A/V Geeks 16mm Lunch with John Allman (5-21-2025)

[Music] Hello everybody. Welcome. Um, I'm Skip Alzheimer. Welcome to the AV Geeks Lunchtime streaming show where we are happy to have guests uh Owen Gotautle who is to my left and John Alman who is to my right. I'm going to introduce Owen who's then going to introduce John. Owen is a associate professor of interactive games and media at uh the RIT where he founded and directs the interaction media and learning lab. He's a game interaction and narrative designer and producer as well as a media historian working on a book on the design history of instructional broadcasting. His most recent publication comes out on June 1st, a chapter on the history of rescuing instructional television. See if I can bring up that uh image um which is from the Peabody series on media studies and the University of Georgia press the archivability of television on has presented on John Alman's work at the society for cinema and media studies and has a number of other publications in the works on AIT which is a agency for instructional television and ITV which I don't know what that stands Maybe the wind will tell us. Thank you, Skip. It's great to be here. Very excited for today's uh lunchtime celebration of some of John Alman's works. Uh ITV instructional television, so classroom television. Uh so uh it's my honor to uh introduce John Alman today. Uh I have been an admirer of of uh John's uh works in ITV for decades and now have the opportunity to study and to learn uh from my interactions with John. Uh John Alman was born in 1945 and grew up in St. Louis. He wrote poetry in college and started writing plays. After graduating, he found opportunities for work for a small commercial production company called Communico that was moving into educational films. Working his way to the educational division, he also got the opportunity to direct. And though Communico folded, those first credits got him hired at KETC, the St. Lewis PBS station to write and direct programs for AIT, which was the Agency for Instructional Technology and later uh television. They changed the TN84. At the time of Inside Out, which we'll be looking at today, it was NIT, National Instructional Television. He was working on the series images and things, that first series, which was arts education for sixth graders. The next series for NIT was Inside Out, focused on a effective education, what we might today call social and emotional learning for fourth and fifth graders. Inside Out gave Alman the chance to start making dramas, which was his aim all along. Other series he's written for uh and directed include Self- Incorporated. You might be familiar with the episodes Two Sons and by Whose Rules of Self- Incorporated, uh The Heart of Heart of Teaching, Think About uh and Powerhouse. And I'll also mention that it was um one of the episodes we'll look at today, a clip from it was one of the two episodes that got Inside Out uh that it was were submitted for the Emmy, which uh Inside Out wins over Sesame Street, Mr. Rogers Neighborhood in Schoolhouse Rock in 1974. So, we're very pleased to welcome John Alman today to discuss Inside Out and his filmmaking process. I'm going to hide, but I'll be I'll still be here, but I'm going to make myself uh invisible. So I would say just by way of background on the inside out series which is what we're looking at today. uh AIT began as the loaning library for the old NE which is and then they they were NIT and so many requests came in for some unmet needs that they figured out they could develop series and so this series was developed by a con AIT put together a consortium of state and provincial departments of education and every series began with experts in the field and in this case health education uh who would create a a content design and then the programs would be based on the topics that they sorted out. So that's the background on all the programs you'll see today. Excellent. And to kind of kick us off, maybe if you could share a little bit about uh the team that you worked with on Inside Out series um and kind of how that team was comprised in its various elements and and uh your general approach to approaching the stories. You could start either one, I guess. Well, I was a young filmmaker who wanted to be Bergman or Truo or the like and never made it within remote distance. But, uh, the idea with these 15inute shows was to create as powerful an impact as we could. I I the cinematographer's name was John Houston, not the famous one. The editor was David Howard. I later edited myself and I was a writer director and some other people or I produced which was sort of a minor task in those contexts. uh the both David and John made enormous contributions to these shows uh and uh the AIT team they I can't emphasize enough to what degree the content designers or Harelson would travel around the country to the different agencies producing shows Northern Virginia Cleveland Ontario uh Ontario was always part of the package because they wanted Canadian sponsors uh uh and or Larry Walkoff was kind of a smoosher hustler who worked for AIT uh would you know consult at various stages of the production they were very non-interfering and they they were very uh supportive of making the shows strong which is what we as filmmakers wanted to do of course uh in St. Lewis programs. We also consulted with a child psychoanalyst because uh we had the most explosive topics in the series. I lucked into that. So, uh maybe we'll wait on that uh story. Maybe not. Uh because we're definitely going to share that one. Uh you've also spoken in the past about Glenn Easley and you've spoken about Mois Shopper and so you're kind of maybe filling out for the audience a sense of this is a this is a tremendous group of people coordinating and working together as a team. um maybe share a little bit about um how that worked and what it was like working with with uh with some of those folks as well. Well, Wally Wesley was in on the earliest designs of inside even before and or Glenn. Uh she worked for the American Medical Association. Wally was a she and uh was just consulting to educational progress wherever the American Medical Association could contribute to educational knowledge that she would she would do that. Uh but those three were really close friends. There were other designers involved but Orv Glenn Easley was the chief Seattle psychologist uh for the schools and Orv was a health education expert and MD. So that his background fed into this and Moisy Shopper whom I mentioned was a cycle analyst in St. Louis that I had known socially and uh who consulted on most of these shows. Can you take us a little bit into maybe the process um of how you would work with such a group of people? You know, some people may say, "Oh, you know, too many cooks in the kitchen. Somehow you're leading the ship on these episodes and yet drawing from all of these sources together." I'm curious about like table reads or script consultation and like coffee with folks or the process of bringing it all together. Yeah. Well, basically the assignment there was a big meeting of content designers and writers at the start of the project. So, we all had a two-page outline for each subject, what the kind of what the heart of the thing would be. And uh then it would just be our job to come up with scripts and my job to come up with scripts in St. And uh so that I