The educational screen (c1922-c1956])

February, 1943 Page 57 Left: Floyde E. Brooker and J. C. Coffey discuss chart on the development of training films. Right: Display of National Audio-Visual Council Teaching Guides for Office of Education Films at Vocational Visual Aids meeting. show tlie material in great detail. "These and other filin.s under production are facilitating the transition of visual aids from a period when they were looked upon as the frills and fads of education to where they are regarded as basic instructional materials as essential as textbooks or the blackboard." Des])ite the ever increasing use of training films iij America, we are still in the Stone Age of visual aids, in Brooker's judgment. He predicted new techniques both in the production and utilization of films and said that we have but scratched the surface of the potential use of pictures for instruction. He suggested that the present motion picture projector might compare with the projector of tomorrow as the famous Model T compares with the motor car of the future. "But no longer are the pro's and con's of visual aids a subject for emotional academic discussion. We are approaching the production and use of training films from a scientific basis and we must continue in this direction." Norman Mathews, director of the motion picture di- vision of Bell Aircraft Corporation. Buffalo, contributed a behind-the-.scenes description of the production and use of training films in one of America's vital war industries. This program, he explained, was born of the need existing at the outset of the war for training many men rapidly. A motion picture division was established at Bell Aircraft in April, 1942, and work began im- mediately on the production of a series of training films on subjects requested by the United States Army Air Force and the Bell Aircraft service department. "From a motion picture standpoint, the qualities we sought from the outset were neither complex nor very obscure, but we felt they were sound," Mathews ex- plained. "Our first concern was with the visual, for it was our feeling that pictures, not sound, should carry most of the information. Thus we sought to design our films with a logical and coherent picture continuity. We were gratified to hear the comment at the screening of a silent rough cut of our first picture that no sound track was needed to make clear the procedure of the operations shown." "We tried at all limes to keep our audience in mind so that when the camera moved about the complex mechanism of the airplane, it would be known at all times just where we were and where we had been. We wanted to show as much as possible an operation as it would appear to the individual who was to tackle this particular job himself." The function of the spoken commentary in the Bell Aircraft films was to be sup- ])lementary to the meaning carried by the picture and to lend emphasis wherever needed. The narrator was instructed to "come oflf his high perch from behind the screen and to talk a little more ^mth the fellows rather than at them." This was accomplished by a combination of writing and delivery. "Aside from the spoken commentary, synchronous sound is used for the instructional value it can con- tribute." he .said. ".Sound effects, that is, natural sounds, figure largely here, and in some instances are indis- pen.sable to the meaning we wish to convey." Mathews corroborated the experience of the United States Office of Plducation. as reported by Brooker. to the effect that the success of training films depended largely upon the inclusion of elaborate detail. The advice of the Bell Aircraft service department was "to leave no cotter key unturned," and this was found to be sound advice in ])roducing the films to meet the needs both of pilots and service men. The training films produced by the United States Office of Education are designed as teaching aids and are not intended to supplant the shop instructor, C. F. Klinefelter, assistant to the U. S. Commissioner of Education, made clear in his paper presented at the Toledo conference. For this reason, none of the motion pictures attempt to cover each and every operation in the subject treated. It was agreed that certain things should be left out so that the shop instructors would recognize at once that they must do some active teach- ing theuLselves. "The primary test that was applied as to material that was to be left out, and that which was to be included, was whether or not the point to be in- cluded was one that the average shop instructor, even