Educational screen & audio-visual guide (c1956-1971])

The Filmstrip's Future I As the 2 inch by 2 inch slideset displaced the lantern slide, so the filmstrip supplanted slides. As we look back, we can see clearly what happened: the slideset could do the job when the demand was small and the churches willing to pay a small rental charge. When the ciemand grew and the churches wanted to purchase and own materials, the slideset was too costly and difficult to duplicate and a new medium came along and displaced it. The filmstrip took over the job of providing the church with projected still picture material because it could be duplicated easily, cost less, was somewhat easier to use, and had a fixed order of pictures. At first the '"teaching" captions were right on the frames. When left off, they were supplied at little cost on mimeographed form. As many will remember, this newer medium took over very fast and the slideset receded into insignificance. The handwriting for all this was on the wall at the time of the first and second InternationaJ A-V Workshops, at North Park College in Chicago in 1944 and at Lake Geneva in 1945. Few saw it; no one made anything of it. However, by the time of the fourth and the fifth Workshops, the filmstrip was a newcomer in the church field and attracting considerable attention. It was at this time, not at the fifteenth Workshop, that the leaders of the church A-V movement should have asked if the filmstrip had the inherent characteristics and educational potentials required of the medium which seemed destined for extensive use in the church. This question of media potential in relation to the categorical objectives of the churches' program got scant attention at that time. I raised it in my book (Projected Visual Aids tn the Church, Pilgrim Press, but so far as I know the basic research needed for an answer still remains to be done. II Today we in the church field are confronted with three basic questions beMttment bv WILLIAM S. HOCKIMAN relating to the future of the medium of the filmstrip: a) is it becoming too expensive? b) can anything be done to improve the physical characteristics of the sound filmstrip and make it easier to use? and, c) can it meet the need of the church for a fool-proof, inexpensive, visual or audiovisual medium for use at the level of the classroom, by small groups, and by the tens of thousands of small churches across the country? Let us look at each question briefly. When the slideset had only incidental relationship to the program of my church, renting it from a distant depository was satisfactory. .'Vs the demand for useful visual material grew in my church, our interest shifted from renting to ownership. It was at this point that the slideset was first found wanting — the cost of a good set was more than we wanted to pay. It was the old problem of mass production. To meet this need, a new medium was brought forward. We have a somewhat parallel situation today with the sound filmstrip. We now need a medium which can put still picture material into the classrooms, of which there are many in every church, rather than just into the departmental rooms. In relation to this need, the sound filmstrip as it is now developed looks to many churches and educational leaders like a pretty expensive medium. Take my own church as an illustration. Five years ago filmstrip utilization was limited to the departmental level. This meant that two or three filmstrip utilization units were enough for the church. Within this period of five years utilization has dropped down to the classroom level. Four filmstrip units will no longer do. We need more. As utilization drops from five or six departments to fifteen or twenty classes, we face the economics of this medium. The trend in my church is the trend across the nation. To make this situation more acute, the proper utilization of the sound filmstrip requires the use of record playback equipment. We are up against a trend here. Within years upward of 90% of all filmstrip material has and is now coming out with recorded sound. To recap: if a sound filmstrip has become itself a SIO package, and if its proper utilization requires a $50 to SlOO projector plus a $30 to $50 record player plus a $20 to $40 projection screen, to say nothing of the $14.95 table filmstrip previewcr, how can this medium qualify as the one to bring the projected still picture into the classrooms of the larger churches, and also into the tens of thousands of smaller churches? In all honesty, and with as much objectivity as we can summon, this question of cost must be faced when we consider the filmstrip's future. Ill When we turn to the filmstrip's inherent physical characteristics, we are confronted with factors that are already operating to limit the popularity of this medium. So far as I am aware, the filmstrip was never engineered, never designed. It was discovered: found — come across by the makers of the slides which made obsolete the expensive and hard-to-duplicate lantern slides. This may account for some of its physical peculiarities: hard to roll up because of the springiness or temper of the material; hard to remove and return to its container; easy to get into the projector wrong end to; easy to get into the projector wrong side to; hard to make out the title with the un-aided eye; difficult to. preview and study without special equipment; easy to finger-smudge; and, needing to be framed with every insertion into the projector. Quite a list! While every one of the "troubles" can be overcome to a satisfactory degree by careful training and long practice of the user, these very faults of the medium are nominated time and time again by leaders as tending to limit its mass use in the church. These faults are real, and must be faced as the future of the filmstrip is weighed. Notice, also, that the user (at every level in the church) must not only master a medium with these general faults, but must at the same time master the operation of a second piece 536 EdScreen & AV Guicie — October, 1958