My Holy Grail from 1983 - Looking great - Thanks Kent!

[Andersens Tears]

Some things mean more to some folk than others and I have to tell you that I recently came across some super 8 footage that is very special to me.

My family never had a movie camera when I was growing up - all I have from my childhood are photos. Being a lover of super 8 in adulthood this has always been a sadly missed thing for me.

In 1983 I went on Cub Camp. Our leader had a movie camera, and him filming some birds at a local park was my first introduction to a movie camera. I saw that he was taking a series of 'still images' I thought - interesting. He shot some more footage of us at Cub Camp. That memory stayed with me. Now I had never ever seen this film and thought of ever being able to see it only a dream. To cut a long story short, I managed to get in contact with the son of the guy who shot it. I asked him if he knew if this footage still existed. He said he thought that his father gave away all the films to the Cub Scout group long ago, but he said he would check. It was a while before I heard from him again, but it was sort of good news! He had found a box of old cine films and he said I was welcome to check through them if I got a transfer made of them for him. So he sent them to me and I was over the moon to find that the Cub Camp films were amongst them! I sat there watching them on my projector lapping up the nostalgia to see all my old buddies until out of the blue I found myself on film there amongst them. I had to stop the projector and pinch myself, was this for real? Did I just find some super 8 footage of MYSELF as a boy? YES! I can't tell you how much this means to me. To know that some footage of me of a child had existed somewhere in someones dark cupboard for 28 years......

Here is the footage - I got this back the other day - it was shot on Boots Moviechrome and was dirty with some minor scratches. Kent at Uppsala Bildteknik AB made a great job of the transfer using his new 'wetgate' process!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mz72hyqpNls

At 3.02 - 3.06 I am the boy in the bottom left wearing a blue top and looking a little unsure of everything!


PS - please go for the 720 resolution and switch your speakers on!

[granfer]

Jamie, you're a lot more beautiful these days... or so your avatar would have us believe!

[BAC]

That's a great story, it must have brought back some great memories! I had a similar experience earlier this year. I purchased a projector from someone on Craigslist that had an 8mm film reel in the box with it. After watching the film I discovered that my father was on the film. It was a company baseball team that he played for in the late 1960's and early 1970's. I wrote about it on another forum that you can see here:

http://8mmforum.film-tech.com/cgi-bin/u ... 942#000000

[john59]

A couple of great stories there. I really must contact the guy who bought from me my cine equipment back in the mid 70s. I know for a fact that he shot film of the locality where i used to live and also shot film in my late father's local pub and I know he will be on his films. I only have about 20 seconds of my dad on film because he would never let me film him purposely Just reading this thread has reminded me.
Thanks.

[Andreas Wideroe]

I also had a similare experience last year. For those of you who don't know this, I run a professional telecine facility and we do quite a bit of R8 and Super8 films.

One day an older local man showed up and wanted some R8 films from the late 1960s transferred. This was a pretty standard job so no questions asked about what's on the films or where he was from.

The day came when I started transferring the films and in on of the reels there were footage from a scout camp. I kind of recognized the name of the division and I paid some extra attention to the kids and grownups there and would you believe it, there was my father as a teenager! The camera panned by him a few times. This was really fun since as far as I know my family (on my father's side) doesn't have and cine footage of their childhood and youth and all of a sudden there was some very cool seconds that I'm really glad I came across.

Andreas

[Uppsala BildTeknik]

Ah, wonderful story! I didn´t know it was that precious footage I had received (although all family footage is precious, this must be over the regular level of "preciousness").

[Angus]

My dad never took the plunge from still to cine cameras until I got hold of one, by which time I was 13. Since I was the one who did most of the shooting there's little movie film of me as a teenager.

However I do remember a friend's birthday party, probably we'd be aged 7 or so, and one parent had a super 8 sound camera. I remember vividly he shot one cartridge of sound film. I've never seen the footage and did ask a few years ago but nobody remembered who had shot the film. I'd love to see that, probably 30 years on.

So...lots of still photos of me growing up but little in the way of moving images.