The Educational screen (c1922-c1956])

Page 144 The Educational Screen A School-Made Film Which Stands on Its Own Feet SCHOOL-MADE films too often come out like home-made candy—all right for passing around to the family but not quite good enough to put in a store window. Too often the trouble has been that they have not started out in the beginning with any- thing particular to say and have made, perhaps, a record of school events or some local situation which is not understandable or applicable to people outside of the particular city or town. The Harmon Foundation, in its Division of Visual Experiment, has been very much impressed within the last few months, however, in watching the work of a group of junior high school boys and girls in Norfolk, Virginia. The visual interpretations which they have made have been the outgrowth of their study and have substituted somewhat for the usual homework assign- ment papers which are turned in, graded, and that's as far as they go. In this case the "homework" serves a real tangible end and is available to a number of other young people in quite an understandable form. The young people who made the film have also actu- ally experienced some of the things they were studying. Their work in filming came about as the result of the interest of one teacher, J. J. McPherson, who had a photographic turn of mind. He found little difficulty in training the young people or arousing them to the idea of planning their studies in visual terms. Three films were made last year at the Blair Junior High School under his guidance. These were one short sub- ject entitled Patches In The Making, in which it is sought to bring out the planning that goes into the presentation of a school play and how all departments of a school may cooperate to bring about a successful production; another film was entitled A Personal Assignment and this has to do with vocational guid- ance, where a boy and girl are both given an assign- ment to interview a vocational guidance expert in the city. As they talk to him, various scenes are shown to illustrate the advice he has given them. The third film, which is the only one more than a reel in length, is entitled This Is Our Challenge. It is the last film which has achieved the widest notice already and about which we wish to make particular mention. This film was an outgrowth of the study of housing which Mr. McPherson took up in his civics classes and represents how a group of boys and girls in the eighth and ninth grade years can make a real, practical applica- tion of their school work. "In their study of major civics problems," says Mr. McPherson, "I encouraged my students to work out concrete projects. While they were studying housing conditions in Norfolk, a number of students decided that they would like to make a short movie in which conditions in Norfolk's slums could be shown and an answer to the problem could be given. Other classes in previous years had presented housing plays before the auditorium, built scale models An account of School-Film Production that gets down to fundamentals and minute details. EVELYN S. BROWN Harmon Foundation, New York City of blocks of good and bad housing from actual surveys of slum property and drawn large numbers of posters. These students wanted to do something diiTerent and leave something behind as their contribution to a study of this problem. Since three classes were studying the same material, the class in which the idea originated decided to make the undertaking a joint project of all the 9B classes." But how would you finance such a scheme? This is a question which would quite naturally come up. 8mm film was first thought of because the cost was so much less, but the students themselves had an idea that the 16mm film might make the finished product more widely available and decided to go ahead with it and then set to work to find their means of paying for it. Twelve dollars was donated by the principal of the school from his office funds, but in figuring up the costs it was clear to the young people that this was not enough. "Finally," says Mr. McPherson, "one chap suggested that we sell stock in the enterprise and then charge an admission fee and pay back the stockholders as much as possible. This idea was adopted. A busi- ness manager and two assistants were elected and a form for the stock certificate was adopted. After an actual share of stock was brought to school and ex- amined, an art student in one of the classes drew the approved certificate form and then cut the mimeo- graphed stencil. Each share of stock sold for 25c. Approximately $40.00 worth of stock was sold in the three classes. With this amount of money in hand, it was possible to plan the actual production and outline the various kinds of work that had to go into the making of the film. There would be the research and planning of the scenario; there would be the photography, the selec- tion of the sets, the props, the doing of the actual work on the photography ; and there would be the titling and editing of the finished film, and finally, of course, some- one in the group would have to do the pushing for distribution so that some of the original cost could be paid out. After all these plans were outlined to the boys and girls, they were called upon to designate which phases of the production work interested them. The first committee which was selected was that for script writ- ing and was composed of about six students. This group Mr. McPherson took on a tour of some of the slum areas so that they might get their ideas first hand as to what to cover in the script. This was quite prop- erly included as a part of their research work but they