Documentary News Letter (1944-1945)

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER JANUARY AND FEBRUARY 1944 Problems in Production of U.S. Navy Training Films* Orville Goldner * From "Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers" Slide-films and motion pictures for the Navy are being produced under the supervision of the Chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics, who was directed by the Secretary of the Navy, in August, 1941, to ". . . fulfil the photographic requirements of education and training in the naval service". The Photographic Board, which made the original recommendation on which the Secretary acted, lumped the responsibility for the photographic requirements of education and training with other photographic responsibilities and assigned them all to the Bureau of Aeronautics because of its long-time experience in naval photography. As a result of this directive, the Photographic Division of the Bureau of Aeronautics, through its Training Film Branch, serves the entire Navy in its film production programme. Requests for film productions originate from training officers in the various naval training centres maintained throughout the country, or from officers in the training divisions in Washington. When production requests are approved by the cognisant authorities, the Training Film Branch assigns a two-man team to work with the technical advisor in outlining and producing a training film on the subject. One team member is the educational consultant, the other the project supervisor. Essentially, the project supervisor is the co-ordinator and administrator of the project for the Navy. Besides contributing the film "know how", he activates the project through his liaison relationships with the several persons jointly engaged in it — the technical advisor, the Navy or commercial producer, the educational consultant, the procurement and cataloguing departments of the Training Film Branch. The educational consultant helps to ensure that a film, as planned, teaches. He not only defines a film's purpose but helps to plan it according to well established pedagogical principles. He finds ways to fit it into existing curricula and may assist in adapting existing curricula to the new instructional programme. In several instances it has been found that pictures have forced realignment of existing curricula. Since the organisation of the Branch charged with responsibility for producing films for the Navy (July, 1941), the total number of projects completed is 1,692. Of these, 1,412 were slidefilms and 280 were motion pictures. The total number of projects in production at this time is 1,296, of which 850 are slide-films and 446 are motion pictures. Requests for production of films on additional subjects of interest to Navy training are coming in at the rate of 200 a month — clear evidence of the Navy's interest in the medium. Another line of evidence showing the Navy's dependence upon training films is found in the film distribution figures. In the last quarter, over 90,000 prints have been distributed. Nearly one thousand individual activities have been served. These include both ships and the nearly five hundred schools and naval training establish ments ashore where men are trained before being assigned to the fleet or to which they are returned for further training after some fleet experience. The training films the Navy makes and uses have been designed to be used in classrooms at the time in the course when they will help the instructor to standardise operations and make ideas clear to his students. They are not made to be shown as separate, uncorrelated features. And when planned for one specific group, as is most often the case, they are not expected to meet the complete needs of another group being taught things in a different way. For example, slide-films designed for use in the Aviation Service Schools for training enlisted men in maintenance and repair of aeroplanes have not been found particularly helpful for training civilian personnel in the aviation assembly and repair shops, even though both groups are working on the same model of aeroplane. The films the latter need are definitely job-analysis films on assembly and sub-assembly of parts, much too detailed to be of use in the Service Schools. The purposes served in each are different, and hence the training aids must of necessity be different too.i It is our task continuously to analyse the problems peculiar to and characteristic of every training situation. Training films must fit. Simply, they must assist in training or they are an expensive waste of time and strategic material. We find it necessary to repeat frequently that we are not in the business of making films per se; we are in the business of making training aids. That is why in a training film programme like the Navy's there is no place for the movie making prima donna. Celluloid fever is easy to get, but the making of effective training materials requires analytical, straight-line thinking, planning, and execution. When an official request reaches the Training Film Section, there are still a great many questions that have to be answered before a producer can be assigned to the task of producing the training film. A thorough job of research and preplanning must be done. Due to the problems inherent in a training programme during a war period, basic research and pre-planning take on various aspects. First, there is the research based upon standardised doctrine, good or bad, realistic or unrealistic, which has been used over a long period of time by a fairly well stabilised training activity. Second, there is the research on a training programme where there is no established doctrine — where the whole training programme is so new that a syllabus or simple outline has not been developed. Frequently it becomes the job of the Training Film Branch to establish the doctrine along with the production of the training film. In many cases, a training activity without established doctrine permits the creation of a more effective + The foregoing was written by Lt. Reginald Bell. U.S.N.R., Senior Educational Officer for the Training Film Branch. It is reproduced here substantially as it appeared in Visual Review for 1943. The remainder of the paper was written by Lt. Orville Goldner, U.S.N.R., Officer in Charge, Training Film Branch. training film than the activity that presumably has all its information frozen in outmoded handbooks and syllabi. It is far more stimulating for the project supervisor, the educational consultant, and the technical advisor to approach a problem that has not been thoroughly explored. A training film that evolves out of such a situation is almost certain to be more operational and less abstract than one that has been built out of a maze of words and formulae If no technical advisor is indicated on a request when it arrives at the Training Film Branch, it is obvious that the Branch must insist upon the appointment of a technical advisor before the basic research on the training film project can begin. It is always hoped that the technical advisor will come to the Training Film Branch with two basic qualifications — first, that he will be a subject-matter specialist, thoroughly experienced in the technical aspects of the proposed training film ; second, that he has sufficient authority to make decisions that will hold and be approved by his bureau or the activity which he represents. If the technical advisor happens to be a desk engineer with years of experience or a technical writer who has thought in terms of words and mathematics entirely when considering his subject, he almost invariably creates many difficulties for all those concerned -in the production of the training film. Let us consider tor a moment the first type of research — that based almost exclusively upon doctrine set forth in great detail in handbooks and manuals. If the subject happens to be mechanics or electricity or any one of a hundred other involved subjects on the complicated apparatus of this war, in all probability, the authors of the manuals and handbooks were engineers sitting at the desks of the manufacturer of the equipment involved. Frequently these have been considered all that is necessary for the guidance and training of competent personnel. Needless to say, these handbooks and manuals are generally one-sided — they tell the story about the equipment that the manufacturer wants to tell. And yet more than once, these engine encyclopedia, Diesel dictionaries, and radio rhetorics have been given to training film officers as scenarios. "Certainly." says the technical advisor, "what more do you want?" "Just make pictures to tit. and you'll have a beautiful training film." And. believe it or not, we've made a few along this line — abstract talking panoramas to delight the eyes and ears of our best engine Einsteins. We have been speaking here of one kind of material that is presented as doctrine for the construction of training films. This is the overcomplicated and unrealistic which makes picture planning difficult. Another kind of material presented as doctrine is the over-simplified — that kind that grew up in an unstudied training programme, in the hands of an alleged instructor who thought that generalisations were enough. This kind of material contains profound statements such as "Proceed to the engine, make adjustments preparatory to starting, turn up fuel oil to the proper level, turn throttle to recommended starting position, proceed as recommended in Section C, p. 32 of the Manufacturer's manual, serial number 836, etc., etc." We who are involved in the construction of training aids for the Navv know that neither of these kinds of material is sufficient as a basis or plan for an effective training film. Our job of basic research must go further. Consider for a moment the construction o\ training films on a