being his poig
nant "Roads To Moscow," which was a
titantic undertaking for a rock songwriter.
Stewart's latest album, Time Passages,
breaks no new ground as it is filled with
material which stays in the same basic
framework, yet it is not merely a rehash
ing of old songs.
His backup band is as strong as ever,
the lead guitar work of Tim Renwick and
Peter White along with the big, buzzing sax
of Phil Kenzie, pick the songs up in all the
right places.
Production good
The production chores are handled ad
mirably by Alan Parsons, who succeeds in
capturing the subtle essence of Stewart's
vocals, which certainly are not
overpowering.
However, as is often the problem with
Parson's work, the sound quality is a little
too artificial. The acoustic guitars and
drums sound crisp, and the solos jump out
into the forefront at appropriate inter
ludes, yet the music seems to lose some of
its immediacy in the process.
Stewart's songwriting touch remains as
deft as ever and, while he misses his mark
with a few tunes, he turns in a strong per
formance throughout most of the album.
Heavy-handed
Side one is highlighted by "Time Pas
sages," "Valentia Way" and "A Man For
All Seasons," all of which have fine
melodies and expressive lyrics. But the
references to Henry Plantagenet and
Thomas More in the side's closing number
are a bit heavy-handed.
Side two gets off to a good start with
"Almost Lucy" and the grandiose "Palace
Of Versailles" but finishes on a low note
with "Song On The Radio" and "End Of
The Day."
However, one drawback Time Passages
has is the fact that the music and lyrics are,
for the most part rather subdued, inducing
moods of dark introspection which are
not balanced by any good, clean fun. Even
Dylan and Simon occasionally cut loose in
an exuberant fashion, but Stewart seems to
be caught in a perpetual state of melancho
ly and, as a result, much of his material is
often better suited for late night listening
on the radio than for playing in your home
on a Friday afternoon.
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