1958 8mm Film Saga

[Tscan]

About 7 years ago a good friend of mine bought a 200ft can of reg 8mm film at a thrift store. Not knowing what was on it, he passed it onto me about 2 years ago to see if i could do anything with it. For some reason last week, I finally decided to dig it out of the trunk it was in and load it on the Retro 8 to see what was on it. It turned out to be some good footage of a family shot locally sometime in the late 1950's. So i did a bit of tweaking, editing, posted it to Vimeo, and then Facebook. My friend who found the film shared the link and so on. From there it went viral around the city with all kinds of people trying to figure out where the neighborhood was and who the people were, trying to follow clues in the film. By Monday the local news team caught wind of it and all the attention it was getting, so they asked us to do a story on it yesterday. Soon after it aired, family members who were in the film as children came forward. They were blown away, never knew about the footage and here they were on the news from 55 years ago. The news team called us out this afternoon to meet a 64yr old woman who was in it. Her husband just passed away last Monday. She told us that this film had brought a lot of happiness to the family during a difficult time. I gave her the original reel and some DVD's. It was a great day. check out the news stories below!
http://www.katu.com/news/local/Mystery- ... 1481237582

http://www.katu.com/news/local/Why-are- ... =video&c=y

[BAC]

That's pretty cool Tscan. I have a large collection of other peoples home movies that I've found at garage sales and such over the years. I started out buying reels for my own movies but I couldn't throw away the film. I never understood why people sell their home movies. Based on some conversations I've had some people think that since they had them transferred they can just get rid of them. One person I bought some reels from told me how long it took to unspool the film into trash bags after he had it transferred.

I live near Seattle so most of the film I have is from the Pacific Northwest. I have a lot of footage of the 1962 Seattle Worlds Fair. Some of the film I have dates back to the 1930's but most of it is from the 1950's and 1960's. It's interesting to watch especially if the footage has places that I'm familiar with. I also found footage of Saigon shot by a pilot during the Vietnam war. I have footage of the US Olympic Ski team practicing on Mt Bachelor in 1962. I have a road trip to Mexico in the 1930's, trips to Disneyland in the 1950's, trips to Alaska, Hawaii, Europe, Japan...

My best find was when I purchased a Bolex projector from someone on Craigslist that included a home movie of a baseball team. It turned out my father was in the film. It was a Boeing company team that he played on in the late 1960's and early 1970's. He remembers most of the people on the team including the person that shot the film. It's a well edited and titled 400' film. I added it to my own families home movies.

Unfortunately I don't have a good way to transfer any of the film right now. I will eventually try to transfer some of the better footage but transferring it all would cost a fortune. I have some great old home movies of New York City that has vinegar syndrome that I should transfer while it still has a good picture.

[Tscan]

It turned out that the woman didn't know how the film ended up in a thrift store, and didn't even know it existed before yesterday. But i tried to point out my original theory of how film gets written off but ironically holds up forever compared to it's successors. Your collection of old films sounds really awesome. I was actually pretty surprised at the amount of interest and how much people enjoyed seeing this old film. I bet a lot of people would like to see your films.

[aj]

Nice to get some reward from your work. Old footage items are popular with local television around the world. Even national sometimes have a quearterly show of an hour. With old cars, biplanes and zeppelins etcetc.

There are billions of feet of home movies. Only a fraction ends up in a antique or media recycling shops etcetc. So much of it gets tossed out in the garbage by not knowing and mostly not giving a sheit people. Very much as it is with modern digital footage of last year. But then, who re-views vacation or family photos of 20 years ago?

It is remarkable how many early 1900's family photo-album you will find at antique or photograficafairs.
Either the family doesn't care any longer or the family has died out.

BTW from an earlier discussion. Owning or possessing a bearer doesn't give right to the content You cannot publish it or consider the rights to be yours. How are things with this man who thought he found a crate of Ansel Adams glass negatives and would be rich?

