Reel and Slide (Jan-Sep 1919)

Record Details:

Something wrong or inaccurate about this page? Let us Know!

Thanks for helping us continually improve the quality of the Lantern search engine for all of our users! We have millions of scanned pages, so user reports are incredibly helpful for us to identify places where we can improve and update the metadata.

Please describe the issue below, and click "Submit" to send your comments to our team! If you'd prefer, you can also send us an email to mhdl@commarts.wisc.edu with your comments.




We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.

Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.

REEL and SLIDE 21 Vocational Training Offers Field for Moving Picture By John S. Bird, A. B. AMERICA'S leading industrial experts have, for years, supported vocational training schools in which the youth of to-day are made the skilled artisans of to-morrow. As a rule, the manual training course and the subsequent vocational course take up more time than the average poor boy can afford to give. Endowments have helped much in this direction and many boys are able to earn a living while taking such a course ; but the crying need for skilled workers to-day and for helping our returned soldiers get back in profitable trades, more than ever calls for haste. There are many branches of vocational study in which moving pictures may be expected to play an increasingly important part. The text book work, especially, can be augmented and the theory of mechanics clearly demonstrated with sets of correct and well made reels bearing directly upon the subject undergoing study. Some time ago I witnessed the exhibition of a moving picture in a vocational training school in St. Louis. The audience was composed of boys who were learning how to become masons. This picture, produced, I believe, by Pathe, demonstrated certain fundamental theories of masonry which undoubtedly would have taken a volume to make clear by means of the written word and the stolid line drawing. Besides this, lantern slides of specific points were interpolated at well chosen points, which made the moving picture all the more valuable. I figured in my own mind that this screen demonstration, taking into consideration the value of the close attention it got, saved these boys at least two weeks in their course. I was told by the head of this school that the affair was merely an experiment, but that he believed in it and that it would work out well in the end. He deplored, for one thing, the lack of satisfactory reels on the subjects taught and the incompleteness of those which were available at that time. Since, I know of a number of big manufactories which have progressed far beyond the stage of advertising films and are now educating their workmen with reels made for the purpose. The Y. M. C. A. is interested in this subject through their contact with industrial organizations. A beginning has been made. The labor shortage has called upon the captain of industry to take "raw" human material and make it into skilled help. He cannot afford to spend time in the process ; he must work quickly. The moving picture answers his problem to a large degree. One after another, big manufacturers are following the leaders in this connection, and many of our auto builders and rubber plants are producing reels for no other purpose than to acquaint the unskilled laborer with the tricks of the trade in which they desire him to work. Manifestly, the majority of these productions cannot have a sufficiently wide appeal to be of great use to the pedagog since they too often visualize only fragments of processes, but they are of some value nevertheless. It is probable that some producer could well afford to film sets of correct productions covering the essential processes in our chief industries and do a considerable business selling copies outright to the employers. At least one big department store has produced a picture to aid in the training of its clerks. It is considered that the retail clerk, perhaps more than any other employe, has less to attract him to the more serious side of his calling. He can be appealed to through lectures and store meetings, but there is a total lack of serious interest in them and to hold attention and drive home the more salient points, a "show" is needed. There is little technical that he may learn, but the silk salesman, after seeing a two-reel picture, "The Story of Silk," is a better salesman for it and is better qualified to talk to his customers. A shoe salesman who witnesses a couple of good reels on the "Making of a Shoe" finds himself better informed in regard to his daily duties than if he read a dozen books on the subject. Calls Moving Picture Screen Most Powerful Force in the World Today / / "W" N his speech to the Pleiades Club, William A. Brady, protesting against the proposed increase of the tax I burden of the motion picture industry, said that the time will come when the word of God will be largely taught through the media of the camera, the screen and the silent drama," says the New York Telegram. "He might have gone further in forecasting the widening opportunities of cinematography by pointing to the already well conceived and shrewdly directed efforts of teachers, preachers, publishers and politicians to project and make memorable on the screen those facts, incidents and arguments which have to do with visual education, religious thought, artistic development and civic tendency. "Even the swift forward movement of the amazing motion picture vogue which we have witnessed is but an indication of its inevitable development and extension. For arresting and fascinating the attention, for rapidity and accuracy of expression, for the ease and certainty of its appeal, the motion picture, with its accompanying written titles, sub-titles and "footnotes," is the greatest time saver, the most dependable and unvarying "authority" imaginable or possible for the quick and ceaseless dissemination of news and knowledge. In the universities, colleges, schools and nurseries the motion picture has already begun to fulfil some of its widening possibilities as a medium of education. "The surgeon, the bacteriologist, the chemist, men of all of the exact sciences, are turning to the motion camera and projector as first and most essential aids in their own investigations, as well as in the dissemination of their priceless discoveries and achievements. And the incredible celerity, in combination with unfailing accuracy of detail which characterize the thoughts and facts 'illustrated' upon the screen, have already established the motion picture as an absolute necessity (as it has already proved a commendable recreation) to the present life and future wellbeing of all sorts and conditions of people. There will be neither wisdom nor justice in any governmental plan to place needless inhibitions or hindratory obstacles in the path of the onward-moving motion picture industry." Meriden, Conn., Begins School Motion Pictures With "Why Water Should Be Boiled" THE town of Meriden, Conn., has just completed a successful test of moving pictures as aid to high school instruction, and from now on the films will be used at regular intervals in practically every branch of study which permits of visualization. The first picture shown in December depicted "Why Water Should Be Boiled." This subject is a lesson in the bacteria content of water under various conditions. The science classes do not have a monopoly on the screen, however. The physics classes recently studied machinery. The English classes will also be given opportunities later on to have presented to their attention "Lorna Doone," "Macbeth," "Adam Bede" and "The Cloister and the Hearth," without the bothersome work of turning the pages. The science classes will also watch other reels, such as "The Evolution of Transportation," "Development of Electricity" and kindred subjects. Chamber of Commerce Uses Screen to Boom Imperial Valley Imperial Valley, California, is to invade the moving picture world with scenes from her industries. Carl Wallen of the Pathe News Service has been at the Barbara Worth Hotel, El Centro, with his camera to photograph cotton fields, great flocks of turkeys, the wide stretches of milo maize and kaffir corn. These pictures will reach hundreds of thousands of people and be instrumental in bringing more settlers to the valley, it is thought. The work is done under the supervision of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce with the help and co-operation of the El Centro Chamber of Commerce and the Farm Bureau. Morris Rathbun will write a series of newspaper articles illustrated by these same pictures. The First Methodist Church, Bridgeport, Conn., is projecting the several films included in the Lincoln series for the benefit of the congregation. Admission is free. That motion picture shows "are required to run health slides" is a ruling recently promulgated by the city commission of Boston, Mass., sitting as a board of health, concurrently with the rescinding of the general closing order. The ruling adds that "copy" for the slides will be "furnished by the health department." The City Temple, Dallas, Texas, is the scene of periodical community motion picture exhibitions. The institution is supported largely by local church people.