Business screen magazine (1946)

Is Multi-Media REALLY the Message versus the Medium? BY KEN SACO Mulli-mcdia programs, by iheir VL'O' nature, pose an interesting dilemma: Where is the point at which multi-media technique begins to com|X'le with the me.vsage it is designed to communicate? Although it is one of our most modern communication tools, the rules under which a multi-media producer operates are at least .100 years old. If we could exhume a highly articulate spokesman of that era and ask him to act as our communications consultant. he might use these familiar words: "Use all gently: for in the very . . . whirlwinil of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness . . . Overdone, though it makes the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve: the censure of . . . which one must, in your allowance, o'crweigh a whole theatre of others." This Klizabethan advice is quite relevant. Hamlet's actors, though lacking our electronic capabilities, still ran exactly the same risk wc do today — the chance of overpowering their message with iheir medium. Confusing the importance of message and medium is a failing that sometimes begins with the client hiniselt. A corporate audio-visual director recently approached an outside producer of industrial shows with a request for a lO-minute keynote presentation for an upcoming sales meeting. "I'm looking for a strong impact." he said, "a completely new visual technique." Then he asked, quite seriously, "Do you have anything of this sort available off the shelf — perhaps a program developed for another meeting'.'" His total concern for the medium completely obscured any thought for the message. I believe there is an import. int distinction that should be made between the message and the medium that carries it. Consider for a moment the message as something that need not necessarily require sound effects or music — or need not be pictorial — or need not require even words. It can. theoretically, be non-pictorial, or nonaudio, or non-verbal; it need not appeal to or reach us through any one single sense. We might conclude with some facetiousness that the message could very well be non-sense. But this, though foolish sounding, does make a point — the message, since it can be carried by any one of at least three media — picture, word, sound — can be helped, hindered, or totally undone by any one or a combination of these. We have all been subjected to interminable speaker whose words I tediously overwhelmed his story, can pair him with his opposite, w! pictures or sound effects also whelmed his story. The important consideratior seems to me. is not a concern for many words, or too many picture toi* much sound; but a vital con for the proper handling of these ments (and perhaps others like tc and smell as well) as parts of a — a carefullv designed whole ai |:-:.«R Eastman Kodak Company has recently presented a nine screen program wr striking display of graphics. The spectacular is also available in a travehng sq square screen two-projector version that retains the overlapping look of the or V V Ken Saco, nmlti media practioner since 1957, together with partner Curtis Lol heads Ken Saco Associates, New York audiovisual and corporate communica'f company. 20 BUSINESS SCF