Documentary News Letter (1947-1949)

84 DOCUMENTARY FILM NEWS CORRESPONDENCE Agricultural Films SIR, 'Technician's' tetchy article on the SFA Films in Agriculture Conference has had at least one valuable result. It has stimulated Mr Mervyn Reeves into writing some valid and useful criticism, in your May 1948 issue. As he says, we have few if any objective data about rural audiences, their rate of and capacity for film assimilation, their comparative response to sound and silent films, their views on commentators, and so on. Facts on all these and other similar points would be of great value to film-makers (who genuinely prefer to do a useful rather than a useless job) and to the people in the Ministries, COI, NAAS, and other organizations who have to suggest, commission, supervise and use the films. Two questions now arise, and I ask them not with the object of scoring any debating points, but because I want to know the answers. (a) Whose job is it to get these facts? (b) How is he going to get them? It is no good saying 'How nice it would be to have some facts!' and then sitting back. If it would be as nice as all that, then they have to be got. Getting them is going to occupy some man-hours. Man-hours cost money. Therefore, somebody, or some body, has got to make itself responsible — has got to assume the financial and moral burden of getting the facts, interpreting them and making them available? Who, or what, is the correct, competent and willing body to do this? Granted that the work is to be done, the question of method has to be tackled. The facts must be facts, not subjective and contradictory personal impressions. The technique of this kind of fact-finding is not very highly developed at present, and analogous work in the entertainment and child-education film fields has yielded some results which are susceptible to more than one interpretation. I venture to suggest that no acceptable standards against which audience-reaction results can be measured for significance and validity have yet been devised. The very methods of experimentation are yet in their infancy. Investigation will have to be carried out on a fairly large scale if results are to be reliable, because there are a large number of variables involved, not all of which are exactly measurable— statistical levelling is, therefore, necessary. Further, I have the impression that the reactions of audiences to, at any rate, the instructional kinds of film change rather rapidly with the number of films seen. If this is true it suggests that the fact-finding ought properly to be regarded as a continuing rather than a oncefor-all job. I am not saying all this with the object of discouraging fact-finders. My point is that useful fact-finding is not going to be dead easy, and I rather suspect that even when the facts have been found they will be somewhat difficult to interpret. The job ought to be started, and the sooner the better, but I think we must not expect a golden shower of understandable results in the first week or two. Yours faithfully, 355a Finchley Road JOHN shearman Hampstead, NW3 How, What and Why sir: Having seen the film How, What and Why reviewed in your June number, I feel that I must take issue with your reviewer on the item concerned with the pulse. 'No indication,' he says, 'is given at the end of the significance of the difference of pulse rate with which the doctor is concerned.' What, indeed, would he have in a three minute item designed for children? But perhaps he does not know that the significance of pulse variations (in which rhythm and volume are concerned just as much as rate) is a complex subject which could fill quite a large text-book? In a film of this type it would be impossible to make any statement which would not be misleading or inaccurate without qualification. Quite rightly the film-makers re fused to attempt it and confined themselves (at the end!) to the statement that the pulse varied in health and disease, and that these variations gave the doctor an indication of the state of health of the body. That, surely, is answer enough for a twelve-year-old. So far from indicating careless scripting, this particular item seems to me to illustrate the precise reverse. Yours etc., MEDICAL PRACTITIONER DON'T FORGET THE 2nd INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF DOCUMENTARY FILMS at EDINBURGH AUGUST 22 to SEPTEMBER 12, 1948 For further Information apply to EDINBURGH FILM GUILD FILM HOUSE, 6-8 HILL STREET EDIN BURGH, 2 TELEPHONE AND TELEGRAMS: EDINBURGH 34203 \ A COMPLETE LABORATORY SERVICE PRECISION FILM PROCESSING ■ TITLES • INSERTS • ANIMATED DIAGRAMS OPTICALS • SPECIAL EFFECTS NEGATIVE CUTTING EDITING STUDIO FILM LABORATORIES ltd 80-82 WARDOUR STREET & 71 DEAN STREET W. 1 TELEPHONE GER: 1365-6-7-8 REVIEW YOUR FILMS Al 1 OUR R.C.A. PREVIEW THEATRE