Finding Aids

Cinecraft, Inc. is a corporate film and video production house. The company was founded in 1939 by Ray Culley (1904-1983) and Betty Culley (1914-2016) in Cleveland, Ohio. Ray Culley served as president of the company until his retirement in 1970. During his tenure, Cinecraft specialized in commercial productions for business, industry, trade organizations, and, in some cases, government agencies and social service organizations. Cinecraft was one among hundreds of production houses in the U.S. during the middle decades of the twentieth century that specialized in a motion pictures commonly referred to as non-theatrical, industrial, commercial, business and/or sponsored films. The collection consists of films produced or acquired by Cinecraft, Inc., scripts prepared for film productions, and administrative documents related to the daily functions of the company. The collection is divided into three series: Films; Scripts and project documentation; and Administrative records. The materials date from 1915 to the 1980s.

Cinecraft Productions was founded in 1939 by Ray Culley (1904-1983) and Betty Culley (1914-2016) in Cleveland, Ohio. Ray Culley served as president of the company until his retirement in 1970. During his tenure, Cinecraft specialized in commercial productions for business, industry, trade organizations, and, in some cases, government agencies and social service organizations. Cinecraft was one among hundreds of production houses in the U.S. during the middle decades of the 20th century that specialized in motion pictures commonly referred to as non-theatrical, industrial, business and/or sponsored films. This collection documents the history of the company, the people that worked there, and some of the company's film and educational projects. The collection has been arranged into three series: Company and personnel history; Films; and Educational materials. The materials date from 1937 to 2016 with a bulk of the collection dating from 1937 to 1975.

E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company is a chemical company, commonly referred to as the DuPont Company which was established in 1802. Today, the DuPont Company typically introduces more than 2,000 products and patent applications each year. This large collection of moving images documents the research, development, training, safety measures, products, and promotional aspects of DuPont Company history. The moving images include commercials, short films, feature films, and television programs.

Robert “Bob” A. Schneider (1943-) worked as a sound engineer, then a writer, producer, and director at Cinecraft Productions, a film and video production company, from 1965 until 1977. This small collection of digital copies consists of twenty films either written by Storycraft or produced by Cinecraft or both. There are also fourteen sets of digital copies of photographs, mostly production stills, but also some images of Cinecraft personnel, workspaces, and equipment. The materials in the collection date from 1947 to 1976.

'Sponsored film' defines a variety of motion picture productions funded by businesses, organizations, or governments that dictate the film's point of view, audience, and intent. Industrial or business films are a subgenre of sponsored films with content that markets products and ideas, touts a particular company or industry, trains employees, and explains manufacturing or transactional processes around creating and selling products and ideas. The Sponsored and Industrial Motion Picture Film Collection at Hagley is an artificial collection compiled by curators that includes single motion picture films or small sets of films acquired via purchase or donation.