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more effective films
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formation-gain, to induce attitude change, and, most importantly, to increase the learner's ability to learn." When the film producer makes a film without seriously considering his audience or the behavior his film is intended to change or influence, he does not understand the communication process (or, worse yet, he chooses to ignore it). The instructional film does not exist in a vacuum — something generated a need for the film and the film is intended to have an effect on someone. Let's call this need a "Real-Life Need" which a film can satisfy (Fig. 1).
Once the film is produced, it should have an effect on the original need. We learn the effect through feedback (F.) Feedback tells us if the original need was satisfied (in which case we all congratulate each other) or it may indicate that the film didn't do the job. or it didn't do all it was supposed to, or it had the opposite effect — it boomeranged. This may be bad news but it is also good news — if we get the information at the right time. The right time is not after we have completed the film and had 200 prints distributed all over the country to 200,000 viewers! The right time for feedback is early in the filmmaking process when change can be made to increase effectiveness.
Feedback, as defined by Norbert Wiener, is a method of controlling a system by reinserting into it results of past performance. Let's see how the film producer can apply this concept. Figure 2 is a rough representation of the filmmaking process. Starting at the left we find a need in real-life for which a film is made and prints distributed. The film is seen by an audience with some effect but, even when there is some feedback as to whether objectives were satisfied, the filmmaker rarely hears of it and, of course, it doesn't make that particular film any better. The real question is: "How can feedback be related to the production of the instructional film?" How can we achieve the ideal goal of making films capable of bringing about desired behavior changes in the intended audience?
One way of approaching that goal is the diagnostic pretest — a review of a form of a film at critical stages of development to pre-determine probable effectiveness and take corrective action before release and distribution to insure that the completed film is as effective as possible in accomplishing its objectives. By taking a closer look at the production process (Fig. 3) we can see how the diagnostic pretest can make feedback relevant to the instructional film. A script is written, film is shot and sound recorded. The film is edited and the production completed — the tracks mixed, negative cut and the answer print approved. In applying the diagnostic pretest, the
one-way nature explicit in Figure 3 is revised to emphasize feedback as a means for product improvement (Figure 4).
By expanding the PREPARE SCRIPT phase to include script research, a script outline, a treatment and the actual writing of the script, the filmic system begins to get complex (Fig. 5).
And well it should, for communicating effectively is not a simple matter. It cannot be assured through off-the-cuff or seatof-the-pants decisionmaking based on intuition, faith, or the unified opinion of the filmmaker or other specialists. To get your film on tar^'^t, you have to make an effort at developing and applying a filmic system emphasizing feedback during production to increase effectiveness.
Your system may include pretesting your audience characteristics before tailormaking your film to take into account what they already know or believe. You might let several people read the draft script, talk to them about it, and test its effect, or go through it scene by scene with someone who represents the eventual primary audience. You can apply some readability yardstick to check its comprehensibility; analyze the content to see if you've included what you started out to cover; check the facts for their relevance to the objectives (one analysis showed that 80% of the facts in a film were either irrelevant or already known by the audience); and you can analyze the content to see if your desired behavior change could be expected to occur given what you've included in the script. You can storyboard the key scenes, go over your sketches individually, or make slides and a rough narrative track for presentation and revision. You can test the interlock, or, as a last resort, even the answer print if you feel the film has too many special effects to run a rough version for an unsophisticated audience. Use interviews, questionnaires, rating scales, achievement tests and/or profile analysis — the continuous recording of audience response on a polygraph device. Try infrared photography of the audience as it views your film or take physiological measures such as galvanic skin response or pulse rate. Hire some consultants to review key stages of the film. And check actual performance, if possible. Did they stop smoking? Can he perform that in-flight maneuver? Can he rescue a drowning person? Will the trend reverse as desired?
In short, the more you use a rational and audience-oriented approach to your decisions, the more effective and efficient your film. Why pretest? It defines problems, raises questions, suggests answers and focuses attention on effects. Whether you apply a complex experimental design or simply observe an audience viewing your film. Carpenter's warning to the military twenty
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