former glory and curse the metamorphosis that has occurred. This is a pattern that is also followed from television to film and vis--vis.Films become television shows - Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Highlander etc, etc.Television shows become Films - Startrek, Southpark, Mission Impossible, The Avengers etc, etc. There are, surprisingly, still a few classic shows which have yet to receive the film upgrade. The Goodlife for example. Film and television share a visual capacity so ideas can pass between them freely, aesthetic development is less when compared to a radio show becoming television. Yet, Howard Stern’s feature ‘Private Parts’(1998), is an exaple of radio crossing to film. Despite sharing the visual form, television and film also differ in many ways. Film is a single production, a film usually completes a circle of events, television programs do not have to.. Television uses the cliff-hanger to entice the viewer back for more next week. There is no next week in film. Tensions, if party to the film, are built between scenes not left to the end (although trilogies use this ploy). Film offers us the ‘good ’ and the ‘bad’ and points us to root for the good, it does not have the time to construct characters and sympathies over a long period of time in the way television can. With a few exceptions film rarely leaves the viewer perplexed as to what’s going to happen now, the time taken was enough, there is no time limit on a film, it finishes when it has run its course. The enhanced quality of colour, sight and sound which a film gives when viewed in its correct place (the cinema), makes for a different viewing experience to that of TV. It is like an event, like watching a play or a concert. You have a choice in what to watch, certain genres you may have a preference for, you take your chance with others, the difference with film you have to accept what it is it is bei...