would send those of course to Orv and and Larry and and run them by Mois Moyes and another friend of mine Earl Hollis who was head of the clinic at the special school district in St. Louis. Uh basically had input on every show but once the script was there it was a question of approval suggestions etc etc. Uh, and then, uh, Larry and Orb would travel around once we had a rough cut and view the rough cut that we were we were pretty true to the mark and they were pretty non-intrusive. So, I bear most of the blame for the way these shows play, although a lot of other people can share the credit. Maybe as a way of introducing or preparing for the clip set, I want to think about kind of your your camera eye, your sense, and and working with John Houston. um really I think many of us are so deeply struck by uh being in the shoes of young people facing really difficult times and maybe your thoughts on how your aesthetic approach your directing and writing approach to to reach young people a little bit about either your philosophy or your process in presenting these shows. From my perspective, there are few depictions of young children from their perspective that um that really emulate what it's like to be a kid in difficult circumstances. Well, I I would say that once we had these six topics, which you'll see clips from, I think that Skip limited himself to them. Uh and we knew that they were all powerful powerhouse topics. And so you might you you might want to add in there that you grabbed those topics when others Yeah. when there was a writer's planning meeting Ruth Pollock who was a head writer at Northern Virginia which later became Educational Film Center and we would become fast friends through the years. She's still alive at about 95. But uh she had raised four kids and and uh kind of wanted to have gentler topics and so and all I somehow I've analogized it to the Red Sea party that all the other writers kind of backed away from bullying and crushes and divorce and family abuse which was handled very lightly and so forth. And uh and I just oh we took turns and I said I just felt they all fell into my lap and there I was looking at two years of work making short films on powerful topics. But I wanted to say uh Owen that uh one once we knew we had the opportunity to create these. Bob Glazer was the head of the St. Louis station and was very supportive of first of all more national contribution. So he he was glad to be uh hired have the station hired by a AIT and he we said we did a communitywide casting which the station advertised on air and stuff and hundreds of people came out and we had everybody who might have some judgment of what representative performance who was on the KETC staff uh conduct auditions and so we had this enormous mob of people pouring through the studio and uh I I'd written a uh improv setups and they could choose among them and the readings they could. But by the time we had completed that casting, we had just an unbelievable reservoir of talented children and emotionally together children and expressive children and tolerable children. That was a big part of the formula for a child actor. They couldn't be a primadonna. Uh, and I those kids in turn impressed me that when we were making the shows, cuz they were latency age, basically 8 to 10, uh, they were they knew that they were as smart as the adults but less experienced, and they got the chance to show that in the way they performed on set and so forth and so on. But the the talent of the kids is a big factor in uh people like Owen and and Skip empathizing with the performances they see. Did you find yourself rewriting scripts once you had cast or working with them in terms of seeing where they went or uh how did the script to screen process work? Well, to to a degree you always adapt the script to the talent, but not not I wouldn't call it rewriting. I would call it adapting shaping. Uh you they're your as the cliche goes the talent are the actors are the paint and so you have to utilize what they do well but these kids were just powerhouses. I mean I didn't find my find myself limited by them in any way. And then in terms of um visuals working with John, you know, are you setting uh compositions for his framing? uh what's that relationship like with uh determining how you're going to set you know your misans and your your composition of the frame and well I'm I'm I'm constructing the editorial sequence of the shots and know what coverage we want but John was a real artist with the camera and had been a still photographer before and was so we would certainly consult obviously through the viewfinder and things like that but I could trust his judgment to a great degree as far as how the frames worked and whatnot and you'll see all that in the uh in the clips and not go bully. Um, so I'm going to call call on Skip and say, Skip, is there anything else? Would you like us to take a couple uh to take a little more time for questions? Should we go ahead and look at our clips? I can do a sentence or two on on what we're about to see if you'd like. Why don't we uh watch the clips and if you want to say Owen because Owen I let Owen pick his the clips that he really wanted to show from the from five episodes and then you guys will come back and talk about uh some of that or four is it six total or five total? It is I counted it's five uh total. Yeah. So four four in the clip set and then we'll do a full screen. No, no, no. There's five in the clip set and Okay. Then we're going to watch Bully in its entirety. Excellent. So Owen, you going go ahead and and do your little intro for these clips, the setup, and then I'll run the clips. Great. So uh pulled some some uh clips in particular that I think spoke to things like shot composition, the performances that everyone's responding to. Um, and also just to think about when these were uh both shot right in the early 70s and then airing at least through the 80s. Um, if we think just for one example for breakup about depicting a separation and potential divorce, this is just not shown on television. You One Day at a Time comes on within a couple years that's in a sitcom context that's not open-ended like Inside Out with typically open endings. And so the kinds of things we're going to see in these episodes, especially if you haven't seen them before, you could not see anywhere else. So I'll just set that up and and um enjoy these clips and we'll be back after the screening. What happened? My mom gave my cat scratching my stupid furniture. She gave your cat away. Hey, how much money you got? About 14. I got about a coin. Let's go buy some soda. Okay, let's go. It's not just the cat. It's everything they do. I'm not going back to that place. Well, what are you going to do? I'll tell you what I'd like to do more than anything. Yeah. I'll tell you if you catch me first. What I'd like to do more than anything is to come and live with your family. A Come on. No, really. You're my best friend. Your parents are really nice. Oh, come on. You know what they make me do? Pick up that. Pick up this. Have to mop. Yeah, but they were nice, too. They don't scream all the time. Do this. Do that. Brush your teeth. Take a bath. Did your parents take your bike away for a month if you broke a dish or something? No. But you're lucky. All sorts of Did your dad blow up all the time and shove you around? No. But And you're really lucky. I got two more. You know what? It didn't serve our parents right if we ran away. Oh, where would we go? I know places or we'd really get it when we came back. Well, we wouldn't come back. What do you mean? Well, at least not until we wanted to. Oh, our parents would really worry about us. Well, maybe yours would, but not mine. Let's go to my Donna has learned to take care of herself and we've tried to raise her that way because she had she will have to someday take care of herself completely. Donna has had to learn, for instance, to clean up her room, not the way another child does by watching their mother, but by having it explained to her and shown to her. She can't learn by watching someone else. She has to have it explained, and when it's explained, even then it isn't clear. So she really has to do something to learn it. She can't learn by the process of looking at someone else doing it. Normally she remembers things well and therefore she learns quickly. But she still has to go through the actions of whatever she is learning before she can do it. What's 2 * 3? Seven. You know that's not seven, David. 