Business screen magazine (1946)

CAMERA EYE continued and county-size offer tremendous audience potential for films designed to serve millions of these fairgoers. Public relations is, of necessity, a wide-band area insofar as content and film subject matter are concerned. Recruitment of young people for future corporate careers, problems of national (and therefore, of business, concern) such as pollution, conservation, health and safety are paramount. The economics of our free enterprise system, hard-pressed by avid critics these days, need continued treatment and maximum creativity to keep such matter interesting and attentionholding as well as factual. And who is to say that the always-popular sports, travel and related recreational themes are not only apropo as public relations fare but also great busmess-builders? Consider the definition of the role of the communicator (read: PR director) laid down by Henry Strauss in these pages some years past: "The communicator commands an infinite variety of techniques which enable him to enter the privacy of the mind through an interplay of emotions." C. T. Smith, AT&T statistician in that company's Marketing and Public Relations' activity, told us back in 1962: "We think that films will help people to know more about our business and to understand it better. We believe that films will help in the effort to have the public think favorably of our business." With such Bell System films as Beyond Three Doors (dealing with the individual's importance in influencing public affairs; and Beyond All Barriers (the Larry Madison exposition on international communications) and myriads of other useful motion pictures serving Bell companies throughout America through recent decades, this company is truly one of the nation's foremost, knowledgeable users of the screen medium. And it makes sense of C. T. Smith's further comment back in '62 when he concluded : "Furthermore, we think that having the public favorably disposed toward our business will make them more willing to listen to a sales message and more likely to buy the many products we have to sell. In that vein, note that the American Oil Company set some audience records within the past three years with its widely-appreciated film series of Happy Holidays. In 1967 we reported that 78 million viewers had seen one or more of those U.S. travel promotion films. One of these, Happy Holidays in the Smokies, was accepted for Paramount Pictures' release to theaters and won 3,347 show-days with a total audience exceeding 1,673,000 persons. Public service television release of both 28 Vi and 4 '/2 -minute versions of the Happy Holidays' films (by Modem TPS) brought American Oil 1,853 showings to nearly 76 million viewers. Modern also carried these titles to 15,143 community (16mm-equipped) audiences for another 774,293 viewers in that one year. Who will say that successful public relations for an oil company, an airline or any other transport company, are not achieved through encouragement of travel. Most appreciated of all screen fare and most resultful in terms of building relevant business, the travel film remains one of the most effective sight/sound tools. But deeper concerns motivate both business and its publics in these times. Away back in 1962, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America sponsored two of this era's most notable (and at that time, least appreciated ) titles : Fair Chance and The Costly Crowd. These Parthenonproduced forerunners showed viewers the vital need for family counseling, for "open skies" policies on population control as opposed to growing unemployment, slums, bankrupt welfare agencies, shortday schooling, overcrowded hospitals and mental institutions. Nobody will disagree that America and the rest of the world have simply "grown" too fast, and that we're filling the earth's air and water with too much waste, and that we're jamming our streets and highways. Before we give our readers the impression that national and world "problems" are all that can and should be dealt with by the film medium, arrange to see such excellent screen fare as Why Man Creates, sponsored by Kaiser Aluminum & Chemical Corporation and produced by Saul Bass. The Grand Prix winner last fall in the most rugged of all film competition: The International Industrial Film Festival at West Berlin, this film excited European audiences as much as it has U.S. viewers. Hopefully, man's ingenuity may yet enable him to "create" his way out of our global mess! Another sponsor in tune with today and tomorrow: Boise Cascade Corporation. This company's documentary The Significance of You relates the imporance of man as an individual with the free enterprise system approach to today's problems and tomorrow's solutions. Ask any Modern TPS film library in the 50 states and principal Canadian cities to arrange a booking of either or both of these last-named titles for an up-to-the-minute overview of the best in content and production technique. And in these latter years of our 25-year "review" let us return, all too briefly but with real emphasis, to the useful role of public relations films in helping expand world trade. For without this vital segment of overseas business, America as well as its neighbors abroad, are really in economic trouble. Britain has one of the world's truly great examples of a worldwide PR film program in the continuing work of Shell International and its Shell Film Unit headquartered out of London. Approaching the fourdecade mark of excellence, Shell films developed out of its London centre (headed by Hugh Wickham, head of Films, Radio & Television) include these recent titles: Mekong, the Story of a River (the only factual documentary to inform the world of what might have been a better answer to the Vietnam conflict, completion of the international river control project and the doubling of that area's food supplies); and The River Must Live, a fine exposition on pollution control). By 1968, in 34 years, more than 200 films had been produced by this dedicated film unit, including those aided by such illustrious names as John Grierson, Edgar Anstey and Sur Arthur Elton. And here's what the PR practitioner can learn from Shell International's experience: Distribution statistics serve this Continued on page 20 18 BUSINESS SCREEN