This black and white and color 1954 Encyclopedia Britannica film outlines the production process of creating educational films in a celebration of the company’s 25th anniversary (TRT 18:34).
Safety leader: Central Washington University Media Library Services (0:06). Title card: Encyclopedia Britannica Films (0:24). Opening titles (0:31). A hand holding a pen composes a memo on a clipboard. Subject: “Making Films that Teach” (0:48). Our host is revealed in a 16mm film editing suite lined with film canisters and reels on rewinds (1:02). Closeup of the man smoking a pipe and facing the racks of film reels (1:26). A framed portrait shows a date range of 1836-1847: “The McGuffey Readers. An effective use of pictures in education” (1:27). Our host speaks, as if to the portrait (1:35). Back at the desk, writing on the clipboard (1:51). An actor portraying William Holmes McGuffey materializes. He points to the portrait, from which he has vanished (2:10). Our host pats a 16mm film reel (2:50). A bookshelf. A woman wearing glasses retrieves a book and sits down at a desk, browsing (3:10). Spines of books about education (3:38). Three men in suits and ties review documents in an office (3:46). Closeup of a typed script outline (4:16). Two men compare notes. Counting on outstretched fingers (5:00). Leafing through pages of a script. Pan to a board with a shot list (5:28). A producer reviews the plan with his staff (5:44). A set on a soundstage. Scenery flats, the long arm of a boom mic, lighting equipment and folding chairs. A cameraman points a film camera (6:05). A clapboard marker for scene 10, take 2. Actors portraying George Washington and Thomas Jefferson act in period dress with white wigs (6:28). Cutaway to the director, script supervisor, and cameraman (6:58). Cutaway to the boom mic operator (7:09). Two men operate a machine which illustrates a planet orbiting the sun (7:29). Building the gear-like device. Dissolve to an actor spinning the gear (7:35). An actor in Renaissance garb looks through a telescope (7:50). A balance scale operated by bearded men in classical robes (8:04). The Leaning Tower of Pisa (8:09). Scientists of old with chemist’s glassware, a microscope (8:16). Children at a school lunch table (8:28). Film lighting equipment staging outdoors (8:32). Four glass vials contain smoke from a supply of cigarettes (8:41). A factory worker and a nylon thread machine. Flames of an Indiana steel mill in action (8:48). A film crew on location outside the US Capitol (9:29). A man at the head of a family dinner table. A boy feeds a dog spaghetti (9:56). Indian women modeling saris (10:10). Men in hijabs walking (10:26). Two men with a 16mm film camera (10:30). A turtle lays an egg (10:42). Ants and bees in microphotography (10:54). A man seated at an illuminated animation camera stand holds up an animation cel painted with a human outline (11:30). An illustration of human sinuses in cutaway profile zooms into animation (11:40). A camera points into a woman’s mouth (12:10). A larynx expands and contracts (12:17). An eardrum vibrates (12:27). The moon. X-rays show shifting bones (12:43). A ball rolls down an incline, the film stopping as it hits numbered intervals. Time-lapse footage of a plant (12:58). A photographer turns lights on and off in a room full of plants (13:38). A 16mm film editor at a Moviola style editing console (14:26). A 35mm film editor sends a reel of film on rewinds through a frame counter, marking it (14:42). A sound engineer at an audio mixing console (14:53). A 35mm film projection booth with multiple mechanical rewinds and a projector (14:58). Film shifts to full color (15:31). Children drag a Christmas tree through winter snow. Climbing. Sniffing flowers, pointing skyward (15:45). A painter’s harbor landscape. Baby and adult birds. A monarch butterfly (16:14). McGuffey vanishes (17:42). End titles (18:21).