2 * 3. Six. All right. Okay. Now, if 2 * 3 is six, where do you go from there? I had a teacher once. Name is Simpson. Three. And I thought she was the prettiest lady in the world. You know what 2 * 2 is? I'm sure you do. Four. You know, I think you're missing these on purpose. Write it down. Mhm. I think you knew that all along, didn't you? I think so. Shoulders up. That's it. And lift your beautiful. Beautiful. Did everyone see that movement? Did you see our legs? Miss Simpson taught us how to do things that were really fun. Things like nobody else knew how to do. The bar rounding. That's it. Round the fingers around the bar. That's it. Very good. Okay. your left hand around the bar. Round your fingers now. But that's fine. All right. And your shoulders up and step up. Very good, Denise. Okay. Now, who wants to help next? Joy and uh David. Relax. Breathe. Eyes straight ahead. And very slowly begin to go back. Back. That's it. Into my hand all the way. That's it. Relax back and slowly up and over. Let your head drop. That's it. All the way to the floor. And can everyone see David's position? And one. Very good. One, two, one, two. And on your toes. 1 2 5 1 2 1 [Applause] 2 Let me know if there's any way I can help. That night, I still couldn't sleep. I just felt sad about Grandma. [Music] Are you [Music] crying? It's all right to cry, especially together. I was her little girl. You were my little girl. Someday you may have a little girl of your own. Grandma will never come back again. Will she? Never. Let me tuck you [Music] in. Death is a part of everyone's life. What were Linda's feelings when her grandmother died? How would you feel at a time like [Music] this? There are times when I really don't know. When I'm confused and frightened. It's the answers that nobody knows. that make me confused and frightened. I wonder about tomorrow. 5 minutes or an hour from now. I wonder about the changes that will happen anyhow. Where will I be? What will I be doing? Will we ever be the same? Will there always be this leaving time and time again? [Music] Before the winter comes, before the summer's gone, before the leaves come, for long. Before you say goodbye, before I say hello, before you make me cry, before Stay close to me now. I'm not even sure where we're [Music] going. So the um get everybody back here. So in the comments, people really uh love these films uh and uh people recognize that these are not your average educational films that I show on my show every day that these have more of a heart to them. Uh so I'm going to leave you guys to continue talking. Thanks. Yeah, just I you know and I know these clips well and every time I see them I'm I am moved and I'm thinking about those of us who know breakup and where Becky and Corey and the mom are headed is to see the father who's flying in um and the parents are separated and possibly going to get divorced. Um and I I included that clip in terms of you know music and aesthetics and cinematography and motion and acting. I really think it captures um aesthetically so much of of what's happening even though plot-wise, right? I didn't we didn't introduce it with the plot element in it. Um and and again deeply struck by in my memory how powerful that that sequence is. Um, so when I guess I'll open up in terms of discussing the clips to ask maybe for a little more about working with the young actors who you explained were so talented in dealing with uh emotionally challenging topics. You chose these topics because of how challenging they were. Domestic violence uh um uh loss of a grandparent and the people who were commenting were right. Um, as far as we know from the TV Guide article, in my memory was not played in Boston. It was it was banned there. I'll also point out it was 10 years prior to the uh Sesame Street episode addressing Mr. Hooper's death. So, this is 10 years a decade earlier. So, maybe share a little bit with us about addressing these issues of uh that have such weight to them. Well, I'll I'll give an anecdote on breakup which was perhaps as potentially explosive as any of the subjects for the idea was that kids in classrooms and there were a lot of materials that then supported later discussion. So teachers didn't go into this without reser a reserve but uh so when I was trying to come up with an idea for breakup I consulted with Mois Shopper our psychoanalyst in St. child psychoanalyst and uh I said we know how would you convey the feeling of a child whose family is on the rocks and he said you'd you'd convey that what that child would feel would be that the pedestal that they were standing on was crumbling and that and so that then evoked the idea of doing it feeling it as a trip to the airport with all this constant flux of change and with flashbacks which we didn't get much into there where she's remembering both fantasizing and remembering moments. Uh uh little Becky was just a powerhouse of a kid. You you did raise the subject there. She has perhaps the most powerful scene in the series where she's screaming at her parents not to divorce. Uh that's that's it. It it just amazed me the emotion she generated. The only child in those clips you saw who I thought was he was terribly talented and and but who I thought we might be tapping a little too deeply into his personal reservoir of pain was Eddie the kid on par parental domestic abuse situation who was he was really a weather vein of emotion. He uh carried off the part magnificently. But if I felt it moment you was you watching the actor, not the kid, not the part. Uh did that cover what you were asking about Owen? Yeah. And might you take us into maybe a moment if you if you have a story about how you communicate with the children actors that you're working with when they're on set? Any any um approaches that you I mean it because you evoke with them as actors such great performances. Um, how are you talking to the kids on the set or before you get to the set or? Well, of course they have scripts and we do a read through at the start of the show once they're cast. We don't do readroughs prior to that. And then I think my attitude was the main thing and it's what they delivered in the long run, which is if you treat a 10-year-old as an adult as far as their ability to do what called for, you talk about it as you would talk