From the wonderful Open Video Project, a new source of bandwidth drain, comes The “Your Name Here” Story, the ultimate industrial film. This film was made in 1960 by and for attendees of the Calvin Workshops, an annual series of workshops held to help industrial filmmakers improve their work. Whether this film was meant to be seen in public or not, it shows that these guys clearly had an idea of how inane a lot of their work seemed, not just today, but even while they were creating it. The spoof industrial film in Spike Jonze’s Being John Malkovich owes a debt to the Calvin Workshops.
Also, don’t miss #Bfl O {ggGX = STwWcfl x 2s4 (1963), a look at the film-production process starring chimpanzees, and The Vicious Circle, or What Are We Trying To Do? (1964), about the joys of working with corporate clients.
I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that the industrial filmmakers of the 1950s and 1960s have a lot in common with today’s web designers. Watch and laugh and learn!
Trivia Note: The Calvin Workshops were sponsored by the Calvin Company, a leading producer of industrial (“nontheatrical”) films based in Kansas City. An early employee was Robert Altman.