A Communications Primer (1953)

★★★★★ · Brothers? · EamesFan · 2005-05-18

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.

★★★★★ · Wow! And this was 1958! · jgruszynski · 2009-03-21

Insanely accurately and prescient given that Shannon published his seminal papers about communication channels and information only 12 years before this film was made. If only more people understood these ideas. They are applicable well beyond the obvious engineering applications of communication technology, being relevant to human cognition and economics as well. The attribution of information theory and communication channels to also applying to brains is accurate and it is still surprising that anyone still argues this but they do, especially in academia. The likely reason is that direct…

★★★★★ · This film is not in the Public Domain · owwls · 2021-08-05

To save folks some trouble, I asked the Eames Office if this film was in the public domain. It is not, despite being labeled as such here.

★★★★ · Smarter Than Your Average Educational Film · Christine Hennig · 2004-08-12

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…

★★★ · Educational films as 'Art' · Bill T. · 2005-05-12

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…

★★★ · Adequate · Steve Nordby · 2003-06-12

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.