Business screen magazine (1946)

izcneral impression. But when the industriiil traineroi salesnumager pieked up that little hand-held projector, he was thinking .ihout concrete objectives: to train, lo sell. ti> teach. His joh is to impart |a specific understanding of a "hartr' Skill or method, or an operation, or la hands-on pri>duct advantage. As differentiated from absorbing an impression, the trainee or prospect or student must understand and memorize. The challenge to the viewer in this case is not so much a matter of concentration but of remembering. What is mentally taxing — is the htakcaway" load of hard material which the viewer is adding to his mental stock. Granted the ma.xim that a picture— the iii;lii picture — is worth many words, a 20-minute sound film may deliver the equivalent of two or three hours of platform lecture. However, when the subject requires the viewer to remember and act upon concrete action and facts, the long film is trying to teach a full semester course in a single long lecture. No tciicher would dream of dtv ing this. Teaching has always been done in incrciiiciii.s. Lessons must he presented cine at a time in doses small enough for the recipient to assimilate. So why have A-V people always :onstructed our films in "semester" lengths? Because, to repeat, the cost md clutter of conventional 16mm Ifilm presentation has limited the number of times we could get our i;roup audiences off their jobs (or |i)ff their apathies) into our showing 'situation. If we're going to have [jnly one crack at prospects, we arc 'compelled to throw the book at them, and hope that some of it stays Iput. j Here is a piece of personal scar'■.issue. I In a training film which my company made for telephone informa[:ion operators, there was a motivaj.ional theme. The body of the conlent was a progression of twenty 'problem" calls, in each of which :he caller's situation and the operators' correct procedure was demonstrated. The situations were interesting, the actors were cute and smart. md for its secondary use of public "elations showings the film created a avorable impression for the comxmy. But our primary objective was o instruct the trainees in the correct procedures for handling each of these twenty problem calls. Here we fell on our faces. The trainees would watch the first call, get the message, and channel it into their functional memories. I'hey wtnild watch the second call, ditto. But at the third or fourth call, even the brightest class member was trying to remember the preceding techniques while trying to acquire the new detailed instruction. By the twentieth call the result actually had become negative, with potentially happy operators now frustrated and confused. It should be emphatically noted that at the time this film was made the sound-cartridge "personal projectors" did not exist, and we were compelled to go the 16mm one semester lecture route. If we were to produce a Now version of this same subject material, we would break the twenty calls into a package of .'i-minute cartridges. We would still be inviting confusion, however if we simply put scissors through the existing film at .'^-minute intervals. We should rearrange the individual calls into clusters of four or five thematically related problems. Cartridge C might cover the deaf person, the person who speaks broken English, the slow thinker, the short-fused abuser, and the drunk. These callers all are alike in terms of basic problem and approach; each caller is "difficult," and each can be serviced by patience, and ingenuity in re-phrasing one's questions. With this sht)rt-film format, the trainees would study only one cartridged "lesson" per session, and after a participatory dicussion (and hopefully an invaluable re-running of the short film ) would leave with the lotal instruction now embedded in their functional knowledge inventory. And since there had been no complicated projection and screen set-up to arrange, probably three or four trainees at a time had walked only a few yards from their operating positions to the supervisor's desk, or the practice room. In fact, one of the great advantages of this 5-minute format (and the new mini-projectors which make it feasible) is that it brings the training lo the trainee, with a complete flexibility of choice as to time and place. On many subjects, properly structured software, built on the Triascope system, enables completely independent self-training. and eliminates need for an instructor or class. Accessible in bkK'ks of time; permitting the trainee to progress at his own pace, they are inexpensive enough to integrate into existing courses or training situations without strain. Free from clutter of the threaded projector and the darkened room, and with visual-audio nt)w as handily available as a book, the trainer can make short bits of film into a pamphlet-size lesson. He can use film strips to visualize the occasional point which needs live-action or animated illustration — the cartridges which come with a Home Study course often contain "segmented loops," instead of the conventional beginning-to-end ncm-stop film presentation. The reel contains several separated segments of a few seconds or a couple minutes duration, gleaned from the text or slide-film as needed to carry the progression forward. The short-film content will be utterly (and newly) simple, direct, and visual. People have a perpetual tendency to jump off the cliff of the Either/ Or prognostication. At the turn of the century the phonograph was going to drive out live mu>-ic. Later radio was going to knock off the phonograph. Still later television was going to destroy movies. Today we have predictions that Super-8 will replace 16mm, and who knows what will become of us with the advent of the video cassette. All of the doomed media are prospering. In the next few years, it is my opinion we will see more 16mm releases, rather than fewer, to accomplish those largegroup assignments of persuading and inspiring. In fact, the increased exposure of executives to the powers of audio-visual as a result of their vastly expanded use of the medium in the new 8mm cartridge-loaded self-screen proiectors, will give executives a realization of the power of film. In all probability this awareness will result in an actual increase in their usage of the 16mm type productions. But for certain vital aspects of communication, particularly individualized learning on an independent self-controlled basis, the 5-minute cartridge sound film promises to break through the traditional A-V barriers of cost and clutter to open up whole new wurlds of effective cimimunication. MARCH, 1971 27