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tke. New England Association of Chem
Walter E. Schaap
University Films, Inc. New York, New York Laurence S. Foster U.S. Army Materials
Research Agency Watertown, Massachusetts and Elbert C. Weaver'
Phillips Academy Andover, Massachusetts
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Using and Producing Filmstrips low-cost aids for chemistry teachers
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Fifteen years ago, the filmstrip was an infant, indeed, an orphan, the neglected stepchild of the educational motion picture. The growth of the filmstrip industry has in recent years been phenomenal in the range of subject matter and in both quantity and quality of productions.z Today, the filmstrip is the "work horse" of audio-visual education, with sales exceeding those of educational motion pictures. Yet it is nearly as unpublicized and neglected as ever. While public notice often goes to more glamorous audio-visual aids, such as educational television, programmed teaching machines, language tapes, and entire courses on film, the filmstrip increasingly continues to do an essential, albeit prosaic, job in classrooms all over the country. What Is a Filmstrip?
The filmstrip is a roll of 35-millimeter film that exhibits a sequence of illustrations with explanatory captions or legends. Or in other words, it presents a series of statements with explanat.ory illustrations. I t is the equivalent of a lantern slide sequence, but with a builtin continuity and unity that individual slides lack. Today, for good reasons, nearly all filmstrips are in color; an artistic color filmstrip has its own aesthetic appeal. I n addition, color adds verisimilitude to most views, and lends interest to what otherwise might he a very undramatic table or diagram. The colors in the frame shown in black and white in Figure 1 run from red on the left through green in the middle to blue on the right of the scale. Color-coding can help the continuity of a filmstrip. A different color background may be used for each of three experiments, for example, and the change of background (for example, from yellow to green) tacitly shows that a new topic has been introduced. A different use of color, adopted in a recent filmstrip on pH, also puts
Reprint requests should be directed to Mr. Weaver. * A catalog of chemistry filmstrips has been published in JOURNAL, 39, 374 (1962); 41, 630 (1964). 172
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Journal o f Chemical Education
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frames referring to acid solutions on a red background, to alkaline solutions on blue, and to neutral solutions on green. I n this way, the learning process is subtly reinforced by visual cues. Another use of color is to emphasize an important or a new item in a frame or a sequence. I n a filmstrip on balancing equations (essentially a class drill of gradually increasing difficulty) this technique has been used extensively. Color patches can be used to call attention to a formula, an ionic charge, or a coefficient.. One part of the calculation may he shown in whit,e,while the rest of the calculation is in yellow. Advantages of Filmstrips
Filmstrips have several unique advantages over other audio-visual devices. Foremost among these isJlexibi1ity. A motion picture imposes a built-in pace upon the classroonl, while a filmstrip frame can be held on the screen as long as necessary. A 40-frame filmstrip can be a 10-15 minute lesson in one class, and a two-hour project in another. This flexibility enables filmstrips to be used advantageously a t ahnost any time during the teaching of a given topic. They may he used to introduce a new subject, later to provide a change of pace and enliven discussions, and still later for review purposes, even by an individual student. They can serve a class well because they are truly visual aids.
Figure 1. Block ond wh:te reprcduciicn of Frome 16 of filmstrip on hydrogen-ion concentration. Oririncl ir color coded to show ocid or red; neutral, green; cnd alkolinc, blue.
A filmstrip can provide a framework that the teacher can adapt for a particular purpose. With a filmstrip, it is a simple matter to project only a few frames that pertain to a part of a lesson. Short excerpts from a motion picture may produce chaos unless these have been very sldllfully edited and spliced. Use of excerpts from sound films is practically in~possible. A filmstrip can be used in a large auditorium, in an ordinary classrooni, or even on an individual's desk. When the filmstrip is projected on a screen, the ent,ire class can see the picture clearly, any complicated diagrams can he explained thoroughly, and all questions can he answered. For individual use, there are several makes of "viewers" simple enough to be operated with a little instruction. One of them is shown in Figure 2. A convalescent student can use a viewer and filmstrips by himself to catch up on classwork that he has missed. A gifted student can move ahead on his own, enriching his knowledge of a subject by viewing filmstrips on advanced topics. I n addition to flexibility and simplicity of use. the filmstrip has a considerable advantage of low cost. A 20-minute motion picture fihn in color, will cost $100 or more; a fihnstrip print costs only $6 to $8. Production costs are lower, print costs are lower, and the filmstrip projector costs are lower.
