The 16mm film, introduced thirty years ago, removed important economic and technical barriers to the use of motion pictures in education. Today, the teaching film is cinematically professional and academically respectable. From the experience and experiment of the past thirty years has also come a number of valuable concepts which have changed the nature of the teaching film and which give us clues as to what the teaching film of the future might be like. We are, for example, developing new concepts of how people "see," based on a recognition of the fact that the film itself is only a part of the total film situation, and that while seeing may result in believing, seeing is also conditioned by what the audience already believes. The teaching film of tomorrow will be based on a better knowledge of the physiology and psychology of how people look at pictures. A related concept is that of the "target audience." This is the theory that film effectiveness is proportionate to the degree to which the picture satisfies the needs and interests of a specific group of individuals. Classroom films of the future will be tailormade to fit the age, grade-level, and interests of their intended audience.
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