Film and Radio Guide (Oct 1945-Jun 1946)

26 FILM AND RADIO GUIDE Volume XII, No. 2 MICKEY AS PROFESSOR BY WALT DISNEY Condensed, with Permission, from The Public Opinion Quarterly, Summer Issue, 1945 Like other American homes, the home of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck went to war. From the Disney Studios poured training films for the Armed Forces and animated cartoons prodding cuid instructing the home front. In this article Wcdt Disney enthusiastically supports Mickey’s prof essioncd possibilities. But he cdso describes the obstacles in the way of the educational film. The pressure of the past four years has forced us to put on trial the things we do, the way we do them, and the reason we do them. Under national crisis, we have been compelled to reject any move that had no purpose, any method that was slow, any means that could not guarantee results. The watchword was to retain whatever was efficient and to cast off whatever was not effective. The physical sciences — chemistry, aviation, electronics, radio, medicine — have taken enormous steps forward to meet the urgent needs of war. Necessity has forced us to adopt techniques that, until the war, had been considered visionary. Scientists who knew theories had to learn application ; the public had to learn use; industry had to learn the techniques to meet the demands of volume and quality. The motion picture took a leading part in wartime education— propaganda as well as training. It explained ideas, it showed events, it made hidden phenomena visible, and it demonstrated the way to control them. So successful was the motion picture in this task of education for war that close attention was once more given to its capacity as a means for enlightenment in the work of peace. Educators, scientists, statesmen and prelates have led a chorus of enthusiastic interest in the use of motion pictures for instruction. ANIMATION POTENTIALITIES The Disney Studios have enjoyed a vantage point from which to observe the currents of opinion on motion pictures as educational aids. This was due to the circumstance that our facilities, at one time, were almost exclusively dedicated to film training programs for the Army, Navy, and Air Force. Moreover, the character of our output, as well as the personalities who carried out this work, led us toward attitudes that are educational although expressed in entertainment. We had been preparing for this task for a long time. We had improved our technique to the point where it knew practically no limitations of picturization. The animated cartoon could with equal clarity depict the birth of a continent, the rhythm of a stellar system, the structure of an atom, or the anatomy of a microbe. What is hidden to the eye could not escape the drawing board. The animated cartoon can show the movement of winds over a continent and the next moment demonstrate the flow of an electric current. The versatility of the animated cartoon is obvious. What is not so apparent is that its nature demands a delicate adjustment of what are called “story values.” The argument must be condensed and continuity so arranged that clarity and interest are never lost. The virtues of the animated cartoon do not exclude the equally great virtues of direct photography. This fact has led the Disney Studios to develop the technique of combining animation with direct photography. In educational films all technical devices should be employed. WAR EXPERIENCE We learned much from the films we produced for the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs on health subjects, and from projects we have undertaken for private industry. There has been no limit to the variety of content. It ranged from mechanics to medicine, nutrition to inflation, language to geology, anatomy to infant feeding. Reports from instructors and trainees were unanimous in crediting our films with speeding up learning, increasing retention, and compelling interest. These films, however, have been every one an experiment. We could not pretend to have reached definite conclusions, or to have discovered unfailing formulas. The success of these films, while flat