The gutenberg galaxy 129 the street until he took a natural turn—he mustn’t w alk off the side of the screen, but must walk down the street and make a natural turn. It was quite understandable that he could disappear around the turn. The action had to follow a natural course of events. Panning shots were very confusing because the audience didn’t realize what was happening. They thought the items and details inside the picture were literally moving. You see, the convention was not accepted. Nor was the idea of a person sitting still while the camera was brought in to a close-up; this was a strange thing, this picture growing bigger in your presence. You know the common way of starting a film: show the city, narrow it down to a street, narrow it down to one house, take your camera in through the window, etc. This was literally interpreted as you walking forward and doing all those things until you were finally taken in through the window. All of this meant that to use the film as a really effective medium we had to begin a process of education in useful conventions and make those films which would educate people to one convention, to the idea, for example, of a man walking off the side of the screen. We had to show that there was a street corner and have the man walk around the street corner and then in the next part of the film show him walking away, and then cut the scene. African audiences cannot accept our passive consumer role in the presence of film. A basic aspect of any literate audience is its profound acceptance of a passive consumer role in the presence of book or film. But an African audience had had no training in the private and silent following of a narrative process. This is an important matter. An African audience does not sit silently without participating. They like to participate, so the person who shows the films and makes the live commentary must be flexible, stimulating, and get responses. If there is a situation where a character sings a song, the song is sung and the audience is invited to join in. This audience participation had to be thought of as the film was made and opportunities provided for it. Live commentators who presented the films had to be trained to the last degree in what the film meant and in their interpretation of the film for different audiences. They