Documentary News Letter (1944-1945)

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER THE DARTINGTON HALL FILM UNIT THE DARTINGTON HALL FILM UNIT was Started in 1934 by the late William Hunter, a master at .Dartington Hall School. There was at that time — and it is still true — very little in the way of even moderately good class-room films. Hunter felt that more information was needed about the kind of film that was useful in class-teaching : there was clearly no future for film regarded either as a substitute for the class-lesson, or as semi-entertainment — movie-jam to coat the class-room powder. What the teacher wanted was a technique of illustration to supplement the text-book, the spoken word or the blackboard. Hunter started to experiment with films in his own subject, geography. He had certain advantages: technical knowledge, artistic flair, and the background of a progressive school and of an estate carrying on • a number of rural industries associated with the geography of the region. He produced films that were successful teaching instruments; by 1940, about a dozen were in general circulation. By this time the Unit had grown out of the space ■ available in the School, and it was transferred to the Arts Department, with an endowment of £400 a year. Further, Penguin Books Ltd. made a production grant towards a new series — Puffin Films — on agricultural topics. All this constituted a great advance on previous re' sources. But now the war drastically affected 'plans; it was not clear, with growing restrictions, to what extent the Unit would be able to continue. An Educational Experiment Early in 1941 the Unit was asked by the newly-created Film Council of the South-West to undertake the management of a small educational film library. Petroleum Films Bureau increased this by adding their instructional films to it. At the same time the Ministry of Information was considering the formation of regional libraries for the circulation of their films, and decided to make use of the Unit. Hunter's departure into the R.A.F. at the end of 1941 created a serious problem. His pioneer work was just beginning to make headway; if the Unit ceased to exist, the ground would be lost. It was decided to carry on, and at least keep the Unit alive until his return. His death in February, 1943 was an unexpected and irreparable disaster. But it seemed now even more important that the experience should not be wasted, and production has continued, not at the level that anyone would have thought ideal, but at the level that was possible in the existing man-power and material position. Productions to date total 24 films, in 40 reels. It is now clear that the Unit must as soon as possible get on to a more professional level than hitherto, still specialising in 16 mm. silent educational films of the type that its location makes peculiarly possible. Up to 1940, weekly dispatches of D.H. films seldom reached double figures, and revenue was negligible. 1945 showed an income from sale and hire of close on £1,000, and for the first time the Unit could have paid its way without endowment or production grants. While there is probably no future— nor, in the writer's view, should there be — for an educational unit based on the sale and hire of prints, the revenue figures are of interest as an index of demand. The distribution of M.O.I, films has likewise expanded rapidly; the Unit now serves over 200 sound and 30 silent 16 mm. projectors in the region, and dispatches about 1,000 reels a month. To sum up the experience of the past eleven years, there is first of all a considerable and unsatisfied demand for class-room films which are widely sought after even when they do not reach high technical quality in photography or direction. Secondly, an educational film unit need not be an expensive business; the quality of 16 mm. production can now be— though it still seldom is— as good as standard and the costs are almost absurdly small, even as compared with the modest scale of documentary. Finally, there is an advantage in a small production unit being linked with regional distribution. It can thus serve three related purposes. It can be an advisory centre, and since regional needs and preoccupations differ it is in many respects better able to give such advice than a central body; it can run a film library for schools and other organisations with their own projectors and run a mobile projector service on the M.O.I. model ; it can undertake experiments, or produce specialised films at a cost that is within the (continued on page 1 1) CANADIAN COLOUR SCHEME TJT/"hile we have been jogging along filming " everything in black and white, Canada, true to her history, has been blazing a new trail. Kodachrome sixteen millimetre is the tool she is using and a pretty dazzling one it is too. In fact it looks as though black and white films for nontheatrical showing might as well pack up. And if you think that this is exaggerating things a bit, just try seeing one of our films after seeing one from Canada. I am not suggesting that we should use colour for colour's sake but there is no doubt that the impact of a colour sub-standard is much greater than the equivalent black and white. The subject is more alive and the whole film more pleasant to watch. At a representative showing the other day we saw Flight of the Dragon, a film on Chinese art, Salmon Run, a film about the rumbustiously named Sockeye salmon, Face of Time, a geological survey, Life on the Western Marshes, a film of bird life and an organisation with the odd name of Ducks Unlimited, Eskimo Arts and Crafts, which was about what the title said it was about and Ski in the Valley of the Saints, a tourist-come-hither piece. All of them were nice to look at, all were on Kodachrome and the whole affair was a great pleasure to the eye. | I should say that during their making the | cameramen had grappled with most of the major problems which one might meet in connection with colour. In the ski film there were interiors with a lot of colour which were sucI cessful except for the poor rendering of flesh tones. Attention to make-up will, in time, i probably get over this. In the geology film there i were laboratory interiors which came off very well. In the same film there had obviously been trouble with the maps. The different colours tended to obscure the wording, but they did not look as though they would have been very good maps in black and white anyway. In the film about salmon two problems were faced and overcome successfully. The exteriors shot at different places matched very well except for one shot of a Reckitts blue sea and, incidentally, the sea always seems a special problem for any colour system as anybody who saw Western Approaches will remember; in order to get individual salmon scuttering across the shallow water of the spawning grounds the cameraman had obviously had to snatch shoot and this did not seem to have upset anything very much. The major drawback to Kodachrome is that dissolves still have to be made in the camera or not at all, so, unless the picture is following the commentary very closely, there are some rather awkward bumps, especially from exteriors to maps, for instance. Of course Kodachrome is nothing very new in the film arsenal but it would appear from these films that it is becoming a weapon of much greater precision and usability. It may be that cameramen are getting more experienced in the use of it (or that they still stow away thousands of feet of cut-outs in the vaults without telling anyone) but judging by the overall smoothness of the films we have seen, it presents no major obstacles to the would-be user. There is no sign that anyone is trying to use it dramatically but then I do not see that there is very much opportunity for this in the general rough and tumble of documentary film making. There's the subject in front of you and you have to make the best of the colour as you go along. Unless of course you want to emulate the gardeners in Alice in Wonderland. This of course brings us to the major defect of colour as far as documentary is concerned. It does tend to exaggerate all colours except pastel shades and thus, while it gives the picture an added interest, it also makes everything slightly unreal. Perhaps our tired eyes no longer see colours as they are and that they do in fact glow and shout and make a noise and that we have merely learnt to neutralise them to get a little visual peace. They certainly look a bit odd on the screen when applied to ordinary life. Whether this difficulty will be overcome by the lens or the stock or whether we shall just learn to accept them as we accept so many other conventions about the screen remains to be seen. The films I have mentioned are only a few of a large programme of colour films from Canada and these few notes on them are only nibblings at the edge of a large and important subject. Over here, shortage of stock, the difficulties of obtaining good prints, and lack of plant to meet professional needs, holds up any large scale developments, but they are bound to come. Colour gives the film an extra strength as well as a great deal of extra pleasure to the viewer and our vast non-theatrical audiences will want to see it used. So, whatever our prejudices against working in 16 mm. and our aesthetic views on the selective use of colour may be, it is worth while considering the whole matter carefully now, before we find that times have changed and left us with a hard sprint ahead of us.