Documentary News Letter (1944-1945)

20 DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER SLOW BUT NOT SO SURE G. S. Bagley, of the National Film Board of Canada, looks at visual aids when i arrived in England two months ago 1 was not particularly orientated towards visual education. We had done a little at the N.F.B. for the armed forces, but had not specialised in it. My behaviour during the first few weeks of my visit must have been quite a creditable imitation of a bloodhound, circling around prior to pulling strongly away on an interesting scent. The interesting scent for me proved to lead into the visual education field and I soon decided that "visual aids" was a depressing label to hang around the neck of such an interesting animal. I also found quickly that there was argument and disagreement in the field. For instance, in using the term "visual aids" I am already upon dangerous ground, for there is apparently a great gulf between the happy-go-lucky visual aider and the profound visual educationalist absorbed in V.E. psychology. Now this academic argument is rather ludicrous: are we to suppose that the latter earnest gentlemen conceive education as being entirely visual? If they do not then all illustrative material must be classed as an "aid". I'm not a teacher. Neither am I a film man in the sense of film making. But I am an educationalist, for all who have practised in the graphic arts find themselves willy-nilly in that class. I find that quite a lot has been written about visual education and to be candid I think that it is rather on the dull side. Why? The subject is far from dull, it's exciting. Graphic forms are going to brighten up the curriculum. Buildings are taking on new shapes, their insides will be much more pleasant, the new visual education material — with its attendant colour— is going to delight the eye, I hope. But the existing visual aids do not delight me at the moment. They remind one of a shopping expedition in a badly bombed town. You travel all over the lot and then find that the greengrocer is about sixteen blocks to the north, and it's getting darker every minute. In the National Film Board we do not like darkness or even dimness, so we decided to have a light. The co-ordinating art director came into action. I mention this because there is one word — co-ordinating — which is frequently found to be missing when studying the visual education field. Without co-ordinated media, each doing a specific job, there can be no such thing as visual education. There is nothing very difficult about it if we know the meaning of the word. The Oxford defines co-ordination as equal in status. The following co-ordinated media are essential to a good visual education plan : Booklets and leaflets. Charts, diagrams and maps. Displays. Epidiascope material. Films, sound, silent and strip. Models. Newspapers (wall). Teaching Notes. Simple, isn't it? Yet how many people are planning this way? The film, of course, occupies a prominent position in our daily lives, in fact the film and the newspaper probably educate (don't forget that education is a broad subject) more men, women, and children than any other media. Yet I'm told that there are very few films, that teachers wish to use. I'm sure that; as the technique of film-making is so competent, this slight impasse will be solved by the agreement between the film makers and the teachers on the requirements of the film as a unit in the visual education field. The fact remains that there are films in use in the schools, quite a number of them. How about the film strip? Well, it's not really in being yet. Here is a lovely handy medium, cheapish, easy to make, and as portable as hell. But it must not be thought of as a poor relation of the movie. It should be a film in itself, carefully planned, and the research, especially for the pictorial matter, painstaking. The illustrative material is very important for here is a method of bringing good graphic art before the children. (A fine 18th-century copperplate looks magnificent when blown up to six feet wide.) There is one more point about film strips that I'd like to mention: some people are thinking of them in terms of clipping up, re-arranging, using in sections or even individual frames. This is not the function of the film strip. It must be constructed to tell a definite story and tell it in a definite sequence. Don't above all let the film strip be a light-weight substitute for a set of slides. In the list of media I have deliberately used the term "display" because I want to get the emphasis off "exhibition" which conjures up visions of vistas and vastness. Visual education needs the simple, the portable, the flexible. Such displays can be anything from the one-shot improvised paste-up to the multiple photographic silk-screen, or collotype job. In function it may be a leader-up, a finale, or a recapitulation of the whole subject. It may be so designed that it can be retained from year to year or have its component parts detachable and capable of rearrangement; it can be flat, three-dimensional, and use true or distorted perspective. Displays are probably the most flexible of our media and enough to excite all but the most phlegmatic cerebration. Models come within the display section and should be used frequently. I would hazard a guess that the model has the greatest attraction and memory impressing value of any form of visual aid. Finally simplicity is the vital point to remember when planning displays as visual aids. The flat panel series idea, which has been well used by CEMA, is probably the best basis. The occasional application of a threedimensional item to one of the panels will give a lift to the series when seen as a whole. One crumb of comfort for the local authority milch cow; expensive lighting gadgets need not be used at all in visual education display work. If any of my friends in Canada read this article they will probably wonder why I've made no mention, before this, of my particular baby, the printed art. I have a particular reason. Here it is: the tremendous importance of that prime of the printing art — typography. It is no use commissioning and obtaining lovely drawings, paintings, photographs, charts and what you will, unless we have first-class typography and lettering either to complete or to make a; designed unit. These considerations ap equally to all our media, not only to prin work. One of the truisms of our day and wi the small number of citizens who do typog; and layout as it should be done, and here I ha a suggestion to make to your people in Bri and to Canadians who come here. Go to a country churchyard and see w] 18th-century country bumpkins left for us to* on their tombstone*. Was there ever a ti frame or chart to equal the sheer beauty a legibility that record* the passing of bumpkin! ever-loving wife? As I say, go to such a churchyard — prefe: on rising ground — and visualise. See the flowr stone of the decorated, the spacing (very impo ant) of things in general. Look around — you on rising ground — at the panorama of ear trees, stone, and life. You are now experiencit visual education by means of visual aids. Is dull? Is it dead? Of course it is not. The story of the land, th people, the past and the present have com alive. It whets the appetite — solid and liquid so go down to the pub by the hopfield side aa scuddy mill stream. Brewing and milling, do story on each, local studies, interweaving suitabl social and economic justification. Have I made this visual education matte sound exciting? I hope so. We must approacj such a job with enthusiasm, for enthusiasr breeds daring and banishes dullness. Childre: and all things young do not suffer dullnes gladly. Neither do the young in mind. Delhe us from a surfeit of discussion. Do not let u have to learn a new alphabet or subscribe to thj patenting of monotony. Let us get right on and do things. Get them d celluloid, paper, board, acetate, wood, and thj hundred and one materials that we can get b going round the corner, with an official ordel firmly grasped in our mitts. If we feel we an getting dull let us go and bounce a ball or rea« a whodunit. Last week I felt far from scintillating so 1 picked up a thriller by Michael Innes. read: "I mind Rob Yule asking once: 'Arn what is Visual Education?' and before the womai could reply Will Saunders cutting in sharp1 'It's what Susannah afforded the elders* daft speak, and black affronted the scho mistress." Well, I don't know all about the elders, aa I'm sure none of us want to affront any scho marms; but the film makers and the artists a designers will have to pull their weight in t councils which will decide the future of visi education. We, the film makers and designe know how to present a visually acceptable ite We know how to plan it, how to shoot and oth wise graphically portray it — and that is mi than half the battle. If it is decided that vism education is the order of the day then the officii educationists must accept the guidance trained practitioners in the visual arts. Fo remember that aids to Visual Education must bi acceptable — nay, more than that, they must b< capable of attracting and holding the attentioi with or without the aid of oral embellishment