with an adult actor about a park. Uh, and mainly you're trying to stay out of the way and create a a ambiencece for them to do the create the onscreen material. You're not trying to tell them do this line in this way or that line and that way. Uh, that's sort of stock and trade uh independent film making. Uh, did did you have a lot of takes? I'm guessing there weren't wasn't a lot of time for very many takes. Well, once you once you get to a a location and set up, you've got you have the time you need to to do the takes you need. Uh I I wouldn't number of takes seems kind of superfluous. Sometimes we get it quickly, sometimes not. So, it depends on the situation itself. Yeah. Um is everything shot in in St. Louis on those shows? Yes. Uh, and whoever was asking about KETC, yeah, they they were the AIT hired KETC to produce the shows and KETC hired me. I was on staff for a while, then freelance for the rest of the time. But, uh, I was on staff for these shows. Uh, so, uh, I don't know if that that addressed your question, Owen. Uhhuh. Definitely. Skip, do you want to take a couple of uh questions from our viewers uh prior to us getting into bully and I could do some introduction to bully? Um we can I can also ask questions too, but I thought I would offer it back to you, Skip, if you want to take some questions from folks who are watching. Yeah. So folks post some questions in the comments and I'm I'm guessing because John and Owen have both commented on what they've read in the comments. They can read the comments so I don't have to relay them. So all of them are questions. Yeah. Where do we read from the top or what what do you want? There's a lot. You pinpoint the comments you want us to address. I I I also I'll just keep asking questions until Skip if you want to curate a couple of them um out of the vast comments that we have. Um and you know where where for John did you in terms of either in your training or your upbringing do you think you got the sensibilities that you brought to the set both in terms of the the drama um the ways of communicating with children and kind of the storytelling that you wanted to do. Where where do you feel that came from for you? I I don't know. I I have good parents, warm parents, sufficient a number of problems to uh put some heat in me. Uh not divorce or anything like that. Got a good education. Uh was a poet in college and uh learned to sort of shape a thing. And these films were a lot like poems in that respect. you were using a narrative structure, but you were shaping a rather small thing, a 15inute film. Uh, that's a very hard question, Owen, because Yeah, I apologize. The, you know, we we've spoken briefly about some of what was in the air in terms of child development at the time, Erikson's work, um, you know, and some of the work that you had been reading in child development as an undergraduate. um if you had a couple of thoughts about what was in the air at the time and what you had learned about kids from that perspective maybe um thinking about Eric Eric Ericson and maybe um Charles starting to think about the life cycle because of Ericson was was important but then Bruno Bedleheim there were just all kinds of people Robert Kohl's this was the 1960s and child development was a very widely interesting subject to a lot of people Maybe now or maybe not. Maybe uh times have changed a lot obviously. Uh no, I I think in each case it was the opportunity presented by the topic and the figuring out a story that would deliver that with impact. And then any of the uh filmmakers that you'd like to mention because you did talk about Trufo. I know there's some other filmmakers that you you watched quite a bit during the years kind of before and leading up to these. Well, Trufo and and uh you know, for instance, I've mentioned to uh Skip last week that uh Trufo made a short film called Leon, which is something like the mischief makers. I don't remember the translation, but that that paid played a really important role in the idea for how to do the kid with a crush on his teacher. Uh an adult looking back or looking back from an adult perspective. Uh, and I don't know, just all the wonderful filmmakers of the 60s and maybe maybe some of Bo Weiderberg's work as well. Boerberg, Adeline 31 and Joe Hill were both powerful movies of that point in time. Uh, Fellini of course was making movies. This is kind of like random recall. Yeah. Yeah. But it's definitely like a a very fertile period um for independent filmmakers like the 70s, right? the probably the greatest independent film period in American history. So, we have some uh some questions. Uh so, Matt asks, "Did you stay in touch with any of the kids that were actors or actually any of the actors after production wrapped?" Uh, not explicitly. Some we would cast in later shows because from this AIT made self-inccorporated for junior high age kids and so some of them we were recast. I I didn't develop personal relationships with any of them whereas with the crew and people like that have maintained a lot of contact over the years. Uh so no that's so that that's the kids passed on. In fact I'm often curious because Becky who was in breakup was about nine then it was about 1973. So she's getting to be an old lady herself and I've been I often wondered what their lives turned out how their lives turned out. So, uh, Old Radios is one of our commenters who collects camera equipment among other things, uh, and he has his own copy of Bully, but he asks, "What, uh, camera equipment did you do when you did these location shots?" It was Aeraflex with a 16 millimeter Aeraflex. Uh, in later shows, we would do two camera with that and a Claire that my uh, one one of the people who came board on board slightly later, Eric Nelson, had so Eric could get a rental and a job at the same time. And we shot a lot of two camera as time went by to for all the advantages you get from that. Uh but this was an Aeraflex and an Inagra tape recorder and good microphones, good microizers and so forth. Nice. Um so uh Tom asks uh did you ever get feedback from uh parents who watched whose kids watched the episodes like after they aired? Did you ever get feedback? I don't know. I I I would get feedback from the school people who would write in and say and I never got any negative feedback on this series which is kind of surprising because it was controversial and you would have thought some Christians would have been offended or evangelicals would have been offended but uh no not really except through the AIT would then funnel us comments because these would be shown either live in a 16mimeter film in a rural classroom or over the PBS station and they would have be aired in classrooms and the teachers would you know have this whole session and they might contact AIT to say this was a really good show or bad show I don't know about and then AIT would tell us some of the feedback but that was the only route I was sufficiently hidden behind KETC and AIT there's some original I'm sorry skip I'll just add that there's some original documents in the ERIC database if people are interested with uh early feedback from teachers and students of a number of episodes. Now, the ERC database was defunded a couple of weeks ago, so grab them now while you can. Um, so, um, I guess my question was that, um, you had said that they did test screenings of of the works. Is that true? Like where they would