Business screen magazine (1947)

ISSUE 1 • VOLUME 8 OF THE FIRST NATIONAL BUSINESS JOURNAL OF AUDIO-VISUAL COMMUNICATIONS Since 19B8: A Business Screen Review MARGINAL NOTES ON THE PROGRESS OF VISUAL COMMUNICATIONS DURING THE THREE PHASES OF THE WAR PERIOD AND AFTER I -if ANOTHER VOLUME BEGINNING and nearlv a decade of apprenticeship already served in tlie cause of visual publications serve as fitting background for these paragraphs of retrospection. "Vcsterdav" was July, 1938 when the first Business Screen appeared after six months of intensixe preparation. Headline performers in our first all-star show were International Harvester "film pioneer since 1911." johnsManville, United .States Steel (with a color epic .seldom cciuallcd) . Bristol-Myers (Boy Meets Dog in Technicolor animation), Standard Oil of Indiana, and Coty. These were good films. The Johns-Manville technical subjects (such as Hent iind lis Control) arc outstanding examples of companv use of the fifm mecfiiun to explain processes, product, and to deliver in clearly understandable language, facts whicli exade the ]>rinted or oral word in education. li is most significant and gratifying to note I hat nearly every sponsor mentioned in oiuiu.iugural number has been continually acii\e in ihe ust' ol hlin lor the past ten years. Har\ ester's twcnty-se\en years (from 1911 to 1938) have now lengthened to thirty-six consecutive years of film production and use in the field, on the farm and in the factorv. RtAL Progress is ".Sti<.kin(, \\ rrii ihi [ob" Oiustanding technical de\elopments such as (he advent and improvement of television as a means ol mass distribution of the film message, the breath-taking beauty and growing dependability of color processes— these are milestones clearly seen along the road. But progress is not always in the events as such. lO us as editors, progress meant "sticking uiih the job" and in those dark, lean years just before the AVar. we learned what that meant. For industry, except for the bright iniirlude of the New York AVorld's Fair, was 111 put aside sales promotion, sales training and advertising programs and "business as usual" became all-out "war production" for every first-class U.S. industrial concern. Visual training techniques learned in the studios ol lletroit. New York and Chicago film pro(luters (as in others ol this specialized craft in locations from coast to coast) , were reach lor Din war industries and for the armed Inrccs. Ii is significant and trui' thai bnili lihns and visual training ulili/alinn lucthdils applied on a broad ui.iss siak bv tin Arniv and Na\y were not the result of their own limited prewar experience but were provided bv commercial film companies. Three Reports on Significant Programs In the earliest phase of the important Visual .Aids for War Training ])rogram of the United States Office of Education, the Editors of Business Screen provided business with the first summation of the initial 48-film series in the area of M/trhine Shop Work, Precision Mi'iisureiiioil . and Shipbuilding Skills. .As tfiis |jrogram was extended through the war years to an ultimate library of more than 450 separate titles, including both motion pictures and individual hlmstrips as well as instructor's manuals for each subject, the use of the visual medium was extended into plant training departments throughout the nation as never before. We suminarizetf the U. S. Office of Education Visual .Aids program in a 194(1 issue which was well-received. Both .Army and .Navy lilm production and utilization programs were on a scale undreamed of in prewar years. Millions of feet of raw stock were consumed, thousands of motion picture ancf filmstrip projectors utilized in training camps and bases both here and abroad, as well as on nearly every type of ship at sea. The successful work of the Training Film and Motion Picture Branch, Bureau of Aeronautics, and the contribution of industrial film producers from New York to California was reported in the Navy Issue of Business Screen. It was a memorable and sizeable document, authoritatively edited by the officers and men who serxed in that historic war training effort. 1 he report of the .Armv Pictorial Service completed our trilogy on the wartime phase of audio-visual connniniication growth. Pages of significant data on ilie ellecis of films in changing men's minds and attitudes in vital morale programs, on the effectiveness of the audio-visual method in skill training, will make this Army issue historically useful in years to come. \'(rAi. St.\tistics on Business Fil,\i Making Publication activity was to become of secondary importance during the war era, except h)r manuals and other direct contributions to the immediate training tasks at hand. Per.sonal detail on behalf of manufacturers and producers in connection with the War Production Board accounted for countless days of travel and consultation. The statistical backgrounil thus aci)uired, however, will prove invalualjle as a base for vitally needed industry figures on manufacture and finished film production. Bv 194.5, for example, we knew certainly that all known and measureable companies active in the field of business and industrial film production (and In that time largely converted to war lilm production ol one kind or another) were absorbing 38,(100,000 feet of 35 mm negative and positive film in a single year. Hundreds of millions ol feet of 1() mm positive stock resulted from these "originals. " It was easier to know the size and character of the industry itself. Lists of hundreds of socalled "film producers " boiled down to less than one hundred when we applied real measurements of capacity, personnel, and experience. These were important clues to needs of the immediate present. Caveat emptor! is a dubious industry motto on which to build a permaneni ])ros])crity. Marginal Notes On .An Era These, then, are marginal notes for a more detailed re))ort on an era spanned by the vears pre-war, the war years and the confused I h.ios ol (he first year after the war. The substance that was real and lasting in the beginning of this decade has lasted. Real progress is, of course, always just ahead and if (hat is so, the sense of urgency and importance which I hose who .serve the medium feel in these davs might be a pretty good sign of good things to ( ome. Our own measure ol growth is in the graliIving numbers of business and industrial concerns, associations, agencies and others who n.iil lliis pciioclira! aiicl pav lor il. --OHC NUMBER ONE • VOLUME EIGHT ■ 1947 19