The Moving Picture Weekly (1917-1919)

26 THE MOVING PICTURE WEEKLY Advises Use of Films m all Sckools DR. PHILANDER CLAYTON, U. S. Commissioner of Education, would equip all schools with latest and best visual instructional material to be had. DON CARLOS ELLIS, new head of the Universal Educational Department, planning interesting series of Pedagogical Films to be exhibited at the Nat. Educational Assn. at Cleveland. Don Carlos Ellis. WHEN Universal undertook its colossal plan of building films for schools, it laid the same broad and logical foundations for the work as it has hitherto done, first for its theatrical productions and more recently for its industrial films. It has started its pedagogical work in the only logical way to insure the success of the undertaking; that is, by placing behind the effort the best procurable authorities in both the fields of school work and of educational films. First it selected one of the foremost publishers of school text books in the country, D. Appleton and Company, and placed them under contract to furnish the rights to the use of all their text books as subjects for series of films and to arrange for the services of the authors of these texts, in co-operation with Universal forces, for the preparation of scenarios and the production of the films. Under the terms of the contract, the Universal has been assured of the co-operation and assistance of leading authorities in the various branches covered by the Appleton texts. As the second step, the Universal has placed in charge of educational production the only man in the country who has up to this time successfully produced a consistent series of high-grade pedagogical films. This man is Don Carlos Ellis, who has been in charge of the film division of the U. S. Department of Agriculture for the past two years and who is responsible for the excellent series of films issued by the Department during that period. These films of the Government's Agricultural Department are the nearest approach to text book parallels that have been produced in films. They have been built to illustrate Farmers' Bulletins, and other publications of Uncle Sam's Agricultural Bureaus and represent the only work of this kind which has been done successfully either in commercial or government films. Mr. Ellis resigned from the government service the last of the year to take charge of the production of educational films of the Universal's new educational department. He is adding to his staff men and women who have done con spicuously successful work in both education and motion pictures. Every one on the Universal's educational staff is to devote his or her best efforts to the production and distribution of educational films, and there is to be no galaxy of people occupying honorary positions or constituting co-operating committees, but who do not contribute substantially to the quality of the films. Much has been said and written within the past few years concerning educational films. Programmes of socalled "educationals" have been placed upon the market, convincing prospectives have been issued outlining the excellence of various types of instructional pictures, learned men and women have spent much effort in planning instructional film, the demand from teachers everywhere for the right character of school reels has been large and imperative. School auditoriums and class rooms .have been equipped with projectors in preparation for the use of educational film, and the motion picture and educational press has been filled to overflowing with exceedingly interesting accounts of what has been accomplished towards providing schools with suitable motion pictures. The one great drawback, however, in the entire situation is the lack of the educational films themselves. With the exception of the highly instructional pictures issued by the Government, no systematic pedagogical films have yet appeared, and educators the country over are justly dissatisfied with the rehashing for school use and class-room instruction of films designed for entertainment in theatres. There is a definite place and an imperative demand in schools in all parts of the country for systematic series of real pedagogical films built by educational experts on film subjects for class-room use. The Universal Film Manufacturing Company has undertaken to meet this demand, and to meet it in the only way in which it can possibly be met adequately and satisfactorily; that is, by placing in the hands of leading educators and film producers the necessary resources and the responsibility for (Continued on page 34)