show them to kids or they would show them to your staff and you get feedback from that. Is that correct, John? No, that it may have happened from time to time, but that would not was not a major part of the project. I mean, once it was shot, there wasn't enough money to re-shoot. So, there was there was no sort of focus group stuff, nothing like that. That same data piece will have that. And it's not every episode, but there were select episodes for which there were uh early screenings done. There might have been some edits. So, some of that data is available. I'm not sure if it's any of John's episodes that were done with the pre-screenings, but there is data um that is available on some of that. It's really interesting um to see early screenings of a few episodes um and how they were received. We also this was really string. I mean it was the idea I was never asked to reshoot a scene or anything like that. And remember it had gone through all these processes with Irv and Mois and Larry Woff and so but no now there focus groups and rescreen re-shoots or whatever and it wasn't part of the picture. All right. Um so did we want to watch the film that traumatized me as a child? Well, it didn't traumatize me but it emotionally impacted me as a child. Um can I do a sentence or two on it just Yeah. And I just want to give context. Um, you know, as you were saying, John, these were shown on public television, but they also shown on on film, but a lot of times, at least in North Carolina, they would show it on public television, and then the different classrooms would have TVs. So, they would how it was being shown. So, the kids who saw it on TV had the benefit of then talking and processing what they had seen with the teacher. I saw it when I was home sick and I was sick. One, probably feverish. Two, I saw this amazing film that really just tore me up and I had no one to proc process it with. So, um, with that, I'm going to leave it to Owen to introduce I will just inject one thing, Skip, which is teacher training was a big part of the component of a big component of these projects for AIT. So, uh, the teachers who were going to use Inside Out in their classrooms, uh, had plenty of chance to sort of prepare and see what was happening. Yeah, this is a great, uh, intro to what I was going to mention because John alluded to it earlier. There were teacher guides, right? So, Exxon sponsored a great teacher guide for this series that uh, Locky uh, uh, Overbay, she used to be Locky Christopher, you know, did with Oral Harlson. There's an original. Um so that guide there was integer training to support um the discussions in the classroom and skip also raises that for many people what even if you saw it in the classroom as it was broadcast live over PBS right there are children who are homesick there are children who are home on snow days and teacher conferences so my generation watch these shows in multiple contexts some of them not so um intended and then uh I've also um found some evidence of being screened in prime time because it was such such a hit uh that apparently there was prime time screenings in some cities so that uh uh parents could also talk to their children about them. So just thinking about these films and these episodes existing in a variety of different viewing contexts. Um and with that just to uh introduce Bully and we'll get a chance to talk about it afterwards. I'm excited that we'll get to see a a full episode in its in its full power um taking us back to 1973 and um what some young people may very well have been facing. Um, so the power and the work. The following is from a national instructional television series. The series and related materials were developed and supported by 32 educational agencies with additional support from Exxon Corporation. [Music] I want to see all of you doing this. Okay, Shelley and Adrien, are you ready? The problem is 25.2 22 + 18.04 + 11.13. Okay, I want to see the rest of you doing this problem, too. Don't look out the window, Bob. Okay, it's real close, but Adrienne's one. Very good. Adrien, you must have really been a good math student at your old school. Would you like to stay up at the board since you're new at school? Okay, now who would like to go next? Oh, you've already had your turn. Bonnie, would you come up and do and what's the most important thing when you add decimals? Correct. Okay, here's your problem. 108.52 + 26.13 + 9.24. Pretty close. Doing fine. Got it. Good, Adrien. Adrien won again. Very good. Adrien, would both of you sit down now and we'll have two more people come up to the board. Jim and Susan, would you come up to the board, please? The problem is 3.72 plus 4.05 + 7.21. Frankie. Huh? What's the problem? No problem. The math problem. What's the math problem we've just been doing? Haven't you been paying attention, Frankie? Would you turn around now and pay attention? Please write down the problem. Okay, come on. Don't make it out. David [Music] [Music] have perfect. You laughed at me in class, punk. Now, do you think it's funny? Huh? [Applause] You just got lucky this time. You just wait till after school. I forgot my magazine. What? I forgot my magazine. Frankie, not again. I'll be there. I just don't know what to do with you, Frankie. Cindy, do you think that you could lend Frankie some of your magazine articles? I guess so. Stop. Stop it. Hey, what'd you do that for? What's that all about over there, Adrian? Frankie smeared my painting. Nothing. [Applause] You should have told on Frankie. The teacher wanted Nancy. He's always picking on my little sister. Anyway, nobody likes Frankie and nobody likes the way he fights. Don't pick fight. Frankie is not as tough as you think. Last week when he tried to pick a fight with Don, Don gave him a bloody note. Who was Don? Over there in the last shirt. Leave Angie alone. Just leave him alone. Dad, is there anything I can do to help you? No thanks. I'm almost done. You just wait till school. Okay. Now, don't call row three yet. I don't believe they're ready. Rhonda. sit up straight so that she can call you. Lendon, now don't forget your uh arithmetic this time, please. Uh row five and row four. Adrien, that was your row. Aren't you going to go home? Okay. Good night everybody. Nate says, "See you later tomorrow." Goodbye, Donnie. Bye. Bye, Gary. Bye. Have a nice day. Bye. Bye. Good night. See you tomorrow. Okay. See you tomorrow. Bye. [Music] [Music] I [Music] [Music] Mister, do you know how to get to Tuxedo Boulevard? No, I'm sorry I don't. Well, do you know how to get back to Locust Street School? I'm sorry I don't. I'm taking pictures of the river. I don't live here. Pretty scary, isn't it? Huh? Oh, all this flooding water, I guess. So, Surprise! What are you trying to do? Run away? Well, just don't try because I've got you now. Come on. Let's [Music] go. Cut out. Leave me alone. Will you please stop it? Why can't we talk it over? Hulk, what's there to talk about? Well, I didn't do anything to you. What's the matter, you chicken of cars? You're chicken of everything, aren't you? I'm not chicken. I just think it's gumified. Dom, you think everything you do is smart. You must really like school a whole lot. We don't want to go back up there. We want to go down here and be alone. Come on. Why can't we talk it over? H, just get going. Come on, let's go. Why can't we be friends? I didn't tell him you in class today. That's