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Figure 2. Typical individual viewer or "Previewer" for fllmstripr. tesy of Standard Projector and Equipment Co., Inc.
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Overcoming Disadvantages of Filmstrips
A number of unsatisfactory filmstrips (poorly conceived and poorly executed) are on the market. A poor filmstrip, however, is easier to discard than a poor textbook or a poor niot,ion pict.ure and easier to replace when better ones become available. The virtue of flexibilit,~ has its limitations. A motion picture may be inflexible, but a good one can be counted upon to tell its st,ory and make its points precisely as intended. The flexibility of the filmstrip requires proper presentation in class. Unless the teacher lcnows how to stimulate discussion, the filmstrip lesson may fall flat. The filmstrip is often belittled for its lack of motion and the absence of a sound track. Neither of these
criticisms is as valid as might appear. Properly presented, a filmstrip can succeed in giving the impression of movement-often, after a filmstrip lecture, a member of the audience will comment "That's a fine movie you showed us." Where sound is important, fihnstrips can and do have sound, with the sound track on a phonograph record that accompanies the packaged filmstrips. This combination, known as the "sound fihnstrip," or "sound slidefilm," is widely used by sales-promotion organizations and by philanthropic or money-raising institutions for motivational purposes. For classroom use, however, it is doubtful whether the addition of sound, with its pace-setting tempo: outweighs the loss of flexibility. The teacher should provide whatever sound is needed. How a Filmstrip Script is Written
The most important part of the filmstrip production cycle is its script. The razson d'entre of an educational filmstrip is to teach, and it is up to the written word and the picture to convey a message. Important as the visuals may be, the carefully considered script for the legends is the essential component. Ideally, the author or filmstrip producer must be both a subject-matter expert and an audio-visual expert. The reality, however, is that it is virtually impossible to find this combination of skills in one person; a pooling of talents is therefore necessary. For example, a nunlher of colored filmstrips have been edited and produced by the present authors. The chemist team members wrote drafts of the scripts; the producer rearote the drafts into filmstrip concise English. The producer serves as a kind of devil's advocate. If he cannot understand, he mill object. At such moments, the three editors--chemistry teacher, research chemist, and filmstrip producer-will then reconsider the point being made, the sequence, or the visualization, with several possible outcon~es:(1) the chemists may be able to explain the point to the film producer. I n this case, since any teacher can presumably explain the difficulty as easily to his class, there will be no need to make a change; (2) the chemists can point out that the students would have covered background material earlier in their course, and therefore will not have the same trouble as the chemically-illiterate film producer; (3) the chemists will agree that clarification is needed, and jointly with the producer, they will work out a new wording, a better illustration, or a more logical sequence of frames. There is the final possibility that the chemists will decide that the troublesome point was too advanced or too unrelated to the heart of the matter, and drop it from the filmstrip. The filmstrip producer of experience knows a lot about fihnstrips, even though he is not a subject-matter expert in most of the fields in which he produces filmstrips. The chemists are not conversant with most of the problems of making effective filmstrips. The collaboration of the chemistry teacher, the research chemist, and the filmstrip producer has therefore produced a better product for teaching chemistry than any one of those alone could have achieved. One early decision to be made concerns the scope of the filmstrip, since it is impossible to cover fully such a topic as "atomic energy" or "the gas laws" in 40 frames, using some 600 words. Someone has to decide which Volume 42, Number 3, March 1965
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are the most important points, which are the less important points, and which poink may safely be omitted. The chemistry teacher must he the one to decide the ideas upon which his classes 111ost need help, and which ideas ought to be amplified. The research chemist may have ideas about facts that should be included, even though they may not yet have been adopted in textbooks. An effective filmstrip should do more than merely repeat what is commonly known; its content should extend beyond t,he usual course to challenge the imagination of the superior students in the class, and to stimulate the teacher hopefully into learning a modern approach to an older subject. Other problems in filmst.rip script writing can he solved only by the mind that has been trained to act in a special way, like that of the filmstrip producer with his special training and skills. The number of words that will fit into a filmstrip frame is limited; three lines of 42 characters each is t,he optimun~. Script producers therefore can say only a little a t a time, which forces them to organize t,heir thoughts carefully. Instead of using sweeping statements, they must proceed bit by bit,, using short, simple, succinct statements to produce a