Communications Primer, A

PA9049 Communications Primer, A 16 Eastmancolor print

This item is part of the collection: Prelinger Archives

Audio/Visual: sound, color

Creative Commons license: Public Domain

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Reviewer: EamesFan - - May 18, 2005
Subject: Brothers?

POst by Bill stated that: "Which of course, brings me to the films of Ray and Charles Eames. The Eames brothers..."???

Charles and Ray were husband and wife, not brothers. They were not initially architects. Ray was a visual artist. This is a classic Eames film and a great introduction to their creativity that spanned many industries.

Reviewer: Bill T. - - May 12, 2005
Subject: Educational films as 'Art'

Which of course, brings me to the films of Ray and Charles Eames. The Eames brothers really dared to fool around with the question 'What is a euphemeral film?' (Much like Herk Harvey I suppose) and proceed to put their own arty spin (I do believe initially they were architects) on these films. On 'A Communication Primer', from beginning to end, we're faced with an odd history of communication, told with interesting images and off-puting strange narration that seems dull and boring, but never really wrong for this type of movie. Like their animated stuff, this film is not for everyone. I know a couple of people who swear that the Eames are total geniuses, and maybe they are.. I just am not a big fan.

Reviewer: Christine Hennig - - August 12, 2004
Subject: Smarter Than Your Average Educational Film

This film was made by Charles and Ray Eames, which makes it more intelligent and visually striking than most educational films. It deals with the semantics of communication, breaking down the concept into a flow chart of choosing, coding, sending, receiving, decoding, and understanding messages. This is applied to modes of communication as simple as ÃÂone if by land and two if by seaÃÂ and as complex as billions of neurons firing in the human nervous system. Visually, these concepts are portrayed with a collage of animation, film clips, photographs, electronically-generated images, and images from famous works of art. Aurally, they are portrayed with deadpan narration and a haunting music score by Elmer Bernstein. This film is to films like Communications and Our Town, as 2nd-grade social studies is to a graduate-level course in philosophy. But at heart, itÃÂs still an educational film, so it still qualifies as ephemera, though smarter than your average piece of ephemera. The EamesÃÂ were key players in the modernist design movement, giving this film a great deal of historical value.
Ratings: Camp/Humor Value: *. Weirdness: ****. Historical Interest: *****. Overall Rating: ****.

Reviewer: Steve Nordby - - June 12, 2003
Subject: Adequate

The basics of communication presented in this 1953 introduction to "the era of communication" (aka the information age) are still true in 2003. Transmission, noise, redundancy, distortion... misunderstanding. Foresight into the importance of the computer but a misleading comparison to the human brain, and an irrelevant (though entertaining) clip of sounds generated from scanning computer punch cards. The film is scratched and the narrative dry, but the visuals are well done and quite compelling at times.