your tough one. And anyway, if we were friends, I could help you with your homework. Homework? Who cares about homework? Let's go. Hey, I got a quarter. If I give it to you, will you leave me alone? For a quarter? I might just You really don't thinking I'm going to leave you alone for one meal. Get up. I'm not going to get up. See that brown or something up there? That's my house. Oh, sure it is. I'm not kidding. It really is. How come when I fought you home yesterday, it was another house and on the other end of town? I don't know. I'm sick of waiting. Now you fight. I'm tired of this. I'm going home. No, you're not. You're going to fight first. I'm going home. You are not. I am. So, you're not. You're going to stay here and fight. It's not fair. If my parents did a fight, I'll get in trouble. Parents, who cares about your parents? Go home and show them this. Where you going, Bob? Come back. The the other way. Hey, stupid. There's only one other bridge back to town. I'll catch you before you get to that one. Hey, teacher pet. Look at this. I can get you anytime, punk. Hey, where are you going? Come on out. I know you're in there, so come on out and fight. I know you're in here somewhere, Adrian. You little punk. So come on out. You can't hide from me. Come on out, punk. You can't get away from me. You keep hiding like this, I'll just get you worse tomorrow. Come on out, Adrien. Now I know where you are for sure. [Applause] What are you going to do? Stay all night or something? Well, the longer you stay here, the better I'm going to get. Leave me alone. You don't come out. God, this might kill you. Kill you. There you are. You ran away again. You're really going to get it. Hey, my leg. You broke it. I can really hurt you now. Oh, please help. I can leave here. Oh, it hurts. Oh, please help me. It hurts. Please help me. Please. [Music] I inside out is a series of programs and related materials developed and supported by 32 educational agencies in the United States and Canada with additional support from Exxon Corporation. This program was produced by KEC St. Louis, Missouri, under the supervision of NIT, National Instructional Television. National Instructional Television. Uh, so thank you John and the Exon Corporation for uh the guides, the teacher guides that they sponsored. Yeah, they haunted. Yeah. So, what was the relationship with? Somebody asked about what was the relationship with Exxon Corporation and how did they kind of play into this? I've been in the archives on that, John. If you I mean, if I'm happy and then to me, they came in after the fact with additional support to really finish it off, right? Yeah. They they sponsored the teacher guide. So, it was a big win for uh for for AIT to have Exon aboard for the the really beautiful and substantive teachers guides. So really it's that the the uh provincial agencies and the state agencies that do the primary funding. So John, you wrote this episode, correct? Yeah. Uh were you processing something? Were you going through something here when you wrote this? Because this this is has so much going on. No, it's interesting. There were I I once had a kid tear my shirt like that. And there was a bully in my grade school class and my mom explained his father made him that way by beating him. But uh I was never bullied as a kid. I was a big athletic kid and I was pretty much spared that with isolated incidents where somebody made a mistake to challenge me. But uh no it was more just uh Moisy Shopper the psychoanalyst again played a key role in this because I asked Moyes early on at the conception stage for how to treat this as a story. Uh what's the difference between a just a tough kid and a bully? And Moyes's answer was when the bully gets you down on the pavement he doesn't consider himself to have won. He wants to beat your head against the pavement. So the the relentlessness of Frankie kind of came out of that anecdote from Moy or that analysis from Mois and the whole fact when uh the main character is approaching the adult who's who's filming the the river and just the helplessness you feel. You're like ask the adult for help and the adult is just like wow look at the flood. You know, I had I had taken a note on that, right? Because the line the adult says, he says, "Pretty scary, isn't it?" And it's for a moment it's like Adrian's like, "He gets it. He's going to maybe help." And he's like, "Oh no, the river is flooding." He's like, "That's not what's scary." And I thought that's a very interesting node moment for the film where the the adults are present through most of it yet absent at the same time. And that's the feeling of I think of a little kid who's like can't be helped. There's adults there, but they don't get it kind of. Yeah. Uh the an interesting background story someone commented on there's a river in St. Louis so there's floods. This was actually up in Missouri in a little scenic town called Washington Missouri which is about 50 milesi from St. Louis and we might have filmed there anyway because one of the freebies of independent film making on location is you get the backgrounds and this was a terribly scenic town but then when there was a flood that spring uh that that kept us for us. So we said it in Washington, Missouri in flood time. Can I ask a couple? So So just to follow up on that notion of um well I'm thinking about the shot through the door where the door closes and we see them framed in the distance. There's also it's as if there's a POV of someone watching him being hunted by Frankie. and and I'm struck as I've watched this a number of times recently again um of that that that the the torment the isolation right so you're exploring some incredibly dark perspectives that you know I remember as a young person being like that's an actual depiction of what it was like at times being a fifth grader and so it was really those discussions with with Moyes that get you into that mindset perhaps but you're also driven to tell the story right I mean all this background from from the designers. Uh, but that key idea on this one as on breakup came from Boise. Uh, no, no, it's just 15. You got 15 minutes to tell the story about bullying. And there you go. Um, I'll think of the the the last piece I'll throw in before we go to more was just the the notion of the level of the cruelty I think of there's a notion of like the cruelty of children and how children can be particularly cruel. um you know I don't we don't see it depicted as often these days um and certainly not with children as young. So I'm doing work on another project right now where at least in the states there's less horror for children than we would see in British television than we would see in Canadian television than we would see in Australian productions. Um uh certainly by the time you get into the 80s to me this al this also plays as a bit both as a horror film right because it's very frightening but then also there's this um this beautiful core of Adrian where to a certain extent he's passive but then he fights. So the whole time I'm watching I'm going like, "Come on, suck him. Sock him." Right. Then when he does suck him, he's conflicted about it. And I I wanted to see if you uh had any thoughts to offer on the conflict that that he feels towards the end of it where he's at a lack of words for making the decision that goes into that open ending. Well, AIT favored open endings because the