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Amateurs should master carefully the theories of the different schools. They will provide a necessary academic grounding and prevent a great deal of lost labour and enthusiasm. In so far as amateur work is directed to public uses, the Flaherty example will be found useful in some cases (for Travel Association purposes, for example) ; but in the main the modern school will be found more useful. Here you must watch carefully, for these tempos and rhythms and things are all too theoretically fascinating and at the level of discussion all too "arty" for practical guidance. They may easily land you in abstract sequences which are anything but purposive in their total effect. They are, after all, only the means by which you make your material interesting : they do not of themselves create a theme or story for that material. Even in documentary the play's the thing. Or, as the case may be, the lesson, the message, is the thing. Indeed there is now some considerable sign that the more complex documentary effects (as in Berlin, for example) are passing out of favour. A simpler, quieter, less "musical'1 and more purposive treatment is taking its place.
Where the tale is a simple one, better tell it and let the effects look after themselves, and not vice versa. This will both recommend you to your educational or industrial or civic sponsors and give you a first right step towards effective work. Amateurs, when they are ambitious, tend to be too ambitious by half. When they turn professional, it takes two years to de-theorise and decomplicate them. They are too proud to be simple. This is spoken from laborious experience.
Such advice in hand, what are the direct possibilities? In the first place, there is a vast "bringing alive" service to be performed: a very valuable line of approach to development associations, city councils, steamship companies, travel associations. They all want to see their particular blob of territory alive and kicking on the screen, and there is no reason why the amateurs should not do it for them. They can do it cheaper than professionals and may often, with local knowledge, local enthusiasm, and a higher critical understanding of cinema, do it better. Many sections of the country: villages, counties, industrial communities, seaside resorts, stretches of mountain and coast, hiking circuits, have their descriptive story to tell; and there are traders' organisations, civic organisations, to whose interest it is that the story should be told. The rest is a matter of business, and every amateur group should have a member who can do business. The number of 16 mm. projectors in schools and lecture organisations of all kinds will indicate the growing audience available for this type of material. It may even be shot on 35 for the wider audience 35 mm. commands ; 35 can always be reduced for 16 mm. circulation.
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