logical sequence of ideas. Furthermore, a visualization must accompany each legend. At every moment, the writers must examine riot orily what they want to say, but also what they want to show. Very often the illustration changes the immediat,e response to the writing. Occasionally, visualization distorts the thought; but more oft,en visualization leads the writers to present their ideas in a new, unort,hodoxway--a clearer, more logical way because the statement is buttressed by the visual part of the frame. Filmstrip script writing is truly the enemy of wooly abstractions; it forces concrete thinking. The need for terseness together with visualization may lead to choppy writing. To overcome this, the script writ,ers must concentrate both on making each individual frame clear and on providing smooth eont,inuity from one frame to the next. Our experience has been that the collaboration of an experienced script producer and subject-matter experts can do a better job of solving these peculiar writing problems than the foremost subject-matter experts alone. The primary responsibility of the chemists should be t,o tell the script producer what to write, and Lo check the validity of his product; the primary rcsponsihility of the t,rained script producer should be to organize the message t,omake the best use of the advanlages of this medium, recognizing its limitations. A poor script is easy to recognize; it constantly jolts the viewer with its jerky lack of continuity between frames, with it,s misleading or ambiguous wording, and wit,h the lack of connection bet,ween picture and legend. An effective script flows so sn~oothlythat one never notices it. The viewer never realizes that countless writing problems had to he solved in order to produce this seemingly simple and effortless prose. To insure legibility, filmstrip type must be 2-3 times larger than regular book type (3Qpt. type is often used). Type of this size requires hand-setting, and often must he specially cast to provide the subscripts, snper~cript~s, and symbols necessary for chemistry (see Fig. 3). Filmstrip type is generally set by hot press. I n this 174
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Figure 3. Special t y p e fonfr w e r e required t o hand-set this t y p i c o l chemical colcvlation in the Solubility Product Constant filmrtrip.
process, heated type imprints from a foil of the desired color onto the paper or transparent cellulose acetate, to faciliate use of colored type more conveniently than with ink printing. Considerable savings in time and money for artwork are made possible by placing different type transparent overlays or "cells" on the same basic piece of art. The same artwork, with appropriate cell overlays, thus may serve for successive frames of a filmstrip. Production of the Visuals
The actual production of the finished fihnstrip is the responsibility of the producer. He should he familiar with all the technieques and problems of artwork, typography, photography, and making filmstrip masters. Few filmstrip artists, are familiar with chemical equipment. They must be supplied with references for their illustrations-catalogs, photographs, or even the actual pieces of apparatus. Even then, they may find it necessary to simplify the apparatus for the sake of clarity, or to distort its shape in order to fit the proportions of the filmstrip frame (4 wide X 3 high) as illustrated in Figure 4. A typical size for fillustrip art is 10 in. X 71/rin.
Figure 4. Frome No. 2 of filmstrip on "Solubility Product Conrtmt." showing rirnplificotion a n d distortion of o p p o r a t m t o tit p r o p o r t i o m of Rlm,tri. fromer.
Even today, good color photographs of industrial chemical processes are rare. Reams of request letters sent to technical associations or industrial corporations sometimes produce only a few poor transparencies. Sometimes the solution is to scissor out a black and
Figure 5. Cut-out cotolog picture of pH meter, mounted on colored bockground.
white photograph and mount it on a colored background as was done in Figure 5. Sometimes the producer has to go on location, hire actors, and take live shots. In making the filmstrip master, the illustrations and captions are shot in proper order on a strip of 35mm color negative film, such as Kodak Internegative #6008 or Eastman Motion Picture Negative Film Type 5251. Masters are then printed on a different stock, such as
Eastman color Print Type 5385. When shooting the master, the floodlights must be placed with great care, to light the frame evenly and to avoid "flare" (reflection of light into the animation camera). Transparenciesmust be backlighted; it is quitea trick to shoot them just right,especially since thecaptions are double-exposed on the same frame of the film by frontlighting. Transparencies should be masked (by sandwiching them with a soft black-and-white negative) so that they do not become overly contrasty when copied. A filmstrip usually contains 35 to 50 frames. If any error is made on a single frame-if it is slightly tilted, if the exposure is even a half-stop off, if a piece of type has chipped, or if something is shot out of sequence--the entire master usually must he reshot. Even then too often little mistakes elude the eye until the final product is in print. Eagerly and apprehensively the first test filmstrip print is scanned by all three collaborators-producer, chemistry teacher, and research chemist. If all is well, months of joint effort have paid off in an effective contribution to chemical education.
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