teacher could say, "Well, what would you do? Would you leave Frankie with a broken leg? would you go away? Would you go get help? You know, so that was kind of a structural matter more than uh depth. I don't know what Adrian was feeling at that moment. Uh he seems at a loss for words. So you write that kind of loss for words in as a way to provide the open ending that that NIT is asking for. I think you just write in a freeze frame and tell the kid he can't decide what to do or whatever. He's all a sudden he has the upper hand. That's your true foe 400 blows final freeze frame moment there I guess. Yeah. Skip, you want to shall we go to the audience? Uh yeah. So there were some questions somebody asked about uh when roughly what time of year in 1973 did you shoot this? And my bigger question is how long would it take from taking on the project to actually being done with the project? uh would an average inside out episode take? Well, remember that it would start with this design meeting and choosing topics and so forth and so on, writers and designers. And so that the envelope for the six programs was at least a couple years, but the envelope for a given program would be a few months. And we we we c we for each of the shows we would have call back casting drawn from the kids who'd come to that mass casting and and and adults in some cases. Uh our kid acting is a lot tends to be a lot better than our adult acting. Uh and so from the time you I would start writing a script for Bully, let's say. I think it was a spring and I it was fairly late in the series. I think in my memory came first and I forget the sequence. Uh, I think I'm I'm I'm presuming it was spring just because of the flood. I don't remember physically. Uh, so a few months, maybe four months, maybe five through the editing and getting answer prints back and approvals. Excellent. Um, let's see if there's any other questions here. Uh, somebody did want you to talk about some of your other work for other series like images and things and and things like that and I figure that that will be something you guys can talk about and then maybe that's another impetus for another show uh down the road. Yeah, we could talk about did the person particularly ask for images and things and because uh John's work in self incorporated is really important. Um, some of us think about episodes, right? or was there was there a request in particular? Um well, somebody said talk more about images and things. Um and there are some super self-inccorporated fans uh on here. Um but also somebody asked uh let's see the actors, how did they feel about portraying these roles? Um because they these I mean I'm guessing these kids did some theater, maybe some commercial work. like how did they feel about uh portraying these troubled children? I don't think they had done much theater or commercial work. It was uh this was sort of sprung hole in St. Louis. I'm sure there were kids in commercials, but when we'd get the little kids who were competing in the Miss Junior Child America, whatever type things, they would not generally be the ones we cast. We cast very natural kids who were pretty healthy for starters. Uh it was interesting only in Self incorporated if any of you have watched that carefully there I had to do a show on failure and cast a little girl who'd been very good in auditions uh and she plays a girl who tries out for a cheerleading team and uh doesn't make it so and her father talks to her and it's a little bit formulaic the plot but that was the only that was the first time I'd ever come across a kid who had any misgivings about their role. I think she didn't want to portray a loser. And uh it was it was a shock to me. You know, it's like one day we were shooting a tennis scene with her and her girlfriends and she says, "How long is how long is this going to take?" And I thought, "Oh my god, that was the opposite of every kid I'd dealt with from that time." They were mainly, "What can I do next? What can I do next?" Uh I No, the kids I don't think any of the kids had any reluctance about their parts. I'm kind of impressed in Bully. Adrien made a wonderful victim, but I don't I can't remember about the kid who played Frankie. Uh, except he's awfully good. I mean, I can imagine a lot of kids in that role who would have gotten self-conscious about being so high pressure all the time. And I thought that kid pulled it off. In some ways, that being the bully was a harder role than being the victim. Yeah. I mean, the evil character. Um, so how did you do a casting call? Was it just put in the paper or was it um Well, as I say, the original casting call for the series was that the television station aired that we're going to have a huge casting on this weekend. Uh, and then for individual shows, it would just be callbacks off of the results of that. Was there any any improvisation allowed? Oh, sure. Yeah. Well, there wasn't improvisation like from the get-go. There was a director in those days. Some of you may remember John Cabites who you could you could see in his films that they were highly improv. Of course he had actresses like his wife Gina Roland's and and so forth. So these were powerful actors. Uh but to a certain degree you would set the terms for a scene and then the kids could improv. But it wasn't sort of let's make up a scene on the set kind of thing. It was always a context in the script. And so did you, you know, you certainly talked about the big the big feature film directors and the independent directors. Did you ever look at other educational works uh to kind of do to say like I I like that or I don't like that or I mean in in when I say you like at AIT were were there decisions made based on other educational films or out currently out in the world? Um, and it was funny talking to you two beforehand that you had films that had deeply moved you in childhood. I remember the kid in my class who was a projectionist with Richard Richard von Baron, but I don't remember any educational films in in classrooms. This was in the 19 mid-50s. uh we were very aware of each other's work on the series but and and we might independently watch the red balloon or glass or other educ but but it was it was not like a culture of educational films. The culture that we drew on was feature film making. Skip, do you want us to talk a little bit about some of the other series that John worked on? Yeah. Uh I think that's great. uh because we're we're past the one hour mark, but uh this has been so pleasant. Like uh yeah, let's talk about the other works that you did and then you know if there's interest with you guys and with the commenters, maybe we can do another show like in the fall or something. Yeah, I would love that. Let me find let me say uh AIT eventually folded I think in the 1990s maybe later and 20 about 20 13 is the final door closer approximately I'm going to be set setting Owen up for this because he'll be able to tell you the exact weight of AIT both from its origins as a sort of central distributor of shows to schools and states and whatnot uh and then creating its own what they called consortium projects because they were funded by consoria, state departments of education and so forth. Uh I only worked on many there they have a huge catalog which they donated to Indiana University. Oh and you can tell them how to the website and how to find any AIT show they might want except the ones that