Business screen magazine (1946)

Parddox STANFORD SOBEL ll is usually soiiidhing of a shock to iiiDst Americans, but the vast majority of children born on the face of the earth are delivered by midwives, very few of whom have any legal certification, although they are well qualified for the work. Recently. I wrote that I was a registered midwife. Without a doubt, no other column I have written has precipitated such a deluge of response, among which were queries whether I was qualified to do abortions. (No! No! No!) How I became qualified to deliver babies is a result of a scries of films I did for training midwives. Because I had to go through the course as research before doing the films, I took the e.xam and qualified for the certificate. Technically speaking, however. 1 may no longer be legally qualified, as I have not paid the renewal fees during the intervening years. Films are a very efficient method — almost ideal — for training midwives, whose language and reading skills may be at a minimum. Furthermore, in my experience, miilwife trainees have very little respect for men in general, doctors in particular, and government officials of any kind. They will, hiiwcver. raptly observe an entire series of training films. They recognize realistic situations on screen, and want to know how to handle unusual situations. A training film can show them, without the presence of a doctor in the room while they watch. Ask anyone in this business how the sponsored films industry began, and invariably they recount World War II and the government training films used to train millions of men rapidly. Then ask the same chroniclers their opinion of government training films today, and they answer with a simple, disgusted "Yicch" It's a curious paradox that the worst films made today are training films, although without them, we probably wouldn't have an industry. Why arc they so bad? I think the answer is that we still are making them as the gcncrnment made them in 1943. Training is the one area of sponsored films that almost no company of any size can afford to be uithout. and \ct there's been almost no progress in making good ones. I'sually. they arc made on very low budgets, supervised by "training" directors who are either former teachers or former salesmen who. themselves, were great at selling, but who are simply dreadful at training others liow to sell. The other problem is that training people to do simple mechanical tasks, such as assembling a vacuum cleaner, is quite different from training them to sell vacuum cleaners. Confusion often exists in this area. I believe that anyone responsible for producing service training films sinnild be kept three miles away from those producing sales training films. I absolutely love to do training films, although often I am not allowed to do a good job on them: tightly strictured preconceptions of most training directors in corporations may prevent me. In fact, my reasons for liking training films arc quite selfish. Like New York City buses, training films have the herding instinct; they us ually come in groups of four to ten at a time. Obviously, anticipating a continuing scries of films that relieve the financial anxieties of a free^ lance writer is awfully nice. Another reason I like doing traia ing films is that they allow the writer to establish a continuing rapport with a client. The result of this kind of relationship is the growth of confidence. Confidence breeds the opportunity to do better work, to innovate, and to show solid results — a casserole instead of a flash in the pan. I have had the good fortune to be involved in a five-year series of training films for a petroleum marketer. 1 think the films are superb, and they improve each year. When we first started, the dealers gnmibled about the time required to look at the pictures. Now. they ask the com pany reps when another film will be ready for viewing. The good results have begun to show up in the field also; the more effective dealers are using the selling methods presented in the dealer training series. That was the good news. Now for the bad news. Last year, anothei company making its first training film put a process engineer ta charge. Having read two books on training, he informed me that he wanted a film along these lines: .\r opening situation with a man doinj something wrong, followed by hi? superior showing him how to do i' right, followed by the iiriginal mar showing a new trainee how to do ii right, followed by a recap at the end' "Tell them what you're going to tcl them, then tell them, then tell thci what you've told them." That's whai he told me — numerous times. The film was completed sevci| numths ago. and has become a jot — literally. To date, only three mer. have seen the picture, and they al laughed out loud. Oh well. 1 guess I must train my 1 self to deal with difficult jvople. i % \ 40 BUSINESS SCREENi