Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers (1930-1949)

by the Navy's Special Devices Center at Port Washington, N.Y. The affinity of television to radio, by way of establishment of television studios and networks in association with radio studios and networks, brought into television a group of artists, craftsmen and technicians not too familiar with motion picture production and motion picture studio practice. Partly because of studio and small-screen limitations, and partly because of fresh talent in the television industry, television has changed the format of video presentation and revived many techniques successfully used in the past in military training and other nontheatrical films. The second influence on film production methods and techniques, particularly in training and informational films, is the growing body of research data on factors which increase the instructional effec tiveness of motion pictures. On the whole, this research has tended to verify and emphasize the applicability to motion pictures of well-known instructional procedures, and to demonstrate that the training and informational effectiveness of films is measurably increased when instructional procedures are incorporated into film production. This emphasis on instructional techniques in training and informational films is almost as unwelcome to the professional film producer as is the emphasis of the television producer on production shortcuts and simplified background and sets. Teachers are, as J. E. Morpurgo says in The Impact of America on European Culture, "the depressed class in America's predominantly commercial society." Instruction techniques are associated with teachers. Submergence of teachers in the American value system submerges Fig. 1. ". . . occasionally Jim steps out of his role, and for a moment, is the master of both the machine and of the practical aspects of the theory." 196 September 1952 Journal of the SMPTE Vol. 59