never got made it through the process. Yeah, some didn't some didn't survive. Yeah, but go ahead. I'll I'll wait till you're done. Well, no. How what what I on my computer I just type in Indiana AIT and I get the website but I don't remember what they're called the film and whatever archives the moving image archive has done stuff my new chapter that's coming out on June 1st in the book from University Georgia Press archive television chapter 2 is about what survives from the AIT collection in two collections in particular one the national public broadcasting archive at the University of Maryland and the second at Indiana Moving Image Archive. So for those people who are interested in what uh in that story that chapter specifically about what has been saved and what survived and you can follow on Google Scholar over the coming years the publications that I'll be putting out further you know kind of in depth on each series things like that um if we want to talk a little bit I'd love to talk about self incorporated some of John's work on think about skip what's the best way for us to give you know a taste of what might come when we hope summarize that uh So again apart from the fact that they had this broad catalog uh they had a con inside out spurred a lot of interest for instance starting with Exxon but also in the departments of education and they f after that they did a series called bread and butterflies where they I made some of the shows I made some of the shows for each of the these series I'm going to name the other did others where they didn't use me uh and unfortunately bread and butterflies was about career education but they wanted to stick with the model of the open-ended 15-minute drama and so I learned how to write skits there because these were not dramatic subjects. Uh then they did self incorporated which was inside out for older kids. Then they did teachers uh what's it called? Art of teaching for teachers five programs. A yeah art of teaching. Then the head of AIT, Ed Cohen, had a they had made their chops, so to speak, on uh effective things, but his real interest was in teaching learning skills. Uh Ed was not a medddler. So he didn't he wasn't trying to curb the effective stuff, but he was interested in teaching a series, and they created a very large series with a lot of funding called Think About. uh in my mind it was overplanned but uh you could create skits for it because the topics again were like using criteria and things like that and all of those shows are available on on the website. Uh after that they did a series that now we're moving from film to video. Uh, I worked on a series called Arts Alive, two math series, Salvad and something else, fifth and sixth grade. Uh, t a series called uh I'm not going to remember all these series names. I worked basically on their projects through the 90s while doing other things. Educational Film Center, which created the majority of programs in the first couple series, started hiring me to do things on a series called Footsteps and Powerhouse. And that led to some projects with Endomment for the Humanities. And so that's kind of where my career went. Uh I would say for whoever asked about images and things that that's one of the better series that has escaped the net. Uh so if you go on the Indiana U website, you'll find my shows for that series because I donated my film prints. Uh but the series as a whole didn't didn't they that didn't come up with the materials. Yeah. I haven't had a chance to actually look for those films to see if I have any uh titles that in my collection, but uh I have not run across any. So So John, you're saying that images and things the other episodes are not currently available? Not that I'm aware of. Skip may have them. I don't know if you've boasted on your number of films. Two series, two shows that EFC did that were really excellent in that series. One was called Sea Images and one was called Dreams and Fantasies. Uh the idea on images and things for those of you who asked about it was that uh they wanted to use film as a medium to impress or to make available the connections between real life things and art museum type things that aesthetic values underly both. Now I'm now I'm going to put on my detective lens and go hunt for images and things. Oh yeah, it's worth it. Well, I I have the catalog so that could that could I could send you a list of programs. I think I have the list. I want to make sure I can find all the episodes. Yeah. Great. Yeah. And I've shared the links to John, your films that are at IU, uh, and also the AIT holdings at IU, uh, in the comments. So, and John's prints are going to be of a much higher quality than what we had previously, which is great. And thank you so much to John for for bringing those to you. You barely ran them through a projector. Is that right? Right. They basically sat in a can in a box for 50 years or whatever. So, it's it's really great that we have those excellent prints because some of what survives in for instructional television, right, has burntin time code or it has sometimes subtitles across it. Um, so or it would be bumped to umatic and umatic is the um it's not my most favorite video format and it doesn't age well. So, um yeah, so there's really some beautiful Sorry, there's really great prints that that John donated. All right. So, I'm hearing in the comments that people would love sometime in the future uh bringing John and Owen back and we'll visit some of these other uh episodes. Uh you in the in the course of talking about this beforehand, there were Owen definitely wanted and and John definitely wanted to show some things and I was like, well, that's going to be like a four hour show. So, let's hone it in on Inside Out first and then we'll we'll branch out. So, uh, I would say in the future we'll we'll talk about this. Um, but it's been lovely having both of you. John, thank you so much for joining us. John, thank you to Skip. Thank you for organizing this, Skip. And thank you, Owen, for the interest you're reviving in these old shows. Yeah. Yeah. Owen is is just amazing. When he talks about his detective lens, he is not kidding. It's amazing what he is he has found in all these little documents. So, the treasures. The treasures. So, one last question. Uh, are there any preprint materials that exist? Any original camera negatives or anything that exists with this that um that you know of? John, you want to go first? No, you go. You're you're the archist. So, the the archive uh in Indiana where I've spent a fair amount of time, um it depends on the project. Usually what I might find right I'll find stills there's sometimes I'll find slides so for some of John Robbins works right the slides exist for the opening of read it um I have not found camera negative but there's unprocessed material as well so I'm not aware of camera negative right right there's scripts there's all kinds of stuff in the archive but uh yeah the the prints that John uh donated are beautiful they're really stunning so that's really great um and thank you for doing that on and that that guarantees the legacy uh moving forward. So uh thanks everybody for joining us and um uh I'm so happy that we hosted this that uh Owen suggested it and uh for those of you that follow me, I'll be back again tomorrow showing you more stuff. Um but thanks again and we will see you all at a later time. Take care. Thank you.