[Tommy]

I remember reading about 5 years ago, of someone who bought an old ancient film can on Ebay for approx. $5., I believe in the UK. It turned out, it contained an early lost Charlie Chaplin movie, apparently the only print still in existence, I believe he sold it for 1.3 million.
I hope the home movies sold are those discarded after video transfers....I think of nothing more sad, than a family history that holds no value for the later generations.

[aj]

I remember reading about 5 years ago, of someone who bought an old ancient film can on Ebay for approx. $5., I believe in the UK. It turned out, it contained an early lost Charlie Chaplin movie, apparently the only print still in existence, I believe he sold it for 1.3 million.
I hope the home movies sold are those discarded after video transfers....I think of nothing more sad, than a family history that holds no value for the later generations.

Charlie Chaplin wasn't on super-8 I suppose.

It seems fairly optimistic to destroy transfered film. The likelihood of the digital version to get lost or destroyed is so much bigger then the original film. Also transfer technology will still gain more quality and then what?

[JeremyC]

Tscan,

Fantastic images so clear and well coloured, I guess shot on something with fixed focal length lenses. I especially liked the clip of the car being pulled from the sea, backwards. A good story, congrats on getting it into the local media as well as highlighting the importance of film as a long term storage medium for social history that we we should pay more attention to.

BTW, You Americans looked so much better 50 years ago, what happened?

[Tscan]

Tscan,

Fantastic images so clear and well coloured, I guess shot on something with fixed focal length lenses. I especially liked the clip of the car being pulled from the sea, backwards. A good story, congrats on getting it into the local media as well as highlighting the importance of film as a long term storage medium for social history that we we should pay more attention to.

BTW, You Americans looked so much better 50 years ago, what happened?

Ha thanks! Trans fats and high fructose corn syrup is what happened. A lot of people over here commented about that on the links that went around... how you didn't see any fat people.

[JeremyC]

Meant to ask in previous post. How or who did the transfer?

[Tscan]

Meant to ask in previous post. How or who did the transfer?

I scanned it with the Retro 8. Did some grain reduction with Neat Video

[aj]

BTW, You Americans looked so much better 50 years ago, what happened?

Progress, food is too cheap and thanks to cheap oil manufacturing is too cheap thus mechanized transport is near free. Hence nobody moves a limb without strict necessity.

Here you have modern US home movie making at work : http://youtu.be/3g3iTGfXFvU
All three unable to fit normal clothing and way too fat with a fat collar and top to toe a layer or pack of fat.
Unfortunately their brain suffered too. Men will soon start wearing skirts as they can no longer fit trousers.
Their wide 3/4 pants are the first sign of this progress.

[carllooper]

I really like this story - it kind of taps into the seemingly futile nature of photographing anything, ie. that in the end it will just end up thrown out with the rubbish anyway (when you're gone) ... but then it turns this right around and restores a kind of strange faith in photography (similar to the story behind the archive of films that kick started the Kinograph project). But here it's just an ordinary woman, rather than a King, in her sixties, sitting at home watching the news, getting a complete shock (I imagine) when seeing her childhood, in glorious 8mm colour, come back to life out of nowhere on the local news.

The fact that her husband had just recently died adds a lot to the story. It's about loss on all sorts of levels, but in the midst of that, a little bit of magic. Completely arbitrary. Completely coincidental. Completely banal, and yet all the more magical as a result.

Carl

[JeremyC]

Andre,

To be fair (my original comment was a bit tongue in cheek) as a dual Australian British national I can tell you that the populations of both my countries match the waist size of modern America, in fact I seem to remember that my fellow Australians in recent years, according to stats, have begun to beat Americans in belt sizes.

[carllooper]

Andre,

To be fair (my original comment was a bit tongue in cheek) as a dual Australian British national I can tell you that the populations of both my countries match the waist size of modern America, in fact I seem to remember that my fellow Australians in recent years, according to stats, have begun to beat Americans in belt sizes.

Yes, I can vouch for that. I'm Australian, and comparing my waist to what it was thirty years ago, it is definitely larger.

Carl

[Tommy]

TW, You Americans looked so much better 50 years ago, what happened?

Don't forget we have the internet ....how many calories can you burn there? Also cable TV, ..video games
and wide panel TVs.